by Heidi Perks
‘What am I going to do?’ I asked, burying my head in my hands. ‘Harriet must really hate me to speak to that journalist.’ Telling him this story did nothing but back up what he’d already implied about me at the appeal. That I was irresponsible and couldn’t be trusted. ‘I can’t believe she’s done it,’ I said. ‘I know she must be hurting, but this – it just doesn’t feel right.’
NOW
‘Why do you think Harriet went to the press?’ DI Rawlings asks.
‘I don’t know that she did any more,’ I say. My eyes are sore from rubbing them. I ache for the luxury of being able to place a cold pack on them, but all I can do is try to stop touching the tender skin.
‘So she must have told someone?’ The detective is relentless. ‘Even though you asked her not to. That must have made you angry?’
‘Angry?’ I could laugh at the woman who quite obviously has no clue. ‘No, it didn’t make me angry. In some ways I thought she had every right to tell that journalist or her husband or whoever she wanted.’ I sigh. ‘I think it was Brian. I believe Harriet told him at some point and he was the one who spoke to Josh Gates.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Because of what he said when he came to see me on Wednesday night, two days ago,’ I say with bite. I take a breath and then add, a little more calmly, ‘I’m struggling to see how this is relevant. What happened when Jack was young has got nothing to do with any of this.’
‘We are just trying to build up a picture,’ she says and presses her lips into a perfect heart.
I look away and sit back, resisting the urge to fold my arms. She knows she’s getting to me and I have to be careful, but to say I am exhausted is an understatement.
‘Let’s talk about the call you received this morning,’ she says. ‘Friday morning, thirteen days after you’d last spoken to her. It must have been a shock?’
‘It was.’
‘What were you doing when she phoned?’
‘I was supposed to be meeting DCI Hayes. He’d asked me to go to the station but then the school called me to say Molly was ill. So I was going to collect her first.’
‘And the call from Harriet was totally unexpected?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did she sound?’
‘Frightened. Desperate,’ I say, remembering the sound of her voice with unnerving clarity.
‘And why do you think she called you?’
‘Probably because I was the first person she thought of.’
‘After what had happened, she still turned to you? Why would she do that?’ Rawlings asks.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, my voice rising a notch. ‘She was afraid. Most likely it’s because Harriet has no one else to call.’
‘And so as soon as she called you, you went to help her?’ the detective asks, raising her eyes as she waits for me to respond.
‘Well, no,’ I say. ‘Like I said I had to pick up my daughter from school.’
‘So your close friend calls you, frightened and desperate, and for a while you did – nothing?’
‘Not nothing. I had my daughter to look after—’
‘But you didn’t call the police?’
‘No.’
‘Or tell anyone else?’
‘No.’
‘Despite how desperate Harriet sounded?’
I nod silently.
‘Then what I don’t understand is why the delay in doing anything, Charlotte?’ she asks. ‘Why did you sit around for what – an hour, more even – before deciding what to do?’
My mouth is dry, regardless of how many times I swallow. I lean forward in my chair, my hands beneath me. My heart is painful, it is beating so hard, and all the while she doesn’t take her eyes off me.
But I cannot tell her the truth.
‘Charlotte?’ she is prompting me. I wipe my hairline, edged with a thin streak of sweat. I have to say something but the harder I try the faster words escape me. My voice is low and hoarse when I finally whisper, ‘I’d like to take another break, please.’
BEFORE
Harriet
DCI Hayes arrived ten minutes after Angela had hung up and Brian quickly ushered him into the back garden. ‘Let’s not worry my wife further,’ he snapped at the detective. ‘She’s dealing with enough at the moment.’
Harriet watched them from the window. Both men had their backs to her; Angela stood mutely at their side. She knew that if it was anything serious they’d have taken Brian to the station, but she was still desperate to hear what they were talking to him about. What had he done to make the detective come round so quickly?
When Brian eventually came back into the house, Angela and Hayes stayed talking in the garden. He slammed the door and banged his fists on the table, snapping his head up when he noticed Harriet hovering.
‘Why were they questioning you?’ She continued to watch the detective through the window.
‘They weren’t questioning me,’ Brian replied curtly. ‘They had questions, yes, but they weren’t questioning me.’ He hesitated as if he was thinking about what to say next. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘No, I’m not hungry,’ she said.
His body softened as he removed his balled fists from the table. ‘You haven’t eaten anything all morning. I’ll make you some toast.’
‘Brian, I don’t want toast.’
‘I’ll put some honey on it for you.’ He began trawling through the jars in the cupboard until he found a pot of honey at the back. He knew she didn’t like honey. It was only him who ate it.
Harriet took a deep breath. ‘Why won’t you tell me what they wanted to talk to you about?’ She hated begging yet it scared her that Brian knew something about Alice that she didn’t.
‘Harriet.’ Brian slammed the jar hard on the counter behind him. ‘I am going to have something to eat. As I have just told you, I will tell you everything after I’ve eaten. But please, will you listen to me for once and accept what I’ve said instead of trying to manipulate everything? You must see what you’re doing to me.’
The scream started in her gut, shooting up through her body like a bullet, as it often did. If she opened her mouth she wouldn’t be able to stop it from coming out and filling the room with all the anguish inside her. She knew too well that if she screamed Brian would win, calling in Angela and the detective to tell them his wife seemed to be suffering a breakdown.
Brian wouldn’t tell her what had happened in the garden until he was ready. Not until he had played with the situation a little more. Maybe not until she left the room wondering if a conversation with the detective had even taken place by the sandpit.
Resigned, Harriet squeezed her eyes shut to push back the threat of tears until the smell of toast wafted under her nose. ‘Eat up,’ he smiled, waving a piece in front of her that was slathered in honey.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Then why did you just ask me to make this for you?’ he snapped, and threw the toast into the sink.
Once DCI Hayes had left, Angela came into the kitchen and found Harriet sitting at the table with her head in her hands.
‘I’m trying to get my wife to eat something,’ Brian said. When Harriet looked up at him he flashed her a smile.
‘What were you talking about in the garden?’ Harriet didn’t care who answered as long as one of them did.
‘Have you not said anything, Brian?’ Angela asked.
‘Oh, Harriet.’ Brian shook his head and swept across the room towards her. Kneeling down beside her, he took her face between his hands, gently brushing her hair as he spoke. ‘Of course I’ve told her, Angela,’ he said, without taking his eyes off his wife. ‘I’ve just been through it all with her while you were both outside. Have you forgotten already, my love?
‘I told Harriet it would be sorted and it’s nothing for her to worry about. Because I don’t want her worrying any more.’ He looked worried himself as he pushed up from the floor.
‘Are you OK, Harriet, you do lo
ok a bit pale?’ Angela asked her.
‘You haven’t told me anything, Brian,’ she said. ‘So will one of you please tell me what’s going on?’
Brian took a deep breath and nodded. ‘Of course I’ll go through it all again if that will help,’ he said with feigned patience. ‘The detective wanted to know why my alibi had fallen through.’
‘Your alibi’s fallen through?’ Harriet repeated.
‘Yes. Ken Harris,’ he said, rubbing her shoulders. ‘You know what he’s like. You’ve said yourself the man forgets what day it is half the time.’ Brian paused. ‘Well, now he seems to think that he can’t actually remember seeing me the day Alice went missing.’
‘I’ve never even met Ken Harris,’ Harriet said slowly, watching Brian carefully for a reaction. When he didn’t give one she went on. ‘So what does that mean, that he can’t remember seeing you?’
‘Nothing. Please don’t look at me like that, Harriet. You know I’m telling the truth. I wouldn’t lie about where I was.’
Harriet chewed on her lip, unsure what to say, as Brian leaned in closer. ‘Harriet, I’m not lying, you know that, don’t you?’ She could hear the desperation in his voice, feel the tremble in his hands, and see the beseeching way his eyes flickered over her. Harriet looked at Angela, who gave her nothing.
‘I don’t know what to believe any more, do I, Brian?’ she said quietly.
Ten minutes later, while Brian was still in the kitchen with Angela, Harriet crouched beside her bed and peeled back the corner of the carpet. She reached under the loose floorboard for her notebook, tucked it beneath her top and crept into the bathroom, carefully stepping over Brian’s iPad that had strangely been left charging on the landing.
She locked the door and sat on the closed toilet, opening up the thick, deep-grey Moleskine notebook that she had treated herself to on a trip to Wareham. Turning to the next clean sheet of paper, Harriet pressed it flat with the heel of her hand. Then she pulled out a silver pen and started to write.
In meticulous detail she wrote down what had just happened. What Brian actually said to her while Angela and the detective were in the garden, her husband’s promise to tell her eventually, his intent on forcing her to eat toast and honey. Then how he calmly told Angela he’d already relayed the story of his lack of an alibi to her. When she’d finished, Harriet read through her notes and the discrepancies between what Brian said and what he tried to make her believe until she was confident she knew the truth.
Before she closed the book she flicked through the pages that came before, ones that had become a lifeline to her since she started writing. The eighteenth of May 2016 was her first entry, almost twelve months ago.
The rest of the world might think she was losing her mind. Brian might be trying to prove she was. But at least she’d found a small way of gripping on to reality.
That evening, while Harriet ran herself a bath, she thought how Brian had been unnervingly calm earlier on. He seemed unfazed by the fact his alibi had fallen through as he skittered around the house, tidying shelves, offering cups of tea, and casually flicking through an old copy of the Angler.
She had run the bath water so hot, it almost scalded her as she placed a foot in to test it, but Harriet couldn’t stand baths that turned cold soon after she’d got in. As the bubbles soaked around her neck she closed her eyes and felt herself drifting into the state where she was almost falling asleep when there was a shriek.
She jolted upright to find Brian standing in the doorway as her phone, attached to its charger, slipped off the side of the bath and into the water. Harriet screamed and jumped out of the bath in horror, then stood naked on the mat.
‘What were you doing?’ Brian yelled.
She stared at him wide-eyed, her shivering body dripping water into a puddle around her feet. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ she said. She’d never felt so exposed as she did then, the thought of lying naked in the bath while Brian had crept in.
He took a towel off the radiator and wrapped it around her so tightly that she couldn’t move her arms. ‘You can kill yourself doing something stupid like that.’
‘But I didn’t. My phone wasn’t even upstairs. I wasn’t charging it, I’d never bring it into the bathroom.’ She tried to untangle herself from the towel but with every movement he swaddled her tighter.
‘So tell me what it’s doing here,’ he said. ‘Oh, my goodness.’ Brian pulled her against him as they heard Angela racing up the stairs.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked, looking from one to the other.
‘Thankfully there’s no harm done,’ Brian said, as his eyes wandered into the bath where the phone lay sadly at the bottom of the water, its lead still attached and snaking out of the door on to the landing. ‘Please just give me a minute to get my wife dressed,’ he said and Angela nodded, silently backing out of the room.
‘You were lucky I got there in time,’ he said, loud enough that Angela would hear. ‘I saw the phone plugged in and pulled it out of the socket before I found you in the bath.’
‘I didn’t do it, Brian,’ she said as he led her on to the landing where Angela hovered at the top of the stairs.
‘It was an accident,’ he said and she could have sworn she saw him furrowing his brow at Angela. ‘Thankfully everyone’s fine.’
‘I saw your iPad charging. It wasn’t my phone.’ Harriet looked over her shoulder but there was no sign of Brian’s iPad. ‘It wasn’t me,’ she mouthed at Angela, whose eyes flicked to the plug that had been pulled out of the socket just as Brian had said.
‘If I hadn’t been here,’ he said as they disappeared into the bedroom, ‘you’d be dead, my love.’
Harriet
It was Wednesday, eleven days after Alice’s disappearance, and Harriet knew she had to get out of the house again. She called to Brian and Angela that they needed milk from the shop, but before she got to the front door Brian appeared at her side. Where he had sprung from this time she wasn’t sure, but he was making a habit of skulking around corners then pouncing on her.
‘But we don’t need any more milk, my love,’ he said. ‘We only bought some last night.’
‘No, it’s all gone,’ she assured him, standing her ground. ‘You can check if you like.’
Brian’s tongue whipped out, licking his bottom lip as he was about to protest, when Angela called from the kitchen. They both turned to see her shaking an empty plastic bottle. ‘Actually we do need some,’ she said and, while Brian was looking the other way, Harriet took the chance to slip out.
She didn’t turn back as she hurried down the path, which meant she didn’t notice him still waiting on the doorstep, watching her. When she returned half an hour later he was still standing in the open doorway. Had he been there the whole time? She couldn’t care less, she thought, as she tried to push past him. All she needed was to get in so she could lie down because all of a sudden she was feeling dreadful.
‘And how was your walk?’ He didn’t budge as he held her on the doorstep, his eyes crawling over her face as he waited for an answer.
‘I was just getting milk,’ she muttered. Her hands were trembling and, amidst the hot flushes that ran through her, Harriet felt surprisingly cold. She hoped she’d be able to pass it off as coming down with something – Brian was already looking at her strangely.
‘Are you OK?’ he said, eventually stepping back so she could get into the hallway. ‘You look very pale.’ He reached out and took the milk from her.
‘I don’t feel well.’
‘Are you sick? You look as if you’re going to be. I hope nothing’s happened while you’ve been out?’ His smile vanished.
‘No,’ she whispered, ‘nothing’s happened; I just really don’t feel well and I need to lie down.’ She slipped off her shoes and pushed them into the corner of the hallway with her foot.
‘OK, let’s get you up to bed. I’ll come and lie down with you.’
Harriet took hold of the banister. ‘No,’ she said
. ‘I’ll go on my own.’ She started to walk up the stairs when he grabbed her arm and stopped her.
‘Everything OK?’ Angela asked, stepping out into the hallway. Her handbag was slung over her shoulder and a cardigan draped over her arm. ‘You don’t look well, Harriet.’
‘She’s not,’ Brian said. ‘But I’m taking care of her. Aren’t I, my love?’
‘Can I get you anything before I go?’
‘No,’ Brian said. ‘We’re fine. I can get my wife what she needs. Thank you, Angela,’ he added as an afterthought, or maybe because Brian was never one to forget his manners.
All Harriet wanted was to be left alone, but as she climbed the stairs Brian was right behind her. When she got to the bedroom she asked him for a glass of water just so he reluctantly had to go down again. Curling up on top of the covers, Harriet found that every time she tried closing her eyes they sprang open again. The swirling patterns on the wallpaper danced in front of her until they blurred into one large fuzzy shape.
Harriet knew every inch of those walls by heart. Every change of colour in the paper, all the bits that didn’t quite match. She had loved it when she’d picked it out, her tummy swollen with her baby, wondering if they were having a girl or a boy. Brian was adamant he wanted a son. An heir, someone just like him, he was always saying and in turn Harriet found herself praying they’d be blessed with a girl.
Now Harriet hated the wallpaper. Its patterns made her feel even more nauseous until she thought she actually would be sick. She pushed herself up and held a hand over her mouth, waiting for the feeling to pass.
How happy she had been when she was expecting Alice. What a lifetime ago that felt like, wandering the aisles of Mothercare, promising herself she would always protect her baby. She could never have foreseen this. The terror of not knowing where her daughter was and whether she was safe coursed through her veins until it paralysed her. And for a moment, Harriet didn’t register that something wasn’t quite right in their bedroom even though she was staring directly at it.