Now You See Her

by Heidi Perks

  I reached in my bag for the envelope. ‘She’ll be at school,’ I said. ‘But maybe we can show Evie?’ I ran my fingers under the seal and reached inside. ‘Oh. That can’t be right.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’ the girl behind the counter asked.

  Yes, there was a problem. Instead of the three hundred pounds I had watched Brian count out there was now only a ten-pound note.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I flustered, picking up Alice’s hand. ‘I’ll need to come back.’ I turned and pulled Alice towards the doors.

  ‘Mummy?’ Her little feet ran behind me in my haste to get out of the store. ‘Does that mean I can’t have the skirt?’

  As soon as we were outside the shop I crouched down beside her and took her hands in my own. ‘Silly Mummy forgot the money.’ I smiled at her. ‘But I promise you,’ I said, pressing her hands against my heart, ‘I promise you that one day I will definitely come back and get you that skirt.’

  Monday 8 August 2016

  I told Brian it would be hard to make nice meals every night with my allowance cut right back.

  ‘You’ll just have to be a little more creative, my love.’ He smiled at me and ruffled my hair.

  ‘Why do we have to budget?’ I pulled away and flattened my hair back down. ‘I thought things were better at work?’

  ‘Oh, don’t use that word “budget”.’ He screwed up his nose and sighed deeply. ‘We don’t have money issues, Harriet. You know why I’m doing this. I need to learn to trust you again.’

  I bit the inside of my lip. I would not rise to him. ‘I just need more than this to survive,’ I said patiently. ‘Alice needs new shoes and—’

  ‘Harriet,’ he snapped. ‘Can you really expect me to hand over cash to you? You remember that time, don’t you? I don’t have to spell it out. You lost three hundred pounds.’

  ‘I didn’t lose it. The money wasn’t in the envelope.’

  ‘Oh, please, let’s not go through all this again,’ he sighed. ‘Money doesn’t disappear. Just keep itemised receipts for everything and if Alice needs new shoes then we can both take her on Saturday. OK?

  ‘OK, Harriet?’ he said when I didn’t answer. ‘It will be nice for us to have a family trip out together. As soon as I get back from fishing you can be ready to go and I will buy Alice her new shoes.’ He reached out and ruffled my hair again. ‘There, you see? All sorted.’

  Harriet

  I sat in my car, staring blankly at the unfamiliar road ahead, my handbag clutched tightly on my lap as I considered if I had any other options. There was no choice. I had to find the remote hideaway where we had planned for Alice to be taken.

  From now on I would have to pay for what little I needed in cash, but I was still praying it wouldn’t be long before I knew Alice was safe and I could figure out what came next.

  Fear was driving me on to Cornwall but I was also filled with dread at what I’d left behind, and that the longer I was away the worse it would be.

  Was Brian back at the house already?

  I imagined his face when he came home and found me gone. For a while he would presume I had popped out, but how long until he realised I should have been back? How long before he alerted Angela to the fact I’d disappeared? Until he urged them to believe I was as unhinged as he’d been making out and they should track me down immediately?

  I put my handbag on the seat next to me and started the engine. I couldn’t waste any more time – I needed to get as far as I could as quickly as possible.

  As soon as I saw the flashing lights of the police car parked outside my house the day of the fete, I knew my plan had been carried through and Alice was gone. Brian had already been told the news that his daughter had disappeared and soon they would tell me. I couldn’t back out now, I kept thinking as I watched them from inside my car.

  Brian had dragged me out of the car and up the garden path, his fishing rods clanking like boat masts in the wind. For a very short moment my heart went out to him. Despite everything he had done, I wondered if he deserved to think his daughter had been taken.

  ‘Alice is missing.’ His words screamed out into the still air. My legs were pulled from under me as I fell on to the ground like my body had been taken along with her. That’s when it really smacked me that in that precise moment I had no clue where my daughter was. I could pinpoint on a map where she should be, but even as I imagined it, every road and motorway between us stretched interminably until I feared I might have lost her forever.

  Had I made a mistake? What if someone else had taken her at the fete? How would I know if she was in a car accident? I screamed out Alice’s name, clawing my fingernails into the concrete until I was taken inside and forced to endure her last known movements.

  When Angela suggested it would be a good idea to talk to Charlotte I knew she could be my downfall – I’d want to tell her everything. As adamantly as I refused, Brian was insistent and eventually I caved in. But as soon as my friend stepped inside my living room I couldn’t bear to look at her. I wanted to freeze time around us so I could crawl across the floor and whisper in her ear, ‘I know where Alice is. This isn’t your fault. I’m sorry for what I’m putting you through but I’m doing this for her.’ As fear and guilt dripped from Charlotte’s words, I realised how stupid I’d been to convince myself she would one day understand why I’d done what I had.

  Before then I’d satisfied myself that it was only a matter of time before my daughter reappeared and Charlotte could move on with her life. Her abundance of friends would get her through the short term and no one would blame her. In fact I not only thought they wouldn’t blame Charlotte, I believed they’d feel sorry for her. How dreadful she must feel, they would say. Their hearts would go out to her. It could have happened to anyone.

  What I didn’t anticipate was that Charlotte would be posting on Facebook the moment my daughter was taken. That a journalist would pick that up and twist it until she looked nothing more than careless and inattentive and ultimately as responsible as whoever had my daughter. To make it worse, every news report on Alice attracted comments from strangers lashing out at Charlotte, making out she was a bad mother. Everyone was focused on her failings and I couldn’t bear to imagine how she was coping. Yet still I continued to reassure myself that as soon as Alice was back everyone would forgive and forget.

  But deep down I knew what I’d done to her. Because seeing Charlotte in my living room, trying to piece together how she could have lost my daughter, my broken heart fractured into more pieces. She would never get over it.

  Later Brian paced the living room, loading every ounce of blame on to Charlotte, skilfully dodging it himself as always. Of course he could justifiably wipe his hands clean on this one, though it never stopped him when he couldn’t. This is your doing, Brian, I thought, watching him prowl the room, smacking a fist into the palm of his other hand when Angela wasn’t watching. If you hadn’t made it so impossible for me to leave, I would never have resorted to this.

  It was ironic that the reason I’d never confided in Charlotte about my husband was because I didn’t want to lose her, when I knew now that I would anyway. When she came to the house that night, it was clear there was already too much separating us to be able to claw it back.

  I’d had another friend once. After Jane and Christie and before Charlotte I worked with a girl in Kent called Tina who was a receptionist at my school.

  Sometimes Tina and I would slip out and have lunch at the local bakery. She was in her early thirties and lived alone in a one-bed purpose-built flat with two cats she wasn’t supposed to own. She was always intrigued by married life and how it didn’t seem to make people as happy as they should be.

  ‘I’m happy,’ I’d told her during one lunch.

  Tina had snorted, wiping a serviette roughly across her nose, making me wonder how it didn’t catch the tiny stud that sparkled when she moved. She took a large bite out of her prawn sandwich. ‘No, you’re not,’ she said as sauce dripped on to her
plate.

  ‘Of course I am.’ I’d been married a year and had a husband who was forever telling me he loved me and how beautiful I was, how I was the only thing in his life worth living for. We had just enough money to get by and I enjoyed my part-time job at the school, even if I wasn’t making the best use of my education. How could it be possible that I wasn’t happy?

  ‘Really?’ She opened her eyes wide. ‘Can you hand on heart say everything’s great?’

  I fidgeted in my seat and looked down at my own untouched sandwich. Brian might not be the person I thought I’d end up with and maybe I didn’t always feel like I got things right. It was true I managed to upset him quite regularly. Only the night before he’d questioned why I never showed him much affection.

  ‘Why don’t we ever see Brian?’ she persisted. ‘He turns up to collect you but he never comes out. Nor do you, much.’

  ‘I do,’ I protested. I couldn’t tell her Brian couldn’t stand her brash sense of humour or how her loudness grated on him. ‘In fact, I’m coming to the end-of-term drinks on Friday,’ I announced suddenly, knowing I’d get away with it because Brian was, unusually, away overnight at a conference.

  That Friday evening, as Tina downed her sixth glass of Pinot Grigio, she slurred at me, ‘Brian has a weird hold over you.’

  I brushed her off though her words stayed with me, and a few months later when Brian and I had a row, I ended up walking out of our flat and staying at hers.

  ‘I can’t believe what I’ve just done,’ I told her. I was shaking. I’d never stood up to him before. Brian wanted me to cut my hours at school but for once I wouldn’t agree. I loved my work and had even just been offered the chance of going for a promotion. ‘Mrs Mayer’s job,’ I explained to Tina.

  ‘What’s the problem with that?’ she asked. ‘And you should totally go for it. You could do that job with your eyes shut.’

  That was what I’d thought, only Brian wanted me home more.

  Tina choked on her wine, managing to spit a mouthful back into her glass. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  I wasn’t. He told me I should be more of a homemaker than a career woman and asked me if I wanted our marriage to work because if I did I was going the wrong way about it.

  But as Tina continued to vilify Brian I found myself drawing away from her, unable to defend my husband but increasingly anxious to do so. He was still Brian, the man I loved, and I didn’t agree he was as controlling as she said. I needed to believe he was only worried for my sake because, if I didn’t think that, then what else was wrong with our marriage?

  By the time Brian turned up at Tina’s door, I was ready to run back into his arms and tell him I loved him. I wouldn’t go for the promotion, I assured him, but I stood my ground: I wasn’t prepared to give up any hours.

  I tried ignoring how much he continued to obsess over Tina and how she’d influenced me so easily. How unhappy I’d made him putting my friends and my so-called career first. At the time I was just pleased I’d stood up for myself, though deep down I knew he felt betrayed.

  What I never expected was for three weeks later, when I was back at school after the Easter holidays, Brian to pick me up and tell me we weren’t going home to our flat any more. ‘Surprise! I’ve bought you your dream, Harriet,’ he said, clapping his hands.

  ‘You’ve what?’ I laughed. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘We are moving, my love,’ he said, straight-faced and carefully monitoring my reaction. ‘Everything is packed already so you don’t need to worry about a thing.’

  ‘No,’ I giggled nervously. ‘But I like our flat,’ I told him, watching his face fall. ‘You’re having me on, Brian,’ I added cautiously.

  ‘No, I am not. I’ve bought us a house by the sea in Dorset. We are starting again. A new life,’ he said, a little more despondently than the conversation had started.

  ‘But—’ I began. ‘You mean you’ve sold our flat and bought a new house? You can’t have.’ But I knew that was exactly what he had done and because it was all in his name he didn’t need me to approve it. ‘But why?’

  Brian looked at me carefully. ‘It’s just going to be me and you, Harriet,’ he said. ‘You can’t tell me that isn’t what you want?’

  It took a long time for me to understand how threatened Brian felt. How close someone had come to seeing him for the man he was. Someone who, in his eyes, was turning me against him. I stood up to him. I refused to let my job go. It was Tina’s fault: it couldn’t have possibly been my decision.

  Other friends had been more easily disposed of but one of the reasons Brian disliked Tina was because she was so dogged. When Brian moved us to Dorset he knew he couldn’t let that happen again. He needed another way to ensure I wouldn’t slip away from him. Having his daughter wasn’t enough. He needed me to believe that without him I wouldn’t survive. And he would do this by eating away at me until I doubted my own sanity. How could I leave when I was so reliant on Brian? When I had no money of my own to live on? How could I leave when he’d set it up so he could effortlessly prove I couldn’t be trusted to look after my daughter and that she could be taken from me so easily?

  As I pressed on towards Cornwall, I ignored the unsettling feeling Brian might have been right. If I could be trusted, I would know where Alice was right now. Instead I was heading to a place I’d only ever seen on the internet.

  ‘It’s dirt-cheap,’ he had told me, pointing to the holiday cottage on the rental website. ‘It’s tucked away on a lane that’s pretty much deserted. There are only three cottages and no one bothers you. No one even goes down there.’

  I shuddered at the pictures of the mismatched furniture and the old-fashioned stand-alone units in the kitchen. The garden at the back was long and much larger than Alice was used to, but it was also overgrown and untidy and I couldn’t imagine what she would have made of it when she was taken there from the fete.

  But wasn’t it also perfect? I had thought at the time. We needed a hideaway where no one would notice the little girl and the man appear one Saturday afternoon, before they were aware the country was searching for them. A place where no one would consider looking for her.

  Only now all the things I had convinced myself were good about it made me feel sick. The secluded shack of a cottage was more of a threat than a safe house and I was still over three hours away from getting to it.

  NOW

  ‘Is there any news?’ I beg.

  I know so little of what is happening. All I know for sure is that Charlotte is being questioned in another room, somewhere along the corridor by the detective who turned up at the beach. But this isn’t the news I am after.

  DI Lowry shakes his head and tells me no. Behind his small circular wire-rimmed glasses and his light ginger stubble, his face is the epitome of blankness. It has been since he introduced himself when I was brought into the station, his short legs scurrying up the corridor as I followed quickly behind.

  I am desperate to leave so I can get back out there and find out for myself what is happening. I am sure the detective is keeping something from me. Maybe he thinks that by keeping me in the dark he can manipulate me to his advantage, use my fear to break me down.

  I peer at the clock and then at the door, dismissing a crazed yearning to jump out of my seat and run towards it. Is it locked? I am certain it isn’t. Can I run out? I’ve not been arrested, after all. Lowry has told me I’m here to help with his enquiries and he is stepping around me like I might snap at any moment. Of course I could physically walk out but what would I do then? Where would I go? If I did that I’m sure they would haul me back in handcuffs. So even though I want to run, I know it’s impossible.

  I gaze towards the wall on my right and wonder if Charlotte is on the other side of it. She could be saying anything and I have no right to ask her not to. I lost that luxury the day of the fete.

  ‘Are you OK, Harriet?’ DI Lowry asks.

  ‘Sorry?’ I look up at him and he nods at my wr
ist. I hadn’t noticed I’d been rubbing it. I pull my hand away. The skin is red but the searing pain has subsided and in its place is left a dull throb.

  ‘I think it’s OK,’ I say, though no one has checked, but right now my wrist is the least of my problems.

  He is still watching me, glancing at my wrist. He looks concerned as he strokes a thumb against his stubble, before he checks himself and glances down at his pad. Now he is moving on and is interested in my friendship with Charlotte. I tell him she was always a good friend to me.

  ‘Charlotte knew I didn’t know anyone in Dorset,’ I say. ‘She made me feel welcome.’ I was grateful for that, more than I would have ever let on. It had taken me three months to find a part-time job and settle in at St Mary’s Primary School and still I had no one I could call a friend. I’d seen Charlotte in the playground huddled in her group of mums. She stood out more than the others, with her long blonde hair always swishing behind her in a ponytail, her skinny jeans, expensive clothes and selection of sparkly flip-flops. I couldn’t take my eyes off Charlotte, though for no other reason than she attracted me like a moth to a light.

  I would go into school in the mornings and look out for what she was wearing. I used to pull my own tangled mat of hair back into a ponytail and see if I could look like her.

  Charlotte was the picture you stick on the fridge: the one that reminds you there’s something to aim for. For me she epitomised everything I wanted in life: freedom and the ability to make choices without repercussion.

  ‘Charlotte introduced me to her group of friends but, to be honest, I didn’t have much in common with the rest of them,’ I say.

  ‘But you did with Charlotte?’