Katy looked around the table; there was nothing but numbness and she stared harder at the faces, willing her mother’s gold locket on its thin chain, or the scar on Terry’s chin, to make her feel something. Nothing came. It had been too long, she realised. The last time she sat round a table with them all, she’d just been a kid.
They were embarking on a desultory pudding when the brick came through the window. It was at the front of the house, the little empty parlour, and no one would have been harmed had Bernice not been pouring a round of tea. She dropped the pot, slightly scalded both her own hands, as well as Sonia’s, when she jumped to help.
Terry crashed out of the door and came back with the offending article held aloft.
‘See!’ He waved it towards Katy, but he spoke to Joyce. ‘The baby could have been asleep in there. I told you we can’t have her.’
When Bernice and Sonia had wrapped their burns in soaking dishcloths and the tea had been mopped up, Katy stood up. ‘I’ll go,’ she said quietly.
‘No,’ said Joyce, without looking at her. ‘Not tonight. Tomorrow.’
Katy felt a stab of hurt that her mother hadn’t protested more, but she sat down nonetheless. ‘Tomorrow,’ she agreed.
August 2017
Helen
The next morning – forty-one hours and approximately fifteen minutes after her son went missing – they came to tell her they’d found Jennifer.
‘She doesn’t work at the hospital,’ said DI Nelson, who’d come in person to update Helen and Neil. A thick file of papers lay where he’d slapped them down on the coffee table and he periodically drummed them with his fingers. ‘She’s a fifty-five-year-old primary school teacher with three kids and a dachshund. And she lives in Queensland.’
‘Australia?’
He nodded. ‘Proper Australia: petrol generators, dingoes, bush-tucker trials, the works. Apart from an annual holiday to the coast, she’s not left home these last ten years. We’ve had her phone and her email checked. She doesn’t do social media. Whoever sent these notes to your mum, it isn’t her.’
‘How do you know this is the right Jennifer? I mean, who is she?’ asked Darren. He’d returned to the house at eight that morning, to the utter delight of Alys, who’d had to be physically detached from his legs and placated with Toy Story when DI Nelson turned up.
‘It is her.’ The DI turned from Darren and glanced warily towards Helen. ‘Her family have good reason to hold a grudge against Mrs Marsden. Your wife can fill you in on the details.’
‘So,’ cut in Veena, a little too brightly, ‘we’d like you both to do a press conference.’
It would be at two o’clock in the main police station in town. Veena would help them to prepare a statement; she checked if Darren had a suit with him. Nelson’s expression seemed to sour further. Helen wasn’t sure if his distaste was for a man who travelled with a suit or for the whole circus of the press conference. He picked up his files and made his excuses.
They spent a macabre couple of hours drafting their lines, rehearsing and ironing their outfits. Helen finally managed to corner Neil in the kitchen for a few moments whilst Veena was caught up with Darren. He was rinsing yet more teacups. Her mouth was sour from tea, but she still nodded when he lifted the kettle.
‘Did Mum tell you much, when you went to see her yesterday?’
‘She said she didn’t do it.’
‘So, who …’
He shrugged. ‘They’d given her sedatives, I think. That was about all she managed to say.’
‘What about Jennifer?’
‘I don’t know, love, I really don’t. And who is the Jennifer who wrote the notes, anyway? The police seem pretty certain this woman in Queensland couldn’t have anything to do with those notes.’
‘I suppose so, but someone wrote them, didn’t they? Whether or not it’s got anything to do with Barney. Someone still wrote them, and if it wasn’t Jennifer, then it was someone who knew all about her. All about her and her poor dead sister too.’
*
The press conference was horrendous. Helen and Darren were kept waiting in a stuffy first-floor office while Veena went backwards and forwards to the conference suite, looking increasingly irritated.
‘One of the reporter’s cars has broken down,’ she told them, ‘and it’s the ITN guy, so we don’t want to lose him. I’ll get them to bring you up some drinks.’
‘Mine’s a vodka,’ said Darren. Helen managed a weak smile. Veena didn’t.
Darren had insisted that Helen take the only armchair. It was one of those dinky upright things, and she was shuffling around in it, conscious of the feel of the scratchy, stain-retardant material through her thin silk top. Darren paced, alighting on one or other of the office chairs for only a few moments at a time.
Ten minutes after promising drinks, there was still no sign of Veena’s return.
‘I’ll go downstairs, shall I?’ suggested Darren. ‘They must have a vending machine at least. I might be able to get a Red Bull.’
‘All right. I’ll have a bottle of water if they’ve got one. Don’t worry if not.’
She didn’t know how he could think about having a caffeine boost – the adrenaline was making her far too jittery as it was.
He was back a couple of minutes later, calling ‘Room service!’ as he came through the door. She smiled for a moment in spite of herself. Instead of plastic bottles, though, he was carrying two paper cups filled with water.
‘I’m afraid it’s not exactly Babington House, is it?’ He gave a wry grin.
She shrugged. She didn’t want to think of Babington House, where they’d gone for a few birthdays and anniversaries since the business took off. They’d ordered champagne on room service, Darren might watch a film while Helen slathered herself in the posh toiletries and then they’d have the sort of lazy, sprawling sex that toddlers made infeasible at home.
Suddenly she wished to God they’d never had any of those conversations about how lovely it was to be without the kids. She wanted to grab them all back as if they were a sin through which she’d brought this horror upon herself – upon Barney.
She gulped at her water – she’d been more thirsty than she realised – whilst watching Darren out of the corner of her eye. He leant heavily on the windowsill, staring down to the street. She wondered if he’d been back to Babington House, if that was why it popped into his mind like that. As soon as the thought occurred to her, she was sure that he had. Did the nice receptionist or the joking Aussie waiter remember them? Did they realise that he was now with a different woman? Had he taken Lauren there before they split up? Perhaps the waiter and the receptionist were so friendly because they felt sorry for her.
Her water sloshed over the side of the cup. She resented him for putting her in this position – for making her think about that stuff for even a minute, when all that really mattered was Barney. She imagined for a moment refusing to speak to him – demanding that they put her in a separate room. But something stopped her; Darren was the only person who could share this hell she found herself in, the only person who could feel even a tenth of her agony.
Veena bustled back in just as Helen had mopped up the spill with a pack of tissues.
‘Sorry, guys … Shit, I totally forgot your drinks, didn’t I? I am so sorry. Anyway, this is Philip. He’s in charge of the techie end of things; he’s going to chat to you about speaking into the mics. The ITN guy is here now, so that’s good news, but they’ve got some sort of hitch with one of the links. Anyway, Philip’s going to talk you through stuff, like I said, and there’s a girl coming in to do just a tiny bit of make-up so you don’t pale out on screen, and hopefully we’re going in five …’
When it started, Helen read the statement they’d prepared that morning, while Darren held her hand and glared around at the reporters as though challenging them to a fistfight. She felt like an actress as she read out the words on the page. Even when her voice broke and she had to repeat things, it was as
if someone else was struggling, someone else was drowning in the lights.
There was a backdrop behind them with Barney’s first – and please not last, she prayed – school photo emblazoned across it. Her eyes kept straying off to one side, to the laptop screen that was projecting the image, of Barney with his dimples and the bit of his hair sticking up at the back. She’d been so annoyed that the photographer hadn’t sorted it out. If she could just brush his hair down, she thought, if she could just brush it down one more time and bury her face in the biscuity, little-boy smell of him.
As arranged, Darren read the final couple of lines of the statement. He let go of her hand to grip the paper with both of his. His hands were steady, as was his voice, but she could see his fingers turning white from the pressure of his grip.
‘We won’t be taking questions, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Veena. ‘We’d like to thank you all for your support in helping to get Barney Harrison home as quickly as possible.’
There was an eruption of sound as the journalists ignored Veena’s statement and called out their questions, trying to get a reaction from Helen and Darren as they collected themselves and followed Veena out. She wanted to spit back how did they think they’d be ‘bearing up’ in the circumstances, but, terrified that making enemies could somehow hamper the search, she kept her eyes down and followed Veena meekly from the room.
‘Aren’t we going back to the car?’ asked Darren, when Veena turned onto the staircase that led back to the room they’d been waiting in.
‘Not yet.’ She shook her head. ‘We’ll let them clear the room first. It might be uncomfortable for you to bump into someone on the way out.’
They frittered a few minutes. Darren went down the corridor to the toilet and Helen sat awkwardly with Veena. The adrenaline that had built up for the press conference seeped from her system, leaving her feeling exhausted and broken. The exhaustion was such that even her fingers felt heavy and clumsy as she reached for her phone. She had nothing worthwhile to give to the search for Barney in this state; but she knew she couldn’t pull herself out until there was news. Was there something she was missing? She’d been wrung out for days. Was there some obvious clue that her frazzled brain wasn’t letting her see?
She texted Neil to tell him that they’d be back soon. At Veena’s suggestion, he’d taken Alys for McDonald’s and to the cinema, so she was a little surprised when he responded straight away. Of course, she realised, feeling even more stupid, he was almost as desperate for news as she was.
Eventually, they made their way out, the three of them returning to the same unmarked BMW that had brought them to the station a good three hours earlier.
*
The two big police vans were obvious as soon as they pulled into the street. Veena had to nudge the BMW through because the tacitly negotiated parking conventions of Neil’s neighbours had been cast into turmoil by the vans. Helen’s heart started to thud; had they brought Barney back to her?
Darren leaned forward at the same time she did, a hard frown on his face.
‘What’s going on?’ he said, repeating himself when Veena didn’t answer straight away.
‘Let’s get inside,’ she replied, tucking the car neatly behind the van closest to the house. ‘There are more photographers,’ she warned.
Helen hadn’t been aware of any before, but sure enough, when she strained round to look past the van, there was a little encampment along the low wall of the next-door neighbour’s front garden. It didn’t occur to her to try to hide her face; after all, they’d just been giving a press conference, but when they started calling her name, shouting out questions, she panicked and stood rooted to the spot. Darren gently pulled her arm to urge her forward. Veena was ahead of them and the door was already opening from the inside.
They stepped through the front door and into a disaster movie. It looked like a hurricane had ripped through the place. Carpets and floor coverings were peeled away, cupboard contents were disgorged onto the floor, walls were denuded of pictures. As she took it in, Helen realised this was no natural disaster. Hurricanes didn’t stack paintings neatly in a corner. Floods didn’t make chalk markings in code on cupboard doors.
‘We’ve done a search,’ said Veena, before Helen or Darren could say anything.
‘You searched before,’ Helen said, and of course they had, in the attic, in the shed, anywhere a small boy could hide or be hidden.
Darren had gone pale. ‘That whole press conference was a set-up. You wanted to get everyone out with no chance of us realising what you were up to. This is all just … just gone to fuck … Barney’s out there.’ His voice rose and he was trembling. ‘When are you going to stop pissing around with us and actually do something about finding him?’
Veena fixed him with a hard look, but said nothing. Instead she turned her head and called into the kitchen.
‘PC Andrews?’
‘Yes?’
‘Have you found anything?’
A young man with a shock of ginger hair stepped out of the kitchen. In his latex-gloved hands he carried a thick stack of paper. At a glance, it looked to be a mixture of cuttings – both from newspapers and colour magazines – and computer printouts. The papers packed tightly together were neatly bundled with elastic bands. Whoever had hoarded them was organised and pressed for space.
PC Andrews looked less comfortable with his role in this little performance than Veena did. He shuffled his feet and held the papers up a little, as if they might have missed them.
‘These, Sergeant, under the floorboards in the study. They’re all about missing children.’
Barney
The lady had pictures of flowers on her neck. Barney had noticed them even from the back of the car. They were blurry and wrinkled. Dead flowers. Yuck.
The lady had said she was taking him to see Nana Barbara in hospital, but they hadn’t gone to the hospital at all. He thought he was in a hotel. There was a big bed and a telly and a desk and a bathroom. It smelt bad, though, not like the hotels he’d been to with Mummy and Daddy.
‘Where’s my mummy?’ he asked the lady.
‘She wants me to look after you for a bit.’
‘While Nana’s ill?’
‘That’s right, while Nana’s ill.’
‘But I didn’t say goodbye.’
‘Oh, big boys don’t worry about things like that, do they? Let’s put on some telly.’
At first, the lady tried to be nice and she brought him McDonald’s to eat and a new toothbrush and she asked him all about Rabbit. But she didn’t know that he was only meant to watch a bit of telly and not all day. She gave him medicine that made him sleepy and the programmes all fudged together. Once or twice, she let him draw pictures for a bit at the desk, but there was only one biro, no pencils or crayons, and mostly he was too sleepy or too sad to draw.
The lady also didn’t know that adults weren’t meant to leave children by themselves. And she didn’t like it when he kept on saying things about missing Mummy and Daddy and Alys and Nana Barbara and Granddad Neil and Nana Chris and Granddad Adam and his friend Leo from nursery and she told him to shut up and then once she hit him when he didn’t.
Soon she stopped getting McDonald’s and just got him cheese strings and crisps and things. She kept talking about what the fucking police were going to do and getting angry. Barney didn’t like cheese strings and he didn’t like the lady and he didn’t like being here. This place wasn’t a safe place.
August 1964
Katy
It was hot. Airless in the baking fields, scorching in the sticky kitchens, sweltering in the dormitories. But hotter than anywhere else was the foetid cellar they called chokey. It didn’t make sense. It had been colder than death any other time she’d been stuck here, but this time she felt as though she had been entombed in a brick kiln – the damp, the mould, the very air; all dried to nothing by a three-week heatwave. Katy fought in the dark to stay calm, to drag some of the thin air into her lungs an
d out again.
It was all she could do to keep going – pull the air in, drive the air out. She forced herself not to think of the outside. If pictures came to mind of her family, her home, or even just the kids she used to run around with in the park, she pushed them away quickly before the tears came; before it all became too much. Instead, she focused on his face. If she concentrated on him, there wasn’t space for the others. Anger, she’d learned, was better than sadness or fear. You could control anger, and it could be useful. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Simon Gardiner. Breathe out. Simon Gardiner. Breathe in. Revenge.
It was Stephenson’s fault that she’d landed in here – it usually was. They were the only two girls in for long stints. They’d become friends, and they looked out for each other, but Katy was subtle where Maureen Stephenson was brutal; Katy relied on cunning, where her friend was happy to stick to simple terror. The kid Stephenson had beaten up this time had felt her arse in the dinner queue or something equally misguided. His punishment should have been a straightforward mishap, a shove down the stairs, or a crack of his stubby nose against the hard stone laundry room sinks. Of course, the staff would guess what had really gone on, but who was going to bother getting to the bottom of it?
He’d crumpled too easily, though, the boy. Katy wasn’t even sure of his name. As soon as Stephenson dragged him aside and started whispering about what he’d let himself in for, he’d started wailing. Wet his Y-fronts, Stephenson said. The weakness of him riled her – it was like an extra insult after he’d thought he was man enough to paw her over. Stephenson had gone for him, right in the middle of a corridor. Broken jawbone, very messy. There was a fair chance he’d lose the sight in one eye, apparently.
Katy had had to pull her friend off in the end. All the kids who had been there were too shit-scared to try, but one of them had at least had the nous to come and grab her. She’d hauled Stephenson back, still spitting and yelling, and got a black eye herself for her trouble. Then she’d carried the can for her.
The Mother's Lies Page 18