The Stranger In My Home: I thought she was my daughter. I was wrong.

by Parks, Adele

  ‘Good luck with that,’ mumbles Jeff.

  Tom’s a clever man and, however irrational or hysterical Annabel considers him to be, however afraid she is of that side of his personality, I am more afraid of his determination, his organisation. I always have been. It seems that he’s approached this flit with extreme rigour and careful planning. It wasn’t, as I initially assumed, necessarily an impetuous whim. There’s evidence that he pre-planned it. He cleared out his savings account on Friday evening, which means he has over two thousand pounds in cash. He has not used his phone or a cash machine since Saturday morning at eight o’clock. The last person he called was Katherine. He called her twice between 7.35 a.m. and 8 a.m. The first call lasted twelve minutes; the second only one. The last call he received was from me, on Saturday, at eleven forty. He must have been expecting my call. Probably kept his phone just long enough to receive it. I assume the subsequent calls he’s made to me were on a new phone – a pay-as-you-go one that he can get rid of if necessary. As he rang our home and we have a rewired vintage phone, there was no number recognition.

  We’re informed that there are eight thousand cameras positioned up and down the country’s motorways and that the police have activated automated number-plate recognition; if he travels on a motorway, they’ll pick up a trail in a jiffy. However, his car is soon found parked just a mile from his home. It’s possible – probable – that he has another vehicle: the police are checking local garages for recent sales, and hire companies, too; it’s going to be a long process. Besides, maybe he and Katherine are travelling on public transport; I imagine them zigzagging across the country in coaches, but in which direction I can’t decide, or even imagine. The police are circulating their photos at bus and train stations. Olivia provides the picture of Tom, I don’t have one. It strikes me as bizarrely telling. I thought I knew this man, I thought we had a relationship, admittedly a hazy, ill-defined relationship but something empirically important, but I don’t even have a snap of him on my phone. He’s a stranger. I stare at the photograph Olivia supplied, trying to understand. Looking for some sort of clue. I can’t find one. Apparently, Olivia took the photo last summer. He looks tanned, handsome, winning, charming. He doesn’t look like a man that would steal my child. Yet he is.

  The police have released a statement to the press but, as it is Sunday, there’s no mention of the case in the national papers, and the local papers don’t run at the weekend. The local radio station has picked up the story, however, so the phone has not stopped ringing. Obviously, our friends are very concerned: they want to help but don’t know how; obviously, some people are frighteningly morbid: they just want to tell people they spoke to us. Gifts have started to arrive: food in sealed plastic containers, flowers, boxes of chocolates. Things are left on our porch. I have to step over them. It’s peculiarly festive. I think, Katherine would love this. Then I catch myself.

  ‘If there’s anything I can help with, do say,’ offers Annabel.

  Inspector Davis nods. ‘Well, of course we need to know the moment he gets in touch with any of you.’ The police know every detail of the calls I had with him yesterday. It’s still almost impossible to believe that, while he was pretending to look for her, he was, in all probability, concealing her. Like some sort of macabre game of hide-and-seek. The police have attached a machine to our home phone which might help us track him if he does call again, and a press conference has been arranged for tomorrow morning. Everything is being hurried along, escalated, because of all the information Annabel has given the police.

  ‘Although she might be home by then,’ says Jeff forlornly.

  No one comments.

  ‘He won’t stay under the radar for ever,’ says Inspector Davis confidently. I want to believe her, but this man has had us all fooled for so long it’s hard not to be afraid of him. Annabel is afraid of him: poised, competent Annabel, who was married to him for fifteen years and had three children with him, who was nursed through cancer by him, is afraid. I can see it in the lines around her mouth, the way her eyes nervously flick to the door whenever anyone comes in and out of the room. She’s afraid, so I know I should be, too.

  And I am.

  38

  After Annabel had given us the first sluice of news, while we were all waiting for the police to arrive she released another catastrophic wave of revelations. We moved through to our once cosy living room, hoping it would offer some ease; it didn’t, really. Leaning towards me, her swollen body oozing empathy, she explained that a temporary court order had recently been placed on Tom, excluding him from any contact with his children.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last Thursday. It was a very hard decision to make. To be honest, the issue was taken out of my hands when he started to turn up at school and be, well – disruptive.’

  ‘Disruptive? How?’ Jeff asked.

  ‘When we first divorced he was entitled to see the children every other weekend and every Wednesday evening.’ I know this to be standard practice from friends who have gone through divorces. ‘For a time, that arrangement worked well enough. It wasn’t ideal. As often as not, a desperately needed schoolbook was left at the wrong house. I was always receiving a phone call asking me to drive over with a bit of missing sports kit, a favourite pair of jeans or a ballet shoe. No matter how often you ask kids to take responsibility for their own things, it never seems to work out that way. Then, over the months, the children became less interested in going to Tom’s. They found it disruptive, inconvenient. He was often depressed. The kids said he was moany, needy. Besides, Callum and Olivia, in particular, have their own interests now. They don’t want to spend the weekend mooching around with their slightly forlorn, slightly spiteful father. They wanted to see their friends, pursue their hobbies. Believe me, I tried very hard to keep their relationship with Tom going.’

  Her strength radiated out as she gave this account of a tricky situation that so many families have to manage. I believed her and sympathised with her, yet I wished it had all been different. I can’t help but think that, if he’d still had her kids, he might not have needed my daughter.

  ‘What about Amy? Didn’t she want to spend time with her father? She’s still young enough to find a parent’s attention worthwhile,’ Jeff commented.

  ‘She did, until the pregnancy began to show. These past few months she’s wanted to be around me and Rory more. She’s helped put the nursery together. Painted pictures of cats on the wall. I don’t know if she’s feeling a bit insecure that her position as the youngest child is being taken or if she’s very excited. She seems to fluctuate between the two. Either way, she stopped wanting to go to Tom’s. She wanted to stay with us.’

  ‘He must have been hurt,’ I muttered.

  ‘Yes. And angry. He couldn’t accept that the decision was the children’s. He said I’d poisoned them against him. He took to turning up at our house, late at night, shouting, waking the children, waking the neighbours. He once took a swing at Rory.’

  ‘Was he drunk?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Just furious.’ That scared me more. ‘He started to go to the children’s schools and insist that he needed to take them out of class.’

  ‘And the schools allowed that to happen?’

  ‘The first time, he told a teacher that Amy’s grandmother had died. Amy was beside herself but then he told her he’d just made it up because he wanted to take her to the park, and that was better than going to boring old school, wasn’t it?’ Jeff and I swapped a glance that said: The man is unhinged, what does that mean for us? For Katherine? ‘I had to tell the school not to let the children leave with their father. This just accelerated the tension. He felt undermined, powerless. Still, I felt better, but the truth is the schools can do so much to protect Amy, but Olivia and Callum are older.’

  Olivia jumped in. ‘He banged on the window of my biology class once, held up a picnic bag and waved to me to join him. It was, like, eleven fifteen on a school morning. He had no idea how odd and e
mbarrassing that was!’ I’m reminded of him rushing on to the lacrosse pitch on Friday. Emotional, unaware. ‘He literally stalked Callum. Discovered where his girlfriend lived and then knocked on the door to introduce himself to her parents. Callum is seventeen – why would Dad think it was OK to do that?’

  ‘How did they react? The parents of his girlfriend?’ Jeff asked Annabel. ‘Didn’t they think he was a bit odd?’ She cast him a look which asked, Did you?

  ‘If they did, they passed it off politely enough. You see, he’s charming and convincing.’ Oh, I know that much. ‘He told them he’d found a necklace at his house and thought it must belong to Issy. He made out that he was being attentive, helpful; he wanted to ingratiate himself. He wanted to infiltrate.’

  ‘You make it sound like a battle.’

  ‘It sometimes felt like one. Callum started to get used to the fact that he’d arrive at his girlfriend’s house to pick her up for a date and find his father ensconced there, having a cup of tea.’

  ‘Erratic, irrational – certainly. But dangerous? Was a court order really necessary?’ Jeff asks. He wanted to believe that the situation wasn’t urgent and grim.

  Annabel looked embarrassed. Her calm splintered. I knew she was deciding how much more we could take. Carefully, she explained. ‘I mentioned there were a lot of rows. There were fights outside their schools, at the ice rink, at their friends’ houses. He was always kicking off. We really didn’t have a choice.’

  So the court order was issued on Thursday. He would have certainly known about it on Friday when he came to Katherine’s lacrosse match, when he whispered in her ear, when he asked what her plans were for the weekend, when he told me he loved me.

  It’s Sunday. Katherine should have been playing lacrosse against Guildford High School for Girls today. She’d been looking forward to the game. They usually offer up quite stiff competition. A challenge. I vaguely wonder whether the game will go ahead or whether her team mates will be too distressed to play. Will they forfeit? Katherine would hate that. Sunday. Some families will be eating roast beef and Yorkshire pudding; others will be sitting in front of the TV or fighting with their kids about finishing homework. Sunday. A long time since Friday, when I stole a swift hug before she jumped out of the car and dashed up the path towards Maddie’s house. I’d give anything to be fighting over the homework with her.

  It’s raining; relentless, grey drizzle. I wonder whether she’s dry. At least that. I flick through the coats in the downstairs cupboard, fingering the thick, fleecy jackets, the bulky coats with hoods, the foldaway waterproofs, wishing they weren’t in my cupboard, wishing my daughter had taken one with her. Despite the nasty weather and the fact that there is a countdown of shopping days until Christmas, teams of volunteers – other parents from the school, parents of Katherine’s friends, mostly – have stepped forward to say that they’ll join the search party or distribute flyers in the shopping precinct.

  MISSING. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?

  DO YOU RECOGNISE THIS MAN?

  I don’t like them sharing a flyer. His face close to hers. So similar.

  At the time that used to be known as ‘after lunch’, as if anyone was interested in eating, Jeff declares he’s going to join the search party. He simply can’t stay put. I think of the many occasions when Katherine was little and we went to Legoland or the Aquarium at the weekend. The first thing I always did was to point out a really obvious meeting point. ‘If you get lost, come here,’ I would instruct. ‘If you can’t find this, then just stay in one place. I’ll look everywhere. I’ll find you if you stay in one place.’ I guess Jeff remembers this, too.

  Callum and Olivia say that they want to distribute flyers. I imagine them in the precinct; it’s white, spacious and bright with a storm of silver lights everywhere. The windows of every shop are decorated with tinsel and baubles, treats and temptations. I look at the tree in the corner of the room. I haven’t turned on the lights today. How can Christmas still be happening? The precinct will be full of stressed mothers carrying too many bulky carrier bags, yelling at their kids for trailing behind them or running in front of them. Some kids will be hoisted on to their father’s shoulders, kicking their little wellied feet, both father and child sighing with impatience. Those lucky, lucky creatures. They don’t know. Will everyone be too busy with their own affairs to give us a thought? Will they even pause to look at her face on the sheet of A5 paper? At this time of year, people act as though buying the items on their list is the single most important thing in the western world. It’s laughable.

  Even so, I say I want to go, too. Anything is better than staying here watching the clock creep round, fielding calls from people who, whatever their intention, irritate me both because they are not Katherine and because they block up the line. In unison, everyone choruses that it is best I wait indoors, wait for her to come home. She might call.

  I wonder whether they think they are protecting me.

  Annabel offers to stay with me. It’s good of her, because I’m no sort of company. For a long time, we sit in silence. The poor apology for daylight begins to fade and, as it does, hope seeps away, too.

  Inspector Davis said that people are not as random, freespirited or impetuous as they like to think they are. She said they always leave clues as to their intentions, that patterns in behaviour create a trail: ‘Humans cling to routine for survival. No one is immune.’ In my mind I obsessively replay every moment of the last three months, looking for clues as to where Tom might have gone. Where he might have taken her. We have her passport and so I’m still hopeful he’s in the UK. But the UK is a big place: not when you are holidaying in Bude – then, it seems that we know every third person on the beach – but when you are looking for a child, it’s enormous. She’s a needle in a haystack. I start to appreciate that Tom gave me very little information about himself and now I know that anything he did divulge is likely to have been untrue. He never spoke about anywhere he wanted to visit or a favourite place of his. He’s never spoken about his childhood, or much about his past at all. I know his parents live in Alicante. That’s all. The police are trying to track them down.

  Annabel does not move to put the lights on, so we sit in the room, letting the dusk envelop us. I’m grateful to her for her tact. I like her, Annabel. Realising as much surprises me. The reality of her is so much more sympathetic and appealing than the dead Annabel I have imagined. I find I’m not jealous of her. She gave birth to Katherine and she’s clearly a caring, thoughtful woman, but throughout this vigil it’s been clear which of us is Katherine’s mother. She would not swap places with me. No one would. I’m not resentful that she brought more bad news to my door. She came with decent intentions. She doesn’t want to interfere, she wants to help. This mess is not her fault. Despite the fact that my world has been chewed up, spat out and urinated upon, I trust her. My gut reaction to her is the opposite of the one I had about Tom.

  In the darkness I find the courage to mumble, ‘I didn’t want anything to do with him, not at first. I felt exactly as you did about the situation. Leave well alone. Jeff was the one who was interested, because of the illness, you know. He thought Tom might be a support if Katherine was sick.’

  ‘Understandable.’

  ‘Do you think? I still wonder, maybe if we had just upped sticks and run off? Told her nothing. We could have kept her safe that way.’

  ‘You didn’t know. You were being lied to. Besides, there are some things you just can’t outrun.’

  That’s true enough.

  ‘Then Tom came around and told us about Katherine playing truant so she could go to visit him and the children. I was so shocked, but I understood how desperate she was to have a relationship with them. I had to go along with it after that.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure of what?’

  ‘That she ditched school to visit them. Did you talk to her about it?’

  ‘No.’ Annabel raises her eyebrows, asking me to think again. �
��Oh, I see, you think it’s another thing I might have been duped about.’

  She nods ruefully. ‘You can’t trust a word he says.’

  That’s a more difficult thought. Maybe Katherine never had a desire to meet Tom and the children. Perhaps we inadvertently pushed her into the relationship. What must she have thought of us? ‘Why did I trust him? Why didn’t I make more checks?’ But I know why: I was so desperate to keep it a secret that I trusted the one person who didn’t deserve to be trusted.

  Annabel looks self-conscious. ‘Olivia told me.’

  ‘Told you what?’

  ‘About Friday evening.’ Then she’s straight to the point. ‘Are you having an affair with him?’

  ‘God, no!’

  ‘I’m not judging. It’s none of my business, really,’ she says hurriedly. ‘I just wondered whether the police might think it’s relevant.’

  ‘I am not having an affair with him,’ I say firmly, but I can’t help myself; I know my cheeks are scarlet. I wonder whether she can tell in this dark room.

  I think maybe she can when she gently asks, ‘Were you ever?’

  ‘No!’ The denial hangs around in the air like a bad smell. I know I have to offer more. I owe her the truth. The full truth. Besides, what if she’s right? Do the police need to know what happened on Friday? Is it relevant? I sigh. ‘On Friday I went round to his house. Jeff and I had had a tiff. I was upset. He became amorous.’

  Annabel lets out a little squeak, almost a giggle. ‘I’m sorry, Alison, I know this is incredibly serious, nothing more so, but “a tiff”, “amorous”? You sound like you live in a different century.’

  Surprisingly, I’m not offended. The comment is too accurate and fair for me to resent. I collapse back on the chair, tuck my legs up under me and admit, ‘You’re right. You know, sometimes I think that’s what’s wrong with me. I’ve a tendency to be this ridiculously passive victim. I sit about worrying and fretting instead of taking control. My default setting is to be almost preposterously polite. I’m always trying not to get in the way, trying not to put anyone out or cause any trouble. Trying, I suppose, to sneak under the radar. Look where that’s got me!’