Little Black Lies

by Sharon Bolton

  When I get home with the boys, I look at the post for the first time. There is another white, hand-addressed envelope. Local postmark.

  Even though I can hear them playing, I nevertheless have to go into the room and do a head count. Big boy, middle boy, little boy, all present and correct, engrossed in building a Death Star from Lego. I want to throw the envelope away but can’t bring myself to.

  I open it. Same as before. Almost.

  DON’T LEAVE HIM ALONE. LAST WARNING.

  * * *

  I don’t sleep much. Every hour, it seems, I get up, check the locks, pull the curtains a little closer and peer in at the boys. Each time I do, I work out the time where Sander is. I surprise myself by how much I want him home. I surprise myself by how afraid I am.

  On my third bedroom round I see the fires. A dozen or more, stretching up the hillside, dancing in the wind. Beacons for little Archie West. All over the island, people are camping out, keeping vigil, so the child won’t be entirely alone. It is well meant, I know, but I wish they hadn’t, because the picture up on the hillside seems the living embodiment of verses I can’t get out of my head.

  About, about, in reel and rout

  The death-fires danced at night

  Each small flame looks to me like a funeral pyre.

  DAY THREE

  Wednesday, 2 November

  30

  Two nights now, Archie West has been missing, and everywhere I go there are reminders of what Sapphire said to me that first day of the search. Fear changes a community. It’s certainly changing this one. As I drive the boys to school, I pass four cars whose drivers don’t wave at me. It’s what we do here, when we pass someone on the road, we raise our hand in greeting. Visitors find it funny, think we must constantly be lifting our hands from the wheel, but when there are so few of us, it’s a courtesy we wouldn’t think of letting go. Today, even though I know the cars, I don’t get the familiar sign of recognition. And then I realize I’m not doing it either. We are all preoccupied. We are all thinking about the dead child. Not missing child, any more, although that’s what we still say when we mention him aloud. In our heads he’s become the dead child.

  Another dead child. What is wrong with us? Why can’t we keep our children safe?

  Two men are arguing outside the post office as I drive past. I don’t know them, nor the crowd that watch them at a distance. Someone lurches into the road and I brake sharply. The man, plump and middle-aged, sees the boys in the car and leers closer for a better look. He spots the youngest in the back and his eyes widen. I press my foot down. On the drive home, I decide, I’ll lock the car doors.

  I hold Chris and Michael close when I say goodbye at the school gates and, around me, see other parents doing the same thing. There are more mothers here than usual. Normally, even primary school children walk to school by themselves. Their mothers wave them off at the door, happy for them to journey a couple of short, quiet streets. Not today. Mr Savidge seems to be counting them in, reassuring himself that each one of his charges is safe so far.

  ‘I can’t take my eyes off them,’ says one mother. Not to me. They rarely talk to me, but they are close enough for me to catch snippets of their conversation.

  We all wait, until the last child is safely inside and the doors slam shut. I wonder how many of us will come back at break-time, just to be sure they’re still safe.

  I push the buggy to the shops, as I often do. My life has become one long exercise in killing time. There are too many soldiers on the streets. They are here to make us feel safe, but today they seem to be a reminder of how we’ve failed. How we continue to fail.

  ‘A bunch of bloody whales! They’re all heading over to some back-of-beyond island to save a bunch of bloody whales. What’s wrong with these people?’

  ‘Especially after last night, you’d think missing kids would take priority.’

  I slow down. I’m back at the group of visitors I saw arguing earlier. I think one of them is Archie West’s father. The others I’m not sure about.

  ‘Phone the papers. Get the number for the Daily Mirror.’

  ‘It’s bloody disgraceful, your little lad’s still out there.’

  Discreetly, I change direction and head to the offices of the Penguin News. With no particular desire to see my father, if there are calls from British newspapers in the offing, he needs a heads-up.

  As I enter the hallway I hear his voice coming over the airways, which means the red light will be on above the studio door and he won’t be receptive to interruptions. I can leave a message though. My grandmother pounces on Peter and releases him from the buggy.

  ‘It’s getting ugly out there,’ I say to Cathy, an old friend of ours who works with Dad and who brings the boys home from school a couple of days a week.

  She knows I’m not talking about the weather. ‘Tell me about it. Phones have been going off the hook. Like we know anything.’

  As if on cue, one of the desk phones starts ringing. Cathy leans across, activates the answering machine and holds up a finger for silence. The music fades and I realize my father is interviewing Chief Superintendent Stopford.

  We all listen, my son being so quiet I feel sure Grandma Mabel is slipping him Polo mints. She never misses a chance to sneak them to my children or my horses. Apart from me, she is the only human Bee will tolerate.

  ‘Now, obviously we care about the local wildlife, Bob, but can you assure us that the search for little Archie still takes priority?’ My father’s voice always sounds deeper, more cultured, when he is on the radio.

  ‘Absolutely, Robert. Very much so.’ Stopford clears his throat. ‘We’re widening the area that we’re searching. The military are up at Estancia at the moment, as are as many volunteers as can spare the time.’

  ‘Except for those who’ve gone out to Speedwell to help the Conservation rescue the beached whales?’

  ‘Robert, it’s not my place to tell people here what to do with their time. They decide that for themselves. What I can tell you is that we have a lot of people out looking for Archie today and, God willing, we’ll find him.’

  ‘Have you searched the Princess Royal?’

  Stopford half answers, loses his thread, and starts again. He emphasizes that they have enough personnel to search the area where Archie went missing.

  ‘Have you had any success tracking down the sighted silver Land Rover?’

  More bluster, about following a number of leads, but there being no certainty there was another silver Land Rover at Estancia in the first place and the important point, for everyone to take away, is that the search for little Archie is continuing and will do until, well, for as long as it needs to.

  ‘What about a house-to-house search? What are there, seven hundred properties in Stanley? With all the military personnel you keep talking about, it can’t take more than a day, surely?’

  ‘Well, you know, Robert, we can’t go searching people’s houses without warrants, and everyone’s been more than cooperative. I’d go as far as to say every resident of Stanley has searched their own property in the last twenty-four hours, just to be on the safe side. I think we have to concentrate police resources on where they are most needed.’

  ‘Will you be requesting police assistance from London?’

  ‘If need be, of course, but there is nothing to suggest, at this moment in time, that the situation is anything other than … What I mean to say is, we are putting all our available resources into the search for little Archie and, I have no doubt, we’ll find him soon.’

  There is a pause in the studio. A second or two of dead air. Mabel and Cathy share a look. ‘Wait for it,’ says Mabel.

  ‘There’s a rumour flying around this morning that the body of a young child was found at Port Pleasant last night, Chief Superintendent. Can you tell us anything about that?’

  What? I spin to face Cathy. She shushes me again.

  On air, Stopford makes a low-pitched choking sound. ‘Information will be released
in the fullness of time, Robert. You know it would be wrong of me to speculate.’

  A body? At Port Pleasant? The boys and I listened to the radio over breakfast. Nothing was said about a body.

  ‘Do you think it was Archie?’ Dad is asking now.

  ‘At this moment in time, we have no reason to believe … That is, we are almost certain that it isn’t Archie, and we’ve informed his family accordingly.’

  A child’s body? No wonder people in town were jumpy. But if not Archie, then—

  ‘Jimmy,’ Cathy mouths at me. ‘Jimmy Brown.’

  ‘How soon do you expect to have a positive identification?’

  ‘I really can’t speculate.’ I can practically see Stopford getting out of his chair, inching towards the door.

  ‘Do you believe the two cases are connected?’

  ‘There is no— absolutely no reason, at this stage, to connect, well, to believe the two cases are connected. It would be irresponsible to speculate. And very unfair on the families.’

  ‘Three young boys in the past two years. All disappeared near water – and you’re still asking people to believe they’re not connected?’

  ‘Robert, this is unhelpful and upsetting for the families concerned. We’re going to have to leave it there.’

  Music begins to play, and we hear the sliding back of chairs, then the studio door opening. Chief Superintendent Stopford doesn’t acknowledge us as he strides through and out the front door. My father stands in the doorway, watching him go, as the sound of ‘Sweat’ by Inner Circle blares out across the islands. ‘Gonna make you sweat,’ warns the lead singer.

  Some days, even I have to love my dad.

  * * *

  Home again, I give Peter something to eat and then take him down to the beach with me, something I never usually do. He’ll get grumpy fast, he really should sleep after lunch, but I feel the need to be out of the house and for some reason – which is almost certainly the notes – I don’t want to leave him by himself.

  As I left the house I heard, via Dad on the radio, that the initial examination of the body, that police have still to confirm is that of Jimmy Brown, is taking place at the hospital this afternoon.

  I wonder again whether I should tell someone about the notes, but with everything else the police have going on, my anonymous, judgemental pen-pal is hardly going to be a priority. It’s not as though Archie’s family received notes before he disappeared.

  Or maybe they did and it’s been kept quiet. So, what do I do? Report them and risk wasting police time, not to mention drawing attention to my poor parenting, or … I will report them, I decide. Definitely. Soon.

  The novelty of being on the beach makes my youngest child forget that he’s tired. He takes a few, fast steps towards a flock of birds and they take to the air around him. He spins on the sand, entranced by his power to have such an impact upon so many other lives.

  It’s a dangerous power, I think, watching his fair head bounce, his feet scuff the sand, his eyes widen in wonder. I should know.

  When Chris was born, in those first few days after becoming a mother, I found the sudden responsibility close to terrifying. So much of our time, in those early days, we were entirely alone. Just me, a tiny creature completely at my mercy, and my head filled with sickeningly violent fantasies.

  They came from nowhere. I’d be making tea and think how easy it would be to tip the contents of the kettle over his cot. I’d take him out into the garden for air, walk to the edge of the cliff, and wonder, were I to loosen my hold on him right now, how long it would take him to reach the bottom. Would he cry? Would I be sorry? In the few short moments before he hit the rocks who – he or I – would scream the loudest?

  I struggled to feed him and switched to formula quite quickly. I could put anything in these bottles, I’d think, as I made them up every morning. Drain cleaner? Neat Scotch? Who was there to stop me?

  I had no idea what had gone wrong with the wiring in my head, why these unspeakable thoughts kept bursting their way in. It wasn’t as though I didn’t love my baby. Sometimes it felt as though the love I had was so intense there wasn’t enough space in my head to keep it all in. I could hardly bear to be in a different room. I’d wake at night, find my hand resting softly on his tummy as he lay in the crib beside me, and wonder how I’d spent so many years of my life without him. And still the dark, twisted thoughts kept coming.

  I became afraid of myself, afraid of what I might do, and there was no one to whom I could turn for help. How could I confess that I was fantasizing about killing my baby? Other mothers would open their eyes wide in fright and make an excuse to get out of the house. My GP would section me. Sander would apply for custody. My best friend had a new baby herself, she was hardly in a position to deal with my paranoia.

  In the end I did tell Catrin. I broke down completely one afternoon and told her everything. Inscrutable, unflappable as ever, she thought about it for a while.

  ‘I think it’s your subconscious processing a fairly cataclysmic life change,’ she said, eventually. ‘On some level, you’re aware that you could do those things so, on that level, you’re acting out, exploring the boundaries. I wouldn’t worry. I think they’ll go in time, once you get used to the whole motherhood business.’

  ‘What if they don’t? What if I actually do one of these things?’

  She looked at me like I was dim. ‘Rach, I’ve seen you catch wasps in your hands because you can’t bear to swat them. They’re fantasies.’

  In time I came to think that she was right. The fantasies became less frequent, eventually stopped altogether, and when Michael was born they didn’t repeat themselves.

  It’s still a dangerous power, though, control over another human life. There came a day when I had an impact on other lives and, years later, the consequences of that one mistake are eating me away like a cancer.

  A police boat appears around the headland and I watch it draw closer. It’s heading for the wreck. They are all going to be searched over the next couple of days. The old ship on which people I loved played pirates is going to be crawled over by police officers.

  A sudden gust hits us hard, almost knocking my child over. He’s wandered some way down the beach and for a second looks round in panic, imagining himself lost.

  Sometimes it feels as though everyone around me is lost. A dozen miles away, people are still looking for a lost little boy. Fifty miles away, other people are trying to get over a hundred lost whales back to where they belong. I sit on the cold sand, watch a skinny two-year-old chase shags and guillemots across the beach, and wonder who’s going to find me, and how I’ll ever get home.

  * * *

  Chris wakes me in the night. The phone is in his hand. It must have been ringing for a while but didn’t penetrate my drug-assisted sleep.

  ‘Mummy.’

  He’s on the bed with me, pulling at my shoulder. Panic hits and I pull myself up.

  ‘It’s Granddad. They’ve found him. They’ve found the little boy.’

  I grab the phone and try to concentrate. It isn’t actually that late, not long after midnight, but the drugs have a powerful hold. Yet I take in enough. Archie West has been found. Alive and reasonably OK.

  Chris is leaning close, trying to catch what Dad is saying, a smile of relief on his young face. I can hear the excitement that Dad is trying so hard to conceal, the chattering of my mother in the background. I have a sense of everyone around me taking deep breaths, allowing the tension to leave. It’s over.

  Dad is still talking. Little Archie was found by Catrin and Callum, of all people, on their way home from Speedwell. Dad can barely contain his joy at the story that has landed at his feet like a pot of ambrosia tossed down from Olympus. They slaughtered nearly two hundred whales after an unprecedented beaching and, on their way home, spotted a cold and hungry little boy by the roadside.

  When Dad stops to take a breath, and I’ve grasped the opportunity to wish him goodnight, Chris is snuggled up i
n my bed, almost asleep again.

  I get in on Sander’s side. It feels cool beneath me.

  The nightmare is over, has ended better than anyone could have hoped. The small child from far away is found. There are signs that Callum and Catrin are together again. Suddenly, so much seems possible. I settle down, glad of the feeling of Sander’s cool clean sheets beneath me, of the sound of Chris’s breathing at my side. It’s over. Whatever happened to Archie, it’s—

  Then I remember what day it is. The third of November. The day I killed my best friend’s children.

  Sleep feels impossible now, so I pull the covers up over Chris’s shoulders as I get out of bed. In Michael’s room, there is an unusually large lump beneath the quilt with two fair heads peeking out. The little one can’t get out of the cot by himself, so I can only surmise that he woke, Michael heard him and carried him into his own bed.

  On my way back to my own room, I lean in to close Peter’s door and even though I know exactly where my youngest is, the sight of the empty cot startles me.

  They should be the most precious of all, our youngest children. Youngest, sweetest, most loved, the last children of our bodies. Archie is a youngest child. Holding him in her arms again, his mother must feel as though the thin, fragile shell of her heart can’t possibly hold the swell of emotion inside it. She will stay awake all night, holding his tiny, cold body within her own, hardly able to believe she’s been given this second chance.

  Is it possible, that there’s a second chance for me?

  ‘Mummy.’ In my room, a sleepy young voice is calling me back to bed. I don’t go. I stand here, thinking, staring down at the empty cot.