‘When I opened my eyes, I think I knew he’d gone. I just felt alone, empty. I pulled myself up and called an ambulance. They took me to the hospital, performed a C-section, as you know. I already knew he was dead. I felt it. I felt him go.’ Maisie grits her teeth, trying to stanch a fresh flow of tears. This is his time to grieve. Not hers. He deserves that.
‘The doctor heard me telling him about us. Telling him about our life and our home. She shouldn’t have but she pulled a few strings and let me bring his body home. I showed him the lounge, twirled him round where you’re standing now, told him how much he looked like you and that, even when I got old, I wanted him to dance with me. Like we did together when we moved in. I told him how his grandma would make him hot chocolate and tell him stories about giants and fairies. I told him how much we loved him.’
Ben wipes his eyes, but he misses a tear, and Maisie watches it drip into his mouth. She reaches out to take his hand but stops herself in time. Ben stands and dashes to the door, and she watches it swing to in his wake.
His footsteps beat out a hateful rhythm on the staircase, and when he reaches the bottom – where she had lain in a pool of blood a year ago, crying over her little boy – she finally lets the tears fall into her hands. There is nothing holding her back now.
Chapter 25
Miller
Saturday 1 September, 1990
They sit side by side, two little boys with the palest of hair and the brightest of eyes. One sits patiently, smiling at a bird in the sky; the other wails and grits his teeth, clawing, giggling when he scratches someone walking past.
The mother stands to the side, gossiping to a woman in her forties. The woman’s teenage daughter and husband flank her, waiting for her to finish. The husband is looking at the teenager and the teenager is looking at the ground, thin body clad in silk shorts and a shirt advertising a football team. The mother looks at them, and I wonder how she doesn’t see what stares her in the face. The man wanted a son and instead got a daughter, who he beats for punishment and lusts after for pleasure. The teenager stands quietly, sad, withdrawn. The clues to their family dynamic are as clear as the sun in the sky. But only to me.
When the bad boy begins to scream at the top of his lungs, they turn and stare. The mother rolls her eyes and kneels in front of him. ‘Listen, Angus, if you don’t stop you won’t be having a lollipop at the shop. Look at Toby, as good as gold.’
The bad boy stops, ponders his choices and then begins to scream again, angrily rocking himself from side to side. The good boy shifts farther along the bench, away from his brother. The mother shakes her head. ‘He’s so naughty at times. I’m not giving him a lolly now.’
And she doesn’t. Later, when they go to the shop, Toby has his and Angus goes without. And I realise, Blue-Eyes, you get what you want when you are good. You go further in life when you are well-behaved and sweet and kind. Watching those two little boys, similar in looks but so different in temperament, it becomes clear that if I am a good boy, I can have everything I want.
This realisation is one brick in the bridge that carries me to you because now I need to leave this place. The people in this town know who I am. They have watched me since I was a baby. I’ve had my fair share of ‘tellings off’ over the years. For being naughty, for being odd. Now, though, seeing those two little boys, I wonder if I have been wrong to let myself be seen. If perhaps I should have – what does Mother say? – put on an act. Like the apologies I let fly when I bother her.
A woman walks down the road, tottering along on heels that are too high for her. I walk up and push her to the ground. Her head grazes the tarmac. Her fingers come away with blood. She sees my face then crawls a few inches, pulls herself up and rushes down the street, as fast as her heels will permit, not daring to look back at me. What a weird little kid, she will think.
Another lady walks down the street, her nose pressed against the pages of a magazine. She isn’t looking where she is going and when she trips on the bike I have left in her path, I am by her side, holding her up, righting her. I smile again. She brushes my cheek with her finger. Thank you, she says. You’re my angel. She rummages in her pocket and hands me a five-pound note. Treat yourself to some sweets, love, she says, then pats my arm and carries on down the street as I wipe my cheek, removing the smell of her skin.
And as simple as that, with two tourists, I have set my life on a new course.
Mother is easy to lie to. All it takes is a few choice words from me and a well-placed property paper to plant the seed in her mind. I tell her people are whispering behind her back. Saying how terrible it must be to have had a cheating husband. I tell her they pity her, talk about her at the WI every Sunday. She has been the topic of conversation for five sessions, beating the ‘big-fire-at-that-old-schoolteacher’s-house’. I tell her they are like archaeologists, raking over the facts of her divorce, studying the anatomy of her marriage. And – the final push for Mother – saying that the root of the divorce probably goes back to the death of their little girl. Mary’s name is what does it. She picks up the property paper without thinking where it has come from and finds us our new home within minutes. Want to know where it is?
Right next door to you.
Tuesday 4 September, 1990
The day we meet is a day I will remember for the rest of my life. What makes it special isn’t what you might expect. It isn’t when I walk up to you, introduce myself as your new neighbour, ask if I can play ball with you and your friend. I smile and laugh and project an air of sweet, humorous sincerity. I tell you I like your bike because I can tell you are proud of it. I tell you I don’t like your jumper because I see you scratch at the red skin on your arms. I say your mother makes nice cookies because the pleasure on your face when they crumble in your mouth makes my heart quiver and my hands clammy. I ask how old you are. What is your favourite food? What do you like to do for fun? Just how many pins did you say you got down bowling? Ten. That’s impressive. I even ask your friend with his spindly legs, fat middle and full lips what his favourite games are because I know it will please you. You you you. I am instilling pieces of myself in your life and in your memory. So the next time you go bowling, when you knock down ten pins, you will think of me. When you play with your dolls – because that is what they are, your action figures – you will smile at the thought of me. And when you have your mother’s cookies, I will be there at the edge of your thoughts, reminding you that you are mine now, even if you don’t know it. Mine mine mine.
My treasured moment isn’t even the eleven seconds my hand touches your skin. Your mother, pleased with her son for making friends with the new neighbour, takes our picture, asking us to bunch together and pose. I wrap my arm around your shoulder, fingers grazing your sore, sweaty neck, the smell of it sinking deep into my flesh. Exactly where I want it. By the time she has finished, my hand is shaking and I have to tuck it in my pocket. Later, when I am in my room, that will be the hand I caress my face with, imagining my hand is yours.
No, what makes it really special is the moment I first see you. I am standing in our new lounge, looking out of the window at our new garden, when you rush out, wheeling your bike, laughing at something your friend has said.
With your blue eyes and blond hair, you are everything my life has been leading up to. Happiness pours from you and fills our neighbourhood with a force that makes people smile. You are a vision. And finally I have you. A special one. A good one. Like Mary, like Sarah, but better. Far better.
Your name is John Graham. You are four-foot-six. You love Angel Delight and riding your bike. Every Sunday morning you take your little sister to the sweetshop for acid drops. You are a brave boy, wise boy. Good boy. And you are my boy now.
Chapter 26
John
Wednesday 9 December, 2015
‘They’ve found her. They’ve found Bonnie.’ John repeats it to himself. The fifth time it finally sinks in.
Amy sits them down and tells them Detective
Inspector Alice Munroe just contacted her to say they’d had a sighting of a little girl meeting Bonnie’s description. She is with a man in his late forties. They are at the airport.
John jumps up and grabs his car keys, a small part of him stung that Alice, after their conversation last Monday, didn’t tell them – him – herself. ‘We need to go! Which airport?’
‘I suggest staying here until further news, John. We don’t know it’s Bonnie. It could just as easily not be. DCI Munroe is there. She’ll call me as soon they’ve identified her.’
‘Amy, we need to be there.’ He gestures to Jules, who is by his side in an instant. ‘If that’s her, we need to be with her.’
‘And what if it isn’t?’
‘It is. There haven’t been any other potential sightings. This is her. It has to be.’ He drums his fingers on his leg, impatiently. How can she be so slow? This is his daughter. This is Bonnie. Frustrated, he takes Jules’s hand and leads her to the hall. Amy shoots out in front of him, arms out, placating.
‘John, you could turn up there, all guns blazing and ruin any chance of getting her back. The guy could flee and we might not find her again. And if it’s not her, you’ll just terrify a little girl and her father. Don’t. Let us deal with this.’
‘Amy, we can’t just do nothing!’ Jules is moving from foot to foot, twirling a piece of hair round her finger. A recent development. John thinks it is a stress reliever.
‘I know, Jules. I know how you feel.’
‘You don’t! YOU WILL NEVER KNOW HOW I FEEL!’
John jumps, surprised. Amy looks as if she has been slapped across the face, and if he weren’t angry with her for keeping them there, he would feel sorry for her.
Jules drags a ragged breath through her lips, balling her fists, fighting tears in her eyes. John can feel her frustration and desperation like a fog in the room. Amy nods, eyes cast to the floor. ‘OK. I don’t but I know you could jeopardise any chance of getting her back if you leave now. Don’t do it. Let us deal with it.’
John’s mobile buzzes in his pocket. He ignores it, glaring at Amy. He knows she is right. They should let the police deal with it. If anyone is going to find Bonnie it is them. But he feels so helpless. His daughter is about to leave the country, a future of God knows what awaiting her. He can’t do nothing. He squeezes Jules’s hand, then walks past Amy to the door. They’ll go to the airport and wait outside. At least then they can be close.
The mobile buzzes in his pocket again. He pulls it out and stares at the words across the screen. A message from Alice. He shows Jules, and they turn and wrap their arms around each other, hope splintering like glass at their feet.
Not her.
I’m sorry.
*
He feels as if the crux of who he is has been stripped away. And like a shell, like a box, now there is nothing.
John sits with the sun on his skin amid the bubbling joy of young children, either playing tag, taking turns to push each other on the swings, or sitting cross-legged on the grass, sweet smiles of contentment smoothed across their lips. He’d brought Bonnie to Florence Park hundreds of times, watched her small form blend into the crowd of others and flopped onto the bench where he sits now with an audible sigh. He can spot some of her friends, blissfully unaware of Bonnie’s struggle and his own silent fight to keep desperate fingers holding these feeble shreds of hope.
He watches a young girl with blonde ringlets and green-tipped fingers skipping across the grass, her mother watching from the sidelines, and ponders how old she is. Six? Seven? If Bonnie was with him, she’d initiate a friendship on a single smile, the offer of a toy or the sharing of a chocolate bar. And in that instant they’d be the centre of one another’s world. Children cluster to Bonnie for her easy smiles, humour and generosity. Perhaps John is biased. But then he is allowed to be. She is his daughter, after all. Pulling his mobile from his pocket, he rereads Alice’s message and feels a lump settle like a rock in his throat.
Not her.
I’m sorry.
‘What’ya looking at?’
John jumps in his seat, turning to see seven-year-old Rachel peering over his shoulder, leaning forward on the bench and swinging her legs. ‘Hi, sweetheart. I didn’t realise you were there. Where’s your mum?’
She shrugs and smiles. ‘Talking on the phone. Where’s Bonnie? I want to show her my new book. I haven’t seen her in ages.’
John adopts a smile to disguise the clinch in his gut, feeling a flush of guilt at lying. But what is the alternative? Tell a seven-year-old her friend has been kidnapped? ‘Sorry, Rachel. She’s got a bug. In bed at home. I just needed a bit of fresh air so I thought I’d come here.’
Her expression fizzles into a frown. ‘Oh. OK. Mum says to drink a lot of lemon tea when I’m poorly. I can make her some, if you want?’
‘That’s OK, sweetheart. She’ll be better in no time.’
Rachel nods and skips back to her mother, who sends John a smile and a wave. He nods and looks back at the little girl with blonde ringlets. She is pulling against the hand of a man in a baggy shirt and tracksuit bottoms, her bright-red face a sharp contrast to the white crescents the man’s fingernails have cut in her skin. John frowns, a niggling concern embedding itself into his side, like a splinter into the soft pad of his finger. Where is the girl’s mother? Why isn’t she helping her daughter? John sweeps his eyes across the play area, hunting for her perfectly permed hair and red lips. Nowhere.
Baggy Shirt shoots a glare at the girl and pulls her in the direction of the car park. John pushes down a torrent of fear and looks to see if anyone else has noticed. They haven’t. But then, did he notice when his own daughter was taken? Did he sense a disturbance in their lives? No, he was arguing with his wife in the kitchen.
The girl lets out a thin wail under her breath, scratching the man’s hand, batting away his glares with ones of her own.
John watches all of this happen but now a scene is playing out in his mind: a man is creeping into his house and creeping back out with Bonnie in his arms, her fingers stretched towards him and Jules. And she is afraid and confused at the absence of her parents. The ones who vowed to protect her.
‘No! I don’t want to! Let go!’ the girl cries, tears streaking her cheeks. Baggy Shirt grunts and sweeps her into his arms. And at that moment John jumps up and rushes across the grass, dodging children and leaping over the bags and coats discarded on the floor, his head throbbing with panic. He is taking her! He is taking her like He took Bonnie!
‘Hey! Let go of her! Don’t touch her! I said, let go of her!’
Baggy Shirt pauses, eyebrows popping up into his forehead like miniature jack-in-the-boxes. ‘What did you say, mate?’
John prises the girl from his grip and folds her into his chest, hands swift and gentle. Baggy Shirt glances down as if he can’t believe the girl has vanished. Fear marks her face with twin blotches of red. She cries, drawing the eyes of children and parents alike. But John can no longer hear them; he can no longer hear the girl’s wails and he can barely even hear Baggy Shirt’s barrage of threats because Bonnie’s voice is crying out for him and in his mind’s eye he can see spittle flying from her gaping mouth, hair falling into her frightened eyes as she is pulled away.
She’s calling for him. His Bonnie’s calling for him.
‘Daaaaaddyyyy!’
‘Let go of her!’
‘Daaaaaddyyyy!’
‘LET GO OF HER!’
John grits his teeth and backs away, cradling the girl. She sits in the crook of his arm just like Bonnie did, and he feels a flush of anger. He won’t let another girl be taken away from her parents. He won’t let another man be the undoing of another little girl. ‘No!’ he shouts. ‘If you come any closer, I’ll call the police! I mean it! You’re not taking her!’
Baggy Shirt creeps towards them, lunging on the last step. ‘GET OFF HER, YOU FUCKING PSYCHO!’
John blocks his hands and sidesteps. Baggy Shirt grapples ag
ainst his chest, prising the girl from his hold. John hears the girl’s wails blend with the cries of a woman to his right.
‘Oh my God! Oh my God! Pippa! PIPPA!’ The woman with red lips and permed hair shoots forward and screams. John rushes towards her and gently slips the girl called Pippa into her waiting arms. ‘She’s OK! She’s OK! She’s OK!’ John repeats the words not only to her but himself also.
The woman weeps into Pippa’s hair. Between sobs, she strokes her daughter’s head and looks at him. ‘He wasn’t kidnapping her, you idiot! He’s her father!’
Her father.
Her.
Father.
The words skitter like stones in his mind, jolting him from his reverie.
Her father.
F
A
T
H
E
R.
‘Oh my…’
It is then John feels the strength leach from his body and the blood drain from his lips. The man wraps an arm round the woman and delicately strokes Pippa’s cheek, panting between two prominent middle teeth. ‘Are you OK, Pips?’ He nestles his cheek into her head and kisses her hair. John stumbles back, holding his stomach in the hope of delaying the sickness. ‘I… I thought… he was… he was taking her away. I… I’m so sorry! Oh God, I’m so sorry.’ John sucks in breath after breath, the words pouring from his mouth faster and faster as the realisation meets his heart like a ton of bricks. ‘I’msosorryIdidn’trealiseIthoughthewastakingherI’msosorryohGodI’msosorry!’
The woman looks at him, patting Pippa’s back. ‘You’re lucky we’re not calling the police!’
‘I… I can’t apologise enough! I was trying to help her! I’m sorry!’
The woman glares at him, turning away. ‘Fine. Just leave us alone, please.’
Lies Between Us Page 12