by Jane Shemilt
‘Did Mrs Mears notice his appearance?’
‘It was unlit at the back of the theatre. He was sitting down. She thought he might be a parent.’ Then he looked at both of us. ‘Did Naomi say anything to you about a new relationship? Or did anything else happen that struck you as unusual?’
Ted said no at exactly the same time that I said yes. Michael turned to me.
‘She didn’t say anything, but something was different,’ I said slowly.
‘How different?’
‘Quieter. I only realized it after a play rehearsal. She came back late and seemed very distant.’
‘Distant?’ He waited, pen poised over a page in his notebook.
I glanced at the stove where Bertie was now sleeping. She had been standing right there when she had glanced sideways at me.
‘She used to talk to me a lot,’ I said. ‘About everything. That night it occurred to me that she had stopped doing that; I thought it was tiredness with all the play rehearsals and homework, but …’
I stopped for a moment, remembering the quick hostility over homework, the silence that followed. ‘Thinking back it was as if she deliberately wanted to shut me out.’
There was a pause; I could hear the faint scratching of his pen, then Ted looked up quickly, his voice cutting across my memory.
‘The cottage,’ he said.
13
DORSET 2010
ONE YEAR LATER
Locking the window so it can’t blow open again, I strip off my sodden clothes and leave them on the floor in a heap, putting on pyjamas, thick socks, an old jersey. Downstairs the cottage feels cold and empty after Mary’s warm bungalow. I pace backwards and forwards; my body feels horribly alive. What has escaped or what have I allowed in? Something has pulled at the corner of my mind and let in flickering colours where I had made calm black space. An image is forming that demands to be captured. Behind the desk is the old portfolio of paintings. I pull it out quickly to find a blank canvas, then scatter paint tubes on the table. I want to paint the colour and sound of the storm.
Some of the other pictures have escaped; one falls to the floor. Before Bertie can walk on it I pick it up. It’s the portrait of Naomi that I never finished. Her mouth is smiling; there is a look of triumph in her eyes that I hadn’t noticed before. They say the youngest gets away with things the older children are forbidden. I had told Ed that he couldn’t have parties in the cottage, but I let Naomi. She got her way over almost everything; that was her undoing.
BRISTOL 2009
ONE DAY AFTER
‘She went to the cottage last week,’ Ted said. He stared at Michael, who had stopped writing and was looking at him questioningly.
‘The cottage?’
‘Sorry,’ Ted said quickly. ‘Jenny’s parents were going to retire to a holiday cottage in Dorset they’d had all their married lives, but her father died. Her mother made Jenny a gift of the cottage very recently.’ He sighed, impatiently. ‘Anyway, we let Naomi go there last weekend, before the play started. She said she needed a break; she wanted to go with some of the cast to relax. It seemed reasonable enough at the time.’
I remembered how she had stood inside the door quite silently. ‘She was very … preoccupied when she came back. She didn’t tell us much about the day.’
Ted and I looked at each other.
‘Who did she go with?’ asked Michael.
‘Friends from school. From the play,’ said Ted. ‘At least that’s what she told us. A boy she has known for ages. Other cast members. Nikita.’
‘Did they pick her up?’ Michael was writing again now.
‘No, she went to meet them,’ I told him, feeling sick. Had that been true?
Ted and I got to our feet at the same time.
‘I’ll need the address.’ Michael glanced up at us. ‘A key.’
‘No need,’ Ted replied. ‘I’m going now.’
Michael pushed his notebook inside his jacket and stood. He pulled out his mobile and spoke into it. We heard him request a driver and two officers to accompany Ted to the cottage.
‘I’ll be fine on my own. I’d rather,’ Ted said abruptly. ‘If she’s there, she might be frightened if a whole load of policemen roll up.’
Michael paused from speaking on the phone. He said quietly: ‘If she is there, and someone is with her, you may panic him.’
We stared at him wordlessly; unforeseen possibilities seemed to swell in the air of the kitchen. Panic him into doing what?
As Michael moved away, speaking into his phone, I turned to Ted.
‘I’m coming with you,’ I told him.
‘You haven’t had enough sleep.’ His eyes scanned my face.
‘It’s just a couple of hours, for God’s sake. I can sleep on the way.’
‘Stay,’ he said. ‘In case.’
In case I heard her footsteps running towards the back door? Her voice calling to Bertie that she was home and he could stop pining now? Those familiar things had already taken on the sheen of an impossible luxury.
When the doorbell sounded, Ted and Michael went upstairs to open the front door to the policeman who was driving Ted to Dorset. I heard voices, the door slammed and then Michael’s footsteps came down again into the kitchen.
I put the kettle on and looked at the clock: 1.30 p.m. Fourteen hours. It would be more by the time they got to the cottage. I wondered if they would drive the way we used to, the M5 to Taunton then across country to Chard, Axminster and Bridport. The final three miles to Burton Bradstock, with the sea between the hills on the right. The children used to be impatient by then, wanting to stretch their legs.
‘I’m sorry, Jenny,’ Michael said simply as he walked towards the table.
‘How are you going to find her?’ My voice rose uncontrollably. ‘What about the rapist? Every second –’
‘It’s not the rapist,’ Michael interrupted. ‘He was picked up ten days ago; he’s in custody. We are doing all we can at the moment. We have taken prints from the dressing room, the theatre, the seats and the changing rooms. Her friends are being interviewed.’ He looked at me carefully, checking I was following. ‘We are asking residents and the school about cars in the area at that time and checking the CCTV cameras in all the local garages and on roads going out of Bristol.’ I watched him as he went through the list; his grey eyes were serious. ‘We are also putting together a photofit from Mrs Mears’s description and it will go out on television on the six o’clock news this evening. We are taking this very seriously.’
It made it better but it made it worse. I was sliding down somewhere I had never been before, hands out, trying to hold on.
He stood by the kettle, found the jar, then milk, made two cups of coffee. He gave me one of them and sat down again, facing me across the kitchen table, which was still littered with packets of cereal and the carton of juice, dirty bowls and mugs of cold tea.
‘We are making some assumptions here,’ he said. ‘We have to look at other possibilities, however unlikely.’
‘Other possibilities?’
‘There are several. First, there are good possibilities.’
I looked up quickly. ‘How do you mean, good?’
‘She is with a friend; she is sleeping or she has simply taken time out.’
‘Naomi would never do that; besides, she had one more performance to do.’
‘Perhaps the pressure …?’
‘No.’ I shook my head. I wished I could believe that, but however she might have changed, whatever we had missed, I knew she wouldn’t have just left the play like that.
‘Then there are other options. She met the unknown man for a brief while, or maybe not at all.’ He was telling me she could have been abducted from the theatre by someone completely different, or on the way home perhaps, randomly, by some brutal stranger.
I stared at him in silence. Which would be worse? Someone who had befriended her, planning to do her harm, or a stranger hiding in the shadows outside the theatre door,
or further away, down the street? I stood up, but my legs felt too weak and I sat down again.
‘Does anything else unusual cross your mind? Something you may not have noticed or have got used to? Enemies?’
He passed me a notebook and a pencil. Holding the pencil in my hand steadied me.
I looked at him; he knew how to help, but the downturned edges of his sad mouth told me he didn’t like this part of his job.
‘You’re used to this,’ I said. ‘You know what to do.’
It sounded like an accusation. I could see he was considering his reply carefully.
‘Yes. But every time it’s different. Like your job. You must see lots of people with the same sort of illness, but no one is ever the same, there is no set routine.’ He was right, of course. I nodded and he opened his own notebook. ‘Who lives next door?’
‘Flats, people come and go. Mostly young couples. We don’t know them really.’
‘Opposite?’
‘Mrs Moore and her son. He has Down’s syndrome.’
Michael wrote that down as well.
‘Anyone else at all?’
Enemies, he had said. I thought of Anya’s husband scowling at me when he dropped Anya off. Mr Price’s eyes last time I had seen him. Friends were easier. Nikita. She had lots of other friends at school, but the only other one I could think of now was the boy who had helped her with maths, James. The one she said she had gone to the cottage with, the one who had given her the ring.
I began to write my list slowly; it took a long time to marshal my thoughts. When the phone rang I started up, heart thumping, but Michael moved swiftly to answer it.
‘No comment,’ he said tersely after a small pause, then repeated, ‘No comment.’ As he hung up, he turned to me.
‘The media will be intrusive.’ He had dealt with this before as well. ‘I’ll prepare a statement for you for now, asking them to respect your privacy.’
I stared at him. All I cared about was Naomi, seeing, hearing, touching, holding her. Privacy seemed completely irrelevant.
I finished the list and gave it to him, and he stood up to go. I didn’t want him to; it felt less desperate with him there. He said he would be back in two to three hours.
After he left I sat still for a long time, incoherent thoughts racing through my mind. Eventually I stood stiffly, glancing at the clock. Sixteen hours now since we had expected her back, twenty-two since she had walked out of the door. Just then, I remembered her voice as she said goodbye, but, strangely, I couldn’t remember if I had said goodbye to her.
14
DORSET 2010
ONE YEAR LATER
I lay green wash on the paper, then mix sap green and crimson for a greyish green, but the colour is too cool, it needs to glow, darker, thicker. I layer on viridian green and raw umber. The purple and deep brown of the sea lifts up to the edge of the sky as if it would swallow it. I stipple white spume along the crest of a wave, but mostly I want the dark heaving shapes of water. Even as the painting takes shape, I feel the rope it is offering me. I imagine it is rough with salt and wet under my hands. I stop from time to time to put wood on the fire, swallow wine, a sandwich, pacing as I eat.
Some time after midnight the picture lets me go. The fire is flickering low, and the room feels warm and safe though outside the storm is still raging. Last year our lives were destroyed in a raging, pitiless storm. I’d clung on then because I thought we would find her and because of the boys. Theo and Ed kept me going.
BRISTOL 2009
ONE DAY AFTER
Theo came home from school in the late afternoon. He had bought fish and chips in a white paper bag translucent with grease, and the smell of vinegar made me feel sick again. When the phone call came I used the nausea as an excuse to go upstairs, so that Theo wouldn’t hear the conversation.
Ted’s voice sounded strained. ‘The cottage is empty. No one’s here. No one’s been here in the last twenty-four hours.’
So she hadn’t been taken there. I waited.
‘She was here, though. Last week, like she said. Only …’
‘Yes?’
‘She … they …’
‘What?’ My head was tingling with impatience.
‘The bed’s been slept in. There’s a stain, through to the mattress.’
‘Slept in? But she didn’t stay the night.’ Then his other words caught up with me. ‘What d’you mean, stain?’ I asked, my voice trembling. ‘What sort of stain?’
‘Blood.’
‘Jesus.’ I couldn’t speak for a second.
‘They say it’s several days old. And it’s smeared on the floor as well.’ He was speaking quietly. Someone must have been near, perhaps listening to what he was saying. ‘You can tell how old it is by the colour – that’s what this officer says. He’s in forensics. And the wine in the glasses has dried. Definitely there for longer than a day and a night.’
‘Wine? What wine?’ I didn’t know what he meant.
‘There’s a bottle next to the bed, two glasses.’
Glasses of wine next to the bed? She never drank alcohol. She had smelt of wine after the rehearsal and at the dinner after the first performance, but I thought that was probably because everyone was drinking. I thought she hated alcohol.
‘It must have been the friends she went with; some of the kids she knows are much more … grown-up …’ Even as I said it I thought of the little girls who came to the practice, pregnant at twelve. But Naomi wasn’t like that. She’d never had a boyfriend. I’d told that to the police. It wasn’t possible she’d been in bed with someone.
‘She didn’t go with friends.’ Ted’s voice came back harshly. ‘That was another lie. There are only two sets of footprints. It was just her and that bastard. You thought she was preoccupied when she came back the other day? Hardly surprising – she was traumatized.’ There was a rasping intake of breath. ‘He got her drunk first …’
Even as I shrank from the words I tried to think beyond them. ‘If that’s true, that’s all right,’ I heard myself saying. ‘Drinking together, that’s a good sign.’
‘What? Good she was drunk when he raped her?’
I flinched at his cold incredulity. ‘No.’ She had been standing so quietly inside the door. ‘We saw her when she came back after the cottage. I would have known if something bad had happened. She was so calm.’ I spoke more quickly, feeling more certain. ‘Think about it for a moment. If you have wine with someone in bed it means you are relaxed and talking. Enjoying –’
Ted cut in. ‘A local team arrived about an hour ago. They are taking samples – fingerprints, photos, DNA.’
I kept the wine glasses in my mind. He would have poured her a glass, put his arm round her; she would have sipped it, smiling at him, pretending she liked it.
‘The wine means he liked her.’ I spoke carefully. ‘The blood is because it was … her first time. So if she is with the same person now, he won’t hurt her. Not if they … they made love.’ The words sounded ridiculously out of place. But love was better than rape, better than murder.
‘Wake up. Of course it must be the same person, but it doesn’t make it any less dangerous. It will all be part of a plan. That was just the start.’ His voice shook.
There was a silence and then he told me they were getting another team down. There would be house-to-house questioning in the village. It was all going to take longer than he’d thought. I wished then we had known more people in the village, but we had never stayed long enough to make friends; we’d always been absorbed in family, making the most of Ted’s time off with us. Now I wished I had reached out. I would have had someone to ask if they’d noticed anything different, or if there had been strangers lurking in the village.
I went back to the kitchen. When the phone started ringing I lifted the receiver, but as I heard the bright voice of a journalist rapidly introducing herself I quickly cut the call. The phone rang again immediately and I ignored it.
Ed came in. He stood st
ill when he saw me and for a moment he looked frightened. I put my arms round him. His eyes were bloodshot. Had he been crying? He stayed quite still, his muscles tense.
‘It’s all right, Ed. It’s going to be all right.’
‘Nothing’s all right.’
He shrugged me off and walked away. When he sat down on the sofa I sat next to him. He got up then and sat in the chair. I heard Theo open the fridge door.
‘Whatever happened, I’m on your side,’ I said quietly.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Michael Kopje from the police force came to see us. Apparently you told Mrs Mears –’
‘Fuck.’
‘You don’t have to tell me now.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘They might need to check with you. Obviously I want to know about Naomi –’
‘See? You never mean what you say. Ever.’
I waited, watching the anger burn in his face.
He looked down. ‘I told Mrs Mears I would walk Nik and Naomi home. While I was in the loo, Shan turned up and took Nik.’
‘Yes, I know she did.’
‘After that, while Naomi was changing, she yelled through the door for me to go. She told me a friend was coming to walk her home. She made me go.’
I knelt in front of him, held his arms. ‘It’s not your fault, Ed – or it’s everyone’s, mine and Dad’s as well. Naomi always makes people do what she wants.’ As I said it I knew it was true and it gave me hope. It meant she could make whoever had taken her let her go. Ed turned his face away.
Theo leant against the wall wearily. ‘Mrs Mears resigned,’ he said.
I stood up and turned towards him. ‘Why?’
Behind me, Ed got up and walked out.
‘A member of staff is supposed to be in the theatre with the kids at all times. She must feel awful …’ Theo’s voice trailed away.
I felt sick again. So Mrs Mears knew that if she had acted differently Naomi might still be here, but whatever guilt this teacher felt couldn’t compare to the terror Naomi might be going through. The agony we were enduring. Blazing anger surged inside, but I knew it wouldn’t help, because then I would have to feel angry with Ed as well, and the useless rage would swell and block out everything else. I had to stay sane.