Whistle in the Dark

by Emma Healey

  He kept repeating the name, and Jen wished she hadn’t said anything. She could never call her Milly now, she thought, because she’d heard him pronounce it in his peculiar, scratchy voice. A voice that was like a stranger running his fingers through her hair.

  ‘No. You should call her Lana,’ he said at last. ‘Lana.’

  Jen quite liked the name and told him so, trying to placate him.

  ‘Promise me, then,’ he said. ‘Promise me you’ll call her Lana.’

  He seemed deadly serious and gave Jen such an intense look, such a frightening stare, that she promised. Then he got up and went away. Just walked down the carriage, never to be seen again. And it was odd, but Jen felt they’d made some kind of bargain, she and this man: her baby’s name for his absence. So she stuck to her promise, though she never told Hugh why she’d changed her mind about Milly or why she was so definite about Lana.

  Q&A

  They’d all seen police stations on the television and, after Lana was discharged from the hospital, they were able to judge which programmes were the most accurate. The interview room had a sofa and a coffee table and, although it wasn’t exactly luxurious, it wasn’t the grey, intimidating interrogation room Jen had been expecting. They were offered drinks and given biscuits, the door was left open and everyone could choose the seat they wanted. Jen and Hugh sat either side of Lana, like some middle-aged, out-of-shape henchmen, but luckily, no protection was needed, and the detective, a woman with a very lean face, wasn’t unsympathetic.

  ‘Are you okay to talk to us?’ she asked, and Lana nodded. ‘Can you tell us what’s been going on in your life recently?’

  Lana seemed surprised at the vagueness, the casualness, of the question and Jen wondered whether she’d been expecting more of a battle and, if so, what she would have fought to hide.

  ‘Just normal stuff,’ Lana said. ‘School and…’ She shrugged.

  ‘You were in the Peak District on holiday? What were you doing?’

  ‘Yeah. We were, like, painting and drawing. It was good, actually. Our tutor took us on walks and made us try different techniques, like putting food dye in water, and using wax resist, and cutting our own reed pens.’

  ‘You were enjoying the holiday?’

  Lana nodded.

  ‘That’s good. Did you like the other people?’

  Lana nodded again.

  ‘Can you tell me about them?’

  ‘They were mostly really old.’

  The detective smiled. ‘Like over forty or something, huh?’

  ‘Forty’s not old,’ Lana said. ‘Is age something that worries you?’ She sounded just like her therapist, and the tone made Jen feel uneasy. It was unnatural in the voice of a fifteen-year-old and it gave away Jen’s failure as a mother, someone who’d had to fall back on professionals. The whole situation reminded her painfully of sessions in Dr Greenbaum’s office, waiting for Lana to explain why she wanted to hurt herself.

  ‘You think I’m patronizing you. I’m sorry,’ the detective said. ‘Answer this for me: have you seen anyone away from the group?’

  ‘Like, anyone on the holiday? The people from the holiday?’

  ‘From the holiday or anyone else. Anyone special?’

  Lana shook her head and looked at Jen, who took a ginger biscuit and tried unsuccessfully to nibble at it quietly. It was sweet but not very spicy and she immediately wished she hadn’t been tempted.

  ‘What about Matthew?’ the detective asked Lana. ‘You had a friendship with him, is that right?’

  ‘Did my mum tell you that?’

  Jen stopped nibbling for a moment.

  ‘She didn’t, but Matthew was also missing for a few hours on the Friday morning when your disappearance was discovered, so I have to ask you about him.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lana said. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Was he with you at all during the time you say you were lost?’

  ‘Did he say we were together?’ She sounded outraged, as if her reputation might be at stake.

  ‘I want to hear what you say happened.’

  ‘He wasn’t with me.’

  ‘But you would say you were friends?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘He thinks you are.’

  ‘He’s a bit lame,’ Lana said. ‘I mean, he’s sweet, but he likes birdwatching and stuff. I only hung out with him to be nice.’

  ‘He had some pages from your sketchbooks in his room. Did you give them to him?’

  Lana winced then looked at Jen. ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘I left them between some rocks.’

  ‘Did you leave them for him to take? Or for someone else?’

  ‘I didn’t leave them for anyone, really,’ Lana said. ‘Or, I guess I left them for the countryside, for Mother Nature.’

  ‘But there were notes to Matthew on the pages.’ The detective looked down at her own notes and read out loud. ‘Of course I like you. I can’t sneak away. Okay. After dinner. Where are the eco toilets? Did you write these?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you were addressing Matthew?’

  Lana shrugged and nodded.

  ‘So you did spend time with him, then? Alone?’

  ‘Yeah, if you don’t count the badgers.’

  ‘Has he hurt or threatened you?’

  ‘Matthew?’ Lana smiled. ‘No.’

  ‘Has anyone threatened you, Lana?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Has anyone told you to keep quiet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you had contact with anyone? Have you made any plans to meet anyone other than Matthew?’

  ‘No. No, I haven’t, I didn’t.’

  ‘Can you tell us where you’ve been?’

  ‘Not really. I got’ – she took a breath – ‘I got lost.’

  ‘Mr Crossley – that’s the farmer who found you – he said he thought you’d come from the woods. Is that right?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Lana said. ‘It’s a bit of a blur.’

  Jen had heard this all before, and wasn’t sure whether it was a good sign or a bad sign that Lana was using nearly the same words. She had an idea that people who told the truth used more varied vocabulary. She put her half-eaten biscuit back on the coffee table.

  ‘Okay. How did you get lost? Can you remember that?’ the detective asked.

  ‘Not really. I was sleepy,’ Lana said. ‘I went to the shower block because I’d left my wash bag and I wanted some lip balm. I thought I’d taken the path back to our room, but I guess I hadn’t…’ She stretched her hands out.

  ‘Did you find the wash bag?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The wash bag. Was it in the shower block?’

  Lana was still a moment. Had she been caught out or was she trying to remember?

  ‘I don’t think it was there. I think it must have been in our room after all.’

  The wash bag had been in their room, inside Lana’s suitcase. Jen didn’t know if that made her story more believable.

  ‘So you went to the shower block,’ the detective repeated, ‘and the bag wasn’t there. What happened next?’

  ‘I took the wrong path,’ Lana said. There was a faintly biblical quality to the sentence, which made Jen uneasy.

  ‘Which way did you go? Left, right, straight on?’

  ‘I can’t remember. It was dark, I’m not good with directions. I just walked the way I thought and then, when I realized I’d gone the wrong way, I tried to walk back again, but I only got more lost.’

  ‘Okay.’ The detective wrote something down. She held her pen very loosely and had beautifully slanted writing. There was a pause while she reread what she’d written, and Jen felt Lana sit up ever so slightly.

  ‘And did you see anyone before Mr Crossley found you?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Have a think about it. We’d like you to try and be sure. There were lots of people out searching for you. You didn’t see anyone? Hear anyone?’ She left another long gap, but thi
s time she looked at Lana during the silence.

  The stare was determined, focused, and Lana cleared her throat and shuffled her feet, obviously uncomfortable. Shifting in her seat, she began to turn her head and then stopped herself, as if she weren’t sure that her parents were allies any longer. Jen dropped her bag, trying to distract the detective’s gaze for a moment, though it seemed a faintly ridiculous and theatrical thing to do and neither the detective nor Lana seemed to notice.

  ‘Can you tell me how you got the laceration on your head?’ the detective asked, after it became clear Lana couldn’t remember seeing anyone.

  Lana put her fingers up to her head and touched the stitches. ‘I think I fell.’

  ‘Was anyone with you at that point?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where did you fall, Lana?’

  She shrugged. ‘Near some rocks?’

  ‘Can you describe the rocks?’

  ‘Big. Grey. Rocky.’

  ‘You can’t tell me anything else about them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. You’re doing really well, Lana. Just a few more questions, all right? The doctor noticed some marks around your ankles when you got to the hospital. Can you tell me what they were from?’

  ‘My socks.’

  ‘You’re sure about that? You haven’t had anything tied around your ankles at any stage? Somebody else hasn’t tied anything around your ankles?’

  ‘No. My socks were tight.’

  A nod and a note. ‘Your clothes were very wet. How did they get wet?’

  ‘From the rain?’

  The detective tapped her pen against her lips. ‘I don’t think that can be it, Lana,’ she said, ‘because it hasn’t rained heavily since the day you went missing.’

  ‘Then I’m not sure.’

  ‘Are you telling me you can’t remember?’

  ‘I suppose I am.’

  ‘Okay.’ She wrote something else down. ‘Did you take your mobile phone with you when you went to the shower block?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did you keep it on or switch it off?’

  ‘I kept it on. Oh, but I might have switched it off for a bit to save the battery.’

  ‘You didn’t switch it off so that your whereabouts couldn’t be traced?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you don’t have it now?’

  ‘No, I lost it.’

  ‘Do you know where you lost it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We haven’t been able to find it yet, but if you could tell us where to look, perhaps we could recover it for you.’

  ‘I don’t know where to look.’

  ‘All right. What were you wearing when you got lost?’

  ‘Leggings, a fleece, a jacket.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Socks, shoes, a bra.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Pants.’

  ‘Is that everything? What about a T-shirt?’

  ‘I…er…I didn’t put one on when I got up.’

  ‘What T-shirts did you have with you on holiday? Can you remember what you packed?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Why does that matter?’ Hugh said, breaking his promise not to interject.

  The detective didn’t seem annoyed. ‘Lana wasn’t wearing a T-shirt when she was taken into hospital, and a ripped T-shirt has been discovered not far from where Lana was found.’

  ‘It’s not mine,’ Lana said.

  Jen nearly asked to be shown the T-shirt, to be given the chance to identify it, but she didn’t want to ask in front of Lana, to imply that she didn’t trust her word. And anyway, she wasn’t sure she’d recognize the T-shirt, or be certain it was Lana’s. The police had been noticeably disappointed by her vague memory of Lana’s clothes when they’d asked for a description during the search.

  The interview went on. They talked about Stephen, and about Peny, they talked about Matthew again (Lana rolled her eyes). They talked about Lana’s school and her friends and her social-media accounts, they talked about the dangers of meeting strangers on the internet (Lana rolled her eyes). They talked about her therapist and her therapy sessions and the ‘dark thoughts’ which had led her to cut herself in the past (Lana rolled her eyes).

  ‘How were you feeling the night you got lost?’ the detective kept asking. ‘How were you feeling within yourself?’

  Lana’s answers got shorter and shorter. ‘I was pretty happy, from what I can remember,’ she said. ‘Fine. I was fine.’

  It was lunchtime when Lana was eventually released into Jen’s custody.

  ‘Mine?’ Jen said, caught between anxiety at the responsibility and gratification at the official allocation of power. ‘My custody?’

  But custody wasn’t quite what she thought it would be. After silently swearing not to let Lana out of her sight, it turned out she just had to make sure she was available if there were any more questions in the next couple of weeks. And then they were in the car and the car was on the motorway and it was all behind them.

  Pretence

  Lana feigned sleep all the way to London: Jen knew she was feigning because she’d seen her sleep, the corners of her mouth wet, her arms twisted around each other, her legs splayed. She knew this neat, dry sleeper on the back seat of the car was a fiction.

  Creases

  Lana’s damp, heavy head left sharp creases on her pillow, and sometimes the lines would be visible on her cheeks at breakfast. Jen had worried about them when Lana was small – they seemed slightly sinister, pinkish marks made by a nightmare, or a creature from a nightmare – and she’d got into the habit of smoothing the pillow cases and tucking the ends down tightly before Lana went to bed. It had never been any use; the lines had always appeared again by the morning.

  Since she had stopped putting her daughter to bed, she had stopped smoothing the pillow but, at the holiday centre, where they shared a room, Jen had begun to run her hands over the cotton covers, to pull at the corners and press the fabric flat. And sometimes, in the middle of the night, she had tugged at the material again, easing the creases out from under Lana’s sleeping face. On the last night, though, there had been no sleeping face there.

  She hadn’t thought to check the time, but had waited, half dozing, expecting Lana to creep back in after having a wee, to disturb the drowsy, musty air, to whisper the sheets over her shoulders, to squeak the mattress springs as she curled towards sleep. At first Jen slipped towards sleep herself, but then the cold of the night began to seep into the room and Lana still wasn’t back, and the light of dawn glowed above the curtains and finally Jen sat up and shivered. None of the guests had been able to get a signal on their phones since they arrived, but she tapped the buttons anyway, listening to the low Call Failed triple beep again and again.

  Feeling disorientated, scooped out, she had put on clothes, checked the loos and then gone to the shower block. It was called the shower block but was mostly full of deep baths which seemed like they’d come from a thirties boarding house, and little wicker stools that creaked all the time, even when no one was touching them. The cubicles were almost romantic. Ivy grew against the high windows, and someone’s rose-scented talcum powder had been spilt over the floor. But there was no Lana.

  Jen had a sensation of clutching at nothing, though her hands didn’t move, and she walked around the series of outbuildings, her steps weighty in the thin morning air. It was too early to believe it yet, but she believed it anyway. Lana was gone.

  By the time anyone else was up, she was terrified, she was crying, and she was certain. The centre manager called the police and the staff rechecked every building, went around the grounds, took the footpaths towards the moor, up the hill, through the wood.

  Jen called Hugh while the police went through Lana’s belongings. They found her phone was missing but her clothes were still there, except whatever she was wearing. Leggings, Jen guessed, and a white fleece jacket.

  ‘You’re sure she went to bed?’ a
policeman in an expensive-looking waterproof asked. ‘And you didn’t hear her get up?’

  Jen answered yes and no and began to feel she was lying. They asked about Lana’s depression, whether she had ever attempted suicide. ‘Not exactly,’ Jen said, ‘but she’s run off in the past, and she’s hoarded pills in the past, and she’s cut herself in the past.’ She hoped it was all in the past.

  The policeman rang Hugh in London. Jen heard him explain that their daughter was officially missing, that the police were doing everything they could, that someone had to remain at home in case Lana turned up, and that some officers would be around to search her room.

  ‘Do you know if she kept a diary?’ he asked.

  And who were her closest friends? And which school did she go to? And what was the name of her head teacher? Her therapist? Her GP? A request was put in to check her text messages and emails, a trace was put on her phone, but it was already undiscoverable. The CCTV at the bus and train station was checked. And, meanwhile, they started to search the surrounding countryside.

  Staff and holidaymakers volunteered and the police began to interview people in the centre manager’s office. Stephen came out talking about trusting in God, a phrase which seemed to make the police suspicious, and for a few hours it seemed the boy, Matthew, was missing, too. But he turned up suddenly, standing still amid the activity, asking what was going on, asking if they were really sure Lana wasn’t there.

  The police took him into the office straightaway and, according to his father, they were quite hard on him.

  ‘Matthew wishes he did know where she was,’ he said, hugging his son to his side, ‘but he hasn’t seen her since yesterday and she said nothing to him.’

  There were some scrapes on his hands and knees and a bruise on his elbow which the police wanted explained, and he said he’d been for a long walk, hoping to see, or at least hear, a bittern or, failing that, a chiffchaff. To Jen, these words seemed to be made up, a fantasy, until one of her fellow painters quietly reminded her that bitterns and chiffchaffs were types of birds.

  ‘Have you, have you tried calling her phone?’ Matthew asked. ‘Where are they searching? Which direction?’