by Alex Lake
In the corridor she took her phone from her bag and pressed the button.
The screen was black. It was out of battery.
She swore quietly. She fished around in her bag for a charger. Not there; of course not. It was in the car. She could run up to her office and call from there, but it was on the other side of the building. No – the quickest way was to get to the car and charge it there.
She hurried down the corridor. She didn’t doubt everything would be fine, but she still didn’t like the feeling of being late to pick up her daughter.
ii.
As she drove away from the office, Julia tapped her finger on the logo at the centre of the screen of her phone, even though she knew it would not shorten whatever process it went through when it switched on. She did the same thing when waiting for a lift; if it was slower to arrive than expected she would press the call button again. And sometimes again.
Won’t come any faster, some wag might say, and she’d reply, with a thin smile, well, you never know.
Come on, she thought. Come on.
This had happened before, resulting in an uncomfortable encounter with Mrs Jameson, the retired teacher who stayed after school with the children whose parents had neglected to turn up on time. It was going to happen again today. There’d be the stern, disappointed look, then the gentle reminder of school policy.
Mrs Crowne, I realize you are busy but could I remind you that the school cannot provide after-hours childcare without prior arrangements being made. If you need such assistance then we can provide it, but you must inform us ahead of time so that we can make the necessary arrangements.
I’m sorry, she’d mumble, feeling like she was back at school herself, hauled in front of the head teacher for smoking or wearing her skirt an inch too short, but my case ran over and I would have called but my phone ran out of juice and thank you Mrs Jameson for being so flexible. I appreciate it, I really do.
And then she’d leave, feeling like a terrible parent but wondering why, since Anna would be perfectly fine, babbling away in the back seat, telling Julia about her day and asking what was for dinner and could they read The Twits again that night, and Julia would be shaking her head and thinking I’m not a bad mother, just a busy one.
And she was about to get busier. When she and Brian separated she would have to pick up almost every day, and God knew how she was going to do that. At least now she had Edna, Brian’s mum, to help: she took Anna on Mondays and Wednesdays, and Brian normally got out of school early enough to get her on Fridays, which left Julia with two days on which she had to cram her meetings into the morning and spend the evenings catching up on emails. From time to time, if she was going to be late, she could give Edna a call; in fact she had tried that morning, but Edna was out so she had left a message, a message that Edna had ignored. And then, damn it, in the dash from one meeting to another she had stupidly let her phone run out of battery. Mental note: always keep the phone charged on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
And maybe other days as well. She doubted she would be able to rely on Edna after the divorce; behind her sweetness, Edna was a traditional matriarch, and Julia had never felt that she liked her son’s wife all that much.
Anyway, it would be what it would be. Whatever happened, Julia could take it. That was the price she would have to pay for the life she wanted.
Finally, her phone beeped as it booted up. She found the school’s number and pressed send. It rang through to the answering service pick up.
‘This is Julia Crowne,’ she said. ‘I’m running a little late, but I should be there—’, she glanced at the clock on the dashboard ‘around three twenty. Anyway, just to let you know, I’m coming.’
Ten minutes later she arrived at the school. As she pulled up outside the school gates, her phone rang. She unplugged it from the car and opened the door.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘This is Julia.’
‘Mrs Crowne,’ a voice said. ‘This is Karen, from Westwood School.’
‘Oh,’ Julia said. ‘Don’t worry. I’m here. I just arrived.’
‘Mrs Crowne,’ Karen said, her voice uncertain, ‘do you have Anna with you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m coming to pick her up. I left a message.’
‘I thought that was what you said,’ Karen murmured. ‘Mrs Crowne, I think there’s been a mix-up.’
A mix-up. Not words you wanted to hear in connection with your five-year-old daughter.
Julia stopped. She stared at the cast iron school gates. Both were adorned with the school crest: an owl clutching a scroll above the letters ‘WS’.
‘What do you mean?’ she said, her voice tightening with the beginnings of worry. ‘What kind of mix-up?’
‘Anna’s not here,’ Karen said, her tone retreating into something official, something protected. ‘We thought she’d left with you.’
iii.
Julia broke the connection. She ran through the gates to the school entrance and pushed open the worn green door, then ran along the corridor in the direction of the administrative offices. Karen, the school secretary, tall and thin, with a head of tight black curls, was standing outside the office door, her face drained of colour.
‘Mrs Crowne,’ she said. ‘I’m sure everything’s ok. Perhaps your husband picked her up.’
The twitchy, alert look in her eyes belied the calm reassurance of her tone. Julia’s stomach fluttered, then contracted. She had a sudden, violent urge to vomit.
‘I’ll check,’ she said. She dialled Brian’s number.
‘Hello.’ His voice was hard; his dislike of her deliberate and obvious. ‘What do you want?’
Julia licked her lips. They were very dry. ‘Brian,’ she said. ‘Is Anna with you?’
‘Of course not. I’m at school. It’s your day to pick her up.’
‘I know,’ Julia paused, ‘but she’s not here.’
There was a long silence.
‘What do you mean she’s not there?’ The hardness in his voice had softened into concern. ‘Where is she?’
‘I don’t know,’ Julia said, wanting, even in this situation, to add a sarcastic obviously. ‘Maybe your mum picked her up?’ She almost smiled with relief. This was the answer, after all, of course it was. Edna, her grandmother, had come on the wrong day. The relaxation was almost palpable, like the glow from a stiff drink.
‘It wasn’t mum,’ Brian said. ‘She’s at home. She called an hour or so ago to ask about something. She wanted to know where the stopcock for the mains was. Apparently, there was some kind of leak in the kitchen.’
The hopeful glow faded. Julia swallowed; her mouth powder dry. ‘Then I don’t know where she is.’
They were words you never wanted or expected to say to your husband or wife or anybody at all about your five-year-old daughter. Five-year-old children were supposed to have known whereabouts at all times: with one or the other parent, at school, at a friend’s house, with a select few relatives, who, in Anna’s case, were Brian’s mum Edna, or, occasionally, when they were back from Portland, Oregon, Brian’s brother Simon and his wife Laura, these being the extent of their relatively small family circle.
‘You don’t know where she is?’ Brian asked, his voice caught between anger and panic. ‘You’d better find her!’
‘I know.’
‘And it’s nearly half past three! How come you’re just calling now?’
‘I was a bit late,’ Julia said. ‘I just got here. I thought the school would be – I thought she’d be here.’
‘Did you let them know you’d be late?’
‘No, I … my phone was dead. I just assumed … ’, her voice tailed off.
‘Jesus,’ Brian said. ‘She could be anywhere. In thirty minutes, she could be anywhere. She could have wandered … ’ he paused. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. Start looking for her. Search the grounds and the streets nearby.’
‘OK.’ She felt frozen, unable to think. ‘We’ll search for her.’ She looked again at
Karen, who nodded.
‘I’ll tell the cleaning staff to help,’ Karen said. ‘And Julia – don’t worry. She’ll turn up, I’m sure. She’s probably in someone’s garden, or the newsagent, or somewhere like that.’
Julia nodded, but the words were not at all reassuring. They were little more than meaningless sounds.
‘Brian,’ she said. ‘I have to go. I have to get started.’
‘One more thing,’ Brian said. ‘Call the police.’ He hesitated. ‘In fact, I’ll call them. You start looking for her. Start looking for Anna.’
The line went dead. Julia’s hand dropped to her side. Her phone, loosely gripped between her thumb and forefinger, dropped to the floor.
Oh, God,’ she said. ‘Oh, God.’
2
The First Hours
i.
These were the crucial hours.
If you had been seen then the police would learn about that soon enough. First, they would check the immediate area, then they would drive the route to the girl’s house to see if she had set off for home alone. When they didn’t find her they would contact all the parents and staff who had been there at three p.m. and ask them what they had seen. Then they would interview the family. They always looked close to home first, not that they would find anything.
And, of course, they would check the school’s CCTV. You knew you weren’t on that. All they would see was the girl walking out of shot and into oblivion.
Of course, there was always the possibility that there was a camera in the area you hadn’t spotted. You’d checked carefully, but it was possible.
And if there was, or if they had seen you, and realized who you were, then the police would be here soon enough, knocking on your door.
But that was OK. You had a plan for that. For these first hours the girl was elsewhere, stashed in your neighbour’s garage; your neighbour who was in Alicante for the fortnight, and who had left you their house keys because you’re our only neighbour so you can keep an eye on the place in case anything happens.
Something had happened, but not something they could have imagined.
You’d backed into their garage and unloaded her, then put your car away. No one would have seen. There was no one to see. No prying eyes. No spying eyes. It gave you comfort that you were invisible to the world, allowed you to get on with your life unobserved. Not just now, with the girl, but the other times as well.
And now the girl lay there, sleeping on the floor of a large doll’s house that the father had built for his kids, his braying, noisy kids, who had outgrown it. It was just big enough for her to lie full length in, her feet by a small table, her head on a bag of sand, which was destined to re-fill the sand pit that the two spoilt kids who loved to disturb your afternoon peace played in.
She could stay there until midnight. That was when you would bring her inside and introduce her to her new home.
Her temporary new home.
She wouldn’t be here for too long.
ii.
Julia ran out of the green front door of the school. Ahead of her were the gates, still open from when she had come in. They were supposed to be kept locked at all times. Supposed to be. The problem was that things that were supposed to be often weren’t. She was supposed to have been there to pick up her daughter, but that didn’t help much now.
She pictured the school at the end of the day. Kids in uniforms pouring out of the school doors, the younger ones heading straight for the parents outside the gates, the older ones running into the playground for a last few minutes of fun before home and dinner and bedtime, the teachers hanging back, making sure that everything went as it should, which it would, because it always did. Every child would be accounted for, either picked up by whoever was supposed to be there for them or held back inside the sanctuary of the school because their adult was late. No one slipped through the cracks, not at this small, fee-paying private school. The parents here could be relied on to make sure that their children were properly looked after, that they were not left waiting and vulnerable. The chance of a mistake was vanishingly small.
But it was not impossible.
Julia pictured a small, dark-haired girl with a pink Dora the Explorer backpack and new black leather shoes walking out of the gate with the other pupils and looking around for her mother, frowning when she didn’t see her. And then maybe walking a little further down the street, perhaps thinking that she could find the familiar black Volkswagen Golf her mum drove. And then, a hand tapping her on the shoulder, a large, man’s hand, with thick fingers and black hair sprouting from the point where the hand met the wrist – Julia blinked the vision away. She had to stay calm, or at least calm enough to look for her daughter.
‘She’s fine’, she said, talking to herself. ‘She’s fine. She’s just waiting somewhere.’
The words didn’t make her feel any better. There was a ball of fear and panic knotted somewhere between her stomach and her sternum so big and real and hard that it was making it difficult to draw breath and to keep her head from dizzying.
But she had to act. She had to do something. And the quicker the better. She ran towards the iron gates. She would start outside the school. If Anna was in the building or the school grounds then she was probably OK. She could wait to be found. If she was outside – well, she needed to be found as soon as possible. Outside were cars and dogs and buses and people who might have an interest in an unaccompanied five-year-old girl that they shouldn’t have.
‘Anna!’ she shouted. ‘Anna! Where are you?’
She heard a similar call from inside the school, as Karen started her search.
‘Anna!’ Julia shouted. ‘It’s Mummy! Where are you, darling?’
She exited the gate and faced her first decision. Left or right? Left, towards the village centre, or right, towards a small development of overpriced cookie-cutter commuter boxes surrounded by scrubby fields? Boxes with closed doors and sheds and hiding places, boxes that were unoccupied and unobserved during the day when the inhabitants were at work or at school, boxes into which a girl could be smuggled. So, left or right? It was normally such a small decision. If you got it wrong you could backtrack and try again. But this time it felt bigger, more important. This time it was not just left or right: it was towards Anna or away from her.
But do something, Julia thought. Standing still is the worst option.
She went left, towards the village. It was more likely Anna had wandered that way, gone towards people and the newsagents and the recently opened old-fashioned sweet shop that sold sweets in quarter pounds and half pounds from jars behind the counter. The Village Sweete Shoppe, it was called, and Anna loved it.
The narrow, tree-lined road to the village curved left then descended a small gradient. The houses along the road were old and large and concealed behind high sandstone walls and thick foliage, which was both a good and a bad thing: it was unlikely that Anna would have been able to get into the gardens, but if, for some reason she was in there, she would be impossible to see.
These were the thoughts Julia had now. She saw once innocent gardens as threats to her daughter. The whole world was twisted into a sick new configuration. It made her head spin.
‘Anna!’ Julia was surprised at how loud her voice could go. She hadn’t used it like that for years. Even when she and Brian were in full flow she didn’t turn it up this much. ‘Anna! It’s Mummy! If you can hear me, just say something. I’ll come and get you!’
There was no reply. Just the distant barking of a dog (is it barking at Anna? Julia wondered) and the noise of a car engine (where’s that car going? she thought. Who’s in it?) and somewhere, incongruously, a pop song being played at loud volume.
She ran down the hill, her heels clicking on the pavement. ‘Anna!’ she shouted. ‘Anna!’
There was a rustle in a thick rhododendron bush to her left. Julia stopped and pulled back the branches. The inside was cool and smelled of wet earth.
‘Anna?’ she said. ‘Is tha
t you?’
There was another rustle, deeper in the bush. Julia pushed her way in; her heart thudding.
‘Anna’ she called. ‘Anna!’
The rustle came again, then a blackbird emerged from the other side of the bush. It looked at Julia, then took flight and vanished into the branches of a sycamore tree.
Julia stood up. To her left was a driveway leading to a covered porch. A man in his sixties, with grey hair and walking cane, was standing in the doorway, looking at her.
‘Everything OK?’ he asked. ‘I heard you shouting.’
‘It’s my daughter,’ Julia said. ‘I can’t find her.’
The man frowned. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘What does she look like?’
‘She’s five. Dark hair. She has a pink rucksack and she’s in uniform.’
‘Is she at the school? Westwood?’
Julia nodded. ‘Have you seen her?’
‘No. But I could help you look?’ He lifted his walking stick. ‘I’m not very mobile, but I could drive around and look for her.’
Julia looked as him, suspicion clouding her mind. Did he have Anna? Was this some double bluff? She caught herself; he was just someone trying to help, and she needed all the help she could get at the moment. Probably, anyway. She’d mention him to the police later, if it came to that.
‘That would be wonderful,’ Julia said. ‘Maybe I should drive, too.’
‘You can probably look more closely on foot. I’ll take my car, though. And my wife is home. She’ll take the other car. What’s her name, if we do see her?’
‘Anna. Just stay with her and call the police.’
‘OK,’ the man said. ‘Good luck.’
‘Thank you,’ Julia said. She pulled herself out from the bush, wincing, as a twig or thorn or branch scratched her bare calf, then carried on towards the village.