by Lizzy Barber
It’s a curious prayer; one I’ve heard her say many times before, but that seems to have no source in any book of psalms or hymnals I’ve ever come across. As soon as she gets to the end, she starts again, faster and more ardent. The rasp becomes a hiss. I go upstairs without daring to look back.
When I open the door into the darkness of my room, the light from the hallway casts a beam onto the cushion Mamma gave me, pride of place on my bed. I prayed for this child, and the Lord answered my prayer. The words seem to mock me now.
I pull it to me and, denying myself the luxury of a light, crawl into the corner between the dresser and the door, rocking back and forth with my cheek pressed against its rough weave, sobs moving in waves through me. Masochistically, it feels good to cry, to give myself over to the pain and confusion that have been pursuing me like some unseen gadfly.
What are you trying to tell me? I silently demand of the pendant, hiding beneath the floorboard. Who are you? I beg of the anonymous ink of the card, of the white-suited man who disappeared too quickly for me to register him. Why am I so meek that I didn’t run after him when I had the chance? What does it mean? I plead with the Astroland ticket, as the rush of the whirling carousel looms again into view.
Emily.
The name shimmers at me like a silver thread, begging to be pulled on. Outside, the storm shrieks through the trees with a voracity that means it’s directly overhead. I imagine it taking up my anger and confusion, shaking the branches and blowing up violent winds that rattle the windows in their frames.
Later, when the gale has lessened, leaving only the methodical trickle of rain on wet leaves, I feel calmer, more rational. William is right: there must be some reason behind all this; there must be a way to find out what it is, without upsetting Mamma.
Mamma.
I think I know at least part of the source of her anger this afternoon. She fears me slipping away, leaving her, as I edge towards adulthood. The fear grows more pronounced the older I get. Sometimes she keeps me so close I feel like I’m drowning in her. In this house. In this life. But could it be there’s another, deeper reason she won’t let me go?
I crawl over to the dresser, peel up the floorboard and draw out my secrets.
I take the Astroland ticket between my fingers, smooth it with my thumb. The green turrets of the castle are etched in the background, and I imagine the carousel, whirling just out of sight.
Emily? The voice gets clearer, and I can just make out the faint impression of a woman: a mass of curly hair; something – a freckle? a mole? – on her right cheek; sunglasses; a red top. But as soon as I turn my head towards her, something or someone pulls me away.
Why that name? Why now? I pick up the pendant, squeeze it tight, as if, maybe, holding it will draw something out further. I see it in my mind’s eye, swaying again from a neck. But whose neck, and why, I can’t say.
I replace the trinkets, edge open my bedroom door. I have no idea how long I have been in my room, but now the house is silent and dark. Down the hall, a ray of light under Mamma’s bedroom door. Her presence hangs in the air like the smell of her lavender perfume. I tiptoe down the stairs, careful to avoid the third step from the bottom, the one that creaks.
The kitchen light is off, but the moon throws a pool of pallid yellow light across the floor. The dinner things have been cleared away, but the vase is still there, untouched. Splinters of glass shimmer against the white tiles, and the tulips are already crisping, turning brown at the edges. A can of corn has rolled across the floor, remains wedged against the bottom of the refrigerator. I ease across the room in the thin light, cautious of the water and broken glass, and pick up the can. It’s dented but unbroken; a welt sears across the Jolly Green Giant, severing him at his jolly green neck. I place it back in the store cupboard, nestled in precision next to the others, their labels all meticulously facing outwards.
I fetch a broom from the closet in the hallway and begin to sweep.
ROSIE
8
When I dare to crack open an eye I wince. A dull and constant throb makes its way across my temples. I remember that I’m at Keira’s house, and stretch for my phone to look at the time. It’s nearly eleven o’clock. I rouse myself, sitting up against the wall and pulling the blanket up to reach me. As I do, my fingers brush the side of my body, and the acrid memory of Adam’s hands on my rib cage rises within me. I draw the blanket around me tighter.
I hear the grind of the doorknob, and the door is butted open with the edge of a brown wicker tray. Keira sets it down on her desk by the window and nudges aside the debris of make-up and lever arch files scattered across it. A grey light takes over the room as she rolls up the blinds with a steady sweep. It’s rained in the night; the window is speckled with droplets of water, and beyond it the trees shudder miserably in the wind.
‘Oh, good, you’re up. I brought you breakfast.’
The mattress wobbles underneath her as she sits cross-legged at the other end and hands me a glass of sparkling vitamin C, the tablet still fizzing at the bottom and turning the water a darkening shade of orange. Next come a couple of aspirin, builder’s tea, and a plate with four slices of Marmite toast.
‘I have to find out what happened to Emily.’ The words leave my mouth before I have time to process them. They’re the first I have said today, forcing themselves out through my arid mouth. Without warning, I feel my face start to crack, sobs erupting from my chest.
I ball my fists, trying to force the tears away, but through them I can see Keira looks horrified. I don’t think she’s ever seen me cry before, and now it’s twice in twelve hours. Instantly she’s crawling across the mattress and wrapping her arms around me. I breathe in the smell of butter and Marmite, and the hint of last night’s vanilla-sweet perfume mingling with the last strains of weed, and something else which is just ‘her’: biscuity and warm and familiar. I wipe my face with the neck of my T-shirt and I open my mouth to speak but my thoughts overwhelm me again and I choke on hiccups and tears and snot.
Keira hesitates, then asks, ‘Is this because of what happened with Adam?’
I inspect the corner of a nail, the white ridges of torn cuticle. ‘I thought it would just stop my thinking about it. But it didn’t work. It never works.’ I stare down at the blanket, following its colourful swirl with the corner of my thumb. I swallow thickly. ‘I found an email.’
She listens, stroking a spiral of hair by her ear, as I tell her about the email, the lack of money; the timing; how impossible it all seems, even with the anniversary, that we’ll be able to keep the trust going. At last she sits back, folds her arms, sighs. ‘And they haven’t said anything to you?’
I shake my head.
I feel her searching my features, trying to see how carefully she should tread. ‘And you’re worried … because of last time?’
Last time. The time we don’t talk about. The time before, after the ten-year mark, when they all told us it was impossible. When the money in the Emily Archer Trust really did run dry, and it was only at the eleventh hour, with an anonymous cash injection from some millionaire donor, that it survived. When there were arguments and shouting and crying. And Mum became no longer my mum, but a limp rag wrung dry, not eating, not speaking, barely leaving her room, let alone the house. And Dad tried so hard but nothing he could do would fix it. And then one day when I woke up she was gone, and Auntie Sally was there in her place, all fixed smiles and why-don’t-we-have-pancakes and Mummy’s-gone-for-a-little-rest. And nobody would tell me where she’d gone, or when she’d be coming back. And I wanted so desperately to know.
That was the first time I hurt myself, the day Mum went away. Secreted a pair of nail scissors from Mum’s sink – I was just looking for something that smelled like her – and found myself locked in their bathroom, sitting on the loo and without really meaning to tracing a barely there squiggle on the top of my thigh, enjoying the burn it produced. When Auntie Sally questioned it, seeing it peeking from my pyjama
shorts, I told her I’d scratched it on a tree in Highbury Fields. I learned to be more careful over the years: certain things, like the broken knuckle, invite more trouble than they’re worth; the poking and the prodding inevitable with a ‘child who has experienced trauma’. I’m not trying to kill myself or anything, but God, sometimes it feels nice to have control over my own pain.
And Mum came back, after a month or so. Wore a smile every day, even though it didn’t quite go as far as her eyes. And I stopped doing it, for a bit. And nothing was ever said about where she’d gone.
These are the bits no one really wants to know, when they ask what it’s like. They want to hear about the TV crews, and the endless gory theories, and what it was like to meet Barack Obama. Not the bit that makes them feel truly awkward and uncomfortable. Not the bit that feels too real. Which was why I decided, after that, to stop talking about it altogether; to try to pretend it didn’t exist. Because if no one wants to know the actual truth, why should I say anything about it at all?
Keira keeps her arms around me, not saying anything, giving me the space I need to collect my thoughts.
‘I have to figure out what happened to her,’ I say, finally. ‘Before the money runs out, and everyone just forgets. I have to do something, before …’ I inhale slowly, ‘before it destroys my family more than it already has.’
Keira pulls away from me, holding me at arm’s length so she can read the smallest expressions on my face. ‘You really want to do this? To start looking for an answer?’
I nod.
She pulls her laptop from her desk, places it on her lap as she scoots next to me and tucks her legs under the blanket. The base is warm, it heats our legs beneath the covers as she flips open the lid. The screen whirrs into life.
She moves the cursor to the URL bar, types ‘TheHive’ with the fingers of her right hand, and taps the enter button with a short, sharp click.
‘Then this is the place to start.’
I know this site, although I’ve never had much reason to visit it before. It’s a gossip search engine: a place where Internet sleuths and people who’ve watched too much true crime pore over unsolved mysteries and share rumours they think’ll help solve them. I heard Dad once refer to them as ‘scum of the earth’, and I know he tried to ban them from mentioning Emily’s case when the site first launched a few years ago. He couldn’t do anything about it though. Freedom of speech and all that. But he doesn’t want us trawling the Internet, seeing the crazy theories. It’s not that it’s forbidden – it’s more of an unwritten rule.
I’ve seen it all, of course. Read what people have written about us in the comments section of articles. On the sidebar of shame. I can easily imagine the sort of thing that could be written. That Rob and I are overprivileged. That we’re wasting taxpayers’ money (even though, if they bothered to actually look into it, they’d know that any public funding dried up a year after she went missing). That Mum and Dad ought to just give up and get over themselves.
The site’s acid-yellow home page loads, bearing The Hive’s childish logo – a cartoon bumblebee holding a megaphone, with the words ‘What’s the buzz?’ looping out of it in black cursive.
‘Have you been on here before?’ I ask Keira.
She stares down at the keys and I see a pink blush darkening her caramel cheeks.
‘How often?’
‘I just like to … keep an eye on things.’
The home page lists the most popular stories, voted for by the Hivemind – the site’s readers – by clicking the little bee icon at the corner of each post. Tapping on a header topic brings up a new page, under which readers can comment. Under the logo is a search bar, with the most searched for topics listed underneath.
On the right-hand side, Keira deftly flicks down the list of topics, delving further into the subtopics until she reaches a page bearing Emily’s frozen-in-time grin, next to a bold yellow heading, ‘Astroland of Horror’. I look up at Keira, who quickly scrolls past it. ‘Ignore that. That moderator’s a dick. And likes being sensationalist.’
The screen loops through a series of subtopics, each with its own dramatic heading:
Was Emily Archer the victim of a prank gone wrong?
Archer still buried in the park.
Prey of the Florida State Killer.
I look on in silent amazement at the endless theories and conspiracies, some of them with hundreds of comments attached. Keira mutters about this one or that, praising one commenter, snorting at another.
I stop her. The cursor is blinking next to ‘Archer parents did it’.
I force myself to look away from that one. There was a period, I know, in the beginning, when they were treated as suspects. You can hear the disgust in Mum’s voice, even now, if she ever mentions it.
‘How well do you know all this, Keira?’
She avoids making eye contact. Her finger hovers over the trackpad as she tries to find a way to answer.
‘I don’t mind – I just want to know.’ But I do mind. I know that other friends will read things and have their own opinions about what happened, but I’ve always thought Keira would ask.
I feel a tweak of shame in my rib cage. I’m not always the easiest person to ask. I suppose it must have been difficult, all these years, to be so close to it all and not feel she could talk about it.
‘I guess … pretty well?’ she finally ventures. Her index finger loops around on the pad, moving the cursor in a figure of eight on the screen. ‘I first went on it about four years ago. But it’s been going more like ten. I heard from someone at school that there was stuff about you guys on there. I just wanted to have a look, and make sure no one said anything bad about you, and since then I’ve just been … checking in. Seeing the theories, what people are saying.’
‘And …’ I swallow, knowing what the answer will be, ‘have they been saying anything about me?’
She looks up at me from beneath a tangle of hair, taking my complicity to mean I’ve forgiven her snooping. ‘Not bad stuff. There’s a few pictures, now and then, of you growing up. Some commentators like discussing whether you guys look alike. There’s a thread run by someone called KittyMum09 which sketched out which parts of each of you are like each parent. It was interesting, actually. I never noticed before that you have your dad’s nose.’
I feel as if the thin blade of a scalpel is running over my face, parcelling each of my features into one box or another. Mum. Dad. Emily. Will there ever come a time when my family aren’t specimens of public curiosity?
‘OK …’ I breathe out slowly, resisting the urge to gouge my fingertips into the heels of my hands. ‘So, where do I go from here? Did my parents really do it?’ My voice is light, jokey. I know enough to understand that there are a lot of sickos out there, people who come up with stupid theories just for kicks. But seeing it all on there, all the crazy speculations, just makes me realise how public my life is; how open to anyone’s pulling apart.
Keira relaxes. She shifts her weight on the mattress, balancing the laptop on the cross of her knees, and idly scrolls down the screen. ‘Obviously a load of these are bollocks. But there are a few key threads and core Hiveminders who seem to genuinely know what they’re talking about.’ She glances at me again, as if for reassurance. I nod, and she clicks deeper into the web, eventually bringing up a thread called ‘Astroland Hank’.
The heading looms at the top of the page. Beneath it, a small circle depicts an avatar: a cartoon drawing of a woman holding a magnifying glass – the author of the thread. The cursor blinks over her name, ‘MissMarple63’.
‘MissMarple63 has a theory that Emily was snatched by a man named Hank Wilson, who was a worker at a nearby construction site. Witnesses say they saw Hank on the day Emily went missing, in the park.’ Keira flicks through the dense jumble of words my brain can’t process.
‘But why would he have anything to do with Emily? What’s his motive?’
She’s silent.
‘Keira, wha
t?’
‘Sorry, Rosie – it’s weird, suddenly relating it all to you.’ She sighs and gnaws at the skin around her thumb. ‘Hank was convicted of raping two girls in the Florida area about ten years ago.’ Keira puts a palm on my hand, squeezes it. The skin is moist where she’s been chewing. ‘There’s nothing to link him directly to Emily, but witnesses came forward after he was convicted to mention similar incidents with him, and someone picked up on the fact that when he was on the construction site he used to spend a lot of time hanging around the park.’
My throat feels dry and scratched from last night’s vomiting. I swallow. ‘I see. And what happened to the girls?’
It’s the question she must have been waiting for, and one I had to ask. ‘They’re both still alive.’
I blink. ‘So, OK then.’
‘That’s why the police dismissed it as a lead. They said it didn’t connect up, and obviously when they spoke to Hank it was years after Emily’s case, and they couldn’t find anything to pin it on him.’
She pulls up something MissMarple63 has posted, a black-and-white photocopy of a newspaper article. In the centre is a picture of a man I assume to be Hank. He’s heavyset; you can tell by his jowls, and the width of his shoulders beneath his creased cotton T-shirt. His hair is fair, and thinning on top, forming two inlets of bare skin either side of his temples. He has a goatee, bristly and clipped short, and creases around his mouth that place him in about his mid forties. I search his eyes, trying to find some definite sign of misdemeanour. He looks like a creep, but did he harm my sister?
‘Show me another.’
Keira sighs, but turns back to the screen. ‘This one’s a bit out there, but you have to bear with me.’ She pulls up an image of the infamous carousel, the one Emily was said to have disappeared from. Above it are the words ‘No Death in Dreamland’.