I pointed out a mallard with a string of ducklings, paddling at the water, getting blown downstream. Abigail stopped and watched until the mother duck had shepherded her brood to shelter. But she hadn’t come out here with me just to look at ducks; I’d known that from the moment we set out. She needed me to talk, to explain things to her but I was walking through a minefield of things I was terrified to say. But you have to, I told myself, you have to say something. You have to speak because you need to find a way to set this straight.
‘I know how confusing this has been for you,’ I began but trailed off because what did I know, really? I hadn’t been there. I didn’t know what he’d said to her, day in, day out, for seven years. The heel on my boot had begun to squeak. We were rounding the bend now, the canal lock coming into view up ahead. I let the wind fill up my lungs trying to think how to keep everything on track. As we came up the low incline, I could see that there was no one there, no figures in yellow, and the place looked empty and abandoned. ‘Look,’ I said, pointing at it anyway. ‘This is what I mentioned last week. We’re working on it, restoring it.’
Abigail hardly glanced up. She was right next to me but the space between us felt miles wide. She went on walking, one foot in front of the other, the two pairs of socks pulled up round her ankles. She tugged up her zip. At least, I thought, now she’s sheltered from the wind. I tried to see in her the child I remembered, how she was in the years before he took her, when she was her best self, her happiest self, and I tried again. ‘The detective said he claimed to be your uncle.’
She lifted her chin from the collar of her jacket and let a word out: ‘Sometimes.’
Sometimes.
In the wind, her hair was whipping at her cheeks. Was there even any point in going any further? She didn’t care about the lock and I only cared about putting her right. I turned to face her, feeling the wind shove at my back and she came to a short stop in front of me.
‘He wasn’t your uncle,’ I said.
Did she think the police hadn’t investigated every single relative? Did she think we would have left any stone unturned? Lillian had gone on and on about Preston’s brother. She was convinced he was involved, convinced for some reason that it had to be him, but then Lillian had a prejudice against Preston’s whole family.
‘He wasn’t your uncle. He didn’t know you at all.’
Preston’s brother lived happily with his own family in Scotland and the police had found not one shred of evidence against him.
Her hair blew across her face, catching in her mouth. She released a hand from her pocket to yank the strands free. ‘He told me other things as well.’
We were head to head now, thick gusts of wind swirling between us.
‘But these things he told you – you can’t have believed them?’
Abigail kicked at the ground, scuffing the toe of her brand new trainer in the dirt. She’d become a parody of a surly teenager, angry with me, angry at the world. ‘Abigail,’ I said, ‘please don’t do that.’
‘I don’t know. It wasn’t just about being my uncle.’
‘What else then?’
She still wouldn’t look at me. She stood twisting her shoulders as though she just wanted to go home. She went on with her trainer, kick, kick, kick, and I felt all my fears and anger from last night resurface.
‘Abigail.’
She stopped. Beside us the reeds and grasses were bent over in the wind. She lifted her chin again and I stared at her, waiting.
‘He said you could have come and got me if you’d wanted. He said you knew exactly where I was.’
The wind gusted like a punch to the back of my neck. I felt like I was falling over a ravine. I could barely control myself as I grabbed her by the elbow. ‘Come with me.’
I gripped her so hard I was scared I was hurting her, but I needed her to come with me, I needed her to see. I marched her all the way back to the house, half dragged her into the kitchen. I yanked out a chair. ‘Sit there and don’t move.’ Her face was chalk white.
I left her and went upstairs. I dragged the ladder down from the loft, ignoring the twins as they came out of her bedroom. I pulled the nearest box from the pile in the attic and wrestled it down, missing a step and scraping my ankle bone on the ladder. Downstairs, I upended the cardboard box right there on the kitchen table: piles of paper came spilling out, all the documents we’d cleared from Abigail’s room. Pages and pages of information we’d pored over through the years, every scrap of anything we could find. I’d made Robert put all this away, but now I could see what a mistake that had been.
‘There’s another four boxes of this, Abigail. Seven years’ worth – two thousand, six hundred and thirty-five days. That’s how much we didn’t know.’
This was all the evidence we had. I spread the papers out all over the table so she could see every detail of how hard we’d searched. I caught a flicker of realization in her eyes and a moment where her features softened. Surely looking at this, she couldn’t doubt us.
And yet when she finally looked up at me, somehow it still didn’t seem to be enough.
Chapter 12
Saturday 8th June:
Day 13
JESS
When Abigail had pulled off her bangle and said that, it felt like losing her all over again. All the next day, I felt like a ghost. It frightened me and I needed to be okay.
That night, I went upstairs and brushed my teeth, then sat up in my room, still dressed. I heard Mum and Dad each go into the bathroom, then climb into their bed, the springs complaining. It took them a long while to settle down. When at last I heard their bedroom light click out, I waited a quarter of an hour more. Then I slipped back downstairs.
I felt my way through the hallway and kitchen and opened the door that led to the garage. The space was cold and full of the ticking hum of the old freezer that stood in the corner. The toolbox was buried under a pile of Dad’s old dentistry magazines. My dad, the repairer of broken smiles. When I was ten, he’d fitted me for braces. I remembered his soft breath on my face, his quiet concentration, the way he wrote careful notes in my file while we waited for the plaster to set. Easy as that to fix my slanting teeth. Easy as that, I’d thought, to fix anything.
As quietly as I could, I opened the top of the toolbox, making all the little shelves and trays fan out. The screwdrivers were laid out in a neat row, their handles colour co-ordinated by size. I couldn’t remember which one I needed, so in the end I took out all three of the smallest. Then I closed the box back up.
In my room, I took the chair from my desk and placed it at the foot of my bed. When I was younger, I’d have to stack my thickest school books on top to reach, but now I only needed the chair. I took off my socks so my feet wouldn’t slip.
High up on the wall in the corner was a small air vent, its grille held in place by four grubby screws. If the wind blew, it would whistle in the duct and clatter the slats. The first screwdriver was too thin, but the second one fitted fine. The screws were stiff, thickened with dust and black gummy dirt that stuck to my fingers as I twisted them free. With the movement, the chair shifted under my feet, clunking against the wall. From next door, I heard Mum murmur and turn over. She’d always been a light sleeper. I pressed my palms to the wall to steady myself and counted to twenty.
When the house fell silent again, I reached up and hooked my fingernails round the back of the grille. It stuck for a moment then lifted off. The wallpaper underneath was darker where the daylight hadn’t faded it. Because of the angle, reaching up from below, I couldn’t see inside the vent. But I knew what was in there. Mum thought I had thrown them away. Once I was ten, eleven, she said they were unhealthy. But I hadn’t. I had hidden them in here. The concrete tunnel was gritty and I could feel cobwebs. For a moment, I fished in the air at nothing, my wrist scraping the edge. Then I hooked my thumb under the cardboard lid.
I inched the box towards me, black-speckled with mildew, biting down a cough and blinking the gr
it from my eye. Carefully, I climbed down. I sat on the bedroom floor, cross-legged, the shoebox in front of me.
Inside, as I knew I would, I found them all.
My clippings.
Abigail had always been everything to me; I hardly knew myself without her. When I was eight and she disappeared, overnight my world collapsed. At the school gates, I clung to Mum’s hands, refusing to let her turn her back on me for an instant. When teachers tried to pull me away, I screamed.
The doctor called it separation anxiety. Well, Mum told him, can you blame her? She’s frightened she’ll be taken too. But it was worse than that. It felt like half of me was already gone.
In the beginning, Abigail was missing, and that meant she had got lost, the way car keys got lost, or a favourite teddy, or like when the school gerbil disappeared under the classroom cupboards. Abigail had got herself lost, but everyone was looking for her and sooner or later we’d find her, or she’d just turn up. I remembered holding the big hallway phone to my ear and hearing Auntie Anne’s questions, endless questions, and Mum crouched alongside me telling me not to worry, I wasn’t in trouble, but could I think of anything, anything at all? Abigail was somewhere in a city she didn’t know, surrounded by strangers, separated from her mother. Did she have any favourite shops, favourite kinds of places where she might have headed to feel safe? I tried. I told Auntie Anne everything I knew about Abigail. But none of my answers helped.
In the days that followed, my aunt and uncle put up big posters, like families do if their cat goes missing. Have you seen this girl? But days went by, then a week and missing didn’t make any sense. At eight, you know how to say you’re lost. At eight, you know how to ask for help. If she was only lost, surely she would have been found by now. Soon Abigail is lost turned into Abigail was taken. That was what abducted meant.
In my room, I lifted the lid and tipped up the box, spilling the pictures and stories across the floor. When Auntie Anne and Uncle Robert finally came home from London, their hollow faces had frightened me. It was everything I was frightened of in the world. In response, I hunted out every story I could find, cut pictures from magazines, tore whole pages from library books. Stories about happy endings, children who escaped, children who found their happy way home – I collected a whole storybook’s worth of clippings, comforting fantasies about my cousin. Everything beyond that terrified me. This adult world, the real world, the world of growing up. If I took one step without her, who knew what would happen? Instead I would stay in the bubble we had made with our games, and I would stay there, unchanging, until she came back.
Now I pushed my fingers into the mass, until I found the printed photograph I’d put in here too. The last one taken of me and Abigail. I am eight and she is eight. We stand with our arms around each other, barefoot, our nearest legs pressed together, as if for a three-legged race or like conjoined twins. The photograph’s been taken against the sun and our outlines are blurred, merging. If you look, you can see how our shadows make a single shape.
I laid the photograph face up on the floor. Then I reached over to my school bag tucked under my desk, and fished deep into the front pocket. I pulled out the creased sheet of paper, the page Lena had given me. I unfolded it and laid the article down, edge to edge, next to my own photo.
Abigail and me. Abigail and him. I stared at those two images, side by side, for the longest time. And it didn’t matter how hard I looked; never, never could she belong with him. And I would never allow him into our lives. I took up the article with its ugly picture and tore it into pieces – so small he was nothing but pixels and scraps. Tomorrow I would throw the whole thing away.
I placed the photograph of me and Abigail on my pillow. And all night I slept with her beside me.
On Sunday, Mum said they’d begun redecorating Abigail’s room. Soon as I could, I headed over with a fat roll of posters, ones I’d bought for myself on a rare shopping trip with Lena, but never got round to putting up. Well, now Abigail could have them all. I knew she would want me there, I had promised to help. I texted my aunt to say I was coming but I didn’t ask Mum and Dad, just left a note. Mum hated me doing things without asking, but I was tired of always waiting for her permission.
The buses across town were hardly frequent, but I knew the timetable off by heart. I had to either take the bus or cycle to get anywhere. We lived on the north side, in a village that had been swallowed up by the town. Mum liked it because it was supposed to be the posh area, but to me that just meant there was even less to do. Abigail, the Whites, they lived on the south side. Kind of a more ordinary place.
It was sunny that day, summer finally deciding to get going, and it was hot in the bus on the way over, so hot I had to take my coat off. That’s how I arrived, my bag with the tube of posters jammed in it bumping on my back, my coat dangling over my arm. The walk from the bus stop took me the back way, the way we’d come when we first visited. I let myself up through the gate in the back hedge and knocked on the whorled glass, like we’d done before. The bus, the walk had taken longer than I’d planned and I knew now that I wouldn’t have much time – not if I didn’t want to make Mum furious. But even half an hour together would be enough.
I stood on the decking in the shade of the Whites’ house, my T-shirt cooling against my skin. I knocked again, stepped back and listened. Birdsong in the street and cars driving by, but no sounds from the kitchen, no shapes or movement. I hitched up my bag, went round to the front. No sign of my uncle’s van on the street. I rang the doorbell to confirm what I already knew: no one home.
I felt stupid for thinking they’d all just be waiting for me, there in the house for my next visit. I sat down on their front step, my coat flopping over my knees. The sun was hot round this side and today there was no breeze. I stood the tube of posters up between my feet. It wouldn’t be long before Mum would be calling me, blipping up my mobile with texts. Half an hour, an hour at most. But I would wait as long as I could.
From across the road, the shadow line of a lamppost moved round like a sun-dial. When the edge of it hit my shoe, I dug in my bag and pulled out a crumpled sheet of notebook paper and a pen. All right then, I’d leave Abigail a note, and the posters, so she’d know that I had been at least. The ink in the pen was dry and I had to shake it out before it would write.
Abigail,
I came to see you, but you were out. Thinking of you lots, and I’ll come again soon. Love Jess.
I drew a heart at the bottom, then another one, their shoulders crossing. Two hearts: mine and Abigail’s. I folded the paper up, just as I heard my mobile ping.
I was tucking the note in the flap of the letterbox when I heard the engine, Uncle Robert’s van pulling up in the driveway. They were here.
The van door swung open and Abigail climbed out, a little awkwardly, still a little heavy. She stopped short when she saw me. The twins came tumbling out and then Uncle Robert from the driver’s side. ‘Jess?’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
Abigail, Uncle Robert, the twins. They stood looking at me like the bears discovering Goldilocks in their house. I held my note out towards Abigail. ‘I should probably have called first. I just wanted to see you. And I brought the posters, like we said.’
She came forwards and took the paper from my hand. Read my message carefully, right down to the hearts at the bottom. ‘That’s really nice,’ she said. ‘Thanks, Jess.’
Uncle Robert closed the sliding door of the van.
‘Where’s Auntie Anne?’ I asked.
A tiny shadow dipped across my uncle’s face then he smiled, but a funny smile and his eyes didn’t match. ‘She’s gone to yours.’
‘To our house? Why?’
Uncle Robert put a hand on Abigail’s shoulder, like reassuring her. Or singling her out. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You know. Decisions.’
‘We went to the big store,’ said Sam, like he was explaining, ‘but we didn’t decide on anything.’
I couldn’t work out what he was
on about.
‘But you brought the posters?’ said Abigail. She looked tired, her eyes kind of sleepy.
I lifted up the tube. ‘All here.’
‘Are you coming in?’ said Laurie.
In the summer sunlight, Abigail’s hair was bright with its old golden glow. Something expanded in my chest, like a flower in time-lapse bloom. I shook my head. ‘I can’t. Mum’s already texting.’ And anyway, it was enough. Seeing her, standing next to her, giving her the posters.
‘We’ll get together again soon,’ said Uncle Robert, ‘don’t worry.’ He and the twins were ready to head in.
I hugged Abigail goodbye, little sparks passing between us. The feel of her stayed with me all the way home, like I’d absorbed it into my cells. Seeing her, holding her, even for a moment, it made everything, absolutely everything, okay.
When I got home, right enough, Auntie Anne was there, and the kitchen table was covered in strips of paper – rainbow shades, pale to dark, red, blues, pinks, creams. Tiny pots of paint lay scattered at one end, a dozen little dark blue tins.
Mum sat at the head of the table. I put my bag down and hung my coat carefully on the back of a chair. I didn’t say anything about where I’d just been. Mum didn’t even seem to remember I’d been gone. ‘What’s going on?’
Auntie Anne pressed her palms to the coloured strips and fanned them out across the table. ‘Here, Jess. Come and look.’
Sam’s words. To the big store. So that’s where they’d been – choosing paint. But why had my aunt brought all of this here?
‘This is for Abigail?’
Mum opened her mouth, but my aunt was faster. ‘What colour do you like? What would you choose?’
Little White Lies Page 10