There were so many, almost too many to pick from. I looked to Mum, but her mouth was closed now. I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. It depends.’
‘Cream, do you think? Or is that too plain? Wait – what about – what colour is your bedroom?’ Her voice tingled with anxiety. I tried to ignore it – the twisty feeling on the floor of my stomach that I so often got with my aunt.
‘Well, what colour does Abigail want?’
Auntie Anne smiled at me, a sad kind of smile, strained at the edges. ‘She can’t decide,’ she said. She gave a tight laugh. ‘Or maybe she just doesn’t want to pick!’
Her comment was shrill and I winced.
‘Annie,’ said Mum. ‘All these options, you’re overwhelming her.’ Her voice was low. It went like that when she was holding back, when she was being very careful about what she said. It was a voice I knew not to mess about with.
‘It’s her bedroom. I want it to be right.’
‘Then choose for her! It’s just paint.’ There was a scraping sound as Mum pushed back her chair. She got up and went to the sink, turning on the tap and running the water over her hands. I watched her fingers twist round one another. Before long I could see the steam rising.
‘Mum,’ I said. ‘Mum.’
She didn’t look up, just went on standing there letting the water turn the backs of her hands red. I pushed past my aunt and turned off the tap. I couldn’t make sense of what was passing between them.
Mum took a deep breath and pressed her palms down on either side of the sink. ‘Jess, don’t you have any homework to do?’
I looked back and forth between them. Auntie Anne didn’t say anything.
Slowly I picked up my coat and bag and climbed the stairs, pulling myself up the banister. I shut my bedroom door loudly, making it bang. But I stayed outside my room, on the landing. Silently, I sat down at the top of the stairs. They couldn’t see me from here, but I could hear their voices. There were words I missed, gaps in their sentences, but I caught enough. It was the tone as much as anything. Like skating on ice, thin enough to crack.
‘The way she is with me. I think she remembers.’
‘Annie, she’s traumatized. She’s remembering all sorts of things. Why do you think it must be about that?’
‘I can’t help it. I look at her and I can’t stop going over it.’
A pause. I slipped down a few stairs so I could see a bit of them now – my aunt’s back in the chair, Mum’s lower half by the sink. ‘Somebody took her, Annie. What difference does the rest make now? Honestly, you can’t keep bringing this up. You have to move forwards, you’ve enough to deal with. Robert, Abigail, they don’t need this.’
Auntie Anne’s next words were slow in coming. She was gripping the edge of the table. ‘But I could have said something. I could have told the police at the time.’
‘For what – so they could blame you? So our whole family could be in disgrace? Listen to me, Annie. It wouldn’t have helped.’
I didn’t catch what Auntie Anne said next. Her voice had gone too quiet. Too quiet for Mum too, it seemed, because she was asking Auntie Anne to repeat herself.
‘At least they might have been able to tell me.’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Whether it mattered. I think it matters, Lillian.’
I curled my fingers round the lip of the stair. I wanted to be sick in the silence that followed.
At last Mum spoke into the cold stillness. ‘For Christ’s sake, Annie, just be glad that she’s back.’
Chapter 13
Wednesday 12th June:
Day 17
ANNE
The thing is, Abigail was always a difficult child. Those early years were filled with crying fits and tantrums that wore us both out, impossible to understand, impossible to deal with. I didn’t seem to know how to make peace with her, only cold silence. Having Abigail and living with Preston made it obvious: I’d never known how to fix things myself. But now there were people, professionals, we could turn to.
The kitchen, our pretty kitchen, was full of sunlight, the morning rays streaming through open blinds. The surfaces were all clean, the breakfast things put away and the air was lemon-fresh from the plates drying in the rack. At the sunlit table, I scrolled through the websites DS McCarthy had given us. It would be preferable he’d said, to do this after the trial. But go ahead, he’d said, if you feel you can’t wait.
‘What about this one?’ I said to Robert. ‘She specialises in childhood trauma.’
He was pulling on his overalls to go out to work, the smell of sawdust homely and familiar. When I angled the laptop towards him, the sun from the window glinted on the screen, bleaching the image. ‘If you want,’ he said. ‘If you think she’d be best.’
‘But I’m not sure, Robert, that’s why I’m asking.’
He was tugging on his jumper, leaving the overall sleeves dangling. He changed tack; there was something on his mind as well. ‘I know it’s only the initial hearing, but I think Abigail’s family should be there, right from the start. Even if it’s only one of us.’
‘You want to be there when he’s going to say that? You want to actually hear him claim he’s not guilty?’
‘Somebody should be there, Anne, full stop.’
Well, I’d always known, hadn’t I, how responsible he felt? Because it was due to him that we had been in London and that I’d ended up on the Underground with the children by myself. We had gone down to visit his mother in Guy’s Hospital, because this time, Robert said, she really was sick. We’d even brought the children to see her, though she didn’t show any pleasure at them being there. And even when Sam and Laurie got tired and grizzly, Robert said he ought to stay on at the bedside of his mother who he’d never got on with, who had never accepted me or Abigail as her family, who could never find a single good thing to say about me and who even during that hospital visit had been cruel. I wanted to leave, Robert wanted to stay, and we argued because of it and I got so upset with him. In the end he stayed and I left with all our children and the buggy, to make our way back to the hotel on our own.
Afterwards, it was three hours before the police could reach him, his phone set by hospital policy to silent. Twenty missed calls before they sent a message through the hospital switchboard. And Robert had never forgiven himself for any of it.
My phone buzzed next to me, a call appearing on the screen. I recognized the digits: DS McCarthy. The thought of his cool grey eyes made my stomach clench.
‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’ said Robert.
I should, I knew I should, but instead I switched the phone to silent and, drawing a breath, turned the laptop back towards me. ‘I really think that Abigail needs this.’
This time, Robert stopped pulling on his boots and came to sit next to me. ‘All right. Let me see.’
I opened the page links one by one. When we came to the therapist I’d picked out before, he pointed. ‘That one.’
‘This one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay.’ We were agreed. On my mobile, the voicemail alert pinged.
Robert stood now, checking his pockets for keys. ‘Anne, listen, about the hearing. I know they’ve told us he plans to plead not guilty; I know it will only last ten minutes, but—’
But I didn’t need to argue with him. I understood, I did, why he needed this. ‘It’s all right,’ I told him. ‘If it helps, you should go.’ When I looked up, I felt so much love from him.
‘Thank you, Anne.’ He leaned down to kiss me. ‘Please tell Abigail I won’t be home late.’
When he closed the front door behind him, the house fell silent. The boys were at school and Abigail was upstairs, still sleeping. I looked again at the profile on my laptop. In her photo, the therapist looked kind and wise and like someone who would do all she could to help. I imagined telling her everything I was afraid of. I imagined her finally setting Abigail straight. In the quiet, I let my tired eyes close and the sun from the window
warm my cheek.
The shrill of the landline was like someone yelling in the silence. It went on ringing until I pushed my chair back from the table and lifted the receiver.
‘Mrs White?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s DS McCarthy. I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’
I let the pause between us hang. I knew he had. ‘What is it?’
‘The Met detectives have been questioning him and now we need to speak to you again. Something’s been bothering me. Do you think you can come to the station?’
‘With Robert?’
‘No, we don’t need Robert. It’s your statement. Can you come now?’
‘Right now?’
‘As soon as you can. And Mrs White? Please could you bring Abigail too.’
I went upstairs. I was wrong: Abigail wasn’t sleeping. She was sticking posters to her unpainted walls, an array of pretty boys and punky girls, none of whom I recognized.
I let the door close softly behind me. ‘Who are all these, then?’
She was using her teeth to tear off a strip of Sellotape. ‘Jess’s favourites, and I like them too.’
‘We’ll have to take them down before we re-paint.’
‘I know.’
‘Have you chosen, then?’
She didn’t answer, just carefully smoothed the Sellotape onto the wall, securing a last corner. The sticky tape was going to leave marks. She stepped back. ‘Do you like them?’
I nodded. They were nice posters.
‘Abigail?’ I said. ‘I need to take you down to the police station. DS McCarthy wants to see you again.’
‘Why? I’ve already answered all the questions.’
‘I know you have. They just want … They want to speak to me too. Can you get ready? He’s waiting for us now.’
DS McCarthy was standing outside the station, clearly impatient, his long face pinched. He looked as though he had just finished a cigarette, or wished he had. We arrived at the station forty-five minutes after his call.
‘Come in.’ No thank you for coming.
Inside, he led us straight through to the rear, down a long corridor to a set of interview rooms. DS McCarthy stopped outside two doors. ‘Abigail, you’ll be in here. I know it’s new to you – we haven’t had time to show you – but I hope you’ll find it similar, familiar from London. And Mrs White – Anne – you’ll be in here.’
I stared at him. ‘I should go in with Abigail.’
He shook his head. ‘No. You don’t need to do that.’
‘She needs someone with her.’
‘She’ll have that. An appropriate adult.’
‘But not me?’
‘No. You’re a witness. You can’t be present.’ He opened a door onto a room with soft chairs where a detective was already sitting waiting. ‘Abigail?’ He was expecting her to go in.
‘Detective? What are you going to ask her?’
DS McCarthy’s face was an unreadable mask. He crossed the corridor and opened the second door. ‘Please, Mrs White. In here.’
In the room allocated to me, there were two more officers waiting, a woman in a pink blouse and a man with a beard. They both stood up as I came in.
‘It’s really just a formality,’ said the man. ‘Have a seat.’
When the three of us were sitting, the woman switched on the tape recorder. ‘Not strictly necessary this time,’ she said, ‘but…’ I remembered being taped before, years ago, when I made statements to police in London. I was thinking about that as they made their introductions.
‘I’m DC Vickers and this is DC Neilson. Mrs White—’
‘Anne.’
The woman in pink – DC Vickers – nodded. ‘Anne. We’d like you to look at a picture of our suspect. This is the man we’re questioning over the kidnapping of your daughter.’
DC Neilson opened the slim file that sat in front of them and handed the print across to me. I’d seen this already, every time it flashed up on the news but this printed image was crisper, cleaner, bigger. So this was him, his face life-sized, introducing himself to me. John Henry Cassingham.
‘Have you charged him then?’
The detectives glanced at each other. The detective in pink began to speak, but her colleague cut in. ‘The detectives in London are about to seek advice from the CPS. That’s why this interview is so important. Please look closely at his picture and tell us whether you know this man. Whether you recognize him at all. Whether he is known to you in any way.’
I closed my eyes for a moment. I couldn’t keep on and on staring at him or letting him stare at me.
‘And are you showing this to Abigail too?’ I asked.
‘No. We wouldn’t need to do that at this stage.’
Of course not. What a stupid question.
I looked again at Cassingham’s face: wide jaw, pale eyes, that pale blond hair that framed his cheeks. Who knows, maybe if I had seen him in person and been able to hear his voice and see his mannerisms and gestures and breathe in the very smell of him, there might have been something there. As it was: ‘I don’t know him.’
I pushed the picture back across the table. DC Neilson put it back in the file. ‘What about other people in your family? From the news – have they said they recognized his face or his name?’
Robert, Lillian, Fraser. No, no, no. I shook my head.
‘For the tape?’
‘No. You can ask all of them. She was lost and he took her. None of us knew him.’
DC Neilson nodded. ‘All right.’ He pulled something else from the file. ‘Now. You will recognize this. The Met have sent it up to us.’ He handed the sheets of paper across to me. ‘A copy of your original statement.’
I stared down at the typed sheet, my own words and signatures staring back at me. Around six p.m. we boarded a train at London Bridge.
‘Have a read through. If there’s anything else you can add, let us know.’
There was a delay. People were pushing to get off while we waited.
‘Where did he find her?’ I asked. ‘I never saw him, so where did he find her?’
The DCs looked at each other again. ‘She says she met him outside the Tube station. No more than a dozen yards from the entrance.’
‘You can see it then? On CCTV?’ Footage, proof of the awful thing he did.
DC Vickers pinched her nose. ‘We’ve tried, believe me, we’ve tried, but on the cameras, you can’t see anything but water and umbrellas.’
The bubble of hope dissolved. Even back then, they’d never been able to find anything, no matter how many times Robert demanded they check. She’d been too small, lost in the crowd, a ceiling of umbrellas hiding her – and hiding him – from the lens. But how, how could still no one have noticed? ‘“Met him”,’ I said, ‘and then – what? He just took her? And no one did anything?’
DC Neilson sat back in his chair, not saying anything. I looked back and forth between them. ‘What does that mean?’
DC Vickers pressed the palms of her hands together. ‘We were wondering that ourselves.’
Something in her tone made me stop. I’d felt only friendliness from her before but now there was a shift like a sudden drop in temperature and I was all of a sudden so aware of them looking at me, two on that side of the table and me, alone, here on the other.
‘We checked all the old statements,’ DC Vickers went on. ‘Nobody reported a fight or a struggle.’
I knew that, didn’t I? Robert had gone on and on about it – how nobody claimed to have witnessed anything. Yet in my mind I’d always pictured my daughter fighting like a tiger to get away. Now I was realizing that my picture had always been wrong and I had been entirely mistaken.
‘You say he isn’t known to you or Abigail,’ DC Neilson said, far too slowly as though he was screwing each word into the air between us, ‘but can you think of any other reason why your daughter would go willingly with this man?’
He let the question hang in the air, like a noose or a guillo
tine above me. I closed my eyes again, suddenly sick of all this. How did they know to touch this painful spot, this place that hurt from the slightest pressure? I could see her again, floating up that escalator, making her way out onto the London street, into the sodden sheets of rain, the crush of spread umbrellas. Opening my eyes, I fought with myself to keep my voice level and my thoughts clear, focused on what mattered and not spiralling down into that place where nothing good lay. ‘Well, wasn’t it the same with Tonia? Didn’t he take her in exactly the same way?’
The detectives exchanged a look. Tonia. The little child in the garden.
DC Vickers tilted her head. ‘It would seem so.’
‘Then you have all the reasons. My daughter was lost, she was confused, she was eight.’
‘Then we should only need to write a line or two,’ said DC Vickers, ‘if that’s what you’re saying. He didn’t know her and you didn’t know him. You’ve been shown his picture and attest you’ve never seen him.’ She drew a blank, clean form from the file and I watched as she carefully turned the words into my statement.
Out in the rain, he saw her. Perhaps he was the only one who did, when everyone else was too wet and in too much of a hurry to pay any attention, crushed under umbrellas and gusts of wind.
‘If you are happy with this as your additional statement, then you can sign it and we’ll be all done.’
He saw her and she saw him. And then what? Then he leans down out of the crowd, through all those other people passing her by, and holds out a hand. Little girl, why don’t you come with me?
It could be the straightforward answer to their questions. It could be as simple, as plausible as that. DC Vickers pushed the form across to me, the spaces for my signatures in black and white. For a moment I stared down at the declaration: … liable to prosecution if wilfully stating anything false.
Then I picked up the biro she had given me, and signed.
DC Neilson got me a coffee while I waited for Abigail to finish. We’d been here over an hour and my ears were ringing and I only wanted to take Abigail back to the safety of our home. They had Cassingham and would charge him soon, and then the hearing, a trial and it would all be over.
Little White Lies Page 11