Little White Lies

by Philippa East

  The cursor blinked as I clicked the search key and the page flipped over to a list of hits. There were so many it was hard to focus. His name seemed to crop up everywhere, but it was never him; there were other Davids, other people called McCarthy. I kept opening the links and clicking back, still unable to find what I was looking for.

  Nothing, nothing, and then something: on the second page of hits, I found him. When I clicked on the link, the screen half froze, then the story appeared.

  I hadn’t heard about this case. Despite all the research Robert had done during those years when Abigail was missing, I hadn’t come across this poor family. Perhaps because the child’s disappearance had only lasted a matter of days, not months or years. It had happened in Leicestershire though; only the next county over.

  DS McCarthy’s name was all over it. A child, his grandparents, and a line of enquiry other officers refused to pursue. The truth discovered one day too late.

  ‘What’s that?’ Abigail came looming up at my shoulder and I jumped. I hadn’t heard her come down the stairs.

  I swiftly closed the laptop. ‘Nothing. Are you ready?’

  Today was Abigail’s first therapy appointment. She was dressed for it like an ordinary teenager, in jeans and a rose-pink T-shirt. All her clothes had arrived by now, almost too many. She tended to wear the same outfit day in, day out; I had to remind her to put them in the laundry basket. These jeans and that T-shirt were a case in point; four days in a row, at least, she’d been wearing them.

  In the car, I checked the address on my phone and put the postcode into the sat nav. It was spotting with June rain and the air outside was humid and muggy. I knew Abigail needed to talk; I knew there were questions she needed answering, but what good could my own words be to her, little more than a catalogue of regrets and failings? On her website, the therapist had looked so much like someone who could help and knew how to resolve all kinds of problems. She admitted on the phone that she’d never had a case quite like this before, but Ms Coulson’s voice was so gentle and kind that I knew without doubt that I’d made the right choice.

  I looked over at Abigail now, sitting crookedly in the passenger seat. ‘It’s fine if you don’t like her,’ I said. ‘Just see how you feel, we can try different people, find which one works for you.’

  She gazed out of the window. ‘You need to turn here.’ The arrow on the sat nav pointed clearly to the left. I braked a bit too sharply, turning without my indicator and the car behind beeped.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, to Abigail, to the other driver, and anyone else who needed an apology from me. ‘Look out for the house number,’ I said. ‘The even numbers are on your side.’

  It was a nice street on the west side of town, rowan trees with berries in bud and little garden gates in neat hedges, and hardly any distance really from our house. The rain-spotted wheelie bins, put out at the edge of the kerb, had house numbers painted on them. Very proper.

  ‘Here,’ said Abigail. ‘Number 26.’

  There wasn’t much room on the street for parking and it took me a while to squeeze into a space. The tall gate at the side of the main house squeaked as we opened it, and it took me a couple of goes to replace the latch. We rang the bell of the little annex at two minutes past the hour.

  She didn’t look quite like she did on her website. Her hair was longer, and she was wearing glasses. But her eyes and smile matched the kind voice I’d heard. ‘Ms Coulson?’

  ‘Yes. You must be Abigail and Anne.’

  She opened the door wide for us, and I waited for Abigail to step in first. Inside, the annex was like a cottage with a neat waiting area and the therapy room behind.

  ‘Come straight in,’ she said, ‘and please call me Jenny.’

  In the therapy room proper, we sat in two dove-grey chairs facing her. The room was small, intimate, calming pictures on the walls and a soft rug on the floor, unobtrusive tissues on the table and a little clock that ticked on a shelf.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Abigail,’ Jenny said. She used her thumb to push her glasses up on her nose and went through how she worked: the bounds of confidentiality, the exceptions to that rule. ‘… And you’ve given a full statement to the police already? That’s always best, when there are legal proceedings.’

  Abigail hesitated. I noticed that she hesitated.

  ‘Yes.’

  This wasn’t the first appointment we had taken her to. Three days before, Abigail had been seen by an educational psychologist. Another recommendation, another way of knowing where we stood. She hadn’t been to school since Year Four; she’d been a bright child then, but what about now? It was seven years of education she had missed.

  We’d had to travel to Newark to see the psychologist, Dr Hallam, and in the car on the way home, Abigail had described the pictures, cards, puzzles, the stopwatch. She’d had to calculate numbers, remember things, solve problems. She remembered especially the little plastic cubes, their sides red and white, that she’d had to match to geometric designs. Dr Hallam wouldn’t tell her if she was getting the questions right or wrong, just said, that’s fine, keep going, do your best.

  I mentioned that now to Ms Coulson – Jenny.

  She lifted her eyebrows and smiled at Abigail. ‘Police interviews and an IQ test too? What a lot of assessments you’ve had.’

  Abigail smiled back from under her fringe. ‘Yep.’

  ‘So, what’s your understanding of why you’ve come here?’

  Abigail’s fingers began picking at each other, gently at first, then harder. ‘I was living—’ said Abigail, then stopped. ‘A man … John Henry … took me to live with him in London.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘But now they’ve told me he shouldn’t have done that. Now I’m … home again. At my dad Robert’s house.’

  The therapist nodded. ‘Now you’re home.’

  I felt the muscles along my shoulders ease the smallest bit.

  ‘And how,’ the therapist went on, ‘would you say you’re doing with that?’

  Abigail went on picking with a fingernail at the skin of her thumb. Pick, pick, pick. I waited but she didn’t say anything. I waited for Jenny to ask another question but the therapist was sitting there silent as well. The little clock on the shelf ticked along, precious seconds that we’d paid for in advance.

  Finally Abigail spoke up. ‘Everyone in my family’s very happy. Everyone says they’re very happy that I’m home—’

  ‘We are—’ my voice cracked. ‘We are.’

  ‘But I keep getting a feeling.’ Abigail’s hand fluttered up at her chest.

  ‘Can you describe that?’ Jenny’s voice was so soft.

  ‘Like burning. Or – like squeezing.’ Now Abigail pressed the flat of her hand to her chest.

  ‘All right. Like burning or squeezing. And what brings that on?’

  ‘It’s because … because all we talk about is that I’m home, how everything is happy and safe for me now. And I just keep thinking – how can any of this be real? Because here, inside, it doesn’t feel like that at all.’

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t move.

  The therapist drew a slow breath in through her nose. ‘It would be natural,’ she said presently, and I felt the knots in my shoulders let go, ‘to feel intense emotions. The sensations of anxiety, you can feel them in your body.’ She tapped her fingertips to her own chest. ‘Tightness, that can feel like burning. And it’s not uncommon,’ she went on, ‘for children who’ve been through trauma to feel the world is unreal. Or still unsafe. There can be so much to process. It can take a while for the brain to catch up.’

  Abigail still didn’t look directly at the therapist but her fingers stopped picking at least. As the therapist sat observing her quietly, I had such a strong feeling that this woman understood.

  ‘It makes sense,’ I said, ‘you’re right – everything you’ve said …’ I fumbled for my handbag on the floor, my hands clumsy with relief. ‘There’s really been quite a bit of
confusion and it really has been hard for her to adjust. I brought along-’ the zip snagged then growled as I wrenched it, ‘this notebook. I’ve been keeping notes.’

  I smoothed out the corners where it had got crumpled in my handbag and flipped through the pages to let Jenny see. I’d written as neatly as I could, all my observations about my daughter since she came home. The foods she liked and didn’t, the things she knew and the blanks in her life. What seemed to trigger her changes in mood, habits she’d developed, preferences and routines. The sleep talking.

  ‘… Everything,’ I said. ‘I wrote all of it down.’ All these weeks since she came home. Hours listening on the chilly landing.

  I held the notebook out to the therapist but she wasn’t looking at me. She was watching, intently, for Abigail’s reaction. It was tiny, tiny, but I could see that my daughter was shaking her head. I saw myself suddenly through Abigail’s eyes, skulking round the houses, spying on her and I knew at once that I’d made a terrible mistake.

  The notebook went slithering off my lap, bouncing on the floor to lie on its side like a bird shot down.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought it would help us. Abigail, I’m sorry.’ I picked up the crumpled pages.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said the therapist. But I knew it wasn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to look at my daughter.

  I knew what the therapist was about to say and I got the words out before she could. ‘It’ll be easier if I wait outside. I’m not helping, I know that. It would be much better for Abigail to talk with you alone.’

  The therapist stood up as I did, holding out a hand to make me pause. ‘Abigail, what would you prefer?’

  I longed for Abigail to ask me to stay, even as I pushed the notebook back into my handbag and even as I told myself, Anne, stop expecting.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she mumbled, ‘if you prefer to go.’

  For the rest of the hour, I sat in the tiny waiting room outside, feeling like such a terrible failure. I’d left, and how could I know that’s what she’d really wanted? The look on her face when she’d said I could go. Why hadn’t I been brave enough, strong enough to remain there? All I could think now was that I should have stayed.

  The silence felt like a great breath I was holding and the notebook sat like a lead weight in my handbag. When my phone rang, the jangling ringtone was like an insult in that quiet space. I knew who it was; I still recognized that string of numbers and my heart lurched at the sight of them. I scrabbled to press the cancel button as the door of the therapy room opened, and Abigail came out. Her face was relaxed, and the therapist was holding up a diary.

  ‘Can we make another appointment?’

  A wave of relief washed down me. It hadn’t been a failure then, after all. I stood up, my legs shaky but able to smile and show Abigail I was proud of her, that she had done so well in agreeing to come. We booked another session for next week, plus a whole series more for the weeks after that.

  On the way home, Abigail put the radio on, and I let her turn the volume all the way up.

  That same evening, Dr Hallam the educational psychologist called us. She had the results of Abigail’s IQ test. ‘She’s very bright,’ Dr Hallam said. ‘Really, she has quite a brain.’

  She was calling from the train on her way home. ‘Your daughter’ she kept saying instead of ‘Abigail’. Confidentiality in public, of course. Her voice was crackly on the line – my mobile on speaker-phone laid out on the low table in the middle of the room so that both Robert and I could listen. ‘It’s not just her natural intelligence,’ Dr Hallam went on. ‘She knows things. She’s learned a lot.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ There was a pause, or a break in the line. ‘Hello?’

  The line cleared and Dr Hallam’s voice came through distinctly. ‘Your daughter’s IQ is 127 – well above average. But it isn’t just that.’

  Through in the kitchen, I could hear Abigail on the landline, talking to Jess, little bubbles of excitement in her voice.

  ‘What then?’ I asked.

  ‘Mrs White, Mr White … I gave her GCSE exam papers. Maths, Physics, Chemistry, History. She understood them and was able to answer. Abigail hasn’t missed any schooling at all.’

  For endless seconds I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t look at Robert. It was as though the world upended all over again. She’d been held captive in a house for years. She’d had no friends, she was kept secret from the world by a man, a complete stranger. But now we were learning that he’d educated her, given her books, learning. Given her all those things we would have. I couldn’t hold it straight in my head. The line between black and white was blurring. What did it mean that he’d done this for her, cared about her in this way, as though she was his own child? Out of all the children in London, why, why did he pick Abigail for this?

  ‘Be grateful for small mercies,’ came Dr Hallam’s voice faintly.

  But if he gave her these things, if he was good to her, how much more damaged must her loyalties be? What if, living with him, she’d been happy, and was longing now for everything she missed? What if it wasn’t that she didn’t understand – what if she understood the difference completely, and it was simply that she would prefer to go back?

  My stomach turned over and over. If he was good to her, and if I … if I …

  What had Abigail said to Jenny, how much could she remember and how far back would they have gone? They had seven whole years to cover. Had they gone from the end – or from the beginning? And the same with the last interview Abigail had given to the police. That statement, the one I’d made right at the very start, when I’d described how exactly we got separated. Had they shown my words to Abigail as well? Could she have read them and realized that I’d lied? And if she had, how could I ever, ever explain?

  When Robert hung up the phone, I covered my head with my arms, unable to say a word. I could picture every wall around me crumbling, flaking beneath her Sellotaped posters, ceiling plaster splintering, beams crashing down.

  How desperately I’d been trying to hold them up.

  Chapter 16

  Tuesday 25th June:

  Day 30

  JESS

  When the last bell rang, Lena and I took the back exit from school. A week and a half on from the music festival, she and I were close again. Maybe she’d appreciated me making the effort – to go out with her and Tom, and bring Abigail too. Maybe she’d seen that Abigail could get along with people. In the summer sunshine, I felt my heart lifting, imagining a future when all four of us were friends. Lena and Tom, me and Abigail, all of it clicking and me never having to choose.

  Instead of taking the bus home, I was going to walk with Lena part-way. Her route home was on the way to my cousin’s, and I was going to visit Abigail straight from school. I had something I wanted to give her, a present I’d been carrying about with me for weeks. As we weaved past the teachers’ cars, late June sunlight striped with shade, I paused, hopped, flicking my foot. I could feel a stone lodged in the tip of my shoe, a crumb of gravel digging right into the sole of my foot. ‘Lena, stop a minute.’ I crouched down.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I’ve got a stone.’

  I unlaced my shoe and wiggled my foot out. My school sock was bunched and wrinkled round my heel. I hopped again, trying to keep my balance.

  Lena crooked out an arm. ‘Here.’ It was easy between us now. Natural.

  I held onto her elbow and tipped my heavy shoe up. I could hear the stone rattling but nothing came out. In the heat, kids shoved past us, eager to get home.

  ‘So,’ said Lena. ‘When were you going to tell me?’

  ‘Tell you what?’ The stone still wouldn’t come out.

  ‘You know. About Abigail.’

  ‘“About Abigail”? What do you mean?’ A piece of grit came finally tumbling out. How could something so small have caused all that discomfort? I let go of Lena’s arm and crouched down to shove my shoe back on.

  �
��That’s she’s coming back to school.’

  Crouched there on the hot concrete, I froze. ‘What?’

  I could feel Lena above me. Her shadow hung right over me. ‘Well, isn’t she?’

  Very slowly, I straightened up and made myself look right at my friend. She was staring at me, waiting for my answer. I shook my head, made myself laugh. ‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘’Course she is. I was just surprised that you already knew.’

  It was because Lena’s mum was on the school council. That was the way that my best friend had heard. And as we headed down the lane away from school, I had to pretend I’d known all along. A plan for Abigail to return to school? Why hadn’t my cousin said anything? In fact, why hadn’t anyone? Auntie Anne would have told Mum, and Dad would have asked, but no one had ever said anything to me.

  I thought about the snippets of conversation between my parents. Like, just the other night, Dad asking in front of me, hasn’t anyone heard from Pres— and Mum cutting him off, making a face: shhh. Even though I already knew who Dad was talking about. I already knew all about Abigail’s real father, about the fight, the panicked phone call from Preston’s brother. About how it was my mum who came to the rescue. Dad had told me all of it years ago because he always wanted to explain everything in our family, always wanted everything shared. Mum was different, refusing to talk. Mum kept things back, hid things, I knew that now. So how much was there that I had missed out on?

  ‘So – I mean, do you think she’s ready?’ Lena had started to walk a bit faster. She was tall and her legs were longer.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, hurrying to catch up. ‘Why not?’ Okay, so it had come as a surprise, but the truth was, it was a good thing, wasn’t it? It said how well she was doing, if Abigail was thinking about school. But there was Lena always questioning things. Why couldn’t she ever just let things be good? I hitched my bag back onto my shoulder.