Finding Grace

by K. L. Slater

  ‘Listen, Bev,’ I hear Blake say. ‘We shouldn’t have just turned up like this. I should’ve called you first. I’m sorry, we can come back another time.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Bev insists. ‘It’s fine. Sit yourself down, Lucie. I simply can’t imagine what you’re going through.’ She looks at Olivia. ‘Darling, can you watch the rest of the programme in your bedroom?’

  Olivia slides wordlessly out of her seat. She slows down as she passes my chair, and for a second, I think she’s going to say something.

  ‘Are you OK, Livvy?’ I ask. She nods warily.

  ‘Up to your bedroom then, poppet,’ Bev says.

  Olivia breaks eye contact and scurries away.

  ‘She’s taken it really hard,’ Bev whispers. ‘She’s desperately worried about Grace. As we all are.’

  ‘Have you asked her if Grace said anything about calling somewhere before coming home, or—’

  ‘We’ve talked to her several times,’ Bev confirms a little tersely, I think. ‘The police have had a quick chat with her too.’

  Something in her voice tells me that that’s as far as she wants Olivia questioned.

  Mike comes in and sits on the arm of the sofa next to me, as far away from Bev as he can get, I notice.

  ‘Anything we can do, you only have to say. I hope you know that,’ he says.

  ‘Thanks, mate, appreciate that,’ Blake tells him.

  I look up and catch Mike aiming what I’m sure is a glare at my husband. I feel shocked but immediately think I must’ve read something into it that’s not there.

  Blake doesn’t seem to have noticed, but when I look at him properly, for what feels like the first time in a long time, his stubbled face is pale and weary.

  ‘There’s no news at all yet?’ Mike says awkwardly, breaking the silence.

  ‘I’m sure they’d have said right away if they’d heard anything, Mike.’ Bev’s nostrils flare.

  Blake shifts in his seat. It’s all so uncomfortable, as if there’s stuff happening that I’m not aware of. But then I haven’t come around here for a cosy, relaxing chat.

  ‘We’ve heard nothing at all,’ I say. ‘It’s getting on for five hours now that Grace has been missing. Five hours!’ Just saying the words out loud is devastating.

  My daughter has been somewhere else for nearly five whole hours.

  The top of my nose starts to prickle, but I force the tears back. Snivelling isn’t going to help find Grace, so I press on.

  ‘I wanted to come because I want you to take me through the whole day, if you would. Everything happened so quickly and the police just commandeered us, so I feel like I’m in the dark about how everything unfolded.’

  Bev sighs. ‘Well, when we got back from Alton—’

  ‘No, Bev, tell me from when you picked Grace up from the house this morning.’

  She nods and proceeds to catalogue everything that happened.

  ‘The girls were nattering in the back and Mike and I were talking about parking and getting into the theme park. It took us just over an hour to get there and it was full on from the minute we were inside.’

  She describes the rides, the girls’ delight on being allowed on the scariest ones. I recall Grace’s face, so alive and excited in the Smiler photo that Mike texted while they were there. It feels like a long time ago now.

  ‘The girls had a slice of pizza each for lunch and we just had a sandwich.’ She glances at Mike, but there seems to be an invisible screen in place between them.

  ‘How did Grace seem?’ I say. ‘I mean, was she her usual self or did she seem a bit subdued?’

  ‘Definitely not subdued,’ Mike responds quickly. ‘I’d say she was her normal self but in extra-excitement mode. They were both bubbling over.’

  ‘They ran ahead almost the whole time,’ Bev agrees. ‘We kept them in sight, but we gave them a little space and they loved it.’

  I nod, my heart growing heavier by the second. There’s nothing new here. Nothing that could help.

  ‘It seemed to drop cold really quickly, so we left the park a bit earlier than we’d initially planned,’ Mike says.

  I immediately wonder what would have happened if they’d been a bit later. Would Grace have arrived home safely? Would she have missed a dreadful window of opportunity when someone decided to take her away?

  I dig my fingernails into my palms, realising what I’ve just admitted to myself. After five hours of Grace being missing, it seems I’m arriving at an abduction conclusion, despite keeping the hope alive that she called somewhere else before home; got distracted and delayed.

  ‘On the journey back, the girls were less talkative because they were tired,’ Bev remarks. ‘We were all a bit quiet, but Grace said she was looking forward to getting her pyjamas on and watching a film with you both later.’

  I press my fingers to my lips and feel a spring of hot tears.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lucie.’ Bev looks at her hands. ‘I can’t imagine how hard this is for you.’

  ‘It’s fine. Honestly, carry on.’ The last thing I want is for Bev to clam up and stop telling me about the day. I need to know everything, every last detail.

  ‘When we got back, the girls played upstairs in Olivia’s bedroom for around twenty minutes, and then Mike called Grace down.’

  ‘She was bouncing again, excited to be walking home alone. Livvy came down to wave her off and she was excited for Grace, too. It was a big deal to them both,’ Mike says softly.

  ‘Can you tell me exactly what happened next?’ I say, trying to take a step back from my emotions and failing as my heart hammers relentlessly at my chest.

  Mike draws in a big breath.

  ‘She put her trainers, coat, hat and gloves on and I tucked her insulin case in her pocket and took her to the gate. Once she’d set off, I texted Blake to say she’d just left and then stepped back inside the gate and watched her covertly so she wouldn’t see me if she looked back.’

  ‘Did she seem nervous at all?’ I ask him.

  ‘Not in the slightest.’ Mike shook his head. ‘She marched up the road with purpose, and when she got near to the bend, I came inside.’

  I silently repeat back to myself what he just said.

  ‘Did you watch her until she disappeared around the bend?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes… well, almost.’ Mike frowns, thinking. ‘She was nearly there and I heard Bev calling me. As Grace was almost at the bend and I knew Blake was waiting, I came back inside.’

  His cheeks are colouring up as quickly as the colour drains from my own. I can’t believe what he just said.

  ‘Where exactly – exactly – did she get up to on the road before you came back inside, Mike?’ The effort needed to stay calm is immense.

  ‘I watched her cross over Abbey Road and then I came back inside.’ His voice sounds weaker and he looks at Bev, who hasn’t said a word yet.

  Abbey Road leads off Violet Road. It’s quiet, never much traffic, but there’s one thing about it that makes my blood run cold.

  It’s thirty yards or so from the start of the bend. Grace would have been completely alone, invisible to Blake, for at least twenty seconds.

  Twenty-Seven

  We hurry home in silence, back along the dark track.

  ‘Did you have to lose it in there?’ Blake says accusingly behind me. ‘They must feel bad enough Grace going missing on their watch, Lucie. It’s just not helpful to—’

  ‘I don’t give a shit whether it’s helpful or not.’ The tears are clogging up my throat and threatening to choke me. ‘Why would Mike even do that? Why would he leave our daughter at a crucial moment when a few more seconds would have seen her well past the bend and safely in your care?’

  Silence.

  I asked Mike that very same thing and his only answer was, ‘Bev called me inside.’

  But Bev knew he was watching Grace halfway home. Why would she call him back into the house at such an important time when she knew he’d only be a couple of minutes at t
he most?

  ‘What was so important that you needed him back inside, Bev?’ I asked her.

  ‘I… I can’t recall now. I didn’t think he’d come back until he’d watched Grace as far as he could.’ That had earned her a withering glare from Mike.

  ‘We need to speak to the police.’ I drive my feet into the mud, desperate to cover ground quickly. ‘They need to know about the crucial time lapse and we need to tell them about the money upstairs before they find it for themselves. It can only be a matter of time before they do a more thorough search.’

  ‘Lucie, please. Let me deal with the cash issue. I can explain everything to you, but let’s not get involved in that discussion while Grace is still missing. Please.’

  ‘For all I know, you might be in trouble. You’ve kept a massive amount of cash from me; what if you’re keeping other secrets? What if you’ve double-crossed someone who’s out for revenge and has abducted Grace?’

  ‘Lucie, you’re being ridiculous. This isn’t a TV crime drama.’

  ‘Oh, I’m painfully aware of that,’ I say acidly. ‘But it follows that if nothing is amiss, then you shouldn’t mind the police knowing.’

  And then something repeats in my head and it feels like a light bulb pinging on.

  Why would Mike leave our daughter at a crucial moment when a few more seconds would have seen her well past the bend and safely in your care?

  But Blake wasn’t watching at the gate because his phone distracted him and he slipped on the mossy path.

  ‘Why did you check your phone, just before you slipped?’ I ask him.

  ‘A text came through,’ he says in a tone that indicates he’s tiring of me going over old ground. ‘I thought it might be council business.’

  ‘And was it? Was it council business?’

  ‘No, as it happens, it wasn’t,’ he retorts. ‘Give it a rest, can’t you? I’m tired, you’re tired. There’s no point blaming—’

  ‘So who was it from, this message?’

  He waits just a beat too long before he answers. ‘Oh, just a colleague about a meeting. Nothing important. Look, I’ve been thinking. You really need to take the tablets Dr Mahmoud prescribed; there’s only so long you can run on adrenalin, and when she’s back home, Grace will need our support twenty-four-seven.’

  Very clever. Using the prospect of Grace’s return to keep me drugged up and out of his hair.

  He carries on listing reasons why I need to stop my ‘crazy theories’, as he puts it, but I just fade him out. I wouldn’t admit it to him, but I do feel exhausted. I feel ill.

  The more I poke around, the more I feel like there’s a lot of stuff going on I’m unaware of. Have I really become so detached from everything outside of the children and the house that I haven’t registered what’s happening right under my nose?

  And now… what if Blake is in some kind of trouble he’s tried to keep from me? He might have got into something well over his head and not know what to do about it.

  I like to think he’d confide in me about anything, but I know he worries about my state of mind. Although he doesn’t know what happened in Newcastle all those years ago, he knows about the anxiety that has plagued me, the panic attacks, the agoraphobia.

  He’s never pressured me to talk about possible reasons; has always just accepted that’s the way I am and tried to support me.

  He might not feel he can burden me with the truth.

  As I run through possible scenarios explaining why he has got so much cash in the house, cash he has kept a secret, the irony is not lost on me.

  I’m enraged at the thought of him keeping secrets, and yet what about my own past, my mistakes, my buried truths?

  What if… what if Grace going missing is nothing to do with Bev, or Mike, or Blake’s secret stash of money? What if her disappearance is some kind of karma – to make me pay for what I did?

  Twenty-Eight

  Sixteen years earlier

  On arrival at the university, Lucie was allocated a very small, very basic room that overlooked a scrap of ill-maintained garden with a scratched, graffiti-marked wooden bench.

  All first-year students were entitled to live on the university campus, and Lucie didn’t mind that the room was shoddy, but she did mind the single bed, which not only resembled what she imagined you’d get in a prison cell, but also felt like a bad camping mattress. It was incredibly uncomfortable, not helped by the polythene cover that the list of rules pinned to the door instructed her not to remove before adding her own bedding.

  The house manager showed Lucie and a small group of other students around. Next to Lucie’s room, there was a large communal kitchen with a wooden table and eight plastic chairs.

  ‘You should label all your own food and obviously not use anyone else’s stuff,’ the manager recited from a printed list she held.

  The others had already started joking with each other, whispering smart replies to the house manager’s comments. Lucie had quickly gathered, from what people had said while they waited for their tour, that the others didn’t know each other. But light-hearted chat seemed to come naturally to them. They were interacting and behaving like old friends from the off.

  There were five boys and three girls on her landing. One of them, a short, thin girl with glasses and shoulder-length mousy hair, had smiled awkwardly at Lucie once or twice, and she’d smiled back. But that had been the extent of their communication. Lucie didn’t want to be friends with someone as shy and inadequate as herself. If possible, she wanted a new set of friends who’d show her how to start enjoying life at last.

  Some hope there was of that, she thought glumly as they all trooped after the wittering house manager.

  There were still a couple more days until lectures began.

  Lucie found it was worryingly easy to sit in her room, draw the thin curtains and turn on the small flat-screen television. Here, she was free to hibernate, away from uncomfortable interactions with others.

  The location of her room, right next to the kitchen, was both a blessing and bad fortune. When the boys, who had immediately bonded as firm friends, came home in the early hours, the first place they congregated was the kitchen.

  Kebabs were upended on plates extracted noisily from the cupboards. The fridge was raided, crockery dropped, glasses clinked against a backdrop of screeching laughter and yelled conversations.

  When they were finally tucked up in bed and snoozing like babies, Lucie would wake and listen, one ear pressed against the wall. Although she was sorely tempted to bang on all their doors to get her own back, she instead capitalised on the good fortune of being able to identify, through the wall, whether anybody was in the kitchen before she ventured in there.

  When she was satisfied the coast was clear, she’d dash in and quickly prepare some breakfast. But not before she’d cleared at least some of the detritus left over from the boys’ midnight feast.

  She scraped coagulated kebab meat into the bin and often had to wash up a plate and cup for herself before she could begin to prepare her own meal.

  One morning, the house manager stuck her head around the door.

  ‘Everything OK here?’

  ‘Not really.’ Lucie frowned, nodding to the table, covered in empty beer cans and takeaway pizza boxes. ‘Nobody seems to be taking any notice of the rules, and it’s the second morning someone’s used nearly all my milk.’

  ‘Annoying, isn’t it?’ The manager rolled her eyes. ‘Boys will be boys, eh?’

  ‘That’s not really good enough, though, is it? The rules are there for a reason.’

  The manager checked her watch. ‘I’ve got to dash now, but don’t feel it’s your job to clean up after the mucky so-and-so’s. Tell them to sort themselves out!’

  Lucie was beginning to appreciate the structure she’d enjoyed at home. She’d always taken it for granted, been irritated by her dad’s love of routine at times. But now she could see first-hand the chaos that ensued when it was missing.

  One
of Pete’s favourite phrases came to mind: ‘Rules are there for a reason: because they work.’

  It was a sobering thought for Lucie to realise, in this new oasis of freedom, that he had been right all along.

  After a few days had passed surprisingly quickly, she realised she would have to force herself to leave the building.

  She had exhausted all the acceptable reasons for staying in, having unpacked most of her stuff, which had arrived on time as planned. She’d texted and called her father regularly, assuring him everything was super and not mentioning any of the stark realities of university life. And most importantly, she’d now run out of food, helped to some extent by the pilfering boys she had the misfortune to share the accommodation with.

  She pulled on an old grey sweatshirt over her fashionably ripped jeans and stuck her wallet in her back pocket. Before leaving, she glanced in the mirror at her pale face and took another couple of minutes to brush on a little bronzer, mascara and a slick of pale pink lip gloss.

  She tied her dark blonde hair up into a messy topknot and headed outside.

  The campus was busy with students walking in different directions, some with books tucked under their arm, some strolling more leisurely, talking on phones or clutching paper coffee cups.

  A group of girls sauntered in front of Lucie in a line, arms hooked into each other’s as if they were inseparable friends. Was this yet another case of people playing the role of lifelong buddies in order to cement their place in the social fabric? It seemed so false and, frankly, embarrassing to her.

  She slowed down her pace, not wanting to catch up with them and have to overtake their stringy, giggling line, which blocked the whole path leading to the main building. The air was fresh, bordering on chilly, and she wished she’d had the sense to put on her coat instead of just a fleece.

  She’d spotted on her tour that there was a small supermarket on site, about a five-minute walk from her room, and that was where she was headed.