The Final Child

by Fran Dorricott

  This wasn’t how it was meant to be. She was going insane.

  EXCERPT

  Charlotte & Hazel Davies

  Abducted: Leicester, 2 August 1997

  I have only been able to interview the parents of Charlotte (8) and Hazel (6) Davies once together because the girls’ father travels for a living and spends around eight months of every year living in Hong Kong, where his father’s family are from.

  “Matt’s always worked a lot,” Andrea told me. “Ever since the girls were small, and even more now. He’s back and forth, all over the place. We all went to Hong Kong on holiday once, when the girls were two and four. They hated it. It was too hot for them, too loud. But I always told them we’d go back one day – and they’d love it like Daddy.”

  Matthew was quiet. He’s not tall, fine-boned like both of his daughters, and the quiet house seemed to weigh very heavily on him.

  “They never got to go back though,” he said. “They never met my father. It was really poor timing when we took the girls to visit – he was out of the country. We thought there would be more opportunities. You know?”

  “Hazel was a chatterbox,” Matthew said when I asked about the girls. “Talk, talk, talk. She loved, you know, the usual. Painting and art, anything where she could get her hands dirty. We still have some of her old clay figurines. Do you want to see them?”

  He came back with three. Two animals and a third I couldn’t identify.

  “What’s that one?”

  “We don’t know.” This, finally, made Andrea laugh. “She was so proud of it though. We think maybe it was meant to be Charlotte.”

  “Did Charlotte like art too?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Matthew said.

  At the same time Andrea said, “Oh not really. She’d much rather have been outside.”

  They shared a look.

  “She did prefer being outside,” Matthew conceded. “I guess whenever I was home she stuck pretty close to me, and I’m more of an indoor person.”

  “When Matt was in Hong Kong she was hard to reign in.” Andrea shrugged in a way that said she hadn’t minded. “She was very sporty. Rounders, football, tennis. God, she loved tennis. She sometimes even slept with this tennis ball she’d doodled on, right under her pillow. Even though I told her not to. I couldn’t find it after and it wrecked me. She liked martial arts, too.”

  Andrea sank into the sofa and her expression changed.

  “Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “Just creeps up on me sometimes. I was thinking about the martial arts – tae kwon do, she did – and how unfair it was. The reason we paid for her to go was so that she’d be able to protect herself.”

  “We didn’t know that it wouldn’t matter,” Matthew said.

  “No. I know. I know.”

  SEVENTEEN

  8 NOVEMBER 2016

  Harriet

  WE HURRIED AWAY FROM the house. I held Erin’s arm – she looked like she might keel over at any moment. When we reached the car, she leaned against it with her whole weight.

  “Sorry,” Erin muttered. “I just… Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologise.” I waited for Erin’s eyes to focus, and then I added, “What exactly did you remember in there?”

  “I don’t know…” Erin hesitated. “Just feelings. Like flying. Cold air. The window. He was small enough to fit through the open window, but strong enough to carry me, persuasive enough to get Alex to go with him once he had me.” She started to shiver. “I don’t know why I’m so surprised. I just didn’t expect anything to happen. I thought I’d never remember. I lived there for a couple of years after and nothing ever… The nightmares…”

  “Come on,” I said. “Get in the car. I think you need a drink.”

  Erin didn’t argue. We drove in silence to a pub I knew. It was small and compact, and more importantly it was dark inside. I settled Erin in a booth before getting us both drinks. When I returned she seemed a little more put-together.

  “Drink this,” I said, handing her a glass. “It’ll help.”

  She sniffed the brandy suspiciously, but took a big mouthful anyway.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I pressed gently.

  “Yes. I think so.” Erin sighed. “I’m just going over and over it in my head. Why I’d go with a stranger out my goddamn bedroom window. And now it makes more sense. He drugged me. I was never sure about that before, but the smell of gloves, like latex, over my nose… Maybe he put something in my mouth. I think Alex was alert. Like… like he was worried about me. I’ve never been sure about the drugs before. But he must have needed me docile to convince Alex.”

  I felt a tremor of excitement shoot across my face, even though I tried to fight it. I knew it. There was a small segment early on in my book about the logistics of the abductions. How one person might manage to steal two small children without alerting anybody, without leaving any trace. The trees out front, latex gloves: it all fit together. I’d theorised in my notes that the Father must have subdued one or both of each of the pairs of siblings in order to get them out of their houses unnoticed.

  “There’s no need to look so pleased with yourself,” Erin snapped.

  “Sorry. But I knew there was no way he’d get you out without subduing at least one of you. The police wouldn’t release any details from the tox panels they ran, but I knew he had to have done something more than just offer you sweets in the middle of the night—”

  “I guess I could ask the police to tell me the results. But I was gone nearly three weeks so surely the drugs wouldn’t have still been in my system anyway? Nobody ever even talked to me about it. I always just assumed he’d lured us out. The name they gave him didn’t help.” Erin slumped in her chair. I found myself wanting to reach for her outstretched hand; I wanted to massage the warmth back into her fingers. “Everybody assumed he was kind to us. That maybe he knew us already or something. But if he subdued one of us, that means we didn’t go entirely willingly. I never understood why they thought that he was kind. Didn’t he abuse one of the girls?”

  “Morgan Bailey was beat up pretty bad,” I said. “He kept her longer than anybody else they found. But Morgan and Paul were the third pair he took and the name the press had given him had already stuck, probably partly because Jem and Mikey were looked after until they died. It took the press long enough to publicly connect the first couple of abductions in the beginning anyway, what with them being in different counties, and the children being different ages. The police held loads back, including the window information, when they talked about Jem and Mikey’s abduction because they didn’t know it would happen again. When the media latched onto it, there was hysteria.”

  “I can’t help thinking that the police missed stuff because everybody was looking for the wrong thing.” Erin finished her brandy with a mournful shrug. “Everybody was looking for a man who we knew. A father figure. We didn’t want to go, Harriet.”

  “It seems so ob—”

  “Obvious?” Erin let out a stringy laugh. “Is it, though? I remember people, so many people – even Wendy – asking me, ‘Do you know who would hurt you or your brother?’ and it’s the same now. The police asked me if I know who would break into my house. If I fucking knew, I wouldn’t have called them!”

  “I understand, Erin.”

  “No, shut up a second.”

  I clamped my lips shut but I didn’t take it personally. Erin was animated now.

  “So he drugged us,” Erin went on. “I don’t know what the police thought about that, but what do you think? Does that change anything if he used one of us to lure the other one out?”

  “I…” This was so far beyond the parameters of my book that I was momentarily stunned. “I don’t know. We know he always took siblings, perhaps that’s why. So he could get two children with the same ease as taking one. But why would he need so many?” It sounded callous even as I asked it, but it was a valid question. Why take two at a time?

  Erin scrunched her eyes up ti
ght.

  “I just don’t get it,” she said. “There’s got to be a reason. All of the kids shared bedrooms, right? You don’t find that accidentally. So he was looking for pairs of siblings, children who shared a bedroom, so he could take two at once. Which makes me think it’s not just about having two kids – the sibling element is important.”

  I kept quiet. Erin didn’t want me to fill the silence.

  But something did, anyway. A faint buzzing began. Erin jolted, patting around her pockets as though she’d been stung.

  “Mum?” she blurted, answering her phone in a swipe. “Are you okay?”

  A pause. A release of breath.

  “Oh, god, sorry. I’m just… It’s fine. I’m just jumpy. I’m glad you’re okay. Are you having a nice holiday?”

  Erin’s hands were shaking.

  “They’re meeting again tonight?” The tentativeness of Erin’s voice made me pay attention again. Her eyes sought mine across the table, cold and blue and nervous, but a spark of hope within. “And Molly – she sounded okay, right?”

  A pause.

  “No, it’s nothing. Don’t worry. Give me the details for later? I think I want to go.”

  She put the phone down, stared at me for a moment, then shook her head as though dispelling a cloud.

  “The therapy group,” she said. “Do you know it? They’re meeting tonight. Some of them said they needed a chance to talk, after the memorial. They invited her but obviously she’s on holiday… I should go. Maybe they can help me figure out who’s breaking in to my house. Maybe it’s even one of them – I don’t know. I wouldn’t rule anything out now.” She clenched her hands into fists.

  I knew I couldn’t just abandon her now.

  “I’ll drive you there if you want.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Erin

  I GAVE HARRIET THE address. They were still meeting in one of the same churches. There was a rota of sorts, each city or town where children were abducted taking turns to host so somebody didn’t always have to drive miles and miles. This Methodist church in Burton was all shiny wood and air freshener. I’d hated it before, even when we were trying it out in all earnestness, trying to talk out our feelings; my stomach fizzed at the thought of going back.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Harriet asked. “You seem iffy.”

  “Ugh,” I snorted. “Iffy. Have you ever even been to one of these?”

  She shook her head. “My aunt and uncle always said they’d rather have parties than sermons. Molly said you’d had a bad experience, before. Did you go or just your parents?”

  “I went to a couple, right at the beginning. Well, the beginning for me. They’d been meeting before me and Alex were taken, obviously. We just sort of crashed their circle.”

  “What are they like?” Harriet asked tentatively.

  “Look at it this way. My mum and dad just wanted some kind of closure. They wanted to talk about the son they’d lost, to people who understood. Everybody sits in a circle and there’s tea and biscuits, but they’re all ratty because they’ve had to drive a bloody long way to get there, and nobody wants to not be there, so sometimes they just get wound up for nothing. My parents found it hard enough because of – me, and what happened, and they didn’t make it any easier. Except for a couple of them who were nice, like Molly. So Mum and Dad found their own coping methods.”

  That was all I was going to say on the matter. I was sure Harriet could figure out the rest. Dad drank and smoked more and more until he had a heart attack. From the day I was back Mum became overly clingy. Nervous. Obsessive.

  Now, the thought of going back, it made me feel like my skin didn’t fit properly.

  “Are you coming in?” I asked as we pulled up.

  It was already getting dark and Harriet’s face looked ghostly white in the glow from the floodlights that sat over the church door. I watched as she chewed on her lip, some internal battle raging. I wanted her to say yes. Even the distance between the church and the car seemed too far on my own.

  “I’d better not,” Harriet said eventually. “I don’t want to… intrude. If I’m there I’ll be a distraction. Maybe you can catch them off guard without me?” She must have noticed my face fall because she added, “But don’t worry, I’ll wait in the car.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That’s what friends are for.”

  “Right.” I gave her a terse smile, trying to ignore the ticking feeling in my chest.

  I couldn’t, though. Even as I grabbed my phone and shoved it into my pocket, darting into the brightly lit entrance of the hallway, I was asking myself if that’s what this was. Were we friends?

  The mood in the church was sombre. There was a circle of plastic chairs already set up, some people I half-recognised and some I’d never seen before sitting in them. There was a table with a paper cloth and a selection of coffee, tea and biscuits by the door, just as I’d predicted.

  I glanced around awkwardly, wondering if Molly was there. I could do with a friendly face, and maybe I could talk to her, make sure she was still okay, ask her if she’d been exaggerating before. But I couldn’t see her. Instead I was met by blank stares.

  A man wearing slacks and a green jumper started to approach me and I felt my insides twinge. I recognised him, only he’d been fifteen years younger when I’d last seen him. He was the vicar who ran these Burton sessions.

  Now I had to decide. Was I Erin Chambers? Was I somebody else? Too late I realised I didn’t have a plan. Would they have seen me at the memorial? Did that even matter? How could I make these people trust me? Did I even want to?

  “Hello,” the man said. He wanted to shake my hand, but I kept both of mine in my pockets. In one I clutched my phone, in the other my box of cigarettes and my lighter, desperately trying to keep my breathing even.

  “Hello.”

  “This is a closed session tonight.”

  He didn’t turn me away but it was clear from his tone that he expected me to leave.

  I brushed back a strand of my blonde hair and said, “My name is – Jillian. Chambers. I’d like to sit in.”

  * * *

  For once, being Jillian seemed to be worth something. Even despite the grating pain that saying it aloud caused. There was a collective intake of breath.

  “Jillian…” the vicar murmured.

  The woman closest to me was probably in her fifties. Her hair was impeccably styled, bronze with hints of gold, and her eyes were a piercing silver-grey. I didn’t remember her.

  “Alex’s sister,” she said.

  Her expression was direct and I felt myself shrinking a little under it. Then she smiled and the spell was broken; warmth.

  The vicar stepped back to let me into the circle. It was clear that she was running this thing now, not him.

  “I don’t think we’ve met.” I walked straight to the woman with the bronze hair but neglected to offer my hand to shake.

  “Vera Bailey.” She patted the seat next to her and I sat.

  “Morgan and Paul’s mum.”

  She half-inclined her head. Paul and Morgan seemed to be the two children the public remembered the most, aside from Alex and me. The brother and sister had been five and nine years old at the time of their disappearance. They were good-looking children, from what I saw of their photographs online. Both had dark hair that was almost black and bright blue-green eyes. I had thought about Morgan most nights after I made it home from the hospital. That could have been me, could have been me…

  I wondered if Vera had dyed her hair because it was going grey, or if it was because the dark hair betrayed by her eyebrows was more than she could stand to look at in the mirror. I nervously fiddled with the ends of my own hair, the faded brown dye I’d hoped would help me the same way. In the end it had just made me look like a stranger and I’d let the blonde grow back in.

  Morgan had died eleven months after her abduction. Eleven long months of whatever suffering I had managed to escape. I felt my whole
body tingle and itch and I had to stop myself from wriggling in my seat like a child.

  “I’m – sorry,” I choked.

  “We’re all sorry,” she said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  I agreed with that. I decided that, despite my initial feeling towards these people, I liked Vera Bailey. She was direct – but warm. I wondered if she had been here back when we’d first come. I didn’t remember her.

  “I haven’t seen you here before,” Vera said.

  It was like she had read my thoughts.

  “No,” I said eventually. “We came years ago. Mum and Dad and me. Then we stopped.”

  Vera nodded, as if she understood.

  The room was filling up now. I was suddenly overwhelmed. All of these faces, half-remembered. I glanced about, my gaze winging from one side of the circle to the other. It really felt like I was her. I was Jilly again.

  For years I had been little Jilly Chambers or poor Jilly. I tried everything I could to get away from her. I grew my hair, dyed it, stopped wearing combat trousers and playing outside. I wore makeup – still did, even now – to hide the circles under my eyes, the sharpness of my cheekbones. I wanted to be as little like the girl who had been stolen as possible. As little like the girl who was Alex’s sister. But it wasn’t that simple. No matter how many new friends I made, or jobs I started, I could never shake her off completely. My hair came through with blonde roots; my eyes were still the same, hooded and blue; my mum still, sometimes, looked at me like she had looked at Jillian. But it made me feel strong to try. To move forwards, or at least sideways, instead of remaining where I was. I’d been two people for a long time, and suddenly being just her – just Jillian – was strange. Eerie. Like I was a living ghost.

  I gripped my phone in my hand, cocooned in my pocket, almost praying for it to vibrate with a reason to leave.