Girl, Missing, page 4
‘Why would someone do that?’ Her creased brow tells me she doesn’t get what I’m telling her.
I bit back. ‘The last time I saw them on her was the day she was stolen from me. Only the monster who took her would have her socks.’
Traci’s hand slaps over her mouth in dismayed horror.
I carry on, ‘Whoever this scum is they’re either trying to scare the crap out of me. Or make me stop looking for the truth about what happened to my daughter.’
‘Go to the police—’
‘The cops?’ I scoff. ‘They won’t help me.’
Traci’s shoulders roll back in a gesture I remember her doing so many times back in the day. It meant she was getting ready to do battle. She points at me. ‘Now, you listen to me. In the morning you’re to get yourself to the police station and insist they investigate who’s doing this wickedness to you.’ She hisses, ‘Tell them, if they don’t, they’ll have me to deal with.’
Chapter 6
I’m a bag of nerves sitting at a table in the interview room at the local police station. Facing me is Detective Wallace. On the table between us is the pair of pink socks. Sara-Jane’s socks. The socks someone kept for the past fifteen years and now want to torture me with.
‘And how do you know that these socks belonged to your daughter?’
I could SCREAM. He’s already asked me that question a gazillion times.
My impatience comes through me grabbing one of the socks. ‘See this stitching here.’ I point to a thread that should be a straight stitch but is zigzag instead. ‘This was a feature of them, because I got them as a job lot down the market on a stall because they were seconds.’ That’s what poor mums like me had to look for, every bargain that we could get our hands on to save pennies. ‘And the small hole, here, on the heel.’
Beneath hooded eyes he gives me a quizzical look. ‘You just said they were a job lot. So this market stall was bound to have plenty more which it sold to other people. Which means that there are plenty of other people who have got these socks.’
‘After fifteen years? They look exactly the same as the day I last saw Sara-Jane wearing them.’
At least I think this what I’m saying. I didn’t sleep at all last night. Wired and tired, that’s how I’m feeling. My words are a confused jumble.
Wallace has the mandatory police sympathy on his face, but the stiff set of his body tells me as loud as a foghorn that he doesn’t believe a word of it.
With a lengthy sigh, Wallace picks the socks up. Shouldn’t he be wearing gloves or something to try to preserve any DNA? I’d brought them here carefully wrapped in a carrier bag. He gives them a cursory examination before putting them back down.
‘Look, Gem—’
‘Did the police ever find any more security camera or CCTV footage?’
His eyes shutter. My hope dies. ‘As the police will have explained at the time, whoever took Sara-Jane avoided all the security cameras and CCTV. Which indicates her abductor – abductors – knew the area well so were probably local.’
My heart sinks at the knowledge that nothing new has turned up in the investigation.
‘I understand, I really do.’ His sympathy feels more human this time. ‘But there’s absolutely no reason at all to believe these socks are your daughter’s. Why on earth would someone put these through your door?’ His tone changes. ‘You claim this must be Sara-Jane’s kidnapper. How on earth would they have known you’re back on the Rosebridge Estate?’
‘You saw me at the school yesterday. Lots of other people did too. Someone could’ve followed me back to the Rosebridge. There’s an easy way to find out. Send the socks for DNA testing. That will settle it one way or the other. Or look at CCTV footage on the estate?’
He maintains his position with a slow-mo shake of his head. ‘We’ve got a backlog of evidence that needs testing from other cases. We can’t justify testing these socks with our limited resources. Or spending hours going through security camera footage.’
My voice rises and has a strange pitch. ‘You mean you don’t want to.’
Wallace’s chest heaves with a weary sigh. He pulls out a file and opens it. ‘This is the record of a serious incident fourteen years ago . . .’
I tense up, face going hot, knowing exactly what he’s about to tell me.
Fourteen Years Ago
The back of a head. That’s how it all started. One minute I was walking out of the shop and the next there she was, up ahead of me.
Sara-Jane.
I didn’t see her face. I only saw the back of her. Her head. Then again, I’m her mum, I wouldn’t need to see her face. I know my own little girl. It was her hair that was the dead giveaway. Brown and short. My Sara-Jane never liked long hair, said it got in the way of her playing.
Oh my God, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My daughter holding . . . Why was Sara-Jane’s sweet hand holding that of another woman? Oh God, was this the monster who took her?
‘Sara-Jane!’ I cried out, hoarse emotion clogging my voice.
‘Sara-Jane!’
I remember thinking, why isn’t she turning back to me? Doesn’t she remember my voice? What if her kidnapper has driven her to forget my voice? They must’ve given her a different name, brainwashed her into thinking she’s someone else. That must be it, because my child would never forget me. Oh, my poor, precious darling girl. Mummy’s coming to rescue you.
I rushed over so fast I almost tripped and ended up banging into someone else, who muttered rudely at me. I admit, I’d been drinking. OK, I’d been knocking back the hard stuff since I got up that morning. It’s the only way I could get through those early days. The drink twisted reality into a hazy blur that made me feel safe. Turned my world into a place where I didn’t have to think about a beast doing monstrous things to her.
After righting myself I flew over to them. I had to rescue my daughter. There was no time to lose. My hand lashed out and I grabbed Sara-Jane’s arms and turned her to face me. I staggered back slightly at what she looked like. She’d changed. Was older. Where had her braces gone? Her glasses? A year of changes I’d missed. Anger boiled inside me that someone could do this to a child and her mother.
Why was her smile dying on her face? Why was she desperately trying to pull free?
‘Mummy,’ she screamed out.
I dragged her closer to me. ‘I’m here, baby. I’m here.’
A crowd began to gather.
The child-stealer who had my Sara-Jane stared at me with shocked horror. ‘What are you doing? Get your hands off my daughter.’
I shook my head, drawing Sara-Jane closer still. And growled, ‘She’s not your anything.’ I felt the crowd around me and pleaded with them. ‘Help me. Please help. This woman has abducted my child.’
The onlookers shifted with concern and indecision. They looked at me and Sara-Jane and then at the other woman, not clear what to do.
Sara-Jane yanked hard from me. I wouldn’t let her go. Wouldn’t. ‘Mummy’s here to take you home,’ I said.
Tears leaked from her beautiful eyes before she started sobbing. ‘You’re not my mummy.’
Then the child-stealer was on me, her hand crushing my arm that held my child. MY CHILD.
We struggled. I wouldn’t let Sara-Jane go. Never again. This woman, this criminal, would have to kill me first.
‘Mummy! Mummy!’
Sara-Jane’s screams were frantic. But I noticed that she was looking at and pleading with the other woman. That she was straining and stretching to get out of my grip. Why had she done that? Her teeth sank into the top of my arm, forcing me to release her, and I let go, stumbled back in pain. I watched my girl rush into the tight embrace of the child-napper. Kissing the top of Sara-Jane’s head, the woman stared over at me, her glowing eyes a mirror of the expression I have every day. Terror that someone took her child from her.
I was taken to a police station. I didn’t remember the journey. I came back to myself in the cell, my knees tucked under my chin, rocking. I felt so lost.
The doctor who examined me explained the child was called Jenny and was not my daughter. Not Sara-Jane. Then they sent a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, a therapist, I didn’t remember what the fancy title of her job was but she was someone who treated people who weren’t right in the head. Probing and asking private questions, trying to make out that I was mad.
They let me go with a caution. I stopped drinking that day. Looked forward. Tucked my beautiful memories of Sara-Jane in a treasured place in a corner of my mind.
‘I was having a hard time back then.’ I firmly defend myself to Wallace. ‘I wrote a letter which I gave to the doctor at the police station to make sure it was passed on to the mother and her daughter, begging their forgiveness for what happened.’
The pink socks on the table seem to have come alive in front me. They’re telling me who they are. They say they’re my daughter’s. They can’t tell me how they came through my letterbox, but they know who they are. With a mother’s care, I pick them up and get to my feet. I wrap Sara-Jane’s socks around one of my hands. It makes me feel like I’m holding her hand after all this time.
I tell Detective Wallace with all my avenging heart, ‘I will never give up looking for my little girl. Never.’
Chapter 7
Something is wrong. Badly wrong. I sense the change in the atmosphere in the flat as soon as I enter. I go deathly still in the hall. My grip tightens painfully against the handlebars of my bike. The daylight wraps around me, oppressive and suffocating as a plastic bag over my head. It’s hard for me to breathe. My heart . . . God . . . My heart is banging so hard against my body it feels like it’s on the verge of breaking my ribs. A layer of nasty, cold sweat trickles along my hairline.
‘Is anyone there?’
What a stupid question. If someone is waiting for me it’s not as if they are going to alert me to their presence by answering. Then again, that’s what they do in the movies, isn’t it? Some half-naked young woman in a horror flick where you know that she’s going be attacked and savaged and killed.
Killed.
Murdered.
Is that what someone is waiting to do to me? In the place I once tried to make a safe home with my missing daughter. Maybe I should rush out and get help from Traci next door? Yeah, but what if I’m wrong? What if there’s no one here except the ghosts of the past? I’m going to look like a real idiot then.
With a twist and turn of my palm and fingers I rearrange my set of keys in my fist until a key is sticking out, a tiny makeshift dagger ready to defend me. A stab to the eye. A deep jab to the head. Thrust deep into my attacker’s neck and then a solid slice along their flesh to the other side. I’m not going down without a fight.
Heart rate racking up, I move forward. Silent and cautiously with the knowhow of a burglar on the balls of my feet. My breathing is hard and hurts. And is too loud. I need to slow it down. I don’t want them to hear. If they hear me . . .
I reach the threshold of the main room. My hand tightens on my makeshift blade. And . . . Jump inside. Look around. And around.
No one there.
It’s just me and my heavy breathing that shatters the air. I sag with relief against the coldness of the hard wall and momentarily close my eyes. Not until that moment do I realise I’m riddled with tension from my interview with Detective Wallace. The horrible sensation of pins and needles pulsing through the soles of my feet. Am I being paranoid?
My head falls defeated to my chest. I feel broken. On the brink of being destroyed. It’s when I feel like this that I question whether I’m doing the right thing looking for my kidnapped daughter. I’ve got enough money to have employed a private investigator to find answers, or not, and then report back to me. Why am I doing this? Why am I putting myself through the agony?
With a lengthy sigh I open my eyes and Sara-Jane’s there, right in front of me.
‘This is for you, Mummy.’
She hands me a card.
‘For me?’
I know exactly what it is, but I keep that to myself. Seeing the anticipation and joy dancing on her little face waiting for me to open it is one of the biggest pleasures. Inside the envelope I reveal a Happy Mother’s Day card. Sara-Jane has made it at school. Her big message on the front squeezes my heart. I can barely breathe.
‘THE BEST MUM EVER.’
She runs into my arms and whispers in my ear. ‘You are, you know. The best mum ever.’
The best mum ever. That’s why it has to be ME searching for her. Her mother. The one who carried her for eight months and twenty-one days. The person who has never given up hope.
In the kitchen I go to the fridge and down some refreshing sparkling water straight from the bottle. And that’s when I feel it.
The heat. The unnerving presence of another person in the room. Standing behind me.
The fear’s back. You’re the best mum ever. Using the courage from my daughter I twist around.
The bottle in my hand drops and crashes to the floor, shattering glass everywhere.
I was right all along. It’s a ghost from the past. But this one is very much alive – unfortunately.
Charlie. Sara-Jane’s father.
‘How did you get in here?’ I move back. As far away from him as possible. I don’t want this dirtbag anywhere near me for fear of being infected with what I know he is.
He smiles, lazy and long. ‘I’ve always been good with my hands.’
‘So you broke in,’ I snarl. ‘I should call the police.’
‘The cops?’ He puts on a wounded lost puppy expression. ‘Is that any way to greet the father of your child?’
I’d once loved Charlie with all my eager young heart. Fell hard for his looks, especially those dark eyes which were born for a girl to melt in. He could run courses on how to sugar-talk a girl. Then I got pregnant at seventeen, which wasn’t the best situation, but once my baby’s wriggling body, so full of innocence, was placed in my arms I knew the future would be bright . . . Except for Charlie. Only with age and experience did I understand that love goes so much deeper than physical appearance. The person you love should have that extra-special something, that uniqueness that makes them shine above everyone else. It was while I was pregnant with Sara-Jane that I figured out that Charlie’s special something was rotten to the core.
His leanness now borders on way too thin for his height, but he’s still got that ‘it factor’ which captures the female eye. He’s losing his hair though, which shoots delicious pleasure through me. He’d been so vain about his hair, primping and preening it this way ’n’ that, insisting that when we made love I run my fingers through it. And look at him now, his crowning glory nearly gone.
I don’t ask where he’s living. In fact, I don’t ask anything about him because I don’t want to know. He’s been out of my life for fifteen years and that’s the way I’d prefer it to stay.
‘We made an agreement years ago,’ I remind him.
He rubs his fingertips along his jawline as if deep in thought. ‘Well, I’d say things have changed since then.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Shame about that body being found in the school.’ He shakes his head with fake concern.
My heart skips a couple of beats. ‘What do you know about that?’
He shrugs before folding his arms and leaning casually against the door frame. This puts me on high alert; there’s nothing casual about Charlie. ‘The way I hear it, you’ve reappeared like the Good Witch to find out if it’s our daughter—’
‘My daughter,’ I savagely correct.
‘Our daughter,’ he asserts again as if I haven’t spoken. ‘Were the remains found in the chapel? Isn’t the chapel the place where Sara-Jane and that other girl snuck out of school from?’
I storm part way to him. ‘You never cared about her then, you don’t care about her now. Charlie, what do you want? Really want?’
His brow arches. ‘If I said I wanted to get down on bended knee and propose to you, to beg you with all my loving heart to take me as your beloved for the rest of our days, would you believe me?’
He looks so serious, like he means every last word. See, the thing about Charlie is he had such charm. He always had the right words, the right gestures, the way he moved his body to draw me back in when he’d done something wrong. I was so starving for love back then, being with a man who honey-talked me into forgiving his every abuse seemed, at the time, to be better than being with no man at all.
It was the horror of what happened the last time I shared a roof with him that woke me up. Opened my eyes wide to the fact that living with a man who treated me and my daughter like shit was not living at all. Best for me and Sara-Jane to be on our own. God, does he really think, after fifteen years, I’m on the edge of falling into his treacherous happy ever after? Again?
Moron.
I jerk and step back. As if pulled by an invisible string he moves right along with me. I keep moving back, he keeps coming forward. I feel the wall against my back. There’s nowhere left for me to go. Charlie looks down on me and our eyes meet. His hand shoots out. I flinch, slamming my eyes shut, waiting. Waiting for what I know will come. Why did I put my keys away? My body trembles in horrified anticipation. His hand reaches me . . . His fingers curl in my hair. This isn’t what I’d expected him to do. He leans down and smells my skin.
And whispers, ‘I hear that you’re living it high and happy with loads of ready cash at your fingertips.’
Swiftly, before he can stop me, I duck under his arm and rush behind him. He turns to face me. I answer him slowly, so he hears every last one of my words. ‘Never. I don’t owe you anything. I made it on my own.’
‘That’s not what a lawyer told me—’
‘Screw you. And screw your lawyer. The days of you screwing me over are long gone.’ He’s angry, his hands flexing into fists at his side. ‘If you touch a hair on my head, I’ll have you before the law quicker than you can say “cheating ex-boyfriend”.’
