Little White Lies

‘Yes. With the robbers.’

I turned more pages, searching for other stories she’d know, other ones to make her smile. ‘Some of them were scary,’ I said, ‘but you were never scared.’

Abigail let the book slide from her lap and suddenly uncurled herself from the bed. I had to steady myself as the mattress shifted. What was it? It was like some word of mine had pinched her somewhere, snagged on something. She went to the window and folded back the curtains, peering out into the street, that narrow street we’d parked on. It was like she was still wondering when we’d arrive. Or waiting for someone else entirely.

The bedroom door creaked, and I jumped.

‘Girls?’

Mum, come to check up on us. On the nightstand, the clock read ten to six. We’d have to be leaving before long, I knew. Mum had said we shouldn’t stay too long. We didn’t want to stress Abigail or tire her out. Or ourselves. I could read in Mum’s eyes how she wanted to reassure me: Don’t worry, it will get easier, she’s still adjusting, try not to mind…

Don’t you get it? I wanted to say back. Nothing is different between us. I haven’t changed and neither has she. But Abigail wasn’t saying anything, just standing with her forehead pressed against the window. In that moment, I saw my cousin as Mum did – like a stranger, awkward, not knowing where to put herself, even though she was right here, home, in her own room.

Silently, I got up and put the book of fairy tales back on the shelf. I felt hollow. I couldn’t even find my voice to say goodbye, just swallowing empty mouthfuls as my cousin turned around, pressing the heels of her hands on the sill behind her. There’s no way Mum expected what Abigail said next, and she even caught me giddily off-guard. It was just the kind of announcement she used to make when she was eight:

‘Auntie Lillian, please, can Jess stay the night?’

We sat up in her room like little mice while downstairs the adults argued, trying to decide what to do. They hadn’t planned for this, there was no protocol. What if it was too much too soon – but then if Abigail herself had asked? Upstairs I rolled my eyes and my cousin giggled, with that funny hiccupping laugh I remembered so well.

Finally, Uncle Robert put up a camp bed in Abigail’s room and Auntie Anne made up the guest bed for Mum and Dad. She found us spare toothbrushes, and I could sleep in my T-shirt. As so we did, we stayed the night. All of us under one roof.

Sitting crossed-legged on the squeaking camp bed with her Mickey Mouse lamp on the floor between us, I didn’t need to think of where she’d been, or who with, or what had been done to her there. I only needed to see her here. When my aunt brought the twins up to say goodnight, they hovered in the doorway, twining themselves round the frame. They’d been so little when she disappeared, only nine months old, too little, I imagined, to remember anything. Me though, I remembered everything. We listened to the thumps and bumps of the adults making their ways to bed. When at last the house fell quiet, it was just the two of us alone.

‘All your stuff is here,’ I said, looking round. It was like I was only taking it in properly now. I knelt on the camp bed and ran my fingers over a row of frilly rosettes pinned to the wall. Now, close up, I could see the Blu Tack marks from where Anne and Robert had had their notes, their pictures.

This rosette was for second place in a dancing competition, aged seven. I laughed. ‘You hated ballet.’

She rubbed her cheek. ‘I know. But Mum liked me to go.’

I sat back down. ‘You loved reading, stories, that was your thing. And you were good at drawing. But mostly we made up our own games.’

She nodded, sliding down into the cocoon of her duvet. ‘I remember. Tell me again, Jess, how it was between us.’

So I did. I told her about the games we’d played, the ones we’d disappear into whenever she was upset. Dress-up, make-believe, once-upon-a-time. The thousand imaginary worlds we created, the nights we wouldn’t let each other fall asleep because we didn’t want to say goodbye. As I talked, other scraps of memory flickered: arguments, tantrums, Auntie Anne losing patience. Our games, though, had made everything all right.

‘It can be the same now,’ I told her. ‘Just like before.’ I’d been waiting to say that to her all this time. Now we were together and nothing could hurt us. Just like catching each other in the game of Do-you-trust-me? I didn’t say the rest, but I think she knew. I’ve only been waiting for you.

I snuggled down in the warmth of my sleeping bag. My eyes grew heavy, I was so warm, so happy. I could hear her breathing, steady and deep. After a while, I switched off the lamp, and we went on lying there in the soft dark. Maybe I dozed off in that darkness, just for a moment, because when I next looked over she was sitting up in bed, staring at the far wall like it was a TV screen or a stage. I could see her – just – in the light from the landing, filtering under the bedroom door. She didn’t look like Abigail in that moment. I didn’t quite feel like myself. Something had shifted in the space between us, something had entered the bubble I’d made.

Maybe that was what made me ask, made me shape the question. A sudden need to fill a blank, a hole. My skin tingling like when we’d tell ghost stories, torches under our chins, my words came out slow, dreamy, as I whispered:

‘Abigail – what was it like?’

At first she went on staring at the wall, not moving. I wondered if she hadn’t heard me or whether she was pretending. I suddenly wondered if she was even awake. But I could see her eyes glistening in the dark. She leaned towards me, turning her head.

‘It isn’t like anything,’ she said.

Chapter 5

Friday 31st May:

Day 5

ANNE

Abigail slept so much more soundly that night. I knew because I stayed up, haunting the landing, listening, checking long after Robert said, come to bed. I pictured them in there, our family’s two daughters, sleeping together as they used to as children. It had always been like that between them; calming each other like no one else could. There had been something unbreakable between them, something that hadn’t broken, even now. Listening to Jess’s whispers, finally my heartbeats slowed and I could slip away to my own room across the hall, leaving the door open, knowing she was only calling distance away.

By the morning, I had made a decision; I had woken with one bright thought in my head. Beside me, Robert was still asleep, his hefty, lion-like shape a mound under the covers. I thought of Jess, asleep in Abigail’s room, of Lillian and Fraser next door, all of us gathered together. Why not take the opportunity? What better chance to show what she meant to us? Careful not to wake my husband, I eased back the blanket and slipped out from the warmth, and at first I pulled a jumper on over my nightdress, then took both off and got properly dressed. No one else up, the house fizzing with cold, I went downstairs.

In the kitchen, I opened every cupboard and took out bowls, plates, side plates, knives and spoons. All the boxes of cereal we had I pulled out: Shreddies, Weetabix, Coco Pops, Frosties. We had five flavours of jam in the cupboard: strawberry, apricot, blackcurrant, raspberry and the one that had always been Abigail’s favourite: cherry. I set them all out so she could choose anything she wanted. I dug out a butter dish from the back of the cupboard – an old wedding present we never used – and unpeeled a hard block of butter from its wrapper. In the fridge I found orange juice, apple juice, milk; I laid out yoghurts with individual spoons. When the kettle boiled, I made a heavy pot of tea, and even folded eight napkins from a roll of kitchen towel.

I heard the footsteps on the stairs; soft light footsteps and I straightened up, a rush of love thrumming through me. ‘Mummy?’ I was so ready to welcome her, my beautiful daughter. When the kitchen door pushed open, I saw blond hair, thin shoulders, bare feet.

‘Mummy?’ The shape wavered and blurred. ‘What’s going on?’ Not Abigail. Sam.

All right then. I made myself smile. ‘Come on, sit here.’ I pulled out a chair. ‘Doesn’t it look lovely?’

Sam rubbed at his eyes, a tiny frown-crease lining his forehead. ‘Is this for Auntie Lillian?’

I shook my head. Why say that? Just because I’d made it all look so perfect? ‘No. It’s for Abigail. A welcome home breakfast.’

I pushed him forwards and settled him into the chair. The clock on the microwave clicked over. Sam leaned his elbows on the table, his feet scuffing at the bare kitchen floor. ‘I was sleeping, Mummy. You woke me up.’

Outside it was only just growing light – too early for any reporters to have gathered – but already I could hear birds singing: blackbirds and the croak of jackdaws. The kitchen felt chilly though; I couldn’t understand why the boiler hadn’t come on. Sam fiddled with the knife at the side of his plate, his thumb making a smudgy print on the blade.

‘Sam,’ I said. ‘Leave that.’ He set the knife back down. The clock on the microwave blinked again: 5:41, ridiculously early, I know. Sam shivered, his fingers sliding from the knife, from the table. ‘Mummy,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m going back to bed.’

It was three hours later when the whole family finally appeared – Lillian and Fraser, Robert and the boys, Abigail yawning in the dressing gown I’d lent her, and a sleepy Jess by her side, pulling her jumper sleeves down over her arms.

Abigail sat down to eat with the rest of us and heaped up her share of cereal and toast. From where I sat at the other end of the table, she seemed happy enough – busy with milk and butter and jam – and I set to my own breakfast with a grateful sense of relief. It was only when I came to clear the plates that I realized, my heart twisting. She had hardly eaten a thing.

She spent the rest of the day wrapped in my thick pink dressing gown, watching TV, dozing. She was tired after the Bradys’ visit. From the couch, she received all my yes-or-no questions – Do you want a drink, have you had enough sleep, do you remember your flopsy, can you work the remote? – with a steady expression. I knew I was hovering, crowding her, but it was as though seven years of everyday mothering was now desperate to come out. She replied, yes, yes, yes to each one of my questions, but always with a pause beforehand, a tense little pause.

It was the same when she replied yes to Robert’s suggestion.

He had been set on the idea all week, ever since the first headlines got out. I knew what it meant to him. He wanted the chance to say: here we are, the family who never gave up, the family who never stopped trying and thank you for bringing her back to us at last. It wasn’t as though I didn’t understand. Hadn’t my breakfast been about the same thing? When he came into our lives, he’d made a promise to protect her. Hadn’t that been a condition of our love? And hadn’t he spent these last seven years wracked with guilt at how this promise was broken? Now she was found and safe and at home. He had every right to be overjoyed at that.

The twins crowded round him as he broached the subject with Abigail, clambering next to him on the armchair in the living room, and I watched them all from the doorway.

Under the dressing gown, she was still wearing the T-shirt and leggings she’d slept in last night. They needed a wash but we hadn’t got anything else for her yet. My daughter, home, and we didn’t even have clothes.

Robert looped an arm around Laurie’s shoulders and he spoke so gently and calmly to Abigail, explaining, reassuring – we’d only need to be out a few minutes, let them take a few photos, and she wouldn’t even need to say anything, he would prepare a statement for us all, one even DS McCarthy would approve of. He could arrange it all with one quick call.

‘What about it, Abigail? What do you think?’

Hugging a cushion, she looked at him. The little tense hesitation, a breath through her nose, a glance up at me and then: yes. Surely it was better this way, said Robert. It would stop them hounding us, get them off our front step, and yet I woke up the next morning with a pain in my stomach.

That afternoon, I sat on our rumpled mattress turning up a pair of my smart black trousers while Robert shaved at the corner sink. His electric razor was humming and the sound of it usually comforted me, but right now it felt like a needle against my teeth.

The trousers had been so long on her when she tried them on, whole inches pooling at her feet no matter how high up she hitched the waist. I’d measured the amount they’d need taking up but now the needle in my hand kept slipping, the thread twisting and tangling, making a knot that refused to pull through.

‘Some of the reporters will be the ones from before,’ Robert was saying over the buzz of his shaver. ‘I’ll never forget how they tried to help.’

I remembered too: how he had gone on and on calling up the news stations – at home and in London – begging them to provide fresh coverage, fresh appeals, even when the soundbites of information shrank to crumbs and every single lead dried up. He had done everything. He had never given up.

‘I’m not sure.’ When he didn’t hear, I had to repeat myself. ‘I’m not sure.’

Now Robert paused his shaving, looking at me through the mirror, the razor hanging in the air. ‘But I thought you were all right with it. All we’re doing is sharing good news.’

I wiped the damp pads of my fingers on my knee, rethreaded the needle. Lillian had tried when we were younger to get me to copy her own perfect efforts: stitches in rows like soldiers, each one alike, but mine had never come out like that.

‘I am – I was, but don’t you think we should wait? Why do we need to go out there right now, when we’ve barely even just got her back?’

‘Anne, this is a good thing. All we’re telling them is how happy we are. All they want is to write their happy ending. That’s the only reason they’ve been standing out there. The sooner they’ve got that, the sooner I think they’ll let us alone.’

I tugged at the trousers, pushing the needle through again, shaking my head. Robert set the shaver down on the shelf. The buzzing vibrations whined worse than ever. ‘What is this, Anne? What is it you’re so worried about?’

But how could I explain when I hardly knew myself, just had this feeling, a cold stone in the pit of my stomach, making sweat bead on my palms. How could I explain that it all felt so fragile, as though the slightest misstep would break everything apart?

In my panic, I found myself saying, ‘Why do we have to be all on show? Why does it have to be shared with everyone? Just what is it that you’re trying to prove?’

Straight away as the words came out, like catching my fingers in the slam of a door, I knew it was absolutely the wrong thing to say. In the mirror, it was written all over Robert’s face.

‘Robert,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’ I pinched at the hems of the trousers, trying to press the stitches flat. ‘I didn’t mean that at all.’

He reached out and carefully turned off the shaver. The silence flowed in like a cool sluice of water. He came and sat along from me on the bed, in a patch of May sunlight. I reached out my hand, a gesture we’d done a hundred times over the years: our olive branch that had got us through the very worst of times. As always, he took my hand in his but this time, in his fingers, I felt the tension.

‘Anne, it’s not like that. I’m not trying to prove anything. But why are you acting like we’ve something to hide?’

When I held up the trousers, miraculously the hems stayed in place. I gathered them up and went to give them to Abigail. Robert was right, we had nothing to be afraid of. I had read his statement, it made everything clear; it would give the journalists exactly what they wanted and if Abigail hadn’t said anything before, why should she now? All right then – as soon as she was ready, we would go.

‘Abigail?’ Her door was ajar, her bedroom empty, and her bed was made with uncanny precision. It was as though she had vanished into thin air or climbed out of her window or run straight out the front door. ‘Robert,’ I called out, ‘where is she?’

‘I heard her go into the bathroom,’ he said from our doorway. By now he had his shirt on and was doing up the bottom button. ‘Just knock for her while I sort out the boys.’

Of course. After all, hadn’t we told her to get ready? At the bathroom door, I listened for her with the trousers bunched in my hands. She’d closed the door tightly and I couldn’t hear anything – no sound of taps running or a brushing of teeth. How long had she been in there? Five minutes, ten? A sickly thought rose up, like something with claws climbing up my throat. Wild thoughts, paranoid thoughts, but I couldn’t stop them stretching and thickening as I thought of the razor blades beside the bath, a dressing gown cord to loop from the shower rail and a whole box of painkillers in the cabinet over the sink.

I knew the lock on the door was loose and I lifted the handle up with a twist and shoved the door open – and there she was.

At first I couldn’t make out at all what she was doing. She jerked back from the mirror and out of some instinct thrust her hand behind her back. Still, I glimpsed what she was holding: something small, black, circular.

‘Abigail? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have barged in.’ I told myself to keep my voice steady.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I should have asked first.’

‘But what are you doing?’ Her forehead was pale where she hadn’t swept the colour yet and the front of my dressing gown was scuffed with powder. I told myself, you remember this from before, the way it can go, if she’s challenged, if you get angry.

She looked at her nose, her cheeks in the glass. ‘I’m just so white.’

The trousers slipped from my hand and I fumbled to catch them before they fell. I couldn’t escape it as my mind fitted the pieces together, showing me suddenly what this meant: so pale, so white because of how she had lived, in conditions no child should ever have to live in. The thought was sickening.

I shook my head. ‘Don’t apologize. You don’t need to apologize. Of course you can use my make-up if you want, I can even show you if you like, how to do it, how to get it right.’ It was the kind of thing a mother would do for a daughter, another of the thousands of things we’d missed out on. But somehow this time an edge had crept into my voice; I’d glimpsed that look I knew so well, the bottom lip pushing out, the stubborn flare of her nostrils and I’d felt the old, old feeling: that raw, painful discord between us. She set the compact down on the lip of the basin. It wobbled for a moment and then fell in, scraping down the enamel. I was ready for it; I knew what came next. I remembered her this way, this other Abigail; I remembered it and I braced myself.

Instead she turned away, a quarter turn back to the mirror, as though all the fight had gone out of her, or as though she’d had no fight at all to begin with. Seeing it drained my heart. Whatever I had expected, this was worse: this disconnect, this hollow gap. This closed-off, silent turning away.

I held up the trousers, right-sized now, filling up the space with my words. ‘I’ve taken these up now so they should fit, and come through to the bedroom when you’re done and I can quickly measure you for the rest.’

After a beat, she looked at me. ‘You don’t need to do that. I know my size.’

She must have seen the red climb my cheeks. She did. Of course she did. ‘Okay,’ I said when I could get my voice even. ‘Just give me a minute.’

She stooped to wash the make-up off.

Downstairs, Robert was pulling out shoes for the twins. He didn’t ask any questions as I went out of the back door and yanked open the bag by the wheelie bin. That’s what I’d done with them, on her very first night; she must have wondered. The clothes were inside, safely nestled in the clean plastic – the clothes he had bought for her. Of course the size was on the labels. I carried the whole bundle back upstairs with me, including the neat white bra. Up in her room, she took them from me and placed them carefully on the bed, right next to the trousers I’d laid out. I took hold of myself. They’re only clothes, I told myself, and she had to wear something. You needed the measurements and now you have them: size 14 and 36C.

Once she was dressed – in the black trousers and white bra and the blue acrylic jumper – we finally made our way up the road. As we walked, Abigail in between me and Robert, and the twins on either side, I thought to myself, we’re all right, we’re fine. We’re a family reunited, and it’s wonderful, a miracle that all five of us are here, walking down a sun-filled street together. Why should anyone think any different? Laurie slipped his small, hot hand into mine and I tugged him a little, to make him keep up.

We heard them before we even reached the hall, and when we rounded the corner, the grass was beetling with reporters, more of them than I think even Robert had expected. Beside me, Abigail fell back a step. The journalists had seen us now and were jostling for position. ‘On the steps? If you stand on the steps?’ The press officer, a petite woman with blonde hair in a bun, was coming towards us, all smiles. She reached for Abigail, curling one hand about her elbow, and this time Abigail let the woman handle her just fine.

She positioned Abigail on the top step and Robert climbed up to stand beside her. He was clearly waiting for me to get up there too.

‘And your boys?’ Against the sun, I could make out the faces of our neighbours and friends, this tight-knit community that had accepted me and Robert, a community that had supported us through the ordeal of all these years.

‘Mrs White? Anne?’ The press officer was gesturing to me: come along, stand here, your sons will be fine. I looked up at them: my husband and my daughter. They looked nothing alike, never had, but he’d been more of a father than her real dad ever was. From the start, their bond had been so loving, so strong, and there’d been a naturalness, such an ease in his relationship with her; I’d envied it and I’d loved him for it, the joy that he’d brought to both of our lives. Then all through this ordeal, we’d been a team together. He’d never allowed himself to be pushed to one side. Now he reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out his crisp sheet of paper. He smiled down at me and I felt myself smile back as I climbed up beside them. We were still a team here today and suddenly I wanted everyone to see it.

With a deep breath, Robert read out the statement and it was perfect. I put my arms around both twins and I managed to say my bit too. Abigail stood there all the while, bravely, and didn’t speak or add anything. The May sun was glinting in my eyes; I could hardly make out the reporters in front of us. It was only when the sun disappeared for a moment that I made out the cameras with their local and national and international logos, nothing at all between us and them, nothing hiding us at all. And suddenly I realized why I’d balked at bringing her here. Suddenly all the knotted ropes in my stomach made sense. All the eyes of the world were on us and like a bloated cloud passing over the sun, the thought bloomed across my mind:

He will see this.

Chapter 6

Friday 31st May:

Day 5

JESS

They aired the story on the evening news. They started with the other girl: Tonia Dillon, six years old, taken by a man with chin-length blond hair. The same man, they said. Then about the teenager who’d brought her to Southwark Police Station, who said the child had been brought to her house.

I gestured Dad to move up on the couch, make room for me between him and Mum. I’d already seen coverage all over Twitter, but Dad had wanted us to watch this together. For Abigail White’s family, just being together again is a joy, said the news anchor, and there they were – Auntie Anne, Uncle Robert and Abigail, up on the steps in front of some building, the twins cuddled in at my uncle’s side. Five days in and it still sometimes felt like a dream. I squeezed my arm, checking the tender, sharp spots. Making sure I wouldn’t wake up and find her gone again, like all those other times I’d dreamed she’d come back. But this news broadcast was true, the real deal.