Little White Lies

You could catch the flash of cameras, sense the dozens of reporters. It was like in the beginning, when Uncle Robert had to keep calling the papers, making sure they covered her story. I knew the guilt he felt for not being there. Because he’d stayed at the hospital instead. He’d gone over that story with us a million times in the months after Abigail went missing, like he couldn’t stop punishing himself. But even despite that, it didn’t make sense to him – why there weren’t witnesses with all those hundreds of people right there? He wouldn’t let the media give up. They’d even staged a reconstruction. A Tube platform, overflowing with rain-soaked commuters, all these people pushing, pressing to get home. The train carriages bursting, a crush for anyone to get on or off. They showed us a woman with infant twins in a buggy, trying to keep her eight-year-old in tow. And then a tide of passengers pushing to get out of the carriages, and how, in a split second, Auntie Anne and Abigail got separated – bodies buffeted, hands wrenched apart. And they said how in her confusion, my cousin left the platform, made her way up and out of the station. And then there was that shot. The one where it wasn’t an actress, it wasn’t the reconstruction, it was the CCTV footage of my cousin herself, holding the hand-rail and standing on the right, just like you’re supposed to, people packed in all around her. On the footage, they used a bright spotlight to pick her out. You know, in case you missed her. In another two shots, she drifts through the barriers and up the steps to the exit, and then that was it.

Dad turned the volume up on the TV. ‘Where are they?’ I said. ‘What building is that?’

Mum lifted a hand to say, shush.

The camera pulled back and now I saw the lettering above them: the village hall. Uncle Robert read from a sheet of paper, his voice fuzzy on the TV speakers. Our daughter has been returned to us after an eternity. We are overjoyed. It is a miracle to have her back with us, safe and sound.

Mum rubbed at the skin between her forefinger and thumb, making Dad shift awkwardly.

‘What?’ I said. But Mum just shook her head.

To a clatter of camera shutters, Uncle Robert passed the paper across to Auntie Anne. We ask for privacy at this time. Abigail has been through a great ordeal. But she’s safe now and we will do everything to help her.

A last shot, zooming in on Abigail. And that was that.

‘Is that it?’ I said. ‘That’s all they have to say?’

Dad scraped a hand down the stubble of his chin. Mum’s lips were tight.

‘They really didn’t think it through, did they?’ she said, ignoring me.

‘I don’t see how it can do any harm.’

‘Really, Fraser? Drawing all that attention? Parading her like that, like a provocation? Putting the whole of themselves on show?’

Dad closed his mouth. Without another word, he switched the TV off.

I wished I could crawl under the cushions of the couch, into the warm, soft, silent space below. I knew, I always knew. I could read it, the atmosphere between them, clear as a weather forecast. But why, why did it have to be now when everything was supposed to be finally all right? Very carefully I stood up, the air as heavy as before a thunderstorm, and when I left the room, I made sure to close the door tight shut behind.

Upstairs in my room I pushed my ear buds hard into my ears. I didn’t want to hear them, I didn’t want to know. I felt like a kid again, fingers jammed in my ears, tears jamming up my eyes. They could go months, half a year and I’d think they were done, over it now, until the air would go tight again and just like that, I’d know. The pressure that would build to one of their rows. On my phone, I pressed the volume as high as it would go.

I almost missed it, I had my music on so loud – my phone screen flashing with Lena’s pixie face. My phone pinged, and pinged again. I paused my track and swiped for her texts.

Oh My God! I saw on the news!

Tom texted me too, the message right after said, and I felt the familiar ache in my chest, the distance between us nothing to do with miles. I went to lean against the cool of my bedroom window.

Another text: Jess, can you believe she’s back?

Outside, down the end of the garden, the wind caught the blue ropes of my old childhood swing, setting the plastic seat swaying. Nearby the grass was ragged from where Dad had been digging at something. Lena and I had been best friends since we were ten, but these last couple of years, ever since her parents divorced, we’d grown further and further apart. The two of us used to do everything together, but now there was Tom and other girls she hung out with, now there were parties she got invited to, without me. She’d got so busy with growing up, while all I’d done was try to keep things the same. Sometimes, like now, I felt the stab of it. The aching sense of how I’d fallen behind.

My fingers slow, I texted back.

Always knew she’d come home.

Because why else had I been waiting, stalling all this time, putting the whole of my life on hold?

Need all the deets! A pause. Then: Can’t call, Mum barely letting me text. Home Sunday but really late, but see you at school??? Then a row of smiley-face emojis.

She was reaching out, so happy for me, so friendly. There was so much I wanted to tell her. I typed a reply, deleted it, tried again. But nothing I wrote explained how I felt. I just didn’t know how to share Abigail with her.

Eventually, from the icons on my phone, I found a smiley face to send back.

School. I hadn’t even thought about it, but half term was almost over, May was almost over, and school would start on Monday, in three days’ time. In the morning, Saturday, when I came down to breakfast, Mum and Dad were both standing at the sink with their backs to me.

‘I know anyone can read a newspaper,’ Mum was saying, ‘I know anyone can follow the news. But seeing her, Fraser.’ Her tone was made even more bristly by the scourer she was rubbing over the draining board. ‘He never gave her up.’

They still were picking at the edges of their argument, like fanning a flame instead of blowing it out.

‘What are you saying? That he’ll try to… when the police are—’

‘The police have no idea where he is!’

‘Seen who?’ I interrupted. ‘Try what?’

They both turned around. I sat down heavily at the kitchen table.

‘Hey, Munchkin,’ said Dad. ‘Are you wanting some breakfast?’

I didn’t say anything, just waited for one of them to finally explain. Instead, Mum pressed the button to jump the bread out of the toaster, and handed it to me. Like everything in our world was so normal.

I set the plate down on the table: two pale slices. ‘When are we going to see her again?’

Dad sat down opposite and handed me the butter. Mum had already gone back to her scouring. ‘Jess,’ he said, ‘you have to be patient.’

I looked at him silently. But you saw how happy she was to see me, I wanted to say, and I’ve been patient for seven whole years.

‘You went to bed early last night,’ Mum cut in. She did that, had a way of hauling up a question, putting me on the back foot. I was used to it, but it still worked.

‘Yes,’ I said. The toast on my plate wasn’t properly done and the bread split when I tried to spread the butter. ‘Anyway,’ I pressed the knife down hard, ‘you two were busy.’

Dad frowned, a sad frown, and opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, the doorbell rang. Mum turned from the sink and my parents looked at each other, not moving, just letting whoever it was stand out there on the step. What was wrong with them?

‘I’ll get it,’ Mum said eventually.

She went down the hallway and I heard her open the door. I picked up my toast, dropping crumbs, and followed her out. A lady stood on our front step, an older neighbour I recognized from a couple of doors down. Mum ran errands for her sometimes, but I could never remember her name. She was beaming at Mum. ‘…like a miracle!’ she was saying.

‘Yes,’ Mum said. ‘On Monday night.’

The neighbour shook her white head like she still couldn’t believe it. ‘And you’ve seen her? How is she?’

‘We saw them on Wednesday.’ Mum glanced behind at me. She didn’t say anything about my crumbs.

‘Oh! How did that go?’

‘She asked for Jess to stay over. In fact, we all stayed.’

‘Well, isn’t that lovely!’

The neighbour’s beam reached me over Mum’s shoulder. She looked like she wanted to hug me. I swallowed a dry piece of bread and smiled back. But we haven’t made a single plan to visit again, I wanted to tell her. Don’t you think that’s unfair, don’t you think that’s stupid?

‘So – will she be coming here at all?’ the neighbour went on. ‘Will we be able to meet her too?’

Mum’s hand tightened on the edge of the door. I couldn’t tell if she realized she was doing it, but bit by bit she was edging it closed.

‘No. Not until—’

The neighbour’s face was so shiny, so expectant. I listened for Mum’s next words very carefully. Waiting for her to answer all my own questions too.

‘Not until we know it’s safe.’

Chapter 7

Saturday 1st June:

Day 6

ANNE

My sister was right – DS McCarthy too for that matter – it had been a bad idea to do the TV appearance. He might be desperate, wrote Lillian in her barrage of texts. Reckless and unpredictable. Who knew what he was capable of, this man who had abducted my daughter, what lengths he’d go to to get her back? The police were looking for him but he’d vanished and they couldn’t say where, so don’t go parading her around, my sister said. Until he’s found, we all need to be very, very careful.

Because the thing about it, the thing that was so hard to understand, was that Abigail’s discovery didn’t happen the way you see in films. She wasn’t ‘rescued’ and she didn’t escape. She’d simply walked into a South London police station. Holding six-year-old Tonia Dillon by the hand.

We’d seen the news about Tonia, of course we had; we followed every missing child case. It was two days before that Mrs Dillon had reported her child missing. ‘Kidnapped in plain daylight!’ she’d cried to the 999 operator. The girl had been playing in their back garden, even though it was drizzling. Mrs Dillon had needed her out of the way; she was dealing with Tonia’s father who’d come to demand his visiting rights. It was a neighbour who’d spotted the man from her window – early thirties, with longish, light-coloured hair. He’d chatted to Tonia and offered her something – sweets, probably, the police had said. Then he held out his hand and off they went. The neighbour watched them walk down to the end of the road and turn the corner. She waited, but they didn’t come back.

Over five minutes had slipped past by the time the neighbour went running next door. Did Mrs Dillon have a friend, a relative with pale blond hair? She’d just seen Tonia going off with a man. The three of them roamed the wet streets for an hour but by then there was no trace of her.

So we’d heard Tonia’s story. And that was where it all began for us.

Officers questioned the teenager who’d returned the lost child. She gave her name – said she was Abi – and her age, and an address a twenty-minute walk from the station. And how and where did you find Tonia? they asked.

The teenager said: the little girl was brought to the house where she lived. The officer read out the address she’d been given. Who else lives there? Presumably some adults? The teenager described a man: blue eyes, blond hair. When the officer asked, and… is this your father? Abigail, we were told, stayed quiet a long time. Then: No. I don’t think so.

Then she said she needed to get back. He won’t cope without me, she said. He won’t cope. Instead, the officer asked her to repeat her name, her full name please, this time. She did, eventually, reluctantly. It was only then that anyone realized who she was. That she was my daughter. That’s when they began to ask a lot more questions. But during that whole interview, they admitted, not once did Abigail ask to come home to us.

So now our house was like a bunker, as though we were waiting out a siege with Abigail at the centre of it all. Every move she made was like a pinch to my heart – if she yawned, if she coughed, if she changed TV channels – and at the same time within these stifling walls, I couldn’t seem to stay still. I was as afraid as anyone about the man they were hunting, and yet there was something else that so unnerved and troubled me, something happening within these four walls. I kept remembering the look on Abigail’s face when I’d stumbled across her in the bathroom, an avalanche of history I’d tried to keep at bay. Aged six, aged seven, I’d been so proud of her, seeing her behave herself so well, and it was so much of what Lillian approved of – the decent family Robert allowed me to create, but it hadn’t always been that way and now more than ever, I couldn’t stop thinking about the contrast: how Abigail had been and how I was, all that time in the years before.

The missed call I’d received last night and the voicemail sat like a lead weight on my phone, a few short phrases, threatening to unravel everything. Annie, you know I have a right. Annie, please, I just need to know how she is.

In the end, I had to get out. I tried not to think what it said about me that I needed to get away, that I had to leave her, my long-lost daughter, not even a week after she had come home. I was going out, and it was Robert who would stay, my husband who had always been so good with her. From the start, he’d brought out the best side of her: a child quick to laugh who came running for hugs, who let herself be kissed. And I became so much more patient with her, so much more competent, able finally to shower her with love.

When I told Robert what I needed, making up my reasons, he didn’t question me or chide; he just nodded his big head as though to say, I completely understand if you need to get some air.

‘An hour,’ I told him. ‘An hour and a half at most.’ I just needed time to decide what to do, time to decide how best to protect her.

I dug my anorak out from the forest of coats by the front door and pulled out my walking boots from the wardrobe upstairs. Downstairs, Abigail sat cross-legged in my dressing gown on the floor of the living room where the twins had set up a board game. I’d expected them to be shy, cautious around her, but it was quite the opposite: they were so keen to be with her, to sit next to her, to play with her, it became overwhelming for her at times. I had to remind them to give her space. By now we had settled into some semblance of a routine: she slept late, ate a little breakfast, and spent most of the afternoon hours with TV. Yet it all felt so temporary, as though we were all on hold. All still pretending, acting, or waiting for the real show to start. Her physical presence seemed to be everywhere in the house, but I could look at her, my daughter, my child, and feel that she hadn’t returned to us at all.

I crouched down beside them as though they were all tiny children, the fuzz of the rug bristling through my socks. On the floor, there were clue cards they weren’t supposed to peek at, but Abigail had spread them all out, not following the rules.

‘I have to go out for a little while,’ I said to her. I picked up the cards and set them correctly. ‘There’s a project I volunteer at and I can’t let them down. I can get you anything you need though, while I’m out?’ I would have fetched her anything in the world.

She looked up at me with a face brighter than I’d seen these last six days, her gaze this time steady and direct. Wide awake, no traces of the way she had been last night, when I’d heard her from the landing, and then again when I’d stood at the foot of her bed, mumbled sounds because she was fast asleep and sleep-talking, a stream of words I couldn’t decipher at all.

‘Any food you’d like? I could pick up pretty much anything at Asda.’ On the summit of her cheeks her teenage skin was dry and I wanted to place a cool hand on it, soothe away every tiny thing that hurt. I had touched her so little since she’d come home. ‘Abigail?’

‘Maybe I can come with you?’

My knees were numbed from crouching down and I couldn’t seem to move. Yes, yes, yes, I thought, you can come with me anywhere and it means so much to me that you asked, but really, how could I take her with me, the whole point was not to involve her in this, to keep everything simple, everything separate – happy home, happy family – and so all I could mumble was, ‘Not today, Abigail. Not to this.’

She nudged a blue disc from one empty square to another, the ragged curtain of her hair slipping down across her face.

I got to my feet with my legs burning, and left the house thinking, shit, shit, shit.

I’d never expected it to be like this. For years I’d imagined how it would be if she returned; that I would do nothing but cling to her, talk to her, sit with her for hours. I had pictured my daughter, her eyes, her smile, I had longed for the shining Abigail I remembered. I’d never thought it would feel like this: like being dragged back to the worst parts of myself.

All the way along the busy road to the canal, I fingered the phone tucked in my pocket. I’d never deleted his number though I told Lillian I had, and now it turned out he’d never deleted mine. I needed him to stay away, I had to find a way to keep the past in the past. If I opened a door I had worked so hard to jam shut, how much would I be risking then? From the road bridge I pushed my way through the scrubby grass down to the towpath; it was the first of June, officially the beginning of summer, but it had been a raw, cold spring and the banks were still a muddy tangle. As I headed downstream, ducks came scattering out of the reeds, setting up a wild quacking as they skittered away, a fan of ripples spreading out behind them. The slow water helped me to draw my breath. It felt as though I hadn’t breathed since Abigail came home.

Just keep walking, I told myself, until you know what to do. Call him, don’t call him, but you have to decide. The towpath was long enough; it ran all the way to Nottingham. I knew where I’d get to though, long before that. Soon enough I could make out the figures in bright yellow jackets, the work team dotting the canal banks in this project I’d signed up for last year: the renovation of the old lock. I’d thought it would help, and in some ways it had. We’d never spoken about Abigail here; the pain, the grief. This was a world apart from everything – from past, from present, from family, from loss. Here I was Annie, plain old Annie, and not the mother of the girl who… Sometimes, I’d just needed to escape. I’d never thought I would still need to escape now. Voices carried downwind on the breeze and I could hear the ring and chock of tools. I longed to be among them and get my hands dirty with a simple task, repetitive and focused. What had started out as an excuse – a lie to Robert about needing some air – perhaps would turn out to be true.

One of the volunteers straightened up as I got near them, a boyish figure, seventeen, eighteen, looking up at me from the uneven bottom of the lock. I undid my anorak; I hadn’t needed it – no rain. ‘How is it going?’ I called. The volunteer – Cory was his name – smiled up with his face so friendly and open, looking like the kind of person who only wanted to help, the sort who would never do harm to anyone. I pulled my hands out from my pockets and zipped my phone away.

‘We’re good,’ he called back and stooped to pull another staff of rotted wood from the sides of the lock. ‘Have you come to help?’

They would have heard, all of them here, they must have, but even now they were good as their word, not mentioning anything. I nodded, blinking wind-blown strands of hair from my eyes. ‘Can I? I just need to feel useful,’ I said. Half an hour, I told myself, and then I’ll decide and go home.

‘Sure.’ His smile was doing me the world of good. ‘All right, wait here.’

He climbed up nimbly and headed to an older man across the little stone bridge. I could smell the canal water, deep and earthy, and I took in big lungfuls. ‘Martin says you can help to take down the hut bricks.’ Cory pointed to a structure that must have once been a little house. For the lock keeper? I headed across to them.

‘We’re preserving the bricks,’ said Martin, handing me a hi-vis jacket. ‘They can be recycled. It’s an easy enough job though to pull them down and stack them.’ His smile made sun rays in the corners of his eyes. Here I could pretend there was nothing but sunshine.

The bricks of the little hut were loose, the mortar around them crumbling, and Martin was right, I could pull them off with a quick sharp tug. Under my anorak, I could soon feel the sweat building and when the sun came out from behind the scudding clouds, it heated me from the outside too. With each brick I pulled, I seemed to gain courage, a belief that maybe I was stronger than I’d thought. Perhaps after all I could do this – return his call with no harm done. My thoughts, always so fast and so scrambled, fell into a slow order and I hid my face behind my hair, wiping my cheeks and nose on my sleeves, hiding my tears in the currents of the wind as I lowered the walls brick by brick.

I could only imagine how he, her father, would be feeling, knowing she was found, knowing she’d come home. He would have so many questions, ones the police could hardly answer: what exactly she looked like, how exactly she was, those myriad details that meant so much. Didn’t he have a right to that at least? Surely it need be only one short conversation, telling him what he’d want to know but no more. And what if I didn’t call and he simply turned up – emotional, demanding, volatile, high – wouldn’t that be so much worse for Abigail? Wouldn’t that reignite the worst in us all?

The volunteers were breaking for lunch; I straightened up and brushed the mortar dust from my hands. ‘I can’t stay,’ I said, handing the yellow jacket back to Cory. ‘Abigail’s waiting for me at home.’

‘See you soon?’ Martin said and I nodded, and they both hugged me to say goodbye.

Even so, I’d stayed longer than I meant to and I walked back quickly, already feeling a thin chill as my sweat dried. A few minutes from home, in a place where the muddied path narrowed and was hidden from the main road by a copse of trees, I pulled my phone from my anorak pocket. My sister’s voice was buzzing in my ears: don’t call him, Annie, don’t let him back in, but I ignored it. I wanted to call him, I realized now, it felt like a chance to set everything right. I could ring him, just once, and never tell anyone. I clicked the phone open.

Three missed calls from Robert, one text:

Come back.

Sick with guilt, I made myself run the rest of the way home.

When I got there, Robert met me at the front door, a finger to his lips.

‘What is it? Is she all right?’

‘DS McCarthy called. They’re showing it.’

‘What?’

‘On the news, now. They’ve released his photograph to the press.’

My legs were like lead as I kicked off my boots and the sleeves of my anorak tangled as I twisted my arms free. In the living room, the BBC news was on the TV, but Robert had muted the sound. He pointed a finger to the ceiling: to the twins’ and Abigail’s bedrooms. ‘I think it’s best right now if she doesn’t see.’

On the screen, there were shots of a house, a street, a car, nothing I recognized.

Wanted in connection…

Police are tracing…

Appeal for information…

The inevitable picture of her flashed up, our eight-year-old daughter frozen in time, but now the reporter was sounding another name out, and now came the shot of a man with blond hair and pale eyes.