Little White Lies Read online

  Dad checked his watch. ‘You’re going straight there?’ he said, keen as always to know every detail. ‘To this place – this victim suite?’ It was barely a quarter past nine.

  ‘We have to, Fraser,’ said Auntie Anne. ‘If they brought her and we weren’t there!’ Another car came growling up the street. ‘There was a man,’ she continued. ‘A man had her all this time.’

  For a moment the approaching headlights blinded me. I had to cover my eyes from the glare. A man? But they’d got her away from him now. They were driving her home, she was perfectly safe now.

  ‘What else do you know?’ said Dad. ‘What else did they tell you?’ Even with the twins there, it was all coming out.

  Auntie Anne turned back to the car, digging in the footwell of the passenger seat. ‘Only to bring something,’ she said. ‘Something she might know, that we could talk about. Something she would remember.’

  She held out a slim packet, the kind you rarely saw these days. Inside, a handful of photographs.

  ‘Daddy, my book!’ Laurie was still rummaging in his bag, but nobody seemed to be paying attention.

  As my aunt lifted the flap, the glossy prints almost slipped from her grasp. ‘We chose the best ones,’ she said. ‘The happiest ones.’

  ‘Daddy!’ Laurie’s small voice was shrill. He was getting upset that no one was listening. ‘I haven’t got it.’

  My aunt held the pictures out to show us, but it was too dark to see properly and the streetlights made everything look orange.

  ‘This too.’ My aunt drew something else from the car, something small and soft and blue. My heart did a tuck jump. Of course. I recognized it at once – Abigail’s flopsy. With it, another swarm of memories came: us running races neck and neck, every grazed knee she ever had. Running, playing, sleeping like reflections of each other. Dad was always amazed at how vivid my memories were and I’d tell him, because there was nothing that came after, because for me there’s been nothing between then and now.

  ‘We kept him,’ my aunt said. But of course, I thought. What else would you have done?

  ‘Daddy,’ said Laurie, ‘the one you were reading me—’ We were all so preoccupied and he was so little, unable to understand the enormity of this.

  The little blue stuffed rabbit looked so small in my aunt’s hands, smaller than I remembered as I reached out to touch it. Auntie Anne wrapped her hands around mine, pressing the soft toy between us. ‘Jess – do you have something, anything else we could take with us? I think the more we can take, the better.’

  I stared at her. Better for what? We were all here, Abigail’s family, ready and waiting. Why would she need any more than that?

  ‘Daddy! I’ve forgotten our book!’ Laurie’s words seemed to get swallowed up in the rain.

  Now Uncle Robert came round the bonnet of the car. Dad met him with a kind hand on his shoulder. ‘Thanks, Fraser,’ my uncle said. Auntie Anne was still looking at me, her question hanging and the thrum of the car engine was going on and on. ‘Jess,’ she said again, ‘can’t you think of anything?’

  The fur of the rabbit suddenly made me feel shivery, like someone was running a finger up the back of my neck. Mum was standing, watching us all.

  And then Laurie’s hand slipped on the strap of his backpack and all the contents went tumbling to the pavement.

  ‘Laurie,’ moaned Sam, ‘look what you’ve done!’

  Mum reached out, too late to catch the clothes as they fell. The pavement was wet, everything was getting soaked. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Dad, ‘it’s fine, it’s fine.’ Both my cousins looked so desperate. But Uncle Robert smiled, a hero’s smile, and crouched to scoop up the pyjamas, the toothbrush, the little pair of socks. ‘It’s all right, Laurie, we can read it tomorrow.’ Mum helped him slide it all back into the bag. He lifted Laurie off the ground, then Sam too in his strong arms. ‘It’s all right. Everything’s all right. Be good, boys, and I promise we’ll see you very soon.’

  My aunt was still looking at me. I still had the flopsy in my hand.

  ‘Anne, love,’ said my uncle, ‘we have to go.’

  She nodded but she still didn’t move. Mum reached out to the twins – ‘Come on, come inside’ – and now Uncle Robert was re-opening the car door. Dad touched my elbow. ‘All right, Jess. Come inside.’

  I pressed the flopsy back into my aunt’s hands. ‘You don’t need any more things,’ I told her. ‘You’ll be there. She’ll have you.’

  It should have been enough. She should have known it was enough. Instead my aunt looked past me, her eyes searching out Mum’s face in the dark. ‘But Lillian, what do I say to her? What on earth am I supposed to say?’

  Chapter 3

  Monday 27th May:

  Day 1

  ANNE

  In a puffy chair with a heart-shaped tea stain on the arm, my hands shaking, I tried to study the printed pages the detective had given us, one for me, one for Robert: Reunification. Remain calm and speak in a soothing voice. Remain calm, remain calm, but I kept thinking we should never have come so early because now we’d spent nearly an hour in this claustrophobic suite with a detective who put my whole being on edge, and for every minute on the clock that we sat here, I felt the past crawl one step closer and my anxiety rise yet another inch.

  ‘She’s already been interviewed and had a medical assessment,’ the detective was saying, ‘so you’ll be able to take her straight home.’ He was young and neat, had a long, oval face: DS McCarthy, Lincolnshire Police, brand new to the case and assigned at the request of the team down in London. It was completely irrational of me not to like him; there was nothing wrong with the way he looked, with how he spoke or anything he said, and all the officers before had been so kind and understanding, going to the ends of the earth to help us, so why should it be any different with him? And yet every time his grey eyes gazed at me without flickering, all I could think was, you don’t trust what anyone before might have said.

  ‘Will that be all right?’ The grey eyes came to rest on me. ‘We’ve assumed you’re ready for that?’

  I forced myself to hold my gaze steady and not lose my courage. I’d done my best to make the house look perfect, prepared her room and put framed pictures of her everywhere, but now I thought, what does it matter how neat the couch cushions are or how her room looks and whether or not I’ve hoovered the stairs? If a bomb is about to go off, what good will any of that do?

  ‘Yes,’ said Robert. The clock on the wall read twenty past ten. ‘But the medical assessment – do you know if she’s all right?’

  The detective reordered the notes in his lap, as though all the answers about Abigail were in there. I pressed my wrists against the rough chair arms. I didn’t want him to talk about my daughter. I wanted to tell him myself: she’s mine and she’s perfect, and I’ve loved her from even before she was born and I’ve loved her exactly like that ever since.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Overall, physically, she’s okay.’

  Physically. But what about all the other ways to be hurt? The typed words on my sheet ran on: Follow the child’s lead. Don’t assume s/he wishes to be touched straight away. The page detailed nothing about what a child might say, what accusations they might blurt out.

  I made myself look back at the detective. ‘But what about the man? Where is he?’ It sounded as though I was accusing him, but it was only because his grey eyes kept fixing on me, or on Robert, as though he was peering into every corner of our lives. I thought again, you don’t know how I feel about my daughter and you can’t judge the mistakes I’ve made. I didn’t say it though, I just squeezed the flopsy in my lap.

  Robert echoed me. ‘Do you know where he is?’

  The clock on the wall ticked: twenty-five past ten. DS McCarthy shook his head. ‘We’re looking, but we haven’t found him yet.’ A car crunched on the wet gravel outside. ‘Now,’ said the detective, ‘they’re here.’

  When the door of the suite opened, we all stood up. The photographs went sl
iding from my lap and I didn’t even try to pick them up. I was still holding her flopsy though – I had that at least. I drew on all my strength to stand there and just keep holding it out to her so she would know it was us and that we loved her – to stand there and not to burst into tears. There were so many phrases Robert and I had rehearsed, but overrunning all of these was the avalanche of words I was suddenly desperate to say, words I’d been living with all these years, wondering if I’d ever have the opportunity to say them. Finally, here and now, was my chance – before she could possibly say anything herself, what if I could put right what had happened, make it okay, and if I could do that, then nothing else would matter but that she was home now, rescued and safe and everything else would be forgiven.

  They came together down the long aisle of the room. The police officer escorting her was pretty and graceful and had such a kindly face, and then next to her: my daughter. Robert reached for my hand, and I knew he was also shocked at the sight of her because, my God, she looked so different. All these years I’d pictured her the way I’d remembered: light and lithe as a ballerina, her golden skin, her rosy mouth, her plaited hair the loveliest blonde. Happy, shining, brimming with love – that was the version of her I remembered. Instead now her hair was dull and ragged and there was a pudgy thickness to her shoulders and thighs. Her face was so pale that all her freckles had gone – our family trademark completely disappeared. Now it was such a different Abigail I saw, like a side of her that I had pushed away or forgotten, or like a different person entirely.

  Yet all of those physical changes I could have accepted, overlooked and not minded; it was what happened next that threw everything off, tearing up my script and all my good, brave intentions. The escorting officer didn’t even touch her – she would have known better than that – the kind hand was only there to usher her forwards, but Abigail wrenched her arm from that kindness with a movement so brutal that even Robert flinched.

  And with it, every word in my throat dried up.

  They stopped in front of us. ‘It’s all right,’ the female officer said, but then she seemed to fade into the background, along with all the others in the room – DS McCarthy and the blurred figure of some appropriate adult – and we were there alone, the three of us, a triangle of the most complicated love.

  Abigail hitched the trousers she was wearing – dark purple jeans I had never imagined for her. I was so aware of Robert beside me and the fact that he wasn’t holding my hand any more.

  When she opened her pale, chapped lips it felt as though my whole world stood still and I thought to myself: here is where it all falls apart. Here is where the tidal wave comes, the force I never knew how to deal with and that I never managed to outrun.

  With her free hand, she reached out and took the flopsy, almost idly, from my hand.

  ‘So I’m going home with you now?’

  The words were so innocuous, so devoid of emotion, so exactly the opposite of what I’d been expecting. It was as though a vacuum opened up in the room, sucking out everything I’d been bracing myself against and it left me frozen, ears ringing, completely lost as to what came next. It was only when DS McCarthy stepped forwards that I saw the aching mistake I had made:

  That was the moment – the exact moment – when I should have hugged her.

  She sat in the front seat of the car and we made sure the heater was on so she wouldn’t get cold. All the way home, my heart scrabbled like a rabbit trying to escape its hutch.

  ‘Are we going to the same house?’ Abigail strained against the seatbelt, craning to see every road and turn-off we passed. In the wing mirror I glimpsed fragments of her face: her mouth, the discolouration around all of her teeth, and I thought, what on earth has done that? Later I discovered it was the cigarettes he’d given her, the ones she’d grown addicted to.

  Robert nodded. ‘The very same.’

  She continued to crane, as though she couldn’t believe him, and I thought, does she still not understand she’s come home? At our front door, in the rain, I fumbled the lock and inside it felt as though we all tangled in the hallway, not enough space for us all. She put a white hand on the wall to steady herself, and stared up the stairs and through the doorways as though she feared something would leap out at her. I was so glad when we finally brought her into the clean living room, with the familiar coffee table and TV and a couch that we might sit her down on.

  She stood in the middle of the room, her hands at her sides in tight little fists. ‘Where are Sam and Laurie?’ she asked. ‘The twins?’ So she remembered her brothers, even though they’d been so tiny when she last saw them, no more than babies. But she asked as though we were playing a trick on her, bringing her into this house without them.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Robert said. ‘They’re with Auntie Lillian and Uncle Fraser.’ He smiled. ‘They’re seven now, did you know?’

  She didn’t answer and I jumped to fill the silence, silting up the room with words: ‘Are you hungry? Do you want something to drink? Tea or juice or a biscuit?’ Anything to make this more normal, because that’s all I ever wanted for us, to have her home, to start again, to be the happy family we always should have been.

  She sat down with a jerk on the couch and ran her hands over the soft leather as though it confirmed something to her: perhaps that this was really her home. ‘This furniture is the same.’ Her feet jutted out onto the rug and I could take in her shoes as well now: plain white trainers, like old-fashioned plimsolls. She was pushing her heels into the carpet. A few inches from her foot was a crushed rose petal I’d missed and the water stain still shadowed the hearth. Anything could still happen, hadn’t I seen that? My heart was beating so quickly it hurt.

  Robert sat down carefully in the armchair nearby, as though trying not to startle a wild, skittish creature. His gentleness had always steadied her, but who knew if it would still be like that now? ‘Abigail? Is there anything at all we can get you?’

  She sat there, her eyes seeking mine and her very presence demanded so much of me, her mother, a million words I should have been able to say; the little flopsy was slipping from her grasp but I felt freeze-framed, unable to move, unable to reach out and do anything to correct it. Then in a strange slow motion, Abigail slumped backwards into the cushions, her rough hair rubbing up against the leather. Her eyes were closing like a baby’s, her head tilting, her voice already muffled with sleep.

  ‘I don’t need anything,’ she said. ‘Thank you. I’m just very, very tired.’

  We found her one of Robert’s old T-shirts and a clean pair of my leggings; we didn’t have anything else for her yet. She got changed in her bedroom, behind the closed door, then crawled straight into bed without even pausing to brush her teeth. When we knocked gently, only minutes later, she was already asleep. She was gone.

  Shortly before midnight, Robert left to fetch the twins and I went into our chilly bathroom and counted long breaths to slow my skipping heartbeats. When I had a hold of myself, I wiped my eyes, blew my nose and went back into her room.

  I had promised Robert I wouldn’t wake her and he needn’t have worried; she was in a deep sleep, her breathing slow and steady. The cave of her bedroom was musty from all the books and toys we’d brought down from the loft; the dust we’d disturbed was scratchy in my throat. I questioned suddenly if we’d done the right thing, putting her room back like this. I had always been like that, so different from Lillian: making choices and then never being sure; and if there was ever a time I trusted my own judgement, since Abigail went missing, I hadn’t seemed to be able to at all. In the soft light that followed me in from the landing, I moved aside the tangle of clothes she’d left on the low chair at the foot of the bed. I could make out the purple jeans, underwear, the plain blue acrylic jumper. Careful not to make a sound, I sat down.

  In the quiet and dark, it felt so much easier. Asleep, she looked so gentle, so peaceful: the sweet, lovable Abigail I remembered. I’d been so afraid of what she might blurt out,
but in the end there’d been nothing. Could I tell myself then that she’d simply forgotten? Should I make myself try and forget then too? I laid a hand on the bottom of the duvet, my fingertips finding the smooth buttons a hand-span from her feet. My daughter had found her way back to us, to a happy home, a happy family, and Lillian’s advice years ago made more sense now than ever: if she had forgotten, why confront her with it now, and if the three of us made sure to say nothing, couldn’t it be like it never even happened? Abigail stirred beneath the freshly washed sheets and on the pillow the little flopsy slipped sideways again, its long ears tilting over the edge of the bed. Abigail needed us, her family, to be strong for her – no doubts, no questions. Speaking about it could only risk ruining everything. Better to leave it then, bury it, unmentioned; better for everybody that way.

  On the night-stand, Abigail’s little clock glowed as the minute hand stepped gently over the hour: one day over and a new one begun. Still without waking her, I settled the little toy back in beside her, smoothed the blankets and stood up.

  Chapter 4

  Wednesday 29th May:

  Day 3

  JESS

  I had to wait two whole days before I was allowed to see her. Two whole days. I badgered Mum all round the house, but all she could say was, it’s complicated, like a bad status update. It maddened me the way Mum’s rules were so rigid, the way her opinions were always right. Because what could be simpler than Abigail and me? Ever since we were tiny it had been that way.

  I roamed upstairs, downstairs, hardly knowing what to do with myself. I couldn’t even get hold of Lena – out of reach on a last-minute half-term holiday with her mum, a family package with her mum’s new partner too, some Mediterranean island where mobiles barely worked. Without her, without Abigail, I had to hold all my excitement like a fat balloon in my chest.