I shudder. Harriet’s rotting mother had been sitting in a rocking chair, nursing the skeleton of a baby. It’s a sight I’ll never forget.
‘She’d lost her mind, plagued Harriet to get the room prepared so she could nurse her baby. Then she refused to come out. One morning, Harriet found her dead in the chair and . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘Inexplicably, she just left her there.’
He also tells me that Dale Gregory has been in touch. He’d seen the newspaper reports about Jo Deacon. When she’d resigned and they cleared her filing cabinet, Dale had discovered my ‘lost’ purse buried in there.
‘Apparently he’d called at your house with flowers and to tell you about the purse because they’d all blamed you at the time, for being careless. But when you weren’t able to speak to him, he decided not to burden you with the knowledge, with everything else you were dealing with. It didn’t seem that important back then.’
I don’t know what to say. I remember Mum turning Dale away at the door during the weeks, even months, when I just felt incapable of facing anyone.
Jo must have taken the purse for the cash in there but also to make me look scatty and disorganised. As if that would count against me when Evie went missing.
But I swiftly push all thoughts of that from my mind. I can only think about one thing, and that’s the little girl I lost, who is inside the low concrete building in front of us.
‘I know all this is hard to take in. And I know Harriet Watson left Evie unattended and allowed her to be abducted, but I just wanted you to know something – she’s the reason Evie is back with us today.’
I look at him.
‘She recognised Tara Bowen at the hospital. Said she’d seen her in a photograph in your lounge and you’d said it was your friend, Tara. But when Harriet asked, a nurse said the woman was your sister so Harriet told her she thought it was an imposter. The hospital panicked and contacted us.’
I let his words sink in.
‘Unfortunately, in the process of doing so, taking their attention off Harriet Watson. We began making inquiries as to Tara Bowen’s whereabouts and suddenly Evie is left outside a doctor’s surgery.’
The realisation that Tara had been discovered just by chance made me shiver.
‘Please thank her for me,’ I say, realising how crazy things have become that I am actually thanking Harriet Watson.
76
Present Day
Toni
She sits in a cream-painted room on a beanbag. The carpet is azure, like the sea, and her hair is brown. She is big, bigger than before, and her face has changed, though the essence of her shines through. She is assembling some kind of building with Lego bricks.
The bricks aren’t large and brightly coloured anymore. They are small and technical and the building looks like something you might see in an architect’s office.
She looks up as we enter the room and our eyes meet.
I smile and she stares back.
The psychologist, Sarah, pulls out two chairs and we sit down. I remember my conversation with Sarah, about how important it is not to rush things. Not to approach her or touch her. Everything must come from Evie. She must not feel overwhelmed.
‘It’s going to be a very long road for her,’ Sarah said before we came in here. ‘We don’t know how she’ll react or if she’s formed emotional bonds with her abductors.’
After a few minutes of silence, Sarah nods at me.
‘Hello, Evie,’ I say.
‘Hello,’ she replies.
We look at each other.
‘What are you making there? It looks complicated.’
She looks at the building and then back at me. She stands up and walks over to me, but stays a step or two back.
‘I used to dream about you, sometimes,’ she says. ‘Your hair has changed. And your eyes. Your eyes are different now.’
‘You’ve changed too, you’re even more beautiful,’ I say.
She turns without replying and walks back to the beanbag.
We sit in silence a while longer, watching Evie click together the bricks. Then she turns to me again and sighs.
‘When can we go home?’ she asks.