Every eventuality was covered during the conference in the editor’s office. Arrival by taxi, check. Arrival by public transport, check. Back entrances, check. Timings, check. Dawn’s hiding place, check.
Dawn sat and received her orders. She was to sit in a black cab down the street from the barrister’s chambers and jump out at a signal from the reporter. Two rings on her mobile, then out.
“You’ll probably have time for only two questions, Dawn,” Tim, the chief reporter, advised. “So make them short and to the point.”
“I just want to ask ‘Where’s my daughter?’ That’s all.”
The editor and assembled journalists exchanged glances. This was going to be fantastic.
On the day, Dawn was not dressed too smartly, as instructed. “You don’t want to look like a TV reporter in the photos,” Tim had said. “You want to look like the grieving mother.” He added quickly, “Like you, Dawn.”
She was collected by the office driver and delivered to the meeting point, a café in High Holborn. Tim, two other reporters, two photographers, and a video journalist were already around a Formica table, smeared plates stacked in the middle. “All ready?” he said, trying not to show too much excitement.
“Yes, Tim. I’m ready.”
As she sat in the cab with him later, her nerve began to fail, but he kept her talking about the campaign, keeping her anger ticking over. The mobile rang twice. “We’re on, Dawn,” he said, picking up the copy of the Herald she would thrust in Taylor’s face and cracking open the door. She could see them coming down the street, Glen Taylor and Jean, his simpering wife, and she stepped clear of the cab, her legs shaking.
The street was quiet; the office staff who would eventually fill the buildings were still jammed together on the underground. She stood in the middle of the pavement and watched them get nearer, her stomach knotted, but the couple failed to notice her until they were only a hundred feet away. Jean Taylor was fussing over her husband’s briefcase, trying to stuff documents back in, when she looked up and stopped dead. “Glen,” she said loudly. “It’s her, Bella’s mother.”
Glen Taylor focused on the woman in the street. “Christ, Jean. It’s an ambush. You say nothing, no matter what she says,” he hissed, and took hold of her arm to propel her through to the doorway.
“Where is my daughter? Where’s Bella?” Dawn screamed into his face, spittle from the B landing near his mouth.
Taylor looked Dawn in the face for a fraction of a second and then was gone behind dead eyes. “Where is she, Glen?” Dawn repeated, trying to catch his arm and shake him. The cameramen had appeared and were capturing every second, circling the trio to get the best shots while the reporters barked questions, separating Jean Taylor from her husband and leaving her stranded like a stray sheep.
Dawn suddenly wheeled on Jean. “What has he done with my baby, Mrs. Taylor? What has your husband done with her?”
“He’s done nothing. He’s innocent. The court said so,” Jean screamed back, shocked into a response by the violence of the attack.
“Where’s my child?” Dawn shouted again, unable to ask anything else.
“We don’t know,” Jean yelled back. “Why did you leave your little girl alone so someone could take her? That’s what people should be asking.”
“That’s enough, Jean,” Taylor said, and pushed past the cameras, pulling her along in his wake as Tim comforted Dawn.
“She said it was my fault,” she breathed, her face ashen.
“She’s a nasty bitch, Dawn. Only she and the nutters think it’s your fault. Come on, let’s get you back to the paper for the interview.”
This is going to look great, he thought as they traveled through the traffic to West London.
Dawn stood beside one of the pillars to watch as the photographs were laid out along the whole length of the back bench so the newsroom could look and admire. “Fucking brilliant shots of Glen Taylor. That look he gave Dawn is chilling,” the picture editor said as he hawked his wares.
“We’ll put it on the front,” Perry said. “Page three, Dawn in tears and Jean Taylor shouting at her like a fishwife. Not the mousy little woman, after all. Look at the fury in that face.”
“Now, where are the words?”
“The Kidnapper and the Mother” blared out of the front page the next morning on trains, buses, and at Britain’s breakfast tables.
Tim, the chief reporter, rang to congratulate her. “Great job, Dawn. Would love to be a fly on the wall at the Taylors’ this morning.” He didn’t tell her that the editor was delirious or that the Herald’s sales were up, as was the editor’s annual bonus.
THIRTY-FOUR
The Widow
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2008
I was shaking when we got into the lawyer’s. Not sure if it was anger or nerves—bit of both probably, and even Mr. Smoothy put his arm around me. “Bloody stunt merchants,” he said to Tom Payne. “We should report their behavior to the Press Council.”
I kept replaying it in my head from the moment I realized it was her. I should’ve recognized her straightaway. I’ve seen her enough times on the telly and in court. But it’s different when you see someone in the street where you’re not expecting them to be. You don’t really look at people’s faces, I think, just their outlines. ’Course, as soon as I really looked at her, I knew it was her. Dawn Elliott. The mother. Standing there with the idiots from the Herald egging her on, accusing my Glen when he’s been found not guilty. It’s not right. It’s not fair.
I suppose it was the shock that made me shout at her like that.
Glen was angry that I told her what I thought. “It’ll just keep everyone going, Jean. She’ll feel she has to defend herself and keep giving interviews. I told you to keep quiet.”
I said I was sorry, but I wasn’t. I meant every word I said to Dawn Elliott. I’ll do a phone-in tonight and say it again. It felt good to say it out loud, in public. People should know it’s all her fault. She was responsible for our little girl and she let her get taken.
They sat me down with a hot drink in the clerk’s room while they got on with the meeting. I wasn’t in the mood for legal stuff, anyway, so I sat quietly in a corner, replaying the row in the street in my head and sort of listening to the secretaries’ chatter. Invisible again.
It took ages for the meeting to end, and then we had to discuss how we were going to get out without the press seeing us. In the end, we went out the back, down an alleyway where they put the bins and bikes. “They won’t be hanging around now, but no point taking chances,” Tom said. “It’ll be on their website by now and all over the paper tomorrow. It’ll increase the damages—just keep thinking about the money.”
Glen shook Tom’s hand, and I just sort of waved. I didn’t want the money. I wanted it to stop.
He was extra nice to me when we got in, taking my coat off and making me sit with my feet up while he put the kettle on.
It was the anniversary today. I’d marked it in my diary with a dot. A little dot that could be a slip of the pen so no one else would know if they looked.
Two years since she was taken. They’d never find her now—the people who took her must have persuaded everyone by now that she was theirs and she must have accepted them as her mum and dad. She’s little, and she probably hardly remembers her real mother. I hope she’s happy and they love her as much as I would if she were here with me.
For a moment I could see her sitting on our stairs, bumping down on her bottom and laughing. Calling for me to come and watch her. She could’ve been here if Glen had brought her home to me.
Glen hadn’t said much since we got back. He’d got his computer on his knee and closed it quickly when I went to sit next to him. “What were you looking at, love?” I asked.
“Just flicking through the sports pages,” he said, and then went to put petrol in the car.