The press conference makes the evening news. How grave they look behind the green baize table. Amanda should have cried. Her responses are too mechanical, words learned by rote. She is staring coldly at Delia Wright and nodding in agreement with Lynn. She has no memory of doing either. Why hasn’t that section been edited out? It has nothing to do with Marcus. But it was confrontational, good entertainment, and Delia Wright has only one agenda, one blog. There it is, The Wright Path blogged large across the screen of Amanda’s laptop.
Missing Child – Who Is To Blame?
On Monday morning, Marcus Richardson was a happy-go-lucky little schoolboy. He was looking forward to spending the afternoon with his mother, the celebrity hostess of Mandy Meets.
When Amanda Bowe’s demanding work schedule meant she was unable to collect him from school as arranged, Marcus threw a tantrum, as small boys do when they are bitterly disappointed. Then, somewhere on that fateful journey from the school gates of St Bede’s to the car belonging to his aunt, Rebecca Dowling, he vanished.
At the press conference, his father, wealthy businessman, Lar Richardson, made a heartfelt appeal for his son’s safe return. The elderly father spoke movingly to the assembled media about his joy on becoming a first-time parent at the age of 60.
‘My son is my world,’ he said. ‘Please bring him safely home to us.’
This tragedy pinpoints an issue that The Wright Path has long highlighted. Today’s young mother thinks she can have it all. A demanding career, motherhood and a hectic social life. It takes a tragedy like this one for them to realise the importance of their place in the family home during their children’s formative years.
Why did Amanda Bowe disappoint her son? The tyranny of the office desk or, in her case, the television studio, was responsible. If she had kept her promise to her son, would he have felt that urge to run violently into the crowd and disappear from his aunt’s sight?
Gardaí still don’t know if he was the intended target or if this was just a random abduction. A child in the wrong place at the wrong time. A child whose mother arrived nearly an hour and a half late after being informed her son was missing.
While our deepest sympathy must go to the Richardson parents, this tragic case should allow us to pause and consider the rights of children over a dictatorial workplace that makes no concessions to women whose mothering functions are constantly challenged by this dual responsibility.
‘She has a point,’ Lar says when he finishes reading the blog. ‘You should have been with Marcus, not chasing some fucking celebrity who wasn’t even in the country.’
‘That’s unfair—’
‘I’ll tell you what’s unfair,’ he shouts. A vein swells dangerously in his right temple. ‘It’s unfair that our son is missing. It’s unfair that you couldn’t be bothered keeping your promise to him. It’s unfair that he could be in the hands of a murderous criminal gang.’
‘You’ve spoken to Eric Walker. He’s confirmed that the Shroffs aren’t involved.’
‘How the fuck does Eric know?’ Lar pushes her away when she tries to hold him. ‘He was out of the country at the time. No one knows anything. You should have been at the school to pick Marcus up as you promised.’ He storms from the drawing-room and slams the door behind him.
Delia’s followers are quick to comment. The fundamentalist trolls castigate Amanda and insist that Marcus, if found, should be placed in foster care. The crazies believe he’s been abducted by aliens. The internet is a web that displays the calcified flies, never the spider, and such comments are signed by people with monikers like Stigmata Joan, Lily Lips, Silky Mum or, simply, Anon. All that spleen directed at her. All stirred into life by the writings of another. This thread will run for a few more hours, another day at most, then the conversation will move on to something else. But it is there, that shift against Amanda, implicit in those responses that insist a mother’s first responsibility is to hold her son’s hand and guide him safely through the throng.
Apples on the ground. Some are ripe and some have holes with worms living inside them. Some apples are up high on the trees. Marcus can see them when he looks really hard. First one, then another and another. Red like the apple in the Snow White book. His mammy and daddy are in a Big Apple where houses are made with glass and look like Lego. Not like the rainbow rooms in Plinkertown Hall.
He does lessons and songs in the How-To-Do Room. He can sing ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ all on his own now. He plays with magnets in the Wow-Wagon and hears the sea roaring in shells and examines the spiderwebs Super sticks on paper. They’re real webs, not like the internet web. All the knowledge in the world is there, Daddy says when he’s looking at his phone. And Mammy too, in case she misses any of the knowledge on Facebook.
Super plays DVDs of Plinkertown Hall when it used to be real, not cartoons. Marcus had cried when Plinkertown Hall disappeared. One day it was there and then, like magic, it vanished. Daddy had said he must dry his tears. The plinks were going global. Super has a globe in the How-To-Do Room. He shows Marcus Ireland on it, all squiggly and green, and lots of other places but, no matter how hard Marcus stares, he can’t find Plinkertown Hall anywhere on it.
Chapter Fifty-One
No breaking story on the news tonight. No small body has been found on wasteland or dragged from a riverbed. No small boy has been spotted leaving the country, although the police must be dealing with numerous claims of sightings. Marcus Richardson doesn’t have any defining feature that would separate him from other black-haired, blue-eyed four-year-olds with a belief in the power of magic.
He watches the press conference on the evening news. Haggard and desperate, Lar Richardson cuts a more sympathetic figure than his wife, who casts her gaze about as if unable to comprehend why she is not seated on the other side of the table with her peers.
The media are edging towards the Shroff connection. Capital Eye, as always, will be first off the block. The others will follow. The links are obvious. Amanda Bowe has reinvented herself as a chat show presenter but the reputation she gained as a crime reporter has not been forgotten. Killer Shroff claimed she’d stuck her knife, or, literally speaking, her pen into his family with the ‘crap’ she wrote about the family business. He’d heard other stories from the prisoners about her ruthlessness when he was in prison. Blame was the name of the game there. Like a blight, it consumed them, cast them down, roused them to a frenzy, controlled them.
The boy’s bouts of homesickness have been easily assuaged so far. Recordings of Mandy Meets are surely a poor substitute for his mother’s arms but he seems content to watch them and be satisfied. The weather, being surprisingly mild for late October, allows a certain amount of time outdoors but he is like quicksilver, difficult to contain in a constrained environment. Amusing him is bound to become more demanding. So far, he’s still enjoying all that Plinkertown Hall has to offer. Each day has a purpose. One that will lead them to the ultimate goal.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Day Four
Missing Boy Link to Notorious Criminal Gang?
Barbara Nelson