Ever since, that saying had stuck. Hearing her mum use it now, Beth wanted to call a halt to her plan. To throw her arms around her and confess everything. She wanted to go home. She wanted to curl up and watch telly with Mum and Dad, while Wiggins did sneaky trumps that they all tried to blame on each other, laughing, even though they knew it was the dog. She wanted to tell her mum she’d love her forever and ever and ever, to bits and whole again.
Instead, she grinned cheekily, turned and skipped away like a little girl. Taking the mickey was easier than trying to articulate all of those feelings.
The wind plucked at her ponytail as she flew from sparse light pool to light pool between lamp posts until they ran out completely. The darkness swallowed her. Ahead she could feel her fate waiting for her and she rushed towards it eagerly. Tonight was going to be a big night.
Two
MELANIE
SATURDAY 23 JANUARY
The hysteria I had been trying to keep at bay bubbled up again as his name came up on my mobile phone. I pressed dial. The words needing to be said crammed into my mouth, clogging it like dry crackers, but I didn’t stop running. Eyes darting everywhere, but seeing nothing.
Ringing. Ringing. Come on!
‘Hello?’
‘Jacob, she’s gone. She’s gone!’ My voice quivered and cracked, face crumpling. ‘What if someone’s got her? What if she’s hurt? Maybe she’s run away?’
‘Calm down.’ Your father sounded firm and certain, Beth. It was exactly what I needed. ‘What’s happened?’
‘No one knows where Beth is. She never arrived at Chloe’s house last night. I only found out just now, when I called to see when she’d be home. Her mobile is switched off…’
‘Don’t panic, it’s going to be okay. I’ll come home; we’ll look together. Just breathe.’
Calm. It’s going to be okay. Breathe.
Hearing it said out loud, I believed it. I believed that you weren’t really missing, Beth. That you would soon be home, with some silly excuse as to why you hadn’t been where you had said you would be and your phone was switched off.
Yet even while telling myself that, I hadn’t stopped running. My chest still felt as if it would burst.
‘I’m coming to the house now. Stay where you are,’ said Jacob.
The line went dead.
I should have turned back to meet him at home, but knew he would be twenty minutes or so, and panic urged my legs on. There was nothing to be calm about.
My little girl was missing. My baby. My world.
I shouldn’t have let you make your own way to your friend’s house. But you are thirteen, Beth; old enough to be trusted. Aren’t you? And Fenmere is a village where nothing ever happens. The most exciting thing to have occurred recently was when neighbours Bob Thornby and Phyllis Blakecroft fell out over Bob’s untrimmed garden hedge narrowing Phyllis’s driveway. Do you remember the hoo-ha over that?
So again, I repeated Jacob’s words silently… Calm down. It’s going to be okay.
I looked at my watch. Noon. No one had seen you since I’d dropped you off at the bottom of Holders Lane; Chloe’s house is at the top. That was at 7 p.m., seventeen hours ago.
Seventeen hours! What had happened between that wave goodbye and Chloe’s front door?
Anything. Anything could have happened in that time.
I cursed myself; I should never have let you out of my sight. I should have insisted on delivering you right to the front door. But you had begged to be allowed to walk alone.
‘I’m a teenager now,’ you had insisted. ‘I’m not a baby.’
Not stroppy. You had been pleading. The breeze blowing across the fields of cabbages had plucked at your hair, creating a halo that made you look younger than you were. Still, I had relented because, despite my urge to wrap you in cotton wool, the slow, painful process of giving my daughter responsibility had to start at some point. That had seemed as good a time as any.
Now I reached Holders Lane again, deeply regretting my decision. Chloe’s home was the lone building far off at a right-angle corner of the road. It was painted a soft shade of lilac, so stood out easily from the patchwork fields of cabbages and warm brown fallow earth topped with white frost. On either side of the lane ran large ditches, for drainage. Looking at them, a horrible idea formed in my mind.
Hands curled tight in my pockets to fight the tension roiling through my stomach, I forced myself to peer over the edge and focus my panic-blinded eyes.
Twisted limbs. My little girl’s body broken on impact by a car bonnet, then flung aside by a hit-and-run driver. So much blood.
That was what I expected to see. Instead, there was coarse grass, mud and a smear of frozen brown water.
Every step I took made my heart jolt. Maybe this would be the step when my worst fears came true. The adrenaline coursing through me screamed hurry, hurry, hurry. My mind forced me to slow down. I couldn’t risk rushing and missing you. Progress was painfully plodding.
When I finished one side, I crossed and searched the drainage ditch on the other side.
Despite my measured gait, by the time I was done I panted as if I’d run a marathon, the cold hitting the back of my throat and making me cough.
If you weren’t here, where were you, Beth?
Once again I started to run. Shouted your name, tears streaming, taking in only snapshots of houses, gardens, hedges, the playing field. The low winter sun in my eyes making everything sparkle cheerily in the frost. Soon I was back in the centre of Fenmere, where most of the village’s houses were huddled. At the main crossroads was our house, along with the church, primary school, general store, café and the most popular of the two pubs, The Poacher.
‘Melanie!’
Someone shouting my name made me whirl round. Jill Young stood in the doorway of the Picky Person’s Pop In, Fenmere’s general store. The ‘c’ had fallen from Picky some months earlier, making it close enough to ‘pikey’ that villagers had sniggered guiltily until it was rapidly fixed.
‘All right?’ asked Jill. The owner showed the economy of language that marked out true villagers from incomers. Why use twenty words when one sufficed?
‘Have you seen Beth? She’s been missing since last night.’ Saying the words again ripped something in my soul.
Jill’s mouth set. Her squat body reflected the flat fens; she was a woman of horizontal lines: frown, mouth, folded arms.
‘I’ll spread the word. Get the lads out looking.’
Relief spread through me. Jill knew everything that happened in Fenmere. Her network of informants would put MI5 to shame. A woman in her sixties, she ruled her family with a rod of iron, and still called her four forty-something sons ‘the lads’, despite some of them having families of their own.
If anyone could discover what had happened to you, it was Jill Young.
‘Thank you. You’ve got my number?’
When she nodded, I pushed off again. Chest hurting, throat burning. I was not a gym bunny, and my legs were resisting my urge to run. Gathering what little breath was left, I stood in the middle of the village and screamed your name.
Curtains twitched. People appeared in doorways, then gravitated towards me. Everyone talking, but with nothing useful to say.