Closing my eyes, my mind’s eye burrowed deeper into the detritus of the noticeboard, into the precious memories hidden beneath the surface.
The drawing you had done of a ballerina when you were six. That had gone down in the annals of family history, a source now of much hilarity. The ballerina doing impossible splits; her thighs weirdly lumpy where the green felt-tip pen had wobbled in inexperienced hands; her face, unintentionally, a grimace of shock; her smile more of a round ‘o’. Every time we looked at it we all laughed, your own giggles always giving permission to mine and Jacob’s. You didn’t like to take yourself too seriously.
I bit my lip, though, remembering how proud you had been when you first drew it, jumping down from your seat at the kitchen table and running over to me, holding the picture high like a streamer. I had lifted you up, so tiny, so light in my arms, and given you the biggest hug.
Please God, let you be okay. Please let us find you quickly. I can’t cope…
Four
Grief crushed my chest. I needed air. Stumbled to the back door, threw it open and dragged in lungfuls. The late January cold felt like a slap in the face, clearing me of hysteria.
I clutched the door frame, not to keep myself upright but because it was something solid in a world suddenly as unreliable as a mirage shimmering in a desert heat haze. Looking to my left, over the low fence that ran along the side of the drive, I saw movement. Police in high-vis vests strode around the village, breathless, urgent. I shifted to get a clearer view. They trampled down the four lanes our home sat on, through long grasses, going up to their ankles in muddy sections of drainage dykes.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Not even when a warm arm came around my cold shoulders.
‘Come on, duck. Melanie… Sit down. Dad and John have gone to join the search,’ said Mum.
John? I hadn’t even realised my brother had been at the house, but didn’t acknowledge Mum’s words. Couldn’t engage my brain, too intent on staring at the police, willing them to find something. Dreading in case they did.
Come on, Beth, call home. Breeze through the door with an excuse. Any excuse. I won’t be angry.
The officers called out to villagers they came across: ‘Have you seen a teenage girl on your travels? Possibly distressed?’
‘I’ll keep an eye out,’ came the repeated reply. ‘I’m joining the search now.’
‘I should get out there again, look for her,’ I decided.
Mum’s gentle touch restrained me.
‘Why don’t you stay here, eh? Don’t want Beth coming back to an empty house, do we?’ She spoke in that over-bright voice adults use on young children.
‘Has Jacob gone with Dad and John?’
‘No, love. He wanted to but the police persuaded him to stay here. You know, he’s in a bit of a state, like you… Might do more harm than good.’
How the hell was it possible to do more harm than good in this situation? But I’d no strength to argue; it took everything I had to keep myself together. Poor Jacob, being overruled by the police, though. No chance of anything stopping my dad – your Grandpa Mick – or your Uncle John; they were both so stubborn. That was where you got it from, I supposed, though I wasn’t like that at all. Too soft for my own good. As for Jacob, he was a gentle man; artistic, kind, sensitive. Stubborn, in his own way, but only on matters such as family coming first, fidelity; the things that count to a good man – the ideologies that someone should be immovable on.
How long had I been standing there? How long had you been missing? A hole had been ripped in my heart, and I couldn’t seem to breathe. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to hold myself together. Turned to speak to my mum, but she had slipped away, perhaps some time ago.
A thwump, thwump, thwump that had been so far distant I hadn’t noticed it now became impossible to ignore. Squinting in the low winter sun, I found the culprit. A helicopter crawling across the limitless sky like a blue and yellow beetle.
Where are you, Beth? Come home. Please, baby, come home.
A scream ripped through the silence – Mum, making a sound I wouldn’t have thought her capable of. I shivered, turning slowly for fear of what I might see. She walked towards me, careful as a bomb disposal expert.
‘Your dad called. They’ve found Beth.’
Five
They had found you, Beth! Thank God!
‘It’s bad. They don’t want anyone down there,’ Mum added.
It was bad; okay, I could deal with bad. I disregarded your gran’s scream from moments earlier, shoved aside the shock on her ghostly face. I concentrated on the positive – because it was all I could deal with, Beth; there was no other option. You must have changed your mind, started walking home last night after all, perhaps by a different route. Got hit by a car and injured, but you would be fine.
Unless…
Headlines ripped from newspapers flew across my mind.
‘Teenage Girl’s Rape Horror!’
‘Tortured Then Left for Dead!’
‘Drugged & Abused in Frenzied Attack!’
Anything could have happened to you. ‘It’s bad,’ Mum had said. You could be barely alive. Every bone broken. Unspeakable things done to you at knifepoint. Your beautiful skin slashed and gouged.
No! No! No!
Just a few hours earlier, everything had been fine. I’d thought you were safe at your best friend’s house, and had called Ursula to see if you fancied coming shopping with me in Wapentake.
‘Beth? She’s not here. She didn’t come over last night,’ Ursula had said.
I’d almost smiled through my first shot of fear, convinced she’d come back, laughing, at discovering you in Chloe’s room. I’d heard her calling up to her daughter, checking with her.
At the sullen ‘no’ my stomach had plummeted. I’d insisted on speaking with Chloe.
‘You didn’t see her last night?’
‘No, no, she didn’t come round last night,’ she said.
The terror had been a lump cutting off my oxygen.
‘She must have done! Where is she? What’s happened?’
Chloe started to reply, but I slammed the phone down, biting back screams of frustration. My hand shook as I dialled your mobile. It went straight to answerphone.
‘Sweetheart, call me as soon as you get this message. It’s urgent.’ I made my voice stern but calm.
Maybe I’d got the wrong friend? Maybe you hadn’t said you’d be staying with Chloe. No, that made no sense; you and I had walked virtually up to her front door. Still, I called your other pals, but no one knew anything. Repeat-dialled your mobile, but it never rang out.
Even as my head whirled in panic, I tried to convince myself I was overreacting.
Snatching up my mobile, I’d run from the house. You had disappeared on Holders Lane, on your way to your best friend’s house, so that was the obvious place to start looking for you. That’s when I’d called your dad. That’s when this nightmare had begun.