Normally he’d play tennis or go for a run, but everything we do is being monitored, recorded, and broadcast. The reporters outside are knocking on our neighbors’ doors, asking to use their bathrooms or looking for quotes. At the same time, photographers and cameramen have set up stepladders so they can shoot over our box hedge at the bay window and front door. Our house is the backdrop for hourly updates, delivered breathlessly by journalists, while the bright lights blast through our front curtains, casting shadows on the walls.
We’re trapped in here. We’re like rats in a cage, or goldfish in a bowl. Last night Jack and I lay in bed like strangers, staring at the ceiling. At one point his knee touched my thigh and I slid another few inches away from him. He uttered a gentle snore and I resented him even more.
Eventually I slept. Ben appeared in my dreams. I heard him crying and my milk came in and I wondered how my heart could keep beating of its own accord when it felt so broken and mangled. Every four hours I have been expressing and putting the milk in the freezer, adding to my growing supply, hoping it will be necessary.
I woke to the sound of reporters laughing outside. Making jokes. I know from Jack how journalists find humor in the darkest stories because it inoculates them against tragedy or overcomes the boredom. They make jokes about Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. Nothing is off limits or “too soon.”
The TV is a constant soundtrack as I follow every bulletin, listening to the endless parade of child-care experts, doctors, hostage negotiators, and bereaved parents who are asked to comment on the investigation and how Jack and I might be feeling. Our friends are also asked to comment, ambushed as they step out of their cars or front doors. Startled by the cameras, they mouth sympathetic platitudes, adding nothing, filling airtime.
There have been dozens of unconfirmed sightings up and down the country. New mothers are complaining about being stopped by strangers in the street who peer into their prams and quiz them suspiciously.
Occasionally something new emerges. A hospital blanket was discovered in a toilet cubicle at King’s Cross station. The tartan shopping trolley turned up on a train that arrived in Edinburgh. A cleaner took it home, thinking it was abandoned, but saw the trolley mentioned on the news and handed it over to police.
“So Ben is in Scotland,” I said to Annie.
“We don’t know that.”
“But the trolley?”
“It might have been left on the train. There are seven stops between King’s Cross and Edinburgh.”
“So he could be anywhere?”
“We’re checking the CCTV footage and ticket purchases from those stations.”
I am trying to stay positive, modulating my voice to sound low and reasonable whenever I talk to the police, but inside I’m yelling, Just find him, for God’s sake!
In the meantime, the cards and letters keep arriving. The postman came twice today, delivering three sacks each time. Annie has suggested she read everything first in case one of the messages is from the kidnapper, but I think she’s trying to protect us from the trolls. Already there are conspiracy theories appearing on the Internet. Someone has suggested the kidnapping is a hoax to raise Jack’s profile. Others say that an organized crime syndicate was behind the abduction, trafficking white children to slave traders in the Middle East. I shouldn’t read the crazies. My imagination has enough material.
Annie suggests we go stay with my parents.
“You said the kidnapper might try to make contact?”
“We could put a transfer on your numbers.”
“What if they try to bring Ben home?”
Annie doesn’t answer, but I know she thinks I’m clutching at straws. I don’t care. I’m allowed to be irrational or insanely optimistic. What I refuse to do is lose hope.
Lucy has gone to school today, but Lachlan is staying home because I need the distraction. Neither of them has mentioned Baby Ben since yesterday. I don’t think they’re unmoved, or uncaring. That’s the difference between children and adults—children don’t put as much energy into being sad.
I have my laptop open on the kitchen bench and have been searching the Internet for other stories of missing children. When Madeleine McCann disappeared, the circus ran for months and then years. Jack gets angry when I mention facts like this. “It’s not the same,” he says. “We’re going to find Ben.”
Right now he’s upstairs, sitting in an airless study, watching football or playing computer solitaire. Or maybe he’s also searching the Internet, looking for solace or reassurance or a clue.
“Dr. Haven wants to come over,” says Annie, cupping her mobile phone in her hands. “He’s finished the psychological profile.”
“When?”
“He can be here in fifteen minutes.”
“OK,” I say, desperate for any news. It’s not boredom I feel so much as ineffectiveness. I want to be doing something useful or positive that might make a difference.
Annie is brushing her hair and applying lip gloss in the hallway mirror. I wonder if it has anything to do with Cyrus Haven.
“How well do you know him?” I ask.
“Who?”
“Dr. Haven.”
“Not very well.”
“Oh. I thought you might be friends.”
Annie colors slightly and I know that I’m on the right track. Either she carries a torch for Cyrus or there has been a past relationship.
“How did you meet him?” I ask.
“He interviews officers who are involved in shootings or who are injured in the line of duty.”
“Did that happen to you?”
She nods. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
Her reluctance makes me even more curious. “He’s a very interesting man, Dr. Haven. A good listener. I guess he has to be. But he also strikes me as being very sad.”
“That’s understandable,” says Annie.
“Why?”
“After what he went through.”
“What happened to him?”
“It’s not really my place.”
I open my laptop and call up Google, typing in the name Cyrus Haven.
“You won’t find anything,” says Annie.
“Why not?”
She chews the inside of her cheek. “You didn’t hear this from me, OK?”
I nod.
“Look up the name Elias Haven-Sykes.”
Dozens of links appear on-screen with dramatic shout-lines: Family Hacked to Death
Youngest Son Discovers Family Massacre
Haven-Sykes Committed to Mental Hospital
Opening some of the links, I read them in silence.
Elias Haven-Sykes, aged eighteen, used a machete to murder his parents and two younger sisters in Manchester in 1995. One member of the family survived—Cyrus Haven-Sykes, aged thirteen, who came home from football practice and discovered his brother watching TV while resting his feet on their father’s body. Their mother lay dead on the kitchen floor. His sisters had tried to barricade themselves in a bedroom, but were dragged from beneath their beds and hacked to death.
Annie has been watching me read.
“Why?” I whisper.
“Elias was a diagnosed schizophrenic. He’d been in and out of psychiatric hospitals since he was sixteen.”
“Where is he now?”
“Rampton, as far as I know. Maximum security.”
“Does Cyrus ever talk about him?”
“No.”
I close the computer, not wanting to read any more. I remember the case now, but not the names of those involved. One image in particular flashes into my mind—the photograph of a teenage boy dressed in a black suit, standing alone amid the coffins of his family. The caption called him “the loneliest boy in the world.”