Lies Between Us Read online

  One… two… three…

  Four… five… six…

  He counts the seconds until the policewoman answers and he explains what’s happened in dull tones.

  And then it comes. He covers his weeping eyes as his legs give way and the photo of his daughter flutters to the ground.

  John watches Detective Chief Inspector Alice Munroe gently deposit the photo in a clear bag, her gloved hands delicately touching its edges. She tells him it will be sent off and subjected to a forensic examination, as will the envelope, to see if any fingerprints or DNA (aside from their own) can be found. But he doubts it. He doubts this person would be so foolish.

  Since the DCI’s arrival and her cool, professional introduction, he has been bombarded with questions about his past. What happened to him in 1992? What does he remember? Does he have any idea who this person is? Has anyone ever expressed any ill feeling towards him? What was his childhood like? Who are his parents? Who were his close friends growing up? Has he ever had any enemies?

  He answers all their questions patiently, a sickness in his stomach threatening to overpower him. Jules sits beside him during his interrogation, rubbing her bump with her left hand, her right entwined in John’s. A silent support.

  DCI Alice Munroe explains what will happen in the following days and the severity of their situation. But despite trying to digest every word, the flurry of useless sentences pass over his head. In one ear and out the other. Things like this don’t happen. Not to him. His family. This kind of thing belongs on the television, on the radio, in the newspaper. Local girl missing. Police suspect kidnapping. John blanches at that word. Kidnapping. His daughter. His sweet, kind, funny little girl. Gone. Taken. He rubs his neck, a tick that has, despite his mother’s incessant correction, followed him doggedly into his thirties. His neck turns red and blotchy as he rubs it, working the tension and panic through his fingers.

  Munroe flicks her eyes to his hands, taking note. He doubts anything goes unnoticed. She runs her nail along the inside of her little finger – an exercise to help her concentrate perhaps – legs crossed, back straight, expression professionally cool. As if this sort of thing happens every day. It probably does, he supposes. For her. In his small lounge, on the tired, sagging sofa, two realities converge. One that walks on the periphery of loss and fear and devastation constantly; the other residing firmly in what was, until a few days ago, perfectly normal. Good. Happy. But any semblance of normal life has been washed away. Their lives are stripped bare now.

  John looks at Munroe and wonders how she bears this every day. He can’t tell if she has children but, judging from the pale skin peeping out from underneath her wedding band, he guesses she has been married for many years. He silently asks her questions in his mind. Do you have children? Do you have a daughter? How would you feel if she had been taken? What if it was your fault?

  He pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut to quell any more tears. The questions have penetrated and sieved through nearly every inch of his past. All his memories have been invaded and examined. Albums from his childhood, given to him by his parents, have been bagged and taken away; any letters, written or received, have met a similar fate. They have asked him who his friends are. For his agent’s and publisher’s details. If he has ever been involved in any fights, brushes with the law. No, he tells them. No, no, no. The longer the DCI and her colleagues sit in his lounge, the more personal the questions become. When did he and Jules meet? When were they married? Were there ever any jealous girlfriends? Boyfriends? Did he ever notice anyone watching him, studying him? Again, he answers in the negative. They seem surprised at how cooperative he is, and he wonders if they usually have to tease answers out of people, soothe their grief and trick them to get at the truth. But everything he remembers, he offers them. Every morsel of his past, he gives them to study. They are his only hope. Bonnie’s only hope.

  ‘You’ll be provided with an FLO – Family Liaison Officer – to help in any way, support you, talk through the situation, and explain where we are with the investigation. But first, as there’s a suggestion you and your wife might be in danger, we’d like to relocate you.’ She looks at them both, studying their reactions.

  They nod but neither one of them cares. John wraps his arm round Jules, wondering for the umpteenth time why anyone would target them, target Bonnie. ‘Because of you,’ a small voice in his mind whispers. ‘Because of you.’ But why? He’d had a normal childhood. Been a good boy. Done his chores, spent time with his friends, done well in school. Said please and thank you. Hadn’t hurt or upset anyone. He’d never wanted to. He isn’t a bad person. Or perhaps he is… His daughter is a ‘hostage’ – at least that’s what the police are calling her. His little girl. Alone. Frightened. And he is helpless. Useless. It is his own fault.

  Jules squeezes his hand. Suddenly he is overwhelmed by the urge to hold her. When Munroe and her colleagues eventually leave, they climb the staircase, each step a hardship, each breath a toil, to their daughter’s room. There isn’t enough space for them to lie side by side on Bonnie’s small bed so John leans back on the headrest and holds Jules to his chest, and she cradles their unborn baby. They count the stars they helped Bonnie glue to the ceiling over a month ago and bring forth her smiling face and the sound of her laughter as they danced beneath them.

  Wednesday 2 December, 2015

  John gazes at the photographs spread across the wall. Left to right, past to present, they follow Bonnie’s life. From the day she was born, bundled up in a pink blanket in Jules’s arms, to last week, when she lost her first tooth; in the picture she holds it proudly up to the camera, excitement written across her face. After the picture was taken she’d run to his study and deposited the tooth safely in the tin she kept under his desk. Throughout the day, she’d crept back to check her trophy was still there. He’d tried to tell her the fairy only came at night when she was asleep but curiosity consistently won out. The next day, she’d skipped around the house with her pound coin clutched tightly in her fist, showing them, then, moments later, showing them again.

  He sits at his desk now and wonders why his daughter has been taken from them. Is it retribution for some wrongdoing? Is it a past mistake come back to haunt him? Is he being made to repent? Useless thoughts buzz around his head. Peering underneath his desk, he looks at the debris of a life Bonnie built one morning when she came down from her bedroom. A pile of blankets folded neatly where his feet are supposed to go (since she’d made the move into his study, he’d sat slightly sideways or with the laptop perched on his knee), Barbie dolls scattered across it, stuffed bears and boxes of puzzles stacked tidily to the side. Along with the tin she kept for ‘special treasures’ are a notebook, pencil case, the Nintendo DS she only played with when she was bored, and a small child’s toy designed to look like a laptop. When he wrote longhand, she copied him, pencil finding its way to her mouth, eyes thoughtfully rolled up to the ceiling. When he typed out his novels on the laptop, she settled her pink one on her lap and typed out hers. The most recent being about a mole having a tea party with his friends.

  John looks at her ‘cosy corner’, as he and Jules call it, leaning forward and snatching the tin from its perch. It was a sample tin they’d got when painting her room over two years ago. She’d insisted on keeping it, despite the dried paint running down the edges. He pops the lid off and fishes out its contents: three pebbles with heart-shaped marks on them, two neatly folded notes he’d given her that simply read ‘I love you’, and the necklace he and Jules presented to her on her fifth birthday. He runs his finger over the small pendant, which reads ‘Protagonist’. She had been overjoyed when she unwrapped it. But unlike him at her age, she’d done so with care, folding, easing off the strips of tape, pulling out the black box with velvet trimming and slowly peering inside, as if each moment was one to savour.

  He rips a sheet of paper from his notebook and carefully writes ‘I love you’ in his neatest handwriting, popping
it in the tin for when she returns.

  ‘We’re going to find her. We’re going to find her.’ He repeats the mantra over and over, as he had to Jules last night before they eventually slipped away from visions of her torture to the murky nightmares of it instead. He repeats it until his mouth grows dry and his voice begins to catch in his throat.

  A blanket, pencils, a sheaf of paper… Bonnie’s was a world you’d never want to leave. Simple and easy. They’d spent hours in his study together. Sometimes they wrote to music, usually just to silence. When she was bursting with energy, he abandoned his laptop screen to dance round the room with her. When she was exhausted and fell asleep curled up under his desk, he gently pulled her onto his lap, a tiny pool of dribble marking his shirt. If she was upset, he read a suitable chapter from his novel and gradually her tears dried. And if that didn’t work, he folded her in his arms and span them round on his chair until they were both laughing.

  John turns and smiles at Jules as she walks into the room, carrying two plates of sandwiches. Her red cheeks are marred by tracks of pale skin marching down her face, eyes swollen and rimmed with black shadows. She puts the plates on the desk and sits on his lap, head resting in the exact same place Bonnie’s had. He wraps his arms around her waist and kisses her. The hours will pass with them still in this position, the lethargy of shock and fear at this new tide of events making them feel as if they have been dunked in clay and left to slowly dry in the sun.

  John swivels the chair round so they can look at the photos. Bonnie’s Wall, he calls it. His eyes are drawn to a photo off to the side. Bonnie is being cradled in Don’s arms, thumb stuck between her lips, face flushed from their day at the zoo. Don, wearing a Donald Duck cap, smiles tenderly down at her, eyes glued to her small face. The picture was taken two years ago, after John’s novel had won an award for crime and thriller novel of the year. And now he wishes he’d never taken it, never put it on the wall, because it brings his thoughts full circle to his and Jules’s failure, to the day Bonnie dropped out of their lives. She had been missing four days before they received that photo through the letterbox.

  He and Jules were arguing in the kitchen at the time. He’d just received a text from his uncle about visiting in a few weeks. Jules was adamant he shouldn’t come, shouting that he was a creep. John was stuck in the middle – wedged would be a better word – between his wife and his uncle, two halves of his family. He could faintly remember hearing Bonnie giggle in the other room over something Don said.

  ‘Daddy, Mummy, Uncle Duck’s on the telly! He’s on the telly!’ She squealed in excitement.

  And then Don’s voice. ‘Guys, I’m famous. I’m famous—’ He was cut off when Bonnie laughed – John assumed because Don tickled her. ‘Quack! Quuuaaack!’ Don, again, his usual sunny self, a sudden contrast to his and Jules’s bleak dispute. ‘Quaaaack!’ They’d been watching a Donald Duck cartoon before he and Jules left for the kitchen. John couldn’t remember when Bonnie had decided to call Don after her favourite character, his brain foggy with thoughts of what came next.

  Don wandered into the kitchen, smile drooping as he took in their expressions. ‘Oh, guys, come on! Bon’s waddling round like a duck in there, you know! It’s hilarious!’ He patted John on the back and made his way to the bathroom. John barely even noticed him, frustrated as he was with Jules. When they returned to the lounge, moments later, with a plate of biscuits, the television was playing for an empty room. John called up the stairs and Jules rushed out to the garden. They screamed and cried her name but the voice they so hoped to hear didn’t call back.

  ‘What are you doing? She’s in the lounge!’ Don walked up to them, expression puzzled, hands spread in a question.

  ‘She’s gone! She’s gone!’ Jules cupped her face, eyes shooting back and forth across the room as if Bonnie was about to reappear suddenly and shout, ‘Here I am! I’m good at hide and seek, aren’t I, Mummy?’

  Don wrapped a comforting arm around Jules. ‘John, I’ll take the car and have a scout round; you go on foot in case I miss her. Jules, go and ask the neighbours if they’ve seen her. She’s only been gone a few minutes, she can’t be far away!’

  They jumped into action as if it was something they’d rehearsed. John rushed out of the door and down the street, making laps around their house, inching further away each time, scanning the area for her. For some reason, it was her shoes he kept hoping he’d see. Her sparkly red Dorothy shoes. They were getting too small for her but she insisted on wearing them, polishing them with a cloth twice a day, proud of the way they shone. Those shoes were lodged in his mind. Sometimes he thought he saw them, but when he looked back they weren’t there. He spotted Don twice on his frantic laps but not Bonnie, never Bonnie.

  They assumed at first that she had run away, but ‘Bonnie wouldn’t do that!’ they told themselves and then repeated it to the police, to be met with looks of nonchalance and boredom. With nothing else to go on, they began to think she’d just wanted a walk and got lost. The police trawled the streets and neighbourhood. They checked the little village shop, the play area, rechecked where John had already looked. But it was all for nothing. She hadn’t run away or got lost. She’d been taken.

  John doesn’t know how. It is one of the questions that bombard him; even when he is asleep it finds a way to dig its fingers into his subconscious and prey on his ever-befuddled mind. How was she taken? They were only in the kitchen for a few moments. Don was only in the bathroom for a few moments. Did this person lure her outside and kidnap her? Did he walk into the house they were supposed to be safe in and simply take her hand and walk right back out again? No, he couldn’t have – Bonnie knew not to go with strangers. She knew the world was a scary place. She knew, she knew, she knew. But then, he asks himself, would he have heard her talk, shout? Don wouldn’t have from inside the bathroom. All this person had to do was hold his hand over her mouth and leave. As simple as that.

  And now they are sitting here, while their little girl is suffering God knows what. Over and over. Again and again.

  Jules places his hand on her bump. He feels a slow, firm kick against his palm and smiles sadly. How are they supposed to care for a second baby when they’ve spoiled things so badly with their first? This is their fault. His fault. Their only job since the day she was born has been to protect her. And now they have failed, it seems they will surely fail with the next one as well. How can they not? How is this one going to fare any better in their care?

  His eyes slowly begin to flutter closed, exhaustion creeping up on him. They sleep like this for hours. And he dreams that when he leaves their newborn in its crib to fetch a nappy, it has gone when he returns. And in its place is a photograph of both his children together, side by side, broken and bruised, tears and blood forming a pool at their feet.

  Chapter 6

  Maisie

  Friday 15 January, 2016

  She supposes he is a handsome man. With his attractive face and messy hair, she imagines him to be someone who draws eyes easily. But despite what the nurses say behind closed doors, how they gossip and prate about the poor man, she doesn’t see him the way they do. She thinks he looks kind, sweet, honest. And when he smiles, she thinks he might be a funny man. With his teeth slightly crooked and the crow’s feet beside his eyes nestling deeper into his skin when he frowns, she wants to know more about him. More about his life. More about the man beyond the chemical smell of the ward and the bleeping of the equipment. She looks at Heidi, sitting opposite her, and wonders whether she should ask. They washed his hair with warm water and shampoo moments before, carefully avoiding his stitches.

  Heidi looks at her husband, silently. Thoughtfully. Maisie notices that if he smiles, she smiles too – like a reaction to a joke he’s just told. Something only they are privy to. Holding his hand to her lips, she kisses it softly. ‘It still feels like he’s in there. You probably don’t know what I mean, do you?’

  Maisie shakes her head, leaning forward.
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br />   ‘We’ve been together for fifteen years. We know each other’s sounds and signals, every inch of each other. Every single like and dislike even if we aren’t familiar with it ourselves. I know that when he grits his teeth, he isn’t angry, he’s upset. I know that if our daughter jumps on his lap and falls asleep, he’ll fall asleep too. When I’m stressed about something, he twirls me around the kitchen. If he fiddles with his keys, he’s nervous. If he grins just before he has dessert, he’s thinking about his mother’s apple pie. Even if we’re just watching a movie, he holds my hand until the end. Before we eat out, he checks the restaurant serves meals we like so my daughter and I won’t be disappointed. He can’t whistle and he hates broccoli. He loves books and hates comics. Loves the Rolling Stones, hates the Beatles. Loves life but isn’t afraid of dying.’

  Heidi glances at Maisie and her calm expression falters. But it isn’t just sadness Maisie sees. It is something else. Something akin to dread. It blankets her face and shrouds the room in a thick haze. Maisie is reminded of the first time they met, when Heidi stood beside Tim, her hand flying from her chest to her bump, some unnameable emotion streaking through her eyes. It bothered Maisie then but it bothers her now even more. It is a quick flutter of concern in her chest, a creeping unease that settles across her skin. Mostly Heidi keeps calm, smiling and talking about their lives together. But then comes the shift in her behaviour and it taps out a restless rhythm in Maisie’s mind.

  Maisie wonders if Heidi is thinking about the attack. Is she afraid it will happen again? Does she think she is in danger? Maisie catches herself before she asks. Tim’s presence has prompted a surge of twittering and clucking from the nurses. Gossip is currency. And in their breaks it flows freely, theories and suggestions shared hastily over homemade sandwiches and limp salad. The investigator they see plodding up the corridor and the article crushed into the corner of page six of the local newspaper tell them he was attacked and left for dead in the street. Maisie can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like hearing your husband was attacked.