After Anna (15 page)

‘For some reason,’ Julia echoed. ‘Like—’

‘Like anything,’ Wynne interrupted. ‘And everything. Let’s say that Mr Crowne’s father was up to something he shouldn’t have been – perhaps something involving underage pupils – and let’s say Miss Wilkinson was also involved, under the sway of a charismatic older man. Let’s also say that they were found out and decided to disappear.’

‘But I don’t – I mean, I knew Jim. He wasn’t that kind of man.’ Jim Crowne wasn’t a paedophile, Julia was sure of it. But then, you never knew. You never knew.

‘We’d still like to talk to him,’ Wynne said. ‘I was wondering whether you would have any objection to us issuing a statement asking him to come forward?’

Julia hesitated. She had no problem with it, but Brian might, and Edna almost certainly would.

‘I – I don’t know,’ Julia said. ‘I’d have to ask Brian.’

‘I think it’s important for us to do it,’ said Wynne. ‘I wouldn’t want there to be any reason we couldn’t. And – if I’m honest – we’ll do what we have to, to aid the investigation.’

So it wasn’t really a question, Julia thought, in which case she might as well give her assent. And if it helped get Anna back she’d deal with the fallout with Edna.

‘Ok,’ she said. ‘Do it. Is there anything else you need from me?’

‘Not right now,’ Wynne said. ‘But I’ll let you know if there is. And I’ll send someone down to help shift the press. You might want to lie low today, take it easy. Stay home.’

Wynne’s tone suggested that she thought staying at home was a warming, welcoming prospect. A safe place. A place where whatever comfort was available in this godawful situation could be found. Perhaps it was for DI Wynne. It was not for Julia. For Julia home meant memories of Anna and the looming presence of her failed marriage.

But where else was there?

‘Ok,’ she said. ‘I’ll do that.’

v.

‘Well,’ Brian said, ‘nice of you to come. Just a shame that this is what it took.’

His brother, Simon, put down his bag and folded his arms. He was taller than Brian, maybe 6’ 2”, and thinner, and he was going bald. His face was lean, and he had two deep lines running from his cheekbones to his jaw. He looked like an actor who might play a Second World War army officer: distinguished, severe, yet kindly when in the right mood.

‘I’m here to help,’ he said. His voice was similar to Brian’s but a shade deeper, a tone richer, and it had a North American suppleness to it. ‘I’m your brother.’

Brian tried to look unimpressed, but it was clear to Julia that he was both desperately happy to see Simon and desperately sad that he did not see him more often. He could not disguise the longing – for approval, companionship, friendship – in his eyes. He was in awe of Simon, perhaps because Simon had not stayed around long enough to lose the aura that a big brother had for his younger sibling.

Julia began to get a glimpse of just how damaged her husband was, just how badly his family had let him down: his father and brother had both deserted him, leaving him with Edna, of all people. It was hardly a recipe for a happy life. To put it in terms that Laura’s therapist would have understood: his shelves had been stacked with a whole supermarket’s worth of problems for the future.

Simon turned to Julia. ‘Good to see you,’ he said. ‘I’m just sorry it’s in these circumstances. What happened is awful.’

‘They have a lead, at least,’ Julia said. ‘That’s something.’

Simon tilted his head. ‘Oh? Can you share?’

Brian told him about the janitor. As he did the mood lifted slightly.

‘Sounds promising,’ Simon said. ‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed.’ He caught Brian’s eye. ‘How’s Mum?’

‘Good. Fine. You know Mum.’

‘I do. Not as well as I used to.’

Brian shrugged. ‘She hasn’t changed. Same old dear; bossing everyone around.’

Their conversation was an odd mixture of familiarity and distance. They shared so much – they were the only people in the world who knew Edna as a mother, for starters – but there was so much that they did not know about each other. And then there was the fact of Simon’s leaving. It hung between them, an unspoken accusation of betrayal on Brian’s part and an unspoken reply of self-defence on Simon’s. As she listened, Julia wondered exactly what had happened when Simon left, what had made it necessary, and – even more intriguing, this – what had driven Edna to such profound hatred of Laura?

‘Will you see her?’ Brian said. ‘Go out to her house?’

‘She hasn’t invited me,’ Simon said. ‘And I don’t feel much like turning up unannounced. That might not go down so well.’

‘You two have plenty you need to talk about,’ Brian said.

‘We do. But I’m not sure Mum’s the talking type.’ Simon smiled. ‘Unless she’s changed, of course.’

‘She hasn’t.’

‘Then I suspect all she would want to say to me would be to remind me of my folly in marrying Laura and leaving England. I don’t imagine we would have a productive conversation about how we both might have made mistakes but it all happened a long time ago and why don’t we just forgive and forget and move on.’

‘It’s up to you,’ Brian said. ‘But she is your mum, after all.’

‘She is,’ Simon said. ‘But I’m not sure whether that’s important anymore. Or whether I want it to be. I’ve done pretty well without her in my life the last ten years, and it was hard enough getting her out. Bringing her back in … well, it doesn’t exactly appeal. I’m here for you, Brian, here to give you whatever support I can. That’s the only reason I came.’ He picked up his bag. ‘I’m staying at the Apple Tree Hotel. I need to check in, get some rest after the flight. Call me whenever you want and let me know what I can do.’

‘Thanks,’ Brian said. ‘I will.’

Julia stood up. ‘I’m going to get a drink,’ she said. ‘See you soon, Simon.’

In the kitchen, she poured a glass of water. She wasn’t thirsty but that wasn’t the point; she wanted to leave Brian and Simon alone. She felt as though she was intruding on something she had no right to witness. She’d known there was something ugly in the past, but she hadn’t understood how big it was, how it had destroyed the bond between Brian and his brother. It was obvious they loved each other – Brian’s devotion was plain to see, and the mere fact of Simon’s presence was proof of his – but something had gone badly wrong.

And, as she heard the front door close, Julia wondered whether she would ever find out what it was.

6

The Fourth Day

i.

So the truth about the mother is coming out. About her neglect of her daughter. You can imagine her, sipping wine with her friends or lying back while a white-coated manicurist picks at her nails, chattering about how her daughter is the most important thing in her life, the thing that gives meaning to her pitiful existence.

And yet she did not bother to pick her up on time.

Did not bother to pick her up on time
. It sounds so slight, almost like nothing, just a simple error. Hardly a crime, is it, to be a little late? But it is. It is when you are late for something so precious, so perfect. When your lateness puts such a delicate flower at risk.

There is great responsibility in being a parent. Responsibility that the mother failed to fulfil. And this is her punishment.
You
are the instrument of her punishment. You will not fail the girl, as her mother did.

The girl is sleeping. Her eyes fluttered open when you went in this morning, but that was all.

You got it right this time. The drug kept her asleep through the night and another dose this morning meant she has not been awake for twenty-four hours, not since the mistake you made yesterday.

Well done to you. You don’t like the memory drug, not for one so young, but the sedative presents no problem. You can keep giving her that for as long as you like. But you won’t need to. Because it’s nearly time.

You can sense that the time is coming for your plan to bear its final fruit.

Not yet.

But nearly.

ii.

Julia sat in the kitchen at her laptop. She had a headache and her vision was blurred. She had slept for maybe two hours. Two troubled, nightmare-haunted hours. The rest of the night she lay in the darkness, checking her phone for emails, waiting for it to ring, waiting for some news of Anna or of that damn janitor who she knew had taken her daughter and who the police still could not find, who had disappeared so thoroughly that he
must
have taken her daughter, or why would he have gone? So all they had to do was find him and then they’d find Anna, and call her, but the phone didn’t ring.

And so, early in the morning she got out of bed and read the news. She was aware that it was the worst possible thing she could do, that she was going to find nothing but heartache and trouble along this path, but she did it anyway. It was, she thought, almost a form of penance.

It was worse than she could have imagined.

NEGLIGENT
ANNA MUM PLANNED TO DESERT DAUGHTER

It emerged yesterday that the mother of vanished child Anna Crowne had been planning to leave her family in the coming weeks. This revelation followed earlier reports that she had failed to pick up her daughter and also failed to inform the school that she would be late, a failure that was a key element in her daughter’s disappearance.

Mrs Crowne is fast becoming a figure who provokes a mixed response from the public. On the one hand, she is suffering the disappearance of her daughter. On the other, it is hard to avoid concluding that she is in some way at fault for this tragedy, both in the sense that she was not there for her daughter on the day, and in the sense that she was planning to desert her family.

Julia’s hands shook. It was bad enough that she was accused of negligence; now the press had got hold of the information that she had been planning to divorce Brian, and they were claiming that she had also been planning to leave her daughter.

Which she hadn’t, but who cared about the truth in a case like this?

She carried on reading. The first story, it turned out, was relatively measured. The rest of the press was not so restrained, and hinted that she might be deranged – as one put it,
what kind of mother chooses to leave her husband and five-year-old daughter? The kind who doesn’t bother to pick her up from school, the kind who might take extreme and unpredictable action to resolve whatever personal difficulties she was having
, which seemed to be a hint that she had something to do with Anna’s disappearance.

And it was a hint that had been picked up by the commentariat, by those brave warriors on the battlefield of Twitter, who had no problem indulging their most salacious fantasies. It was hard to ignore the conclusion that their tweets were what they wanted to have happened, as much as what they thought had happened.

shes fucking mad. she killed the kid #JuliaCrowne #Madmum

This was replied to by someone called @DB2FCT, who opined:

Any woman who would leave their kid could KILL their kid #JuliaCrowne #notfittobeamum

It was this hashtag –
#notfittobeamum
– that was trending. It drew a lot of hits.

people like that should be sterilized. #JuliaCrowne #notfittobeamum

I can’t have kids. It’s crime that people like her can #JuliaCrowne #notfittobeamum

This bitch is everything wrong with Britain today #JuliaCrowne #notfittobeamum

It seemed the commentariat were particularly incensed that she planned to leave Anna. It was ironic; the crime they were most agitated about was the only one she was innocent of. Added to the grief and guilt, Julia felt a sense of mounting injustice. She had plenty of things to feel bad about, but this wasn’t one of them.

It wasn’t the only untruth doing the rounds. As she clicked through the stories, another theme began to emerge: reports of an affair she had been having. Most of the newspapers steered clear of it, but one of the bolder – or better equipped with lawyers –tabloids ran the story. It too was an instant hit on Twitter, but with a different hashtag, this one –
#mumslut
– even more charming than the others.

Fucking around while her daughter was taken #JuliaCrowne #mumslut

It was too much to bear. She closed her laptop. She stared at the painting above the fireplace. It was a large oil of a golden beach under bright blue, cloudless, Cornish skies, one of many thousands sold in the hundreds of art galleries down in the beach communities of Cornwall. The artist had little skill and less imagination, but for all that it captured something of the essence of holidays by the sea. It was the way you remembered them, rather than the way they really were. When you were sitting in a drab midwinter office staring at the walls of your cubicle, listening to people mutter half-heartedly into their phones, or tap on their keyboards, the summer seaside holiday seemed like that painting: golden and bright and flawless and endlessly enticing.

She would like to disappear into it now. To stand on the warm sand then walk into the bracing waters of the sea and keep on going until it swallowed her up. She never wanted to come back, didn’t want to face the storm.

Had she done this when other, similar, news stories had broken? Had she watched the news reports and read the articles on the internet? Had she felt a shudder of prurient glee at the sight of someone else’s suffering, while also thinking that the press were animals who intruded without a shred of moral decency into people’s private lives and exposed them, all in the name of enriching their rapacious owners?

Probably, she had. But she had felt that she was not part of it, because she didn’t buy their papers and didn’t subscribe to their websites. She felt blameless because she didn’t fund them; but she fed them nonetheless. She only read the free content, but her clicks and comments added to the weight of public interest – public rubbernecking, that is – which was the raison d’être of the whole sorry media circus.