Harvest (5 page)

Claire pulled her cardigan
around her like a comfort blanket and weakly offered them a cup of
tea as if it was a politeness that would be a struggle. They
accepted and she shuffled off into the open kitchen like a frail
old lady and started the tea-making ritual.

Craig called out to her. “I was
at the press conference the other week with all the other
photographers and journalists. But now I am here and it’s just us I
had better tell you that I live in this building, a couple of
floors down, I hope you feel comfortable about that,” he offered
courteously and professionally.

“
I thought I recognised
the face. I guess I don’t mind; everyone knows what’s been going on
anyway,” she called back meekly from round the corner in the
kitchen.

When tea was made the three of
them settled down into an atmosphere of pregnant expectation,
Claire in an armchair and Vicki and Craig on the three-seater sofa.
Vicki quickly cut off any chance of the awkward quiet becoming a
stifling silence. “So, Claire. You called us the other day. It’s
been...” Vicki looked at notes on her pad, checking the facts,
helping her to sterilise her next question. “Two weeks since little
Emily went missing?”

Claire nodded. “Yes, I wanted
to make another appeal for any information. Didn’t want people to
forget.”

The national press had
lost interest. They were waiting for a conclusion.
The Camden Gazette
, through Vicki,
was Claire’s only voice. Vicki had been just another reporter at
the conference, didn’t get any question time as she was only with a
local rag, but she would not let go of a story that had the
possibility of being national again. She had managed to get
Claire’s number of a source she had in the local police, and had
called vowing to keep her story in the papers. “Of course, we have
the facts of the story. I just need an update, a few lines, a quote
or two to go with it: How do you feel now that two weeks has
passed? And with the police making no progress?”

Craig watched uncomfortably as
Claire sighed under the weight of Vicki’s journalistic angle that
reinforced the pain and hopelessness of the situation. “It’s
terrible. I mean there’s just nothing to go on.” She stared
intently at Vicki as if measuring her for a moment. “It just
happened! She was asleep in her bed and then she was gone.”

“
Do you feel the police
haven’t done enough?” Vicki pushed.

“
No, no.” She leapt in
with her emphatic answer, despite her general malaise. “There’s not
much to go on. She disappeared, no one has come forward with seeing
anything, and she had no reason to run away.” Her voice fractured
into faltering tones forcing her to clear her throat of thick
emotion. “It just feels so useless.”

“
Do you feel that some
people close by are hiding things?”

“
Someone must know
something, mustn’t they? Emily has to be somewhere. Someone knows
where she is, or must have seen her.”

There was a pleading
desperation to her reply. “Do you think it could be someone in the
building?” she rerouted after a little time.

“
The police did a full
search of all the flats. Everyone was very co-operative. I’ve
always found everyone here to be good people.”

Claire looked to Craig for some
corroboration but Vicki blocked her prompt to maintain the focus on
Claire. “What are your feelings regarding the disappearance of Mr
Taylor?” She glanced at her notes for his full name. “Albert
Taylor.”

Claire’s eyes brimmed and she
looked to the ceiling as if trying to tip the tears back into her
head. She sucked air into her chest and faced Vicki again. “I don’t
know. When he wasn’t working, he... he always seemed such a
friendly man, always had a joke for anyone who cared to listen.
He... he was great with kids.” She smiled but her resolve broke
apart around her last words and their possible naïve irony, her
eyes reddening as tears brimmed. She held her hand up to her mouth
to hide her quivering lips. “That’s what I hate about this. You
have to start looking at all your friends and your neighbours as
suspects. The – the police said don’t neglect anyone from your
thoughts. Any hunch or feeling has to be looked into... When – when
there is as little evidence... as this.” She began to cry
openly.

Craig watched Vicki study her
pad, no attempt at comforting her. He jumped up and gave Claire the
box of tissues from the glass coffee table and dashed back to
Vicki’s side. Vicki gave Craig a firm stare to catch his attention
and then pointedly directed her eyes to his camera on his lap.
Craig looked at her in wide-eyed disbelief and shook his head
sternly in distaste. Vicki rolled her eyes at his sensibilities but
her look held an edge of genuine frustration with him.

“
Sorry,” Claire
apologised for her breakdown. “It’s just that this has changed
everything for us. We know a lot of people on the estate and it’s
so hard.”

“
You are lucky you have a
lot of support from the community.”

Craig knew as well as Vicki did
that her statement was a lie, and that while the community did
offer its sympathy and outrage it also held cynicism and suspicion.
“Was there really no evidence left at the scene?” Craig found
himself asking, hoping his incredulity didn’t sound like
disbelief.

“
Nothing. No fingerprints or anything. No...
DNA
.”
She grimaced at
the foul taste the last part of her sentence
left.

“
Do you feel that people
may suspect you or your husband?” Vicki asked without
flinching.

Craig sensed Claire look to him
for an ally but he missed his chance to support her as he was too
preoccupied with trying to catch Vicki’s eye with a disapproving
look. It had already been reported that Claire and her husband had
been questioned concerning the disappearance as police procedure,
he didn’t see the need to revisit that. Vicki had her own
agenda.

“
It
scares me... that some people that don’t know me – or Brian...
would think that we could have... done something.” Claire caved in
physically, her shoulders dropping and she sagged in her chair as
if the thought defeated her. “But, then people always think the
worst... Even those that do know you. That’s what’s worse than
suspecting all your neighbours. Knowing...
Knowing
they suspect you.”

“
What do you say to
people who suspect you?”

“
Anyone
that matters knows me and Brian give both our girls all the love we
can and we could never,
ever
hurt them.” Craig was pleased Vicki had
offered Claire the chance for a quote in her defence. Claire looked
over to a cluster of photographs of the twins on the opposite wall.
“How could we?” Her eyes glazed. “It’s destroying
us.”

Craig tried to read some
indication of whether Vicki believed her, Claire’s resolve hadn’t
broken once and Vicki looked impressed by the conviction of her
last answer. Vicki nodded a prompt for Craig to prepare his camera
before addressing Claire. “Would it be okay to take a few
photographs of you while we talk? Keeping your face in the paper
usually stirs up more support – Keeps the story in people’s
minds.”

Claire nodded and Craig slid to
his knees and prepared his camera.

“
How is your husband
taking it?”

“
Brian has been
wonderful.” Claire smiled back at Brian. “It’s killing him, but he
still keeps it together. For my sake more than anything, I think. I
wish men could talk about things more. He cries when he thinks I
can’t see or when he thinks I’m asleep.”

Vicki allowed for a measured
silence then spoke again. “How about Emily’s sister?”

“
Amy
hasn’t spoken since that night... Doctors have tried to get her to
talk. She just won’t... They say its shock. They said to keep her
to a routine.... Keep her at school. It might bring her out. I
don’t think she knows how to cope with it, she has just shut
herself down. The longer Emily isn’t here, the more it feels like
she isn’t coming home. When I put Amy’s clothes away I see Emily’s
identical things as if they were just Amy’s. They would share their
toys too. They have lost their identity, as if they were always
just Amy’s, as if there was always
just
Amy. The more I see of Amy the less I see Emily. As if I only
ever had the one.” Claire wiped a tear from her face. Craig
snatched the image onto his camera in a cold flash of white light.
“I only have memories and photos and her empty bed. It sounds like
I’ve given up hope, doesn’t it?” She aimed a bitter accusatory look
at Vicki and a broad smile broke across her face that quivered in
tormented anguish as she accepted her own rhetorical answer. “I’m
just so scared that Emily isn’t coming back.”

“
Don’t give up hope,”
Craig offered desperately in the cavernous cold vacuum of Vicki’s
silence.

“
Do you fear for her?
Amy, I mean?” Vicki asked cautiously. She got a warning look from
Craig as he set up a shot.

“
What do you mean?”
Claire frowned.

“
Do you worry that Amy
may be in danger?”

The camera flashed, forcing
dark shadows into the room.

“
Emily just vanished. I
never thought that could happen.” She stared vacantly at the floor,
caught in her memories. “I never thought people disappeared. Now
I’m scared – Yes, I’m scared it could happen again.”

Craig’s camera ignited the air
and the light burned everything briefly away in a brilliant white
void.

Vicki explained she would rush
the story through for her, and they said their goodbyes to Claire
on the doorstep leaving her to return to her twilight den.

“
I will get out at your
floor and walk down. I hate being in lifts on my own,” Vicki
reminded him as she poked the button that would summon the
lift.

“
Okay.” Craig sighed,
deflated. “Well – that was awful,” he summarised as they boarded
the lift. He relaxed into a slouch, feeling physically drained by
the meeting.

“
Yup, but it was hardly
going to be a story I could get my teeth into. Pays the bills
though.”

Craig cocked his head to one
side with a disdainful expression. “That wasn’t what I meant.
Tragedy isn’t there to serve your career. I meant her story was
terrible.”

Vicki punched the button for
Craig’s floor. “You have too much emotion to be a journalist.”

He restrained the urge to
defend his ambitions and redirected his bile into sarcasm. “Oh, I’m
sorry. I forgot I was talking to the ice queen. So, ‘Miss
Objectivity’, what do you think?”

The lift slowed and stopped and
the doors opened on to Craig’s floor, he let Vicki out first.

“
She did it.”

“
The mother? I meant do
you think the police will find some leads or whether you think the
little girl will be found. After what we just sat through you think
the mother did it?”

“
You hear about it all
the time: happy families… Kids are a pain – the mum in the bedroom
with a pillow… Twin sees it. It explains the vow of silence the
other kid has taken.”

Craig fixed her in wide-eyed
disbelief. “You can say that after seeing her grief?” He held his
hands up in surrender to her cynicism. “I am gonna let you go now.
I’ll get the pics to you as soon as I can. Go spread your sunshine
somewhere else.”

“
You’re just too
innocent. Don’t worry.” She smiled disarmingly. “It’s a sweet
thing.”

Chapter
Five

Jason stood in Claire’s kitchen
as his mum slid a covered plate of fish fingers and chips and a
casserole dish onto the worktop. He felt afraid to move, like a
time when he was in a china shop and he had been afraid that any
movement he might make would result in an accident, but in this
instance he was afraid of being noticed. It was difficult being
around Claire since Emily had gone. He didn’t know how to act
around her.

“
Here you go, Claire;
something for you and Brian to dip into – plus a tea for
Amy.”

“
Thanks. It means a lot
to me.”

“
It’s only a casserole,”
Jenny joked weakly.

Claire walked into the kitchen
and squeezed Jason’s shoulder affectionately as she passed. She had
a strange smile on her face, as if she didn’t know how to use her
face for that anymore. Claire leaned against Jenny in a lingering
hug and he suddenly remembered being in a school play and not
knowing his lines or where he should be standing.

Claire’s flat seemed different
now, as if Emily not being there had changed the flat itself. It
had always been like a second home; the furniture and pictures were
familiar and held memories, but the place seemed alien and foreign
now. Somehow little things like the grain on the doors or the
pattern of the carpet seemed new, as if he was seeing them for the
first time although they were the same doors he had hidden behind
and it was the same floor he had rolled about on in play. It
reminded him of how it his own home had felt after his dad had
left. Jason realised that it was the missing person and the
feelings that he had about them that changed the place. The two
places where he could get away from his fears of school and forget
about the kids that picked on him and have fun had been ruined. His
world was getting smaller.

The embrace of the adults was
disturbed as Amy stopped her playing in the lounge and dashed into
her bedroom. Jason watched his mum give Claire a questioning
look.