While My Eyes Were Closed (10 page)

I turn the tap off and give the water a swish with my hand. I think it is fine but if the child complains I will add some cold.

I go back downstairs and take her firmly by the arm, not giving her the chance to protest.

‘It’s bath time now,’ I say.

‘Have I still got germs?’

‘No, but a bath will do you good.’

‘Will my hands sting?’

‘Only for a second. And they’ll feel better afterwards.’

She follows me into the bathroom and peers into the water as if she half-expects the Loch Ness monster to rear up at her from beneath the bubbles.

‘What’s that?’ she asks, pointing at the bottom.

‘It’s a bath mat. To stop you slipping.’

‘Why is your bath slippy?’

‘All baths are. That’s why it’s safer to have a bath mat.’

‘We don’t have a bath mat.’

‘No,’ I reply. ‘I don’t expect you do. Your mother doesn’t appear to give safety a very high priority.’

She stares at me then starts to undress without saying anything further. I fold her clothes and put them neatly on the stool. When she is ready I take hold of her under the arms and lift her into the bath. I had forgotten how light children are at this age. They may eat like horses but they are still nothing more than puffs of air. Matthew was always the lightest one in his class, mind. Malcolm used to worry about it. Say he needed feeding up a bit. I used to tell him the boy was not a turkey being fattened up for Christmas. Besides, I liked the fact that he was light on his feet and I always equated it with swiftness of thought too. There are some complete lumps of children being raised now. You see them in Halifax town centre on a Saturday afternoon, being shepherded around by complete lumps of adults who feed them in the street as if they were animals at a zoo. I sometimes think that if you built a cage around them
and supplied a constant stream of food they would not think to complain.

‘Where are your toys?’ asks the child.

It is the one thing I do not seem to have kept, bath toys. Probably because of the mould and mildew.

‘Here,’ I say, picking up the jug and a plastic beaker from the sink. ‘This is what Matthew used to play with. He used to pour a drink for all his toys.’

‘Did he pour one for Mr Boo?’ she asks.

‘Oh yes, all the time.’

She takes the jug from me and immerses it in the water, before struggling to lift it out.

‘A little bit at a time,’ I say. ‘Just enough to pour a cupful.’

She empties some and tries again, smiling at me when she manages it. I have quite forgotten what it feels like to be smiled at like that. As if someone has installed central heating in my bloodstream.

I scoop up some bubbles and put them on her nose. She screws her face up and giggles. I think maybe we are over the worst and she will stop making a fuss now. Will realise that she is better looked after here than she ever was at home.

And then she lifts her hands out of the water to examine them and it’s as if her past is etched there. Her face drops as she scans her pink palms for the grazes from earlier.

‘Have they gone?’ she asks.

‘Almost. The water is helping them heal.’

‘Did you put Deathol in the bath?’

‘Dettol,’ I correct, smiling at her. ‘Just a capful. That will make them better.’

‘Will Mummy need to put a plaster on when I get home?’

‘No,’ I say sharply. ‘You won’t need a plaster. You need to let the air get to it.’

*

It is when I am drying her hair with a towel afterwards that I realise what must be done. She won’t like it. But sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind when you are a mother. And the sooner this is done, the sooner the child can start her new life. Can learn to put the past behind her.

I go to the bathroom cabinet and take the hairdressing scissors from the top shelf. I haven’t used them for a long time. Matthew got to the age, as all boys do, when he no longer wanted his mother to cut his hair. He went to a barber in the town centre one Saturday without me knowing. I cried when I saw what they’d done. It was too severe, it didn’t suit him. I think even he realised that, although of course he didn’t acknowledge it at the time. But he did let it grow back longer, and when he went to have it cut again he went somewhere different and they were kinder there, gentler. They seemed to understand that it was necessary for someone with such a gentle face.

I comb the child’s hair through. The fringe completely covers her eyes when wet.

‘I’m just going to give your fringe a little trim,’ I say.

‘Here?’ she asks.

‘Yes.’

‘Mummy takes me to the Treehouse in Hebden Bridge. The lady dresses up as a fairy and she lets me watch DVDs and gives me chocolate ladybirds afterwards.’

I sigh, wondering how things ever got this complicated. Maybe if mothers learned to cut their own children’s hair instead of paying others we wouldn’t have all this silly nonsense.

‘Well, I am quite capable of doing it myself, thank you. And you shall be rewarded by being able to see properly afterwards.’

I take the hair cape from the bathroom storage tub and put it over the towel wrapped around her. I pick up the scissors in my left hand and feel her shoulders tense beneath the cape as I make the first snip.

‘There. That wasn’t too bad, was it?’

She shakes her head. I snip again, watching as the damp clumps of hair fall on to the cape. She shuts her eyes without me having to ask her to. I cut briskly along the fringe. And when I have finished the fringe I continue down and round the side, leaving just enough to cover the child’s ears. Matthew never liked having his ears showing. Not when he was her age, anyway.

I wait for her to say something, to shriek or scream,
but she is oddly quiet. As if the rhythmic snipping is calming her, sending her half to sleep after the rigours of the day. I follow the line around the back of her head. I do not do layers. It is simply a straight cut. It is easier to maintain like that. Malcolm used to ask me what basin I had used. He had a dry sense of humour like that. Most of the time it was OK. But not always.

I make it to the other side without a whimper from the child. When I am done I step back to check for any bits I have missed. There is nothing obvious but it will be easier to check once I have dried it.

I usher the child into my bedroom and pick up the hairdryer from the bedside cabinet.

‘Is it noisy?’ she asks. ‘I don’t like noisy ones. Or the noisy hand driers in toilets. The ones that roar at you when you walk past. I like the ones like a toaster you stick your hands in.’

‘I’ll put it on the low setting for you. That should be OK.’

To be honest, her hair is half dry anyway and the low setting is all it needs. It is fine, like Matthew’s. And it falls similarly into place without guidance from me. Clearly it knows its own mind.

‘Can I see?’ she asks when I turn the hairdryer off. I hesitate, aware she doesn’t realise what I have done, then guide her gently over to the dressing-table mirror. I watch closely as she catches her reflection in the mirror. Her eyebrows rise as she lets out a gasp before a
frown settles on her face. I brace myself, waiting for the inevitable tears.

‘I look like a boy,’ she says, but in a calmer voice than I had expected, a voice which is apparently not offended by the idea. He gaze flits from her own reflection to that of the photograph on my bedside table. It goes back and forth a couple of times before she speaks. When she does so, she speaks directly to the mirror, rather than to me.

‘I look like Matthew.’

We say nothing for a while. Just stand huddling together in the same spot in the park where I have been all afternoon. I feel close to Ella here, simply because it is the last place that I saw her. It’s almost as if, if I wish hard enough, I might be able to make her rematerialise in front of my eyes at any moment. She won’t, of course, but somehow it feels like the right place to be.

‘I took a call on my mobile,’ I say as we watch the toing and froing of the coppers in the park.

Alex looks at me. ‘What do you mean?’

‘When she disappeared. My phone rang and I answered it. I was too busy talking to some dickhead trying to arrange training sessions to hear anything.’

‘You would still have heard if she’d screamed.’

‘Yeah, but she didn’t, did she? And I don’t know why because I was on the fucking phone.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ he says, taking my hand. He means it too, which is what makes it worse. Usually when Alex puts up the scaffolding around me I am grateful. Today it simply makes me feel even more of a cow than I already feel.

I shrug. ‘I wanted you to know, that’s all.’

He is silent for a moment. ‘You said she fell over, just before.’

‘Yeah, there,’ I say, pointing. ‘And I ran over and saw to her, although I didn’t have any wipes or plasters or whatever, and I said we should go and get Otis and go home to get it sorted but she still wanted her turn to hide. And that’s when I turned my back and started to walk away. That’s when my phone rang.’

‘Was she upset about falling over? More than she was letting on, I mean. Might she have run off somewhere in a state?’

‘No. She’d stopped crying. She wanted to hide. She’s bloody won this time, hasn’t she?’

Alex shakes his head. ‘It must have been the balloon then, she must have seen it. It’s the only thing I can think of.’

‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ I say, nodding in the direction of Sergeant Fuller, who is on his way over to us. ‘He’s the one in charge.’

Alex holds out his hand, ‘Alex Dale, Ella’s father.’

Sergeant Fuller shakes it firmly. ‘Please be assured we are doing everything we can to find your daughter, Mr Dale. I came over to give you both an update.’

We both nod, waiting for him to go on. I think for a second it is going to be bad news. If it is, I wish he would just get on and tell us.

‘You may have noticed we’ve sealed off the park.’

I look around. I hadn’t noticed. I just thought it had gone very quiet.

‘We’re satisfied that your daughter is no longer in the park but we have sealed it off for forensic purposes. Your daughter has been classed as a high-risk missing person.’

‘What does that mean?’ asks Alex.

‘In operational terms, it means that a detective superintendent is being put in charge of the case. Our police search and rescue team are also involved. We tried to call in the sniffer dog but unfortunately we’ve got a problem in that it’s on holiday with its handler and not due back until a week tomorrow.’

‘Well, what about the other dogs?’ says Alex.

‘I’m afraid there aren’t any other dogs.’

‘Of course there are other dogs,’ I say. ‘The police force is full of dogs.’

‘Not highly trained search-and-rescue ones like this.’

‘Can’t you get one from another part of Yorkshire?’ asks Alex.

‘This dog covers the whole of Yorkshire.’

‘Jesus, that’s ridiculous,’ Alex says, pulling his fingers through his hair.

‘I’m sorry. We’ve got plenty of other strategies and options open to us and, as I said, we’ve got all available resources working on the case.’

‘You think someone’s taken her, don’t you?’ I ask.

‘Third-person involvement is one of the scenarios we’re looking at but not the only one.’

‘So what are the others?’ asks Alex.

‘It’s still possible that she may have had an accident, clearly not in the park but somewhere outside.’

‘She wouldn’t have left the park on her own, though,’ I say.

‘I understand what you’re saying but we can’t eliminate it at this stage of our enquiries. I can tell you that we’ve finished searching your property and nothing has been found. We’ve removed items for DNA as we agreed.’

I feel sick inside. They have my daughter’s DNA. That can only be used for one thing. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to hear any of this.

Sergeant Fuller looks at me and Alex in turn and shuffles his feet. ‘I’m sorry to have to ask this,’ he says, ‘but is there anyone you can think of who might have a grudge against you or your family?’

I stare at him. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘We have to look into every possibility at this stage.’

‘No,’ says Alex before I can say anything else. ‘We’re not that sort of family. I’m a small-business adviser and my wife works in a gym. Not exactly turf-war territory.’

‘No, I appreciate that. It’s just something we have to consider. The other thing we need to ask you for is a list of every adult your daughter knows.’

I stare at him. The thought that it could be someone we know hadn’t even occurred to me until this point.

‘But she hardly knows anyone. She’s only four. Anyway, one of your officers has already been through my phone and taken the numbers of family and friends.’

‘I know. I’m talking about adults who may know your daughter, rather than family or friends. Acquaintances, if you like. People she might recognise, even if she doesn’t know their names. If you could have a little think and email me the names of anyone you can think of and the place of work or organisation which she knows them from, that would be a great help.’

‘Right,’ I say, getting out my phone as Sergeant Fuller walks briskly away. I look at Alex. The expression on his face mirrors mine.

‘I don’t know how to do this,’ I say. ‘It feels wrong, writing down the names of people who we are basically saying could have taken her.’

‘I know,’ says Alex, running his fingers through his hair. ‘Let’s not think of it like that, though. Let’s just write a list of people she knows who we don’t know very well.’

I look up, frowning as I think. ‘Well, I suppose there are the other parents at nursery, she’d recognise them. Charlie’s dad Dean, Mr Humphreys on the corner who always says hello to her.’

‘What about the instructor at Gym Tots, the young lad with red hair?’

I shrug. ‘I don’t know. I suppose so. He’s always been so bloody great with her, mind.’

‘Jesus,’ says Alex. Normally I would make a quip about Ella not knowing him but this is not normal. It is far from it. ‘What?’ I ask instead.

‘This. It’s doing my head in. It’s not right. It shouldn’t be happening.’ I see him swallow. If Alex crumbles I have got no chance. I am well aware of that. I reach out and take hold of his hand.