While My Eyes Were Closed (17 page)

I place the order. The amount I pay is both alarming and satisfying at the same time. Shopping for one is not something anyone ever aspires to.

I am about to turn off the computer when I remember the press conference. It will probably be on the Internet somewhere. I hesitate, unsure whether I should watch it. The media are good at wringing the emotion out of these things. Everything is always painted as black or white. Life is not like that, of course. Life is about all the shades of grey in between.

I go to the BBC website. It is the only news one I ever bother with. Matthew showed me how to find it. I like the fact that you only have to click on the stories you want to read. Not like listening to the ten o’clock news,
when you have to listen to all the stupid things that stupid people around the world are doing before you get to the bit at the end about the royal family, or whatever it is you are actually interested in. That’s why I decided we didn’t need a TV. It is bad enough that these people exist without inviting them into my living room on a regular basis.

It is there. The photo of the child in the stripy dress is at the top of the page. I scroll down the story until I get to the video of the press conference and press Play. I recognise the father instantly, though he has always been clean shaven when he has come with the boy. Usually he has a very casual, couldn’t-care-less air about him but that has gone too. His body is taut, his fingers twitchy. She, on the other hand, sits there with a scowl on her face. Looking for all the world as if it is everybody else’s fault, not hers.

A police officer introduces himself as the detective leading the enquiry. There are two other police officers, both women, sitting next to the mother. The detective introduces the parents as Lisa and Alex Dale. I watch as he outlines the ‘facts’ of the case. It is ridiculous, of course, because they aren’t facts at all. They are her version of events. A version which she has carefully crafted to give the best possible impression of herself. So it comes across as if she is some poor innocent victim who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The policeman doesn’t mention the way she
neglected her child when it fell over. Or the fact that she was more interested in answering her mobile phone than keeping an eye on the child. He has clearly accepted her version of events. If this is the detective leading the case, I dread to think what the others are like.

Every now and again they go to a shot of the mother and father. They are stony-faced, as if they are assuming the worst. The mother looks awful. Her hair is lank. She appears to have put a bit of lip gloss on but it only succeeds in accentuating how pale and lifeless the rest of her face is. Guilt does that. Sucks the life out of you.

The policeman says the father is going to read a prepared statement. I watch as he gets a piece of paper out and holds it in front of him, hands shaking, his voice trembling as he starts to read.

I try not to listen to the words. He will have written what he was told to write by the police or what she told him to write. The mother sits next to him, her jaw set, her eyes staring straight ahead. She doesn’t appear in the slightest bit sorry for what she has done. She does at least draw the line at crying. Maybe she knows that she couldn’t do it convincingly. When the father gets to the bit where he asks for anyone with information to get in touch with the police she looks up. As she does so, she is greeted with a battery of flashes. She doesn’t even appear to blink; simply stares out at the photographers, her face hard and uncompromising.

When the father finishes reading he folds up the
piece of paper and gives an audible sigh. I watch as they stand up, the mother still staring straight ahead. You can see it in her eyes, the fear. They probably think she is frightened of what has happened to her child. Only I know that she is scared of being found out. Scared of the truth.

We are all sitting at the kitchen table. It has become like some kind of war cabinet, each of us waiting for news from the front while trying desperately to think of something constructive to do or to come up with the important piece of information which hasn’t been thought of yet.

Mum gets up to put the kettle on; she makes the most of the opportunity to be useful when Claire isn’t here. I say that like Claire is part of the family. In reality we have only known her for twenty-four hours, but real time doesn’t exist any more. It is like we are living in an alternative universe where one earth day equates to about a year of our lives. If we do get Ella back, I wonder if it will turn out that she was only actually missing for a few minutes in real time, if maybe this has only
stretched into days in my head. It is a big if, though. There are lots of big ifs.

‘We’ve done pretty much every lamp post within about a two-mile radius of the park,’ says Dad. ‘We’re going to go further out today, do the main roads out of Halifax and that.’

I look at him, his eyes dull and heavy, sitting there thumbing through the pile of
MISSING
posters one of Tony’s mates had printed yesterday. His face wasn’t the best-preserved thing before the start of all of this; I dread to think what it’s going to look like by the end. If there is an end, that is. Sometimes they don’t find missing children. I know that. I can’t imagine what kind of hell that must be, having this be the state in which you exist for the rest of your life. I wonder if the parents of those kids ever sleep again or if they simply run on anxiety.

I’ve been thinking about them a lot, the other parents. The ones I remember from the news. I wonder if I’ll end up as one of them, if people will say, ‘Ahhh, poor cow,’ whenever someone mentions my name or they see my face on the television. Or whether they will say, ‘I think she did it, you know. I think it was her, the hard-faced cow.’ Someone said that on Twitter after the press conference – that I was a hard-faced cow. I don’t know why I looked. It was stupid of me. I don’t even like Twitter; I’m only on it for work. But Ella’s name was trending and I clicked on it to see what people were saying. And
that was one of the things they said. It seems I’m the wrong sort of mother. Apparently I should have been bawling my eyes out, and not doing so was ‘not human’ according to some people. Like someone has written a book about how mothers of missing children should behave and I forgot to read it. I haven’t told Alex. It would only wind him up. Maybe he looked too and decided not to tell me. Maybe people all over the country are having conversations about whether they think we are guilty or not. Whether the cops are going to end up digging up our patio. I want to scream at everybody to piss off. That it is none of their fucking business. It is though. We are everyone’s business now.

It was the main headline on the news last night. Mum told me – we couldn’t bear to watch it. I mean, why would you choose to watch yourself going through hell when you’re doing it anyway? There’s no point, is there? The weirdest thing was thinking about other people watching it, people who know us, not close friends like, but the other mums at school, clients from the gym. I can’t help wondering what they were thinking. It doesn’t matter, of course, I don’t give a toss really. But I still can’t help wondering.

‘Thanks,’ I say, remembering what Dad has just said. To be honest, I can’t help feeling that lamp posts should be reserved for posters of missing dogs, not children. I think of all the dogs which will piss up those lamp posts while their owners look at the photo of Ella. I can’t say
anything though. Dad is trying his best, and doing this is his way of coping. I am not going to discourage him.

‘I was thinking maybe we should set up a Facebook page too,’ says Tony. ‘Call it Find Ella and get people to like it. I mean more people probably use Facebook than buy newspapers, and they can share it to people all across country, across world even.’

Mum puts the tray of mugs down heavily on the table and gives Tony a look. She doesn’t think he should have said ‘world’. I can see this from her face. She doesn’t want to think that Ella might not even be in this country any more. To be honest, I am not that bothered. I don’t care if they find her in Mablethorpe or Marrakesh; I just want her back.

I look at Alex, who is always allowed a veto when it comes to my family. It’s only fair because he does the same for me with his family. The sign is a nose scratch, although they don’t know this of course. Alex’s hands stay firmly around his mug of coffee.

‘Yeah, thanks. It’s worth a try,’ I say. ‘Anything’s got to be worth a try.’

Mum squeezes my hand. She has been doing that a lot since Friday. That and looking as if someone has taken hold of all her internal organs and is squeezing them incredibly tightly.

‘What time is Otis coming back?’ she asks. Otis has gone to play with Ben, his best friend from school. His mum texted me to offer. I asked him before I replied but
he said yes pretty much straight away. I think he was just grateful for the chance to escape the house for a bit.

‘Four o’clock. He wants to be here when Chloe gets home.’

‘Ahh, that’s nice. And what time are your parents getting here, Alex?’

‘About two. Depending what the traffic’s like on the M1.’

She nods and smiles. Sylvia and Graham do not come up very often, maybe two or three times a year, if that. It is, as they always say, a long way from Surrey.

‘Ah, well it’ll be lovely to see them.’

It won’t, of course. They’re only coming because Ella is missing and they told Alex they feel they should offer their ‘emotional support’. It feels like everyone is gathering for a family funeral: Chloe returning from abroad, the in-laws up from Surrey. I’ll have some long-lost second cousin from Aberystwyth turning up next. I want to tell them all to piss off – not Chloe, obviously, but pretty much everyone else. I want to shout at them that Ella isn’t dead and they should stop gathering around her graveside waiting for her body to appear. But I can’t do that because actually I don’t know if it’s true.

There is a knock at the front door. Claire texted me to say she was on her way but it still turns my stomach. Mum gets up to answer it.

‘No, I’ll go,’ I say. She sits back down again. I go into
the lounge and peek through a crack in the curtains first to see if there are any photographers outside. The road is empty, as it was when Mum and Dad and Tony arrived earlier and when we got back from the press conference yesterday. Maybe it’s done the trick, maybe they won’t bother us again. Surely there are only so many photos of me looking like shit that people will want to look at.

When I open the door I look at Claire’s face. I made her promise to tell me straight away if it is ever bad news. She does that little sympathetic half-smile thing so that I know it isn’t.

‘Manage any sleep?’ she asks.

I shake my head. ‘I think Alex might have got an hour or two.’ She nods and follows me through to the kitchen. She met my family last night after the press conference. Mum greets her like an old friend.

‘Hello, Claire, love. This is an early start for you, and on a Sunday too.’

Claire glances at me. I shrug. Mum makes it sound like she is doing us a favour. Maybe she doesn’t want to admit to herself that Claire is a police officer, sent to deal with a possible child abduction, not some Avon lady who has popped by on the weekend with her order.

‘We’ve had a lot of calls following the press conference,’ Claire says. ‘More than a thousand so far. Nothing in the way of major leads at the moment, I’m afraid, but
the detectives are sifting through all of them, identifying possible leads to chase up.’

‘Anyone who saw her in the park after I did?’ I ask.

‘Not yet but, like I say, they’ve got a lot of information still to sift through.’

I nod. Maybe it will be the last call they come to, like it’s always the last place you look that you find the thing you’ve lost. Maybe it will all be over in a few hours. I brighten for a moment but then realise I might not want it to be over. Not if over is my worst nightmare.

Claire is still standing looking at us. She fiddles with her glasses.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘I’m afraid they need to interview all family members today,’ she says.

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘It’s standard procedure in these cases. They want to double-check every single detail and piece of information. Make sure there’s nothing they’ve missed.’

Dad slams his mug down on the table and looks up at her. ‘And if you think we believe that crap you’re a damn sight dafter than I had you down for.’

‘Dad, don’t.’

‘Well, it’s bloody obvious, isn’t it? They’re trying to pin it on someone in our family. They think one of us did it.’

‘I can assure you that isn’t the case,’ says Claire. ‘On an investigation like this we have to do things systematically to make sure nothing gets missed.’

‘So you do think we did it,’ says Dad. ‘Who’s in the frame then? Well it’s not him, is it,’ Dad says, pointing at Alex, ‘because he wasn’t anywhere near here, and if you think Tina’s capable of hurting so much as a fly, you want your head seeing to, so that only leaves me and our Tony. Why don’t you just admit that and leave the others out of it?’

‘Dad, stop it!’ I shout.

Claire looks at me. ‘It’s OK, Lisa. I understand. I’d be pretty racked off if it was my family, to tell you the truth. I know this is the last thing any of you need right now, but we wouldn’t be doing our job properly if we didn’t do it, and it might be that if we take detailed statements from all of you, one of you might just think of something that you’ve forgotten or we haven’t thought of, and suddenly we’ve got a new line of enquiry which could just lead us to Ella.’

Everyone is quiet for a moment before Alex stands up.

‘Do me first then,’ he says.

Claire looks at him.

‘You might be too nice to say it,’ he continues, ‘but I know how people think and how they point the finger, and that’s the last thing we need right now, so the sooner we can all clear our names, the sooner you can concentrate on looking for whoever took Ella.’

I stare at him. I think he probably has read the same stuff I have on Twitter. And maybe other stuff too. He looks across at me. I give him a little smile.