99 Red Balloons

‘It’s just some attention-seeking woman, that’s all,’ I say. ‘Obviously on the sherry or something.’

‘Let me sit down, Jamie.’

‘Sure, Gran.’

He gets up silently. Why didn’t she choose another chair? There are two spare. I rub Jamie’s arm, but he flicks my hand away. Mum pulls the laptop closer and puts on her glasses.

‘I thought you said …’ I begin, but I shouldn’t start.

‘What?’ She says it dismissively, but I know she knows.

She said Facebook was dangerous, that no one in their right mind should ever look at it, or write on it. ‘You never know who’s watching.’ She’s the same with mobile phones; I’ve bought her two now but she leaves them in the cupboard, switched off.

‘Deandra,’ says Mum. ‘What kind of a name is that?’

‘One created by fairies,’ I say.

Mum gives me a sideways glance. In an instant her expression has said, How can you be flippant at a time like this?

Dad would have understood. Whenever something terrible happened, he would always cut through the darkness by saying something light. Three days after his own father died, Dad said, I owed him a fiver, you know. No one laughed, they just smiled. We could say anything to Dad. He’d know that it’s my defence mechanism to try to remain in the present. Otherwise I might fall apart, and I’d be no use to anyone then, would I?

‘I have tuned in to my spirit guides,’ says Mum, reading from the screen, ‘and requested their help. I believe that Grace is still alive, but she is being kept somewhere. I hear the sound of water …’ She puts her glasses on the top of her head. ‘Well, that’s utter bollocks.’

My eyes dart to Jamie. ‘Language, Mother!’

He rolls his eyes at me. ‘Mum, I’m thirteen, I’m hardly a child.’

In ordinary circumstances I would have laughed, teased him.

‘What’s going on?’ Emma stands at the doorway. Her brown hair is all over the place, her dressing gown is undone and her nightshirt buttons are done up wrong. She barely slept last night, but it looks like she hasn’t had any sleep today either.

Mum flips down the lid of the computer.

‘Nothing, love. How are you feeling?’

‘I’m not.’

Nadia comes back inside – the breeze travels through to the kitchen as she closes the front door. She goes out whenever she gets a phone call about the case – probably because we’d listen in and second-guess the news from her responses.

Emma’s hands are shaking. Mum stands and puts her arms around her. It’s hard to read Nadia’s expression – her demeanour has been measured and constant since she came to the house.

‘Well?’ says Mum.

‘We’ve had no sightings of Grace, but …’

Emma bends over, as though she’s been kicked in the stomach.

‘I … I … thought you’d found her then … I thought you were about to say …’

Mum guides her to the other side of the table, pulls out a chair, and sits her gently down as though she were made of glass. She stands behind her and smooths down her hair. Why can’t she just leave her alone? Emma raises her head and meets Nadia’s gaze. My sister’s jaw sets and she narrows her eyes.

‘What is it? What have you found out?’

‘We’ve had a big response to the appeal – a lot of people offering sympathy, many saying they’ve never trusted their neighbour—’

I clear my throat loudly. Why is she saying all of this – how long has she been doing this job?

‘Anyway, there are some pieces of information we are following up—’

‘But what if someone’s taken her out of the country?’ I say. ‘What then? How will you find her?’

‘We alerted all ports – air and ferry – as soon as we knew of Grace’s disappearance. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. We have an image from the CCTV camera outside the newsagent’s on Monday, which shows a man and what appears to be a young boy. We’re about to release the image to the press, but we wanted to show you first.’

She reaches into her rucksack and pulls out an iPad. She swipes it and places it on the kitchen table.

‘Do you recognise either of these people?’

I lean over, as do Mum and Emma; our heads touch as we look at the screen.

‘It’s really blurry,’ I say. ‘You’d think they’d have better quality images these days.’

Mum gives me one of her glances and sighs. I can’t say anything right.

‘It is rather fuzzy,’ she says, after a minute. ‘How are we meant to tell by looking at their backs? They could be anyone.’

‘Do you recognise any items of clothing on the child?’

‘But it’s a boy,’ says Mum, rubbing her temples.

Emma looks up at Nadia.

‘Do you think this child might be Grace?’

‘We’re not sure yet,’ says Nadia, always talking in the collective, as though she has no opinion of her own.

Emma picks up the iPad.

‘But I can’t see the legs. This child has trousers on. And that coat – it’s too big. Grace’s only little, she doesn’t eat much, you see. I try to get her interested, but she’s not at all. The most food she’ll eat is at breakfast. She’d rather listen to One Direction, or read books, or play on the console, or—’

She drops the tablet onto the table. My chair flips over as I rush over to her and pull her head into my arms.

‘Oh, Steph. What am I going to do? I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough. If anything’s happened to her I won’t be able to go on. I can’t bear it.’

I stroke her hair and whisper in her ear. ‘You are strong. You can do this. I’m here for you.’

She wipes the tears from her face with the heels of her palms.

‘Where’s Matt?’ She pushes me aside as she gets up from the chair, and walks out of the kitchen.

Mum and I are still scrutinising the CCTV image when Matt walks in.

‘Let me see,’ he says, swiping it from under our heads.

Mum opens her mouth, but closes it again. Obviously she can bite her tongue when it’s someone else.

Matt looks like shit. He slept in the same jeans and T-shirt he’s worn for days, bar the press conference. He only went to bed in the early hours of the morning after drinking the best part of two bottles of wine.

‘Can’t see a fucking thing,’ he says. ‘Haven’t you got a clearer picture?’

I glance over at Jamie. Usually he smirks if an adult swears in front of him, but his lips are tight; he’s staring at the table. I don’t think he’s heard Matt swear before.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Nadia. ‘We don’t.’

Matt rubs his eyes with one hand, and looks again.

‘Jesus, it could be anybody. Do you think this bloke has dressed Grace up like this? Have you got any more pictures of them? Surely this can’t be the only one of these two from the cameras in town.’

‘We’re working on it.’

‘Are we?’ he snaps. ‘Well this is no bloody use to me.’ He throws the iPad onto the table. ‘Get back to me when you’ve got more than this shit.’

I sit down next to Jamie at the table.

‘You okay, love?’

He nods. ‘Do you think …?’

‘What?’ I say, but he’s looking down at the floor. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I know it’s Friday tomorrow, but do you think it would be okay if I went back to school?’

I’ve been selfish keeping him here – making sure I can see him, so I know where he is. I should’ve realised that being here would be uncomfortable for him. His dad texted last night saying Jamie could stay there, which might not be a bad idea – if Neil didn’t work all the time.

I put my hand over his. ‘Of course it is.’

Chapter Twelve

Maggie

I stand outside the bedroom door. I hardly ever open it, but I feel as though Sarah’s telling me to go inside, to remember. I almost don’t want to. The everyday thoughts are bad enough – those pangs I feel in my chest when it catches me by surprise, when I think I’ve buried it enough to go about my day. But it never goes away. I’m meant to be sad. Nothing will change that.

Sarah and Zoe moved in with Ron and me six weeks before Zoe went missing. Missing – it sounds so flippant. She was taken from us, murdered, vanished. They are the dramatic words that should belong to Zoe, because we don’t know what happened to her. No, they’re not the only words. She was kind, even at five years old, so kind. Yes, she could be challenging, but only because she was so bright – not that we said so at the time.

Sarah’s husband, David, had been made redundant, but they’d been arguing long before that. She and Zoe moved in with us to give Sarah some space to think. But Zoe missed her dad.

Pull yourself together, Margaret. My mother’s voice is tingling in my ears.

Easier said than done, Mother.

I turn the handle and push the door open. I always leave the curtains tied, so it’s never dark. There’s not as much dust in here this time. What is dust, anyway? I once heard that it was about seventy per cent human skin. No one comes in here, so there can’t be much. I wonder how many of the little particles left behind are from Sarah and Zoe. I want to gather them all up and bring them to life.

Next to Sarah’s single bed is Zoe’s little camp bed. Her three teddies are still on her pillow. One of them, her favourite pink elephant, Wellie (she couldn’t say Nellie when she first got it, and it just stuck), is almost standing upright. The clothes they arrived with are still in suitcases under the bed. I couldn’t bear to unpack, to look at them, to touch them, to smell them. Mother had a point when she said that some things are best left buried – it feels too painful to unearth them.

I still wonder if things would’ve been different if Sarah hadn’t left David. They lived over twenty minutes away, so Zoe would never have gone to the sweet shop on the corner. I used to blame David for driving Sarah away, but that has lessened. I haven’t seen him in over ten years.

I don’t want to look to the left; I know what I’ll see. The mahogany chest of drawers that Ron and I bought from a car boot sale in Blackpool. On top of it will be a twelve by seven photograph of Zoe in a beautiful carved frame; there’ll be a box that contains a lock of Zoe’s hair from her first trip to the hairdresser’s; the candle, burned only once from her christening. There will be angels made from porcelain, plastic, wood; a stone Zoe picked from St Anne’s beach; a jar of perfume she made with roses and Ron’s aftershave; the conker she pickled in vinegar and made me bake for seven hours.

I know all those things are there and I can’t look at them.

I stroke the cover of Sarah’s bed – the place where my beautiful daughter died, and back out of the room.

Chapter Thirteen

Stephanie

Our secret has been easy to keep from Emma, as we’d only communicated through email. Emma, famously to everyone who knows her, never uses email outside of work, or Facebook, or any of that – she seldom even texts. She says she prefers to hear a person’s voice.

Matt hasn’t mentioned it since the text the other day. We can’t talk about it here. It wouldn’t just betray Emma, it would hurt Mum too. Somehow, I’ve got to access Jamie’s laptop and delete whatever we put online. But I can’t now – I’m frozen on the sofa. Matt is watching every news report about Grace – as is Mum, who’s sitting in the armchair opposite me. Sky News has been running almost twenty-four-hour coverage since she went missing on Monday. It’s now Friday. How has it got to the end of the week without her being found? Grace’s face is everywhere; if someone saw her on the street, would they recognise her? Perhaps they’d ignore the feeling that they’ve seen her somewhere before.

I try not to imagine what that man in the CCTV image wants with her – even though it might not even be her in the picture. But if it is, and their picture is everywhere – on television, in the papers – then the man won’t go out with her in public, he’ll hide her away. We might never see her again.

There are reporters in town, and camera crews everywhere – interviewing the police spokesperson and the residents. It’s like it’s not real, that it’s happening to someone else in a different town.

‘I need to go and look for her,’ says Matt. ‘I should be out there, helping everyone else. They probably think I don’t care. If I could just see a picture of this man’s face – the man who was holding her hand … then I’ll find him, find her.’ He keeps saying the same things. He walks over to Nadia, who’s perched on a dining chair near the door leading to the kitchen. She’s been here every day, from early morning until late at night. ‘Please let me help.’

Nadia has that same look on her face, the same tilt of the head she always uses to address him. ‘Nearly the whole town is looking for her, Matthew. The whole town. We need you to be here in case we find her.’

‘But what if it’s not her in that photograph – what if someone didn’t take her and she’s trapped somewhere? She’ll be waiting for me to come and get her. I’m letting her down just sitting here. What kind of fucking father am I, who just sits watching everyone else while they look for my daughter? It’s my job, I should be there. It’s been nearly four days. She’s going to be really cold.’ His voice is barely a whisper. Tears are streaming down his face. ‘It’s freezing at night.’

She guides him back to the sofa and I just watch, useless, an outsider looking in. It’s the first of October tomorrow; the temperature might start to fall. I can’t think about Grace being cold. I can’t think about her being scared. My fears and my hopes are intertwined: I hope someone has taken her, but that they’re looking after her, keeping her warm. It’s wishful thinking, but better than what my imagination is trying to show me: the worst possible things that don’t correspond with my lovely Grace. My thoughts trigger a rage I’ve never felt before. If anything happens to her, I will kill whoever did it with my bare hands.

The same thoughts go over and over in my head.

I sit up quickly.

Jamie.

Mum looks over at me.

‘He’s at school,’ she says. It must be the first time she’s ever read my mind. ‘Do you want me to ring the school again – check he’s okay?’

I look at Matt – he’s not listening. Every time I talk about Jamie, I feel like I’m rubbing his nose in the fact that my child is safe.

‘How many times have we rung?’ I say.

‘Three.’ She’s staring at the television now.

Three times? I can’t remember the first time. Thank God it’s Saturday tomorrow. When I escorted Jamie to the taxi this morning, there were flashes from the reporters’ cameras. I wish I’d had a blanket to cover his face. Then whoever has Grace won’t come for Jamie.

‘Get me a drink, will you, Steph?’

I stand up automatically and grab the cup at Matt’s feet.

‘Not tea. Something stronger.’

I glance at the clock on the mantelpiece – it’s twenty past one. I look to Mum. She raises her eyebrows and shrugs her shoulders. This from the woman who says drinking before six o’clock makes you either too rich or too common.

‘Do you think it’s wise at this time of day?’ I say. ‘What if …’

I don’t know what to say – no one is listening to me anyway.

‘There’s some vodka on top of the fridge,’ says Mum.

How does one person know where every single thing is in every house she visits?

I walk into the kitchen. My heart jolts when I see Emma at the kitchen table with Jamie’s laptop in front of her.

‘How did you guess the password?’ I say, grabbing the vodka off the top of the fridge.

‘I didn’t guess it, did I? How the hell would I guess that? Jamie gave it to me.’

I don’t even know his password. I stop my mouth before it opens and actually bite my tongue. I hate it when she goes behind my back like this, like she can do as she pleases, like she’s— shit, stop it, Stephanie. I want to slap myself. Grace is not here and I’m thinking about myself.

I get a tumbler and pour the vodka halfway.

‘What does Matt drink with his vodka?’ I say.

‘I wouldn’t know these days.’ Emma’s eyes don’t leave the screen. My heart beats faster at the thought of what she might be reading. ‘You’d know better than I do.’

I say nothing and stride into the sitting room, offering the glass to Matt.

‘Am I supposed to drink it neat? What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you not see the coke in the fridge?’

I just stand there. I can’t believe my hand isn’t shaking. I don’t know if I’m more upset than angry. I hear a noise behind me.

‘Don’t you ever, ever talk to my daughter like that!’

Mum is standing next to me and has her right fist held up. The tears well up in my eyes. Matt has never spoken to me like that; Mum has never stuck up for me like that. The air is charged for what feels like minutes. I look to Nadia; Mum’s looking at her too.

‘Perhaps now is not the time to get angry with your family, Matthew,’ she says.

I can see the venom in his eyes as he looks at me. When he shifts his gaze to Nadia, his expression softens.

I’m shaking as I walk back to the kitchen and sit at the table next to Emma.

‘What are you looking at?’ I say to her.

She glances at me as though I’m a nuisance. Did she hear what just happened? Her eyes are bloodshot and there are tiny red blisters under them.

‘That psychic on Grace’s page on Facebook. I’m doing some research on her.’

‘Oh.’ I relax a little into the chair. ‘I didn’t know you knew your way around Facebook.’

‘Just because you don’t see me on the laptop at home, doesn’t mean I don’t use it all day at work.’

I should’ve realised – she’s on a computer all the time at the recruitment agency. She didn’t look at me when she spoke, but paranoia tells me that there was an undertone. What else has she been hiding from me?

‘I’ve got to keep an open mind about these things,’ she says.

‘I guess.’

She tuts. ‘My daughter is missing, Stephanie. Wouldn’t you consider every possibility if it were Jamie?’

‘Of course. I’d consider every possibility for Grace too.’

She glances at me and purses her lips. It’s her way of saying we’re friends again.

‘Bring your chair nearer to me. You can help me look.’

She clicks onto Deandra Divine’s Facebook page. I say nothing about the name. The profile photo is what I expected: a black and white shot of a woman in her fifties, black straight hair framing her face in a centre parting, her gaze off camera. Emma and I would have laughed at it any other time.

‘I’ve read about other missing person cases she’s given readings about, cases from years ago. She’s been right most of the time.’

If she were the real deal, surely she’d be right all of the time. It’s a thought I keep to myself.

‘I’ve emailed her, Steph. If I manage to get an appointment with her, will you come with me?’

I pause for a second. ‘Of course.’

I couldn’t relax until Jamie was back from school. I didn’t know how long it would take him to get here. At home he’s usually back at 3.45 p.m., but I booked him a taxi to pick him up – no doubt he was mortified in front of his friends – and he didn’t arrive until 3.55 p.m. In those ten minutes I experienced only a fraction of what Emma and Matt are going through. He’s upstairs in his usual place now, in the spare room.

Mum is still hovering over Emma. It’s her way of dealing with things beyond her control. I can tell that she’s been crying because she spent ten minutes in the bathroom and the rims of her eyes are still red. I don’t say anything. I never do. Once you start talking about feelings from the past, there’s no way of forgetting them again.

When Dad died four years ago, she baked and cooked for twelve hours solid until she collapsed on the sofa at three o’clock in the morning. She would never let us see her cry. She tried to hide the noise in their – her – bedroom by putting the television on loud. Emma and I would sit at her door, both too afraid to open it.

It had all happened so quickly. Emma and I had been at Mum and Dad’s house when the phone call came. ‘You need to come to the hospital,’ said the woman on the other end of the line to Mum. ‘It’s your husband. He’s been in an accident.’

‘What do you think it means?’ Mum asked in the car on the way there. ‘Why didn’t your dad speak to me himself?’

She wouldn’t stop talking.

Emma sat next to me in the passenger seat as I drove us there. While Mum spoke, Emma and I kept exchanging glances; I think we both knew what we were about to hear without us saying it aloud.

When I pulled up into the hospital car park I experienced a sense of doom – that I was walking into another life, another chapter. It was a feeling strangely familiar, like I’d been expecting it without realising.

The police officer was waiting for us in the relatives’ room. He already had his hat in his hands.

‘I’m very sorry,’ he said to Mum. ‘But your husband was taken ill this afternoon. He suffered a stroke while he was driving. There was no one else injured.’

‘What?’ she said. ‘I don’t understand. We’re going out for dinner tonight … just the four of us.’

She looked to Emma and me as though we had the answers.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what’s happened.’

‘But I only saw him at midday,’ she said. ‘It can’t have happened. He was fine.’ She grabbed hold of my hand. ‘He looked fine, didn’t he, Stephanie?’

‘I … I haven’t seen him since last week.’

She put her hand on her forehead. ‘Yes, yes. You two only came round an hour ago.’ She looked at the policeman. ‘Are you sure you have the right person?’ She reached into her handbag, took out her purse and flipped it open. ‘Is this the same person?’

The police officer nodded. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Mum buried her face in her hands. ‘It can’t be. It can’t be.’

The room was closing in on me; the door, the walls, the ceiling. The tears fell down my face – a stream that came from nowhere.

Emma looked at me – her eyes wide, her mouth open. She shook her head. ‘I … I … it’s not right,’ she said. ‘Not Dad.’

My dad, my lovely dad, had gone in an instant.

He was pronounced dead an hour before we’d got to the hospital – just as Emma and I had arrived at our parents’ house. For a whole sixty minutes, he’d been lying there, on his own. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for him, dying alone. The suggestion that he’d have felt nothing was of little comfort.

I jump as Mum sets a platter of sandwiches on the coffee table. Being in this house now, with Mum and Emma, is making me think about the past too much. Emma is sitting in her chair, her eyes always locked on the window.

‘I know you won’t feel like eating it, love.’ Mum places a small plate on the arm of Emma’s chair, which contains half an egg sandwich, minus the crusts. ‘But you need to keep your strength up … for Grace. She’ll need you to be strong for when she gets home.’

It’s like watching a switch activate in Emma’s mind: she turns to the plate.

‘Thanks, Mum.’

She stares at the sandwich for a few seconds before breaking it into four, placing one tiny piece into her mouth.

When she gets home. I so hope she’s right – that Mum has more foresight than I have.

Emma’s on her second glass of wine in thirty minutes. Matt phoned the woman at the off-licence and they were all too happy to deliver. Probably wanted to have a good look at the family in turmoil.

‘At least she didn’t charge,’ I said.

‘And so she shouldn’t,’ said Mum. ‘Though I dare say they shouldn’t be getting drunk.’

At a time like this, she didn’t say. Six bottles of wine and two litres of vodka the shop had delivered. We shouldn’t be drinking at a time like this, is what I had thought, until I’d finished my first glass of wine.

It hadn’t taken Mum long to join us. Thirty-five minutes later and she’s swinging her left leg, banging it against the bottom of the armchair. I want to dive on her leg to stop it moving.