Have You Seen Her: The new psychological thriller from bestseller Lisa Hall

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‘Can’t say that I have. Let me ask the others.’ He turns and shouts to the two teenagers that work behind him, slicing rolls and folding napkins, before turning back to me. ‘Sorry, darlin’, we haven’t seen her. We’ll keep an eye out though, yeah?’

‘OK. Thank you.’ I try and muster a smile, before turning back to the field. I scan across the crowds, my eyes seeking out that distinct glittery bobble hat in the dark but to no avail. Spying the admissions table, where three PTA mums sit all bundled up against the cold, I start to hurry towards them, cursing the mud for hampering my progress.

‘Hello, hi.’ I am breathless with the effort of trudging through the churned-up mud as I reach the table. ‘Can you help me? I’m looking for a little girl.’

‘Is she lost?’ A caramel blonde woman, wearing an expensive waxed jacket and perfect make-up speaks first, her eyes widening as her hand with its long, manicured nails flies to cover her mouth.

‘Yes, I think so . . . I mean, she followed her mum to the loo and . . . look, we can’t find her, her name is Laurel Jessop, she’s four . . .’

‘Laurel?’ One of the other women gasps, strands of her dark hair sticking to her lip gloss as she jumps to her feet. ‘I know Laurel, she’s a friend of my daughter, Daisy.’ As she says the words I recognise her as the woman my friend Jessika nannies for.

‘Yes, Laurel. Please, have you seen her? She’s going to be frightened if she’s wandered off and she can’t find us.’ My fingers knit together anxiously as I look from one to the other, my feet itching to get back to the field, to start looking for Laurel. The third woman, pale and mousy, who I recognise from the school gate but can’t match to a child looks up with wide eyes but says nothing, her fingers pausing briefly in their tidying of admission tickets.

‘We haven’t seen her,’ Caramel Blonde says, ‘and we wouldn’t let a little one out on their own. Oh my gosh, this is terrible.’ She turns to the dark-haired woman, Daisy’s mother, an accusatory tone creeping into her voice. ‘I told you we should have set up a lost children zone.’

‘Please . . .’ I say again, ‘are you absolutely sure she hasn’t been past here?’ Even as I say the words I know Laurel hasn’t – she would have stopped and asked Daisy’s mum to help her find us, as per Fran’s strict rules.

‘Absolutely sure,’ the woman says firmly, shouldering her way past Daisy’s mother to come and stand next to me, her eyes scanning the field. ‘Right. Where’s Mr Abbott? The head will need to know about this – we have a process to set in place when a child goes missing. You two,’ she turns to the women next to her, an officious air about her now, as though she’s used to taking charge, ‘you need to get this gate closed off before things finish and people start to leave.’

Daisy’s mother starts nodding frantically in agreement, twisting her hands together as she looks anxiously between the open gate and the hordes of people watching the fireworks burst over our heads, panic starting to creep across her features. The mousy woman tidying the tickets whispers something, but before I can ask her to repeat it, there is a huge cheer as the grand finale of the fireworks goes off, and to my horror I see people start to turn to depart, gathering up small children with their glow sticks, stumbling over discarded polystyrene cups and sweet wrappers as they make their way through the field back towards the still open gate and the darkened lane that leads out and away towards the main roads.

‘Anna!’ Fran careers across the field, her feet almost sliding out from under her, her hat pushed right back on her head. Her eyes are glittery, and her cheeks flushed, and I think at first that it’s all OK, that Laurel was just locked in the loo after all. ‘Did you find her?’

My heart sinks. Fran is flushed from her frantic searching, not because it’s all over.

‘Anna? Did you find her?’ Fran repeats, and I shake my head.

‘No. No one has seen her. I checked with Pete at the barbecue station, and I asked the PTA mums at the admissions table, but none of them have seen her.’

‘Fuck.’ Fran pulls her hat off and shoves her hand through her glossy black bob, her eyes combing the scene behind me, as people now flood towards the open gate. ‘LAUREL!’ she shouts, grabbing my hand and pulling me back into the field, back into the thick of the dispersing crowd. ‘LAUREL!’ We both take up the cry, and a thick knot of fear rises up in my chest as the thought skitters across the back of my mind that maybe, maybe Laurel hasn’t got lost.

‘Mrs Jessop? Mrs Smythe on the PTA tells me we have a missing child. Is that right?’ Mr Abbott, head teacher at Oxbury Primary appears in front of me as I struggle to keep up with Fran.

‘I’m not Mrs . . . yes, she’s missing. Laurel . . . her name is Laurel,’ I manage to stutter. ‘We can’t find her.’

‘Right, try not to panic, the chances are she’s just wandered off somewhere.’ His voice is calm, but his brow is creased with concern. ‘Where did you last see her?’ I ramble on about Fran getting drinks and using the bathroom, before impatiently pushing past him and catching up to Fran, who is yanking open the doors to the portaloos again.

‘I thought maybe I missed one,’ Fran sighs. ‘I thought she might have gone in there after I checked. Did you ask the people who were serving at the bar?’

I glance towards the bar area, where Mr Abbott is talking to the parents and helpers behind the table, gesturing across the field with one arm. Behind him I see the PTA mums gathered at the now closed gate, a crowd of people waiting to leave bottlenecking in front of them. ‘The head teacher, Mr Abbott, is talking to them now.’

‘The head? He’s looking for her too?’ Fran looks up at me, a look of blind panic behind her eyes. ‘Dominic!’ she shouts suddenly, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘Dominic was meant to be here . . . what if he turned up and saw her . . . maybe she was cold, and he took her home?’

‘Maybe,’ I say doubtfully, but Fran is already fumbling in her coat pocket, dragging out her mobile phone and dialling Dominic’s number. ‘He’s her dad after all,’ she says, phone clamped to her ear. ‘I mean, why wouldn’t he take her home . . . and he wouldn’t think to ring me, not that I would have heard it even if he had . . .’ she trails off before she hangs up without speaking. ‘Voicemail,’ she says, bitterly.

Mr Abbott appears by her side and gives us both a tight smile, as we hear the sound of Laurel’s name being called in an announcement over a loudhailer.

‘Mrs Jessop.’ I point at Fran and he turns to her. ‘I’ve spoken to a few of the parents over at the bar area, but none of them have seen Laurel. We have implemented the first stages of our missing child process. All exits have been closed for the moment, and several people have already volunteered to start searching the immediate area for any sign of Laurel. What time did you last see her?’

‘I don’t know . . . the display had started, I think. Anna?’ Fran turns slightly, throwing the question to me, her eyes already looking past me, still searching the field for any glimpse of Laurel.

I have no idea. I haven’t checked the time all evening, and my heart thuds in my chest, a frantic double beat that makes my breath stop in my throat for a moment.

‘I’m not sure,’ I say. ‘Just after the fireworks started?’ Mr Abbott flips his wrist and checks his watch.

‘So, she’s been missing for around half an hour now?’ He frowns, and I feel sick – I hadn’t realised how long it had been, it feels like seconds ago and a hundred years all at the same time since I last saw her. ‘OK, I think perhaps it’s time we made a phone call . . . I think we need to get the police involved.’

I turn to Fran, and see my own fear written all over her face.

‘I’ll do it.’ She gulps hard, and slowly pulls her mobile out from her pocket again, tapping in the numbers with shaking fingers, her face illuminated by the glow of the screen.

‘Police, please. It’s my daughter . . .’ Her eyes find mine and I watch as she blinks slowly, pushing a thick, heavy tear out and over her pale cheek. ‘She’s gone . . . I can’t find her. I think someone has taken her.’

CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_c8169dae-3452-5ad5-bcf5-ff107de9612b)

Pulses of blue light flash as the patrol cars pull up across the entrance gate to the field, illuminating the faces of the families still waiting to go home. There are three of them, parked haphazardly across the entrance to the field, blocking the way out. Just the sight of the blue lights, seeing the dark uniforms of the officers stepping out of the cars, is enough to make my nerves jitter and my hands shake. I’ve spent the last five years doing my best to avoid any interaction with the police, at all costs. I have no choice tonight, though. I watch as the taller of the first two officers leans down to listen as Caramel Blonde says something, pointing in our direction. While others have started searching the field for signs of Laurel, the head teacher has kept Fran and me here, not far from the bank of portaloos, up to our ankles in mud, telling us that we need to stay put to make it easier for the police to find us. And now, they are here.

‘Oh God.’ Fran lets out a little moan as two of the police officers make their way towards us, pressing her fingers up towards her mouth. ‘I didn’t think they’d actually come . . .’ She turns to me with a look of panic on her face. ‘I thought we’d find her – I thought we’d find her and there’d be no need for them.’

‘It’s OK,’ I say, wanting to reassure her but she’s usually so unapproachable that I find it hard to break the habit of keeping myself back a little.

‘Mrs Jessop?’

Fran says nothing, and I give her a little nudge.

‘Yes,’ she says finally, turning a tear-stained face to the police officer in front of us. ‘That’s me.’

‘I’m DS Wright. You rang us – said you couldn’t find your daughter. Do you want to tell us what happened?’

The woman’s voice is low, and I have to strain slightly to hear her. Fran starts to recount the evening, starting from when she arrived at the field. Laurel had been excited about the bonfire all week, it had been all she had talked about, and I’d ended up leaving the house with her half an hour before we’d needed to, arranging to meet Fran at the field so she could finish getting ready in peace. Laurel had tugged on my hand all the way along the lane to the entrance, not even stopping for Mr Snow’s house at the top of the pathway – an older gentleman, who was often in his garden in the afternoons, and Laurel liked to pause and chat to him for at least five minutes, seeing as he quite often had lollies in his pocket. I think about the way she rushed along the pavement, excitement making her squeeze my hand, before she pulled away, eager to be the first in the gate and I feel my heart constrict in my chest. What if she’d fallen? What if a car had come speeding round the corner and almost hit her? Would I have held her hand a bit tighter then? Would I have made sure she was in my eyeline for the entire evening, instead of assuming that she’d caught up with Fran?

‘. . . and she just wasn’t there, was she, Anna?’ I am shaken out of my thoughts by Fran’s voice speaking my name.

‘And you are?’

‘Anna.’ I look over at DS Wright’s colleague, a slight woman with short blonde hair and a smattering of freckles across her nose, who stands poised with a small black notebook, as Wright waits for my answer. ‘Anna Cox. I’m . . . I’m Laurel’s nanny.’

‘And you brought Laurel here, earlier this evening?’

‘Yes. I walked here with her while Fran was getting ready. Laurel was excited, she wanted to get here as early as possible.’

‘And then . . . what? Can you run me through exactly what happened – when you first realised that Laurel wasn’t where you expected her to be?’

I see Fran glance in my direction as I open my mouth to speak, to repeat exactly what she has just told them. ‘Fran was going to the loo, and to get us a drink. Laurel said she was going as well, and she ran off after Fran. But then Fran came back, and Laurel hadn’t caught up with her.’ Guilt lies heavily in my stomach. Why hadn’t I watched? Made sure she reached Fran, kept my eyes on her until she grabbed her hand?

‘Thank you, Anna.’ The police officer seems satisfied with my comments, scratching away jotting down my words in her notebook. ‘So, it sounds as though she’s wandered off, lost sight of Mum. We’ve got the exits closed now and we’re looking for her, OK? She can’t have got far – we’ll find her.’ She gives me a brisk smile, before walking away towards her colleagues, leaving Fran and me alone, the chilly night air taking on a sinister feel as Laurel’s name is shouted again and again into the dark.

I’m not sure how long it is before DS Wright walks back over to us, her face pensive. She stumbles over an uneven patch in the muddy ground, her sturdy black shoes sliding as she almost loses her footing. Righting herself, she brushes a splash of mud from her black trousers, before stopping in front of us.

‘What is it?’ Fran says, almost shoving me aside to get close to the police officer, her hand reaching out before falling to her hip. Her voice is hoarse from shouting Laurel’s name, and as I swallow I realise my throat is also raw. ‘Did you find something? Did you find Laurel?’

‘Mrs Jessop . . . Fran.’ DS Wright speaks slowly, calmly, before she turns her gaze to include me. ‘As yet, we haven’t found any sign of Laurel in the immediate area, but we are still carrying out a full, intensive search. In the meantime, there are just a few things that I would like to ask you about.’

Fran says nothing, her face pale, so I nod instead. ‘Yes, of course. We’ll answer any questions you have, won’t we, Fran?’

‘Great, thank you.’ DS Wright pulls out her notebook, rifling through the pages until she finds what she’s looking for. ‘So, Laurel went to catch up with her mother – with you, Fran – is that right?’

‘Yes.’ I nod again, as Fran crushes a tissue to her nose, tears spilling over and running down her cheeks. ‘But I didn’t actually see her catch up with Fran.’ Just saying the words makes me feel sick.

‘But you’re sure she went in that direction – towards the portaloos?’

‘Yes, yes I’m sure.’ I am sure – aren’t I? Guilt and worry converge to make me doubt myself, to doubt the picture I see in my mind’s eye of Laurel running towards the back of Fran’s coat, as she weaved her way slowly through the crowds.

‘And you didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, either before or during the bonfire? Nobody hanging around that shouldn’t have been? No one who seemed overly interested in Laurel?’ Her eyes settle on my face and I feel a slight sweat break out across my forehead, despite the cold night air, as though it is me under investigation, me who has done something wrong.

‘No. No one. Although, there were people starting to arrive as we walked up the lane, so I don’t know that I’d . . .’ I was going to say, I don’t know that I’d have even noticed, but I can’t bring myself to say it out loud.

‘And what about Laurel’s father? Fran says that he was supposed to meet you all here this evening?’

‘He was,’ I say, frowning slightly, ‘he’s a surgeon – a heart surgeon at the hospital in South Oxbury – but he didn’t make it here, obviously.’

‘I tried to get hold of him,’ Fran says, a frown to match my own creasing her forehead. She pauses for a moment and blinks hard. ‘I called him a few times, but it just kept going to bloody voicemail.’ She presses her lips together and looks away, wrapping her arms tightly around herself.

‘It was sort of a big deal, tonight . . .’ I say in a low voice, ‘he works really long hours, but he’d promised Laurel that he would make it.’

‘Can we try him again?’ The blonde officer who spoke to me earlier has arrived to stand next to her colleague, and she looks to DS Wright for confirmation.

‘I’ll do it,’ I say, glancing at Fran. She looks white, the blue lights still pulsing in the background giving her face a sickly sheen every time they pass over her features. ‘I’ll call him.’

I call his number, my fingers fumbling with the phone, but I don’t know if it’s through shock or simply the cold. Just as it did for Fran, the voicemail kicks in within a couple of rings.

‘Dominic? It’s Anna. Can you call me as soon as you get this?’ Fran is talking to DS Wright, so I step away slightly, hanging up the phone and scrolling down to the number I am only to call in strict emergencies. This counts, I think to myself, this definitely counts as an emergency. It starts to ring, and I press one finger into my ear in order to hear better, as I feel the blonde officer’s eyes on me – DC Barnes, I think Wright called her. I turn my back and wait for the call to be answered.

‘Theatre,’ a gruff voice barks into the receiver.

‘Oh, hello,’ I say, gripping the phone tightly as I try to keep my voice steady, ‘I need to speak with Mr Jessop, please, it’s rather urgent. Can you tell me if he’s in theatre, or is he available?’

‘Mr Jessop?’ There is a pause on the line and a murmur of voices faintly in the background, and I imagine the nurse glancing at the whiteboard, then asking her colleague, checking to see which theatre he might be in. ‘Sorry, he’s not on this evening. His list finished at five o’clock.’

Shit. Where the hell is he? He promised Laurel that he would be here tonight, and I assumed that he had got caught up with work – after all, that’s usually what happens with Dominic. I glance over to where Fran is holding a tissue to her nose, her other arm wrapped tightly around herself as if cold. DC Barnes takes a step towards me, and I hold up one finger as the phone in my hand buzzes, relieved when DS Wright calls her over and I don’t have to worry about her listening in.

‘Dominic?’ I pause. ‘You got my message? Fran’s been trying to get hold of you for ages.’

‘Oh, Jesus.’ I hear him exhale, a long, deep sigh, and imagine him sat in his car, his big, luxury Porsche Cayenne that neither Fran nor I are ever allowed to drive, or maybe at home, knowing he was going to be late and miss the bonfire, waiting for us to get back so he can put Laurel to bed. ‘Look, Anna, if she’s getting you to call me just so I answer and then she can take the phone and chew me out, I’m hanging up now, OK?’

‘No, Dominic, it’s not . . . it’s not that.’ My mouth is dry, and I wish I could take it back – I wish I had left it to Fran, or one of the police officers here to make the call.

‘What is it, then? I know I missed the fireworks, but . . . I’ll talk to Laurel tomorrow and make it up to her. It wasn’t my fault . . .’

‘Dominic, I called the hospital, looking for you.’ Whispering, I grip the phone tightly in my hand, feeling the skin stretch over my knuckles, and turn back to where Fran is waiting. I raise my voice again. ‘It’s Laurel. She’s gone missing.’

As I speak the words out loud to Dominic, I see Fran almost visibly stagger slightly, as if my words have cut her, her hands covering her mouth as if to hold in a scream. Mr Abbott appears at her side to clutch her by the elbow and keep her steady.

‘What? What’s happened? Where is she? Are you still at the field?’ Dominic fires questions at me, one after the other, barely giving me time to respond, before he tells me he’s on his way and hangs up on me abruptly. More police officers are arriving, and there is a sense of urgency now humming in the air. Mr Abbott has rounded up several more volunteers who are already beginning to search the field more thoroughly, and I hear Laurel’s name being cried repeatedly into the frosty night air.

‘She’ll be getting cold.’ Almost as though she read my mind, Fran comes close to me, her voice quiet. ‘And she’s not keen on the dark either. Remember that time the bulb went in the nightlight in the middle of the night and she woke up? We all thought she’d been . . .’ Her voice trails off and she gives a tiny huff of wheezy laughter, that catches in her throat. ‘Is Dominic coming?’

‘Yes. He got held up.’ I don’t mention my call to the hospital. My hands are freezing now, and I shove them deep into my pockets, my fingers touching something cold and plasticky. I snare whatever it is between my fingertips and draw it out, only to see a tiny doll, like the little Polly Pocket dolls I used to have as a child. Mr Snow gave it to Laurel as we passed one morning on the way to school – it had blonde hair, and a pink jacket, and he told her it looked exactly like her – I assumed it must have belonged to one of his grandchildren. It certainly wasn’t new. Laurel must have sneaked it into my pocket without me noticing. I curl my fingers round it and feel the soft plastic stick slightly to my palms.

‘He’s always held up.’ Fran’s voice jolts me back to the present. ‘Maybe if he’d actually bothered to turn up this evening this never would have happened.’ She gives a little sob and presses the back of her hand to her mouth again, as her eyes comb over the field, watching the figures of volunteers sliding across the mud, all shouting Laurel’s name.

‘Fran? Anna?’ Someone else approaches now, a stranger, but I can tell immediately that he belongs to the police. There is something about his manner, the way he carries himself, that tells me he is important. He introduces himself to Fran, but I don’t catch his name, only the words, ‘. . . senior investigating officer.’ With a pang, I remember the last time I heard those words. It’s different this time, I think, I can’t be blamed this time.

‘We’re doing everything we can to find Laurel – due to the length of time she’s been missing now we’ve put in a request for a helicopter to join the search, but for the moment I think it’s best for yourself and Ms Cox to return to the house,’ he is saying, a hand on Fran’s elbow to guide her towards the waiting police vehicle.

‘What? No!’ Fran wrenches her arm away, sliding a little in her wellies. ‘Laurel is out here somewhere. Shouldn’t I be here? Waiting, in case they find her?’

‘Mrs Jessop,’ the officer’s voice is low and soothing, and Fran stops dead, biting back whatever she was going to say. ‘We’ve got our finest team out searching for Laurel – the best thing you can do is go home and wait.’

‘Fran, listen,’ I say, still slightly unnerved by Fran’s display of emotion this evening. I’m not used to it – she is usually reserved to the point of occasional rudeness, and to see her so open, so exposed, makes me feel uncomfortable. ‘I think it makes sense for us to go back to the house . . . what if Laurel has wandered off and she’s made her way home and you’re not there?’

‘Do you think so? DI Dove . . . do you think she might be at home?’ She turns to face DI Jayden Dove, hope written across her face.

‘It’s possible. We have already dispatched a team to the house just in case.’ He tries to force a smile, but it doesn’t sit right on his face. ‘DS Wright and DC Barnes will take you home.’ He’s lying, I think, the thought closing around my heart like a cold fist, he doesn’t think Laurel is at home at all. I try to force the thought away and tap Fran lightly on the arm.

‘Come on,’ I say, ‘if she is at home, she’s going to want a cuddle and a hot chocolate.’ And I lead her slowly towards the police car, trying to squash down the familiar feeling of dread that rises up, threatening to consume me.

Laurel isn’t there. Of course she isn’t, I knew deep down that she wouldn’t be and I think Fran knew that too. She is quiet as we step into the hall, DS Wright shadowing us as we enter the slightly chilly living room. The curtains are open, a shaft of moonlight slicing the room in two before I switch on the overhead light and slide my coat off. I take Fran’s coat and usher her into an armchair, before returning to the hallway to hang the coats. I slide the little doll from my coat pocket into the back pocket of my jeans. As I reach up to the coat pegs, the sound of the front door opening makes me jump and I gasp, dropping Fran’s Ralph Lauren jacket on the floor.

‘Dominic,’ I place my hand over my racing heart, ‘you made me jump.’ He looks terrible, his silver hair standing on end as though he has been pushing his hands through it, his face pale and eyes ringed with dark circles.

‘Is she here?’ His voice is desperate, and he grips my forearms tightly, eyes boring into mine. ‘Is Laurel back?’

‘No,’ I stammer, trying to pull away from him, ‘she’s not. The police are through there.’ He lets me go and I gesture towards the living room.

‘OK. OK.’ He shoves his hand through his hair again, before rubbing his palm across his mouth, twelve hours’ worth of stubble scratching his skin. ‘Anna, did you tell anyone I wasn’t at the hospital? Did you tell Fran?’

I frown, shaking my head. ‘No, I didn’t get a chance to. As soon as I hung up DI Dove told us we should come back here. Why?’

‘Nothing.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Just . . . don’t, will you? Don’t say anything just yet. I don’t think Fran would understand . . . I’ll tell her later, when things are . . . you know.’

‘Right.’ I don’t know how I feel about this and I waver for a moment, before I decide I have to let it go, for now anyway. Fran will be furious if she finds out, and I know the focus for all of us should be on Laurel and getting her home safely. I go to speak, to tell him that I’ll keep it quiet for now, but he’s already pushing past me, headed to where Fran sits in teary silence on the sofa.

‘Dominic.’ She gets to her feet as he enters, and at first I think she’s going to shout, or hit him, fury crossing her face before she crumples into his arms. ‘She’s gone, Dom. Laurel’s gone. Someone has taken our baby.’