After Anna (6 page)

For the last two hours, though, it had been the only thing that mattered. She wanted to be everywhere at once. It was the only way she could be sure she would find Anna.

But that wasn’t possible. You really can’t be in two places at once. You can occupy only one patch of earth, one volume of air. And the one she was in was not the same one as Anna.

And might never be.

She couldn’t keep that thought away. It forced its way into her consciousness, trailing hysteria not far behind.

What if she’s gone for good? Dead? Sold into slavery? Locked in a madman’s basement? What if I never see her again?

In the moments after she thought this way, before she was able to grab some small measure of control over herself, she was filled with an emotion so strong that it stopped her doing whatever she was doing. If she was drinking water, the cup would fall from her lips, the contents spilling over her hand and onto the floor. If she was walking she would sink into the nearest chair or against the nearest wall; if she was talking to someone she would stop, mid-sentence and clutch her hands against her stomach.

And it was all the worse because she was to blame.

It was incontrovertible. Yes, she may have some kind of paltry excuse – her meeting ran over, her phone was dead, – but if you stepped away from the details, it was clear. If she had been there at two fifty-five, waiting for Anna outside the school gate, then Anna would be with her now. They’d be at home getting ready for Anna’s bedtime, maybe reading
The Twits
by now.

She definitely
wouldn’t
be here, at the school, sitting in the head teacher’s office with DI Wynne and a cup of coffee while, through the thick glass of the window the sun dipped slowly over the horizon. And Anna wouldn’t be – well, Anna wouldn’t be wherever she was.

The door to the office opened and two police officers came in. They were both men, both in their twenties.

‘Did you find her?’ Julia asked, even though she knew from their expressions that they hadn’t.

‘No ma’am,’ the one on the left said. ‘Not yet.’

DI Wynne followed them in. She had her phone to her ear. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you know if anything changes.’ She cut the connection and looked at the officers. ‘Nothing?’

The one on the right shook his head. ‘Nothing. We’ve covered everywhere she could have walked to. Every street, every park. We’ve interviewed a lot of people – kids, adults, anyone – but no one saw her.’

Wynne pinched her chin with her thumb and forefinger.

‘And the other parents who were here to pick up their kids?’

‘We’ve started talking to them. We’ll get to most of them tonight, the ones that agree to it. Most will.’

The other officer spoke. ‘We’ve started knocking on doors. Asking homeowners if they have any information. We’re rounding up as many bodies as we can to start searching. And we’ll get a general appeal on local radio.’

They’ve done this before
, Julia thought.
Oh God, they’ve done this before. This really happens. And it’s happening to me.

‘Can I come?’ she asked, suddenly. ‘Can I come with you?’

‘To knock on doors?’ the officer said.

‘Yes. I’ll know if Anna’s there. I’ll just know. And if I call out her name then she’ll answer.’

The officer shifted his weight from foot to foot. He glanced at DI Wynne.

‘I think it will be better if we leave PCs Joyce and Bell to deal with that,’ Wynne said. ‘It might help things to go smoothly.’

‘Why?’ Julia said. ‘I can help.’

‘Mrs Crowne, it’s better if you stay here. In case Anna does show up. She could be quite distressed.’

‘I’d like to go.’

‘I think it’s better if you don’t.’

Why was this woman obstructing her?
Julia thought.
Why would she not let her look for Anna?

‘I’m her mum!’ she said, all of the emotion of the last few hours finding an outlet in righteous anger. ‘I have a right to go! If I want to go, I can! What if she’s in one of those houses? She needs me to be there!’

‘Mrs Crowne, we don’t think that she is in one of the houses. We’re just asking for information.’

‘But what if she is? You need to search them! All of them!’

‘We can’t just barge into someone’s house without a warrant.’

‘Why the hell not? If my daughter might be there, why the hell not?’

‘I fully understand your frustration, Mrs Crowne, but we are not allowed to enter a member of the public’s house without a warrant to do so. It’s not something we have any control over. It’s the law.’

‘Fuck the law! If you won’t do it, I will!’ Julia stood up, her knee banging on the underside of the table. Her china coffee cup rattled on its saucer, bitter liquid spilling over the desk. She marched to the door, pushing between the two police officers, and turned down the corridor. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but she was going to do
something
; she couldn’t just sit here and wait, not while Anna was out there. Doing that was accepting her powerlessness, and she wasn’t able to do that, not by a long chalk.

Behind her she heard DI Wynne’s footsteps on the tile floor.

‘Mrs Crowne!’ Wynne called. ‘Mrs Crowne! Where are you going?’

‘Out!’ Julia shouted. ‘I’m going out!’

‘Mrs Crowne, it’s not a good idea to do anything rash. We need the goodwill of people in the vicinity.’

Julia knew that the police officer was correct, but she didn’t care. She was beyond reason, in the grip of something animal and irresistible. It was the same thing that drove a mother to protect her young in the wild; that drove an eland to defend her calf from a lion, or an elk to fight a wolf to save hers, even when this came at the cost of the mothers’ own lives.

When she was a few feet from the front door, it swung open. Brian stepped inside. He was pale and his eyes were red. It was clear that he had not found Anna. He looked at Julia, and then transferred his gaze to the police officer.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked, and looked back at his wife. ‘Why’s she shouting at you?’

‘She’s trying to stop me looking for Anna,’ Julia said. ‘I want to go and look for Anna. I want to knock on people’s doors and ask them if they’ve seen her. Look them in the face. She could be in one of these houses.’

‘Then go,’ Brian said. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Mr and Mrs Crowne,’ DI Wynne said. ‘Could we talk for a minute, before you go?’

Julia turned round. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘A minute.’

‘In the office?’

Julia shook her head. ‘Here.’

‘We have police officers going door to door,’ Wynne said. ‘They have experience in the right questions to ask, and if anyone has seen anything concerning your daughter then they will find it out and follow that lead wherever it takes them. At this stage we need to be systematic in our search for Anna.’

‘What if one of them has her?’ Julia said. ‘How will they know that?’

‘It’s unlikely.’ Wynne shifted uncomfortably. ‘I have to be honest with you. At this stage there are two main possibilities for your daughter’s whereabouts. Either she wandered off on her own – in which case she can’t have gone far and someone will almost certainly have seen her – and is now hiding in some place we haven’t found or … ’, she paused and looked away for a second, before looking back at Julia and Brian, ‘or someone took her.’

‘Took her where?’ Brian asked, his voice hoarse.

‘We don’t know yet, Mr Crowne,’ Wynne said. ‘But for now, we have to focus our efforts on the immediate vicinity, in case Anna
is
out there, cold and frightened and hurt, and that means that we have to be as methodical as possible to ensure that we miss nothing.’

‘She’s out there,’ Brian said. ‘I know she is. I can’t believe anything else.’

‘And we will have officers searching all night for any sign of her. Clothing, footprints, her belongings.’

‘I want to be part of it,’ Brian said. ‘I’ll help. We have friends who’ll help as well.’

‘Excellent,’ Wynne said. ‘We’ll set up a base in the community centre. Call around and get as many people as you can.’

Brian’s hands were clenching and unclenching on his thighs, bunching his chinos up and exposing his paisley patterned socks. Anna had bought them – or chosen them, at any rate – for him last Christmas, Julia recalled, along with a pair of Homer Simpson socks. Brian had worn one of each all day, Homer on the left foot, paisley on the right. He had told Anna he loved them both so much he couldn’t choose between them. Anna had made sure that he kept them on all day.

The memory of her daughter checking that her dad was wearing the mismatched socks she’d bought him overwhelmed Julia. Her hands started to shake and then she started to cry. She had not cried like that – uncontrollably, her chest heaving – since she was seventeen and she had been dumped by Vincent, the first love of her life. She had believed, as teenagers, will, that he was the one, the only one, and when he had told her it was over –
it’s not you
, he’d meant to say,
it’s me,
except the prepared lines had come out wrong and he’d actually said, in a moment of unwitting honesty,
it’s not me, it’s you
– she had cried for days. It had felt like the end of the world, like nothing would ever be the same again. After a while, though, it had passed, and she’d seen that maybe life would go on without Vincent.

And now, for the first time since she was seventeen, she had that feeling again, only this time she was thirty-eight, and old enough to know that it was for real, and that it would not pass.

She pushed her chair back, suddenly weary beyond belief. ‘Come on,’ she said, looking at her husband’s expressionless eyes. ‘Let’s go home and get ready.’

vii.

The search was organized quickly and efficiently. The police knew what they were doing, and they set about it calmly.

They’ve done this before
, Julia thought.
This is the kind of thing that happens, which means this is
real
.

The local community centre – a wood and glass structure built a few years previously with lottery money – was the base of operations. A large, detailed map of the area was stuck to a wall, lines made with marker pens delineating the streets that volunteers had been assigned to search.

And there were a lot of volunteers: friends of Julia and Brian, other parents, concerned locals. Julia had rung through her address book; many others had called the police asking how they could help and had been directed to the community centre, and then out to their search areas.

Alongside them, police officers pointed torches into alleys or knocked on doors or quizzed the homeless. Dog teams roamed the parks and copses and fields and woodlands. If none of these things worked, in the morning, divers would search the waterways.

It was a thorough search. They were searching places that Julia knew Anna could not have got to on her own.

Which meant she had been moved by somebody, and that somebody would not want her to be found.

Brian was out with the searchers; Julia waited in the community centre with DI Wynne; waited for the triumphant smile as the detective heard that Anna was lost and cold but alive and well. But as the night wore on the volunteers came back with their news that there was no news, then went home to their beds and dreams of the poor parents who they had left behind. Julia thanked them for their effort, accepted their well wishes, their
don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll turn ups
.

But there was no sign of Anna, so how could she not worry? She was that woman, the mother whose child was lost, who was at the centre of a storm of sympathy and community spirit. So how could she not worry?

It was around midnight when the door opened and Brian came in. He looked at DI Wynne.

‘Nothing?’ he asked.

‘Not yet, Mr Crowne,’ she replied. ‘You and Mrs Crowne should go home. Try and get some rest.’

‘I’d prefer to stay,’ Julia said. ‘I can go out and look myself.’

‘If anything changes I’ll call you immediately,’ Wynne said. ‘The best thing you can do is to preserve your strength. Tomorrow will be a busy day.’

‘If you don’t find Anna tonight,’ Brian said.

There was a long, uncomfortable, pause, then DI Wynne nodded. ‘If we don’t find her tonight,’ she said. ‘That’s right. But go, and get some rest.’

Julia was pretty sure that rest would be an elusive quarry, but she nodded. She took her car keys from her pocket. She looked at Brian. ‘I’ll drive,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

They climbed into the car, silent. There was nothing to say. For the first time in a long time they were both feeling exactly the same things. Fear. Worry. Dread. Panic. One after another in a horrific spin cycle.

Julia turned the key in the ignition. She almost expected the car not to start – everything else was broken, so why not that, too? – but it fired and the engine came to life. It was a short drive home – maybe a mile – but to Julia it felt like the most important journey she had ever taken; as if she was crossing an invisible border into a new land, a land in which everything had changed.

3

The First Day

i.

You slept well. In the wee hours you brought the girl inside and then went to bed, tired from the exertions of the day – the adrenaline was pumping and it took it out of you – and fell asleep in a heartbeat. Woke at six, a little bleary-eyed, and made a strong coffee.

The story is everywhere. The girl’s photo in every news bulletin. Numbers for the public to call if they know where she is. The police were searching all night, helped by concerned locals. A local pub provided sandwiches and hot drinks. Dogs barked and yelped and sniffed their way across scrubland and through parks and forests.

They found nothing. There is nothing to find. You made sure of that.

Not a peep from the girl in the night. That was no surprise, though. She is young and the sleeping pills you’d crushed into a milkshake (bought from McDonald’s before you took her and administered as soon as you got her in the car – kids were powerless to resist sugary drinks) were powerful. She sleeps still. She’ll be groggy when she wakes, but that is no problem. You plan to keep her under sedation until the end comes – perhaps a week or so, not much more than that – after which, it won’t matter anyway.