Dark Place to Hide (21 page)

Whilst there is coverage inside the corridors leading from Dr Pike’s room, footage at the entrance has been reduced to wobbly black lines for the entire time Clara was at the hospital. I tell Marion a less adverse version of this when she calls me at around ten o’clock. She sounds like a different person; geriatric, slow, confused – an additional forty years seem to have passed for her, overnight.

‘You don’t have her?’ she wails.

‘I’m so sorry, no – we’re checking everywhere – plenty of people have turned up this morning to help.’

‘It’s nearly twenty-four hours…’ she whimpers.

She asks me what the police have found and I pass on what I know. ‘There’s CCTV footage of Clara leaving Dr Pike’s room on her own. She reappears on the ground floor, but then gets lost in a crowd of people by the shops in the foyer. The fire alarm went off accidentally at
the café at 10.45am and there was a big muddle about whether people were allowed in to the hospital or not. There is no visual record of Clara after that and she doesn’t reappear in the footage outside or in any of the car parks.’

‘Where did she go?’ Her voice is far away.

‘She was probably going to head out of the main entrance – to the taxi rank.’

‘That’s where she was supposed to go – with Sheila.’ There’s a muffled cough. ‘But she’s not on the film?’

‘No – there’s a band of about two feet outside the sliding doors that’s no longer covered by the cameras. Clara could have come out of the hospital and gone left or right.’

‘What did Sheila say?’

‘She said she got to the psychiatrist’s room at exactly 11am. There’s footage of her to back that up.’

‘So – Dr… you know, the psych––?’

‘Dr Pike?’

‘Yes – she must have let Clara go early…’

‘The police have spoken to Dr Pike and she said the session had come to a natural close at about 10.50am and Clara was ready to finish.’

‘What did they talk about? Did Clara get upset? Did she get any funny ideas into her head?’

‘I’m sure the police will have given Dr Pike a thorough interview.’

‘Why didn’t she wait for Sheila? Why did the doctor let her go so early?’ I hear a heart-wrenching sob and her voice breaks. ‘Please help me…’

‘Of course, Marion – I’m doing what I can. I’m back in with the search this mor—’

‘I mean – please
find
her – you know how everything works.’

This is hard. ‘I’m not a policeman or a detective, Marion – I’m a lecturer.’

‘But you know about crime and evidence – you know the system and what the police will be looking for. I’m helpless – you should see me – I can’t even get out of bed. I’d be out there leaving no stone unturned if I could…’

The confusion, loss and panic of her pain – I know it only too well – tugs inside me and I know what I have to do. ‘Okay – I’ll do everything I can.’

I mean it. I’m going to break out of this useless self-pity I’ve sunk into, get a grip and start shaking some trees.

‘Thank you.’ The gratitude in her voice makes me want to crumple.

‘There will be a television appeal later today. Are you up to it?’

‘I want to be there – I might need a wheelchair – but I don’t know if I can speak.’

I switch instantly into professional mode. ‘Right. I’ll come over now and we can work out what we need to say. When the time comes, I’ll read it out in front of the cameras for you. I also want to look at Clara’s room again. In the meantime, could you put together a list of
everywhere
Clara has ever been in the area – places to hide, to play, either on her own or with others?’

‘Yes – of course.’ There’s a solemn sigh. ‘Thank you.’

I feel better already. This is what I’m good at.

I’m awake again and this time, I remember. The baby. I lost the baby.

Oh, God. A distraught surge of grief drags at me like too much gravity. My limbs are leaden and stiff. I’m sitting on concrete, but I feel as if I’m being sucked into it, like quicksand. I was going to be a mother and it went wrong. My body rejected the tiny jewel clinging on to me. My heart swells and burns at the memory. I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself. My system failed at the time I most needed it to function properly.

I think of you. My magnificent husband. It’s as though you have suddenly reappeared in all my memories. We were so happy, then two bombs fell on us one after the other. I was carrying a baby and I didn’t even know. Then I lost it – washed out of me at the side of the road in a cruel swipe of fate. We couldn’t even name the child to say goodbye – I didn’t know if it was a girl or a boy; it was too soon to tell. But not too soon to break our hearts. I want to stroke my abdomen, to comfort and honour the place where he or she started growing, but my hands are tied, so I can only rest them there.

The other explosion was finding out about your infertility. It made no sense. I was pregnant! But there were tests and indisputable results and your specialist saying that getting pregnant was a dead-end unless ‘the treatment’ worked. It was so confusing.

I’m definitely being given sedatives – that’s why I feel so dozy, but my side feels a little better and my head isn’t throbbing as much as it was. I can move my arms up and down – they’re still tied at the wrists, but they’re not broken. I can straighten my legs out too, though they’re still held together at the ankle. I’ve managed to get to the bucket and my jeans are drying
out. They still stink and they’re damp, but I don’t think I’ve wet myself again in the last day or so.

How many days has it been?

Why have I been left here?

At least the sedatives have protected me – I can’t remember much at all and the drifting in and out is a blessing. It’s almost soothing and makes me feel lazy. Someone’s left me a blanket, but right now it must be the middle of the day, because there is sunlight bleeding under the doors and it’s hot. There are flies. A water bottle is on its side resting against my thigh. I must have knocked it over and it’s nearly empty.

Periods of nothingness are interrupted by episodes of desperate itching. I need to scratch – under my arms, between my toes, behind my knees – but with my hands tied I can’t reach the right spots. I wriggle and thrash around trying to rub against the wall or floor, but it’s hopeless and it’s driving me mad. I’m sure there are insects inside my clothes, crawling around. I start to imagine them nestling into warm places, eating at flakes of my skin, laying eggs so that in the end I’ll be covered in a seething black mass.

I try to think of something else. Something comforting. I see us on our wedding day. I’m walking with my father at first, under an archway of white roses. It was before the dementia began eating away at his brain. I glance down at my ivory silk dress and satin shoes, then along the aisle at you as you stand tall, waiting – noble and so full of love – and I know this was the best day of my life.

Since then, there has only ever been one issue between us. I want to understand it, but whenever I mention it, you get defensive and prickly. What’s really going on when you retreat to the chicken coop? I know it’s a private way of managing your anger, but it unnerves me when I
hear the sounds you make and witness the damage you do to yourself. My worry is that it seems to be getting worse, not better. You won’t see anyone and you won’t talk about it. I know you’d never knowingly hurt me, but what if your anger got out of control?

For months, I’ve pushed it into the background. It has been my one thorn in an otherwise blissful marriage. I’ve read book after book about displaced anger and grief. It is all there. It leads right back to your father, I’m sure – the way he abandoned you. This is all about him – if only you could see that.

I’ve always believed in telling all and baring the truth, but this has had me flummoxed. I haven’t felt able to ask anyone else about it, not even Tara, although she spotted one of my books and I had to say something. She knows what it’s about, but not the full extent. You don’t seem able to open up and address it – and I don’t know how I can help you.

The temperature has climbed quickly again and the place feels like a sauna. I need water, but there’s only about a tablespoon left in the bottle. I can’t drink it anyway, because there’s tape over my mouth. How bad will it get before someone comes back so I can drink again? Already I can barely swallow and I don’t know when – or even if – anyone is coming back.

Now, with nothing else to fill my mind, I recall other angry episodes – the time you kicked over the newspaper stand outside the petrol station when you saw the magazine article. It painted your father as a footballing hero and you were furious. Then there’s the day I came home to find you sweeping up the pieces of the Waterford vase your mother had given us. I didn’t need to ask – your sheepish look told me you’d lashed out following some altercation with her on the phone. Maybe she’d asked if you’d visited his grave recently? Perhaps she wanted to know if you’d ever forgive him? I’ve no idea what caused it, because I didn’t dare ask and you didn’t tell
me. These disturbing scenes invade my space here as I sit helpless, waiting for something to happen.

I try to remember the last few days and they all melt into one long one, punctuated with distant doors opening and closing. My memory can only hold on to the sounds of sheep and cows, farmyard smells around me, the clunk and whirr of machinery. No voices, no faces. It can’t seem to fix on anything important, like where I am or who has been coming back and forth.

I track back and try to recall how I got here.

I’m driving to the village shop. I’m halfway there. Then, just after the crossroads, someone runs across the road and into the bushes down the bank into the undergrowth. A young child. Yes – that’s right. A girl. Judging from the kids in my class, I’d say she was seven or eight. On her own. I remember the swerve of the car, the screech of brakes. That’s it. I nearly hit her! I stop the car, swing the door open. I go to check she’s all right. The undergrowth is thick and lush in the woods and I don’t know where she went. I listen, but I’ve lost track of her. Then I see her, running, slipping. I call out and she turns. She stops, but there’s someone behind her, with her now. She’s safe – or is she? I’m not sure.

I need to find out.

13 August – 14
^th
day missing

It’s a scorcher of a day and Marion’s bedroom feels like a tent in the desert. The windows are closed and the curtains drawn, making the heat more enclosed and the molecules of air glue together. I want a storm, a noisy, tumultuous downpour, to wash away the cloying depression. But rain might not be the best thing for finding Clara – or for you, Dee. It might obliterate clues, wash away vital footprints or tyre tracks.

Marion can barely hold a pen. She had to ask Tessa, the babysitter, to write down the list I asked for. She’s in no state to get out of bed, but manages to squeeze my hand.

‘I can’t believe I’m like this when my darling Clara’s missing,’ she tells me. She tries to sit up, but her eyes tip to the top of her head and she slumps back into the pillow. ‘She needs me and I’m useless,’ she whispers, her eyes slamming shut.

‘You’ve got me instead now,’ I insist. ‘I’ll work hard enough for both of us.’ I read out the piece I’ve written for the television appeal.

She keeps her eyes closed, but tiny rivulets of tears seep out and trickle down the side of her nose. She sniffs and tries to sound upbeat and appreciative. ‘That was quick – you know all the right words.’ I don’t tell her it’s an altered version of the one I wrote for you, Dee, when I hoped the police would set up an appeal for your disappearance.

I hold up the list Tessa has written for me. ‘The police are already checking everywhere, of course,’ I confirm, ‘but I need to see these spots for myself.’

I check Clara’s bedroom before I go, looking for anything that is different from the last time. The red cape she’s been wearing is on a hanger outside the wardrobe and the wicker basket is beneath it, filled with packets of tea and biscuits she must have taken from the kitchen cupboard. Drawings on the desk predominantly depict scenes from
Little Red Riding Hood
and the book of fairy tales is held open with a stone at the opening page of that story.

What is it about this tale that has got Clara obsessed? Marion said the psychiatrist thought Clara had retreated into it to protect herself, but why
this
story? The wolf, the grandmother, the little girl. Clara is clearly identifying with the little girl by dressing up in the red cape and she quotes from the story as if through the eyes of that character, too. So is this connected to the night in the oubliette, I wonder? I visualise Marion’s skin; her face is the texture of dried rose petals. I can almost smell death in the air. Has Clara been hit by the recognition that her mother is not going to be here for much longer? Or is it something else, altogether?

Helen arrives shortly afterwards to ask if there’s anything she can do. She offers to take me along the exact route she and Clara took on Saturday. Several of Clara’s favourite places are on the way. I have a detailed map in my pocket so we get going.

‘Tell me what you know about seven year olds,’ I ask, as we walk towards the centre of the village. I’m wearing long shorts and a loose T-shirt in deference to the heat. Helen, however, looks like she’s expecting a different climate altogether, with a long brown skirt, a high-necked blouse, cardigan and flat sandals. I can picture her as a nun. She appears to be in her twenties, but has little about her that suggests she’s been living in the twenty-first century. Her hair is long and pulled back hard against her head, as if she wishes she didn’t have any. I think of Marion.

‘In terms of social and emotional development, seven year olds are confident and love
showing off their talents,’ she says. ‘That’s Clara – she’s always bringing me cards she’s made, showing me little dances she’s learnt.’