The School Gate Survival Guide (11 page)

Bronte still went to bed with her toy gorilla. Whatever had happened to her, I was sure she hadn’t disappeared with a boyfriend.

Mr Peters came back in with some tea.

‘Is she active on social media?’ Serena asked.

I shook my head. ‘We haven’t got a computer at home. I’m not sure about school?’ I looked at Mr Peters.

‘No. The school system is set up so the children can’t access those sites,’ he said.

I was fighting to stay calm. I just wanted Serena to stop asking questions and get out there, on the streets, searching for her.

When she asked for a recent photo, all the fear I’d forced down burst out in some kind of wild animal wail. The sound startled me and then I laughed. It wasn’t a noise I’d heard out of myself before, nothing like my giggling at
Only Fools and Horses
or
Mrs Brown’s Boys
. It came from deep inside me, boiling up through my chest and splurging out in a wet burst of sound from the back of my throat. I had that out of control feeling as though I would never stop laughing again, even though I knew that it was wrong, really wrong.

I felt the settee sag as Mr Peters sat down next to me, his hand gently patting my back. I leaned into him and he put his arm round me, making a quiet shushing sound. He pressed a handkerchief into my palm. Then the laughing moved into great spitty sucks of air followed by gaspy sobs and I became aware of feeling ridiculous. Serena didn’t speak, just sat there, watchful. Almost as though she was waiting for me to stand up and say, ‘Now, for my next trick.’

I was about to pull myself away from Mr Peters, when I heard the front door open and Colin burst in.

‘She back?’ he said, shaking the water from his hair. I must have moved away a bit jumpily because Colin looked at me, then at Mr Peters. ‘What the hell’s going on here? You two having some kind of cuddle-fest while my daughter is God knows where?’

I saw Mr Peters take a deep breath but Serena stepped in before he could speak. ‘Mr Caudwell! Your wife, partner, is very upset and Mr Peters was trying to comfort her. Now, please, go and put some dry clothes on and come back down. There are a few questions I’d like to ask you.’

‘S’pose you think I’ve buried her body under the patio, do you? You need to get a move on and start looking for her. It’ll be dark in a few hours.’ He had his hands on his hips.

‘I understand that, Mr Caudwell, but you may be able to tell us something that speeds the whole process up, so if you’d be so kind.’

I had to hand it to Serena. The woman had authority. Colin stomped up the stairs.

I stood up. ‘I’ll just get that photo.’

I ran upstairs. PC Tadman was coming out of Bronte’s room. ‘Did you find anything useful?’

He shook his head. ‘Seeing the child’s room just gives us a feel for what they’re like, sometimes points us in the right direction.’ He disappeared off downstairs.

I chased away the thought that I’d never be able to go into Bronte’s room again if she didn’t come back. I went into our bedroom where Colin was sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. His shoulders were shaking slightly. I lifted his face up towards me.

‘Hey. It’s going to be okay. The police will find her.’ I said it as much for me.

Colin threw his arms round my waist. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do if anything happens to her, I can’t stand it. Where is she? Why would she do this?’

Even in these circumstances, Colin’s desperation shocked and frightened me. I couldn’t think of any other time when he had cried rather than shouted.

I had no answers. ‘Come on, the sooner you speak to the police, the sooner they can do their job.’ I helped him out of his sodden jeans, then I pulled out the box from under the bed. I found my favourite photo of Bronte, taken after Christmas when it had snowed. She was sticking a carrot on her snowman’s face, her smile showing the gap where one of her teeth had come out on Christmas Eve, her hair corkscrewed into damp, snow-flecked curls. She looked relaxed, carefree, beyond her normal buttoned-up self. My eyes were sore. I had no more tears.

Colin came over to look at the photo. ‘She looks just like you there. Beautiful.’ His voice sounded tight. He pulled me close. His cheek was freezing against mine and we stood there for a moment, united in misery. Colin was so much easier to like when the fight had gone out of him. I squeezed his hand and went back downstairs. PC Tadman was looking at the noticeboard in the kitchen. When I walked into the front room, Mr Peters and Serena started talking loudly as though I’d caught them whispering about us. I didn’t have any room left to feel worse.

I handed the photo to Serena. Her face didn’t flicker as she looked at it. I don’t know what I expected. Probably that she would say she was the most gorgeous child she’d ever seen. To her, Bronte was just another face she’d have to scan onto the missing list.

Clover surprised me. When she finally picked up my message, she turned into a one-woman powerhouse. She organised a search of the woods and lanes surrounding her house, phoned every mother in Bronte’s class and brought Harley back from school for me. Once word had got out at Stirling Hall, Mr Peters thought it was better for him to come home. I hovered awkwardly on the front step, trying to find the words to thank her. Clover waved me away, her posh voice booming down the street. ‘Anything I can do, anything at all, just call.’ I felt as though she meant it.

Harley clung to me, his eyes huge in his face. I found it hard to hug him when my other baby was out there, somewhere, needing me more. Colin fetched Sandy to sit with Harley.

‘Maia, love, you poor thing. I’ll wait here in case she comes back. You get out looking or you’ll both go nutty-balloo, just sitting here.’ She sounded like the old Sandy I knew.

Colin was clicking the end of a pen. ‘I’m gonna drive round up by that new park where I took Bronte to ride her bike. That’s not far from the school. And that riverbank where we went swimming last summer.’

‘Good idea. You take the torch in case you’re not back before dark. It’s under the sink.’ I went to give him a kiss but he pushed me away.

‘Come on, let’s get moving, it’s one o’clock already.’

I watched the van screech away. I stood by the front gate for a moment, trying to focus on logic, not panic. I raked through the people she knew locally. Bronte was reserved like me. She’d never really mixed with the kids on the estate. She preferred to play on her own, pretending to be a teacher to her dolls or writing stories about horses. Some of the kids round here were old before they’d had a chance to be young, mini-louts in the making with their pierced eyebrows, swearing and tribal haircuts. I’d never pushed her to mix with them either.

Where could, where would a kid go on a gloomy rainy day? I was wasting time standing there. I set off, heading towards the recreation ground, a good half an hour’s walk away, on the other side of the estate. I hoped she’d have more sense than to go there. All those play tunnels were just asking for evil to hide inside. I shuddered.

The rec was deserted. In all the films I’d seen, no good had ever come from swings dangling in an empty playground. I ran to the big tunnels and forced myself to peer in, almost screaming anyway, even though there were only a few crisp packets and lager cans inside. I climbed the steps of the slide in case she was hiding curled up in the little canopy at the top. From my vantage point, I scanned the playground and beyond, shouting her name, but my voice blew back to me.

It was so cold and damp. I made my way over to the flats on the edge of the estate in case she’d taken refuge in the stairwells there. By the time I’d done ten flights of stairs in six blocks, my legs were shaking with exertion. I sat down on the wall to gather my thoughts and get my breath back, indifferent to the stink of the bins.

It was nearly four o’clock. I hauled myself to my feet, trying to work out a methodical way to search the streets. I was convinced that I’d miss her by a hair, that I’d turn into one road just as she was going round the corner into another. I marched along, the rumbling in my belly reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. A silver Mercedes with blacked out windows crawled past me. It slowed about three hundred yards further up. I started to run, positive that they were going to throw Bronte out onto the pavement, tied up. Before I’d even got close, a boy, maybe a man, stepped out of the shadows and approached the car. I saw his hand reach through the passenger window and quickly out again. He slipped something into his pocket. I promised myself that one day I’d live in an area where Friday night’s entertainment came from a DVD rather than a jacked-up vein. I slowed my pace, hoping they’d been too busy swapping money and crack to notice me flying towards them.

Each street looked the same. Row after row of ugly sixties houses with overgrown front gardens sporting old mattresses, broken chairs and rusty bits of cars. Occasionally there would be a neat lawn with pots and bushes. I called her name over and over again until my throat was sore. Every time I looked at my watch another quarter of an hour had passed. By half past six, my feet were aching and my hands sore from the wind and rain. I forced myself on. I must have been on my fifteenth street when I came up to the community centre, a pre-fab building with pebble-dashed walls sporting the message ‘If you ain’t cool, you can’t rule’ sprayed in red and blue. The lights were on and the harsh tones of rap music blared out. By the door, a skinhead was snogging a girl up against the wall. Her black puffa jacket was wide open and the boy had his hands up her shirt, kneading her breasts like bread dough, oblivious to the rain.

I hadn’t been to the community centre since Bronte was tiny when some well-meaning health visitor did a session about caring for your toddler. When she started teaching us baby yoga, the women practically chased her out of the room, demanding extra benefit payments so they could keep their kids warm. At least back then I’d been able to keep Bronte safe.

I squared my shoulders and marched into the hall, past the gaggle of girls gathered inside the door. Their main purpose in life seemed to be to show lots of flabby flesh, untouched by exercise or fresh fruit. Some of the boys stared in my direction, like dogs who’d spotted a cat and were growling quietly, waiting to see if it dared to come into the garden or not. There was no point in looking for a friendly face. Kids on our estate didn’t do friendly so I took a gamble and walked straight over to a tough nut, who was stabbing away at an iPod. He had so many tattoos up his arms that they were like sleeves. With his black goatee beard and shaven head, he seemed a few years older than the rest, maybe eighteen, perhaps twenty.

‘Hi. Don’t want to disturb you but could I ask a quick question?’

‘Depends what it is.’ He glared at me, fiddling with the bar through his lower lip. Some of the other boys slouched closer. I hated myself for feeling scared.

‘My daughter’s missing. She’s nine years old. I wondered if anyone here had seen her.’

‘Christ, we never get any peace here. Something every week. Some kid goes missing and straightaway you’re in here pointing the finger at us.’

‘I’m not pointing the finger at anyone. I just wondered if anyone had noticed her hanging about. I’m asking everyone, I’m so worried,’ I said.

The boy couldn’t have looked less interested. ‘Why don’t you go and get the cops earning their money? They’ve got plenty of spare time on their hands, they’re always down here bothering us. Last week they were on about some bloody pirate DVDs, week before, some dodgy Es. We’re just trying to have a good time here, keep off the streets a bit.’

Frustration was bubbling up inside me like a saucepan of milk. I wanted to pull him into me by the ring in his eyebrow and shout in his face until he could feel my spit on his skin. I wanted to scream at him: ‘This is my daughter we are talking about, who could be frightened, shouting out for me, yes, even dying right now and you are telling me to get the cops? Do you think I haven’t already done that?’

He turned to the guy next to him with white blond spiky hair. ‘Don’t think we can help, can we? No girls hanging around here, ’cept for them old slags out there and nine’s too young even for us.’

‘Please, can you just ask your mates? She’s got dark hair like mine. Wearing a red skirt and green blazer. She’s got quite dark skin, sort of Spanish looking.’

The goatee man looked at me, hooded eyes unfriendly, considering. Then the boy with the blond spiky hair leaned in close to me.

‘I know you.’

On our estate, those three words usually signalled a punch in the mouth. I pushed down the flutter of panic. I kept myself to myself so it was hard to see how I’d rubbed someone up the wrong way. The boy laughed, showing a chipped front tooth.

‘You’re the woman who called the ambulance that day I split me head open. I think me brains would’ve emptied out on the pavement if you hadn’t come along.’

It was then I noticed the spiderweb half-hidden by the collar of his shirt. ‘Tarants?’

‘Cor, you even remember me name. Is it your little girl who’s gone AWOL?’

‘Yes. She was there the day you hurt yourself, do you remember her?’ He didn’t answer for a moment. I wanted to shake him. Think! Think!

‘No, but I think I seen her around. She got an older brother, blond, yeah?’

I nodded, feeling like I had all day, that I was wasting my time and that some other place, somewhere I hadn’t thought of yet, would be better.

‘What about today? She’s been missing since this morning.’ I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice.

‘No, don’t think so. There ain’t too many kids round this way in that uniform. It’s that posh school, innit? But you’re from here, right? What’s your kid doing there then?’ Now his brain had made a few connections, he’d revved up a gear, lost that dopey look.

‘It’s a long story. Will you double-check with your mates, though? Please?’ I dug my hands deep into my jacket pockets to stop me grabbing his shirt and pleading with him.

‘You leave it with me, love. I got friends all over town. Is it that school with all them cricket fields, up near the Royal Oak pub? Me cousin runs in a gang over that way. I’ll see if he’s seen her.’ He ran his hand over his spikes as though to check they were still standing to attention.