The Girl in the Red Coat

11

DAY 1

It will be like the day in the maze, I told myself. I’ll run round this field looking, scared witless, but we’ll find each other eventually.

The fog had grown cold and dense and I kept stumbling on empty plastic bottles and bumpy ground. ‘Carmel,’ I yelled at the top of my voice, ‘where are you?’

I kept yelling into the fog but it never answered. It just sucked up my voice into its blankness. I wanted more than anything to catch a glimpse of that red, like a poppy standing proud in a cornfield. But there was just a jumble of colour, made milky, as if looking through a wedding veil. I thought I’d go to the entrance and ask for help: an announcement on the tannoy. Or to the St John Ambulance in case she’d fallen over and was there right now having a plaster put on her knee while someone in uniform was saying, ‘All done. Now then, let’s find your mum.’

People were getting fed up and wanting to leave. The field was emptying, they were all at the entrance — a temporary arch made out of plywood with shapes cut into it to look like battlements — so I had to push past them. I knocked against the bodies without caring, muttering, ‘I’ve lost my little girl,’ over my shoulder to the ‘watch its’. Several people asked if I was alright but I couldn’t stop to answer, I was too intent.

‘Carmel, where are you, where are you?’

The ticket offices next to the arch were empty, the organisers probably guessing that no one would arrive so late in the day, so I had to find my way back again, all the time shouting, ‘Carmel, Carmel,’ till my voice was hoarse.

I found my way back into the tent where I’d last seen her. It’s too soon, I told myself, it’s too soon to panic. Stop it. Stop it now.

The trestle table where she’d stood was half empty — many of the books sold. I’d had the idea of asking the man with the till if he’d seen her but there was nobody there now. The thought came to me that the remaining books left out like this could so easily be stolen.

‘Carmel,’ I called. ‘Where are you?’

A man put his hand on my arm. ‘What’s the matter, love?’

‘My little girl. I can’t find her.’ I realised my eyes were wet and stopped for a moment this time.

‘Oh dear. Dear. You need to get to the main tent. They’ll help you. She’s probably waiting there for you.’

‘Yes — thank you. Thank you. Where is it?’

‘Ask one of the staff — they’ll tell you.’

I rubbed at my eyes.

‘Don’t worry, love,’ he said. ‘You’ll find her. Mine were always getting lost when they were young.’

I took his advice and went outside to look for staff. He’s right, I thought. There must be an official tent or a place for lost children. But the fog was lacing the air so now it was hard to see the tents any more. Panic gripped my insides again. Even among so many other people I started to feel alone in some kind of new and terrible reality.

What if, what if … I never see her again? No. No, not that. I stumbled, then righted myself. Stop thinking it.

I tried to yell again but my voice had disappeared into a squeak and a sudden tide of terror washed over me. I reached out and wordlessly gripped a woman’s bright red sleeve.

‘Hey, get off,’ she said. ‘Get off me.’

She shook me off and got swallowed up into the fog. Then one of the men on stilts walked right past me, his stilts close enough to touch. I could feel my voice re-gathering inside my throat in a shout — ‘Please, help me. Help.’ I didn’t care any more what I said or if I sounded mad and frantic.

The stilts paused and started to move on so I shouted again and they stopped and the next minute a young man with cornrows all over his scalp had jumped down and was standing right next to me.

‘Did you ask for help?’ His clothes were made of patchwork and underneath the multicoloured jacket his shoulders were strong, like he was active all day. I remembered the man with the cloth cap in the maze and I felt relief. The stilts man was part of the day, of the organisation. He could tell me where I needed to go.

‘My little girl, I’ve lost her,’ I said.

‘Where did you see her last?’

‘In the place where they’re selling the books.’

‘I bet a lot of people are getting lost in this. It’s bad luck it should happen today when we’ve been planning it for so long. A sea mist is always the worst. It must have been the hot weather this morning that brought it on.’

It made me feel a bit better when he said he expected lots of people were getting lost and separated, like this was just a mishap that would be sorted out.

‘I’ll take you to the admin tent and they can put a tannoy call out. You two’ll be glad to get home when you find her.’ Then he was guiding me across the field with his stilts tucked under his arm.

Inside the tent the fog had crept in and lay low on the ground so it got kicked up into little clouds as we walked. There was a woman with bright dyed red hair — the kind of red not even meant to look real — walking up and down and speaking into a walkie-talkie and I noticed a flap of brown paper had got stuck to the heel of her boot. Across the squashed grass of the floor people were packing things away in boxes.

The man in patchwork steered me up towards the red-haired walkie-talkie woman.

‘This lady has lost her daughter,’ he said. He went away and came back with a fold-up chair for me to sit on. But I didn’t want to sit down.

She looked up with sharp blue eyes and reluctantly re-sheathed the walkie-talkie in a leather holder on her belt that looked like it was meant for carrying guns.

‘I expect she’s just got lost in the crowds. How long is it since you’ve seen her?’ Silver flickered from her tongue as she spoke from the piercing there. She sounded like this losing of a daughter was nothing more than a pernickety nuisance and could be sorted out with a snap of her fingers — meaning she could get on with something more important.

I looked at my watch and with a burning spurt of real sickness in my throat I realised it must have been just over an hour.

‘Ages, an hour and a half. At least.’ I wanted to exaggerate because I sensed she wasn’t taking it seriously enough, that she didn’t have a daughter and thought that kids just ran off all the time.

She was shifting a foot around and suddenly became conscious of the paper stuck to her heel. With a movement like a ballerina she forked a leg behind her, holding her foot with one hand and peeling off the paper with the other.

When she was done she said, ‘I can put out an announcement.’

‘Please. Could you? Her name’s Carmel and she’s wearing a red duffel coat.’

‘How old is she?’

‘She’s eight. Eight years old.’

So she walked off to where a tannoy system was set up on a trestle table and the man with cornrows looked at me with kind big eyes and said, ‘Don’t worry too much. It’s got a bit chaotic because of the weather.’ I nodded at him dumbly.

I heard an electric gasp as the machine was switched on and then the woman’s voice booming from the outside.

‘Public announcement. Lost child. There’s a lost child. Name of Carmel. Red coat. Eight years old. If you find a lost child please bring them to the large tent at the back of the field. Lost child …’

I ran outside and tried to scan the field, though it was hard to see much. I went back in and the woman was busy moving boxes now, stacking unused programmes away.

‘Do it again,’ I shouted.

‘You don’t have to …’ A sharp spike of a frown had popped up between her eyes. The man in patchwork could see it was going to get nasty so he stepped in.

‘You keep on the tannoy. We’ll go and look round the field,’ he told her. Then to me, ‘My name’s Dave.’ He took my hand and his brown fingers felt hard and strong. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Beth,’ I mumbled.

Outside the ground was churned up into mud — a thick cakey mix of lolly sticks, leaflets and broken plastic cups. The smell of the mud rose up, dark, sweet and cold, with the odour of something uncovered that should have been left alone. I heard the announcement again from outside the tent but no one seemed to pay much attention. Dave helped me to retrace our steps, holding onto my arm. Back to the sales tent — he called Carmel’s name in a deep booming voice and looked under tables and I did the same.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Now we’ll work our way round the field.’

After every lap round the tents we went back to the walkie-talkie woman to check if Carmel was with her. Each time I was willing myself to see the bright little spot of red waiting for me by the boxes, or peeping out anxiously through the gap in the doorway, and felt a sickening panic when it wasn’t there. The panic rose in stages, so it was like someone singing the same note but at a higher and higher pitch.

Time was getting jumbled up and I found it hard to think if a long time or a short time had gone. I tried to look at my watch as we raced round the field again, but I was walking too fast, running really, and my brain was in such a state of shock I had trouble deciphering what the golden fingers meant.

Back again. Nothing. Headlines again, wasn’t there … No, no, no. Yes, there was — nearby, about five years ago. I don’t remember if she was found. I think she was, how terrible I don’t remember. Paul, I need to speak to Paul. To tell him, get him to help. He’ll be so worried, angry that I’ve lost her. I can’t think about that, though, I just want her …

‘… back.’ I didn’t realise but the word came out of my mouth in a wail.

‘What?’ asked the walkie-talkie woman, confused.

‘D’you have a phone?’ It was just before the time when everyone possessed a mobile phone and I’d held off because of the expense.

‘Yes.’

‘Call the police, it’s been too long,’ I said over my shoulder as I pitched out once again to look. Then in again and she hadn’t — some problem with the signal. A hole in coverage she called it — though I was sure I’d heard somewhere that emergency-service calls went through anyway and I imagined she hadn’t bothered, thinking I was just a hysterical woman. But then she realised it was her battery that had run out so she made the call on one of the box-packers’ phones.

The field was almost empty and I looked at my watch and focused. The time crystallised sharp and clear: nearly two hours. Really two hours, not the made-up time I’d given her before.

‘Tell them it’s been nearly two hours, tell them that,’ I said.

‘Yes, the mother’s here with me, right here,’ she said into the phone. ‘Yes, that’s right …’

I snatched it from her. ‘Please, please, get here as quick as you can. It’s been ages since she’s gone — ages. And she’s not like that, she’s really not,’ I said, not entirely truthfully. It was anything, anything I could say to make them take it seriously. My voice was rising higher and higher into a painful squeak so the woman took the phone back and gave the details of where the festival was and how to find us when they got here.

The atmosphere in the tent had changed. A few people carried on packing stuff up around me, but quietly, averting their eyes, like there’d been an accident they were now trying to ignore. I felt my legs trembling underneath me and I collapsed on the chair Dave had put out. The woman squatted next to me. She didn’t look bad-tempered any more.

‘They’re on their way,’ she said.

*

By evening the field had emptied of people, but the only way I knew that was because it was silent now. The fog held its stranglehold over everything: its white noise sliced up by powerful police torches. There didn’t seem to be enough police cars; I wanted a whole fleet, an army there.

Sometimes the cars had their lights playing and that cut through the fog too and lit up the air with a crackle of blue lightning. The white-out made it a dream state: the strange sense of being underwater or wading through glue; the feeling that once the fog lifted she would be revealed, standing in the middle of the field, motionless with fright and with drops of moisture clinging to her coat. The feeling that this was a drama, using us as characters, unfolding on a roll-down screen made of fog and air in the middle of a dark field — the red of Carmel’s coat flickering across the screen.

‘I should go home.’

Soothing voices around me. There were three or four of them, ready to contain my terrible anxiety. To direct operations in the way they needed to go.

I found it hard to stand still so I perched on one leg. ‘I need to go home, in case she’s there. She doesn’t have a key. She won’t be able to get in.’

One soothing voice now. It was the tall bony man with ginger hair who had arrived a bare half hour ago and now seemed to be in charge. What was his name? My mind fumbled — Detective something … Andy.

‘What we’ll do, Beth, what we’ll do is we’ll send someone over there. You let us have the keys and we’ll send someone over and if you tell us where we might be able to find a photograph of Carmel then that’s all the better, isn’t it?’ He smiled encouragingly, like he’d had a bright idea and wanted me to be part of the plan. His face looked waxy in the dim light; maybe it would melt away and I would wake, with a jolt and then flooding relief. Instead, a terrible surge of anxiety shot through me.

‘Oh, please. Please find her. Please, please find her.’ My voice was babbling in my ears. I looked at my watch — four and a half hours. But he was going on again about photos. ‘Recent ones. As recent as possible. We’ll take you home but we’ll stop at the station and take a proper statement.’

‘Oh, no, no.’ Now I felt a rising panic at the thought of leaving this place. It would be an admission: arriving as two and leaving as one.

‘Beth, I want you to remember.’ His pale brown eyes — soft, vestigial lashes — looked right into mine. ‘You need to know that you are not alone. There is this.’ He gestured behind him, the torches, the muffled voices through the fog, the blue police lights raking the sky. ‘There is us on your side.’

I relinquished my keys and let myself be led to a waiting police car. Andy held onto my arm and carried a torch to light our way. It lit up the scene in fragments — the gouged-up mud filthy with litter, the flapping empty tents; the festive day now a Somme wasteland. The crew had had to hold off de-rigging and as I drew closer I could see the outlines of their shapes, smoking and kicking their heels around the entrance. I saw the orange points of light from their cigarettes through the fog and heard laughter, then, ‘Sshh, sshh — she’s coming through. It’s the mother.’

In real life bad things can be fascinating, or very hard to look at. Some turned their eyes to the ground and others stared as I walked past. One, with a trilby-type hat and a Polish accent, called out, ‘Bless you mother; bless you and your little girl. I pray to the Virgin …’ Then I was in the back of the police car. Andy slid in beside me, splashes of blue and red light from the cars on his face.

‘Try not to panic,’ he said very quietly and calmly. ‘Children sometimes wander off.’

‘She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t leave me. Not for this long.’

He turned and smiled, tight at the corners. ‘Then that means she’ll be alright, doesn’t it?’

*

But nothing was alright. At the police station it was clear nothing was alright at all. Andy’s platitudes were just a ruse to calm hysterics down. Already I could see some kind of action plan had swung into place. They knew … they knew a bright little girl of eight years doesn’t just wander off and not come back. They didn’t know how it had happened before. I wasn’t going to tell them that. And at the station there were more eyes, sheathing their looks of fear and pity or reproach with their lids: the woman behind the counter; the man unlocking the interview-room door; the woman passing me in the fluorescent-lit corridor, going off duty after carefully applying her eye make-up in the locker-room mirror. Two quick flashes of turquoise as she rounded down her lids and looked at the floor.

‘We need to take a proper statement,’ Andy said. There was a woman already sitting behind the desk in the interview room: round-faced, pretty.

‘This is Sophie, she’s what we call a family liaison officer. She’s there just for you, Beth, for whatever you want …’

She looked at me. It lasted only a moment but the look was deep, deep. I could tell she was reaching in and making some sort of assessment. Moment over, she smiled. ‘Beth, any questions, ask. Anything you need, you must tell me.’

What I need is my little girl back. ‘Hello Sophie,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

I sat facing them at the scarred wooden table and they began questioning me and writing my answers in their notebooks and recording my words on a machine. I tried to answer as best I could, I tried to keep my brain focused on the task, but it kept veering off at steep tangents of rising panic, so I would have to refocus and ask them to repeat the question.

‘Tell us about Carmel’s father, we’ll need to get in contact with him quickly. We’ve tried the number you gave us and we passed by the house earlier but there was nobody home.’

I felt such pity for them then — for Paul and Lucy. The rosy flush of their lust was about to be transformed into something hard and brittle — one of those horrible wreaths of ceramic roses in a graveyard, a filthy sepulchre.

‘Oh God — shall I call him?’ I started scrabbling in my bag for my diary, where his mobile number was scratched on the front page. I realised it was the only one I had — no landline — and it seemed such a tenuous thread. Sophie gently put her hand on my arm.

‘We’ll keep on with that. You say you are separated. Any issues with that?’

‘No, not really. I mean he’s stayed away a lot. He’s supposed to see her every weekend but we didn’t see him for months, then all of a sudden he came round and took her out.’

‘So there have been disagreements with access?’

‘I suppose so. No, not really, it’s nothing to do … it’s just that he’s got a new girlfriend and he’s more wrapped up in that. We’ve only just started communicating again, I mean properly. It’s been difficult.’

They exchanged glances.

‘Is there any way, do you think, that he might have taken her?’ Andy asked. ‘I know it’s hard to fathom, but dads can act in funny ways after divorces. Take kids off out of the blue and not tell a soul about it.’

‘It couldn’t have been Paul. He’s too … too lax to do anything like this. Besides, I’m not sure he even knew we were there. No, no, no, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick, it’s not him. You must look elsewhere.’ All the same I grasped at the possibility that perhaps I had told him, and he’d taken it into his head to spirit her away.

I looked through the window at the dark. ‘He’ll probably be home now. I don’t think they go out much in the evening.’

Sophie left the room briefly, I assumed to give instructions about hunting Paul down. Soon there would be a police car at their door. Blue lights through the window, sliding down their sitting-room walls.

My watch: eight hours now. I found it hard to sit still. Impossible. Every so often I would feel as if I’d been wired to the grid, a surge of electricity would jolt me forward, or even up to standing, so I was looking down at them. The rising panic — I forced it into my body so my mind could keep functioning and giving them what they needed to know. Kindly, they didn’t comment. They let me pace or bang my head with my hand or slump in the chair with my arms hanging loosely by my sides, as long as I kept talking, kept telling them: when; who; school; friends; dads; any boyfriends of mine; eyes: blue or brown; hair: what colour — thin, thick, curly, straight, short, long.

When the photo albums arrived, it seemed peculiar to see them there, uprooted from the shelves at home to lie beside the blinking voice recorder.

They came just as I was describing, screwing up my forehead and trying to be as accurate as possible, the colour of her hair. Not blond, not brown; it was, I finally decided, ‘the exact colour of a brown paper envelope’.