The Girl in the Red Coat

28

DAY 150

I thought Paul might phone on day 150. Then I remembered how he wasn’t keeping track as I was — marking the red number in my diary every day. But I was vaguely relieved he hadn’t. I’d had Nessa’s leaflet updated with ‘Missing — One Hundred and Fifty Days’ across the top and I planned to leaflet Harwich ferry terminal — it was one theory that’s where she’d been taken. Paul might try and stop me. He didn’t think it was good for my health, this incessant looking. He was paying a private detective, who seemed well-meaning but lacked the urgency I felt coursing through my blood.

Day 150 I watched large stately ferries come and go; people in stretchy travelling clothes arrive with their kids and suitcases, bottles of drink in their hands and bum bags round their waists for their travel documents. I stood by a pillar and handed out my leaflets. Some stopped to talk to me.

‘Oh my God, love, I hadn’t heard about this,’ or, ‘I remember this, has she not been found yet? I’ll light a candle for you both. What’s the little one’s name? I’ll pray for her.’

Then walking away, looking at my leaflet and wheeling their cases, shaking their heads as they went. Holding their children’s hands a little more tightly.

But mostly I didn’t want to talk. Once I realised they knew nothing I wanted them to move on and let me find someone who did.

After an hour I saw one of the staff, a uniformed woman with a jaunty necktie, talking to a security guard. They were both looking at me. Tears welled in my eyes. Was this what my looking had become? Something people were tired of, a public nuisance. But they came over and read my leaflets and wished they could help. The guard bought me a cup of coffee and let me stay at my post beside the pillar.

Then my phone rang. It was Paul. ‘Beth. Beth, where are you?

‘I’m at the ferry.’

‘What? Why? Never mind. Look, Ralph has found something.’ Ralph — the private detective.

‘Oh, oh, what?’ I crushed the empty coffee cup flat in my hand.

‘It’s from a holiday video that someone took. Where exactly are you? I’m coming to get you now.’

*

‘And so what happened?’ Craig asked.

‘Ralph had the footage sent over by courier. It had been taken by a couple on holiday on a campsite. They thought they saw Carmel in the background.’

‘When did you realise it wasn’t her?’

‘Oh, straight away. As soon as I saw it.’

‘That must have been terrible. Disappointing.’

I nodded. I’d been so wild with hope and excitement. There’d been a problem with the footage. It had been filmed on some ancient format and we’d had to travel to Ralph’s office in Ipswich to look at it. It made the excruciating tension worse — the trip in Ralph’s car. The smell of leather seats catching at the back of my throat. The stop to get petrol that seemed to last an age.

‘It’s the red, see. They see a girl in red and everyone jumps at it, which is ridiculous. This couple had come back from holiday and seen one of Paul and Ralph’s adverts they’ve put in the press. They’d videoed their kids playing cricket on the grass and there was a little girl walking through the frame in the background. She was wearing red and we couldn’t see anyone with her. But it was a red anorak she was wearing anyway, not a duffel coat.’

‘You say you didn’t see her face?’

‘No. She had it turned away from the camera, looking the other way. But I didn’t need to. I know Carmel’s shape like the back of my hand, the way she walks. They’ve taken it to the police — people want to help so much they jump at anything — but I know. I’d know my daughter. Paul wanted to be convinced, I think.’

Another lead, snipped off at the root.

‘Beth, have you been thinking about what we’ve discussed several times before, your guilt at what’s happened?’

‘Yes.’ I felt exhausted with it all.

‘I think it might be useful to examine it.’

I looked through the French windows at the statue of Pan. The leaf behind him had grown since I was last there, so now it flopped over one of his eyes. His visible eye squinted at me.

‘I try to stop myself thinking about it but I can’t. Because — because I always felt I was going to lose her, maybe it made me overprotective.’

‘Most people feel protective about their children, it’s natural.’

‘Yes. But, oh I don’t know.’ Then I was suddenly heated, sitting bolt upright. ‘What if I influenced events? What if I did? I feel somehow I made this happen and I don’t quite know how but the feeling won’t go away. It’s me, nobody has said I have but …’ I trailed off and sat silent, thinking.

I remembered Carmel’s words from the dream: perhaps we wanted to lose each other. I did sound cross the day she vanished, no maybe. I could admit that to myself now — no, Carmel, stay with me, hold my hand or we’ll go straight home, Carmel. Cross and pissed off and harassed. With responsibility, with worry. No one tells you how it will be when you have a child. No one tells you it’s going to be worry, worry, worry, worry, worry. World without end. How they hold your fate, your survival in their hands, whereas before you were free, free and didn’t know it. How if anything happens to them you will also be destroyed and you carry that knowledge with you, constantly.

‘No one will say it,’ I repeated.

‘Well, I won’t either,’ said Craig. ‘We could sit here for a hundred years and I won’t say that. I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about it. But I’m not going to back the idea up.’

We sat in silence for a while. ‘Alright,’ I sighed, nearly sick of thinking about it. ‘Shall we go back to firsts?’

‘Do you think you’re ready?’

I nodded. We’d been talking about the idea of firsts. First day back at work. First solo shopping expedition.

‘That’s it — I’ll go into town on my own,’ I said. ‘Soon. Next week even.’ I squeezed the arms of the chair. ‘Or the week after.’