What She Knew

In the UK, a child is reported missing every 3 minutes.

www.missingkids.co.uk

The first three hours are most critical when trying to locate a missing child.

www.missingkids.com/keyfacts

RACHEL

My ex-husband’s name is John. His new wife is called Katrina. She’s petite. She has a figure that can make most men drink her in with their eyes. Her deep brown hair always looks shiny and freshly coloured, like hair in magazines. She wears it in a bob, and it’s always carefully styled around her pixie face, framing a pert mouth and dark eyes.

When I first met her, at a hospital function that John was hosting, months before he left us, I admired those eyes. I thought they were lively and sparky. They flashed around the room, assessing and flirting, teasing and charming. After John had gone, I thought of them as magpie’s eyes, darting and furtive, foraging for other people’s treasure to line her nest.

John walked out of our family home on Boxing Day. For Christmas he’d given me an iPad and Ben a puppy. I thought the gifts were thoughtful and generous until I watched him back his car out of the driveway on Boxing Day, neatly packed bags stowed on the back seat, while the ham went cold on the dining table and Ben cried because he didn’t understand what was happening. When I finally turned and went back into the house to start my new life as a single mother, I realised that they were guilt-gifts: things to fill the void he would leave in our lives.

They certainly occupied us in the short term, but perhaps not as John intended. The day after Boxing Day, Ben appropriated the iPad and I spent hours standing under an umbrella in the garden, shivering, shocked, while the new Cath Kidston Christmas slippers my sister had sent me got rain-soaked and muddy, and the puppy worked relentlessly to pull up a clematis when I should have been encouraging it to pee.

Katrina lured John away from us just ten months before Ben disappeared. I thought of it as a master plan that she executed: The Seduction and Theft of My Husband. I didn’t know the detail of how they kindled their affair but to me it felt like a plot from a bad medical drama. He had the real-life role of consultant paediatric surgeon; she was a newly qualified nutritionist.

I imagined them meeting at a patient’s bedside, eyes locking, hands grazing, a flirtation that turned into something more serious, until she offered herself to him unconditionally, the way you can before you have a child to consider. At that time, John was obsessed with his work. It consumed him, which makes me think that she must have done most of the running, and that the package she offered him must have amounted to a seductive proposition indeed.

I was bitter about it. My relationship with John had such solid and careful beginnings that I’d assumed it would last for ever. It simply never occurred to me that there could be a different kind of ending for us, which was, I now realise, extremely naive.

What I hadn’t realised was that John didn’t think like me, that he didn’t view any problems we might have had as normal, surmountable. For him things boiled under the surface, until he couldn’t cope with being with me any more, and his solution was just to up and leave.

When I rang my sister right after he’d gone she said, ‘Didn’t you have any idea at all?’ and her voice was strained with disbelief. ‘Are you sure you paid him enough attention?’ was her next question, as if the fault was mine and that was to be expected. I hung up the phone. My friend Laura said, ‘I thought he was a bit detached lately. I just assumed you guys were working through it.’

Laura had been my closest friend since we were at nursing college together. Like me, she hadn’t stuck with bedpans and body fluids. She’d quit and switched to journalism instead. We’d been friends for long enough that she’d witnessed the birth and growth of my relationship with John as well as its demise. She was observant and forthright. That word ‘detached’ stayed with me, because if I’m being really honest, I hadn’t noticed it. When you have a child to look after, and when you’re busy developing a new career as well, you sometimes don’t.

The separation and divorce tore me apart, I’ll admit to that. When Ben disappeared I was still in mourning for my husband. In ten months you can get used to some of the mechanics of being alone, but it takes longer for the hurt to heal.

I went round to Katrina’s flat once, after he’d moved in with her. It wasn’t difficult to find. I pressed on her door buzzer, and when she answered the door I snapped. I accused her of being a home-wrecker, and I might have said worse things. John wasn’t there, but she had friends round and, as our voices rose, the three of them appeared behind her, mouths open, aghast. They were a perfectly groomed Greek chorus of disapproval. Glasses of white wine in hand, they watched me rage. It wasn’t my finest hour, but I never quite got round to apologising.

You might wonder what I look like, if my husband could be lured away by such a pert little magpie. If you saw the press conference footage, you’ll already have an idea, though I wasn’t at my best. Obviously.

You’ll have seen that my hair looked straggly and unkempt, in spite of my sister’s efforts to tame it. It looked like witch’s hair. Would you believe me if I said that under normal circumstances it’s one of my best features? I have long, wavy dark blond hair that falls beneath my shoulders. It can be nice.

You’ll certainly have noticed my eyes. That’s the close-up shot they replay most: bloodshot, desperate, pleading eyes, red-rimmed and puffy from the tears I’d shed. You’re going to have to take my word for it that normally my eyes look pretty: they’re wide and very green and I used to think they flattered my pale, clear skin.

But what I really hope you noticed was the smattering of freckles across my nose. Did you see those? Ben inherited them from me, and it always pleased me beyond measure to see that physical trace of myself in him.

It would be wrong of me to give you the impression that the only thing I was thinking about was Katrina, when Ben disappeared. On the afternoon when it happened, Ben and I were walking the dog in the woods. It was a Sunday, and we’d driven out of Bristol and across the Clifton Suspension Bridge to reach the countryside beyond.

The bridge traversed the Avon Gorge, a great crevasse in the landscape, carved out by the muddy-banked River Avon, which Ben and I could see flooding its basin far below, brown and swollen at high-tide. The gorge was the boundary between city and countryside. The city hugged one side of it, teetering on its edges, and the woods hugged the other, trees running densely hundreds of feet down steep cliffs until they petered out beside the riverbank.

Once we’d crossed the bridge, it only took us five minutes to be parked and loose in the woodland. It was a beautiful late autumn afternoon and, as we walked, I was relishing the sounds and smells and sights it offered.

I’m a photographer. It’s a career change I made when I had Ben. I walked away from my previous incarnation as a nurse without a single regret. Photography was a joy, an absolute passion of mine, and it meant that I was always looking at the light, thinking about how I could use it in a photograph, and I can remember exactly what it was like as we walked that afternoon.

It was fairly late, so what light remained had a transient quality to it, but there was just enough brightness in the air that the colours of the leaves above and around me appeared complex and beautiful. Some of them fell as we walked. Without a whisper of protest they let go of the branches that had sustained them for months, and drifted down in front of us to settle on the woodland floor. When we began our walk, it was still a gentle afternoon, allowing the change of seasons to unfold quietly and gradually around us.

Of course Ben and the dog were oblivious to it. While I composed photographs in my mind, both of them, with misty breath and bright, wild eyes, ran and played and hid. Ben wore a red anorak and I saw it flash down the path in front of me, then weave in and out of the trees. Skittle ran by his side.

Ben threw sticks at tree trunks and he knelt close to the leaf-strewn ground to examine mushrooms that he knew not to touch. He tried to walk with his eyes closed and kept up a running commentary on how that felt. ‘I think I’m in a muddy part, Mum,’ he said, as he felt his boot get stuck, and I had to rescue it while he stood with a socked foot held precariously in the air. He picked up pine cones and showed me one that was closed up tight. ‘It’s going to rain,’ he told me. ‘Look.’

My son looked beautiful that afternoon. He was only eight years old. His sandy hair was tousled and his cheeks were pink from exertion and cold. He had blue eyes that were clear and bright as sapphires. He had pale winter skin, perfectly unblemished except for those freckles, and a smile that was my favourite sight in the world. He was about two-thirds my height, just right for me to rest an arm around his shoulders as we walked, or to hold his hand, which he was still happy for me to do from time to time, though not at school.

That afternoon Ben exuded happiness in that uncomplicated way children can. It made me feel happy too. It had been a hard ten months since John left us and although I still thought about him and Katrina more than I probably should have, I was also experiencing moments of all-right-ness, times when it felt OK that it was just Ben and I. They were rare, if I’m honest, but they were there all the same, and that afternoon in the woods was one of those moments.

By half past four, the cold was beginning to bite and I knew we should start to make our way home. Ben didn’t agree.

‘Can I have a go on the rope swing? Please?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I reckoned we could still be back at the car before it got dark.

‘Can I run ahead?’

I often think back to that moment, and before you judge me for the reply I gave him, I want to ask you a question. What do you do when you have to be both a mother and a father to your child? I was a single parent. My maternal instincts were clear: protect your child, from everything. My maternal voice was saying, No you can’t, you’re too young, I want to take you to the swing, and I want to watch you every step of the way. But in the absence of Ben’s dad I thought it was also my responsibility to make room in my head for another voice, a paternal one. I imagined that this voice would encourage Ben to be independent, to take risks, to discover life himself. I imagined it saying, Of course you can! Do it!

So here’s how the conversation actually went:

‘Can I run ahead?’

‘Oh, Ben, I’m not sure.’

‘Please, Mum,’ the vowels were strung out, wheedling.

‘Do you know the way?’

‘Yes!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘We do it every time.’

He was right, we did.

‘OK, but if you don’t know where to find the track, just stop and wait for me on the main path.’

‘OK,’ and he was off, careering down the path ahead of me, Skittle racing with him.

‘Ben!’ I shouted. ‘Are you sure you know the way?’

‘Yes!’ he shouted with the assurance of a kid who almost certainly hasn’t bothered to listen to what you said, because they have something more exciting to be getting on with. He didn’t stop, or look back at me.

And that was the last I saw of him.

As I walked the path behind Ben I listened to a voicemail on my phone. It was from my sister. She’d left it at lunchtime.

‘Hi, it’s me. Can you give me a ring about the Christmas photo shoot for the blog? I’m at the Cotswold Food Festival and I’ve got loads and loads of ideas that I want to chat to you about, so I just want to confirm that you’re still coming up next weekend. I know we said you should come and stay at home, but I thought we could do something better at the cottage, dress it up with holly and stuff, so why don’t you come there instead. The girls will stay with Simon as they’ve all got things to do, so it’ll be just us. And by the way I’m staying there tonight so try me there if you can’t get through on my mobile. Love to Ben. Bye.’

My sister had a very successful food blog. It was called ‘Ketchup and Custard’, named after her daughters’ favourite foods. She had four girls, each one the image of their father with deep brown eyes and hair that was so dark it was nearly black and stubborn, wilful temperaments. My sister often joked that if she hadn’t given birth to them herself she’d have questioned whether they belonged to her at all. And I admit I sometimes wondered if my sister ever truly got the measure of her girls: they seemed such an impenetrable bunch, even to their mother.

Close in age – all of them older than Ben – they formed a little tribe that Ben never quite managed to penetrate, and in fact he regarded them with some wariness, mostly because they treated him a bit like a toy.

Nicky proved a match for them more often than not, though, scheduling and organising them down to the last minute, dominating them by keeping them busy. Their lives ran to such a strict routine that I sometimes wondered if these raven-haired girls wouldn’t implode once they entered the real world, beyond their mother’s control.

On her blog Nicky posted recipes that she claimed would make even the fussiest families eat healthily and eat together. When she started the blog I thought it was naff and silly but to my surprise it had taken off and she was often mentioned when newspapers published ‘Top Ten’ lists of good food or family blogs.

My sister was a brilliant cook and she combined recipes with good-humoured writing about the trials of raising a big family. It wasn’t my cup of tea – too contrived and twee by far – but it was impressive and it seemed to strike a chord with lots of women who bought into the domestic heroine ideal.

I called her back, left a message in return. ‘Yes, we’re planning to come up on Saturday morning and leave after lunch on Sunday. Do you want me to bring anything?’

I was making a point by asking that. I knew she wouldn’t want anything from me. She prided herself on being a perfect hostess.

Limiting our stay was also deliberate. When I’d thought we were going to visit Nicky at their family home I’d been determined to stay only one night, because although Nicky was the only family I had, and I felt a duty to see her and to give Ben the chance to get to know his cousins, it was never something I looked forward to especially.

Their big house just outside Salisbury was always perfectly presented, traditional, and loud, and it became claustrophobic after one night. I simply found the whole package a bit overwhelming: super-efficient Nicky working domestic miracles left, right and centre, her big, jolly husband, glass of wine in hand, and pile of anecdotes at the ready, and the daughters, bickering, flicking V signs at my sister’s back, wrapping their father around their little fingers. It was a world apart from my quiet life with Ben in our small house in Bristol.

Not that the cottage was my ideal destination either, even without Nicky’s family to contend with. Left to both Nicky and me by our Aunt Esther, who raised us, it was small and damp and held slightly uncomfortable memories for me. I would have sold it years ago, I could certainly have done with the money, but Nicky remained very attached to it and she and Simon had long since taken on its maintenance costs entirely, largely out of guilt, I think, that she wouldn’t let me release the capital in it. She encouraged me to make more use of it but somehow time spent there left me feeling odd, as if I somehow had never grown up properly, never shed my teenage self.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket. I’d reached the start of the path that led to the rope swing. Ben wasn’t there so I assumed he’d gone ahead of me. I made my way along in his wake, squelching through mud and batting away brambles. When I came to the clearing where the rope swing was, I was smiling in anticipation of seeing him, and of enjoying his triumph at having got there himself.

Except that he wasn’t there, and nor was Skittle. The rope swing was in motion, moving from left to right and back again in a slow rhythm. I pushed forward to give myself a wider view of the clearing. ‘Ben,’ I called. No reply. I felt a flash of panic but told myself to stop it. I’d given him this little bit of independence, and it would be a shame to mar the moment by behaving in an overanxious way. Ben was probably hiding behind a tree with Skittle, and I shouldn’t wreck his game.

I looked around. The clearing was small, no bigger than half a tennis court. Dense woodland wrapped around most of it, darkening the perimeters, although on one side a large crop of medium-sized saplings grew, spindly and brittle, leafless. They dispersed the light around them, lending it a quality of strangeness. In the middle of the clearing stood a mature beech tree, which overhung a small brook. The rope swing was tethered to one of its branches. I reckoned that Ben was hiding behind its thick trunk.

I walked slowly into the clearing, playing along with him.

‘Hmm,’ I said, throwing my voice in the direction of the tree so that he could hear me. ‘I wonder where Ben is. I thought he was meeting me here, but I can’t see him anywhere, or that dog of his. It’s a mystery.’

I stopped to listen, to see if he would give himself away, but there was no sound.

‘I wonder if Ben has gone home without me,’ I continued, dipping a booted toe into the brook. The motion of the swing had ceased now and it hung limply. ‘Maybe,’ I said, drawing the word out, ‘Ben has started a new life in the woods without me, and I’ll just have to go home and eat honey on toast by myself and watch Dr Who on my own.’

Again, no response, and the flutter of fear returned. This kind of talk was usually enough to make him emerge, triumphant at having tricked me for so long. I told myself to be calm, that he was upping the stakes, making me work hard. I said, ‘Well, I guess that if Ben is going to live on his own in the woods then I’ll just have to give away his things so that another boy can have them.’

I sat down on a moss-covered tree stump to wait for his response, trying to play it cool. Then I delivered my trump card: ‘I just wonder who would like to have Baggy Bear…⁠’ Baggy Bear was Ben’s favourite toy, a teddy that his grandparents had given him when he was a baby.

I looked around, expecting him to emerge, half laughing, half cross, but there was absolute silence, as if the woodland was holding its breath. In the quiet, my eyes followed the lines of the surrounding tree trunks upwards until I glimpsed the sky above, and I could feel darkness starting to push in as surely as fire creeps across a piece of paper, curling its edges, turning it to ash.

In that moment, I knew that Ben wasn’t there.

I ran to the tree. I circled it, once, twice, again, feeling its bark scrape my fingers as I went round. ‘Ben!’ I called. ‘Ben! Ben! Ben!’ No response. I kept calling, on and on, and when I stopped to listen, straining to hear, there was still nothing. A sickening feeling in my gut pinched harder as each second passed.

Then a noise: a wonderful, glorious crashing sound, the sound of someone rushing through undergrowth. It was coming from the glade of saplings. I ran towards it, picking my way through the young trees as quickly as I could, dodging low, whippy branches, feeling one of them slice into my forehead.

‘Ben,’ I shouted, ‘I’m here.’ No response, but the noise got closer. ‘I’m coming, love,’ I called. Relief surged through me. As I ran, I scanned the dense growth ahead of me to try to catch a glimpse of him. It was hard to tell exactly where the noise was coming from. Sounds were ricocheting around amongst the trees, confusing me. It shocked me when something burst out of the undergrowth beside me.

It was a dog, and it was big and happy to see me. It bounced at my feet, eager to be petted, its mouth wide and dark red, startlingly so, its big fleshy tongue lolling. A few yards behind it a woman emerged from the trees.

‘I’m so sorry, dear,’ she said. ‘He won’t hurt you, he’s very friendly.’

‘Oh God,’ I said. I cupped my hands around my mouth. ‘Ben!’ I shouted and this time I yelled so loudly that it felt as if the cold air was scorching my throat when I drew breath.

‘Have you lost your dog? He’s not that way or I’d have come across him. Oh! Did you know your forehead is bleeding? Are you all right? Hold on a minute.’

She fumbled in her coat pocket and offered me a tissue. She was elderly and wore a waxed hat with a wide brim that was pulled low on her head. Her face was creased with concern and she was short of breath. I ignored the tissue and instead I grasped her, my fingers sinking into her padded jacket until I felt the resistance of her arm beneath. She flinched.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s my son. I’ve lost my son.’

As I spoke, I felt a bead of blood trickle down my forehead.

And so it began.

We hunted for Ben, the lady and I. We scoured the area around the rope swing and then returned to the path, striking out along it in opposite directions with a plan to converge at the main car park.

I wasn’t calm, not a bit. Fear made my insides feel as if they were melting.

As we searched, the woods were transforming. The sky became darker and overcast and in places the overhanging branches were dense enough to form a solid arch, and the path became a dark burrow.

Leaves gusted around me like decomposing confetti as the wind began to build, and great masses of foliage shuddered and bent as it whipped through the canopy above.

I called for Ben over and over again and listened too, straining to decipher the layers of sound the woods produced. A branch cracked. A bird called, a high-pitched sound, like a yelp, and another answered. High overhead was the sound of an aeroplane.

Loudest of all was me: my breathing, the sound of my boots slapping through the mud. My panic was audible.

Nowhere was the sound of Ben’s voice, or of Skittle.

Nowhere did I see a bright red anorak.

By the time I reached the car park I felt hysterical. It was packed with cars and families, because there were teams of boys and their supporters leaving the adjacent soccer field. A fantasy role-play enactment group loitered in one corner, bizarrely costumed, packing weaponry and picnic coolers into their cars. They were a regular sight in the woods on Sunday afternoons.

I focused on the boys. Many of them wore red kit. I moved amongst them looking for him, turning shoulders, staring into faces, wondering if he was there, camouflaged by his anorak. I recognised some faces amongst them. I called his name, asked them if they’d seen a boy, asked them if they’d seen Ben Finch. A hand on my arm stopped me in my tracks.

‘Rachel!’

It was Peter Armstrong, single dad of Ben’s best friend, Finn. Finn stood behind him in football kit, mud-streaked, sucking on a piece of orange.

‘What’s happened?’

Peter listened, as I told him.

‘We need to phone the police,’ he said. ‘Right now.’ He made the call himself, while I stood beside him, shaking, and couldn’t believe what I was hearing because it meant that this was real now, that it was actually happening to us.

Then Peter organised people. He rallied the families in the car park and got some to stay behind with the children, others to form a search party.

‘Five minutes,’ he said to everyone. ‘Then we leave.’

As we waited, raindrops began to speckle the front of Peter’s glasses. I trembled and he put his arm around me.

‘It’ll be OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll find him.’

We were standing like that when the old lady emerged from the woods. She was out of breath and her dog strained at its lead. Her face fell when she saw me.

‘Oh my dear,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry. I was sure you would have found him by now.’ She laid a hand on my arm, for support as much as reassurance.

‘Have you called for help?’ she asked. ‘As it’s getting dark I think you must.’

It didn’t take long, but even so, by the time everyone had mustered, the shadows and shapes of the trees around us had lost their definition and merged into indistinct shades of darkness, making the woods seem impenetrable and hostile. Anybody who had one brought a flashlight. We were a motley crew who gathered, a mixture of football parents, re-enactors still in costume and a Lycra-clad cyclist. Our pinched faces told not just of the deepening chill, but of the darker and growing fear that Ben wasn’t just lost, but that he’d come to harm.

Peter addressed everybody: ‘Ben’s wearing a red anorak, blue trainers that flash, jeans and he’s got dark brown hair and blue eyes. The dog’s a black and white cocker spaniel called Skittle. Any questions?’

There were none. We broke into two groups and set off, one in each direction along the path. Peter led one group; I led the other.

The woods swallowed us up. Before ten minutes had passed the rain worsened and great fists of water broke through the canopy. Within minutes we were wet through and large spreading puddles appeared on the path. Our progress slowed dramatically but we carried on calling and listening, the beams of the torches swinging wide and low into the woodland around us, eyes straining to see something, anything.

As each second passed and the weather pressed in around us my fear built into a hot, urgent thing that threatened to explode inside me.

After twenty minutes I felt my phone vibrate. It was a text from Peter.

‘Meet car park’ it said, and that was all.

Hope surged. I began to run, faster and faster, and when I emerged from the path and into the car park I had to stop abruptly. I was in the full glare of a pair of headlights. I shielded my eyes.

‘Rachel Jenner?’ A figure stepped into the beam, silhouetted.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m WPC Sarah Banks. I’m a police constable, from Nailsea Police Station. I understand your son is lost. Any sign of him?’

‘No.’

‘Nothing at all?’

I shook my head.

A shout went up from behind us. It was Peter. He had Skittle cradled in his arms. He gently laid the dog down. One of Skittle’s delicate hind legs was at a painful, unnatural angle. He whimpered when he saw me, and buried his nose into my hand.

‘Ben?’ I asked.

Peter shook his head. ‘The dog hobbled onto the path right in front of us. We’ve no idea where he came from.’

My memories of that moment are mostly of sound, and sensation. The rain wet on my face, soaking my knees as I knelt on the ground; grim murmurs from the people gathered around; the soft whimpering of my dog; the wild gusting of the wind, and the faint sound of pop music coming from one of the cars that the kids had sheltered in, its windows all steamed up.

Cutting through everything was the crackle of the police radio just behind me, and the voice of WPC Banks calling for assistance.

Peter took the dog away, to the vet. WPC Banks refused to let me go back into the woods. With her sharp young features and neat, white little teeth she looked too immature to be authoritative, but she was adamant.

We sat in my car together. She questioned me closely about what Ben and I had been doing, where I’d last seen him. She took slow, careful notes in bulbous handwriting, which looked like fat caterpillars crawling across the page.

I rang John. When he answered I began to cry and WPC Banks gently took my mobile from me and asked him to confirm that he was Ben’s dad. Then she told him that Ben was lost and that he should come right away to the woods.

I rang my sister Nicky. She didn’t answer at first, but she called me back quickly.

‘Ben’s lost,’ I said. It was a bad line. I had to raise my voice.

‘What?’

‘Ben’s lost.’

‘Lost? Where?’

I told her everything. I confessed that I’d let him run ahead of me, that it was my fault. She took a no-nonsense approach.

‘Have you called the police? Have you organised people to search? Can I speak to the police?’

‘They’re bringing dogs, but it’s dark, so they say they can’t do anything more until morning.’

‘Can I speak to them?’

‘There’s no point.’

‘I’d like to.’

‘They’re doing everything they can.’

‘Shall I come?’

I appreciated the offer. I knew my sister hated driving in the dark. She was a nervous driver at the best of times, cautious and conservative on the road, as in life. The routes around our childhood cottage, where she was staying for the night, were treacherous even in daylight. In the depths of rural Wiltshire, on the edge of a large forested estate, the cottage was accessible only via a network of narrow, winding lanes edged with deep ditches and tall hedges.

‘No, it’s OK. John’s on his way.’

‘You must ring me if there’s any news, anything.’

‘I will.’

‘I’ll stay up by my phone.’

‘OK.’

‘Is it raining there?’

‘Yes. It’s so cold. He’s only wearing an anorak and a cotton top.’

Ben hated to wear jumpers. I’d got him into one that afternoon before we left for the woods, but he’d wriggled out of it once we were in the car.

‘I’m hot, Mum,’ he’d said. ‘So hot.’

The jumper, red, knitted, lay on the back seat of my car and I leaned back and pulled it onto my lap, held it tight, smelled him in its fabric.

Nicky was still talking, reassuring, as she usually did, even when her own anxiety was building.

‘It’s OK. It won’t take them long to find him. He can’t have gone far. Children are very resilient.’

‘They won’t let me search for him. They’re making me stay in the car park.’

‘That makes sense. You could injure yourself in the dark.’

‘It’s nearly his bedtime.’

She exhaled. I could imagine the creases of worry on her face, and the way she’d be gnawing at her little-finger nail. I knew what Nicky’s anxiety looked like. It had been our constant companion as children. ‘It’ll be OK,’ she said, but we both knew they were only words and that she didn’t know that for sure.

When John arrived WPC Banks spoke to him first. They stood in the beam of John’s headlights. The rain was relentless still, heavy and driving. Above them a huge beech tree provided some shelter. It had hung on to enough of its leaves that its underside, illuminated by the lights from the car, looked like a golden corona.

John was intently focused on what WPC Banks was saying. He exuded a jumpy, fearful energy. His hair, usually the colour of wet sand, was plastered blackly around the contours of his face, which were pallid, as if they’d been sculpted from stone.

‘I’ve spoken to my inspector,’ WPC Banks was telling him. ‘He’s on his way.’

John nodded. He glanced at me, but moved his eyes quickly away. The tendons in his neck were taut.

‘That’s good news,’ she said. ‘It means they’re taking it seriously.’

Why wouldn’t they? I wondered. Why wouldn’t they take a missing child seriously? I stepped towards John. I wanted to touch him, just his hand. Actually, I wanted him to hold me. Instead, I got a look of disbelief.

‘You let him run ahead?’ he said and his voice was stretched thin with tension. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

There was no point in trying to give him an explanation. It was done. I would regret it for ever.

WPC Banks said, ‘I think for now it would be best if all of our focus is on the search for Ben. It won’t do him any good if you cast blame.’

She was right. John understood that. He was blinking back tears. He looked distraught and incredulous. I watched him cycle through everything I’d been feeling since Ben had gone. He had question after question, each of which WPC Banks answered patiently until he was satisfied that he knew everything there was to know, and that everything possible was being done.

As I stood beside him, and let WPC Banks reassure him, I realised that it had been more than ten months since I’d seen him smile, and I wondered if I ever would again.

JIM

Addendum to DI James Clemo’s report for Dr Francesca Manelli.

Transcript recorded by Dr Francesca Manelli.

DI James Clemo and Dr Francesca Manelli in attendance.

Notes to indicate observations on DI Clemo’s state of mind or behaviour, where his remarks alone do not convey this, are in italics.

This transcript is from the first full psychotherapy session that DI Clemo attended. Previous to this we had only a short preliminary meeting where I took a history from DI Clemo and we discussed the report that I had asked him to write.

Predictably, given his resistant attitude to therapy, the report that DI Clemo submitted at this stage was lacking in comment on areas of his personal and emotional experience at the time of the Benedict Finch case. The transcripts fill in the gaps somewhat. My priority in this first session was to begin to establish DI Clemo’s trust in me.

DI Clemo elected to see me at my private consultation rooms based in Clifton, rather than at the facility provided at police HQ.

Dr Francesca Manelli (FM): Good to see you again. Thank you for making a start on your report.

DI James Clemo (JC) acknowledges this comment with a terse nod. He hasn’t yet spoken.

FM: I’ve noted your objection to continuing to attend these sessions with me.

JC makes no comment. He is also avoiding eye contact.

FM: So, I’d like to start by asking whether there have been any more incidents?

JC: Incidents?

FM: Panic attacks, of the sort that led to your referral to me.

JC: No.

FM: Can you describe to me what happened on the two occasions that you experienced the panic attacks?

JC: I can’t just come in here and talk about stuff like that.

FM: It would be helpful to have more detail, just to get us started. What triggered the feelings of panic, how they grew into a full-blown attack, what you were feeling while it happened?

JC: I’m not talking about my feelings! It’s not what I do. I’m sick of the way feelings are all anybody wants to talk about. Watching any sport on TV these days, that’s all the commentators ask people. Sue Barker talking to a guy who’s played tennis for four hours or collaring someone who’s just lost the most important football game of his life. ‘How are you feeling?’ What about ‘How did you do it? How hard have you worked to get here?’

FM: Do you think that expressing feelings is a weakness?

JC: Yes, I do.

FM: Is that why you don’t like talking about the panic attacks? Because they might have been prompted by some very strong feelings that you had?

He doesn’t reply.

FM: Everything you say in here will remain confidential.

JC: But you’ll make a decision about whether I’m fit to work.

FM: I’ll report back to your DCI and make a recommendation, but nobody else will see the contents of your report, or the transcripts of our conversations. Those are for my use only. They’ll form the basis of our on-going conversations. This is going to be a long process, and if you can work towards being open with me, we have a much greater chance of success, and we can hopefully get you back out there doing the work you want to do.

JC: I’m a detective. It’s in my blood. It’s what I live for.

FM: You need to be aware, also, that the number of psychotherapy sessions that your DCI is prepared to fund is limited.

JC: I know that.

FM: Then talk to me.

He takes his time.

JC: At first it was like being winded, I couldn’t get a proper breath in. I kept yawning, and breathing, trying to get air, trying to stop the dizziness, because I thought I was going to pass out. Then my heart was pounding really fast, and I stopped being able to think, I couldn’t get my mind to do anything, and then there was panic all over, gripping me, and all I wanted to do was to get out of there, and punch a wall.

FM: Which you did.

JC: I’m not proud of that.

He covers the knuckles on his right hand with his left hand, but not before I’ve noticed that they’re still scabbed and sore.

FM: And you also experienced some bouts of crying in the days after this?

JC: I don’t know why.

FM: It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s another symptom of anxiety, just like the panic attacks.

JC: I’m stronger than that.

FM: Strong people experience anxiety.

JC: What I hate most of all is the crying starts any time, anywhere. I can’t stop it. I’m like a baby.

Tears have begun to fall down JC’s face.

FM: No. You’re not. It’s just a symptom. Take some time. We’ll come back to this.

He takes a tissue from the box by his chair, wipes his face roughly; tries to compose himself. I make a few notes, to give him some time, and after a minute or two he engages with me.

JC: What are you writing?

FM: I take a few handwritten notes with every patient. It helps me to remember our sessions afterwards. Would you like to see what I’ve written?

JC shakes his head.

FM: I’d like to ask you what kind of support network you might have around you. A partner?

JC: No partner currently.

FM: Family or friends then?

JC: My mum lives in Exeter, I don’t see her much. My sister too. My friends in Bristol are mostly colleagues so we don’t talk about stuff outside work.

FM: I see from your notes that your father passed away a little before the Benedict Finch case started.

JC: That’s correct. About a month before.

FM: And he was a detective too?

JC: He was Deputy Chief Super in Devon and Cornwall.

FM: Was he the reason you joined the force?

JC: A big part of it, yeah.

FM: And you started your career in Devon and Cornwall?

JC: I did.

FM: Was that hard? Did you feel you had a lot to live up to, in your dad?

JC: Of course, because I did.

FM: Did that feel like pressure?

JC: I’m not afraid of pressure.

FM: When you were with Devon and Cornwall was it well known that you were your father’s son?

JC: When I started I was known as ‘Mick Clemo’s boy’, but it’s the same for anyone who’s got a relative in the force.

FM: And when you moved to Bristol, to the Avon and Somerset force, did that change?

JC: It changed completely. Only one or two of the older guys in Bristol knew my dad personally.

FM: So it was a chance for a fresh start?

JC: It was a promotion is what it was.

FM: Has policing been the right career choice for you do you think?

JC: It’s what I always wanted to do. There was never another way for me. Like I said it’s in the blood. It has to be in the blood.

FM: Why ‘has to be’?

JC: Because you see it all. You see the dirtiest, blackest side of life. You see what people inflict on each other, and it can be brutal.

His gaze is steady now, focused entirely on me. I feel that he’s challenging me to contradict what he’s said, or diminish it. I remember that I’m not the only person in the room trained to read the behaviour of others. I decide to move on.

FM: Your record states that you took an English degree before joining the force.

JC: It’s expected to join the force with a degree nowadays. Not like it used to be when you went in straight from school.

FM: Did you enjoy your degree?

JC: I did.

FM: What did you study? Was there anything you especially enjoyed?

JC: Yeats. I enjoyed Yeats.

FM: I know a Yeats poem: ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer…⁠’ Do you know it? I think it’s by Yeats anyway. I forget the title.

JC can’t help himself, he carries on the poem.

JC: ‘ ⁠… Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…⁠’

FM: ‘ ⁠… The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere…⁠’

JC: ‘ ⁠… The ceremony of innocence is drowned’.

FM: There’s more.

JC: I can’t remember it exactly.

FM: He’s a wonderful poet.

JC: He’s a truthful poet.

FM: Do you still read poetry?

JC: No. I don’t have time for that sort of thing now.

FM: You work long hours?

JC: You have to if you want to get on.

FM: And do you? Want to get on?

JC: Of course.

FM: Can I ask you once again: is there anything specific that triggers your panic attacks?

JC covers his face with his hands, rubs his eyes, and massages his temples. I begin to think he isn’t going to reply, that I’ve pushed him too far too fast, but eventually he seems to come to some kind of decision and looks me directly in the eye.

JC: I can’t sleep. It makes me confused sometimes. It makes me doubt my judgement.

FM: You suffer from insomnia?

JC: Yes.

FM: How long has this been going on?

He studies me before he answers.

JC: Since the case.

FM: Do you struggle to get to sleep, or do you wake up in the middle of the night?

JC: I can’t fall asleep.

FM: How many hours do you think you sleep a night?

JC: I don’t know. Sometimes as little as three or four.

FM: That’s a very small amount, which could certainly have a profound effect on your state of mind during the day.

JC: It’s fine.

He’s being stoic suddenly, as if he regrets confiding in me.

FM: I don’t think three or four hours’ sleep is fine.

JC: Maybe I’m wrong. It’s probably more.

FM: You seemed quite certain.

JC: It’s nothing I can’t cope with.

I don’t believe him.

FM: Have you sought any medical help?

JC: I’m not taking pills.

FM: What goes through your mind when you’re trying to sleep?

Again, he studies me before responding.

JC: I can’t remember.

His answers have become obviously and frustratingly evasive, and I want to delve more into this, but now is not the time, because if this process is to succeed I must first build his trust and that, I suspect, is not going to be an easy task.