Page 38

CHAPTER 38

SALLY – D AY F OUR

‘Oh, good grief. Sally, Sally – what are you doing out here? You’re soaked through.’

Sally turns her head to see Carol running from the patio towards her.

‘Come on, honey. We need to get you inside. Get you dry. And warm.’

Sally lets Carol take her arm and help her from the swing. She wasn’t swinging, just sitting with her feet firmly planted on the ground. Hadn’t even noticed she was wet.

‘It wasn’t raining when I came out.’ She casts her head about. Feels so disorientated. Remembers only that she was staring at the swing. Found it unbearable to see it there. Empty. Still. And so she went out to sit on it so that she might feel closer to Amelie. And also so she wouldn’t have to look at it. Out there. Empty.

‘Quickly, love,’ Carol says, looping her arm and striding back towards the open door to the kitchen cum diner. ‘Let’s get you upstairs and out of these wet things.’

And now suddenly Sally realises that she is cold. She sees the water dripping from her clothes on to the wooden floor as they make their way through the room. Up the stairs.

‘That’s it.’ Carol’s voice is all alarm. ‘I should never have left you. I thought you were sleeping.’

Sally remembers now. Carol said she was taking a bath before breakfast. Sally was in her bedroom, fully dressed as always, lying on the top of the covers. She got up and went over to the window. She stared and stared at the swing. Got upset. Went downstairs ...

Carol is pulling Sally’s hoodie over her head. ‘I’ll start running the shower. Get it warm. We need to get you warm as quickly as we can. Strip off everything. Leave it on the floor and I’ll fetch your dry robe.’ Carol moves over to the shower cubicle in the corner and reaches in to switch it on, feeling the spray of water with her hand. ‘That’s it. That’s a good temperature. You get stripped off and get in. Yes?’

Sally takes off the rest of her clothes and moves across to the shower. She’s not embarrassed. They were in boarding school together. She steps into the warm spray and only now realises just how cold she was.

‘That’s it. Get warm, lovely. I’ll get your robe. And a cup of tea too.’ Carol scoops up the wet clothes from the floor and leaves the room.

A while later they are back downstairs together, sitting at the breakfast bar. Sally has her hair wrapped in a towel. Her clean robe on which Carol warmed on the radiator.

‘You feeling better? Warmer?’

Sally nods but then frowns. ‘Warmer. Yes.’ She needs to qualify that she doesn’t feel better; can’t imagine when she will ever feel better.

‘Shall I dry your hair so you can try to go back to bed? Have some more sleep?’

‘No. I don’t like to sleep. It feels so wrong. You know – when she’s out there.’

‘I get that but she needs you to be strong. And rested. And so do the police. How about one of the tablets the doctor left? Or just half a tablet?’

Sally shakes her head. The truth is whenever she’s slept even a little bit, she’s woken disorientated and drenched with guilt, feeling worse not better. Also – she’s terribly afraid of what she’ll find in her dreams.

Anxiety dreams about Amelie started a good while back, long before she disappeared. Sally confided in both Carol and their mutual friend Beth. It was when the anonymous letters started when Matthew was in the papers.

Sally’s friends tried to distract her. Play it all down. Their thinking – that the police never proved who sent the letters. And all parents worry as their children get bigger. Now Sally is wishing she’d not allowed herself to be reassured. Fobbed off? Listened more to her gut.

‘You remember when I told you that I’d started to have dreams. A few years back. Worrying about something happening to Amelie?’

‘Honey, I don’t think it helps to talk about that now.’

‘Was I wrong from the very beginning, Carol? To talk him into all this. Marriage and parenthood. Was it selfish of me? Naive of me? Did I start getting those bad dreams because deep down I knew that? Especially when those letters started. That I was wrong to talk him into all this when he knew he had that threat hanging over him. Hanging over us.’

‘No, darling.’ Carol sighs. ‘It wasn’t selfish. All mothers worry about their children. But we can’t have a world in which the police can’t have families, for heaven’s sake. Anyway. No one knows what’s really happened yet. We don’t know for sure it’s this Dawn woman so there’s no point blaming yourself. When no one’s to blame. Even if it is her. Matthew did nothing wrong. And you did nothing wrong. You’re terrific parents.’

‘Doesn’t feel like it—’

‘Hey. Hey. You need to stop this, Sal. Going over it all. You’re just going to make yourself ill. And like I said, Amelie needs you to be strong.’

‘But the thing is, I thought I was angry with Matthew deep down. For doing the job that he does. But I think I’m really mostly angry with myself. Pushing him to have a child with me when—’

‘Sshhh now. This is not the way, Sally. You can’t have good people blaming themselves when bad people do bad things.’ Another pause.

‘I’ve been googling other cases.’ Sally closes her eyes tight.

‘What do you mean, darling?’

‘Cases where children are taken and survive.’

Carol doesn’t reply at first and Sally opens her eyes and turns her head to the garden again. The empty swing.

‘I found a case of a girl who was taken and found after ten years. The parents were so thrilled. But then they found out what she’d been through. Crashed down to Earth with the shock of it. Turns out she was not the same as the girl who was taken. So damaged. And I find myself feeling so terrified—’

‘They are going to find her. Amelie is strong and you are strong. And this is going to be OK.’

‘Is it?’ As Sally speaks her phone buzzes in her pocket. It’s a long text from Matthew. She skims through it quickly. He’s on his way and will be home in fifteen minutes maximum. He says he caught a glimpse of a green dress on the CCTV. The police have been trying to trace a number of drivers who may have seen something in the car park near where Amelie disappeared. They’ve just found two of the drivers and team members have gone out to interview them.

Don’t build your hopes up but it could be important.

Sally straightens her back.

‘What is it?’

‘Some news from the investigation. They’ve traced a couple of potential witnesses overnight. Drivers who were at the car park near the High Street.’

‘You mean someone who may have seen what happened? When she disappeared.’ Carol sits up too.

‘I don’t know.’ Sally doesn’t understand. ‘It’s something to do with the green dress. The dress I wouldn’t let her buy.’