Page 5

CHAPTER 5

MATTHEW – D AY O NE

‘Stay away from me! Don’t anyone come near me! I’m not leaving!’ Sally is alongside her car in the multistorey, thrashing her arms around to prevent anyone coming close.

‘OK, darling. OK.’ Matthew puts his palms up in a signal of surrender and glances at the policewoman who does the same. The officer steps back but Matthew – completely broken to see his wife like this – tries again to very slowly and very gently edge forward. He wants to take her into a hug. To try to soothe her. But Sally is like a trapped animal.

‘No. No. You don’t touch me. No one is to touch me.’ Sally’s eyes are still completely wild. She backs away towards a concrete pillar. She feels for it with her right hand and then her body seems to weaken so that she slides her back down the pillar until she is sitting on the dirty floor. Next, she begins to cry again, huge waves of sobbing. Unbearable to witness. ‘I am staying here. I am waiting for Amelie here .’

They’ve been like this for the best part of an hour. Paramedics have come and gone and, according to the policewoman, are still standing by, but out of sight now. Sally is refusing a sedative.

When they were first driven to the multistorey in a patrol car, Sally had become almost alarmingly upbeat. She had it in her head that Amelie would definitely be at the car. Upset and lost. But safe. That’s all that’s happened. A misunderstanding . She bolted from the police car as soon as it stopped near her own. She seemed to get a glimpse of something near one of the exit doors and ran across to the stairwell, shouting Amelie’s name. But it was an older teenager in a darker pink hoodie who shrugged her away. Looked confused. And also a bit scared.

Between them, they checked Sally’s car and looked into every vehicle across the whole floor and that was when Sally became completely hysterical as if her brain simply couldn’t cope.

Matthew looks again at his wife. He’s said ‘no’ to medics forcefully giving her a sedative injection; she would never forgive him. But he needs to get her home safely and is at a complete loss as to how.

He feels the vibration of a text to his mobile and removes it from his pocket. Mel Sanders. It’s looking hopeful she can lead the investigation. Good . And staring at his phone, that’s when he gets an idea.

‘Listen, Sally. Melanie’s going to help us. To lead the search. But we need to get you by the landline at home. Urgently . Amelie knows the home number. If she’s lost and tries to ring – to borrow a phone or asks someone to call us – that’s the number she’ll give. And she’ll want to speak to you.’ He should have thought of this before. They taught Amelie their landline number years back, but she doesn’t know their mobile numbers. Too many digits.

‘Your husband’s right. We need you at home. By the phone,’ the policewoman says. ‘So how about I arrange for a police officer, one of the search team, to be stationed right here by your car in case Amelie turns up here. I’ll wait until they get here. And you can be right by the phone at home?’ The policewoman gets on her radio to make this request officially so that Sally can hear.

Sally frowns. She looks very confused, casting her head this way and that. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

‘If she rings, she will want to speak to you, darling.’ Matthew feels a frisson of discomfort at the deceit – the straw he prays she will clutch – when deep down, he’s lost all hope of something innocent going on here. If Amelie were merely lost, someone would have helped her by now. Phoned the police or approached one of the search team crawling all over town.

At the thought of this, the serious place they’re really at, he feels his chest clamp tight. He breathes in deeply, very deliberately. Two long breaths, in through his nose to steady himself.

‘OK. I’ll go home,’ Sally says quietly at last, her tone defeated. ‘But no tablets. No sedative. I need to be awake. You mustn’t put me to sleep.’

‘No one is going to do that, Sally. Now come on. Nice and gently.’ At last she lets him approach, dissolving into more sobbing as he helps her up and leads her towards the stairwell. ‘My car’s one floor down. I’ll drive you in my car.’

Half an hour later, not far from home, with Sally silent and slumped alongside him, her head leaning into the passenger window, Matthew is in a daze too. There are too many thoughts crowding his brain. And so much pain and fear crushing his heart.

He is thinking the most terrible thing of all. The new and unexpected possibility that this might all be his fault.

He is thinking of his beloved daughter, his feisty and funny and entirely unpredictable Amelie, and at the same time remembering the precise moment all those years ago when he pledged never to have children.

He was in a car then too. Older car, younger Matthew. Parked outside the inquest that changed his life. In that moment, he’d meant it – the pledge. The pact with himself to give up on the idea of parenthood. It wasn’t so much that he thought Dawn Meadows would really follow up on her threats. It was more that he needed to punish himself. He didn’t feel he deserved to be a parent because Dawn Meadows was no longer a mother ... because of him . And as a young man, it didn’t feel too terrible. Or impossible to make that decision. Did you really need the whole family package to be happy?

But that was before Sally, the thunderstorm of Sally. The shock – yes, like a clap of thunder through a dark sky. Bright and magnificent but frightening too.

He turns his head to his wife and takes in the pallor of her skin. ‘We’re nearly home.’

‘I’m still not sure we should be going home.’ Sally’s voice is barely a whisper. He has no words to comfort her, so afraid that if he says the wrong thing she will become hysterical again as he drives.

Mel has messaged again. It’s all official now; she’s definitely taking the lead on Amelie’s disappearance. He cannot bring himself to even shape the word ‘abduction’ in his mind. But that’s where he fears they are. And he wishes he didn’t know the stats; that they don’t have long before ...

Mel’s new message says there’s a big murder inquiry still ongoing elsewhere in Devon – all the county teams stretched to the limit – so her offer to help was snapped up. She’ll message with an update as soon as she can.

There’s a family liaison officer assigned already, heading to their home to meet them. Matthew’s priority is to get Sally there, back under their roof and under the care of the FLO and maybe their doctor too. Only then will he be able to leave his wife’s side and liaise with Mel properly. Get involved. Do something.

He feels a terrible pull deep in his stomach as he thinks of her again. His Amelie. Twirling in her new ballet outfit, practising for her exam.

Watch me, Daddy. What do you think?

Alongside him, Sally closes her eyes while Matthew’s mind travels back once more to that inquest. The curse. The pledge.

He was just a young police officer when it happened. Already making a name for himself. Destined for CID but still doing shifts in uniform, waiting for a vacancy to come up.

On his way back to his car near the end of a shift, he saw a child bolt from a shop ahead of him. Just a kid. No more than eleven or twelve. Matthew – tired and especially conscious of the boy’s age – was of a mind to let it go. Check the CCTV the following day to try to find the kid and maybe give him a talking-to. Put him straight with a warning. But the shopkeeper appeared right after the boy. He spotted Matthew across the street and started pointing and shouting for him to give chase. Said the boy had stolen. Go after him. Go after him. What are you waiting for?

Shopkeepers back then always wanted action. Prosecution.

Matthew would give anything to go back in time and try to calm the shopkeeper down. Promise to check the CCTV and try to find the kid later. To deal with it all calmly. And appropriately. But put on the spot, he did the only thing he felt that he could do. In public. In the moment.

He ran after the boy ...

He thinks of the independent inquiry that followed. The questions from the police panel. In the end, he was exonerated of any blame. He was told that his job and his future were safe. He was also offered counselling.

But none of that helped because the bottom line is the boy died. Not because he had stolen. Made a juvenile mistake. But because Matthew chased him and he got scared.

He was just twelve years old. A boy who lost his life over two packets of cigarettes.

The problem is the boy ran around a corner and at first Matthew did not realise the geography. Matthew shouted for the child to stop. Not to be afraid. I just want to talk . If you stop we can just talk . But then the boy cut through to an alleyway that led, at the far end, to fencing on to railway sidings.

Matthew remembers the seriousness of the situation dawning on him very fast. He stopped running to try to defuse things. He called out . No. Stop. Not the railway. It’s not safe . Look. I’ve stopped. I’m not chasing you . He kept still and put his hands up, but the kid didn’t turn round. Instead, he scaled the fence and, despite Matthew’s warnings, he jumped down on the other side and immediately darted across the line.

The live line . . .

Matthew glances at his hands on the steering wheel. The scars at his wrist.

Getting ready for the inquest, he changed shirts twice, trying to find one with longer sleeves to conceal them. He didn’t want the mother to think he was looking for any sympathy for himself.

Matthew was badly burned trying to help the boy. He broke protocol. He was supposed to wait for the line to be turned off. But how could he?

He will never forget the smell.

He saw a long, thick branch not far from the track. It had been raining slightly so wouldn’t be dry enough to be safe, but what the hell. He used it to prod, ever so quickly, to push the boy’s body away from the live rail.

There was a jolt as he felt the charge trying to pass from the boy’s body to his own. A flash and a burning to his right arm and hand. Damn. No good. No options.

Naively Matthew had hoped that at the inquest the mother would listen to how hard he had tried to help. To stop the boy. To save the boy. But he was not a parent then. He did not understand that particular kind of love. He did not know what he knows now; that the love for a child is all encompassing. Irrational and completely overwhelming. So he underestimated just how terrible it would be to sit in the same room as a mother who so bitterly and completely blamed him for the loss of her only child.

Matthew turns again to take in his wife’s face. Grey. Broken.

The verdict had been death by misadventure. Matthew was exonerated by the coroner. Afterwards the mother, Dawn Meadows, stood up and started shouting. First, she cursed the coroner, then the system. Her husband, aided by an usher, tried to steer her from the court. But it was messy. Ugly. Harrowing. She kept on shouting, thrashing her arms and then outside the court she cursed Matthew, pointing at him.

She shouted that she hoped he would never sleep again. She hoped that he would never become a parent. And then she changed the curse.

She said, ‘No. No. I hope you do have a child and I hope that child dies so you will know what this pain truly feels like.’

Matthew feels a punch deep in his gut as he remembers the terrible feeling that swept through him as she shouted.

So is this linked to him? Amelie gone. Linked to his work? His life? That mistake. That curse ...

Fact is, he made a decision, sitting in that car after the inquest, to leave the force and never to have a child.

But then he met Sally. And after the rollercoaster of guilt in the early days of their relationship, he changed his mind.

She changed his mind. We are allowed to be happy.

He can’t regret having Amelie. The joy that is their beautiful, innocent and perfect Amelie.

But when the weird letters started, even Sally got spooked. They were never pinned on the Meadows. But what if they’ve all underestimated Dawn Meadows? Were wrong to dismiss her as harmless?

He turns again to find that Sally still has her eyes closed.

His biggest fear now is that this is somehow linked with what happened all those years ago.

Which means this could be his fault ...