Lark song, p.28
Lark Song, page 28
They called on Hilary at the farm, but she had been up to the field where Gloria and the other sheep were now grazing with their lambs and had seen nothing. She had been advised to stay put in the house in case Sophie turned up, looking for shelter as it got dark. They exchanged phone numbers. He and Will circled the farm for a while, looking in water troughs and turning over bits of corrugated iron propped against walls. Eventually they turned tail and headed back to the lane.
‘Let’s separate,’ said Duncan, feeling that the area was becoming more immense the longer the shadows grew. ‘I don’t know where those men are going, but you go north and I’ll go south. Keep in touch.’
It was getting dark now, and time to be really concerned. He could almost feel Freya’s panic-fuelled heartbeat, although it was separated from him by thick stone walls and several fields. He walked at a brisk pace down the road, around the bend and towards the house. Then he went straight on by, and out towards the bus stop. He shone his torch helplessly into the bus shelter. It was useless. There was obviously no one there. Then he caught sight of something bright, lying at the base of the hedgerow just beyond the shelter. He bent down and shone his beam on it, then picked it up. It was a banana skin. He took in a quick breath. It was relatively new. There were no signs of decay, and on a day like this it would’ve started to blacken very quickly. This was a recently peeled banana, and someone had taken the trouble to drop it at the foot of the hedgerow rather than in the bus shelter. Sophie would have known to do that. She would have known that the banana skin would decompose and go back to nature. She would not have cluttered up the bus shelter with it.
Convinced she may have taken a bus, he rang Freya. There was a commotion as she checked in the pub, but it was clear that the last bus went at three minutes past six. She couldn’t have taken the bus even if she’d had some bus fare. She was at home having tea until at least six fifteen, Freya was certain of it. He could hear the panic in her voice, in her breathing. ‘But if she waited at the bus stop, it means she wanted to get away! What if she hitched a lift? What if someone stopped for her? Oh God!’
Duncan tried to reassure her. The landlord took the phone off her: ‘Last bus is three minutes past six. Unless it was late. We’ll tell the police, don’t worry.’
He phoned Will to let him know about the banana skin, then started off again down the road. What if she had been trying to catch the bus? Who did she know in Cheltenham except him? Had she been trying to find him? Duncan felt pressed down suddenly by a flattening responsibility. Poor Sophie would have no idea how to find his flat in Cheltenham. She had been there once or twice, but she was only six. What sense did she have of areas of town? Lansdown, Tivoli, Montpellier, they meant nothing to her. Could she ask someone? Of course not, unless she had the address written down, which she wouldn’t. And if she did ask someone (he imagined her asking a passing paedophile, ‘Do you know where Duncan lives?’) then it could be very dangerous indeed. He sighed again. The landlord had said he would contact the police. If she’d caught the bus – if it had been late – then the bus driver would know. They could check it out. Let them do that. He had to make sure she wasn’t here, hidden somewhere behind a bush and terrified, or trying the long walk into Cheltenham on her own in the dark. For now it was dark, and there was no mistaking it. The glow from the horizon was little more than a dimming patch of turquoise, and the hedgerows were looming figures crouching by the roadside.
He chose to follow the Cheltenham road for a while, but he had no idea what sort of a head start she had had. Suppose she had left the house at half past six, she could be miles down the lonely road by now. He started to run, and he ran until he was out of breath. This was useless. He would have to retrace his steps and go back up to fetch his car. But then he might see Freya and have to admit that he had found nothing, and he couldn’t face Freya – ever – until he had found her daughter.
He rang Will, hoping he might be close enough to the pub to drive the car down to him, but Will was now in a truck with one of the men from the village. It was gone nine before he made it back. He felt guilty as he passed the house, wondering if Jack was okay, but he imagined Jack would be in touch with Will and Freya. He drove very fast to the place in the road he had reached on foot, and then more steadily, with his lights on full beam, most of the way to Cheltenham. As he cruised down the hill, the lights of the town glittered in the flat valley below. Each light represented a life or several lives: people watching television, talking together, drinking, winding down for the night. Soon the house lights would go off one by one, and all that would be left would be the street lights and the floodlit hotels and churches. People would be dreaming under the darkened roofs, and what about Sophie? Where would she be sleeping? Or would she be awake, shivering and terrified? Where could she possibly be? Eventually he turned round and came back, still scanning the hedgerows for a crouching child.
He left his car pulled up on the grass near the bus stop and stood at a nearby five-bar gate, looking into the blackness of a field. ‘Sophie!’ he shouted. ‘SOPHIE!’ He kept on shouting until his voice was hoarse.
His phone rang, an alarming sound in the darkness. It was Freya, breathless. ‘The bus driver said the bus was a bit late and he thinks there was a small girl who got on the bus at Stonely. But he thinks she was with a woman. He thinks it was a woman, but it could have been a man. He can’t remember!’
‘Okay.’ Duncan assumed a totally fake calmness. He surprised himself at how easily he kept that word steady. He must at least stay calm, because this might be all he could do for Freya. This might be it. But he could feel his ribcage pounding. ‘Okay, we’re going to have to let the police follow that line of enquiry. It may not be her. We have to continue looking.’
‘But what if it is her? What if someone has taken her? She could be anywhere!’
‘And it may not be her, so we mustn’t stop looking. She could be crouching in a hedge somewhere, unable to find her way home in the dark.’
‘Yes, but what if it is her! What can we do?’
Duncan made himself breathe deeply and steadily. He couldn’t betray that he shared her panic. ‘Someone in Stonely must know who caught the last bus. Ask at the pub. Ask Pete, ask everyone at the pub. Someone should know who had visitors today. Someone who came to play after school, maybe.’
‘Yes! Yes, I’ll do that. That could rule it out. Good idea!’ He felt a tiny surge of relief at her last two words. ‘Oh, and the police are going to bring sniffer dogs. It may be tonight. They’ve got Sophie’s pyjamas, and the dogs are going to use them for her scent.’
‘Good. A two-pronged attack. We’ll find her.’ He said the words manfully, but as soon as she hung up, a wave of hopelessness swept over him. He stood for a while, trying to steady his breathing, listening to it slice the silence of that strangely beautiful starlit night.
67
MELTING AWAY
Sophie has been watching a strange wafer-like white disc in the sky, and now realises that it is the moon. It has been slowly rising into the deepening blue as she’s been walking along, making her escape. Behind the trees there is a band of flamingo pink, which softly merges into peach and then pale green before it meets the striking blue. She has been sitting on the little bench in the bus shelter for a few minutes while eating her banana. She is pleased to eat it, and it feels like a wicked treat, because she is not normally allowed to eat after tea, but now she is disappointed because it’s gone. She leaves the shelter and tosses the peel into the hedgerow. Jack says that banana peels are buyer-degradable, so it will melt into the grass and become bits of earth. She eyes it gleaming brightly from behind some nettles. It doesn’t look likely to melt, but then neither does Gloria’s poo, and that melts into the grass like magic, and you never get to see it happen.
She wonders about buses. She has no money on her, but usually Mummy pays, and she imagines that children go free, so that’s okay. Still, she thinks now that she may have missed the bus, as there aren’t many.
She looks up the lane and then down it: a tunnel of green. She lets her head rock back and sees the evening light gleaming through the leaves. So many greens! She thinks of the crayons she would use at school to draw this. The lime-green crayon and the ordinary green. When she grows up, she will invent more crayon colours so that there are enough different greens to draw what she can see now. Lime green, light-coming-through green, underleaf green, moss green, beech-leaf green, oak-leaf green, ivy green. And then all the different grassy colours and flower leaves and caterpillars and things. She will also make sure there are more purples and pinks and extra red and flesh-coloured crayons in every pack, as they always wear down the quickest and get too short and stubby to hold.
She takes in a deep breath. The smells are lovely. Faint scents of bluebells and the garlicky smell from the white pom-pom flowers and the thick powdery waft of May blossom.
Sophie has been trying to work out how long it should take to be found. At first, she imagined that by the time she got to the end of the lane, someone – probably Jack – would have noticed that she was missing. This is because Jack usually plays with her for a bit before he goes off to use the laptop, although he has been playing with her less since he got his own. Yesterday he tore off Matilda’s head and kicked it across the room. She smiled, but it didn’t make her happy. She isn’t really cross with Matilda any more. It’s Daddy she’s cross with. And Granny Sylvia.
Sophie climbs a gate and starts walking along the edge of a field. There is a star now, winking beside the moon. He told me he didn’t want another child. She kicks the grass with her trainers as she walks. Suddenly it’s all Sophie this and Sophie that. She can feel the hot tears burning her cheeks. Her nose fills up. There is snot running over her lips. The weird thing is, before Italy she could hardly even remember him. He was just a blur, and someone they all said was a good man. He was such a good man. That’s what Mummy said and that’s what Granny Sylvia said, but Sophie couldn’t remember anything except the tupping and the empty chair on her big day. Daddy was a funny voice for one of her animals, a tupping ram with Matilda and an empty chair. And a threat.
The undergrowth is getting thicker and the light is going. Ouch. A nettle stings through her leggings. She takes it personally, like an extra insult. Duncan always says the sting is gone before you can count backwards from one hundred. She says, ‘One hundred,’ but can’t think what comes next. She is thinking about Granny Sylvia saying that Daddy has just lost his memory, that’s all. But she knows this isn’t true. Daddy saw her. He looked her in the eye and whispered her name – Soph . . . – and then ran away.
Her daddy saw her and ran away.
She wipes her nose on her sleeve and is cross with herself, because she likes this top. If Sophie hadn’t been born, none of this would’ve happened.
By now, Jack will have noticed. Surely. It’s beginning to get pretty dark now. What if no one has noticed? Jack will have asked where Sophie is. He will. Or Mummy will have called her to clean her teeth. Mummy will be frantic. Or perhaps something has distracted her, like a phone call from Aunty Rachel. Perhaps she won’t notice until she goes to bed. Mummy always pops in then to give her a kiss, and she pretends to be asleep because she likes to hear her whisper things like, ‘Goodnight my little lamb, my sweet lamb.’ No. Will and Jack and Mummy will all be worried. They will. It’s not that Sophie wants them to worry, it’s that she needs them to. She needs them to be very, very, very worried. It’s okay, she tells herself, walking uncertainly in the darkness. She doesn’t want them to find her too soon, because then Mummy will just hold her close and call her a silly sausage and it will all be over, as if she has just been a bit naughty or daft. She knows she is trying to get their attention, but it is for a good cause. It really isn’t that she wants to be unkind, it’s that she wants them to listen to her. She wants to be heard, and at the moment what she thinks doesn’t seem to matter.
She comes to a stile and kicks it with her trainer. She doesn’t want Daddy coming home again. Will told Jack that Dad could come home again because it’s his house too and Mum can’t stop him. And if Mum divorced him they might have to live in another house and go and spend the weekends with him. Will said he wouldn’t have to because he was going off to uni, but Jack and Sophie would. She doesn’t want to live in another house and spend the weekends with Daddy. Jack said he wouldn’t spend the weekends with Matilda – he’d kill her first. Frankly, Sophie doesn’t care about Matilda any more. It’s Daddy she doesn’t want to be with.
A bird is trilling sweetly from a bush. She slips over the stile and her face is aching from crying. She cries for two more fields and then runs out of tears. She is glad. It’s too tiring. She’s exhausted by all the crying and the self-pity. She puts down her rucksack and takes out her hoodie. It’s getting nippy. After she’s zipped it up she shivers. She listens. The birds have stopped singing. There are shadows thickening all around, varying degrees of darkness in the bushes and trees at the edges of the fields. She is tired and scared. She has no idea where she is.
Miss Dowling always says that if you get lost you should stay where you are, and someone who cares about you will come looking for you. If there are people around, ask a woman for help. If not, then find somewhere safe, and stay still.
Sophie stays very still. What if no one comes? She pictures Will ringing Duncan. Then Duncan will come. Duncan would find her. She hopes it’s Duncan. Suddenly, there is a rustling ahead of her. A very tall, dark figure looms over her. Sophie can feel her pulse kick in her chest. If this is someone who knows her, why don’t they say her name? She tries to stay silent and still, but she is panting with fear. She trembles out, ‘Will . . . ?’ but there is no reply.
The figure moves towards her and she turns at right angles and runs across the steep field. She runs and runs until she can feel her legs aching. She can hear someone running behind her, but still no one calls her name. Whoever it is, it’s not a kindly woman she can ask for help. She scrambles over a gate and almost falls. She runs some more, then sinks to her knees. There’s a pounding in her ears, like someone running. She wants to melt into the grass, right now, like Gloria’s poo or the banana. All she can hear is the pounding, and all she can feel is the dewy grass and the pain in her limbs and the terror of someone’s presence. She waits, shuddering, for him to say her name, but he does not. There is just a loud snort.
‘Please,’ she whispers. ‘Please, don’t hurt me.’
She clambers to her feet and starts to run again, but her foot finds no ground in front of it. She has reached the end of the earth.
It takes a moment to realise that she has fallen. Her elbow and her knees feel scorched; they have hit stones and the stones are underwater. She is underwater – except for her head and shoulders – heavy with the weight of it in her clothes. She moves slowly on all fours; her hands feel soft mud and sharp stones. She can’t tell if she is still being followed. She must stay quiet. When she reaches for the bank and grabs at the undergrowth, something bites her! Ow! She pulls back in terror.
Ow. Ow. She can hear her own breath, heavy as a horse’s snort. She feels the familiar burn on her hands and wrists. She’s been stung – not bitten. These are nettles. She stifles a sob of relief and pain. Her palms are on fire. She picks herself up and wades through the water in trainers that feel heavy as bricks. Her leggings are glued on to her skin. She moves upstream and tries the bank again. Tree roots and twigs. She launches herself at the bank and pulls herself up. There is a lot of crackling and snapping, but she doesn’t care. She has to get away. Then she slips back down suddenly on the buttery mud between the roots.
‘Please,’ she whimpers softly. ‘Please, please.’
There is no kindness in the banks of streams. She has never thought this before, but the trees and their roots and the mud and the nettles seem to want to trap her out of spite.
She catches the scent of wild garlic and keeps lifting her heavy feet through the water. She will move towards its sweetness. There must be a softer piece of bank covered in leathery garlic leaves. She is shivering. The rucksack is leaden on her back. There must be some way out.
68
DREAMS OF LOST CHILDREN
God, all her life she had dreaded this. It was as if it was destined to happen to her sometime, careless, inadequate mother that she was. Over the past years she had managed to lose all her children for brief periods of time. She left Will in a department store once, totally forgetting that she had brought the buggy with her. It had only been for about five minutes, but it had been minutes of sheer horror. She lost him again a couple of years later, outside the primary school when she had been chatting to some mums, and had found him fifteen minutes later, stroking a cat down the lane. She lost Jack, aged two, at a village fete and found him leaning perilously low over a goldfish pond. She had taken her eye off a bouncy castle for two minutes to chat to another mum when Sophie had taken a notion, again aged two, to leave her brother bouncing and wander over to the hook-a-duck area at a very large summer fair. Each of the incidents had lasted such a short interval, and yet they had filled a huge space in her memory reserved for most dreaded experiences ever. There was nothing more guaranteed to shoot adrenaline into every branch and bud of your body, nothing more likely to rattle your ribcage with a pounding heart and heaving breath, than a missing child.
And there were the dreams, of course. In dreams, she had left babies in drawers and hedgerows and rivers; she had mislaid small children in runaway buggies and cars and trains. She had watched them fall accidentally off cliffs and into streams and swimming pools and rip tides. They had fallen out of boats, into the cages of lions and into schools of hungry sharks. She had been quite remiss and careless, and had woken up each time in a sweat of panic-stricken regret. Of course, she knew that in these dreams they were only metaphors, symbols of ambitions neglected. Lost children were cherished ideas she had allowed to wander off, talents and possibilities she had put in jeopardy by taking her eye off the ball. Forgotten babies were passions she had had no time to nurture, despite her best intentions. Once, she had found her baby so emaciated it had turned into a descant recorder, and then a twig. Doggedly she had held it to her, wrapped in a blanket, and fed it spoonfuls of baby rice, hoping to flesh it out and transform the little mite into what it had once been before her neglect.
