AllFreeNovel
Share Us
chapter 14
alex
Another false alarm. The child in the back of the pickup truck at the petrol station isn’t Lottie. It looks like her. The little girl is the same age, the same build. She has long fair hair like my daughter, though I can tell, even from the grainy, grey CCTV footage, that it isn’t the same Nordic shade of platinum as Lottie’s.
Itcouldbe my daughter. But it isn’t.
Lieutenant Bates presses me to be sure. The little girl in the CCTV film appears to be under some sort of duress. She’s wearing a stiff, formal skirt that strongly resembles Lottie’s bridesmaid dress, unusual clothing for a trip to the beach. Am I absolutelysure—
I am.
The sudden hope, and then the vicious disappointment, devastates me. My fear and powerlessness reach breaking point; I feel like a caged, demented animal. This is, without doubt, torture of the cruellest kind. I don’t know I’m screaming and smashing my fists against the marble-topped reception desk until Marc wraps his arms around me, physically restraining me so I don’t hurt myself. I collapse against him, keening my agony in harsh, raw sobs. It’s as if my heart has been ripped from me. I didn’t realise, until this moment, thatthe child I never wanted to have has become my reason for living.
Zealy and Marc beg me to go upstairs to get some rest, but I know sleep is impossible. It’s only when Bates points out that I must be coherent for the press appeal this afternoon that I agree at least to try.
Zealy helps me change out of the pale blue cocktail dress I’ve been wearing since yesterday afternoon. It’s unrecognisable now: ripped and stained by hours of searching through brush and scrubland.
I dump it straight in the bin and Zealy selects a clean white T-shirt and pair of taupe linen drawstring pants from my wardrobe. She tries to persuade me to shower before putting them on, but I refuse. I don’t have the patience.
I lie down in the darkened bedroom while Zealy dozes in an armchair, refusing to leave me alone, but I can’t sleep. I can’t imagine sleeping again until my daughter is found. I have to keep vigil with my daughter.
I drift in and out of an exhausted, fitful twilight, haunted by nightmarish images of my daughter’s mottled body lying cold and still on a marble slab, her face bloodied and bruised. I wake, my heart pounding, clothes soaked in sweat. Even when I get up and change my T-shirt, I can’t rid myself of the images dancing behind my mind’s eye. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to close them again.
Bates and her colleague, Sergeant Lorenz, want to talk to me before the press conference. In the last few hours, the police have taken over the business centre overlooking the pool. Two small suites are being used as interview rooms, while in the main conference room the photo of Lottie I gave them has been blown up and taped to a glass display wall.
Smaller headshots of the principal players in this drama – me, Marc, Sian, the bridesmaids and ushers, even an old pictureof Luca, presumably downloaded from social media – are tacked in a semicircle around Lottie. Colour-coded arrows connect us in ways I cannot decipher.
They’re putting together a detailed timeline now. Filling in the gaps, piecing together Lottie’s last known movements from eyewitness reports and photographs from people’s phones.
As I follow Bates through the conference room to one of the interview suites, she tells me that they think the last person to speak to Lottie was Sian’s mother, Penny; several guests saw Lottie chatting to her just as everyone trooped up from the beach to the hotel. But Penny has nothing useful to add. She doesn’t even remember the encounter.
After that, the trail goes cold.
The police can’t find a single person who recalls talking to Lottie after the wedding ceremony ended. There isn’t one photo of her at the reception, despite the fact so many of us saw her – orthoughtwe saw her – flitting back and forth between the buffet and the ice-cream station.
My head swims with nausea. I have been clinging like a drowning man to the hope shewasat the reception, even if I didn’t see her; that she wasn’t missing for hours before I raised the alarm.
It’s possible, of course, that shejust doesn’t happen to be in any of the photos. But given the volume the police have obtained from the phones of dozens and dozens of guests, not to mention the official photographer, the chances are vanishingly small that she wouldn’t be in the background of at least some of them. Far more probable is the terrifying truth that all those apparent sightings of a blonde girl in a pink dress weren’t Lottie after all.
We all made the same mistake Paul did: one little girl in a frothy pink frock looks much like another.
Even, unforgivably, to her mother.
While I’ve been upstairs, trying to sleep, the police have sequenced the photos. The last one they have of her was taken at 18.33, by Flic Everett, who was taking a picture of Olivia.
Bates shows it to me, pushing it across the Formica table between us. Lottie is sitting on her gilt chair at the end of the front row on the beach, her head turned away from the camera as if something – or someone – has caught her attention just out of shot. If we knew what, or who, that was, perhaps it would tell us where she is now. They’re cross-referencing all the photographs they have, Bates says, trying to find the object of Lottie’s attention, but it’s a slow, laborious process, and in the meantime, my daughter is still missing.
18.33.
Nearly four full hours before I reported her missing.
Before I even noticed she was gone.
I realise now why the tenor of the questions from Bates and Lorenz has subtly changed, and why I’m in an interview room, rather than sitting on the sofa in reception.
I understand the logic: statistically, I’m the person most likely to have harmed my child. But while they’re probing for cracks in my story, quizzing me about what Lottie was like as a baby or whether I find it difficult to cope as a single mother, they’re not out there, looking for her.
‘You let a three-year-old kid make her way back to the hotel on her own?’ Lorenz says. This is the third time he’s asked the same question, albeit in different ways. ‘You were fine with that?’
