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‘It’s easy enough to weed out the time-wasters with a few simple questions. Bates says at least half the tips coming in are sightings of kids who aren’t even close to the right age. Teenagers, some of them. But the calls clog up the lines. That’s something we can help with.’
He stops by the gate from the beach to the hotel. A makeshift shrine has developed there over the past few days: flowerswilting in the Florida heat, cheap teddy-bears made in China, bobbingFrozenhelium balloons. Those who leave them mean well, but I can’t bear it; it’s like Lottie is already dead.
‘This is going to explode now,’ Marc says, turning back to me. ‘We’re going to have the world’s press on our doorstep. Alex, they’re going to find out about Kirkwood Place.’
THERE BUT FORTHE GRACE OF GOD
COMMENTARY by Lisa Jenkins
TIME and again over the last few days we’ve heard it: ‘I would never have left my child alone like that.’ We shake our heads, our faces grave, and reassure one another such a tragedy could never happen tous, because we would never take such a terrible risk.
But as we cling to the hands of our own sons and daughters just that little bit tighter this week, an uneasy voice inside us calls us out for the hypocrites we are.
It’s so much more comfortable to think that someone’s at fault, and point the finger at Alexa Martini.
The truth is, there but for the grace of God go all of us. Lottie’s mother only did what all of us have done in some form or another.
Alexa Martini is now living an unspeakable nightmare, blaming herself for allowing her daughter to walk a hundred yards from a beach to a wedding reception with four other young bridesmaids, instead of taking her child’s hand herself.
Random
Sometimes dreadful things happen completely at random. The mother we saw this week pleading to whoever had taken her daughter could just as easily be you or me. And that’s what terrifies us, and, in our fear, we look for someone to blame. When is a child old enough to use a public bathroom alone? To get the bus to school? What age should you let them stay in the house without a babysitter when you have an evening out? Ten? Twelve?
We’ve all left a child in the car while we nipped into the post office, or allowed them to walk down to the corner shop for some sweets, telling ourselves we can’t wrap them in cotton wool forever.
We know the risk of anything happening to them is statistically small, and yet we can’t help breathing a sigh of relief when they come back safe and sound.
It’s tempting to blame Lottie’s mother because we want to believe we can stop awful things happening to our children. We have a desperate need to feel we can control our lives.
Lottie wasn’t snatched from a rough council estate, while her drug-addled single mother entertained her boyfriend. This happened in a luxury resort to a professional, educated woman. And that’s why we’ve been so busy protecting ourselves by saying: ‘I’d never have done that.’ Alexa Martini wasn’t neglectful or thoughtless. She made the kind of decision every parent does on a daily basis. She shouldn’t be condemned for that.
Let’s not turn this tragedy into a referendum on another woman’s mothering. Instead, we must all hope and pray for Lottie’s safe return.
