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seven days missing
chapter 20
alex
Marc has set up our campaign headquarters in an empty office space on the neon strip of St Pete Beach, about ten minutes’ drive from the hotel. An anonymous well-wisher came forward after yesterday’s appeal by the president, offering to make it available to us for as long as we need it.
Getting out of my car, I stare at the windows papered with flyers appealing for my daughter’s safe return. Beneath her photograph is an 800 contact number and the words:Have you seen Lottie?
It’s the same picture I gave the police for the Amber alert. I can’t imagine she’s still wearing her pink bridesmaid’s dress. Her hair will be different, too. The fact that the kidnapper went to such trouble to change her appearance is a good sign, Bates tells me. If he’d killed her, he wouldn’t have bothered.
I try not to think of my daughter’s curls, sealed and tagged in an evidence bag.
Inside the office space, folding tables have been set up, equipped with phones and laptops. Marc has organised the hundreds of volunteers who have come forward into a rota to man the new Find Lottie tip line.
Others have been tasked with posting up flyers. Marc has given each of them a map of the St Pete Beach area, with theirtargeted section highlighted in yellow marker. Grocery stores, pharmacies, nail bars, hair salons. Anywhere there may be eyes. ‘We want her face to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind,’ he says.
I can’t believe how much he’s accomplished in just twenty-four hours. Every lamppost or telegraph pole I passed on my way here had a flyer tacked to it. Our biggest problem has been handling the sheer number of people who want to help.
The press interest has become the firestorm Marc predicted. The hotel has moved my parents and me to their penthouse suite on the top floor, which is accessible only by a private lift, but every time we leave the building we have to run the gauntlet of a growing scrum of journalists shouting questions and shoving cameras in our faces. The manager has been very kind, and the staff are doing their best, but it’s only a matter of time before the situation becomes untenable. Dozens of hotel guests have cancelled their bookings because of the media attention, and I don’t blame them. This can’t go on much longer.
Marc detaches himself from the cluster of people around him when he sees me.
‘What do you think?’ he says, indicating the phone banks lining the sides of the room. ‘Most of the volunteers are local residents, but we’ve got quite a few tourists from back home, too.’
‘It’s incredible,’ I say.
‘A lot of the local churches are doing special services for Lottie tomorrow,’ he says. ‘We thought it’d be good if you attended Sunday Mass at the Catholic cathedral downtown, maybe said a few words afterwards—’
‘Marc, I don’t know. Church isn’t really my thing.’
‘Church matters here, Alex. We need to keep people on your side.’
I’m suddenly assailed by the memory of the last time I wasin a church. It was hot then, too. The black dress I’d bought in London was too warm for Sicily, even in October, and I was so hot I thought I’d pass out. Luca’s parents had surrounded his coffin with so many flowers I couldn’t even get close to him, and their cloying scent mingled with the sour smell of sweat from the press of bodies in the tiny family chapel. The dark wooden pews were packed with weeping, black-clothed mourners, dark as crows. Choking clouds of incense swirled around the nave as the priest raised his thurible, the metal censer clinking against its chain. I had to suppress a sudden, violent urge to drag my smart, cosmopolitan husband’s corpse out of his open coffin and away from the medieval superstition and mummery. He didn’t believe in it any more than I did.
Luca was a lousy husband, but an excellent father. Our daughter would never have disappeared on his watch. If he exists in some parallel dimension or afterlife, I hope he is watching over Lottie now.
‘No church,’ I tell Marc. ‘I’ll give a press statement if you think it’s worthwhile, but I can’t do church.’
A volunteer in her mid-fifties interrupts us, grabbing my hand and pressing it between her own. My daughter’s face stares up at me from the cotton T-shirt stretched across her large breasts. ‘Alexa, I just wanted to say how sorry I am,’ she says, as if she knows me. ‘We’re just praying the Lord brings Lottie home safe.’
‘Thank you,’ I say.
Everyone is watching me, even as they pretend to busy themselves with their phones and stacks of flyers. I’m Ground Zero for this whole carnival,the mother, here, in person. I’m sure many of the volunteers are sincere in their desire to help find my daughter, but there’s a rubbernecking, morbid element, too – a frisson of excitement at being part of a major news story. They’ll go home and tell their friends they met me today.
‘I have to go,’ I tell Marc abruptly.
He offers to come with me, but I’m suddenly desperate to be alone.
Yet once I’m outside, I get in my car with no idea where to go next. I left the hotel because I felt trapped there, too. There are too many people who need my attention; our extended entourage is ballooning, and I’m overwhelmed.
Most of the wedding guests have returned home, but now there are other friends and relatives who have flown over to join the search: my mother’s sister, Aunt Julie; a childhood friend I haven’t seen in fifteen years. I know they only want to help, but the presence of so many people struggling to contain their own distress and grief is exhausting. Harriet was right not to come.
My phone rings. I’ve personalised Lieutenant Bates’ ringtone; hers are the only calls I care about now. I scrabble for it in my bag, and then recklessly empty its contents onto the passenger seat, heedless of the coins and tampons spilling in every direction.
‘We haven’t found her,’ Bates says, putting me out of my misery.
The wild hope dies. Disappointment fills my lungs and makes it hard to breathe. Lottie isn’t dead, I tell myself. They haven’t found a body, either. I have to hang onto that.
