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The tone of his questions starts to change as he asks me about Lottie and I dig my fingernails into my palms. I can’t take my eyes from the stylus moving across the graph paper.
Is Lottie your only child?
Have you ever regretted having children?
Have you ever physically punished Lottie?
Have you ever harmed her?
The needles spike across the graph paper again. Hyatt studies the page, writes in his notes. ‘No,’ I repeat.
By the time we are finished, I am drenched in sweat. Hyatt removes the sticky pads and cables and I bury my face in my hands, struggling to control my breathing. He has reduced the infinitely complex grey shades of motherhood to binary black and white, leaving me disorientated and confused.
Bates told me to just tell the truth, but I’m not sure what that is any more.
Doesn’t every mother wish at some point, if just for a fleeting, guilty moment, that she was child- and responsibility-free? Does that mean we regret having them? I love the very marrow of my daughter’s bones, but there’ve been times I’ve found the burden of raising a child crushing.
And how do you define harm? Lottie’s hair colour was determined by genetics, but how she turns out – the emotionalbaggage she carries with her into adulthood – is on me. I don’t even have Luca to share the load.
The responsibility is overwhelming.
My parents are waiting for me in the precinct reception area when I emerge. I’ve splashed water on my face in the bathroom, but I can see from their expressions that my distress is obvious.
‘This isharassment,’ my mother says, loudly. ‘That Lieutenant Bates is just looking for an easy target because she’s run out of ideas!’
‘Mary,’ Dad says.
‘Please, Mum,’ I say. ‘I just want to get out of here.’
We took precautions to avoid the press but, the second we go outside, a feral pack of at least a dozen journalists surges towards us, shouting questions and shoving their cameras and microphones into my face. Not one single police officer comes out to help us deal with the attention. I realise I’ve been thrown to the wolves.
Dad forges a path through the scrum to our hire car, roughly pushing away a TV camera as I duck inside the vehicle. The paparazzi surround us, pressing their cameras to the windows, still yelling their questions. As we drive away, they run back to their own cars so they can follow us.
In the days since Lottie vanished, I’ve become almost numb to the relentless media scrutiny, the constant presence of cameras every time I step foot outside. Before the hotel manager moved us to the penthouse suite, one enterprising muck-raker even disguised herself as a chambermaid and ambushed me as I came out of the shower. But the attention has never been hostile or aggressive like this before.What can you tell us about Kirkwood Place?
‘Ignore them,’ Mum says. ‘They’re vultures. They don’t care about Lottie. They just want a good story.’
It was naive to hope no one would find out. I’m only surprised it didn’t come to light sooner. After a lengthy investigation, the police in London dropped all charges against me, but that doesn’t mean the slate was wiped clean. These days, it’s almost impossible to fully expunge your history from the internet.
And even I can see that, in this instance, my record is particularly pertinent.
