AllFreeNovel
Share Us
chapter 26
alex
Quinn doesn’t even glance at me as the skinny kid silently closes his fist to signal we’re on-air. Instead, she studies the sheaf of papers on her lap as, over her shoulder, the live-feed monitor shows Andrew Tait, the presenter ofPrimeTimeback in London, introduce INN’s evening bulletin.
‘A beautiful three-year-old little girl, baby Lottie, snatched from a glamorous destination wedding,’ the newscaster says. ‘Her mother drinks and parties at the reception a hundred metres away, leaving little Lottie on the beach alone. Tonight, the mystery continues.’
I tense. This is the interview that’s supposed to rehabilitate me and refocus attention back where it belongs, on Lottie. Tait just made it sound like my daughter belongs in care.
The newscaster introduces a pre-recorded piece from Quinn and his face is replaced by footage of a white sandy beach.
‘This is the last place Lottie Martini was seen alive, the Sandy Beach resort in St Pete Beach, Florida,’ Quinn’s recorded voice says, as the camera zooms in to the gate between the hotel reception area and the beach, left moodily ajar. ‘Lottie was a flower girl at the wedding of a family friend. Lottie’s mum, Alexa, says her little girl had been looking forward to being a bridesmaid.’
Quinn efficiently recaps the facts of the case. There’s nothingantagonistic in her reporting and I wonder if I’m imagining her hostility. Surreptitiously, I wipe the palms of my hands against my jeans.
‘According to police, the wedding ceremony ended just before sunset, which that night was at six fifty-eight p.m.,’ Quinn’s voice continues. ‘Several witnesses saw Lottie talking to various wedding guests on the beach, including the bride’s mother, Penny, but after that, the trail goes cold. Alexa Martini has admitted leaving her three-year-old daughter to walk back to the hotel alone. And in this tropical climate, it gets dark quickly once the sun goes down.’
The camera wobbles and jerks as it follows the fateful path from the beach up to the hotel gate. The footage has been shot three feet from the ground: a child’s view of the world. It’s sickeningly effective.
Quinn lets the journey play out in real time without comment. I had no idea a hundred metres could be so far. The room starts to close in on me, and black spots dance before my eyes. What was Ithinking, letting my baby find her way back to the hotel alone?
Suddenly I hear my own voice being played back to me, a clip from the press conference the day after she disappeared. ‘Lottie’s a smart kid,’ I say. ‘It’s not like she was on her own. Lots of people were around.’
Even to my own ear, I sound careless and indifferent. I was in shock when I said that, but no one will think about that now. They’ll only see a woman who comes across as defiant and defensive; a neglectful, deadbeat mother.
I glance at Quinn, feeling ill. She’s a respected, serious journalist. She’s simply reporting the facts. So is this truly how I appear to the outside world?
Is this who Iam?
‘A waiter at the hotel that night told INN Alexa Martini haddrunk several cocktails with friends before the wedding ceremony even began,’ her voiceover continues. ‘She was then seen drinking a number of glasses of champagne at the reception itself. At about seven-twenty p.m., the maid of honour, Catherine Lord, saw a thin man walking away from the resort carrying a small child wrapped in a blanket. Alexa Martini insists it was the kidnapper, but in the light of the revelations from London, police here are questioning her account.’
On the preview monitor next to the one carrying the live-feed, I see my own face, white and hunted, as I leave the police station after the polygraph.
Mum was right: I should never have agreed to do this interview. Simply by being here I’m opening the door to debate, invading my own privacy and putting my fitness as a mother at the heart of the story, when all that should matter is finding my daughter.
‘Despite extensive police investigations, there hasn’t been a single confirmed sighting since this photograph was taken –’ the camera cuts to the wedding photo of Lottie, sitting on the end of the row of gilt chairs ‘– at six thirty-three p.m. But Alexa Martini didn’t raise the alarm for nearly another fourhours.’ She pauses to let that sink in. ‘Police didn’t receive the first call, which came from the hotel staff, not the little girl’s mother, until ten twenty-eight p.m.’
I’m shocked to see Mum’s face suddenly appear on screen. ‘Lottie’s not the type of little girl to wander off,’ Mum says. ‘She knows about stranger danger, we’ve drilled that into her. She’d never go off with someone she didn’t know.’
I close my eyes. I didn’t know Mum had spoken to the press. I know what she meant, but that’s not how it sounds. The insinuation is clear:It had to be someone she knew. And I can’t argue with that, because I don’tknowhow my daughter vanished in front of dozens of people without anyone seeingor hearing a thing. I’m starting to doubt my own version of events myself. I feel like I’m going mad.
‘Nearly two weeks later, Lottie is still missing,’ Quinn’s voice says. ‘No one knows if she’s alive or dead. Her story has captured the world’s attention, the ear of the US president, even a papal blessing.’ The tone of her voice suddenly changes. ‘The level of interest in the case has not been without controversy, not least because some community leaders have suggested a child from a poor, non-white family wouldn’t have received so much attention.’
The camera cuts to a wall filled with photographs of smiling Black children and then to a man seated at a desk laden with thick, overflowing files.
I glance at Quinn, who’s studiously sifting through her notes while the pre-recorded piece airs. Where’s she going with this?
The on-screen tag identifies the man as Terrence Muse, of the Black and Missing Children Foundation. ‘There are so many families of colour who are desperately searching for their missing loved one. They are just asking for a couple of seconds of media coverage and it can change the narrative for them,’ he says. ‘But the decision-makers don’t look like us. These large-scale searches, they’re always forwhitechildren.’
Quinn’s voiceover resumes as a young Black woman appears on screen. She’s holding a large portrait of a bright-eyed, smiling young boy.
‘Shemika Jackson’s son, Jovon, disappeared in December 2016,’ Quinn says. ‘He was just nine years old.’
I recognise the unquantifiable grief in the woman’s eyes.
‘It makes me angry to see y’all reporting on somebody else’s child,’ Shemika says. ‘I had to fight to get Jovon on local news and this white baby’s on national news with the FBI overnight. I’m tired and I’m frustrated and I’m mad.’
The camera follows Shemika into her son’s bedroom, clearly untouched since his disappearance. She sits on the edge of his bed and bows her head in grief. For the first time since Lottie vanished, I’m yanked out of my own suffering. This woman has endured the same hell as me for almost three years, and she doesn’t even have the fragile comfort of knowing that the world is out there looking for her son.
I’ve spent my working life giving voice to those who would otherwise be unheard and yet I never gave a thought to mothers like Shemika Jackson, who don’t have my contacts and resources, who can’t afford to take indefinite time off work. I feel ashamed.
I’ve lost track of what Quinn is saying and I jump when I hear my name again. ‘Alexa Martini escaped tragedy once before, when she left her baby daughter in a hot car,’ Quinn says in her voiceover. ‘She insists she’s being framed, the victim of a bungled investigation. Rumours are rampant, facts scarce. Those hours of the evening of October the nineteenth remain a mystery, except to the person or persons who harmed Lottie Martini.’
The live-feed monitor abruptly switches to me, trapped like a rabbit caught in the headlights in my plush hotel armchair. I have no idea if I’m about to be eviscerated or finally given my chance to set the story straight.
Quinn leans forward, her blue gaze alight with malice. She’s out for blood. She’s cloaked it in journalistic impartiality, but this whole thing has been a set-up from the start. The interview with Shemika Jackson was deliberately included to make me look even less sympathetic, if that were possible. A privileged white woman in her five-star luxury suite, who at best is guilty of reckless neglect, at worst something far more sinister.
‘INN has received leaked details of the results of the recent polygraph you took, Alexa,’ she says. ‘Would you like to know what they say?’
