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I glance around the classroom at the dozen or so people here. So much misery; so many lives put on hold.
‘It’s the anniversary today,’ I say. ‘Two years since Lottie was taken. Last year, for the first anniversary, I went back to Florida to launch a new appeal. The police there did a reconstruction, which got a lot of coverage. Quite a few of you probably saw it on TV.’
Nods and murmurs of affirmation around the room.
‘We had a lot of calls to the hotline. There was a strong lead in South Africa, but it was another dead end.’ My voice is flat. ‘They’re always dead ends.’
South Africa. Morocco. New Zealand, Belgium, Mexico, Honduras. Every lead, no matter how slim, has to be followed up. For the first year after Lottie went missing, I travelled the globe meeting prime ministers and foreign secretaries, powerful figures who, with the eyes of the world upon them, promised to leave no stone unturned in the effort to bring my daughter home. And I’m no closer to finding Lottie now than I was the day she disappeared.
On my good days, I imagine she’s dead. Everyone has their own mechanisms for self-protection and, for me, this is better than the alternative. The awful images that scroll through my mind in my bleakest hours, of Lottie held in some dark place, passed around some unspeakable child sex ring, no sane human being would want in their head.Better dead than that.
For me, hope is now the enemy. People mean well when they tell me stories about children found alive after years, even decades, in captivity, and insist I mustn’t lose faith. But all I can think about is what those children suffered before they were found. The rapes. The beatings.
How can I hope for that? It’s selfish of me to want Lottie to survive at any cost. I’ll never stop looking for her, but when I pray now, it’s a plea to a God I no longer believe in that she didn’t suffer, and that her death was quick. That her body will be found, so that she – so thatwe– can rest in peace.
I no longer rush thousands of miles across continents at every report of a blonde child in a gas station on the outskirts of Cairo. I’ve learned the hard way to let Simon Green and the rest of his investigative team do their job. I can’t help Lottie, but there are other children whose lives my skill and talentcansave.
So, ten months ago, I returned to work. This year, I’ve treated the second anniversary as just another day. I’ve put my phone on silent and ignored the missed calls from Mum. I appeared in court this morning and fought for my client, a fourteen-year-old Syrian boy who the Home Office insisted was eighteen and therefore subject to deportation to a country that will probably kill him, and I won. For me, this is a day like every other: filled with guilt and grief and the endless agony of not knowing.
And, like every other day, I will survive it.
At the end of the meeting, we stack the chairs and Molly helps me carry them back to the auditorium. ‘Do you come to a meeting every month?’ she asks.
‘Not always. But usually.’
‘Does it help?’
‘Not exactly. But at least here, no one expects you to move on.’ I look her in the eye. ‘You need to know this, Molly. I wish someone had told me. What we’re living with isn’t like bereavement. There’s no closure, so we’re stuck in our grief mid-cycle. Time doesn’t heal for people like us. Our pain compounds, like interest.’
‘Do you ever want to … give up?’
‘Every day.’
Molly twists and tugs a hank of her hair. This isn’t the first time: her scalp is scabbed where she’s ripped her hair out at the roots. People don’t realise how physical grief can be.
‘Can I ask you a personal question?’ she says.
I nod. I know what it will be.
‘Doyouthink he did it?’ she asks. ‘Your friend? The one with the tattoo?’
