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Are you sure it was your daughter?
Did you recognise the woman with her?
Did either of them see you?
It’s been two years – are yousure?
‘Two years is a long time in a young child’s life,’ the officer reminds me. ‘They change so quickly at that age. By your own admission, you only saw her face for a few seconds and at an angle—’
‘It was Lottie,’ I insist.
Her face was thinner, and older, of course. But I know my own daughter. I recognised her in the truculent tilt of her head, the combative set of her jaw. Whatever has happened to her in the two years she’s been missing, she is still Lottie.
‘Is thereanythingelse you can remember, Alex?’ Jack asks. ‘Anything you can tell us about the woman, beyond what she was wearing?’
‘I told you. I didn’t see her face.’
‘You said she was holding Lottie’s hand. Can you remember if she was wearing any jewellery? Was she white or Black?’
I close my eyes, summoning the brief snapshot of the woman to my mind’s eye. I see again Lottie’s hand clasped in hers, the slender silver ring on the woman’s index finger.
‘White. And young,’ I add. ‘Her skin was smooth. I’d say she was under thirty.’
‘Anything else?’
‘I couldn’t even tell you what colour her hair was,’ I say, frustration shading my tone. ‘She was standing up; I could only see her from the chest down—’
I break off as it comes back to me.
The fleece.
South Weald House.
The officer relays the information to someone on the other end of a phone line.
‘I can’t just sit here,’ I say. ‘I can’t justwait.’
‘We’ve got people on all the exits between here and Earl’s Court,’ the officer says. ‘We’ve had Lottie’s picture circulated to all transport staff. We’re pulling CCTV from the entire network system and putting it through facial recognition. If she’s out there, we’ll find her.’
She was out there before, I think. She’s been out there for seven hundred and thirty-three days, and none of you has found her yet.
I stand up. ‘We need to get to our meeting at the Foreign Office,’ I tell Jack.
‘What,now?’
‘I can’t do anything here,’ I say. ‘You’re the one who saidthere’s no point trying to chase Lottie ourselves. The police can do that. We need to make sure Downing Street doesn’t throw up any roadblocks when the Met applies for more funding. I’m not failing my daughter again, Jack.’
‘Alex—’
‘Lottie’salive,’ I say. ‘She’s not buried in a shallow grave or locked in a basement somewhere. I’m not giving up on her again!’
‘I’m not asking you to give up on her,’ Jack says.
Something in his tone makes me pause. He ushers me into the hallway, out of earshot of the police.
‘There are … things I can do,’ he says. ‘People I can talk to. But first, Alex, I need to know exactly how far you’re willing to let me go.’
