Blink(2)
I can’t breathe without one machine. I can’t swallow without another.
Breathe, I tell myself. This can’t be real. It can’t be happening.
But it is. It is happening.
And it’s very, very real.
* * *
What I can still do is think. And I can remember. Somehow, I can remember the past with a clarity I didn’t possess before.
Yet I know instinctively that if I remember too much, too soon, the pain will be too intense and I will close down completely. And then what will happen to my beautiful girl?
Everyone gave up on Evie some time ago. The official police line is that it continues to be an open case and any new information will be investigated, but I know they’re not actively pursuing new leads, because they haven’t got any.
No evidence, no sightings. Nothing.
For months after it happened, I slavishly read all of the comments people posted underneath the online news reports. They talked as if they had personal knowledge about Evie’s ‘terrible, neglectful mother’ and her ‘unhappy home’.
Others openly discussed how Evie could possibly just disappear like that. Everyone an expert.
European paedophile rings, a child serial killer, Romany travellers passing through – all those terrible theories of how and why Evie had gone. I’d heard them all.
Eventually, and without exception, they all wrote Evie off.
Not me. I have chosen to believe that Evie is still alive, that somewhere out there, she is living and breathing. I have to hold on to that.
That’s why I must not panic. Even though I cannot move a muscle or utter a sound, there has to be a way for me to help them find her, save her, while I can still remember everything so clearly.
There is only one thing for it: I must think back, right to the very beginning.
Way back, to before it even happened.
2
Three Years Earlier
Toni
The stark, bare walls of the new house were smooth and cold, like exposed bone. Nothing to flesh them out. The whole place was just a slew of empty packaging, devoid of any content or character at all.
One big smudge of magnolia eggshell. Definitely not mood-inspiring – unless you counted misery and dread.
Yes, it was clean and functional, but I had always loved colour.
I’d relished the plentiful space of our old living room with its big bay window, and the feature wall of turquoise and black paisley wallpaper that had taken me over a week to choose; a week living with wallpaper samples taped to the chimney breast and all three of us having a different opinion before agreeing on the same design.
I glanced around the walls, the skirting boards, the tiny hallway and the clutch of minuscule rooms beyond. As if I might have missed the charm of the place the first ten times I’d looked around.
I felt as if my life had been bleached of colour and texture, like my very soul had been daubed an insipid magnolia shade, inside and out.
I turned away and stood at the small window which looked out on the damp patch of scuffed grass. The letting agent had had the audacity to call it a ‘front garden’, what a laugh that was.
Weeds choked the slender borders and dandelions sprouted between the paving slabs in awkward, impractical places, buffeted by the cool breeze and swaying like drunken soldiers.
I turned away from the window and looked around the room.
Piled up in the corner were a few cardboard boxes and overstuffed bin bags. The sum total of the last eight years of our lives.
All the good times and the bad times were documented in those bags; sentimental items tangled up together and packed in tightly so nothing moved, so nothing else could slip.
A burst of laughter, bright faces and family times filled my head and then were gone, like the brief flash of an old celluloid film before it finally dies. Perhaps one day I’d manage to unravel it all, smooth out the fine, knotted threads of everything that went wrong. Finally make sense of why the nightmare had happened to us.
Maybe then I’d have a chance of sleeping again.
A noise at the door made me start but I turned to see it was only Mum, her face worn and lined, her wiry frame too rigid and tense. Her energy and drive to get things done was enviable, but now it stuck in my side like a blunt needle, constantly reminding me of my own inadequacies.
She frowned at me, seeing the truth with her special mother’s X-ray eyes. ‘Leave no time for thinking, isn’t that what we said?’
She clapped her hands and there I was, ten years old again with Mum demanding I hurry up and get dressed before I miss the school bus.
If only it were that simple, I’d willingly transport myself back there. What I’d give to have another go at life, make some better decisions.
‘Fancy a cuppa?’
I nodded, watching as Mum walked over to the boxes and perused the handwritten labels.
I caught sight of my handbag sitting there on the floor, where I’d left it while I humped in bin bag after bin bag from the boot of the car. I moved forward and reached past Mum to pick up the bag.
‘Just need to check my phone,’ I muttered as she turned to watch me.
I didn’t root around for the phone, but stood stock-still, hugging the handbag to my chest like a prize.
Mum looked at me for a long moment.