Blink(67)

‘Mrs Cotter,’ said DI Manvers, who had just re-entered the room. ‘Your memory seems a little patchy, have you—’

‘No, I haven’t been drinking,’ I snarled. ‘She’s already asked me that.’ I narrowed my eyes at PC Holt. ‘It’s the shock, I feel all panicky inside.’

The officers glanced at each other.

‘You’ve been late for Evie before,’ PC Holt stated, looking at her notebook.

‘I haven’t, not that I know of. Anyway, that’s not a crime, is it? The traffic can be really bad sometimes.’

‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘But Miss Watson has also said you’ve been a little mixed up about which days Evie has her after-school sessions, too.’

I glared at Harriet and she looked away.

‘She had a session today, I know that. And she’ – I pointed a shaking finger at Harriet – ‘she let someone take Evie.’

‘I thought you had taken her,’ Harriet said. ‘You were forty minutes late. I asked Evie to stay in the classroom and I went to reception to see if you were there. We couldn’t just sit there all night, waiting for you, when everyone else had gone home.’

‘We’ve got officers out looking for your daughter now,’ DI Manvers said. ‘She may well have wondered off, looking for you, when Miss Watson went to the office.’

‘My mum had a fall, she was at the hospital,’ I said softly. ‘And then I got snarled up in traffic from an accident. There was nothing I could do.’ I looked at DI Manvers. ‘Did you go next door?’

‘Yes, I spoke to your neighbour and his mother. He’s been at home all day with her. They were very helpful actually.’

I bet they were. I pushed thoughts of Colin being upstairs in my bedroom swiftly away.

Harriet Watson took a breath, her eyes owl-like behind her glasses. ‘If only we’d had a contact number for you, we would have known what was happening.’

Four pairs of eyes turned to me then and I saw a conclusion had been reached; it was plainly etched on their faces.

They had made their minds up. This was all my fault.





58





Present Day





Queen’s Medical Centre





The nice nurse comes into the room and closes the door behind her. I can smell her subtle perfume and listen as she mutters to herself under her breath as she verbally ticks off her jobs.

‘So, how are we today?’ she asks me as always. ‘Did you miss me? I had a couple of days off.’

I did. I did miss you.

‘My son, he lives down in Devon with his wife and my grandson, Riley. They came up to see me and we had the loveliest time. Have you got children or grandchildren?’ She comes close to the bed. A big smudge of white and blue, right at the corner of my eye. ‘Sorry, I should talk to you here, so you can see me.’

Her face appears above me. She has dark hair and blue eyes. She smiles and I see that her front teeth are very slightly crossed. Her eyebrows need waxing and her temples are flecked with grey. Her breath smells faintly of coffee and maybe smoke.

She looks slightly familiar, but this is the first time I’ve seen her properly. Usually she says hello and her face pops fleetingly in front of me, barely looking at me before she’s gone again, busying around the equipment, taking her readings and making her evaluations.

‘I’m Nancy. They’ve put me on this ward permanently now, so you’ll be seeing quite a bit of me. Hope that’s OK.’

I try to widen my eyes, to make her see I am there, behind them.

She frowns down at me. ‘They tell me your sister visited just the once. The names and details she left for herself and for you don’t match up with anything. It’s like the two of you don’t exist.’

I stare back at her. She’s looking intently at me, as if she’s really puzzling over something.

‘Let’s see now.’ She moves away. I hear her shuffling around in the cabinet next to me, where they put my handbag. ‘What have we got here? Maybe something that can show us who you are? Has anyone gone through your things with you?’

No. Most of them have written me off.

She rattles some keys and I hear paper crinkling. I love this woman for trying, for even considering I might be present. I feel the tiniest burst of hope inside.

‘A photograph,’ she murmurs, and a second later her face is in front of me again. ‘So, who’s this?’

She holds the small portrait directly in front of my eyes.

It’s the photograph of Evie that she had taunted me with. She must have dropped it when Dr Chance came into the room unexpectedly. Someone, probably the cleaner, has put it in my handbag, thinking it belongs to me.

Evie had obviously refused to smile for the camera, but that doesn’t matter. Her hair is a beautiful chestnut-brown colour and she’s wearing a dress I’ve never seen before, a fancy affair that looks as if it cost a fortune. A soft cream fabric, patterned with red swirls and dots, like winter berries on snow.

I wait for the adrenaline rush to my head, that electrical charge that powered me to blink before. But it doesn’t come. As the nurse stares down at me, I am completely and utterly unresponsive.

Something inside me shrivels and it feels like I have just stepped a little closer to letting go of the thread that tethers me to the real world. The world I no longer exist in but haven’t fully left.