Blink(80)

By this time, Watson had been sacked from her job by the school governors, but through DI Manvers I expressed my utmost concern at the regular and widely accepted practice of teaching assistants working with isolated groups of children.

Of course, most teaching assistants are not like Harriet Watson, but still, the opportunity was afforded to her and she gladly took it.

After I received that letter I vomited for a full day. I couldn’t eat for a week. I hated myself, loathed myself. I wanted to die. I couldn’t stop thinking about all those times Evie had told me how she hated school, how Miss Watson made her talk in the group when she didn’t want to. She had felt uncomfortable and came to the person she trusted most in the world. Me. And I doubted her, swept her concerns aside.

Mum’s gut feelings about Harriet Watson had been right all along.

I ignored all Harriet’s letters from that point forward. I read them, I couldn’t help myself, but I never replied and eventually they came less frequently and finally they stopped altogether.

‘She’s harmless enough but mad as a box of frogs.’ This had been DI Manver’s expert but unofficial opinion. ‘And after meeting her mother, I’d say I know exactly where she gets it from.’

But she wasn’t harmless.

She hurt Evie, knocked her confidence. Humiliated her in front of her peers, forced her to speak about the most personal things, such as her daddy’s death. St Saviour’s gave her the opportunity and power to wield over very young children who were not equipped to fight back. And for that reason, I can never forgive the school.

I hated Harriet Watson for what she did. She let Evie down.

But I’d seen a counsellor for eighteen months after Evie’s abduction and she helped me see that I was accountable too. I learned how to forgive myself and to forgive Harriet Watson, too.

But I was na?ve. New evidence has now come to light that someone else was involved and I am completely convinced it was Harriet Watson. It could only be her.

My rage and hatred has been born anew.

I am certain that, between them, Harriet Watson and Joanne Deacon know what happened to Evie.

I just don’t know how or why they did it, yet.

I decided from the outset that I would not be involving DI Manvers in any of my planned actions. He and his team have already let Harriet Watson off the hook and have obviously completely failed to properly investigate Joanne Deacon.

I wait until it’s dark outside. I dress in jeans and a charcoal-grey duffle coat with hat, scarf and gloves. I pull the hat down low over my forehead and leave the house. I turn back to the window to see Mum peering out, her face etched with concern.

It’s going to kill her, what happened to Evie. If we can’t find her, she will just continue to get frailer and then she’ll just let go of life. We have never discussed what happened; it’s odd. You don’t always know how you’re going to react to a sudden tragedy breaking your life into little pieces.

Me and Mum will discuss whether to have egg or beans on toast for tea, or occasionally what is happening in politics, but we never talk about Evie and whether she is alive or dead. It’s how we get through the horror of each long, drawn-out day.

I tell Mum, ‘I need a walk to clear my head.’

But when I leave the house, I can tell she doesn’t believe a word of it.

It has been a lonely three years but that’s the way I wanted it. I couldn’t handle people. After Evie disappeared, both Dale and Bryony sent cards and letters, and Dale had turned up with flowers on more than one occasion, but I had Mum send him away. I just couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t see him.

The only person I kept in touch with, and who has been a true support to me, is Tara. We never get together or meet up, we just chat on the phone. Tara, for all her own problems – her MS has grown steadily worse over the years – understands my need to withdraw and be alone. She has retreated herself since Rob died and because of her illness.

Apparently, Joanne Deacon was so upset by what happened that she immediately resigned from Gregory’s and moved out of the area. And now she is lying in a hospital bed, just a shell, a husk. We have no way of accessing further information about what she did with Evie or why she did it.

But Harriet Watson knows. I just feel it.

It takes me half an hour to walk to a bus stop far enough away that I feel a little more anonymous. Frost covers the pavement like a dusting of shimmering icing sugar. Evie used to love it when it was like this. She’d wake up and look out of her bedroom curtains, declaring, ‘Mummy, Jack Frost has been!’

For a few blissful seconds I can almost imagine she’s with me right now. The warmth of her little hand in mine, the constant chatter and curiosity for the world around her.

My eyes prickle and the feeling quickly crumbles, leaving behind only icy fingers of grief that claw at my heart.

I’ve always felt . . . known . . . that Evie is still alive.

But what have they done with her?

And what possible reason could two women, both of whom knew me, have for taking my daughter?

After working through a hundred scenarios and what-ifs in my head during the short bus journey, it is all so unexpectedly simple.

I knock on the door of the house and Harriet Watson answers.

I barely recognise her. She doesn’t stand but stoops, bent over like the letter C, her shoulders rounded, as if something on the inside has pulled tighter and tighter until she has given in.