Silent Child(92)

Aiden fidgeted next to me, looking down at his feet. “Okay.”

Rob turned to me with tears in his eyes and I met his gaze while heat radiated through my chest and into my veins. I nodded and mouthed the words ‘he’s back’. Then I placed my hand on top of Rob’s and squeezed it. We remained like that for at least five minutes, none of us quite believing we were there, alive, and—mostly—in one piece.

*

After being discharged from the hospital I went back to Jake’s house because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. The first thing I did was take down every photograph, strip the beds, and throw his clothes into a bin bag. I would never take pleasure in his death, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be surrounded by his belongings.

Once all of that was done, I had only one more task, and it was to do with Aiden’s story. Hugh had planned his kidnapping down to the letter but I never believed he’d set out to take Aiden. It didn’t make sense to kidnap a child to whom he was so close. As soon as Aiden went missing, every person in my life would be under scrutiny. But Hugh got lucky. Aiden decided to wander off to the river in the middle of a flood. Not only that, Jake pushed Aiden into the river. Hugh came across Aiden floating in the river, fished him out, and took him to his bunker while the rest of the world assumed that Aiden had drowned. Then all he had to do was come up with good excuses to everyone for disappearing so often (business trips and long hours to Josie; affairs to his brother and colleagues). I found out that Hugh would live in the bunker with Aiden for days, staying overnight. Then, when he actually did have to go on business trips, Hugh would drive back from York or London to check on Aiden, put more petrol in the generator, and replace the water. Keeping him alive was a lot of work, but taking him had been convenient. Too convenient.

There was one missing element, and I knew exactly what it was. I also knew what I was going to do about it after forensics finished examining the scene of the crime, because there wasn’t any other DNA evidence inside the bunker aside from Aiden and Hugh. That left me with one choice.

I dropped Aiden and Gina off at Sonya and Peter’s house. Then I got in my car and drove towards Bishoptown school. I took a turn off the main road and instead headed down Singer Lane to the third house on the left. When I got out of the car I checked my pocket, locked the car, and knocked on the door. Mrs White from across the street waved through the window and I waved back.

The door opened and I stepped through, not even bothering to wait to be invited in. I reached into my pocket, retrieved the knife, and pressed the point against her throat.

“Are you alone?”

She hesitated but she answered. “Yes.”

“Shut your curtains in the living room.”

I hid the knife behind my back and followed her into the living room. She did as I’d asked.

I’d been in Amy’s living room about a year ago when we met for takeaway and movie night with a couple of the women from school. It had been tidier then. Amy had left a few mugs on the coffee table, as well as a stack of newspapers. One of them was spread open, with her face shown in a little bubble above a picture of me getting into a car with Aiden.

“You’re not on the front page anymore,” I noted. “That has to hurt.”

“What are you doing here, Emma?” Amy asked. She backed away from me with her hands behind her back. Her eyes were wide, like a frightened puppy. I could tell she was attempting to back up to the vase on the bookcase behind her. I strode across the room and she yelped as I placed the knife edge against her cheek.

“They’re not going to be able to prove it. That’s why I’m here. Aiden told me you put the idea of him going down to the river in his head. You kept telling him how pretty it would be and how brave he would be if he went. You told him the bridge was going to sink and that he should go and watch. You told him I’d be proud of him for sneaking out of school. Then you deliberately turned your back as he wandered out of the classroom. You knew the school would be too distracted with the flood to notice. Then you sent a text to your boyfriend Hugh to tell him where Aiden was. You knew what Hugh was and you helped him. You’re sick.”

Amy took another step back but I saved her the trouble by knocking the vase onto the carpet. I pressed the knife so close to her skin that it drew blood.

“And then, when Aiden came back, you logged into Hugh’s Facebook account and you checked him in at a Las Vegas airport. That… that, the police might be able to trace back to you—”

“They won’t,” she snapped. “I covered my tracks. Hugh showed me how. He learned all kinds of tricks on the internet when he was feeding his habit.”

“Then I suppose I’ll have to serve out my own justice,” I said.

“I didn’t hurt any kids,” she said. “It was… I…”

“What?” I snapped. “Spit it out. Tell me your justifications for doing what you did.”

“We took drugs together, all right? We took drugs and we experimented. It all got a bit out of hand. He used to strangle me sometimes and we’d talk about things in bed. We told each other the darkest parts of us.” Her eyes glittered and she smiled at me. I was tempted to cut the smile from her face but I couldn’t. Not yet, anyway. “I bet you don’t know what that’s like, to crave that kind of darkness. You’re so… normal. Boring. You never deserved Rob.” She sneered, her frightened puppy act slipping. “You’re so… vanilla. You don’t understand what it’s like to live on the edge. I wanted to help Hugh because he was… free. Knowing that I’d helped him was enough for me. I got to go to work every day with the knowledge that I knew what had really happened to your son. I knew every day. Hugh even let me go down there once, while Aiden was sleeping.”