Finding Grace(11)

I felt like the worst person in the world.

I spent the next ten minutes singing back-to-back nursery rhymes and tickling Oscar’s stout little belly, never taking my eyes off him for a second. It didn’t take long until he perked up. He was such a joy; he hardly ever cried unless he was hungry, ill or needed changing. He just seemed to have a positive aura surrounding him that I felt certain he must have got from Blake.

Grace could be a little reserved at times; like me, I suppose. For as far back as I could remember, I’d always had the feeling that the world was against me, that good things happened to other people, not to me. This ingrained belief meant I always tended to expect the worst, while Blake naturally gravitated towards more positive thoughts.

‘Have you ever considered you might just get lucky one time?’ he often needled me when I was fretting about how something or other would turn out. But he might not be as cynical if he knew why I felt that way…





Seven





Sunday afternoon





I feel stifled inside the police car, as if there’s not enough oxygen to breathe.

We must only be about 300 yards from our house but the police had insisted on accompanying us home. I’m desperate to be out there, on foot, looking for Grace but my protests fell on deaf ears.

During the short journey, I’m vaguely aware of Blake looking over at me and reaching across to touch my arm reassuringly several times.

I can’t respond. I can’t even press my lips together in a sign that I acknowledge him, never mind give a little smile. I can’t look into his eyes and feel my own fear reflected right back at me.

I keep reliving the moment he went outside to meet Grace. The moment I decided to turn up the music, to visit the upstairs bathroom, rather than the downstairs loo. The self-indulgent moment I lingered to check for new wrinkles in the mirror.

And now, I can’t stop thinking: why? What made me decide to do those things?

If I’d stayed downstairs and turned the music off, I’d have heard Blake calling out the second he slipped. Crucial seconds would have been saved.

It tears me to pieces to think that so many wrong decisions had to be made in order to create the perfect scenario for Grace to be left completely alone on her walk back home.

Blake had to step on the patch of slippery moss at exactly the right angle to ensure an ankle sprain that he’d struggle to get up from. He had to check his phone at the precise moment he did, although that wasn’t so unlikely, given that he is virtually surgically attached to the damn thing.

In those minutes before my husband went outside to meet our daughter, I’d been so smug in my life. Fondly making light of having to listen to Grace’s incessant chatter when she returned home, looking forward to a fun evening ahead.

As the police car drives slowly up our own street, I look out hopelessly at the unusual profusion of local people milling around, talking with their hands in groups, discussing what might have happened to Grace.

I recognise some of the familiar faces staring at us sympathetically as we pass; we already have a new role as the poor parents of the missing girl. Bursts of radio static pepper the silence inside the car and I have to fight not to scream for them to open the door and let me out.

The houses, the gardens, the people; they all look exactly the same as they did yesterday and the day before that. How can that possibly be, when Grace has gone?

‘We’re here, Lucie.’ Blake squeezes my hand, studies my face. I know my expression is blank as I stare at the back of the driver’s headrest as the car slows to a stop.

I turn and look vacantly at the house. At the path where Blake slipped. At the gate Grace should have run back through, full of stories of her day at the theme park.

The brickwork looks darker, the windows cold and angular.

It doesn’t look like home any more.

There’s a flurry of movement outside the car.

My door opens and a female officer helps me out. Our eyes meet and she gives me a sad little smile that says she knows how hard this is. She spoke to me earlier, told me her name before we got into the car, but I can’t seem to remember anything she said.

I walk towards the house. There are police officers either side of Blake and me. I’m placing one foot in front of the other. One two, one two. The ground is solid and unforgiving beneath my feet but I feel as if I’m floating just above it. Untethered, somehow.

I hear the creak of the front gate, the shuffling of heavily booted feet on concrete. My eyes fix on the skein of moss that patches the path in front of me. The group pulls back for a moment as Blake stops walking and stares down at the cursed spot. I know he’s thinking about the consequences of his accident.

There is a bottle of eco-friendly moss treatment fluid in the cupboard under the kitchen sink that he bought on special offer from B&Q last month. That he noticed the mossy path at all… was this a hint, a warning of the terrible event scheduled to happen? Or was it just another example of his good intentions being scuppered by his failure to follow through?

He has no such trouble at work, just in his domestic life. Rushing around ticking off his to-do list, trying to wear all the hats.

What does it all matter now? I return to my silent, exhausting quest of trying to make sense of what has happened. Yet in trying to search for a reason for Grace’s disappearance, it feels like I’m about to topple over the edge of the normal life I took for granted only this morning, into a kind of relentless madness only I know is there.