Finding Grace(34)

I just want my little girl home. I want her back in my arms, safe and sound. Is that too much for any mother to ask?





Twenty-Four





Four hours. That’s how long Grace has been missing. Four hours ago, our friend Mike saw her off on her five-minute journey home.

The detectives have left the house again, Dad must’ve fallen asleep upstairs with Oscar and Blake is talking to Fiona in the kitchen.

I stare out of the window, but I’m not really watching anything. The group of press are still at the gate, and various people come and go, chatting to each other and looking at the house. There’s a uniformed officer down there making sure nobody ventures up the path.

Blake wanted me to take one of Dr Mahmoud’s tablets right away when he brought my prescription back from the chemist.

‘It’ll help, Luce. Take the edge off your nerves.’

But I refused. I need to stay lucid so I’m aware of what’s happening in the search for Grace. Good or bad, I have to know.

It’s dark out now; it would be pitch black if it wasn’t for the street lights, and the press seem to have their own lighting out there, sourced from large white vans.

I wonder if it’s pitch dark where Grace is. My mind offers scenarios, too rapidly for me to stop them. Terrible visions of her struggling to unlock the door of a speeding car, sobbing and imprisoned in some cold, damp place or lying lifeless in a ditch somewhere.

I know I shouldn’t, Blake and DS Bean have both warned me, but I can’t put it off any longer. I pick up my iPad which I slipped down the side of the sofa before Blake could censor it and I open up the BBC news page.

There’s nothing on here about Grace yet, but when I click on the local news tab, there’s a paragraph and a small photograph of a panoramic view of Violet Road.

Local search for missing child



Police are becoming increasingly concerned for a nine-year-old girl who went missing earlier today from Violet Road in West Bridgford, Nottingham. A search is currently under way, organised by local residents.



Grace Sullivan left a friend’s house alone but never arrived home. Grace is around 135–140 cm (just over 4 ft) tall with dark brown hair in a ponytail. She was dressed in bright colours, including a pink coat and a red knitted hat.



Police say Grace is diabetic and requires regular medication to manage her condition.



The last confirmed sighting of her was at the bottom end of Violet Road leading on to Abbey Road.



If you saw Grace on Sunday afternoon between 4:30 and 4:45, or have any information, please contact Nottinghamshire Police.



Comments:



Carolann66 What the hell was a 9-yr-old doing walking home on her own anyway???



Stardust-Girl This is a safe area, maybe the kid’s run away from home for some reason.



Boxing99Fan Why speculate until you know all the facts? Her parents must be desperately worried!



Carolann66 Just saying. My kid didn’t go missing, cos at 9 yo I collected her from her mates’ houses.





I stare at the article and my hands start to shake as if they belong to someone else.

The news report itself is a simple statement of facts, but seeing it on the BBC website makes it feel like someone took a magnifying glass to my pain.

‘Lucie, did you want me to make you…’ Fiona’s eyes alight on the iPad and she steps forward and takes it gently from my hands. ‘Don’t. Don’t do this to yourself.’

‘I should have never let her walk home. I should have—’

‘What happened to Grace is not your fault, Lucie,’ she says softly.

‘That’s not what they’re saying. They’re saying…’

Fiona shakes her head.

‘They, whoever they are, don’t know anything about you or your family. It’s just trolls, trying to extract a reaction. They don’t deserve to take up a second of your time.’

I get to my feet. ‘I’m just popping upstairs to freshen up.’

It doesn’t matter how many times she tells me it’s not my fault, I know I had the final decision about whether Grace was allowed to walk home. Blake might have pushed for it, but he also deferred to me each time it came up.

My own insecurities from the period when I hardly dared to go out definitely played their part in me agreeing to it. I never wanted my daughter to feel like that.

Now she may never get the chance.

I shake my head against the horror. Four hours she’s been gone, just four hours. If forty-eight hours is the key deadline, then we still have time, don’t we? Time to find Grace.

Everybody – the police and the local community – is working to cover all the obvious things that need to be taken care of, like door-to-door inquiries and a local search. But surely I can add value by focusing on thinking outside the box. We spend so much time together; I know my daughter best out of anyone. Better than Blake, even.

I can make a difference, I know it. I just have to do something, instead of sitting around waiting for others to make a breakthrough.

I climb the stairs quietly so as not to disturb Dad and Oscar, and enter Grace’s bedroom, renewed hope sparking in my heart.



Running along the back gardens of the houses on Violet Road is a narrow track. It’s a sort of no-man’s-land between our homes and the back gardens of the houses on the next street. Nobody even seems sure who the strip belongs to.