Finding Grace(48)

‘Then who the hell’s is it?’ I raise my voice, then immediately bite back, thinking of my dad and Oscar in the other room.

‘Can you trust me without judging me, Lucie? Just for a short while longer?’

I snap on the bedside lamp and glare at him. ‘How can I trust you when you’re scared of the police finding out? If there was nothing dodgy about that money, you wouldn’t have stashed it in your office and you wouldn’t be terrified of the police discovering it. How do you even come to have fifty grand in cash that doesn’t belong you? Can’t you understand how ridiculous it sounds?’

He turns away from me and lies on his back. When he speaks, the emotion has gone from his voice. ‘I’ve told you, I will explain everything. Just not now. Suffice to say, it’s nothing to do with Grace going missing, and she has to be our priority right now.’

I don’t answer. I pick up the glass of water by the bed and take another of Dr Mahmoud’s pills, praying it will abate the wave of sadness I feel that my husband can’t – or won’t – confide in me.

Wherever there’s a lot of dodgy money, there’s a chance that someone is out to get it by whatever means possible. Until I know the details, he will not convince me that it has nothing to do with Grace’s disappearance.

‘I blame myself for her going missing, you must know that,’ he continues, staring at the ceiling. ‘I had one job and that was to watch Grace come home. I couldn’t resist checking my fucking phone, I never cleared up the fucking moss, I—’

‘Leave it,’ I say softly. ‘We all have regrets, Blake.’

‘Ain’t that the truth,’ he says, and his voice is so full of remorse, of unspoken truths, that goose bumps prickle my forearms like tiny thorns.





Thirty-Five





Monday morning





I sit in the living room, leaving the toast and tea that Fiona made me untouched.

The lounge picture window that overlooks the street is large, lets in lots of natural light. It’s one of the many reasons we liked the house on our first viewing. But this morning, the room seems drab with shadowy corners I’ve never noticed that the daylight struggles to penetrate.

I can hear the hum of voices in the kitchen and the odd yelled conversation outside, amongst the press already gathering at the gate.

No breakfast to make or school blouse to hurriedly iron. No missing shoe or glove to hunt for. No frustrated sigh following a glance at the kitchen wall clock with its oversized numbers that Grace and Blake stuck on so carefully together one Saturday afternoon.

All the things that irritated me last Monday, I desperately wish I had back in my life today.

A whole night without Grace. A whole night Grace has suffered without us. Without her family.

Dad sits in the chair, shaking Oscar’s rattle to keep him amused. He keeps glancing at me, as if there’s something he wants to say. But when I catch his eye, he looks away again.

‘Your friends Bev and Mike are here,’ Fiona says brightly from the doorway. She’s doing her best, but I’m starting to feel a little irritated at her efforts to keep upbeat in our increasingly dire and heartbreaking situation.

I lost it a bit with Bev and Mike last night, but I’m past caring about that. I’m totally consumed by the horror of Grace being gone for an entire night. Everything else seems irrelevant.

Bev walks in first. She says nothing at all, but offers me her outstretched arms. I stand up and rush towards her. It’s a relief to fall into them.

‘It’s so shit. So utterly shit,’ she sobs into my hair. ‘I can’t believe she’s all but vanished into thin air. She has to be somewhere. She has to be.’

‘She could be miles away by now,’ I say flatly. ‘She could be anywhere at all. It’s completely hopeless… I just don’t know what to do any more.’

‘Come on, love, don’t think like that,’ Dad says softly.

I don’t cry. I feel dry as a bone inside, as if there are simply no tears left. And what use are they anyway, tears? They do nothing to help; just hinder. I feel like I’ve left tears behind.

‘Pete’s right, it’s not hopeless.’ Mike’s tone is strident, insistent. ‘We will find her, Lucie. We have to. No one will rest until Grace is back home.’

His words are sincere, but they don’t mean anything, not really. It doesn’t matter how forcefully he says that Grace will be found, we all know this can’t be achieved by the strength of our intention alone.

Eighteen hours she’s been gone. Door-to-door inquiries, searches, contacting hospitals, alerting all transportation leaving the country… and nothing. No whisper of my beautiful, innocent girl.

Someone has her, I’m almost certain of it now. Someone has taken our baby.

‘Let’s go and sit upstairs, just the two of us,’ Bev says softly in my ear. ‘I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m under so much scrutiny. Everything I say, everything I do.’

I nod.

‘We’re just going for five minutes’ quiet time upstairs,’ she tells Blake, and he accepts it immediately.

‘Leave Oscar with me,’ Dad says. ‘He’s happy enough.’

As we leave the room, I notice that he and Mike have not yet spoken to each other but I hear my dad’s voice speaking to them both. He sounds so worried, despite him putting on a show for me.