Finding Grace(74)

She felt vindicated. She felt free.

‘Thank you, karma,’ she whispered into his ear.





Fifty-Three





Lucie





Tuesday morning





I lie awake, but with my eyes closed. Once they are open, I will know it’s time to face another day without Grace.

I must have got up three or four times in the night. Oscar woke, fractious and unsettled in the early hours, no doubt picking up on the upheaval and tension in the house. I told Blake to go back to sleep and I tended to him. Relished the closeness of holding him safe in my arms. One child, I can still keep secure. Can still shower with my love.

Twice last night, I honestly thought I was going to be sick. I rushed to the bathroom and sat next to the loo for what seemed like ages.

And I was sick. Sick inside, sick in every cell of my body. So sick, I felt like I might just stop breathing. But I didn’t stop breathing. I just kept thinking and thinking about everything. About Grace… and about Barbara Charterhouse and her shocking revelation.

How could I have been so stupid? Believed Stefan’s lie for so long?

I open my eyes and see that Blake is lying on his side watching me, a strange expression on his face. It’s almost as if he can read my thoughts.

‘What are you looking at?’ I stare steadily back at him. This man I’ve loved and borne his children. I want to tell him what I know but I can’t. Not yet.

‘I’m looking at you. My beautiful wife who I love more than anything.’

I sit up and swing my legs over the bed. We desperately need to talk, but it can wait until after the television appeal today. It has to wait.

Emotion washes over me like a tidal wave, and without warning, I start to sob. Great wet, messy sobs. Then Blake is next to me, trying to put his arm around me.

‘Lucie, come on. We have to pull together on this. We have to.’

Today, we’re doing a live television appeal for information about our daughter. It’s another step in what I can’t believe is our new reality, a terribly serious development that Grace has been missing long enough that we need to do an appeal. But it could be the turning point. This could bring her home.

Is Grace coming home? Nobody can say. Only her abductor knows, and I firmly believe now that she has been taken. Hope has begun to seep away and is gathering speed. Soon there will be none left. For all my anger and disappointment with Dad and what he’s done, I wish he was here with me now.

I walk into my son’s room and watch him sleep. His tiny chest, rising and falling with each precious breath. He is here. He is alive. He needs me.

I shower, wash and dry my hair and pull it up into a ponytail. I dress in a loose striped blouson top and black trousers with low-heeled black shoes.

Downstairs, the hallway is a hive of activity. Uniformed officers and the two detectives mill around endlessly making and taking telephone calls.

Nadine arrives. Blake has arranged for her to look after Oscar while we’re at the television studios. He leads her to the kitchen, where I spot them through the open door, their heads together, speaking in low voices.

I walk into the living room and stand by the window. The press crowd has doubled in size.

Fiona comes in and stands next to me. I continue to stare outside.

‘Morning, Lucie. I know you’ll be dreading the televised appeal, but you’ll get through it. This could be so powerful in progressing the investigation. Try to remember that.’

I nod. I can’t think what to say, so I stay quiet.

An hour later, Blake and I are in the back of an unmarked police car on our way to the BBC studios in Nottingham.

We’re escorted into the building and taken straight inside. When we walk into the big room filled with journalists and television cameras, silence falls.

We are the main event.



We stand behind a screen in one of the studios. When I peek around it, there’s a long table with chairs and microphones. A crescent-shaped group of journalists, photographers and film camera operators wait, buzzing with a nervous excitement.

My palms feel damp and my body is aching, as if I’m coming down with something. Blake smiles and squeezes my hand but his face looks grey and drawn.

DI Pearlman appears and I feel gratified to see a friendly face.

‘OK, just like we said on the way here… be as natural as you can. Just be yourself.’ He looks at me. ‘I know it’s hard, but remember you aren’t on trial here, there’s no script, no right or wrong things to say so no pressure. If you can manage to say how you’re feeling, both of you, how life is without Grace, then today will be a success because people will want to help. We’re confident they will respond.’

He says there’s no pressure but I can feel it like a ten-tonne truck pushing at my back. We have to make people like us, have to let them know how we’re suffering without Grace, or we might not win over public opinion.

And it’s me they’ll be judging. I’ve seen these appeals on television, watched the mother closely for signs of true grief and devastation. I’ve asked myself if she was in any way responsible for her child going missing. Negligent or lax.

A young woman with a BBC lanyard around her neck peers around the screen, glances at me and then addresses DI Pearlman.

‘We’re ready for you now,’ she says.