The Hiding Place(39)

I chuck my cigarette out into the darkness and watch the glowing red tip dim and die. Then I turn, limp back into the kitchen and take the folder out from beneath the sink. Because who am I kidding? I was always going to read it. I pour another drink, walk into the living room and place it on the coffee table in front of me.

The twitching nerves in my leg aren’t the only things that are restless tonight. I can feel the cottage shifting around me. The lights seem to ebb and dim occasionally—nothing new with a village electricity supply—but I can hear something too. A noise. Familiar. Troubling. That same faint chittering sound. It makes my fillings hum and the hairs on my skin bristle. Grating, external tinnitus.

I wonder if Julia sat here and tried to tune out the same insidious noise. Night after night. Or if it only came later? Chicken and egg. Did what happened to Ben somehow change the cottage? Or was the cottage already a part of it? The skittering in the walls and the creeping cold feeding Julia’s fear and paranoia?

I drag my hands through my hair and rub at my eyes. The chittering seems to have grown louder. I try to ignore it. I thumb through the folder until, once again, Annie’s face beams out at me.

Search for missing eight-year-old continues. The headline. But not the whole story. Not even close.

Dad put her to bed that night. About eight. Or so he thought. He was drunk. As he was most evenings by then. Mum was at Nan and Grandad’s house because Nan had had a “nasty fall” a few days before and broken her ankle and wrist. I was out with Hurst and his gang. It wasn’t until the next morning that Mum discovered Annie wasn’t in her bed, or her room, or anywhere in the house.

The police were called. There were questions, searches. Uniformed officers and local men, including my dad, spread out in uneven lines across the old colliery site and the fields beyond, hunch-shouldered against the pummeling rain, dressed in long black waterproofs that made them look like giant vultures. They trod slowly and wearily, as though in time to some somber internal beat, and brushed at the ground with branches and sticks.

I wanted to go with them. I asked, begged, but a kind-faced officer with a beard and bald crown placed a hand on my shoulder and said gently: “I don’t think that’s a good idea, son. Best you stay here, help your mum.”

At the time, I was angry. Thought he was treating me like a child, a nuisance. Later I would realize he was trying to protect me. From finding my sister’s body.

I could have told him it was too late to protect me. I could have told the police a lot of things, but nobody wanted to listen. I tried. I told them how sometimes Annie would follow me when I went out with my mates, sneak out of the house. I’d brought her back before. They nodded and took notes, but it didn’t really change anything. They knew Annie had sneaked out of the house. They just didn’t know where she’d gone.

The one thing I couldn’t tell them was the truth, not the whole truth, because nobody would have believed me. I wasn’t even sure I believed it myself.

Every second, minute and hour that passed the terror and guilt grew. I have never been more aware of what a coward I am than in the forty-eight hours that my sister was missing. Fear battled conscience, tearing up my insides. I’m not sure which would have won in the end if the impossible hadn’t happened. I turn the page:

Missing eight-year-old found—

Parents’ joy!!

I was in the kitchen making toast for Mum and Dad when Annie came back. The bread was stale and a bit moldy. Nobody had gone shopping since last week. I scraped off the mold and stuck it under the grill. It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t eat it anyway. I would just end up throwing it in the trash can with the previous day’s uneaten meals.

There was a knock at the door. We all looked up, but no one moved. Three knocks. Did that mean news? We listened like it was Morse code. Knock, knock, knock. Good or bad?

It was Mum who broke first. Maybe she was the bravest, or maybe she was just tired of waiting. She needed release, one way or another. She shoved her chair back and staggered to the door. Dad didn’t move at all. I hovered in the hallway. I could smell the toast burning, but neither of us moved to take it off the grill.

Mum pulled open the door. A policeman stood there. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I saw Mum wilt and clutch the doorframe. My heart stuttered to a halt. I couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t breathe. And then she turned and screamed:

“She’s alive! They found her! They found our baby!”

We went to the police station together (Arnhill had its own back then), squashed into the back of a blue-and-white police car: Mum and Dad wet-eyed with joy and relief and me a sweating mass of jangling nerves. As we climbed out of the car my legs gave and Dad had to catch my arm. “It’s all right, son,” he said. “It’s going to be all right now.”

I wanted to believe him. I really did. I used to think my dad was right about everything. Always trusted his word. But even then I knew. Things weren’t all right. Things would never be all right again.

“She hasn’t said very much,” the officer told us as we walked down a long, pale blue corridor that smelled of sweat and urine. “Just her name, and she asked for a drink.”

We all nodded.

“Did someone take her?” Mum blurted out. “Did someone hurt her?”

“We don’t know. A dog walker found her wandering up on the old colliery site. She doesn’t seem to have any physical injuries. She’s just cold and a little dehydrated.”