Her One Mistake(51)

I’d opened up Harriet’s bag and was about to put the jumper back in when I’d noticed a necklace glistening at the bottom. “Harriet, I haven’t seen this before.” I’d pulled out the chain, holding its delicate gold leaf pendant in the palm of my hand. “It’s beautiful.”

“My necklace,” Harriet had gasped and grabbed the chain from me. “Where did you— Where was it?”

“It was just lying in your bag. It’s gorgeous.” It really was, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing Harriet wear it.

“I thought I’d lost it.” Harriet had stared at it suspiciously, turning the leaf over in her fingers. “I thought—” She’d shaken her head and hadn’t finished the sentence. “It was my mum’s. I know it was in my jewelry box. I don’t wear it because it’s so precious. But then it was gone and I looked everywhere.”

“Well, you have it now.”

“But I searched the house.” Harriet’s voice had dropped as she continued to marvel at the pendant, and I’d stared at her, wondering if she was talking to it or to me. “I don’t get it. How could it even be in my handbag?” she’d said in little more than a whisper.

“Does it really matter, if you’ve found it?” I’d sighed, fearing I might have snapped at Harriet as I closed my eyes again. I could hear Aud’s voice as clear as if she were sitting on the bench between us. “Charlotte, I’m sure your friend is very sweet, but she looks like she’s away with the fairies half the time.”

I remember turning to look at Harriet, who was then staring at a point in the distance, past Alice, past the trees that lined the park. Her lips had twitched; she was deep in thought. I had lost Harriet completely and Evie was stirring and I knew any minute she’d start screaming, and I’d felt the rise of irritation spreading inside me like a fire.

? ? ?

“WHEN YOU ASK me if there were any signs,” I tell Detective Rawlings, “it’s that bloody memory that comes to mind, and I think if that’s all I had to go on, then did I really miss anything?”

When she doesn’t answer, my body burns with the sheer frustration that we are going around and around in circles and somehow end up in the same spot every time.

My arms feel like jelly as they hang limply by my sides. My back slumps as I reach forward and my hands fall onto the table. “Please,” I say, “I need to go home. I want to go now.”

Yet I know that if I’d sensed what was going on behind Harriet’s closed doors, I could have helped. I would never have convinced her to leave her daughter with me, promising that Alice would be safe. I knew, more than many, how controlling some fathers and husbands can be because my own dad was that way. Harriet understood that, yet still she didn’t confide in me. She hadn’t trusted me to help her.

And Brian knew so much more than she’d given him credit for.





BEFORE


HARRIET


On Thursday morning, twelve days after Alice went missing, Harriet woke knowing that, like it or not, everything was about to change. She was relieved that on that day Angela wasn’t getting to the house until 4:00 p.m.

She’d watched Brian cautiously as he moved around like a ticking time bomb. He hadn’t uttered one word since he’d walked out of the bedroom the night before, leaving her staring at their wedding photo. But she could see by the way he flitted about that he was still wired.

Above her, the floorboards of the bathroom creaked. It was already late morning and Brian still wasn’t dressed. There had been plenty of times when she’d sat like this at her kitchen table with her hands wrapped around a cold mug of tea waiting for her husband to appear, though never so late in the day. She didn’t know what to expect as her mind raced through thoughts of the previous night, trying to figure out if she’d done something wrong. Over the years memories had faded into a dark recess in her mind until she had no way of gripping on to them again. She knew she’d become reliant on Brian reminding her, because he’d told her often enough. Her husband’s support had never wavered, though. Brian would always be there for her.

He’d told her that enough, too.

He’d promised that.

Threatened it.

At first Harriet hadn’t wanted to believe she had problems with her memory, but Brian had been insistent. He took her to a private doctor two years ago, to a practice on the other side of Chiddenford. Harriet had sat mutely as her husband had described her problems, the many mistakes she made, how concerned he was for his wife and daughter’s safety.

“I didn’t have an issue as a child,” she’d told the doctor when he’d asked if she knew when it started.

“Well, it often comes on in adulthood,” Brian had said sharply.

Like the day I met you? Harriet now wondered.

The not knowing was frightening. Believing so adamantly in one thing but then having the one person she loved and trusted tell her the reverse was true left her fearful and worried. Harriet had once found herself standing in the middle of a supermarket, frantically trying to remember if Brian preferred the biscuits covered in milk chocolate or dark.

“I’ve told you so many times, Harriet,” he’d said as she’d handed him the packet of milk chocolate cookies later that evening. “It’s the dark ones I like.”