Her One Mistake(59)

Charlotte was already at the park, and I slipped onto the bench alongside her, watching Evie run around with a bubble wand clutched in her tiny hand. Alice stood by my side, hesitant to join in until she was ready. Charlotte babbled on about her sister’s wedding and, as I often did, I lost myself in the wonderful mundanity of her problems until she said, “There’s still no news of that little boy, Mason.”

“I know. The parents must feel awful. You just can’t imagine what they’re going through, can you?” I shuddered, and both our eyes followed Evie a little closer as she ran around. “I haven’t read much about it,” I admitted, even though his disappearance was headline news. Every time I thought of the little boy vanishing I felt sick.

“Hmm. I know this is a dreadful thing to say, but do you think the parents are involved?”

“No. Not at all,” I gasped. “Why, do you?”

“I don’t think so, but that’s what some people are saying. I read this article online listing all these weird reasons the case doesn’t stack up and it makes you think, doesn’t it?”

“No, it’s not them,” I said. “I don’t believe that for one minute.”

Charlotte sighed. “No, I don’t either,” she agreed. “But isn’t it awful that it gets so twisted by the media? His family’s lives have been invaded. They can’t do anything without the world watching them. It must be so hard.” She fiddled with a scarf that lay across her lap. “But then I suppose if they do have anything to hide, they won’t be able to for long.”

That night I read everything I could about the Mason Harbridge case—the boy who vanished out of sight. It was an interesting thought: how someone can vanish completely. And Charlotte was right, the eyes of the world were on those left behind—Mason’s parents couldn’t put a foot out of place without someone picking up on it.

If they stripped back the walls that Brian had so skillfully built, what would they see? How long would he be able to deceive everyone? With the press poking into our lives, the police trawling our house: living with us, watching every moment, hearing every lie that came out of his mouth.

All I’d need was for everyone to see what I saw. Then Alice and I could escape him. And Alice wouldn’t have to stay hidden for long. Just until the world recognized the monster I lived with.

After all, how clever is Brian, really?

? ? ?

CHARLOTTE’S THROWAWAY COMMENT about the Harbridge family never left me, and a few weeks after, in late November, I first saw a chance of turning the idea into reality.

I was cleaning the house one rainy Monday morning when the doorbell rang. I smiled at Alice who was painting at the kitchen table and, with a duster in one hand, answered the door to find a man on my doorstep. He looked as shocked as I must have been, and with one hand gripping the doorframe, he leaned slightly forward as if he were about to speak.

My eyes skimmed over his face. I shook my head nervously, took a step back. I didn’t recognize all of him, but his large green eyes were so familiar.

“Harriet,” he eventually said. It wasn’t a question.

“No,” I muttered, still shaking my head. “It can’t be you.” I looked up and down the road but there was no one around, then back to him as he awkwardly shuffled his feet.

He dropped his gaze to the ground, leaving me to stare at the patch where his white hair was thinning.

“What—” I said in a low breath. There were too many questions running through my mind. What are you doing here? Is there bad news? How did you find me? Are you really who I think you are?

“Do you think I could, erm, come in?”

I shook my head again. I couldn’t let him in. What would I tell Alice?

“I don’t need to stay long. I would just like the chance to talk to you.”

I eventually opened the door wider and directed him through to the kitchen, telling Alice that if she watched TV in the living room, we could make a cake that afternoon.

She didn’t need telling twice and as soon as Alice was out of the room, I gestured for the man to sit down while I stood against the kitchen sink and said, “Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

“You didn’t believe I’d died, then?” My father, Les, played nervously with his hands, twisting a wedding band around and around. I watched those hands closely, trying to remember them picking me up as a child or playing a game with me, but nothing came to mind.

“No, I knew the truth,” I said quietly. What I did remember was the first time I heard my mum tell someone in a store that my father was dead. I’d looked at her in shock, wondering when it could have happened, but Mum gave me a look and a small shake of her head and even at such a young age I quickly understood she wasn’t telling the truth. It was another of her fabrications.

“So Daddy’s not dead?” I’d asked her later when we were on our own.

“No, he’s not,” Mum had said, flapping about a large sheet that she was desperately trying to fold. In the end she rolled it into a ball and stuffed it into the linen closet. “But he is gone and it’ll be a lot easier for Mummy if we tell people he is.”

I hadn’t liked the sound of it, but I went along with her because she was my mum. There was no one else I could turn to, to ask if what we were doing was right. It certainly didn’t feel it, but I absorbed her lie and at some point over the years it became easier telling people he’d died than facing up to the fact my mother had deliberately created such a dreadful story. By the time I met Brian I didn’t even consider another version.