Her One Mistake(9)

In a daze I let Audrey lead us to the edge of the field by the car park, where she had agreed to meet the police.

I rested my back against the fence, the glare of sunlight pounding down on us. People in front of me were beginning to blur and as my eyes flickered to refocus, a wave of nausea surged through me.

“Drink some water.” Audrey pressed a bottle into my hand and I took a large gulp. “And for God’s sake, move into the shade. You look as if you’re about to faint,” she said, nudging me toward a tree. “Alice will turn up,” she went on. “She’s just run off and gotten lost.”

“I hope you’re right.” After all, nothing awful happened in the sleepy Dorset village of Chiddenford. “But I just don’t think Alice would run off.”

“All kids do from time to time,” Aud said. “Alice is no different from any other four-year-old.”

But you don’t know Alice, I thought. Alice is different. Audrey had never taken the time to get to know Alice, most likely because she’d never gotten a word out of her. She’d never really taken the time to get to know Harriet, either.

“I should call Harriet,” I said as she ushered my children to a patch on the grass where they obediently sat.

“Talk me through what happened again.”

“I don’t know what happened. Alice just vanished. She went around the back of the inflatable and never came off it. What do I tell Harriet?” I took another sip from the bottle. “I can’t tell her I’ve lost her daughter, Aud,” I cried.

“You need to try and keep calm,” she said, grabbing my arms and pulling me around so I was facing her. “Breathe slowly. Come on. One, two—” She started counting slowly and I fell into her rhythm. “Alice will be found soon, I know she will, so there’s no point worrying Harriet yet. And besides”—her gaze drifted over my shoulder—“the police are here.”

I turned to watch the marked car pull up alongside the field. Two uniformed officers got out and, as they walked toward us, the graveness of the situation smacked me once more. It was official. Alice was missing.

? ? ?

OFFICER FIELDING INTRODUCED himself and his female colleague, Officer Shaw. They asked if I needed to sit but I shook my head. I just wanted them to start searching for Alice.

“Can you tell us what happened, Charlotte?” Officer Fielding asked.

“The children were excited to go on the Jungle Run,” I said, pointing to the large inflatable. “Well, not my youngest, Evie, she wanted to go on the slide, but the other three went,” I said, though I knew Alice hadn’t been excited.

“And you saw all three get on?”

I shook my head. “They ran around the back of it quickly and you can’t actually see the start of the run.”

“So you didn’t go around and check?” he asked, one eyebrow slightly raised as he peered at me over the thick black rim of his glasses.

“No.” My chest felt tight. “I assumed they had because they were begging to go on it.”

The policeman nodded and made a note in his pad. I reached my hand to my throat, scratching at the heat that began to prick my skin. “Obviously now I wish I had,” I went on. “But I didn’t think I needed to because as far as I knew, there was nowhere else for them to go . . .” I trailed off. Of course I wished I had now. I wished to God I’d never let them go on it in the first place.

“And what did you do next?” he asked, nodding to Officer Shaw, who wandered off and began speaking into her radio.

“I sat down in the shade with my youngest, Evie. She didn’t want to go on the Jungle Run and I had a headache,” I told him, watching the policewoman and wondering what she was saying and to whom.

“And could you see this Jungle Run from where you were sitting?”

“Yes, I had my eye on the end of it the whole time,” I told him, nodding to convey more certainty than I felt.

“And did you see them at all after they’d run around the back of it?”

“I—I did,” I faltered. “I saw them coming off and running around again.”

“All of them?” He looked up from his pad.

“I saw Jack first,” I said, remembering my son grinning from ear to ear because I’d felt a surge of happiness that he was enjoying himself. “And then Molly.” Her mouth had formed a wide O as she had gone down the slide, her pigtails flying into the air behind her.

“And Alice?” he asked with a hint of impatience.

I paused. I’d thought I’d seen her at the time. Or maybe I’d just assumed I had. I couldn’t actually remember her dropping down the slide like the others. “I thought so,” I said, then added, “I can’t say for sure.”

“So when did you notice Alice definitely wasn’t there?”

“When my two came off. They said she wasn’t with them and they couldn’t remember if she got on.” I looked over at my children, already dreading the moment the police would want to question them.

“What about her shoes?” This came from Officer Shaw, who was walking back toward us.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, don’t kids usually take off their shoes to go on these things? Were Alice’s still there?”