Seeing Other People (34 page)

‘Either there or the family house, I can’t think of anywhere else they’d go.’

‘Do you know when they went? Morning? Afternoon?’

‘We’ve got no idea. Could’ve been first thing this morning or it could’ve been later. We just don’t know.’ I felt myself beginning to shake. This was too terrible for words. ‘I just want them to be safe.’

Stewart rested a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’ll call Van and Paul and get them out looking straight away,’ he said. ‘We’ll start with train and coach stations with links to Harrogate. As soon as you can, text me a picture of the kids and I’ll forward it to the guys so they can get it up on all the social networks while you’re heading over to your place. Wherever they are we’re going to find them, mate, I promise you.’

34

It was after five as I reached the house having spoken to the police several times on the phone. There was no news of the children yet. The police were checking CCTV footage at Harrogate station and also King’s Cross. I wondered how two children could travel to London alone without anyone noticing them. Just thinking about all the people who must have seen them and not thought to question where their parents were made me angry beyond words. What hope could there be for the world when people stopped caring about children?

The house was shrouded in darkness. The Canadian couple and their two kids who were renting the house were due to move in at the weekend. They were both teachers who had moved to the capital for work. The husband had told me that he was a particularly keen gardener and it had been our outdoor space which had attracted them to the house. I’d told him that the garden had been the reason we’d bought the house but that we had lacked the green fingers necessary to make plants grow. ‘Our only success story was the rhubarb,’ I’d joked as I’d shown him around. ‘It comes up year after year without fail, which would be great apart from the fact that we all hate the stuff.’

As I searched for my keys I tried Rosie’s phone again. Straight to voicemail. Her giggling message in a faux American accent: ‘Can’t talk right now. Leave a message after the beep!’ In her absence the lightness of her voice stung me every time and yet I couldn’t not listen to it all the way through. This was how my baby was meant to sound – joyful and carefree – and I wanted her to always be like this.

I unlocked the front door. The house was silent. I checked all the rooms from top to bottom, my heavy footsteps echoing against the floorboards in the empty rooms. There was no sign of the children; there was no sign of anything at all. This used to be the house where my family lived but now it was an empty shell waiting for another set of people to bring it back to life.

I called Penny as I returned to the car. She’d be on the motorway now. At least that was the plan. She was going to come down to London while Scott remained at the house in Harrogate in case the kids went back. As angry as I was at myself, it was hard for me not to be angry with Penny – after all she was supposed to be in charge of them – but it was an impotent anger that had no bite or edge to it, born purely out of frustration. If anyone loved the kids more than me it was Penny and I’d get no pleasure at all from making the one person who understood what I was going through feel bad about something they were powerless to correct.

‘It’s me. I’m at the house. No news.’

‘Well then they must be at your place,’ snapped Penny. ‘Why didn’t you go there first? They’ve got to have gone to see you. They must have.’

‘It’s next on my list. I’ll be there in a matter of minutes. I just . . .  don’t know . . . I had a feeling, that’s all. In the note they said they were going home, and my place is a lot of things but I don’t think they’d ever think of it as home.’

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat like that. You’re only doing your best. Please hurry and call me when you hear anything.’

I checked every room at my place twice, but nothing. The only change to have occurred during the twelve hours I’d been out was the arrival of half a dozen takeaway leaflets and a bill from Thames Water. I called Penny to let her know but I almost wished I hadn’t. She’d pinned all her hopes on them being safe at mine. Now the only image in her head was of them lost and alone in the big city.

‘What about Carly’s?’ I suggested, thinking about Rosie’s best friend. ‘Maybe there’s a chance that Rosie told her what she was doing?’

‘I tried her after I spoke to the police,’ said Penny, ‘but she wasn’t answering her phone. I’ve left messages but I haven’t heard anything since.’

‘Well, I’ll go round to her house. Maybe Rosie told her what her plan was. You never know. It’s got to be worth a shot.’

‘And what if the kids have only just got to London and are on their way to yours now?’

‘I guarantee you, Penny, if the kids are only just reaching London the police will pick them up straight away. They’ve been on the news here. And if they’re on their way to mine I’ll make sure the neighbours keep a lookout for them. But I have to try Carly.’

Carly looked like she was about to burst into tears at any moment as she stood next to her mum in the hallway of their house. ‘I don’t know where she is, Mr Clarke, honestly. You’ve got to believe me. I wouldn’t lie to you about something like this.’

‘I know you wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘We just need to find her and Jack as soon as possible and anything you can tell me that might help would be really useful.’

‘But I’ve told the police everything I know.’

‘Well they haven’t told me, so it would be great if you could tell me what you told them. Maybe it’ll trigger something. When was the last time you spoke to Rosie? What did you talk about?’

‘The usual. School. Homework. What people had been saying. Things that had been on telly. Oh . . . and we talked about you.’

‘Me?’

‘She was saying that she wouldn’t have had to move away if it hadn’t been for you and Mrs Clarke splitting up. She said that she didn’t know what it was that you did but she was sure that it was your fault. I told her that parents get divorced all the time without it being anyone’s fault but she wouldn’t listen.’

Rosie knew. She knew that I was to blame for everything. Was that why she had wanted to come to London? To confront me about breaking up our family?

‘And that’s all she said?’

‘About you?’

‘About anything.’

‘The last thing I heard from her was a text that I got on the way to school. All it said was that she missed me loads and she’d see me soon. I thought she was talking about coming to see me during half term. I never thought that she was going to come down to London on her own.’

‘I know you didn’t,’ I replied. ‘But will you promise me something? Will you promise to call me – whether it’s day or night – if you even so much as get a missed call from her?’

‘I will, Mr Clarke. I’ll call you right away.’

My phone rang as I reached my house. It was Penny. I hoped she had good news.

‘The police have just called,’ she said. ‘They have CCTV images of Rosie and Jack taken at nine twenty a.m. at Harrogate station and getting off at King’s Cross just after twelve thirty.’ It was a small relief, but a relief none the less. They were definitely in London. How many times had I taken Rosie on the tube over the years? Was it too much to hope that she’d know how to get from King’s Cross to Lewisham on the underground and by the DLR?

‘How did you get on with Carly?’ asked Penny. ‘Did you manage to get hold of her?’

‘The police had already interviewed her. Apparently the last thing she heard from Rosie was a text saying that she’d see her soon. Carly thought she was talking about the holidays.’ I thought about telling Penny what Rosie had said about me but decided against it. This was neither the time nor the place.

‘Where are you now?’

‘Back at my place trying to work out where to try next.’ My phone buzzed. I had another call coming through. It was Van. ‘I’d better go, another call. Call me when you reach London.’ I switched calls. ‘Any news?’

‘None yet,’ said Van. ‘Paul’s made up some fliers and brought them over to me here at King’s Cross and is on his way to Victoria coach station now.’

‘Tell him not to bother,’ I replied. ‘I’ve just had word that they definitely came in at King’s Cross so concentrate your efforts there if you can.’

‘Will do,’ said Van. There was a pause and then he added, ‘Listen mate, I don’t care how long it takes I’m not going home till we find them. How you holding up?’

‘I’m fine, honest. I just—’ I swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know where to look next. Part of me thinks I should wait here in case they turn up and then another part thinks I should carry on looking.’

‘You should trust your gut,’ said Van. ‘No one knows your kids better than you do. Whatever you do will be the right thing.’

I ended the call and stared at my phone. Van was right. No one did know our kids better than Penny and I so where could they be? I’d already tried all the obvious places and yet they weren’t at my house, their grandparents’, Carly’s or the family home. How could it be that they’d just disappeared? I had to have missed something. Rosie would know that Penny would be worried sick about her, that’s why she’d left the note on her bed, so why would she have written that she was going home and then not gone there? There had to be an explanation. She’d run away because she wanted to be home and with Jack with her it would have to be somewhere she’d think was safe, somewhere she’d be sure they’d both feel secure. I felt a tiny click in my head as thoughts slotted together. There could only be one place that she could be. I was sure of it. I couldn’t waste another second. I ran into the hallway, flung open the front door and without bothering to close it behind me started running like my very life depended on it.

How old had Rosie been when Penny and I had first discovered her favourite hiding place? Four? Five at the most, I was sure. Jack was just a baby then, and had been down for his afternoon nap when Rosie had requested that we play hide-and-seek with her. She would take the first turn to hide – she had been insistent about that – and then after the count of ten Penny and I would try to find her. I’d been so certain that we would find her instantly I’d insisted that Penny give her an extra ten seconds before we yelled at the top of our voices, ‘Coming! Ready or not!’ I had gone straight to the living room, checking behind the sofa and chairs, underneath the coffee table and behind boxes of toys before yelling up to Penny, ‘She’s not downstairs!’ and joining her in a search of the bedrooms. After ten minutes of looking absolutely everywhere – underneath beds, inside wardrobes, and behind every piece of furniture we owned – it was as though she had vanished. That was when the panic set in. She did understand the rules of hide-and-seek didn’t she? She did know it was an indoor game not an outdoor one? In a panic I’d ran to the back door but it was locked as were the French doors in the living room. Penny called from the front of the house. The latch was still on the front door and she would have had to climb on something to reach it anyway. We began calling out to her. Rosie, where are you? Rosie, we give up. You’ve won, the game’s over. But there was nothing. Penny began to panic, what if something had happened to her? What if she was lying unconscious somewhere? It was a mother’s duty to always fear the worst and Penny was no different. I reassured her that Rosie was fine, and I was sure that she was, I could feel it in my gut. ‘She’s just found the best hiding place there is and she doesn’t want to give it up without giving us a run for our money.’

We continued calling out her name, Penny’s cries becoming increasingly frantic. We returned to each of the rooms we’d already checked. Sofas and bookcases were pulled away from walls, tables were upturned, and the clothes basket emptied on to the floor. No idea of where she might be was deemed too ridiculous to rule out and we searched everywhere so long as it ticked another potential hiding place off the list.

‘We need to think like a five year old,’ I’d said as we stood in the hallway, Penny close to tears. ‘Where would a five year old think is the best hiding place?’

‘Somewhere dark maybe, where they couldn’t be seen or heard.’

‘Like a wardrobe,’ I mused. ‘As a kid my brother and I used to hide in ours all the time.’

‘But we’ve checked—’ Penny suddenly rushed up the stairs with me chasing after her. We came to a halt outside our bedroom and without any hesitation Penny went to the airing cupboard and flung open the door. Rosie was inside the cupboard, sitting on top of a pile of blankets, surrounded by cushions from her room reading one of her comics by the light of her pink princess torch.

‘This is my favourite hiding place,’ she’d said proudly. ‘I knew you’d never find me here.’

Penny had swept her up into her arms while I inspected the cupboard, which had clearly been commandeered for her own personal use some time ago. There were books, spare batteries for her torch, a tub of raisins, her pencil case and a colouring book too. It was like a home from home.

‘This is the best place in the whole house,’ Rosie had explained, completely oblivious to the terror she had caused. ‘I like it because it’s dark and cosy like a mole’s house.’

Entering the family home once more I called up the stairs but there was no reply. Had I got it wrong? Surely they would have said something by now if they had been here? I didn’t dare breathe as I took the stairs two at a time. I didn’t know what I was going to do if I was wrong about this. Every last shred of hope I had was pinned on them being behind the door to the airing cupboard. I turned on the light. The house was as silent and still as it had been on my last visit but as I opened the airing cupboard door and peered inside there they were, huddled together underneath their outdoor coats. In front of them was a half-eaten loaf of bread, two packets of custard creams and a two-litre bottle of lemonade. They both looked petrified as if they were about to be on the receiving end of the mother of all admonishments but telling them off was the furthest thing from my mind. All I wanted to do right now was hold them both in my arms and never let them go.