CHAPTER 6
Sometimes, fleetingly, there have been moments for Simone where the responsibility and love of motherhood has felt just too much.
Times when she expected more of herself.
Small things, things women berate themselves for: when she thought Lucy might fall from a climbing frame at the park and Simone was too far away to help, when she had a fever of over forty.
Both times, Simone simply wanted to turn away, to run.
She’s never told anyone this, thought they might judge her, which is exactly – she knows rationally – how these thoughts continue to hold power.
She can’t absent herself, now, and instead chooses panicked fervour. If she can find Lucy, she won’t have to make a decision about the text. She crosses to the traitorous screen door – if only, if only – and looks at it.
How did a kidnapper know only their lodge was occupied, and nobody else’s? Was it so obvious the door was open? Or was the door deliberately …? How did her hair …? Did they drag her …? Simone cannot complete the thoughts. She stands there, frozen in the hallway, Damien’s words echoing in her mind.
Were they targeted? Have these people researched her and Lucy – followed them? She traces a hand down the wall, shivering, not wanting to know the answers.
A noise just down the street distracts her. A vehicle, maybe two. Simone sprints to the front window in the living area, her fingertips on the windowsill like a child’s.
It’s the police.
Or, rather, it is one cop, now standing by the side of the road, flashing a warrant badge to a man he’s pulled over. He’s in uniform that, despite everything, Simone finds herself thinking he’s spent too much time ironing: two perfect creases down the front of each blue leg.
‘I think not,’ the officer says acerbically to the person he’s pulled over. He has a broad Southern accent, tanned skin. A bald spot at the back of his head that shines with sweat.
‘It was,’ the other man says, his hands up in protest. ‘Must have just changed.’
‘It’s been a fifty for five years,’ the police officer replies flatly.
He perhaps senses Simone watching, because he looks over and catches her eye through the window.
She immediately takes two steps backwards, but he maintains his gaze.
A smile: straight white teeth. He holds a finger up to the driver he’s just pulled over, touches his shoulder, then begins to walk towards Simone’s lodge.
Simone feels fear draining out of her, like somebody has sucked her blood.
Three knocks.
She is a stone statue in the hallway. Do not tell the police.
If you go to the police, we will kill her.
‘You OK there?’ he calls out to her, clearly having radar for people in distress.
And this is the moment. She is eye to eye with a cop. A handful of words and everything would change. Authorities, resources, instructions, help. Simone opens her mouth to answer him.
‘Yes, yes,’ she says, the lies tumbling easily out of her mouth. She’s too frightened to tell the truth. That’s simply how it is. There is too much on the line. ‘Just … here with my daughter.’
She wonders if she will look back on this moment in a hallway with the concertina door that had her daughter’s pulled hair around it and regret it.
‘Vacation?’ he asks, fiddling with the neat collar of his uniform. As he does so, he skews the neckline, revealing creases: he’s only ironed the visible parts, which endears him to her suddenly.
‘Yeah.’
He turns, raising a hand behind his back to her in a wave. Right until he leaves the threshold, she is telling herself that it isn’t too late to ask for help. To shout it out to him.
But then she hears him finish reprimanding the speeding driver, and, a few moments later, drive off himself.
She stays in the hallway just listening and waiting until everything is quiet again.
And, looking at the welcome mat, the cheap laminate floor and open door, Simone wonders if she could turn up there tonight and do whatever it is they ask. If she could be brave enough to do it.
She has always done precisely what her gut told her to, but, really, when it comes down to it, she can’t think of a parent who wouldn’t do that. Except, evidently, Damien. This thought lands fully formed and horrifying, like a splatter of blood on her face.