Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
ERICA
The house felt empty and cold when Erica returned. On the side in the kitchen, a cereal bowl and a mug had been washed up and left on the draining board. Mollie was such a good kid. She’d never given them any trouble. At school, all her teachers had loved her. She had nice friends and was polite and kind and lovely.
Upstairs, Erica stood on the threshold to Mollie’s room. Gone was the pale pink of her younger years; instead she’d chosen to have it painted blue and dove grey. From the far wall, Taylor Swift beamed down from her position among photographs, postcards and flyers. On her bed – a single with one of those mattresses that you could pull out from underneath for the nights when her friends stayed over and they would giggle into the early hours – her saxophone lay like a body on the blankets. What Erica would give to hear its mournful tones right now.
She opened a wardrobe door and all of Mollie’s clothes seemed to be there – apart from the items slung across the back of a chair or in a heap in the corner. She sank down onto the bed. Where was she? How had she not noticed what was going on with her? For so long, she’d had her eyes on Benjamin. Worrying about his schooling, his socialising, his future. Like a fool, she’d thanked her lucky stars that Mollie was so easy. From a really young age, Mollie had been independent. From about three years old, she’d been determinedly dressing herself, wanting to pour her own cereals, looking out for her twin brother when he was upset or needed calming down. Erica had taken her for granted. Oh, she’d had moments when she realised that she needed to spend some time with her daughter. Which is when she’d persuade Andrew to spend the day with Benjamin so that she could take Mollie out to buy some new clothes or they’d go to the cinema together. She’d hoped that this would be enough to keep their mother-daughter relationship on track.
On the wall, a cork board heavy with smiling faces. Mollie and Amelia, other friends, schoolmates. At the top left, curling at the edges, a family photograph of the four of them on their last holiday together. Erica remembered that photograph being taken. Once they were posed, Andrew had set up the camera on a brick wall at the back of the beach to take their picture. Each time, before the camera took the photo, Ben would look in a different direction. The more exasperated Andrew got, the funnier she and Mollie had found it. Until, eventually, Andrew saw the funny side too and they were all laughing. Ben had looked at them as if they were nuts and the expression on his face – as if he were the sensible grown up and they were silly children – had made them laugh even more.
Those were the moments when it’d felt like they could do this. That their family would survive intact, that the children would thrive. Why hadn’t they been able to find a solution that hadn’t torn them apart? Since she’d started at the secondary school, Mollie had seemed to need Erica less. Preferring to spend time with her friends or practising her sax or doing her homework. She’d thought that it was natural. Didn’t all teenagers pull away from their parents at some point? But was that really what she’d thought? Or had she allowed herself to accept that too readily, too easily. Because it freed her up to do the things she needed to do with Ben?
Just as she was about to turn away, she spotted another photograph. This one looked fresh. It was Mollie, sitting at the table in the kitchen downstairs, books spread in front of her as if she was revising or doing some homework. Poking her tongue out at the camera, looking happy and busy and every inch a cheeky teenager. This could’ve been any day in the last few months, Andrew loved to snap photos on his phone of everyday pictures. Since his father died, and they realised how few photographs they had of him, he’d taken it upon himself to capture all the everyday moments they took for granted.
Therefore, it wasn’t the content of the photograph itself that surprised her. But the fact that standing behind Mollie, with her hand on her shoulder, was Celeste. Holding a mug – probably a coffee made in Andrew’s flashy new machine – she looked at home in their kitchen, comfortable with Mollie, as if this was somewhere she spent a lot of time.
What was she doing there and why hadn’t anyone – not Mollie, not Andrew, not Celeste herself – ever mentioned it to Erica? She recalled her meeting with Celeste earlier today. Her questions about Erica and Andrew’s marriage. Pressing her to tell her whether they were still together and then – she remembered with a cold trickle of fear – saying she had something to tell her. Did this photograph have anything to do with that?
Erica refused to let her mind go there. She was being ridiculous. This was Celeste. Her friend. There were several explanations as to why she was there and she couldn’t think about any of them right now. Andrew wasn’t her priority. She needed to focus on Mollie.
Pushing herself back up to standing, she rubbed at her eyes and cheeks with the palms of her hands. There had to be something here that would help. Maybe Andrew should’ve been the one to come back here. He was the one with detective experience. She didn’t even know what she was looking for. Sifting through the pages on Mollie’s desk – bits of homework, sketches, photos she’d printed possibly destined for the cork board – she found a picture that Ben had drawn for Mollie a long time ago. She had no idea why it was out on Mollie’s desk. It was the two of them, holding hands, and her eyes blurred as she looked at it. She should check on him, too.
As she continued to sift through the photographs, she called the residential unit and tried to sound calm. ‘Hi, it’s Erica. Just wanted to see how Ben was doing.’
Helen’s voice was reassuringly chipper and confident. ‘He’s doing great. Sitting in front of the television as we speak. Thanks for remembering the DVD. That was a big help.’
At the last minute, she’d thought to slip a DVD of Ben’s favourite cartoons into his bag. Though they could be found on the Disney Channel, she hadn’t been sure they had access to that at the school. Plus, Ben liked the cartoons to come in the same predictable order.
It sounded as if he was fine without her: that was good, wasn’t it? They’d always been working towards this. Independence. Agency over his own choices. Andrew’s voice echoed in her head. Wasn’t that why we moved him there?
After Helen had hung up, Erica gave up looking through papers and faced the computer, terrified to see what might be on it. She hadn’t wanted Mollie to have a computer in her bedroom. But Andrew had bought it anyway, saying she needed to be able to do her homework in the peace and quiet of her room. If there were going to be any clues as to where she was, it was probably going to be here.
She moved the mouse. The screen came alive immediately. One of the rules of Mollie having a computer of her own was that there would be no passwords so that they could check it at any time. On the screen, a video of Mollie playing the saxophone was paused halfway through. She must’ve recorded herself on the webcam. For a few moments, Erica was transfixed. She was so good already.
Whenever she’d learned something new, Mollie had always been so hard on herself. ‘I’m not good yet.’ Where had that come from? It was the same with schoolwork. Neither she nor Andrew had put pressure on Mollie about grades, but she had always set herself such impossible targets, beat up on herself when she didn’t reach them.
The first time she’d played for Erica, she’d been so dismissive of her mother’s effusive praise. ‘I’ll sound better when I can use a thinner reed. I have to learn with this thicker one and it doesn’t vibrate as much.’
Wasn’t that true for parenting too? You had to learn the hard way. Put the effort in when it was difficult. Hoping that, one day, you’d find it easier, instinctive, beautiful. The difference with learning to parent is that, from day one, you were thrust into the orchestra pit and expected to play perfectly with everyone watching.
Moving the mouse again, she knocked the pile of papers to the floor. As she bent to pick them up, she found something in her daughter’s handwriting that made her blood run cold.
Dear Mum and Dad.
I’m so sorry, but I don’t know what else to do.
Erica’s legs turned to jelly beneath her and she dropped heavily onto the seat in front of the desk. What else had she been about to write? Why hadn’t she finished? Please, God, don’t let this be what she thinks it is.
Hands trembling, she called Andrew but got no answer. Pressing the sides of her head with the heels of her hands she tried to think – think! – where Mollie might have gone. She checked her phone again. No one had returned her calls to say that they knew where she was. Surely she couldn’t have gone far? For a start, she had no money in her account. Mollie’s card account was on Andrew’s phone, which was how he’d known that she’d cleaned it out. But she also had an old savings account connected to Erica’s. When she checked it, that too was empty.
It was then that she noticed she’d had a notification from an old Visa card that she and Andrew had shared. They used to use it when they were eating out or for booking holidays, then they’d split the bill at the end of each month. The card hadn’t been used since she’d moved out three months ago. Except, according to the notification that had popped up from the app, for today.
Though she’d been told not to by Andrew, Erica used the same password for all her banking apps, so it was easy to get into the credit card app and see what it’d been used for. There were two entries. One from the local train station and another from Booking.com.
Erica’s thumbs couldn’t move fast enough as she opened her Booking.com app. Sure enough, there was a booking. When Andrew had warned her about always using the same password, she hadn’t thought for a second that it would be their own daughter who’d use her account.
She’d forgotten that this same credit card was linked to the Booking.com account. When she scrolled through, she could see that it’d been used to book an apartment that they’d stayed in before. In Aldeburgh. The place they’d stayed in that last family holiday together. Where they’d laughed on the beach. Then yelled at each other back at the apartment. That must be where she was.
Erica grabbed her car keys, calling Andrew’s number as she strode towards the door, trying not to think about what had happened on that holiday. The day when everything had started to unravel.