Prologue #2
I’m leaving the room, Skyla scooped under my arms, when she speaks again. Two words that send a chill down my spine.
‘What that?’ Her pudgy finger points down to my feet.
We all turn, bend, and inspect the dummy on the floor. My first thought, heartbreakingly, is that Robin doesn’t even have her dummy tonight.
‘Bella, sorry, but we need to take your statement,’ an officer says.
‘I need to put this one back to sleep first,’ I whisper, watching as they bag up the dummy. I hoist Skyla up on my shoulder. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’
‘I can do it,’ James offers, appearing on the landing with swollen eyes. ‘I’ve given my statement.’ There’s a Tommee Tippee bottle in his hand.
I don’t say what I’m thinking. That he was in charge of our girls and now one of them is missing. I can’t say that, cast the blame. Reluctantly, I pass her over, having no choice but to kiss her forehead delicately and let her go.
‘I’ll give her some milk,’ James promises and buries his face into Skyla’s curls as he walks away with her. The clench of my heart as I watch him disappear with our remaining daughter is hard to shake off.
‘Milkies,’ I hear Skyla whisper pleadingly, and I’ve never needed to hold her and watch her fall asleep in my arms so much in my life.
But I let them go, and the police sit me down at my table that suddenly doesn’t seem like my own any more.
It’s covered in files and paperwork, pens that aren’t mine.
‘Where have you been tonight, Isabella?’ It’s a question so loaded with blame I almost feel culpable.
‘At my work’s Christmas party,’ I mumble, doing my best to maintain eye contact. To sit up straight. To not sway.
‘You left the twins here with James, did you?’ The detective raises his eyebrows as he looks at me.
‘I did,’ I say, my spine straightening a little more.
‘He’s their father. Why wouldn’t I?’ What I don’t ask is, should I have not?
That’s the real question, on the tip of my tongue.
Which is absurd. James is their father. He loves them — and I heard the panic in his voice when he called me.
It was the sort of hysteria that can’t be faked.
‘And how much would you say you had to drink tonight?’ Those hairy eyebrows lift again as the detective catches my indignation, written in the way my fingers worry.
‘I mean, it was a Christmas party,’ I stammer, heat flooding my face. ‘I don’t know. Why does that matter? Why does anything you’re asking me matter? My child is missing!’
The Detective Chief Inspector is an unreadable man, Gary Quinn, but his eyes, the sort of crystal blue that could be the colour of frost on a winter’s morning, are kind.
He stays with me throughout the early hours.
His questioning hard, relentless — but he’s patient with me when he sees me crumbling.
Hands me tissues and gives me the sort of look that could almost make me believe he’s on my side.
That he believes everything I’m saying, anyway.
And he should, because every word I speak is nothing but the truth.
What James has told them, I can only hope is true too.
The door was unlocked, he said. He’d ordered a Domino’s, evidenced by the box holding a half-eaten Hawaiian pizza that has long since gone cold and yet still somehow makes my stomach growl despite having no appetite.
‘The delivery guy didn’t set foot inside,’ James assures us, cradling Skyla in his arms, but from the little I’ve been told the police are collaring him for questioning anyway.
Because how could this have happened? It makes no sense.
Someone must have seen something. James, a neighbour.
A child abduction couldn’t just go completely unnoticed in an apartment block like ours.
People know Robin — they’d have recognised her getting carried down in the lift by someone unknown.
‘Were you drinking tonight?’ I hear the police questioning James again, although he’s meant to be with Skyla, getting her to go down.
Her sleep doesn’t matter to them, and for once, her routine doesn’t matter to me either.
Something in the officer’s tone makes me think this isn’t the first time they’re asking James if he’s been drinking tonight.
‘What’re you implying?’ he snaps at them — his irritation radiating around us.
‘Is there any chance you could’ve fallen asleep?
’ the detective asks and James blanches, as though shocked to even be asked such a thing.
But it is possible, isn’t it? We have been sleep deprived.
The girls had gone through a blissfully long stage of sleeping through the night but now that they’re two, they’ve started waking again, crying in their cots until we reluctantly open the door.
They’ve started telling us something is scary in their room.
I don’t tell the police this. Every two-year-old has a wild imagination and gets nightmares, don’t they?
‘I may have fallen asleep,’ James admits with a perfunctory nod, not meeting anyone’s eyes.
‘I ordered the pizza after the girls were down, and Bella was out. Took it inside and started watching Stranger Things on Netflix. Maybe I didn’t lock the door behind me, I don’t know.
And then I guess I just . . . dozed off. ’
Dozed off. Such a simple explanation for the most impossible of situations. But it’s not impossible, because it’s happening to us.
Something very close to hatred oozes from my pores at his explanation.
Even if he had fallen asleep with the door unlocked, it cries on its hinges when we open it.
It’s the sort of noise that would’ve woken him unless he was in a very deep sleep.
I want to take DCI Quinn to one side and beg him to breathalyse my husband; I’m kind of shocked it isn’t something they’ve done already.
Unless they did it before I arrived. I don’t know, and I’m too scared that if I ask it will seem like I’m finger-pointing.
Because I’m not, I just don’t quite understand my husband’s explanation .
. . and I don’t think the police do either.
I try not to let DCI Quinn’s clear tactics to have me slip up in my own story bother me, reminding myself he is just doing his job. I just wish he’d focus his attention elsewhere — because questioning me isn’t going to get him anywhere.
The forensic team are in the nursery for what feels like hours. They sweep the walls and floor with a special lamp, designed to find even the faintest trace of blood. But they find nothing, just like whoever took Robin tonight intended, I’m sure. A meticulous plan carried out flawlessly.
I can tell, as the hours pass, DCI Gary Quinn and his team start to worry.
Their frowns deepen. Conversations becoming more frantic with each door they search.
They all seem to come up empty handed. I lose count of the amount of teabags I throw into the bin, even during ungodly hours.
But it’s the making of the tea that keeps me sane.
It helps me do something. Measure the sugar, steep the tea.
If only the other things I do in life were this simple.
I’m surprised when I head upstairs to find Skyla and James asleep in our bed.
Overcome with a boiling rage that James could sleep at a time like this, I stomp down to the nursery, but it’s hardly recognisable.
It’s taped off and it’s been dusted, searched for prints.
I don’t go in, but I hover by the doorframe, fighting back the racking sob threatening to break from my ribcage.
An officer shuffles to my side, and I want to ask him, what do I do now?
How do I handle this? But he doesn’t know.
No one does. I learn that quickly in the coming weeks and months, when our faces get plastered all over the news, when allegations are spread.
Our names are dragged through the mud. People I’ve never met swear I’m a murderer; they’re convinced I did something to harm my own child.
It’s sickening. And there’s no telling them otherwise.
The only one who seems to believe in our innocence is DCI Gary Quinn, who has gone above and beyond the call of duty for us.
He has handed me tissues while I’ve cried, answered every hysterical phone call and soothed me in that calm, authoritative way he has.
He has sent flowers, cards, checked in on us even when he didn’t need to.
And he’s the one who helped me learn that the more I fight, the worse it’ll get for me in the media.
So I retreat into myself, let the case swallow me whole until it goes terribly, abysmally cold.
The police don’t close their investigations — they can’t — but I know that they start giving up on the hope they once had of finding her.
They seem to have a deceleration as they exhaust all leads, a building apathy about them at every visit.
I know they’re using their resources elsewhere, their priorities shift, and it’s then that I finally drift back into the nursery.
The pale-yellow walls blur, and my legs give way.
Robin is truly gone, and I can’t bring her back.