Chapter Seven
When we get into the bedroom, I march across the jute woven rug and drag the floor-to-ceiling curtains across the rail, my heart pounding. We are too far from the main road for anyone to see in and yet this moment needs privacy. However, the moment the curtains are drawn, claustrophobia sets in.
‘James,’ I hiss, twirling to face him. ‘She’s here, James. It’s her, isn’t it? That’s our girl.’ I’m tripping over my words, speaking too fast, trying to ignore the need to open a window, let in fresh air.
James starts to shake his head, slowly at first, but it gets faster and faster. ‘I don’t know,’ he stutters. ‘I really don’t know.’
Collapsing on the chaise longue, he swipes at the tears that have fallen down his face, and it reminds me that in moments like these rarely do I remember that he has feelings in this too. Robin was his daughter as well as mine. For all of the turmoil I’m going through, James has his too.
‘Babe, we’ve been through this before and I can’t—’ He swallows. ‘I can’t do it again.’
I bare my teeth, looking down at him disdainfully.
I’ve never thought my husband a weak man, until now.
In this moment, he seems so incredibly small — and I hate to admit it, but I don’t have the time for his emotional turmoil.
It’s the wine. It must be. Drinking has always desensitised me.
I only had the one glass at the dinner table, but I’m hardened from it, and I have to get to the bottom of whether the young girl downstairs is my missing daughter, with or without James’s help.
I need to do something. That scar. I can’t get it out of my mind.
It’s tantalising, in the exact same place as Robin’s beauty spot was, I’m sure of it.
Or am I reading too much into this? Am I looking for something that simply just isn’t there?
Surely it can’t be all in my head again, can it? People have scars.
My mind starts to spin with the room as I try to conjure up some sort of story about where the scar on Raven’s lip came from.
Unless I ask her, I guess I’ll never know.
But I start to invent stories. Her mother’s drunk of a boyfriend, heavy handed one night after coming back late from the pub.
A fall from rollerblades, face connecting with concrete.
A yappy Jack Russell bared its teeth the way I just did to my husband, but Raven hadn’t got the warning on time. It could’ve been anything.
Snivelling, James glances up at me, wiping at his nose with the back of his sleeve. His mucus glistens on the cotton of his shirt, making my stomach sour. I breathe out a heavy sigh.
‘Look, I think we should just be grateful Skyla’s made a friend at school,’ he says gingerly.
I crumble, the way he knows I will. Skyla is my Achilles heel.
This last year has been tough on her and seeing it reflect in her spirit has undone me.
With no friends and the pressure of applying to university weighing her down, she’s been struggling more than she’ll ever admit, but we see it. Her pain is impossible to miss.
‘Maybe it isn’t her,’ I whisper, flopping down beside him.
‘It can’t be, Bella.’
‘Don’t say that.’ I shake my head. Denial, denial, denial.
‘She has a mother,’ James reminds me, his arm heavy as it rests over my shoulders.
This is the moment we should connect, puzzle pieces coming together.
But the way his arm hangs over me, it makes me want to shake him off, resist him.
It’s like the puzzle piece refuses to fit any more.
I wish I could go back to the very moment that first happened, fix it. Make us align again.
‘What were we expecting though, really? For a girl of her age to be living alone?’ My eyes dart around. ‘Maybe it’s a foster mum. Maybe she just calls her mum!’
‘Bella.’ James’s voice has tightened, become steely.
‘I mean, she could’ve been living alone! Until she mentioned a mum I might’ve assumed—’
James stops me with a raised finger. ‘Unless she’s older than Skyla, she’s not sixteen yet. She’d be living with an adult. And if she’s older than Skyla then she can’t be Robin anyway.’
I hate him in that moment for shattering my fanciful theories. Until he lowers his finger, I sit there and stare at it, wondering what it would sound like if I reached out and grabbed it, pulled it back and snapped each bone in that scrawny index finger of his.
‘Come,’ he says, breaking the spell. ‘We can’t leave Skyla down there alone. She’ll hate us if we ruin this for her.’
I know he’s right, and it forces me to pull myself together.
My wonderful, lovely daughter has a friend over.
I know that isn’t easy for her. I know that even now we’re in the Cotswolds, she is known as the girl whose twin sister vanished from her cot in Bristol.
People either tend to avoid her like the plague or want to pry every bit of information they can from her.
Rarely is someone nice to her out of the goodness of their heart, and it’s why she’s suffered so much in recent years as her self-awareness has sharpened.
Just this once, I want to be able to believe that someone genuinely wants to be friends with my little girl. She so needs it.
Before we leave the room, James cups my face in his hands, resting his forehead to mine. Mimicking his breathing, we try to become one again. A unit. But still there’s a stubbornness about us, like magnets springing apart when pushed together against their will.
‘I love you,’ he says. Three words we have always promised to remind each other of when things seem to be about to start spiralling. Usually they help tether us back to the ground. Usually.
‘I love you,’ I reply, though he’s already broken away from me.
Following behind him, I trudge back down the marble steps trying to tell myself I’m wrong about any resemblance between Skyla and Raven.
I must be, the way I always have been, and that’s the reminder I need.
No matter how sure I’ve been that someone is Robin, I’ve always been wrong.
There was always a family or some other unquestionable thing proving it could never be my missing child.
And James is right, he is. I can’t do it again either.
It’s crushing. Soul destroying. I can’t stand the hope any more.
I collide with James who has stopped on the staircase. I’m about to tsk at him, to be annoyed, but I follow his gaze, catching sight of the girls by the front door. They’re lacing up their boots and zipping up jackets. Unnecessary clothing for such a warm summers evening.
My eyes swivel to the clock. It’s late. Too late to be going out.
‘Off somewhere?’ I rasp, clinging to the handrail.
‘Places to be.’ Raven grins, and Skyla smiles shyly too. It’s then I notice her lips, painted dark, the same colour as Raven’s. Skyla has never been one for make-up. It’s a harsh look on her, and I don’t like it.
Every motherly cell in my body wants to know more, wants to remind my daughter that she’s only fifteen.
She doesn’t have a curfew, because she’s never needed one.
Skyla is a homebody. Before I can say anything, James skims his fingers over my wrist, on that sensitive part that hardly ever gets touched or sees sunlight.
Pressing my lips together, I stitch a smile into place and watch them tramp down the drive, Alfie whining in the doorway. As I watch their backs disappear into the night, it hits me that Skyla hasn’t told me where she’s going, and she hasn’t told me when she’ll be home.
‘I should’ve asked where they’re going. I should’ve offered them a lift!’ I gasp, already loading up Life360. There’s a thump in my temple as I watch Skyla’s icon moving away from the house.
‘We need to give her some free rein,’ James says softly. ‘She needs it.’
And this is why one of our children is missing, my mind screams, but somehow, I manage to stay silent.
‘Is this normal though? For a fifteen-year-old to go out this late?’ I’m shaking my head warily, glued to the app on my phone.
James doesn’t answer me, which is a good thing because anything he says is only going to vex me further.
I am overbearing as a parent. I have been even before Robin disappeared. When Skyla and Robin were placed in my care, I swore I would look after them forever, and I guess because they weren’t really mine by blood, I felt an extra sense of responsibility to care for them, to make things perfect.
Throughout the years, I’ve made sure to be available for Skyla for every school drop off and pick up.
It has cost me jobs, but it has kept her safe.
Every time I drive by a young girl in one of those absurdly short school skirts walking alone, heavy backpack hitting her bare thighs, I grip the steering wheel tighter.
I feel a need to watch her get to wherever she’s going safely.
It’s the same with little boys, more so in fact, because while I’m not particularly experienced with boys I know that they are a little more carefree.
Through watching schoolchildren meander the streets while sat at a Costa with a frappe, I have learned that the boys are the ones who tend not to look left and right when crossing the roads.
They ride without helmets, push and shove each other into oncoming traffic.
The girls are a little more careful at least — catty, nasty little beasts but vigilant too, I’ll give them that.
I just couldn’t live with myself if something happened to Skyla and so I made sure I was always there to deliver her to where she needed to go.
So this, right now, is very foreign territory for me.
I don’t like it, but my mind is already starting to scatter, to think about Robin again. Raven!
‘What’re we going to do?’ I breathe, stalking to the pantry and reaching for a bag of half-eaten crisps. I’m comfort eating, the way I always do in situations I feel are out of my control.
‘Trust her.’ James speaks calmly as he follows behind me. His face is pinched as he watches me jam a mouthful of crinkle cuts into my mouth.
‘I mean about Robin!’ I say, flapping my arms wildly around.
‘Raven,’ James replies coolly, and I shoot him my coldest look.
‘Darling, it could very well be a coincidence. Don’t all teenage girls look relatively similar these days?’ There’s a slight crow to his voice.
I narrow my eyes. ‘Not in their bone structure!’ It’s like I’m talking to a child. He just doesn’t understand, doesn’t see what’s right in front of us.
‘You’ve thought girls have been Robin before,’ he reminds me. ‘Don’t do this to yourself again, Bella.’ He steps towards me, reaching out and cupping my face in his hand. His small, beady eyes observe me steadily.
He’s always had this sort of Richard Armitage way about him. Brooding, with intense eyes and salt-and-pepper hair giving him a distinguished look.
I glance down at the Life360 app, peering at the location on my phone.
Skyla and Raven seem to have stopped by Willows Park, where I used to take Skyla to play when she was younger.
I’d spend entire mornings there charging around after her, pushing her on the swings, holding her hand as she slid down the slide.
There was always the wailing tantrum with an arched back when I’d have to wrestle her back into her buggy and leave.
It’s always been a place of fond memories, and nostalgia often grips me when I walk by now looking at the excited toddlers behind those heavy yellow gates.
But I’ve walked by at night before, when the children are all tucked up in their beds.
The park becomes a meeting place for teenagers who pinched alcohol from their parents’ liquor cabinets.
They go there to smoke weed and shout obscenities to passers-by.
They light fires on the cushioned ground and spray graffiti.
It is not the kind of place I want Skyla hanging out at this hour.
‘Look at where she is,’ I say, thrusting my phone under James’s nose. ‘This isn’t like her!’ I start to shake.
James peers at the app, and is that a wince? I grasp onto it, letting it skyrocket my heartrate. He’s worried too. He is, at least, I think he is until he starts to hang his head low.
‘Bella, Skyla is a teenager,’ he says. ‘We need to let her be one.’
My fury builds, and behind my sclera’s, I burn him and our entire house to the ground.
‘If something happens to her, I’ll never forgive you, James,’ I say hoarsely, the venom in my words penetrating.
He sighs, raking his fingers through his hair. ‘You’ve never forgiven me anyway,’ he says, and walks away.
I don’t like the resentment and anger I harbour, and a lot of my internal thoughts and feelings are probably unjust. But as a mother, I have been burned. Wronged. Scorned. It isn’t something that can be fixed through time and therapy, no matter what anyone says.
The need to keep Skyla safe is primal. I am a lioness, trying to protect her cub. And like a lioness, I will fight to the death. But right now, I have no choice but to plant myself in an armchair and wait for my daughter to return.
* * *
My neck is bent at an obscure angle when I wake, my chin wet on the pillow.
The candle I’d lit is out, burnt wick and smoke filling the air.
I rub at my eyes, slowly realising I’m still downstairs in the armchair.
Scrambling up, my breathing accelerates.
It’s still dark, but the small hand of the clock has stopped at two.
I shuffle down the hallway, blinking rapidly. My feet turn to granite as I reach the front door. My daughter’s shoes are not there, neither is her jacket. It’s 2 a.m. and my fifteen-year-old child is still out.