Have You Seen Her. Lisa Hall

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СКАЧАТЬ flood towards the open gate. ‘LAUREL!’ she shouts, grabbing my hand and pulling me back into the field, back into the thick of the dispersing crowd. ‘LAUREL!’ We both take up the cry, and a thick knot of fear rises up in my chest as the thought skitters across the back of my mind that maybe, maybe Laurel hasn’t got lost.

      ‘Mrs Jessop? Mrs Smythe on the PTA tells me we have a missing child. Is that right?’ Mr Abbott, head teacher at Oxbury Primary appears in front of me as I struggle to keep up with Fran.

      ‘I’m not Mrs … yes, she’s missing. Laurel … her name is Laurel,’ I manage to stutter. ‘We can’t find her.’

      ‘Right, try not to panic, the chances are she’s just wandered off somewhere.’ His voice is calm, but his brow is creased with concern. ‘Where did you last see her?’ I ramble on about Fran getting drinks and using the bathroom, before impatiently pushing past him and catching up to Fran, who is yanking open the doors to the portaloos again.

      ‘I thought maybe I missed one,’ Fran sighs. ‘I thought she might have gone in there after I checked. Did you ask the people who were serving at the bar?’

      I glance towards the bar area, where Mr Abbott is talking to the parents and helpers behind the table, gesturing across the field with one arm. Behind him I see the PTA mums gathered at the now closed gate, a crowd of people waiting to leave bottlenecking in front of them. ‘The head teacher, Mr Abbott, is talking to them now.’

      ‘The head? He’s looking for her too?’ Fran looks up at me, a look of blind panic behind her eyes. ‘Dominic!’ she shouts suddenly, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘Dominic was meant to be here … what if he turned up and saw her … maybe she was cold, and he took her home?’

      ‘Maybe,’ I say doubtfully, but Fran is already fumbling in her coat pocket, dragging out her mobile phone and dialling Dominic’s number. ‘He’s her dad after all,’ she says, phone clamped to her ear. ‘I mean, why wouldn’t he take her home … and he wouldn’t think to ring me, not that I would have heard it even if he had …’ she trails off before she hangs up without speaking. ‘Voicemail,’ she says, bitterly.

      Mr Abbott appears by her side and gives us both a tight smile, as we hear the sound of Laurel’s name being called in an announcement over a loudhailer.

      ‘Mrs Jessop.’ I point at Fran and he turns to her. ‘I’ve spoken to a few of the parents over at the bar area, but none of them have seen Laurel. We have implemented the first stages of our missing child process. All exits have been closed for the moment, and several people have already volunteered to start searching the immediate area for any sign of Laurel. What time did you last see her?’

      ‘I don’t know … the display had started, I think. Anna?’ Fran turns slightly, throwing the question to me, her eyes already looking past me, still searching the field for any glimpse of Laurel.

      I have no idea. I haven’t checked the time all evening, and my heart thuds in my chest, a frantic double beat that makes my breath stop in my throat for a moment.

      ‘I’m not sure,’ I say. ‘Just after the fireworks started?’ Mr Abbott flips his wrist and checks his watch.

      ‘So, she’s been missing for around half an hour now?’ He frowns, and I feel sick – I hadn’t realised how long it had been, it feels like seconds ago and a hundred years all at the same time since I last saw her. ‘OK, I think perhaps it’s time we made a phone call … I think we need to get the police involved.’

      I turn to Fran, and see my own fear written all over her face.

      ‘I’ll do it.’ She gulps hard, and slowly pulls her mobile out from her pocket again, tapping in the numbers with shaking fingers, her face illuminated by the glow of the screen.

      ‘Police, please. It’s my daughter …’ Her eyes find mine and I watch as she blinks slowly, pushing a thick, heavy tear out and over her pale cheek. ‘She’s gone … I can’t find her. I think someone has taken her.’

Chapter 2

      Pulses of blue light flash as the patrol cars pull up across the entrance gate to the field, illuminating the faces of the families still waiting to go home. There are three of them, parked haphazardly across the entrance to the field, blocking the way out. Just the sight of the blue lights, seeing the dark uniforms of the officers stepping out of the cars, is enough to make my nerves jitter and my hands shake. I’ve spent the last five years doing my best to avoid any interaction with the police, at all costs. I have no choice tonight, though. I watch as the taller of the first two officers leans down to listen as Caramel Blonde says something, pointing in our direction. While others have started searching the field for signs of Laurel, the head teacher has kept Fran and me here, not far from the bank of portaloos, up to our ankles in mud, telling us that we need to stay put to make it easier for the police to find us. And now, they are here.

      ‘Oh God.’ Fran lets out a little moan as two of the police officers make their way towards us, pressing her fingers up towards her mouth. ‘I didn’t think they’d actually come …’ She turns to me with a look of panic on her face. ‘I thought we’d find her – I thought we’d find her and there’d be no need for them.’

      ‘It’s OK,’ I say, wanting to reassure her but she’s usually so unapproachable that I find it hard to break the habit of keeping myself back a little.

      ‘Mrs Jessop?’

      Fran says nothing, and I give her a little nudge.

      ‘Yes,’ she says finally, turning a tear-stained face to the police officer in front of us. ‘That’s me.’

      ‘I’m DS Wright. You rang us – said you couldn’t find your daughter. Do you want to tell us what happened?’

      The woman’s voice is low, and I have to strain slightly to hear her. Fran starts to recount the evening, starting from when she arrived at the field. Laurel had been excited about the bonfire all week, it had been all she had talked about, and I’d ended up leaving the house with her half an hour before we’d needed to, arranging to meet Fran at the field so she could finish getting ready in peace. Laurel had tugged on my hand all the way along the lane to the entrance, not even stopping for Mr Snow’s house at the top of the pathway – an older gentleman, who was often in his garden in the afternoons, and Laurel liked to pause and chat to him for at least five minutes, seeing as he quite often had lollies in his pocket. I think about the way she rushed along the pavement, excitement making her squeeze my hand, before she pulled away, eager to be the first in the gate and I feel my heart constrict in my chest. What if she’d fallen? What if a car had come speeding round the corner and almost hit her? Would I have held her hand a bit tighter then? Would I have made sure she was in my eyeline for the entire evening, instead of assuming that she’d caught up with Fran?

      ‘… and she just wasn’t there, was she, Anna?’ I am shaken out of my thoughts by Fran’s voice speaking my name.

      ‘And you are?’

      ‘Anna.’ I look over at DS Wright’s colleague, a slight woman with short blonde hair and a smattering of freckles across her nose, who stands poised with a small black notebook, as Wright waits for my answer. ‘Anna Cox. I’m … I’m Laurel’s nanny.’

      ‘And you brought Laurel here, earlier this evening?’

      ‘Yes. СКАЧАТЬ