looked at a cat across the road. I reached out and pinched her arm. She whimpered, tears forming in her eyes. I pulled away as they turned back round, and smiled when I saw I had left a mark.
I stand by the staircase in our small detached house, watching them, wondering why, if we are so similar, if we are nearly the same person, why I’m not wanted and loved and tickled and poked? Why am I not as special as Angel Mary? I watch them, their happiness drowning me, wondering what makes me different. What makes me the oddity?
Monday 2 January, 1984
I run my fingers down her blonde braid as she plays with a doll, permanent grin etched on her face, enjoying the pull and tug of my fingers. I watch her, studying her mannerisms, her expressions, the way she laughs, the way she sticks her thumb in her mouth and sucks – as if on a lolly – when she is thinking, the way a frown creases her forehead when confused. Mother is cooking in the kitchen, stirring soup, tapping her nails on the worktop. Do you know, I lay awake last night imagining ripping them off, prising her nail away from her skin and taking it between my teeth, feeling the soft shell of the varnish crumble in my mouth. When I finally went to sleep, it was to the sweep of silence in my mind, not to the tap-tap-tapping of her nails.
Father is beside her, turning three times a minute to check on us – or rather, on Mary, his eyes ever so slightly concerned as they alight on me, pulling at her hair. Gently though Father, gently.
Our house is a two-up, two-down box with an open-plan living area and a garden roughly the size of a postage stamp, which leads on to the quiet street beyond. In the evenings, children and teenagers bundle on the kerb, kicking footballs, thinking themselves as good as George Best, skittering when a car honks its horn and goes on its way. Girls sit in groups, legs crossed, giving one another tutorials on the application of the latest make-up. Mothers slave away indoors, cooking chicken, cursing their husbands. Fathers combat the stress of their wives with a steady flow of alcohol down the pub, and the elderly residents of our street enjoy the comings and goings with watchful eyes, like owls from a tree. The young yearn to be older and the elderly yearn to be younger. A strange sort of world we live in.
The neighbours complain that their similarly built houses are not big enough for the relatives who come and stay at Christmas and New Year. But we do not share their problem. I have never told you this although you have asked plenty of times. Eluding and sidestepping questions is easy once you have become practised at it. We are a family of three – the quandary that is me somewhere within it – and only three. Our relatives are dead. ‘Nice and cosy in their graves,’ as Mother likes to say, sarcasm lacing her words, as if they chose to die just to spite her and dodge babysitting duties.
At Christmas, as our neighbours celebrate, planting kisses, administering hugs, proffering gifts, we sit around Mary, me slightly back where Father has patted the floor. We watch her rip open her presents, Mother holding Father’s hand. When it is time for them to exchange gifts, they tentatively pass them over. A laugh. A nervous smile. A kiss. An ‘Oh, how lovely!’ A pat on the arm or shoulder, all before the presents are silently nudged to the back.
Father swivels on his heels, penetrating eyes watching my hand as it brushes across Mary’s cheek. ‘Careful. Don’t want to catch your sister now, do we?’ He persuades a smile onto his twitching lips, brow furrowing. I look up at him and shake my head.
‘No, Daddy.’
He gives a little nod and turns around to help Mother with the soup. Mary giggles as I twirl her braids round my finger. Her Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah braids, I call them. She grins up and squeals ‘Hummy’. Her name for me. I nod and study her pink lips, pulled back to reveal her baby teeth.
That sweet smile slips as I lean back and pull her braids. And it keeps on slipping until tears shimmer down her skin and her cheeks bloom red as she screams. And even then, I keep on pulling.
John
Tuesday 1 December, 2015
Two Weeks Later
He runs his finger across the photograph in what is nearly a caress. He scans the child’s face, and it is as if a map has been drawn across it, the red lines navigating the black and blue bruises, traversing the blotchy skin and the swollen, bloodshot eyes as if to reach some unknown destination. He touches the girl’s face, hovering over her parted lips where blood has dribbled down and dried on her chin. She peers up at him, a silent plea in her eyes.
He feels a body brush past him and then hears a muffled gasp somewhere off to his right. He catches Jules just as she slips to the ground and sits her on the staircase. She weeps into her hands, hiding her eyes from the photo, as if it will burn itself onto her retinas. She can’t bear to see it and yet he can’t take his eyes off it. He knows it will come; within minutes an avalanche of emotion, bearing an almost unimaginable force, comes crashing into him. Turning the photo, he reads the inscription and his hand begins to tremble. His wife, sensing the change in the air, glances up at him, then down at the photo, hands falling to her swollen stomach as if to protect her baby from the photo and the assailant who has suddenly marched into their lives. She takes a ragged breath and stares at the typed message on the back, Bonnie’s scrawl signing it off with her name.
Do you remember that day in 1992, John? Do you remember what happened?
John swipes his thumb across the six-year-old girl’s writing and shuffles to the sideboard, feeling as if he is wading through mud. He grabs the phone and dials.
One… two… three…
Four… five… six…
He counts the seconds until the policewoman answers and he explains what’s happened in dull tones.
And then it comes. He covers his weeping eyes as his legs give way and the photo of his daughter flutters to the ground.
John watches Detective Chief Inspector Alice Munroe gently deposit the photo in a clear bag, her gloved hands delicately touching its edges. She tells him it will be sent off and subjected to a forensic examination, as will the envelope, to see if any fingerprints or DNA (aside from their own) can be found. But he doubts it. He doubts this person would be so foolish.
Since the DCI’s arrival and her cool, professional introduction, he has been bombarded with questions about his past. What happened to him in 1992? What does he remember? Does he have any idea who this person is? Has anyone ever expressed any ill feeling towards him? What was his childhood like? Who are his parents? Who were his close friends growing up? Has he ever had any enemies?
He answers all their questions patiently, a sickness in his stomach threatening to overpower him. Jules sits beside him during his interrogation, rubbing her bump with her left hand, her right entwined in John’s. A silent support.
DCI Alice Munroe explains what will happen in the following days and the severity of their situation. But despite trying to digest every word, the flurry of useless sentences pass over his head. In one ear and out the other. Things like this don’t happen. Not to him. His family. This kind of thing belongs on the television, on the radio, in the newspaper. Local girl missing. Police suspect kidnapping. John blanches at that word. Kidnapping. His daughter. His sweet, kind, funny little girl. Gone. Taken. He rubs his neck, a tick that has, despite his mother’s incessant correction, followed him doggedly into his thirties. His neck turns red and blotchy as he rubs it, working the tension and panic through his fingers.
Munroe flicks her eyes to his hands, taking note. He doubts anything goes unnoticed. She runs her nail along the inside of her little finger – an exercise to help her concentrate perhaps – legs crossed, back straight, expression professionally cool. As if this sort of thing happens every day. It probably does, he supposes. For her. In his small lounge, on the tired, sagging sofa, two realities converge. One that walks on the periphery of loss and fear and devastation constantly; the other residing firmly