John looks at Munroe and wonders how she bears this every day. He can’t tell if she has children but, judging from the pale skin peeping out from underneath her wedding band, he guesses she has been married for many years. He silently asks her questions in his mind. Do you have children? Do you have a daughter? How would you feel if she had been taken? What if it was your fault?
He pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut to quell any more tears. The questions have penetrated and sieved through nearly every inch of his past. All his memories have been invaded and examined. Albums from his childhood, given to him by his parents, have been bagged and taken away; any letters, written or received, have met a similar fate. They have asked him who his friends are. For his agent’s and publisher’s details. If he has ever been involved in any fights, brushes with the law. No, he tells them. No, no, no. The longer the DCI and her colleagues sit in his lounge, the more personal the questions become. When did he and Jules meet? When were they married? Were there ever any jealous girlfriends? Boyfriends? Did he ever notice anyone watching him, studying him? Again, he answers in the negative. They seem surprised at how cooperative he is, and he wonders if they usually have to tease answers out of people, soothe their grief and trick them to get at the truth. But everything he remembers, he offers them. Every morsel of his past, he gives them to study. They are his only hope. Bonnie’s only hope.
‘You’ll be provided with an FLO – Family Liaison Officer – to help in any way, support you, talk through the situation, and explain where we are with the investigation. But first, as there’s a suggestion you and your wife might be in danger, we’d like to relocate you.’ She looks at them both, studying their reactions.
They nod but neither one of them cares. John wraps his arm round Jules, wondering for the umpteenth time why anyone would target them, target Bonnie. ‘Because of you,’ a small voice in his mind whispers. ‘Because of you.’ But why? He’d had a normal childhood. Been a good boy. Done his chores, spent time with his friends, done well in school. Said please and thank you. Hadn’t hurt or upset anyone. He’d never wanted to. He isn’t a bad person. Or perhaps he is… His daughter is a ‘hostage’ – at least that’s what the police are calling her. His little girl. Alone. Frightened. And he is helpless. Useless. It is his own fault.
Jules squeezes his hand. Suddenly he is overwhelmed by the urge to hold her. When Munroe and her colleagues eventually leave, they climb the staircase, each step a hardship, each breath a toil, to their daughter’s room. There isn’t enough space for them to lie side by side on Bonnie’s small bed so John leans back on the headrest and holds Jules to his chest, and she cradles their unborn baby. They count the stars they helped Bonnie glue to the ceiling over a month ago and bring forth her smiling face and the sound of her laughter as they danced beneath them.
Wednesday 2 December, 2015
John gazes at the photographs spread across the wall. Left to right, past to present, they follow Bonnie’s life. From the day she was born, bundled up in a pink blanket in Jules’s arms, to last week, when she lost her first tooth; in the picture she holds it proudly up to the camera, excitement written across her face. After the picture was taken she’d run to his study and deposited the tooth safely in the tin she kept under his desk. Throughout the day, she’d crept back to check her trophy was still there. He’d tried to tell her the fairy only came at night when she was asleep but curiosity consistently won out. The next day, she’d skipped around the house with her pound coin clutched tightly in her fist, showing them, then, moments later, showing them again.
He sits at his desk now and wonders why his daughter has been taken from them. Is it retribution for some wrongdoing? Is it a past mistake come back to haunt him? Is he being made to repent? Useless thoughts buzz around his head. Peering underneath his desk, he looks at the debris of a life Bonnie built one morning when she came down from her bedroom. A pile of blankets folded neatly where his feet are supposed to go (since she’d made the move into his study, he’d sat slightly sideways or with the laptop perched on his knee), Barbie dolls scattered across it, stuffed bears and boxes of puzzles stacked tidily to the side. Along with the tin she kept for ‘special treasures’ are a notebook, pencil case, the Nintendo DS she only played with when she was bored, and a small child’s toy designed to look like a laptop. When he wrote longhand, she copied him, pencil finding its way to her mouth, eyes thoughtfully rolled up to the ceiling. When he typed out his novels on the laptop, she settled her pink one on her lap and typed out hers. The most recent being about a mole having a tea party with his friends.
John looks at her ‘cosy corner’, as he and Jules call it, leaning forward and snatching the tin from its perch. It was a sample tin they’d got when painting her room over two years ago. She’d insisted on keeping it, despite the dried paint running down the edges. He pops the lid off and fishes out its contents: three pebbles with heart-shaped marks on them, two neatly folded notes he’d given her that simply read ‘I love you’, and the necklace he and Jules presented to her on her fifth birthday. He runs his finger over the small pendant, which reads ‘Protagonist’. She had been overjoyed when she unwrapped it. But unlike him at her age, she’d done so with care, folding, easing off the strips of tape, pulling out the black box with velvet trimming and slowly peering inside, as if each moment was one to savour.
He rips a sheet of paper from his notebook and carefully writes ‘I love you’ in his neatest handwriting, popping it in the tin for when she returns.
‘We’re going to find her. We’re going to find her.’ He repeats the mantra over and over, as he had to Jules last night before they eventually slipped away from visions of her torture to the murky nightmares of it instead. He repeats it until his mouth grows dry and his voice begins to catch in his throat.
A blanket, pencils, a sheaf of paper… Bonnie’s was a world you’d never want to leave. Simple and easy. They’d spent hours in his study together. Sometimes they wrote to music, usually just to silence. When she was bursting with energy, he abandoned his laptop screen to dance round the room with her. When she was exhausted and fell asleep curled up under his desk, he gently pulled her onto his lap, a tiny pool of dribble marking his shirt. If she was upset, he read a suitable chapter from his novel and gradually her tears dried. And if that didn’t work, he folded her in his arms and span them round on his chair until they were both laughing.
John turns and smiles at Jules as she walks into the room, carrying two plates of sandwiches. Her red cheeks are marred by tracks of pale skin marching down her face, eyes swollen and rimmed with black shadows. She puts the plates on the desk and sits on his lap, head resting in the exact same place Bonnie’s had. He wraps his arms around her waist and kisses her. The hours will pass with them still in this position, the lethargy of shock and fear at this new tide of events making them feel as if they have been dunked in clay and left to slowly dry in the sun.
John swivels the chair round so they can look at the photos. Bonnie’s Wall, he calls it. His eyes are drawn to a photo off to the side. Bonnie is being cradled in Don’s arms, thumb stuck between her lips, face flushed from their day at the zoo. Don, wearing a Donald Duck cap, smiles tenderly down at her, eyes glued to her small face. The picture was taken two years ago, after John’s novel had won an award for crime and thriller novel of the year. And now he wishes he’d never taken it, never put it on the wall, because it brings his thoughts full circle to his and Jules’s failure, to the day Bonnie dropped out of their lives. She had been missing four days before they received that photo through the letterbox.
He and Jules were arguing in the kitchen at the time. He’d just received a text from his uncle about visiting in a few weeks. Jules was adamant he shouldn’t come, shouting that he was a creep. John was stuck in the middle – wedged would be a better word – between his wife and his uncle, two halves of his family. He could faintly remember hearing Bonnie giggle in the other room over something Don said.
‘Daddy, Mummy, Uncle Duck’s on the telly! He’s on the telly!’ She squealed in excitement.
And then Don’s voice. ‘Guys, I’m famous. I’m famous—’ He was cut off when Bonnie laughed – John assumed because Don tickled her. ‘Quack! Quuuaaack!’