99 Red Balloons: A chillingly clever psychological thriller with a stomach-flipping twist
dressed Grace up like this? Have you got any more pictures of them? Surely this can’t be the only one of these two from the cameras in town.’
‘We’re working on it.’
‘Are we?’ he snaps. ‘Well this is no bloody use to me.’ He throws the iPad onto the table. ‘Get back to me when you’ve got more than this shit.’
I sit down next to Jamie at the table.
‘You okay, love?’
He nods. ‘Do you think …?’
‘What?’ I say, but he’s looking down at the floor. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I know it’s Friday tomorrow, but do you think it would be okay if I went back to school?’
I’ve been selfish keeping him here – making sure I can see him, so I know where he is. I should’ve realised that being here would be uncomfortable for him. His dad texted last night saying Jamie could stay there, which might not be a bad idea – if Neil didn’t work all the time.
I put my hand over his. ‘Of course it is.’
I stand outside the bedroom door. I hardly ever open it, but I feel as though Sarah’s telling me to go inside, to remember. I almost don’t want to. The everyday thoughts are bad enough – those pangs I feel in my chest when it catches me by surprise, when I think I’ve buried it enough to go about my day. But it never goes away. I’m meant to be sad. Nothing will change that.
Sarah and Zoe moved in with Ron and me six weeks before Zoe went missing. Missing – it sounds so flippant. She was taken from us, murdered, vanished. They are the dramatic words that should belong to Zoe, because we don’t know what happened to her. No, they’re not the only words. She was kind, even at five years old, so kind. Yes, she could be challenging, but only because she was so bright – not that we said so at the time.
Sarah’s husband, David, had been made redundant, but they’d been arguing long before that. She and Zoe moved in with us to give Sarah some space to think. But Zoe missed her dad.
Pull yourself together, Margaret. My mother’s voice is tingling in my ears.
Easier said than done, Mother.
I turn the handle and push the door open. I always leave the curtains tied, so it’s never dark. There’s not as much dust in here this time. What is dust, anyway? I once heard that it was about seventy per cent human skin. No one comes in here, so there can’t be much. I wonder how many of the little particles left behind are from Sarah and Zoe. I want to gather them all up and bring them to life.
Next to Sarah’s single bed is Zoe’s little camp bed. Her three teddies are still on her pillow. One of them, her favourite pink elephant, Wellie (she couldn’t say Nellie when she first got it, and it just stuck), is almost standing upright. The clothes they arrived with are still in suitcases under the bed. I couldn’t bear to unpack, to look at them, to touch them, to smell them. Mother had a point when she said that some things are best left buried – it feels too painful to unearth them.
I still wonder if things would’ve been different if Sarah hadn’t left David. They lived over twenty minutes away, so Zoe would never have gone to the sweet shop on the corner. I used to blame David for driving Sarah away, but that has lessened. I haven’t seen him in over ten years.
I don’t want to look to the left; I know what I’ll see. The mahogany chest of drawers that Ron and I bought from a car boot sale in Blackpool. On top of it will be a twelve by seven photograph of Zoe in a beautiful carved frame; there’ll be a box that contains a lock of Zoe’s hair from her first trip to the hairdresser’s; the candle, burned only once from her christening. There will be angels made from porcelain, plastic, wood; a stone Zoe picked from St Anne’s beach; a jar of perfume she made with roses and Ron’s aftershave; the conker she pickled in vinegar and made me bake for seven hours.
I know all those things are there and I can’t look at them.
I stroke the cover of Sarah’s bed – the place where my beautiful daughter died, and back out of the room.
Our secret has been easy to keep from Emma, as we’d only communicated through email. Emma, famously to everyone who knows her, never uses email outside of work, or Facebook, or any of that – she seldom even texts. She says she prefers to hear a person’s voice.
Matt hasn’t mentioned it since the text the other day. We can’t talk about it here. It wouldn’t just betray Emma, it would hurt Mum too. Somehow, I’ve got to access Jamie’s laptop and delete whatever we put online. But I can’t now – I’m frozen on the sofa. Matt is watching every news report about Grace – as is Mum, who’s sitting in the armchair opposite me. Sky News has been running almost twenty-four-hour coverage since she went missing on Monday. It’s now Friday. How has it got to the end of the week without her being found? Grace’s face is everywhere; if someone saw her on the street, would they recognise her? Perhaps they’d ignore the feeling that they’ve seen her somewhere before.
I try not to imagine what that man in the CCTV image wants with her – even though it might not even be her in the picture. But if it is, and their picture is everywhere – on television, in the papers – then the man won’t go out with her in public, he’ll hide her away. We might never see her again.
There are reporters in town, and camera crews everywhere – interviewing the police spokesperson and the residents. It’s like it’s not real, that it’s happening to someone else in a different town.
‘I need to go and look for her,’ says Matt. ‘I should be out there, helping everyone else. They probably think I don’t care. If I could just see a picture of this man’s face – the man who was holding her hand … then I’ll find him, find her.’ He keeps saying the same things. He walks over to Nadia, who’s perched on a dining chair near the door leading to the kitchen. She’s been here every day, from early morning until late at night. ‘Please let me help.’
Nadia has that same look on her face, the same tilt of the head she always uses to address him. ‘Nearly the whole town is looking for her, Matthew. The whole town. We need you to be here in case we find her.’
‘But what if it’s not her in that photograph – what if someone didn’t take her and she’s trapped somewhere? She’ll be waiting for me to come and get her. I’m letting her down just sitting here. What kind of fucking father am I, who just sits watching everyone else while they look for my daughter? It’s my job, I should be there. It’s been nearly four days. She’s going to be really cold.’ His voice is barely a whisper. Tears are streaming down his face. ‘It’s freezing at night.’
She guides him back to the sofa and I just watch, useless, an outsider looking in. It’s the first of October tomorrow; the temperature might start to fall. I can’t think about Grace being cold. I can’t think about her being scared. My fears and my hopes are intertwined: I hope someone has taken her, but that they’re looking after her, keeping her warm. It’s wishful thinking, but better than what my imagination is trying to show me: the worst possible things that don’t correspond with my lovely Grace. My thoughts trigger a rage I’ve never felt before. If anything happens to her, I will kill whoever did it with my bare hands.
The same thoughts go over and over in my head.
I