Girl, Missing (17 page)

‘Everyone calm down,' Sam said. ‘Lauren, I know this is hard, but you have to face what they've done. They don't deserve to see you.'

‘And what about me?' I shrieked. ‘Stuck here for ever. I hate it here. I hate it. I hate it.'

I turned and ran up the stairs. I could hear Annie
pounding after me, Sam calling her to come back. I got to my room and slammed the door.

But there was no lock. A few seconds later Annie barged in.

‘Get out,' I yelled.

‘No.' Her eyes narrowed.

I swore at her.

She marched across to the bed and yanked on my arm.

‘How dare you treat me like this,' she yelled, pulling me upright. Her face was completely red, her eyeballs bulging with fury. ‘I have done nothing but tiptoe around you since you got here. I love you so, so much and you won't even let me in.'

‘You don't love me,' I screamed. ‘You don't even know me.'

We stood there, face to face, glaring at each other. I waited, hoping she would just walk away and leave me alone.

But instead she let out a long, slow sigh. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I shouldn't have shouted.' She paused. ‘There's something I'd like to show you – please?'

Thrown by her change of tone, I followed her sulkily into one of the guest rooms. Annie walked over to a tall cupboard in the corner and opened the door.

‘Those eleven years, while your Mom and Dad were enjoying you, I was doing this.'

I peered into the cupboard. It was overflowing with files and boxes of papers. Stacks of yellowing newspaper clippings and internet print-outs were piled on the shelves.

Annie reached in and grabbed a file at random. She pushed it towards me. I read the peeling sticky label:
Possible sightings of Martha
. It was at least three centimetres thick.

‘Looking for you was all I did.' Annie said. ‘I was obsessed. I neglected Shelby. I neglected Sam. We even split up for a while. In the end everyone was telling me to let go, that you weren't coming back. But I never gave up.' She turned to me. ‘Maybe you're angry with us because you think we didn't try hard enough to find you?'

‘No,' I said, honestly. ‘I never thought about it like that. I mean, I know it must have been hard not knowing but—'

‘Hard?' Annie stared at me. ‘I was terrified the whole time. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I stopped
living
. Wherever I went I saw you. Whatever I did, nothing ever took away the terrible guilt that I hadn't protected you properly, that day.' Her lip trembled. ‘The terrible fear.'

‘But you can't punish my mum and dad for that.' Tears pricked at my eyes. ‘They were desperate for a child. When they paid Sonia all that money, they didn't know I wasn't hers.'

Annie ran her hand through her hair. ‘Hasn't it occurred
to you that if nobody was prepared to pay people like Sonia Holtwood the huge amounts of money they want, they'd have no incentive to steal children and sell them?'

She walked out of the room.

I sat down on the floor, stunned. I'd never thought about what Mum and Dad had done like that. A great wave of misery welled up through me. I put my face in my hands. Why was all this happening to me? It wasn't fair.

After a few minutes I felt a little hand patting my back.

I looked up. It was Madison. Her chocolately eyes were round with concern. ‘Hey, Lauren,' she said.

She put her arms around me and hugged me. It was the first proper human contact I'd had in a fortnight. I squeezed her back, tightly.

‘I brought something to show you,' she said, pointing to a slim album on the floor beside her.

I sniffed and tried to smile at her. ‘What's that?' I said.

‘My special photo album,' she said. ‘Pictures of you. And some of me. D'you want to see?'

I nodded, wiping my face. Madison snuggled next to me on the floor and we looked through the album together.

The first few pages were all baby photos marked with my name and the date. I stared at them, my eyes filling with tears again. Here was the life I had lost. The life I had so longed to know about back in London.

‘I wanted to show you earlier,' Madison explained.
‘Mommy said I should wait until you were ready. Like she's waiting for you to meet Gramps and Granma. But I thought you'd like them. Look.'

She turned a few pages to another set of baby pictures. The lighting and clothes were different, but otherwise I looked similar – the same chubby face and brown hair. Wait. I looked more closely. ‘I've got brown eyes in these,' I said.

Madison giggled. ‘That's me. We look alike, don't we?' she said proudly. ‘Everyone says we look like Daddy too.'

I looked at her. I could see the similarity between Madi and Sam. The same turned-up nose and smooth, olive skin. Did I look like them too?

I turned another page. This set of pictures showed Madison – no, this was me again – on a beach. I looked about three. There was a red plastic bucket in my hand.

It jogged something in my memory. From my hypnotherapy with Carla. ‘My bucket,' I said, my heart suddenly beating fast. ‘On the beach.'
That was where I played Hide and Seek with my mother. With Annie
.

Madison nodded. ‘It's near here – Long Mile Beach. It's where you went missing. Mommy told me.'

She pointed to the bottom of the page.

I gasped. It was the woman from my memory. Her eyes sparkling, her arms wrapped around me.

‘There's Mommy,' Madison said. ‘Wasn't she pretty?'

I stared at the picture. It was weird, seeing the face outside my own head. Unreal, somehow. I tried to match the beautiful woman I was looking at with the reality of Annie's strained, lined face. The similarity was there. I could see that now, especially round the eyes. But, eleven years on, Annie looked like an old woman. No. Not exactly older. More like the ghost of the woman in the picture.

‘Mommy said she went sad when you went away,' Madison said, tracing her finger down the picture. ‘Why isn't she happy, now you're back?'

30

From the heart

The texts started the very next day.

I was trying out some new Ultra Babe eyeshadow (Emerald Shimmer, if you're interested) in the big family bathroom next to my bedroom.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Madison peering round the door. I pretended not to notice her, expecting her to jump out at me any moment.
Surprise!
But all of a sudden she spun round, so she was facing into the corridor.

Two seconds later I realised why.

Shelby was there. She didn't notice me inside by the sink, but I could see the back of her yellow head as she moved closer to Madison in the doorway.

‘
Pee-oo
, what's that smell?' Shelby said.

From all the giggling that followed I guessed she was with some of her snotty schoolfriends. One or two girls often came home with her after school. They'd spend hours prattling on about the boys they fancied or the latest lip injection they were trying to persuade their parents to let them have.

‘
Pee-oo
, that smell's disgusting,' Shelby's voice rose in mock-horror.

More giggling. I shifted a little so I could see more clearly. Shelby was standing side-on to me now, holding her nose. Madison was shrunk up against the door jamb. There was this awful, blank look on her face. As if she was trying to pretend she wasn't there.

I froze, my eyeshadow brush still in my hand.

And then, before I could do or say anything, Shelby reached out and lifted Madison's little top. She lifted it right up, so I could see the whole of Madison's flat, white little belly. There was a cluster of little bruises down Madison's side. Some were a dark purple, others more faded and greeny-yellow.

‘Shitty, smelly girls get punished,' Shelby sneered.

I held my breath, unable to believe what I was seeing.

In a single, deliberate movement, Shelby leaned across and twisted a knot of flesh just under Madison's ribs.

Madison flinched. Tried to pull away. But Shelby was too strong.

In one long stride I was there. I shoved Shelby in the chest. She stumbled back across the corridor, crashing into one of her stupid friends.

‘Stay away from her,' I hissed. ‘Or I'll make you sorry.'

I caught a flash of the friend, her mouth wide open. And Shelby herself, her eyes glinting like bullets.

Then I dragged Madison back into the bathroom and slammed the door shut.

I was breathing heavily, my hands shaking with fury. I looked down at Madison. She was leaning against the wall, her face half-turned away from me. Her neck and cheeks burned red.

I touched her shoulder. ‘Are you OK?'

She stiffened, pulled away a little. I was itching to drag her downstairs and show Annie and Sam what Shelby had done – had clearly been doing for some time.
Evil, evil cow
. But I could see that kind of attention was the last thing Madison wanted.

‘If she ever tries anything like that again you tell me.'

Madison just stood there, rigid as a pencil, her face convulsed with shame.

I went back to the sink. The eyeshadow brush was still clutched in my hand. My eye fell on the little pad of eyeshadow I'd been trying out earlier. I held it out to Madison.

‘Would you like to try some on?'

She gave me the tiniest of nods.

I sat on the edge of the tub and scooped some of the glittery green powder onto the tiny padded stick. I held it up.

‘This colour will go really well with your eyes,' I said. ‘You'll look like a movie star.'

Madison took a step towards me. She watched the stick as I brought it up to her face. ‘Close your eyes,' I said.

She did.

I smeared a little of the powder on each lid. ‘Don't want to put on too much, though,' I chatted, ‘or you'll look like Mrs Shrek.'

Madison giggled.

I added a dab of mascara after the eyeshadow. Then a slash of pale-pink lipstick. ‘You're so pretty,' I said. ‘In a few years you'll be fighting off all the boys in your class.'

Madison made a face. ‘Boys suck,' she said.

I grinned at her, then spun her round so she could see herself in the mirror.

She didn't say anything, but this little smile crept across her mouth.

‘Hey, let me take a video.' I whipped out my phone. ‘Pose.'

Madison went through her repertoire of acting faces. Happy. Sad. Cross. Scared. And, her
pièce de resistance,
Madly in Love.

We both laughed. I felt a surge of love for her as she smoothed out her long hair and scampered out of the bathroom. Poor little kid. What chance did she have, with totally screwed-up parents and a sister like Shelby?

My phone beeped as I was packing up my make-up things into the cute little bag I'd bought the day before.

I flicked it open, thinking it was probably Jam, texting just before he went to bed.

I opened the text, totally unprepared for what I was about to see. One line. Three words.

SAY NOTHING BITCH

My breath caught in my throat.

Shelby. It had to be. I thought about marching into her room and slapping her silly face.

My heart pounded with fear. Anger.

Then I decided she wasn't worth it.

I deleted the message and slipped the phone back in my pocket. Apart from my hand shaking a bit, anyone watching wouldn't even have thought I was bothered.

31

The lecture

I stopped talking to Shelby altogether and found even more excuses to avoid being near Annie. When I wasn't phoning Jam, or Mum and Dad's lawyer, I spent most of my time on the
Josephine May
with Sam and Madison.

One day, Sam took me to meet his parents. Just me and him. I was dead scared beforehand. I mean, a few of Sam and Annie's friends had popped in and out of the house before now – they all gave me these guarded smiles, like I was some kind of bomb that might blow up in their faces. I didn't care about them. But Sam's parents were my grandparents. My family.

Though I wouldn't have admitted it to Sam or Annie, I wanted to meet them. I wanted to know what they were like.

‘Annie doesn't think we should push things,' Sam said. ‘But your Granma and Gramps are desperate to see you.'

They lived in this big seafront apartment near the marina. It was all on one level because Sam's dad was in a wheelchair. Apparently he'd had a stroke two years ago. When
I heard this, I got even more nervous. Suppose he couldn't talk properly? Suppose he looked weird?

In the end it was fine. He answered the door in his wheelchair and had me bend down to kiss his cheek.

‘You sure turned out pretty.' His eyes twinkled. ‘I'm your Gramps.'

I smiled. He looked just like Sam, only with grey hair and wrinkles. And he didn't look ill at all, except for maybe the way his right eye and right side of his mouth drooped down a bit.

Sam's dad backed up his chair and wheeled it fast across the big wooden hallway. He burst through the door at the far end.

‘Gloria,' he yelled. ‘They're here.'

‘Thinks he's driving a racing car.' Sam shook his head, then walked after his dad.

I followed more slowly, suddenly shy of meeting his mum. She emerged through the door just as Sam reached it. She hugged him. ‘Sammy,' she said. ‘Thank you for bringing her.'

She peered over Sam's shoulder at me. She was tall, with the same nose as Sam and Madi, and dressed in an elegant, pale-green twin-set.

I stood in the large hallway while she disentangled herself from Sam. Her heels clacked against the wooden floor as she walked over. She stared at me for a few seconds. I felt this stirring of memory – like when I'd
looked at Baby Rabbit. Her eyes were dark brown, deep and intelligent.

‘You remember me, don't you?' she said.

She moved closer and pulled me into a hug. It was so quick I didn't even have time to tense up. And then I breathed in. A deep whiff of a flowery scent. And suddenly I was taken right back to being a little girl again. It was overpowering. Like my memory of the woman on the beach.