Say You're Sorry Part 35

He glances at the double doors and smiles sadly. "Don't judge him too harshly. He shattered his knees in a skydiving accident and the army pensioned him off. The pain doesn't go away."

"And your mum?"

"She left us years ago."

"Did she leave him or you?"

"Does it make a difference?"

A car horn sounds from outside. Theo is waiting.

Balancing on his wheels, Callum spins his chair and rolls away, his shoulders flexing like a boxer throwing punches at a bag. He has to turn to move backwards through the swinging doors.

The woman at the front desk yells goodbye and a chorus of other voices wish him good luck. Callum grins and waves back, sitting up straight in his wheelchair-a man with useless legs trying to stand as tall as his dreams.

Once Tash got an idea in her head she didn't let it go. Running away was her new project. Her eyes would light up from the inside when she made plans, talking about how we'd live in London and hang out with celebs.

Getting more and more excited, she'd spin sentences together each beginning with "and then."

"And then we'll find somewhere to live, not a squat, but somewhere nice in Fulham maybe, or Notting Hill. And then we'll get jobs. I could be an actress or a model. I don't mind getting my kit off. Just the top half like Katie Price, you know. Glamour shots. Lots of girls do that. They make loads."

"I think you've got to be eighteen to be a glamour model," I said.

"I look like I'm eighteen. I've got my fake ID."

"Some of those photographers can be real sleazebags."

"You'll come with me. We'll look after each other."

"Won't they come looking for us if they see you on page three of the Sun?"

"They'll have stopped looking for us by then. You can divorce your parents, you know. It's, like, legal and everything. You just get a lawyer and he goes to court and asks a judge.

"We'll get invited to all the cool clubs, no queuing, straight to the front of the line. And then we'll buy our own place. I'm gonna have a circular bed and automatic blinds that go up and down and I'm going to be friends with David Beckham and David Tennant and that guy from the Arctic Monkeys whose name I can't remember."

Tash had only been to London a few times, but she always sounded like an expert. She knew exactly where she wanted to live and how much it would cost and where all the celebrities lived. She was an expert on Katie Price, having read all her books and the magazine articles.

Our English teacher Miss McCrudden said that if Tash had studied her schoolbooks the way she read magazines she could be a genius. She was getting straight As anyway, so she couldn't really complain. I was the one who was dumber than a box of hair.

The only reason Lady Adolf was so nice to me is because Daddy organized for the school to get a cheap loan from his bank so they could build a new a.s.sembly hall. We had names for everyone at the school. The physics teacher Mr. Fielding we called Mr. Bean because he had this weird overbite and he drove a Mini. Miss Kane, the PE mistress, was called Miss Trunchbull because she used to be a javelin thrower. (If you haven't read Matilda, you won't know what that means.) Everybody at school knew that Miss Trunchbull was having a fling with Mr. Bean. We used to see them flirting with each other in the playground and Tash saw them kissing in the alcove near the a.s.sembly hall. That's when she came up with a cunning plan. She put a digital recorder on the windowsill of the PE staffroom. It was mid-July and the window was open.

Listening to the recording afterwards, you could easily hear what they were doing. Mr. Bean, who has this lisp, was going, "Oh, oh, yeth, yeth, yeth," while Miss Trunchbull was so loud we couldn't tell if she was getting s.h.a.gged or tortured.

That should have been the end of it-a good laugh and no harm done-but then Miss Trunchbull made fun of Tash in PE cla.s.s because she wouldn't do a cartwheel, saying she was a prima donna. Tash's period had started unexpectedly and her knickers were stained, which is why she wouldn't do the cartwheel.

After that Tash uploaded the audio onto a YouTube post which included photographs of Mr. Bean and Miss Trunchbull taken from the school website.

I warned her. She wouldn't listen.

The school hired these computer geeks to track down the person who uploaded the files. Even though Tash took it down straight away, they still kept looking. It took them three days to find her and she was hauled into the headmistress's office where she took the blame.

Mr. Bean was there, his face bunched in fury. "Look at her eyes," he said. "She's high as a kite."

Lady Adolf tut-tutted. "Have you been taking drugs, Tash?"

"No."

"You're lying."

"I'm not."

Denying a lie made it no less a lie, according to Lady Adolf. I remember wondering if admitting a truth would make it more of a truth.

She had made up her mind. Tash wasn't welcome at the school any more, she said.

Welcome? When was she ever welcome!

29.

For the past three hours I've been reading Piper's stories and poems. Her handwriting is full of loops and swirls, punctuated by drawings, doodles and emoticons. At times I feel like I'm eavesdropping on my own daughter's life, yet I don't feel guilty. Maybe I'll learn something. Understand more.

Most of the entries are undated, but I can see how they grew messier and more secretive in the months before she disappeared. There are code words that I don't understand and nicknames for people. One of her teachers is "Mr. Bean" and another "Miss Trunchbull."

She writes letters to herself and to her parents, a lot of them full of angst and anger.

Dear beautiful Daddy and the ice maiden, By the time you find this letter I will be gone. Maybe I'll have killed myself. Maybe I'm too hopeless to do that properly. I mess everything else up. Either way, I'll no longer be your problem. You should be happy now, Mum. You'll have a perfect daughter in Phoebe and a beautiful little boy and the ugly one will no longer mess up the family photographs or get in the way.

I used to think I was adopted. I still do. Then you had a proper baby and realized that I didn't fit in with your perfect family. Maybe you should have given me back to the agency when you had the chance.

I think it's best you forget me. Please look after Phoebe and Ben. Tell them I love them.

I am sorry but goodbye.

As always, Piper.

Another journal entry begins on Piper's fourteenth birthday, after what she describes as "the worst year of my life."

Sometimes I feel that there is no point my living if I'm not going to be anyone. I'd hate so much to be just an ordinary n.o.body. I can't imagine having a quiet life and then fading away, not to be remembered. The other day I read this: "You're not a child any more when you have discovered that childhood is the best time of your life."

If that's true then pa.s.s me the razor blades.

Reading more of the pages, I discover Piper's likes and dislikes. Favorite films. Worst fas.h.i.+on crimes (gypsy skirts and black mesh vests). Coolest bands. Possible careers. "Reasons to hate my mother." "Why little sisters should be boiled in oil." Occasionally I laugh out loud at some of her observations-a bad haircut makes her look like "a startled hamster," while some boy she met at junior athletics has "an IQ two points lower than a rock."

Wedged in the pages of one journal I find a strip of pa.s.sport-sized photographs. Piper and Tash are sitting on each other's laps in a photo booth, pulling faces at the camera, laughing behind smears of crimson lipstick.

It's the only photograph that I've seen of Piper in which she doesn't look self-conscious. Instead, she's relaxed and reveling in the moment, completely happy.

Glancing at the pile of journals, I'm still no closer to uncovering her secret life. Condoms were found in Tash's room, along with two cannabis cigarettes. She had older boyfriends and was s.e.xually active. She went to parties and dabbled in drugs. Piper knew these things, but didn't write about them.

Villages like Bingham are often deceptive. Viewed as rural idylls and perfect places to raise families. People get nostalgic about them, harking back to bygone days, imagining a world of picket fences, corner pubs and village bobbies.

The reality is sometimes very different. Bigger towns expand, swallowing up villages, turning them into satellite suburbs or commuter belts. Areas become run down. Pockets of poverty emerge. Unemployment. Domestic violence. Boredom.

Teenagers feel it most. Too young to drink or to drive, without cinemas, shops or youth centers, they find other amus.e.m.e.nts, cras.h.i.+ng parties and experimenting with s.e.x, soft drugs and alcohol. Young girls like Natasha are drawn to older men. Boys their own age are slower, shyer, less worldly, whereas older men have cars and money to splash around on restaurants and nice clothes. The girls are excited by the fact that a grown man might be interested in them, but are too young to understand the danger of stoking a man's desire.

At some point I fall asleep fully clothed, a journal open on my chest. A phone enters my dreams. My mobile. Buzzing. A name on the screen: Victoria Naparstek.

She speaks before I can utter a word, yelling down the line.

"Please, please help me! They're outside!"

I can hear shouting in the background.

"Where are you?"

"At Augie's house... there are people outside... they want to kill him. They're saying they're going to burn him out."

"Where are the police?"

"I called them."

"What about Augie?"

"He's here... with his mother. They're scared. I'm scared."

"Are the doors and windows locked?"

"Yes."

"OK, stay away from them. I'm coming."

Ruiz isn't answering his phone. I leave a voicemail and juggle my shoes and socks as I run for the lift, taking it downstairs. The streets are deserted. Christmas lights twinkle and blink from shop windows and behind net curtains.

Jumping red lights at empty intersections and swerving around trucks gritting the roads, I reach the house in less than fifteen minutes. There must be fifty people outside, spilling across the footpath and gra.s.s verge onto the normally quiet street. More cars are arriving.

A dozen police officers are lined up in front of the two-story house. Outnumbered. Nervous. They're yelling at people to go home but the protest has already gained too much momentum. Hayden McBain is at the center of the crowd. His uncle is at his shoulder.

"He's a child-killer," yells Vic McBain. "And we don't want him here! There are kiddies in this street. We don't want that evil pervert touching them. This is our town. These are our kids."

The crowd punctuate each statement with a cheer and then begin to chant.

"Sc.u.m! Sc.u.m! Sc.u.m! Sc.u.m!"

Fighting my way to the front, I recognize one of the constables. Yelling above the noise.

"Where are the rest of the police?"

"They're coming."

"Can I go inside?"

He nods and opens the gate. Victoria answers the door and closes it quickly. Relief in her hug. Fear. I glance along the hallway and see Augie, peering from the kitchen, half hidden behind the door frame. His mother is next to him, wearing her dressing gown, her hair unbrushed and skin looking almost jaundiced.

"Is everyone OK?"

They nod.

Augie has his mother's dark solemn eyes but his gaze, even at its steadiest, keeps pulling distractedly to one side. His hands are no longer bandaged, but the skin looks pink and painful, smothered in cream.

From outside the chants are growing louder. Going to the front room, I open the curtain a crack. More police have arrived, linking arms to form a human chain, but they're easily outnumbered. A bottle explodes on the tarmac, scattering diamonds of green gla.s.s.

Joining the others in the kitchen, I try to calm their nerves. "How about a cup of tea."

Victoria fills the kettle.

"Why can't they just leave us alone?" asks Mrs. Shaw.

"They're angry at me," says Augie.

Victoria shakes her head. "It's not your fault."

"Whose fault is it?"

"You should never have gone to that farmhouse," says his mother. "You should have stayed away from those people."

Tightening her robe, she looks through the pantry, trying to find a packet of biscuits. "I know I had some," she says. And then to Augie, "Did you eat the biscuits?"

He lowers his head.

More police have arrived, but so have more protesters. Bottles and bricks are being thrown. Bodies forced back. Regrouping. Coming again. Each chant of "sc.u.m" makes Augie flinch. He presses his hands to his ears, trying to block the sound. He whispers in a little boy voice, "It's my fault. I couldn't save them."

"Who couldn't you save?" I ask.

"All of them." He puts his finger to his forehead, corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it as if drilling into his skull. "I couldn't save Mrs. Heyman from the fire. I couldn't save my brother. I couldn't save the girl."

"Natasha?"

"The snowman took her."

"Why do you call him the snowman?"