Little One Read online

  He smiled. “No. But that’s fine. Like I said, we prefer to worship our own way.” He leaned forward and turned on the radio, turning up the volume as a not-so-subtle hint. “You’re out early in the mornings.”

  “It’s my morning ritual,” Fran said, raising her voice above the music. “A run, a shower, then breakfast.”

  “Ever since your baby died.” He said the words as fact, not as a question. Fran turned her head sharply in his direction, which sent a shooting pain up her spine. He lowered the volume. “Sorry. That wasn’t tactful. It’s just that I know pain and what it does to someone. When I was ten, my younger brother fell into a river and drowned. He was five. Mom didn’t take it well. She was gone at first. Not physically.” He shook his head. “If you’ve ever known someone with dementia, you might’ve seen it. The emptiness. Eyes that no longer see what’s in front of them. Once that went away, she found obsessions. Food first, then drink, then diets, then gardening. They lasted months, sometimes years.” He pulled the car over to the kerb, right outside Fran’s house. He hadn’t needed a single direction. “Well, I hope your ankle is okay. Looks like you might have sprained it.”

  Fran’s hand hovered over the door handle. She was in a stupor. “Thank you for the lift.”

  Elijah said one last thing as she left the vehicle. “Not all of her came back, you know. My mother. A part of her died when Johnny died.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Elijah was right about Fran’s ankle, she had sprained it, as well as bruising her back. For a week, Adrian propped her up with cushions on the sofa, stacked books up on the coffee table and brought through sandwiches and cups of tea. They ate their suppers on their laps, Fran’s leg resting on a footstool. For much of the time she was alone while Adrian read in his study or pottered around in the garden. That wasn’t unusual for them, they both enjoyed solitude. But Fran couldn’t concentrate on the books he’d left, nor could she find herself engrossed in the latest TV crime drama. She simply stewed. In her thoughts, in her pain, in her sense of guilt. It had been five years since Chloe’s death, and she still wasn’t over it. Five years of nightmares, running, gardening, obsessions just like Elijah’s mother. And there was the kicker: out of all the people to understand her pain, it had to be Elijah.

  What Fran did while she was resting her ankle was check her Facebook page. On day two, she’d sent Mary a message hoping she had a good time at the dinner party. She happened to mention the ankle, too, and asked her to thank Elijah for the lift. It surprised Fran to discover Mary knew nothing about her lift or her ankle. Mary was so neighbourly and sweet that she’d offered to bring pot pies and casseroles to the house in order to help with the cooking. Fran noticed the hidden implication there. In Mary’s world, the women cooked, and when the woman was ill, the man struggled on his own. That was far from what Fran was used to with Adrian, who could bake a Victoria sponge without checking the recipe book.

  The day of her choir practice, Fran did something she never usually did. She picked up the phone and called Emily to let her know she wouldn’t be going.

  “I’ll be back next week right as rain.”

  “All right, love. I’ll let the girls know. Did you know we’ve had a new sign up?”

  “No,” Fran said. “Who is it?”

  “Mary Whitaker.”

  “Oh, lovely. Well, I did suggest she join. She hasn’t got any friends here, bless her. Except for me and Adrian I suppose.”

  “You two are friends now, then?”

  “We had them round for dinner one night.”

  Emily’s voice became husky, greedy for more. “What’s he like then? The husband?”

  Fran didn’t mean to gossip. She’d never been one for it, not even at school when good gossip was a sure-fire road to popularity. On the whole she’d kept her nose out where it didn’t belong. But as she sat on the sofa, a wet flannel cooling the swelling around her ankle, Fran launched into a minute by minute retelling of the dinner party, finally offloading some of the thoughts she’d been carrying around for some time. They signed off with Emily promising to get back in touch at another time.

  That night, Fran and Adrian ate spaghetti and watched a documentary about Charles Dickens, Adrian’s choice, obviously. The whole time, Fran had one eye on the mantelpiece clock, waiting for the end of choir practice so that Emily could call her to discuss Mary. It was while Adrian was washing the dishes that her phone finally rang.

  “She brought the girl with her. Dour little thing, isn’t she? Dresses sweetly, mind. I like to see a child dressing like a child. With those frilly white socks.” The woman chuckled. “Right, let me tell you about the woman then. Seems like she wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Didn’t tell me anything about herself, just kept making excuses about how she had to get back and make Elijah’s tea. Got all red in the face whenever I asked her a question. What an odd woman.”

  Fran listened for a long time as Emily carried on, her heart sinking with each word. It seemed that Mary hadn’t received the kind of warm welcome she would’ve tried to initiate if she’d been there herself. Instead she was bombarded by prying questions from the local gossip. It was all her fault for offloading to Emily that night, getting her blood hot for more. Fran had sent Mary to the choir like a lamb to the slaughter. She felt terrible.

  “And in the end,” Emily said, “she left without so much as a goodbye.”

  “Right,” Fran said.

  “I saw Adrian talking to her this week as well,” she said. “It was yesterday, actually. They were standing outside the library.”

  Fran sat up straighter.

  “Didn’t you know?” Emily added.

  “No.” Fran gritted her teeth in annoyance. She hated admitting it.

  “Well, they were talking for a long time about something. I’m surprised your Adrian didn’t tell you because he had a face like thunder the whole time. I’m telling you, he seemed pissed off. In the end he walked away from her.”

  “Oh.” Fran didn’t know what to say. Her stomach flipped over in surprise as she listened to the woman.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said. “But, anywho, that was what I saw.”

  “Yeah,” Fran agreed. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  For the rest of the week, Fran stayed away from her phone. She didn’t contact Emily again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The day of Emily’s call, Fran had asked Adrian why he’d been talking to Mary outside the library. He’d simply shrugged.

  “I bumped into her. We said hello.”

  “Emily said you seemed annoyed.”

  At that, Adrian had lowered his book and looked up to the left, as though trying to recall what had happened. “That’s because I was annoyed. She asked me about tutoring the girl, which I thought was a cheek considering we hardly know each other. Oh, and she mentioned a prayer for your ankle. You know how I feel about prayers.”

  It was true. Adrian was usually the first to roll his eyes when “thoughts and prayers” were mentioned by a newsreader, politician or celebrity.

  “The tutoring thing was my fault,” Fran said. “I told Mary that you might be available if Esther needed help.”

  He sighed. “And now I look like an arsehole. You could’ve given me some warning.”

  “And you could’ve been nicer to her about it.”

  He closed his book. “I was nice about it. But… Doesn’t matter.” He put the book down and shuffled in his chair, fingers tapping the armrests.

  “What?”

  “I may have suggested that you were still quite fragile after Chloe’s death and I didn’t want you being friends with someone who might try to take advantage of that.”

  “You did what?”

  “Yes, I can see how that seems now. I didn’t mean to upset her or anything, but like I said, my priority is you.”

  “It isn’t your place to decide that for me,” Fran snapped. “Is that clear?”

  Adrian stood. “Perfectly.”

>   After he left the room, she dropped the subject. A heavy silence steeped in unsaid words dragged on for a few days until Fran finally began to let it go. Her ankle was much better, and she decided to cautiously return to her early morning run ritual. She wanted things back to normal.

  When Fran’s eyelids fluttered open at 4:45 a.m., it was a relief to dress, lace up her trainers and plant a kiss on Adrian’s forehead. She’d slept heavily that night and woke feeling slightly dizzy. Perhaps she hadn’t needed that final dose of her painkillers. Gently, she tested her ankle as she stepped lightly down the stairs. Still twinging, she thought, and best to walk her usual route rather than run.

  It was drizzling that morning, with a steel grey grimness to the predawn sky. She lifted the hood of her breathable sports top and set off towards the centre of the village, no one else awake apart from a fox sniffing around the bins.

  After two laps of the park, Fran decided to carry on towards the brook, knowing that she was heading in the direction of the Whitaker’s street. The words of an addict popped into her head. Just one more glimpse of the house. She wasn’t hurting anyone by walking past. Tomorrow morning she’d keep away and she wouldn’t message Mary at all. This was her last hurrah. A final indulgence.

  There were no lights on in the house, and their family Volvo was parked on the drive. All the curtains were closed. Fran decided to double back around the other side of the street and walk along the brook. There, on the edge of the woods, the air smelled fresh. The drizzling ceased, and the birds began to sing. The sun rose, and the trees glowed. It took her about an hour to walk along the stream back to the village and across to her house. By the time she was home, her trainers were covered in mud. She still felt slightly groggy. After her shower, she slipped back into bed for an hour rather than eat breakfast right away, finding herself enveloped by Adrian’s arms.

  She woke up about an hour later to the sound of a particularly annoying, high-pitched bird right by the window. After letting out a groan, she realised that the sound was actually coming from her phone.

  “Answer it, Franny,” Adrian grumbled.

  Her fingers fumbled for the phone. Through squinted eyelids she swiped the screen.

  “Hello?” As she waited for a response, she checked the clock on the bedside table. It was already ten.

  “We can’t find her. We’ve looked everywhere.”

  “Can’t find… Mary, is that you?”

  “Yes,” she said. She sniffed and let out a shaky breath. “Esther ran away again. But this time we can’t find her. We’ve checked the green, walked around the whole village. We’ve been searching since eight. We can’t find her.”

  “Have you called the police?” Fran flung the duvet from her body and hurried to the wardrobe, yanking on the door so hard that it rattled down to the carpet.

  “Elijah is doing it now. I just… I thought maybe you and Adrian could help us look? I don’t know who else to ask.”

  Fran ripped a blouse from a coat hanger and tossed it onto the bed. “Of course, we will. We’re coming to your house now.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thanks so much.”

  Fran hung up the phone and threw a shirt towards her husband. “Esther is missing.”

  He was out of bed in an instant. “How long?”

  “Since eight, maybe earlier. I said we’d go to their house.”

  He pulled on underpants. “I’ll drive us over in case we need the car.”

  Cold fingers wrapped tightly around Fran’s heart. She felt a deep sense of dread lying low in her belly, telling her that something awful had happened. She was sure of it. As they pulled on clothes, grabbed keys and grappled with their shoes, Fran’s mind conjured her memories of Chloe’s tiny lifeless body in her crib. SIDS, the coroner told her later. Nothing she could’ve done to prevent it. No one’s fault, simply the way the cookie crumbles for some people. The hand fate dealt, and all those other clichés that Fran had heard countless times in her lifetime.

  They got into the car, Adrian in the driver’s seat. After Chloe’s death they hadn’t spoken much about the future. Adrian had gone back to work before she had. After all, she was still on maternity leave. But the idea had crept up on Fran day by day. That idea was to have another baby. Not a replacement, no, but to say to life that she wasn’t going to give up. She had been forty-one at the time, but she’d felt physically like she was still thirty. She’d even trained as a Pilates instructor in her late thirties. But fate had one more cruel twist to deliver. Fran had started her menopause. It started and it ripped through her body so swiftly that one minute she was having a hot flush on a wintery day, and the next she was dried up and snapping at everyone from dawn to dusk. The day after she and Adrian visited the GP about the early onset menopause, Adrian re-painted the nursery.

  As they drove to the Whitaker’s house, she thought about that trip to the GP. She thought about the agony of losing a child. Her stomach twisted and shrivelled into a knot.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The house was quieter than Fran had imagined it would be. There was no Mary running over to her like the night she found Esther in the park. Fran and Adrian walked solemnly up the drive to the front porch and pressed the doorbell. The cheery bing bong felt out of place. Fran let out a long, slow breath.

  Elijah answered the door, dressed almost identically to the night of the dinner party, in shirt and trousers, hair combed into a neat side-parting. He shook Adrian’s hand and nodded to Fran. “Thank you both for coming. It’s so kind of you.”

  Fran felt stifled by the heat in the porch. She mused to herself that the front of the house was a sun trap, the windowless, glass front porch magnifying the heat. She hurried into the house and slipped off her shoes.

  “Is there any news? What did the police say?” Fran asked. Her eyes roamed around the hallway searching for Mary.

  “Everyone’s looking,” he said. “I was out there myself this morning. Just got back. Thought I’d check on Mary. There’s been no sight so far.”

  “We’ll get out there and help,” Adrian said.

  “Yes, yes. Whatever you need,” Fran added.

  They entered a small living room, where Mary was huddled up in a high-backed armchair, toes curled over the edge of the seat cushion. She was wearing a long dress similar to the one Fran had admired during their lunch at Chatsworth House. Without hesitation, Fran moved across to the young woman and wrapped her arms around her. Whatever could be said of this family, Mary’s love for Esther was always clear.

  “We’ll find her,” Fran said. “We will.”

  “We shouldn’t have come,” Mary said. “It was a mistake.” Her gaze fell away from Fran, over to the two men standing by the doorway. Fran wasn’t sure if she was speaking directly to Elijah or musing aloud.

  Fran pulled away, frowning, examining the woman’s face for clues. “What do you mean?”

  Mary wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Nothing. Sorry. I’m not making much sense, am I?”

  “You’re in shock. Let me make you a cup of tea.”

  “There’s coffee in the pot,” Elijah said. “Shall I fetch us all a cup? Hell, I need one myself. The last few hours have stretched on like days.” He let out a small, odd laugh.

  Mary indicated that she’d prefer coffee and Elijah disappeared into the kitchen.

  “What do you want us to do, Mary?” Fran asked, focusing on what was important, while trying not to dwell on Elijah’s strange laugh. “Do you want us to walk around the village? Or we could call hospitals. We’re here to be useful.”

  “Look for her,” Mary said. “She knows you. She won’t trust people, not my Esther.” Mary swallowed heavily, tipped her head back against the ruby-red velvet of the chair. “She won’t go with a stranger and she definitely won’t go with any police.”

  “Why’s that?” Fran asked. The way Mary spoke, it made her think that perhaps Esther had been through some sort of bad experience with the police.

  “
She just won’t. You know how shy she is. They’ll ask her questions and she won’t answer. She’ll be so scared.” She leaned forward, tossing strands of straggly hair against her knees. “I need to pray. I need to pray for her.”

  Fran rubbed the woman’s back. She noticed Adrian staring in horror at the scene. Was he thinking about Chloe too?

  She watched Mary mumble into her knees, rocking back and forth. A strange contrast to Elijah, who walked in holding a coffee mug, still smiling that amiable smile. The man did nothing to comfort his wife, instead he placed the mug down on the table in front of her and then asked Fran and Adrian if they needed anything.

  “Did Esther run away when you lived in Arizona?” Fran asked. Still perturbed by Elijah’s apparent nonchalance, she wondered whether there might be a reasonable explanation. If this was a common occurrence perhaps, he’d become desensitised to it.

  “I don’t think so,” Elijah said. Which was again a strange thing to say. “She’s such a good girl. I guess coming here has thrown her for a loop.”

  “Aren’t you worried?” Fran asked.

  “I am,” he said. He placed his hands on his hips, like someone either about to spring into action, or someone about to chastise another person. “But worrying isn’t going to get her back, is it? No, I trust in God and God’s plan. Whatever He has in store for us, we’ll weather.”

  Fran removed her hand from Mary’s back, and walked over to Adrian. She turned to Elijah. “Mary asked us to search for Esther. Where do you think we should start?”

  “Maybe the woods,” Elijah said. “Most of the village has been searched already.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Fran and Adrian discussed taking the car but in the end decided to walk. It was a short distance, and they could call Esther’s name on the way there in case she’d decided to hide away from the other volunteers.