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  As they walked, Fran allowed herself to voice the concerns she’d held in at the Whitaker house. “I’m sorry, but I don’t like him. The man is smiling. Smiling! His daughter is missing and he’s offering us coffee!”

  Adrian was quiet for a moment before he answered. “Look, I don’t disagree with you, but I think you need to cut him some slack. People handle stress in completely different ways. I’ve seen people laugh at funerals.”

  Begrudgingly, she nodded, because he was right, and aware that she hadn’t handled Chloe’s death in a way that would fit the cliché of a grieving mother. At first, she’d distanced herself from the emotional side of the tragedy, jumping into the practicalities instead. Later, the emotion had come to her in short, sharp bursts, like a series of aggressive waves breaking on the beach.

  They walked briskly, calling Esther’s name. Fran used a photograph on her phone—taken at Chatsworth House—to ask people on the street if they’d seen her. Fran asked them to check their garden sheds in case she’d curled up somewhere like a lost cat. It felt ridiculous but deadly serious at the same time.

  Ten minutes later, they arrived at the entrance to the woods. In the distance, Fran heard the echoing voices of the search party, all calling Esther’s name in a chilling chorus. The hairs on the backs of her arms stood on end. They made their way along the path, stepping carefully through the whispering trees. Leaves rustling overhead. Earthy scents drifting up from soil churned by recent footfall.

  “Why does she keep running away?” Fran said. “There has to be a reason for it. Children don’t run away for no reason, do they? There has to be something going on in that house.”

  Adrian raised his eyebrows. “You might be right about that. But we need to focus on finding her right now.”

  Fran wrapped her arms around her body. “I feel sick.”

  “Do you want to stop?”

  Her eyes roamed the woods. From trees to stony paths and moss-covered stumps. She saw many places to discard a body and a chill penetrated her down to the bone. “No. I want to find her, and I want her to be okay.” She hugged herself tighter, squashing the flesh beneath her forearms. “God’s plan.” She let out a derisive snort. “A plan that includes dead babies, dead children. He just shakes his head and says, that’s God’s plan.”

  “You still go to church,” Adrian pointed out.

  She brushed tears from her cheeks. There was nothing more to say, she’d let it out of her system. The injustice, the tragedy, the way Elijah so easily dismissed the possible loss of his daughter as fate or bad luck. Yes, she still went to church because she couldn’t bring herself to lose the faith she’d once considered a beautiful thing, but at the same time, she couldn’t believe in fates or plans or will anymore.

  Fran called Esther’s name. It was echoed back to her in a dozen different voices. They veered from the path and stepped over broken branches, waded through bracken, and dislodged tiny stones from the tread of their shoes. The ground was soft, but not wet. Fran recognised that mildew scent of damp soil from her early morning runs. She’d always considered it a joy, but today it clogged her throat.

  She’d known the Whitakers for about a month. Did she have any right to be this upset? Surely anyone would be devastated to hear a local child was missing. At least that was what she told herself as she bit her thumbnail and trudged an unbeaten path through the pines. Esther. Adrian’s voice was beginning to sound hoarse.

  About two hours into their walk, they wandered back to the path and sat on a bench for a while. Fran stretched out her calf muscles then rubbed her ankle.

  “How are you doing, Franny?” Adrian pinched her cheek before planting a kiss there.

  “I’ve had better days. What about you, you old bugger?”

  Adrian slapped his hip. “Ready for my op.”

  It was the lightness they needed in the dark.

  “Come on.” She pulled him to his feet. “Time to keep going. We need to find this girl.”

  Midges floated around them in a cloud as they continued. The longer time went on, the more Fran felt a strange false sense of security. No news was good news, as they say, and not finding her kept her alive. It wasn’t the same as finding her unharmed, but it was still something. She wondered if Elijah had come out of the house to join the search party, or whether he was still with Mary.

  They looped the woods and came out to a grassy paddock where a group of searchers milled about with the police. She noticed some sort of hubbub as an excited man ran towards the crowd. Fran quickened her pace in order to catch what was going on.

  “There’s a girl over here,” the man called. He stopped about thirty feet away and waved his arms. The police set off into a jog to follow him back into the trees. Fran turned to Adrian before she joined them.

  It was a moment in which the world seemed to stop. Her heart beat as hard as her legs worked. She outpaced Adrian, who had never been a runner, to catch up with the others. The agitated man had goosegrass all over his jeans. Fran didn’t recognise him, but she did know some of the other faces following him. A few people from her choir. Emily was there. She didn’t even say hello to them, and they didn’t acknowledge her either. They were too involved in the mutual task at hand. The purpose binding them all together.

  Her head turned left and right, eyes searching for Elijah or Mary. She saw neither. They hurried through the trees, down the slope, spongy grass underfoot. Fran found herself wading through the goosegrass, the sticky burrs attaching themselves to her calves. She glanced back to Adrian, his lips set in a grimly serious line, following her.

  This was it. The man covered in goosegrass pointed towards the brook. He was speaking, but Fran couldn’t hear a thing. She saw Elijah storming ahead, boots hitting the ground hard, his arms out wide to swat away vegetation. Fran’s eyes followed him as he pushed his way through to the front of the crowd. They followed him down to the edge of the brook where a small child lay.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Frantic shouting followed. Elijah’s guttural throat cry formed Esther’s name. A police officer held him back as a paramedic rushed to the scene. Fran and Adrian stood away from them, giving them space, their hands entwined. She felt rigid all over, her other hand was clamped over her mouth. She didn’t know what she was looking at.

  “Is she okay?” Elijah asked, his voice breathless.

  “She’s breathing but she’s unconscious,” the paramedic replied.

  Fran slumped forward and exhaled. Relief swam through her bloodstream, from scalp to toes.

  “We’ll take her to hospital, but you all need to move back,” the paramedic continued.

  The police officers began shooing the crowd away, Elijah remaining close to Esther. Fran tried to catch his eye to ask if she should call Mary to tell her the news, but he was concentrating too hard on the girl lying in the mud. As Fran was ushered away with the others, she took one last look at Esther.

  The girl was lying on her side, her back to the throng. There were splatters of dirt all the way up her legs to her knees. She was fully clothed, wearing an emerald green corduroy dress, canvas shoes, and white socks. What a tiny doll she was. Fran closed her eyes for a moment. Then she turned to her husband.

  “We should get to Mary and drive her to the hospital. I think Elijah will go with Esther.”

  They walked back to the Whitaker’s house as fast as they could, Fran noticing a newly formed blister popping on her heel.

  By the time they arrived back at Mary’s house, she was drenched in sweat. It’d taken them about thirty minutes to get there. Fran knocked but opened the door and went right inside, calling out, not wanting to waste any time. Mary emerged from the living room, her body tense, fresh tears on her cheeks.

  “Has Elijah called you?” Fran asked.

  She shook her head.

  “They found Esther. She was in the woods down by the brook. She’s alive, Mary, but unconscious. Come on, we’ll drive you to the hospital. There’s only one around here
so I know where they’re taking her. Get your coat and bag now. That’s it.”

  “They found her? She’s okay?” She seemed dazed as she collected her coat and bag from inside a storage cupboard. Fran had to remind her to put on her shoes.

  “She’s going to be just fine,” Adrian said as Fran got Mary ready for the journey. “She’s in good hands here. When I had skin cancer, they fixed me up like that.” Adrian clicked his fingers.

  “You had cancer?” Mary’s voice sounded far away, but Fran saw that Adrian was succeeding in distracting the poor woman.

  “Yes, but I’m all fine now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mary said. She let out a soft sob, and Fran put her arm around her waist.

  “Let’s go to the car now,” Fran said, gently leading Mary out of the house. Watching the young mother deal with this stress had her nerves pulled tight. Together they made sure that she locked her house before leaving.

  Adrian drove, while Fran and Mary sat together in the back, Fran’s gaze drifting over to Mary almost every other second. The two women held hands.

  No one knew the extent to Esther’s injuries, and throughout the entire journey, Fran tried not to think about it. She hated hospitals and she tried not to think about that, too. She’d missed lunch and hadn’t had anything to drink since her walk that morning. A dull throb was budding at her temple. None of it mattered though, given the circumstances.

  After a forty-minute drive, Adrian parked the car and collected his ticket from the machine. Fran asked Mary if she’d brought her phone and checked it for messages from Elijah. There was nothing. Apprehension lay low in her body like a stone at the bottom of a lake. The hospital building loomed before them, a villainous lair in a movie. She’d already struggled to adjust her perspective on hospitals after Chloe died. Not even Adrian’s skin cancer treatment had helped.

  They made their way through to the reception desk and asked about Esther Whitaker. Fran did the talking, still holding Mary’s hand.

  “It’s relatives only in intensive care.”

  The words intensive care made that stone flip over. “This is Esther’s mum.”

  “I’m Mary Whitaker,” she mumbled.

  The receptionist gave them instructions on where to go and who to speak to. When Mary’s lost little girl gaze came back to Fran, she squeezed her hand and tried to reassure her. “We’ll take you up there. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  She hated herself for saying those words. But then she said them again until Mary nodded her head.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Fran paced up and down the length of the cafeteria. She pushed her hands into the pockets of her jeans and then pulled them out again. She chewed a thumbnail. She got herself in the way of other people carrying plastic trays topped with cake and pots of tea. In the end, while walking past Adrian again, he caught her sleeve and pulled her back down to the chair. There, she rested her forearms on the mottled Formica and tried to calm her breathing.

  They’d been waiting for almost an hour. It was 4:00 p.m., and there were a few families sitting around tables covered in half-eaten packaged sandwiches. Three young boys were playing hide and seek among the chairs.

  Fran tapped her fingernails, causing ripples to spread along the surface of her cold, half-drunk cup of weak tea. “We should go up there. We need to help. Do something. I can’t sit here, Ady. I can’t.”

  She’d tried to eat, and she’d tried to drink, but nothing helped. She knew this wasn’t her fight, that Esther wasn’t her child. Understanding that did little to assuage the maelstrom of emotions fighting to the surface. Fran stood before Adrian, knowing that he didn’t approve of them returning to intensive care to get involved or in the way. But he sighed and relented, which meant Fran had given him steel.

  On the way through the winding corridors that smelled like disinfectant, Fran had to keep reminding herself to slow down. Not for the first time, she thought of the age difference between them and the fact that she had much more energy at times like this. For once it grated on her nerves. She was impatient with him as she stopped and waited for him to catch up.

  Outside the ward, Fran began to pace again. She pressed her face up to the window, wondering whether to go in or not. It was a highly stressful environment and she didn’t want to bother the nurses, but at the same time she needed to know. In the end, Adrian wrapped an arm around her shoulder and led her over to the small benches near the lifts. There she slumped down and waited.

  “Jesus, I didn’t realise how tired I was,” she said.

  Adrian took her hand in his and gently massaged her thumb. “I know.”

  About twenty minutes later, Elijah wandered out into the foyer on his own. Fran was on her feet in an instant. “Elijah, hi. How is she?”

  The man turned to her in a daze, blinking. His salt and pepper hair was mussed, not neatly parted like usual. There was mud on his shoes and the hem of his trousers. “Gosh, Fran. We thought you’d both left.” He smiled. “She’s awake! She took quite a tumble down to the brook. Hurt her head in the fall. But she’s fine. They’re keeping her in overnight because of the concussion, but if everything goes well, she can come home tomorrow.”

  “That’s wonderful news, Elijah, we’re thrilled for you,” Adrian said.

  “Could we perhaps visit her? If not today, then tomorrow?” Fran asked. “Or maybe see Mary? She was in a bit of a state earlier and I’d love to check to see how she’s getting on.”

  “Mary’s just fine.” Elijah’s cheeks stretched with that Cheshire cat grin he had. “Look, we’re beat, and we’ve got a long night ahead of us. Why don’t you check back in a few days? But thank you for everything you did today.” He patted Fran on the shoulder. “Neighbours are great, aren’t they? We’re brothers and sisters in this.”

  Fran was slightly stunned as he walked away, but what had she expected? Adrian pressed the button to call the lift, shrugging slightly.

  “Never mind, eh?” he said. “The main thing is that she’s going to be fine.”

  “Yeah, of course.” Fran’s voice came out thick. They entered a lift filled with patients, doctors and visitors. It stopped at the next floor down, letting out a porter pushing the wheelchair for a bald-headed young man with a drip. A family got in carrying a get well soon balloon. Tired nurses adjusted their uniforms. All the time Fran held back a rising sense of failure that threatened tears of frustration. Esther was not Chloe. Esther was not her child. She’d had no right to stay here and demand to see the girl. They weren’t family members. They had no claim to this child.

  The air was cooling by the time they reached the carpark. On the way to the car, she took Adrian by the elbow.

  “I don’t know who I am anymore,” she admitted.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  And so, the speculation began, spreading around Leacroft like a virus. There were rumours that Esther suffered more than concussion, that she’d had bruises all over her face and body. Someone came up to Fran in the post office and mentioned “that poor little girl who was raped”, but there was no rape, and barely even a police investigation following Esther’s misadventure. Fran had stood there gobsmacked before setting the record straight.

  She didn’t contact Elijah as he’d suggested. She was too filled with shame once she’d realised the extent of her obsession. Standing in that hospital on the verge of tears, wringing her hands, stomach churning, it had been almost as though Esther was her own daughter. She realised she’d projected her own trauma onto them. Now she had to move on. That meant no visits. No more inserting herself into someone else’s life. She sent Esther a card and a jigsaw for her to do while she was recovering, and that was it.

  Mary didn’t turn up to the next choir practice, but no one had been expecting her too. It was a hellish hour for Fran, her teeth clenched as she listened to rife gossip about people who deserved better. Emily pumped her for information with her rapid-fire questions, while Fran answered in a monotone voice. “What about �
�him’? Was he upset?” Yes. “How long was she unconscious for?” Not sure. “Is it true the head injury occurred before she fell down the bank?” Don’t know.

  She’d snatched up her purse and stormed out once the choir was over, stomping her way down the hill with zero regard for her partially healed sprain. Later she’d poured out a large wine and ranted to Adrian about what she’d experienced. Her loving husband made agreeing noises as he stirred the carrot and coriander soup he’d made from scratch.

  “Well,” he said. “I actually have some news on that subject.”

  Fran sipped her wine and stalled, pretending to be less interested than what she was. “Really?”

  “Elijah is back to work, and Mary took Esther for a walk around the park.”

  She opened a cupboard, searching for the salt. Her voice filtered out from inside the spice shelves. “That’s good.”

  “Franny.”

  She placed the sea salt canister down on the counter next to the hob, then shrugged. “What?”

  “What you’re doing is for the best. It’s good to move on. But are you all right?””

  “Yes, I think so,” she said quickly, not allowing herself to overthink. “You were right all along. I’m obsessing. I’m an obsessive woman. One of those types, you know, the busybodies on Coronation Street. The ones that steal a baby and drive out to the seaside and—”

  He caught her hand. Silent. There was no need for words.

  “I just need to, you know… Get this out of my system. Stay away for a while. Do some gardening or take up knitting or something,” she said.

  “What about going back to therapy?”

  She’d been considering it almost every day, but something held her back. Talking felt like opening old wounds. As she was thinking she picked up the salt and imagined it rubbed into those wounds until the pain blocked everything else out. Then she put it down and let out a sigh. “I’ll consider it.”