The Winter's Child Read online

  There are three comments on my most recent post – a short, optimistic piece about giving ourselves permission to move forward – awaiting my approval. I open the first one.

  I have read all of your blog and I must tell you that you are a DISGRACE taking away someone’s only comfort is knowing that their loved one is watching over them from the other side and you are taking that away from them. I have lost my mam recently and six months after she passed I received a message from the other side telling me she was watching me it was the best comfort I could have and you are taking that away from me and people like you should be ASHAMED are you proud of what you have done you stuck up bitch? Just because you have money you think you know everything but you do NOT know everything no one can prove that there is nothing after this life all we have is faith and so many people have that faith all cultures all over the world and so there must be something we all know it by instinct. Life after death is REAL and we WILL see our loved ones again.

  The first comment on anything I post – whether it’s to do with mediums or not – is always something like this. While the name of the commenter varies, something about the tone and style makes me think it may be the same person each time. Sometimes I wonder if the writer has genuinely experienced loss, or if they’re just a shill for the psychic community.

  At least there are no death threats in this one. I approve it without comment. We all find our own ways of coping. There is nothing I can do to help her.

  Thank you so much for sharing your inspirational story with the world. Like all parents I have days where I feel ‘weighed down’ with parenthood and get angry, lose patience etc – but reading your tragic story has reminded me of how precious our children are and that we should cherish them every second. Thank you again for making me a better parent, I have forwarded your blog to all my friends.

  I take in a deep sharp breath, then let it go again. MummyOfThree has no way of knowing how much it hurts to read comments like this. What matters is the intention, and I know she meant only kindness. I take another deep breath, approve it, and even force myself to tap out a swift reply – Thank you for your kind words, they mean a lot. S – and click on the third comment.

  Mummy please is that you it’s me Joel Im sorry I ran away I need you to come and get me please help me

  This is the third kind of commenter, and the worst. The ghouls who feed on the hope and pain of the vulnerable. The internet is a wild frontier where all things are possible – including the existence of people who get a thrill from tormenting the mother of a lost child. The first time this happened, I called the police station and sobbed joyfully down the phone, telling them that Joel had made contact and all we had to do was track down the IP address and go and find him. The pain of realisation was almost worse than the day Joel first disappeared.

  I press the delete button. Am I sure that I want to delete this comment? Yes, I’m sure. I watch in satisfaction as the little wheel spins in the centre of my screen, taking out the rubbish and leaving my blog clean and untouched.

  Just as it disappears, I glimpse the name of the commenter. JoelMoel.

  Oh no. Please no. No no no no no. I stab frantically at my keyboard, trying to stop the deletion. As a last resort, I hold down the off-switch, chanting out loud, “Come on, come on, come on,” like an incantation. Are you sure, my laptop asks. Why does everything have to be confirmed? Can’t any piece of technology just trust that I know what I want? I click to confirm, pace around the office, chewing on the inside of my cheek as I wait for the computer to shut down so I can turn it back on again. Count to ten, John used to tell Joel when he got impatient and tried to restart things too quickly. No, come on, Joel, don’t cry about it, just count to ten! I count out loud, forcing myself to be patient. Power on. Welcome screen. Log in. Open up the browser. Back onto my blog. It all takes an unbearably long time.

  It’s gone. The comment from JoelMoel has disappeared. But no, I don’t need to panic yet, it must be possible to get it back. I search through my admin page. There’s no sign of a ‘deleted comments’ section. No. No. This can’t be happening.

  It’s all right. I still don’t need to panic. The internet is for ever; you can always get everything back. A quick Google search – recover deleted comments Wordpress blog – leads me to a user forum filled with exhortations to create database back-ups and smug reminders that we should only delete things if we’re sure we don’t want them. Then, a nugget of hope. Do I get email notifications of comments on my blog? Yes, I do, indeed I do. Oh, thank God, thank God. I open my email folder with trembling fingers.

  PinkyBear1248 has commented on your post. MummyOfThree has commented on your post. That’s it. No more. I scroll back and forth, open both notifications in case they’ve somehow chain-messaged into a single thread. Nothing. Nothing. Where is the notification for JoelMoel? Where is it? Where has it gone? What have I done?

  “I’d like to speak to DI Armstrong,” I tell the officer at the desk. “Or leave a message for him if he’s not working today?”

  “DI Armstrong. Okay. Can I ask what it’s regarding?”

  “It’s to do with my son, he disappeared and I might have found some new evidence—”

  “Your son, who disappeared… and maybe some new evidence. Okay. Can I take your name please?”

  “It’s Susannah Harper. And my son’s Joel, Joel Harper.”

  Does the name mean anything to her? It’s impossible to say. She takes my details, and in return gives me the particular nod and half-smile that police officers must learn in training college – both open and aloof, conferring no status, creating no sense of expectation that may be awkward later, a greeting equally prepared for the possibility that I am a victim, a witness or a criminal. No matter what horrors or hilarities they’re presented with, the officer on the desk will always offer the same attitude. Okay, sir, so just to re-cap, you’re saying you’ve been assaulted in your sleep by someone who you believe to be from another planet, and you’d like us to investigate. Can you just take a seat over there, please, sir, and an officer will be with you shortly. Something I’ve learned about police officers: their public persona is a carefully cultivated air of industrious boredom. Crime as admin. The door behind the desk swings open.

  Whenever I see Nick, I experience that small electric jolt as my body registers once more how good-looking he is. His skin is smooth and brown, his square jaw dusted with stubble. His nose is strong with a bump over the bridge, just imperfect enough to save him from prettiness. His hair is thick, clipped short. His eyes are large and liquid. His body is lean and strong, but not so impossibly sculpted that your first thought is That man lives at the gym, and he fits perfectly into his suit.

  I don’t want sex, not any more. The loss of my son and the ending of my marriage have sealed me tight in a little capsule of chastity. When I imagine taking my clothes off with a stranger, letting him kiss me and stroke my hair, putting his naked flesh next to mine, the only emotion I can conjure is a blank curiosity – how could I ever have wanted to do such a thing in the first place? But sometimes, when I see Nick, at our regular no-news meetings – There’s nothing new to share unfortunately, but this is what’s been happening on Joel’s investigation, I’m so sorry I don’t have anything more productive to tell you – or even today, when I’m electric with terror and despairing excitement, my body forgets for a moment.

  “Susannah.” Just for a minute, before he forces his mouth into the usual professional half-smile, I see something warmer and realer, as if he’s genuinely pleased to see me. “How’re you doing? I gather you’ve got something new that might help us find Joel?”

  “Yes, yes, I have. Well, I think I have, it might be nothing but it might be important so I thought I’d better come straight away.” I know I’m talking too fast but I can’t help it, any more than I can help the way my breathing is growing fast and frantic or the trembling in my hands.

  “Okay, no need to panic. We’ve got time. Calm down now. Deep
breaths. No rush. Good. That’s it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s good, okay? It’s really good. Come down to the meeting room and we’ll have a chat.”

  Nick’s good at calming down frantic visitors. I think he could defuse a bomb simply by talking to it in that calm, reassuring voice. I breathe deeply as we walk, get my thoughts in order. Nick opens a door, then takes a startled step back.

  “Oh. I do apologise—”

  In the corner of the room facing the door stands a woman, one arm wrapped around herself, chewing fiercely on a candy-pink fingernail. She’s small and slim, her tight little body poured into skinny jeans and a bright pink t-shirt. Her hard, pretty, pitiless face makes me think of a weasel. She wears her make-up like armour, her gel-painted nails like weapons. She would have been the kind of girl who used to frighten me when I had to pass them on the way home from school. When she sees Nick, her expression turns dark with hope and terror.

  “I don’t have any news,” he says instantly.

  Her eyes harden into little black stones. “Well, why am I even talking to you then? And who are you?”

  “I’m… my name’s Susannah. Susannah Harper.” Her gaze, that hard-girl I-could-bray-you stare, makes me quail. What does she want from me? “I don’t work for the police… I just… my son went missing five years ago and I—”

  “Oh, shit. Oh no. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Mrs Nelson, there’s no need to get upset.” Nick steps forward to block the other woman’s view of me. “I’m really sorry we disturbed you, I hadn’t realised this room was occupied. Tell me who you’re waiting for, and I’ll go and find out what—”

  Nick might as well not be in the room. The woman’s eyes are fixed on me. “Go away. Get out. Get out. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “I’m not here to talk to you! I told you, my son’s missing and I—”

  “I know who you bloody are. I recognise you. You had that boy, what was he called?”

  “My son, Joel, he went missing five years ago and—”

  “Five years. Oh, fuck no, not five years. No, I can’t do five years. I can’t, I can’t, I bloody can’t, I’ll go mad. Go away. My Ryan’s not going to be gone for five fucking years, you hear me? I’m not like you. I’m not.” Her face is crumpled tight with the effort of not crying, but despite her best efforts, there are tears on her cheeks. She wipes them away with a tattooed wrist. “I don’t need your help because my son’s coming back, all right? He’s just giving me and his stepdad a scare and he’s coming back. He’ll be back today. I know it. Okay? I know it.”

  “Jackie?” The room’s growing crowded. This time it’s a young police officer, her face thin and tight with patience, carrying a car seat where a sturdy dough-faced baby in an elaborate pink dress screeches lustily. “There isn’t any news. It’s just Georgie, I think she’s missing you.” She holds the baby out like a talisman. Above the frilly rim of the dress, the face is puce with rage.

  “Jesus Christ, why d’you let her get into this state?” Mrs Nelson – Jackie – snatches the car seat from the officer, working furiously at the buckles. A few seconds of effort and the baby’s free of the seat and draped over her mother’s shoulder. “Lot of bloody use you lot are. There. It’s all right. You’re all right. Stop that racket now. Are you hungry? Mummy’ll find your bot-bot.”

  I have to fight the urge to offer help, to take the baby from her while she hunts for the bottle. I used to seek out opportunities to hold other women’s babies, even the angry ones, even the smelly ones, even the ones who would shriek, for no apparent reason, for hours. From the look on the younger officer’s face, we’re not alike in this. I’m never having one of them, her expression seems to say. Sexist pigs, putting me in charge of the bloody baby. Or maybe I’m making this all up to distract myself from the envy that still pricks me, of women who reproduce frequently and apparently without effort.

  Jackie finds the bottle, drops tiredly into a chair, plugs the nipple into baby Georgie’s mouth. The yells are replaced with a ravenous sucking and grunting. I wonder if the milk’s warm or cold, how long it’s been in her bag. I was always so careful with Joel’s milk, but then he was my first. You’re more relaxed with the second, Melanie said when Grace was born. I never had the chance to find out. Jackie glares at us as if she might stab us both. I’d thought the act of feeding her baby might soften her, but she isn’t giving an inch.

  “What you still doing here?”

  “There’s no need to get angry. Who are you waiting for? I’ll find out how long they’ll be.”

  “Not you! Her!” Her hand clutches tighter around Georgie’s pale, plump thigh. “I want her out of this room right now, you hear me?”

  “I’m sorry, I only came in here by accident. I’ll go now.”

  “Well, fucking good! Cos what happened to you is not going to happen to me, all right? My son’s coming back. He’s coming back. He’ll call me soon. And he’ll come home. Now get lost and leave me alone.”

  I close the door on the sight of Jackie, crouched protectively over her daughter, her hand with its chewed pink nails grasping the baby’s strong chubby leg. Nick is looking at me anxiously.

  “I am so sorry about that.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Are you okay? You want a cup of tea or something?”

  “No, I’m fine. Honestly.”

  “You probably gathered her son’s missing. Jackie Nelson, her son’s Ryan but he’s Watts, Ryan Watts. Been gone just over two weeks now. It was on the news.”

  Something tickles in the back of my memory. A woman with black hair and a tanned face, and a man with a neck as wide as his head. A story I turned over quickly before it could sink its claws too deep.

  “The baby’s to a different fella,” Nick adds. “She had three with Ryan’s dad, Ryan’s the youngest, and they split up when Ryan was two, he hasn’t been in contact since. Brought them up on her own. Didn’t do a bad job really, all things considered. Then she met a new bloke, and now they’re married and they’ve got a new baby…” He sighs. “She’s in the angry stage at the moment. Had a right go at us this morning. Reckons we’re not doing enough to find him. Wants to know why his face isn’t on the six o’clock news every night.”

  I think about that fierce little face, that lithe ferocious body, that heavy make-up. Her spikey nails and spikey gaze. Her tattoos. Her accent, placing her as precisely as a pin stabbed into a map, This one’s a Hull girl all the way through. Her terror, perfectly disguised as hostility. Missing fifteen-year-old boys from tough backgrounds don’t make for good television.

  “Sorry you had to cop for it too,” Nick adds.

  “It’s fine. I’m tougher than I look.”

  He smiles then, his real smile, not the smooth professional mask with its cool aloof look and limited range of movement. “I know, but I don’t want a civilian getting into a fight on the premises. The paperwork takes hours. I’m drowning as it is.” He smiles as he says this, opens another door and ushers me in, sits me down opposite him across the table, takes out his notebook. “Now, what was it you wanted to tell me about?”

  I’d almost forgotten why I’m here. I take the seat opposite him, compose my breathing.

  “It was a comment on my blog. I know, I get them all the time but this was different.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It said…” I breathe through the pain, make myself speak slowly and clearly. “I can’t remember exactly, but it was something like Mummy, this is Joel, I’m sorry I ran away, can you please come and get me. But this one was different, it really was! The name—”

  “Just one sec.” Nick’s notes are neat and careful, recording everything in its proper order, refusing to be hurried. Conditioned by decades of crime dramas, I’d imagined a missing-persons investigation to be frantic and panicky, all tense jaws and shouty phone calls, everyone rushing into cars and screeching off at top speed. Instead it’s a
careful meticulous sifting of possibilities. “Was that the whole message? Did it mention any location, for example?”

  “No, no location, nothing like that.”

  “Did it mention a time or a date?”

  “No.”

  “And definitely nothing about location? Not a description of where he was? Like somewhere warm, or somewhere bright, anything like that?”

  What Nick is truly picturing is somewhere cold, somewhere dark. His careful kindness makes me want to weep.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Okay. That’s okay.” Another little pause while Nick records my answers. He has a long slender scar on the back of one hand. I first noticed it when he took the initial report on Joel, sitting in our living room writing comprehensive notes while John talked about Joel and I sat and trembled, longing to get up and run around the neighbourhood, searching in dark corners and behind garden fences. I noticed everything that night. The smear on the frame of the mirror where I’d tripped over Joel’s trainer and saved myself with a newly-lotioned hand. The dust on the top of the photographs we had taken when Joel was eighteen months old. The scar on Nick’s hand. The expression on his face.

  “So, tell me about the name.”

  “It was Joel Moel. That’s M-o-e-l. It was a joke between us. When he was little he loved Wind in the Willows, I read it to him every night and he loved Mole because it rhymed with Joel. And he always thought it must be spelt m-o-e-l, and he was amazed when he found out that it wasn’t. No one else would know about that, Nick, no one.”

  “So you called him Joel Moel? And it was that specific spelling?”

  “Yes, and his birth year as well.”

  “Was it something you only called him when you were on your own? Or did you call him Joel Moel in front of John, for example? Would he have known about it?”

  “Yes, of course John knew, but no one else.”

  “Did John ever call him that name?”