are you? How’s Amy?’ I told him I’d seen Amy just before I’d flown out and she was fine.
My mobile rang. The caller ID said, ‘Andrew – Security’. Amy often rang me using the phone of her security guard Andrew so I told my uncle, ‘I think that’s Amy now,’ and passed the house phone back to Michael. I still had Henry on my lap as I answered my phone.
‘Hello, darling,’ I said. But it wasn’t Amy, it was Andrew. I could barely make out what he was saying.
All I could decipher was: ‘You gotta come home, you gotta come home.’
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘You’ve got to come home,’ he repeated.
My world drained away from me. ‘Is she dead?’ I asked.
And he said, ‘Yes.’
1
ALONG CAME AMY
From the start I was besotted with my new daughter, and not much else mattered to me. In the days before Amy was born, I’d been fired from my job, supposedly because I’d asked to take four days off for my daughter’s birth. But with Amy in the world those concerns seemed to disappear. Even though I had no job, I went out and bought a JVC video camera, which cost nearly a grand. Janis wasn’t best pleased, but I didn’t care. I took hours of video of Amy and Alex, which I’ve still got.
Alex sat guard by her cot for hours at a time. I went into her bedroom late one night and found Amy wide awake and Alex fast asleep on the floor. Great guard he made. I was a nervous dad, and I’d often peer into her cot to check she was okay. When she was a very young baby I’d find her panting, and shout, ‘She’s not breathing properly!’ Janis had to explain that all babies made noises like that. I still wasn’t happy, though, so I’d pick Amy up – and then we couldn’t get her back to sleep. She was an easy baby, though, and it wasn’t long before she was sleeping through the night, so soundly sometimes that Janis had to wake her up to feed her.
Amy learned to walk on her first birthday, and from then on she was a bit of a handful. She was very inquisitive, and if you didn’t watch her all the time, she’d be off exploring. At least we had some help: my mother and stepfather, along with most of the rest of my family, seemed to be there every day. Sometimes I’d come home late from work and Janis would tell me they’d eaten my dinner.
Janis was a wonderful mother, and still is. Alex and Amy could both read and write before they went to school, thanks to her. When I came home I’d hear them upstairs, walk up quietly and stand outside their bedroom door to watch them. The kids would be tucked in either side of Janis as she read to them, their eyes wide, wondering what was coming next. This was their time together and I wished I was part of it.
On the nights that I didn’t get home until ten or eleven o’clock, I’d sometimes wake them up to say goodnight. I’d go into their room, kick the cot or bed, say, ‘Oh, they’re awake,’ and pick them up for a cuddle. Janis used to go mad and quite right too.
I was a hands-on father but more for rough-and-tumble than reading stories. Alex and I would play football and cricket in the garden, and Amy would want to join in – ‘Dad! Dad! Give
Amy loved dancing and, as most dads did with their young daughters, I’d hold her hands and balance her feet on mine. We’d sway like that around the room, but Amy liked it best when I twirled her round and round, enjoying the feeling of disorientation it gave her. She became fearless physically, climbing higher than I liked, or rolling over the bars of a climbing frame in the park. She also liked playing at home: she loved her Cabbage Patch dolls, and we had to send off the ‘adoption certificates’ the dolls came with to keep her happy. If Alex wanted to torment her, he’d tie the dolls up.
When I did come home early I read to the children, always Enid Blyton’s Noddy books. Amy and Alex were Noddy experts. Amy loved the ‘Noddy quiz’.
She would say, ‘Daddy, what was Noddy wearing the day he met Big Ears?’
I’d pretend to think for a minute. ‘Was he wearing his red shirt?’
Amy would say, ‘No.’
I’d tell her that was a very hard question and I needed to think. ‘Was he wearing his blue hat with the bell on the end?’ Another no. Then I’d click my fingers. ‘I know! He was wearing his blue shorts and his yellow scarf with red spots.’
‘No, Daddy, he wasn’t.’
At that point I’d give in and ask Amy to tell me what he was wearing. Before she could get the words out, she was already giggling. ‘He wasn’t wearing anything, he was… naked!’
And then she’d put her hand over her mouth to stifle her hysterical laughing. No matter how many times we played that game it never varied.
We weren’t one of those families that had the TV on for the sake of it. There was always music playing and I sang around the house. We used to get the kids to put on little shows for us. I’d introduce them and Janis would clap and they’d start singing – well, I say singing… Alex couldn’t sing but would give it a go, and Amy’s only goal was to sing louder than her brother. Clearly she liked the limelight. If Alex got bored and went off to do something else, Amy would carry on singing – even after we’d told her to stop.
She loved a little game I used to play with her – we did it a lot in the car. I’d start a song or nursery rhyme and she’d sing the last word.
‘Humpty Dumpty sat on the…’
‘…WALL…’
‘…Humpty Dumpty had a great…’
‘…FALL.’ It kept us amused for ages.
One year Amy was given a little turntable that played nursery rhymes. It was all you heard from her room. Then she had a xylophone and taught herself – slowly and painfully – to play ‘Home On The Range’. The noise would carry through the house,
Despite her charm, ‘Be quiet, Amy!’ was probably the most-heard sentence in our house during her early years. She just didn’t know when to stop. Once she started singing that was it. And if she wasn’t the centre of attention, she’d find a way of becoming it – occasionally at Alex’s expense. At his sixth birthday party Amy, aged three, put on an impromptu show of singing and dancing. Naturally, Alex wasn’t best pleased and, before we could stop him, he poured a drink over her. Amy burst into tears and ran out of the room crying. I shouted at Alex so loudly that he ran out crying too. After the party, Amy sat on the kitchen floor sulking, and Alex wouldn’t come out of his room.
Despite such scenes, Alex and Amy were extremely close and remained so, even when they got older and made their own circles of friends.
Amy would do anything for attention. She was mischievous, bold and daring. Not long after Alex’s birthday party, Janis took Amy to Broomfield Park, near our home, and lost her. A panic-stricken Janis phoned me at work to tell me that Amy was missing and I raced to the park, beside myself with anxiety. By the time I arrived, the police were there and I was preparing myself for the worst: in my mind, she wasn’t lost, she’d been abducted. My mum and my auntie Lorna were also there – everybody was looking for Amy. Clearly, Amy was no longer in the park and the police told us to go home, which we did. Five hours later, Janis and I were crying our eyes out when the phone rang. It was Ros, one of my sister Melody’s friends. Amy was with her. Thank God.
What had happened was just typical of Amy. Ros had been in the park with her kids when Amy had seen her and run over to her. Naturally, Ros had asked where her mummy was, and mischievous Amy had told her that her mummy had gone home. So Ros took Amy home with her, but instead of phoning us, she phoned Melody, who was a teacher. She didn’t speak to her but left a message at the school that Amy was with her. When Melody heard that Ros was looking after Amy, she didn’t think too much about it because she had no idea that Amy was missing. When she got home and heard what had happened, she put two and two together. Fifteen minutes later, Melody walked in with Amy and I burst into tears.
