‘In the initial account you gave to officers, you mentioned the children enjoyed playing Pooh sticks. Where do they do that?’ he asked.
‘They throw sticks through the first water gate into the river, then race down to the second gate to see whose stick floated downstream fastest.’
‘The second gate being the one you found unlocked this afternoon? The one where Immy’s toy was located?’
‘That’s right.’ I swallowed. ‘I don’t know how it came to be unlocked. The key’s on the hook where it always is.’
He must have heard the despair in my voice, because he said, ‘Most children your daughter’s age turn up within an hour of the report coming in.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Right, if you don’t mind, I need to brief the team.’
Stuart followed me over to a bench under the arbour. I picked at a loose thread on the hem of my skirt and tackled the elephant in the room. ‘Should we have told them about Immy?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not relevant.’
‘But what if…?’
‘Don’t, Cleo. Just…. don’t.’
I held up my hands. I had a feeling the police would think it was very relevant, but Stuart was adamant, and I didn’t want anything to hold up the search. ‘All right. Have it your way.’
We watched in silence as the search team sergeant called five officers in black jumpsuits over and opened the map on the table we’d been sitting at a couple of hours earlier. I checked my watch. Three hours earlier. Which meant Immy had been gone at least three times longer than most other missing children. Briefing over, the officers fanned out towards the river.
‘Why do I feel as though they’re all judging us?’ I said.
‘Probably because they are. Our three-year-old child disappeared from our own garden while we were getting pissed with friends. You’d be the same if it happened to someone else.’ Stuart buried his face in his hands. A tear trickled through his fingers. ‘We’ve fucked up, Cleo. We’ve lost our little girl.’
I’d never seen my husband cry, not even at his own mother’s funeral, and for some inexplicable reason the sight infuriated me. I was trying so hard to hold it together. Why couldn’t he?
‘Please, Stuart, don’t.’
His hands fell away from his face and he stared at me as if I was a total stranger. ‘Don’t you care that Immy’s out there, all alone, wondering why we haven’t come to find her?’
‘Of course I care! But falling to pieces won’t help anyone. Crying won’t find her. We have to stay strong. For Immy.’
Stuart wasn’t always so spineless. When Bill first introduced us in the student union bar at the start of our second year at uni, I’d been a little in awe of him. I knew Bill from an accounting module we’d both taken. Stuart was Bill’s best friend, and he wasn’t like any other boy I’d dated. I’d always been attracted to tall, geeky, uptight guys with Elvis Costello glasses and skinny jeans. Pseudo-intellectuals with emotional hang-ups. Like Bill, Stuart played for the university’s 1st XV rugby team. He was five foot ten, solid and muscular, with a broken nose, a wicked sense of humour and a laid-back attitude to life.
We ended up in bed that first night, and it would have been just another one-night stand, but for one fact. As I’d lain in Stu’s narrow bed with his beefy forearm wrapped around my waist, I’d felt safer than I’d ever felt in my life. I knew that with Stuart I’d never have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t. I wouldn’t have to maintain the charade that I was cool, confident and together. The girl who had everything. I could admit to the crippling self-doubt, the feelings of inadequacy and the fear of failure that plagued me.
Even after one night, I could tell there were no sides to this huge, uncomplicated bear of a man. You knew what you were getting. And he was exactly what I needed.
He’d treated me like a princess in those early days, and I’d thought that was how it would always be. He would take care of me.
Me Tarzan, you Jane.
He knew my faults, but he loved me anyway. And that had meant everything.
Twenty years on, I was unrecognisable as the insecure girl from a Maidstone council estate who’d been so desperate to fit in. I was a successful entrepreneur, affluent and in control.
I looked at Stuart, slouched on the bench beside me. Twenty years on, he was unrecognisable, too. The muscle had turned to fat and rolled over the top of his cargo shorts. His square jaw was hidden under a full beard, flecked with grey. Never ambitious at the best of times, he was happy to put his career on hold to look after the kids.
I was mistaken when I thought Stuart would take care of me, because I was the one who ran the house, earned the money, made the decisions, looked after our family.
He deferred to me in everything we did. And I despised him for it.
Chapter Five
Stuart stumbled off towards the house, but I stayed, watching the shadows lengthen as I waited for news. Around me, police officers muttered into radios and consulted maps. If I craned my neck, I caught glimpses of them on the riverbank using sticks to poke about in the reeds. Occasionally a cry would go up and the search sergeant would hurry over. Hope would flutter in my belly until I saw him shake his head and they carried on with their search. Time was elastic. I felt as though I had been sitting on that bench, my legs crossed at the ankles and my hands clasped in my lap, for half my life. And yet I felt Immy’s presence so acutely it was as if she was still playing croquet on the lawn, just out of sight.
At some point Melanie came to find me. She approached warily, as if I was a cornered animal, liable to lash
