‘I reckon she’s fallen into one of those stormwater canals. I wrote a letter to Municipal Services about how dangerous they are.’

‘Abducted for sure. Like Madeleine McCann. Mark my words, the parents will never see her again. It’s a child sex ring with links to Europe.’

‘What if she’s in the school grounds and we haven’t found her?’

The librarian and the year six teacher looked at each other in horror, and burst into tears. The other teachers turned away, wiping at their eyes and sniffling.

‘This sort of thing doesn’t happen in Merrigang,’ the year three teacher said.

‘I’m sure the police will find her today.’ Brendan repeated the reassurance he’d given to his class.

In the silent staffroom, the crying teachers turned to him with hope in their eyes.

17 MARTY

17

MARTY

MARTY STOOD UNDER THE SHOWER, LETTING THE HOT WATER SOOTHE his exhausted body. The policewoman’s questioning in the car had shocked him into a realisation: I will be a suspect. And Lexie too. She wouldn’t be able to cope with that. In her fragile state, Lexie would say the ‘wrong’ things, react the ‘wrong’ way.

Not long after he’d started working in paediatrics, Marty had been involved in a child abuse case. The boy presented with a broken femur but it was the older, untreated fractures they noticed on the X-rays which caught their attention. The senior consultant contacted the hospital’s child protection unit. Marty watched the six-year-old boy, bewildered and in pain, his big brown eyes desperate for love and protection; Marty wanted to take him home, keep him safe and undo the damage. The boy spent a week in hospital and then, to Marty’s dismay, he was returned to his parents, where more injuries were inflicted. The child was eventually removed and the parents charged. When Marty attended the trial, the media focused on the mother, even though both were to blame. The reporters asked: How could the mother let it happen?

He’d been married to Angela then and had his first crisis of confidence.

‘I’m not cut out to be a paediatrician. I wanted to kill those two fucking mongrels.’

‘The boy is safe now,’ she reassured him. ‘And the parents are going to jail.’

Marty shook his head and grimaced. ‘It’ll happen again and again to other kids. And we won’t pick it up and one of them will die. The system is stuffed. I can’t do anything. These people are monsters.’

Angela had frowned at him. He knew he sounded like a naive medical student. Of course the system was stuffed and people were monsters, but this little boy had begged for help and Marty had failed him.

‘You need to be in the system to change it,’ she told him. ‘If you’re on the outside, you can’t do anything.’