9. November

Eve

Eve is no longer underwater. She can see more clearly; everything is bright as if floodlit. Voices are loud as though everyone is shouting; most people are shouting. It’s been two hours since Sorrel went missing. Police officers have swarmed onto the property, accompanied by dogs, German shepherds moving fast, noses to the ground. A helicopter hovers above the garden, beams are directed onto the wood and the meadow and the surrounding streets. Men are searching the garage, the barns, Igor’s bungalow, the garden shed, fanning out into the woods. Voices echo from between the trees. Sorrel is scared of shouting and bright lights and dogs she doesn’t know; she could be too scared to come out.

An incident room is being set up in a van outside the gates. A police officer sits next to Eve in the kitchen, a darkhaired young Welsh woman called Brenda. The woman’s lilting voice is warm with sympathy. “What was Sorrel wearing before she vanished?”

“A red anorak.” The color had glowed against the trees when she was playing in the garden earlier; red for danger, no one thought of that.

“Where are her favorite places?”

“The wood down the garden.” Is that still true? She’d looked unhappy out there today, it was obvious, even at a distance. “Or in the kitchen near me.”

“So where were you when she went missing?”

Brenda’s young, that’s the trouble, far too young. Her face is unlined, untried. What experience would she have in looking for missing children? Does she have any of her own?

“Mrs. Kershaw?”

“Sorry, what—”

“Where were you when she vanished?”

“In bed.”

Brenda is scribbling something in her notebook; she might be writing that Eve is lazy and careless, criminally careless twice over. Eve looks away from that fast-moving pen; snow has arrived as forecast, white flakes whirling in the brilliant searchlights of the helicopter. Sorrel has waited all year to play in the snow.

“I have to go; it’s cold out there, she might be—”

“There are fifty men and women searching the grounds. Once they’ve finished they will start over again, in case she’s returned in the meantime. If she’s here, we will find her.” Brenda puts her hand on Eve’s; her nails are painted a translucent pink, as if painting your nails was something that mattered. “We need your help to build a timeline so we can work out what might have happened to her.”

So Sorrel has shifted from being lost to something worse, a victim that something has happened to: an accident in the woods or on the railway line; Eve’s thoughts plunge deeper, getting darker. An assault, an abduction, a murder, that kind of “happened to”? Why doesn’t Brenda talk about that? Doesn’t she know all the possibilities are already playing in her mind, twisting and tangling in a knot that’s getting bigger all the time?

“Was Sorrel a happy little girl before your son’s tragic accident? I suppose we are wondering if there was any reason at all for her to run away.”