Elisabeth Carpenter - 99 Red Balloons

She opens her eyes again; it makes me jump a little.

‘You need to find her as soon as possible – the man she’s with is unstable.’

‘You don’t think we know that already?’ Emma reaches for her coat. ‘We’ve got to let the police know.’

I put my coat on. Now is not the right time to tell her that the police might not take this as seriously as we are. The information is so vague – we don’t even have a name.

Deandra stands up.

As we run out of the door, she shouts, ‘It is important that you look deeper into your family.’

I’m not sure which of us she’s talking to.

We’re twenty minutes from home and the sun is almost set. Every word the medium said is running through my mind and it drowns out the conversation Emma is having with Matt on her phone. Emma presses the end call button and flings her phone on the floor of the car, for the second time today.

‘Matt’s going mental,’ she says. ‘He thought someone had kidnapped me too. Didn’t Mum tell him we were going out?’

‘You know what she’s like. You never get the full story until you ask her the right questions. She’s like a teenager.’

Emma leans back into her seat. If there had been news about Grace she would have mentioned it. She didn’t tell Matt about what we heard from the medium, but does that count as news ?

There’s a vibrating sound coming from Emma’s bag.

‘Is that work again?’ I say.

‘Probably.’ Emma’s looking out of the window – I can’t see her face.

‘I can’t believe they keep ringing you. They should know you’re going through a terrible time. Shall I pull over? Do you want me to talk to them for you?’

‘No, it’s fine. They won’t ring again.’

She’s wrong. Five minutes after it stopped, it starts again. Emma’s trying to ignore it, but the skin around her thumb is red raw as she picks at it.

It stops. Then starts vibrating yet again.

‘Oh for God’s sake. Why won’t he leave me alone?’

She grabs the phone and presses a button. I can’t see if it’s the red or green one out of the corner of my eye.

‘Hello,’ she says, her voice flat.

The voice – a man’s – on the other end is loud, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. It sounds as though he’s shouting at her.

‘You have to stop calling me,’ she says. ‘Now is not the right time, you should know that without me texting you.’ I feel her eyes on me. She clears her throat. ‘I will catch up on the paperwork when I get back in.’ She turns to the window. ‘We have to stop. It’s not what I want any more, I told you.’ She’s whispering, but her words bounce off the windows and into the space between us.

Whoever she’s talking to – it’s not about work.

When we pull up there’s another BMW parked alongside Nadia’s. My car has only just stopped when Emma opens the door and gets out.

I follow and she stops at the gate.

‘Do you think they know something?’

I go past her and run to the door. I feel, and smell, the claustrophobia inside the house: the smell of people barely washed, mixed with the warmth of central heating. The oppressive atmosphere of a home with the presence of police officers.

In the sitting room, the detective is holding a clear plastic wallet.

‘So you’ve no idea what this could mean?’

Matt’s kneeling on the floor, his arms folded across his body.

‘For the third time – no. I don’t know anyone who could have said that.’

Mum is perched on the armchair, hands on her knees, rocking back and forth.

‘What’s going on?’ I’m standing in the middle of the room. It’s like we’ve walked into another time zone. I’d expected Mum and Matt to be waiting for us, so we could tell them what the medium said.

Matt looks up. ‘I’ve been trying to ring you.’

Emma grabs her phone out of her bag. ‘I’m sorry, I switched the wrong one off.’

‘What?’

She runs her hands through her hair. ‘What the hell is going on?’

The detective is holding up the plastic wallet. Inside it is a piece of paper.

‘We were called here about twenty minutes ago. Your husband found this on the doormat. It had no name on the front, no stamp, no address. Inside is this.’

He hands it over to Emma. She wrinkles her nose. ‘But what does this mean?’ She looks around the room – at the walls, at the ceiling. ‘Oh God.’ Her knees start to shake. She’s going to fall any second.

I grab her elbows and guide her to the nearest seat – the room is full – so I take her into the kitchen. I sit next to her.

‘What does it say?’

‘It’s all my fault, Steph,’ she whispers. One hand is supporting her forehead. Tears are dripping onto the table. With the other hand, she slides the plastic sheet to me.

‘ It’s payback time .’

I thought Emma was going to talk about her mum, and how she thought this woman had taken Grace to get back at us for taking Emma, but she didn’t. She wrote a name on a piece of paper and handed it to Detective Hines.

‘This might be the man who wrote the letter. He might have taken Grace.’ Her hands were shaking. ‘He’s been stalking me at work.’

Hines narrowed his eyes at her. He didn’t ask why she hadn’t told them before. He didn’t shout at her for keeping secret an important piece of information that might help find Grace. He just took it and left.

‘What the fuck, Emma?’ Matt’s standing at the kitchen doorway, his face flushed and sweat pooling above his top lip. ‘Someone’s stalking you and you didn’t even fucking tell me?’

She says nothing in return.

He turns to me. ‘Did you know?’

I shake my head. What is she thinking? Is she telling the truth?

‘Is it the same person that’s been ringing the landline?’

‘What?’ says Matt.

‘No, that was work,’ says Emma – her eyes wide as she looks at me.

‘What’s his name?’ says Matt.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ says Emma.

‘Course it fucking matters.’

‘Could you stop swearing and shouting.’

‘Why should I? Grace isn’t in the fucking house, is she? I can swear if I want to.’

‘He’s been calling my mobile, harassing me at work. I’ve told my manager. I didn’t think he’d do anything like this. He must be getting back at me.’

‘Getting back at you for what?’ says Matt. ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong, then there’s no reason someone would feel they had to take our daughter. What could you possibly have done to warrant you worrying about it?’

‘ If I’ve done nothing wrong…’ She looks to the floor as she says it.

‘Emma,’ says Matt, frowning as he glances at me. ‘What have you done?’

I crouch at her feet. ‘Why didn’t you tell us, Em? We could have helped you. You must have been going through hell. Do you think he’s the type of person who would take a child off the street?’

She shakes her head, her mouth slightly open.

‘I… I suppose he might be.’ She looks up at Matt. ‘I don’t know him that well – he could be capable of anything.’

‘What’s his name?’ says Matt, louder this time. ‘I’ll find out where he lives – he might be keeping Grace there.’

‘You can’t,’ says Emma, almost pleading with him.

‘Why not?’ he says.

‘He might be dangerous. I’ve given the details to the police. They’ll deal with it.’

‘Have you told them what he’s like?’

She stands. ‘No,’ she shouts, as she rushes out of the kitchen. ‘I need to speak to Nadia.’

Matt looks at me, expecting me to say something, but I can’t find the words.