A. L. Bird - The Good Mother

Should I have been more careful, putting up photos of my daughter? Maybe. Maybe not. But she’s probably all over social media of her own accord. She’s fifteen. It’s what they do.

Oh, to be back in that studio with you now, Cara!

I bend my head against the wall to Cara’s room, as if I’m leaning against her head like on that website photo. Oh my darling. Please let that window help us escape. Please let one of your school friends have seen something. Please.

Chapter 6

She won’t tell. She won’t tell. Alice repeats the mantra of silence. Cara had entrusted her with a secret. What good would it do to tell anyone about it? ‘La, la, la, I’m not listening’, she says to the little voice inside her head that insists telling might do some good. I’m doing my English homework, she tells the voice sternly. And I am not telling that man what I know. That’s a secret.

Alice’s eyes wander to the passport-sized picture of her and Cara on her wall. They’re wearing crazy red wigs, silver star-shaped sunglasses and moustaches. Both of them grinning madly. You can almost see the giggles. It was a party at school, and the teachers had laid on some ‘fun’ dress-up photo booths. And they were fun. What the teachers didn’t know was that Cara had held on to the sunglasses and customised them – just in case they weren’t tacky enough – with some glitter-glue cardboard rainbows. ‘You’re such a rebel!’ Alice had told her. And they’d giggled some more. It seems hard to believe in now, the laughter.

‘Alice! Come down here, please,’ calls a voice. A parental voice.

‘I’m doing my homework,’ she shouts back.

‘Now, please,’ the voice calls.

Fine. Alice closes her exercise book in a huff. On the front is a picture of Mr Wilson that Cara drew for her. It accentuates his big ears and has a funny caption coming out of his mouth. Well, it’s only funny if you know Mr Wilson. He has a silly high-pitched voice like a parrot. So him saying, ‘Good morning, class’, while a parrot flaps round in the background, is a very funny picture indeed. All the funnier for being drawn in class by her best friend. Alice turns the exercise book over. I’m not telling, she says again.

Downstairs, her mum is sitting on the sofa holding a piece of paper.

‘What’s all this about you helping a detective?’ Alice’s mum asks her.

Alice stands next to her mother and peers at the piece of paper.

Oh. Stupid school. Of course they’ve sent a letter about Mr Belvoir. They send letters about everything. And if they don’t send them, they hand them out, and Alice is supposed to give them to her mum. All such boring letters. And so much to remember. Cara always said she never told her mum about the boring stuff. But then, Cara never told her mum about the interesting stuff either. That, she kept for Alice. That was the blessing and curse of having a best friend.

Alice stands back from the piece of paper again. ‘Oh, that.’ She feigns nonchalance. She puts her hands on the arm of the sofa and does little stretches of her legs to either side. ‘Just some man trying to find stuff out about Cara. No big deal.’ Alice hopes her mum can’t hear her heart beating. Or even see it beating. Great big red bangs out of her chest – boom, boom, boom.

Her mum puts the letter down and regards Alice.

‘How can you say that, Alice? Don’t be so fickle. If it’s about Cara, it’s important. You must tell him anything you know. Quite what he thinks he’s going to add, I’m not sure. But you must help, do you hear me?’

Alice stares at the floor and nods.

‘Otherwise I don’t know how you can call yourself Cara’s best friend.’

Alice keeps nodding. A single tear falls down her cheek. Her mum rises from the sofa.

‘Oh, come here, love. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.’ Alice finds herself enveloped in a big perfumey hug. ‘I know it’s difficult for you. You’re being so brave.’

Alice sniffs. ‘I just keep thinking about how much I want to see her. Why did it have to be Cara? It’s so unfair.’

‘I know, love. I know.’

‘And I just keep thinking about the last time I saw her, when—’

She stops herself. She’s said too much. The secret risks slipping out without her choosing it to.

‘When what, love?’

Alice shakes her head. ‘When I try to go to sleep. I just keep thinking about that last time, when I go to sleep.’

Alice feels her hair being ruffled by her mum. Usually, she’d say she’s too old for that, but today it feels nice.

‘It’s natural to feel like that, love. But if you talk to this man, who knows – you might make it all a lot better. You know I can’t tell you that you’ll see Cara again but, well, you never know, it might help.’

Alice nods. She knows all this. She is practically a grown-up – her birthday is coming up soon and then she’ll be even older.

‘Can I go and do my homework now, Mum?’

Another head ruffle.

‘Of course you can, love.’

Alice leaves the room and strides up the stairs, almost managing two at a time. That was a close-run thing. It was bad having to lie to Mum. Because it wasn’t so much thinking about the last time she saw Cara that was bothering her. It was the fact that she knew where Cara was going.

Chapter 7

Maybe there’s a ransom. Maybe that’s what this is about. Maybe the Captor wants money for our lives. Or our body parts. Maybe I’ll lose lock by lock of my hair, or finger by finger of my hand. He can take every limb from my body before he touches one strand of Cara’s hair.

Will Paul pay? We’ve had the debate while watching late-night hostage thrillers. Me and Paul curled up on the sofa, Cara sitting on the floor between us (if we’ve quietly ‘forgotten’ it’s a school night for the pleasure of her company). Is it ever right to pay a ransom? To give money to criminals? We’ve agreed that whether it’s right depends on the circumstances. Do they have a wife and family? Because it’s always the men, in these films, that go adventuring. All I did was stay safe at home. I even based the studio there. I hardly ever went out, not really, apart from to ferry Cara around – orchestra practice, concerts, parties, design classes, fashion shows … We deserve the safety we thought that gave us. I want to shout to him: ‘Paul, it’s always right to pay the ransom, if it’s you and me and Cara. However much money you have to raise’ .

How much money could he raise, and how soon? Sell the house. The loft must have added a bit. Mine and Paul’s domain. Had there been a sibling it could have been her room. But no. So anyway, with the loft, with our Crouch End postcode – no Tube but lots of North London leafiness – we could be looking at £800,000? But the Captor might think it’s more. This might be a rented place I’m held in. He might not be a Londoner. He might believe the press, think we all live in garages worth two million pounds. And he might think that Paul being an ‘IT consultant’ means something, something lucrative. A desk in a corner office in a City building, rather than a desk in the corner of our living room and, whenever his mobile rings, a jump in the car to some industrial estate company that’s too broke to have a permanent IT team. The Captor might also think that because cupcakes are so popular, my company has been raking it in. That I’m doing corporate events or something. That millionaires come to my training sessions, not clever mums bored out of their wits by their decision to stay at home. He won’t realise it’s part inheritance, part being remortaged up to the hilt that keeps us there.

So, all in all, I bet the Captor is asking for a million.

A lot of money.

It’s nice he thinks we’re worth it, Cara and me.