The Girl Who Never Came Back Read online

  "Is she getting worse?" Charlotte whispered to her brother-in-law with a smile.

  "Hello," Tony muttered, staring out the window, "someone's on the prowl."

  Following his gaze, Charlotte watched as Ruth stood by the river with her hands on her hips, as if she was pissed off about something. "God forbid that Sophie should be allowed to play alone for more than a few minutes," Charlotte muttered.

  "She's just worried that -" Tony started to say, before catching himself at the last minute.

  "That Sophie might fall down the same rabbit-hole that I fell down?" Charlotte asked with an amused smile.

  "She's hardly the first over-protective parent in the world," Tony replied. "They've been around since time began, and I dare say they'll be around long after we're all gone. Every parent fusses over their child."

  "Almost every parent," Charlotte replied, glancing back at her mother as the old woman's trembling hands refilled her sherry glass. "Some just muddle through and then expect to be treated like parent of the fucking year even though they barely even broke a sweat."

  "Ruth's a good mother," Tony continued. "I know I joke about her sometimes, but I shouldn't. If every child had a mother as caring and kind, the world would be a much better place. Maybe she goes overboard from time to time, but the benefits outweigh the downsides every time, you know." He added the last of the tomatoes to the salad. "She went through hell when you were missing, you know," he continued. "She was just at the age to be able to really understand it. She doesn't talk about it much, but I know it's on her mind. Try not to give her a hard time."

  "She's a rubbish sister," Charlotte replied, "but maybe she'd have been a useful mother."

  Tony smiled.

  Staring out the window, Charlotte watched as Ruth stood by the riverbank, undoubtedly calling Sophie over and demanding that the poor girl came back up to the house. She wouldn't blame Sophie for resisting such calls, and in a way she hoped that her niece might have the gumption to actually push at her boundaries a little, but she was quite sure that Ruth's control was too strong. The woman wanted to organize her daughter's every waking moment. Charlotte was quite certain that, in the unlikely event that she ever had children, she'd be much less hands-on.

  "Don't you ever wish that Sophie would do something a little naughty?" Charlotte asked after a moment. "Just something... shocking? She's so fucking obedient all the time, it can't be good for her. Show me a kid who grew up respecting all the rules and doing exactly what she was told, and I'll show you a kid who never really developed a personality of her own. It's completely natural to want to ignore what your parents say. You know what I think? I think you should be more worried about Sophie if she doesn't try to disobey you every so often. I mean, fuck, the kid needs to exercise her imagination, doesn't she? Is she ever even naughty? Does she ever do anything wrong?"

  Looking out the window, Tony seemed distracted for a moment.

  "Uh-oh," he said eventually, his face filled with weary concern, "looks like she's really on the warpath about something."

  "What's wrong this time?" Charlotte asked, watching as Ruth hurried across the lawn, making straight for the house. There was something faintly comic about the way Ruth always strutted around when she was angry, and she had a well-worn look of righteous indignation on her face, the same look that usually prompted Charlotte to burst out laughing. Today, however, something was holding back the laughter, and Charlotte felt instead as if maybe there was reason to be concerned after all. Something just felt wrong.

  "Hang on," Tony said with weary resignation, removing his apron and hurrying to the back door. "Let's see what fire needs fighting this time."

  "I can't find her!" Ruth said, clearly alarmed as she reached the house. "It's Sophie! I can't find her anywhere!"

  "She's playing by the river," Charlotte replied matter-of-factly, trying as much to convince herself as to calm her sister.

  "I've just been down there," Ruth said, filled with panic as she hurried through the door and grabbed Tony's arm. "Come on, we have to find her. There's no sign of her anywhere, and you know how I feel when she wanders off."

  "I'm sure she's just having a bit of fun," Tony replied, glancing back at Charlotte with a worried look in his eyes. "Come on, we'll go and see what she's doing. She probably just got distracted by something. I'm pretty sure there's a family of stoats down by the oak trees. It wouldn't surprise me if Sophie's down there right now, tormenting the poor things."

  "She knows not to go out of sight," Ruth continued, leading Tony across the grass. "How many times have I drilled it into her? She knows the rules. Is she doing this deliberately? I swear to God, sometimes I think she wants to give me a heart attack!" She kept talking, her words running breathlessly into one another, as she and Tony got further and further from the house. Eventually they were out of Charlotte's earshot, although Ruth's mouth could still be seen running at a thousand miles an hour, peppering her husband with fears and concerns.

  Charlotte paused for a moment, feeling the faintest whisper of recognition cross her mind before she turned to see her mother pouring another glass of sherry. "Deja vu?" she said after a moment, trying to smile but unable to feel completely comfortable suddenly, as if some unseen weight had landed on her shoulders. Was this what it had been like, she wondered, when she'd disappeared all those years ago? "Hey, Mum?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder. "Deja vu all over again?"

  "What's that?" her mother asked testily.

  "Is this how it was with me?" Charlotte asked.

  "How what was?"

  "Never mind," Charlotte replied with a sigh, before wandering over to the door. Staring out at the garden, she saw Ruth and Tony down by the river, calling for Sophie. Although she wanted to laugh the whole thing off and assume that the girl was just playing hide-and-seek, Charlotte couldn't ignore the sliver of doubt in her heart, or the voice in the back of her mind that was taunting her over and over again with the possibility that somehow, impossibly, it was all happening again. Exactly as it had happened twenty years ago.

  Twenty years ago

  By the time morning came, Charlotte was woken by the same stomach cramps that she'd felt the day before. The pain wasn't enough to cause her to cry out, but it put a frown on her face and left her curled up on her side, with one hand resting on her belly while she waited for the sensation to pass.

  She could hear her mother pottering about in the kitchen downstairs, and a few minutes later she heard her sister running excitedly past the bedroom door. The smell of breakfast was wafting up the stairs, but Charlotte stayed exactly where she was. With the dull, dark pain still floating in her stomach, she didn't feel like eating, and she wasn't even sure if she was allowed to go downstairs. In a way, it felt as if Ruth and her mother had formed a little gang, deliberately excluding Charlotte because of her insubordination. As if to prove the point, Charlotte soon heard their muffled voices from the room below, talking happily to one another.

  Finally, Charlotte decided she had no choice but to get out of bed. She sat up, which made the pain feel a little worse for a moment before seemingly clearing whatever knot was causing the problem. She took a deep breath, still able to feel the pain's echo, but at least it seemed to be slowly passing. As she shifted toward the edge of the bed, however, she felt something wet against her leg. Moving to one side, she looked down, fearing that she might have soiled herself, but instead she saw a few small spots of blood. After staring at the red stain for a moment, she glanced over at her discarded clothes from the night before, and to her horror she saw that there was some old, dried blood in her underwear. With her heart racing, she realized that the blood could only mean one thing.

  ***

  "It happens to every woman eventually," her mother said half an hour later, as they sat alone at the kitchen table. "It's just happening to you a little earlier than most."

  Charlotte shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Her sister Ruth had been banished to play in the garden, somewhat aga
inst her will, and this gave Charlotte a mild degree of satisfaction. Ruth was older, and yet it seemed that her mother had sought to exclude her from this particular conversation. Still, the things her mother was saying made no sense to Charlotte; it seemed completely fantastical that her body might not only have decided to shed part of itself, but also that it might be planning to do the same thing every month from now on.

  "It's a good thing," her mother continued with a faint smile. "The discomfort is a part of the process. For some women it can be quite debilitating, for others it's little more than an annoyance. You'll have to wait and see how it goes with you, but if it's any consolation, none of the women in your family have a history of difficult periods." She paused, as if she wasn't sure what to say. "Do you have any questions, Charlotte? Don't be shy. Just tell me what you're thinking about, and I'll try to answer as truthfully and helpfully as possible."

  Charlotte paused. "But are you sure I'm not dying?" she asked eventually.

  "One hundred per cent certain."

  "But blood means something's dying," Charlotte continued.

  "Or living," her mother pointed out. "Blood means life as well."

  Charlotte frowned. "Does Ruth have this?"

  "Not yet," her mother replied, "but she will, one day soon. She's older than you, so one would have thought that she'd be affected first, but there's really no strict order to these things. It's quite unusual for it to strike a girl as young as eight, although there are exceptional cases."

  "So it might not be what you say it is?" Charlotte asked, as she felt a twist of pain pass briefly through her belly once again. "You might be wrong?"

  "I'm not wrong."

  "But you -"

  "I'm not wrong," her mother said again, more firmly this time. "Charlotte, there's no reason to be scared about growing up." She paused. "Is this what your behavior has been about recently? Have you been feeling yourself growing up, and it's been scaring you? If that's the problem, you really have nothing to worry about. You're starting to become a woman, and that means you're at the start of a wonderful adventure that's going to take you to lots of great places. It also means that you have to be careful with your decisions, but you're going to reach the point soon where those decisions start to define not only how your day turns out, but how your life develops." She paused again. "Do you understand, Charlotte?"

  Charlotte stared at her mother, wondering why she was lying. For Charlotte, all this talk of biological changes and physical maturity and becoming a woman... it was all rubbish, and she felt that her mother was insulting her intelligence. No, the blood in the bed and in her underwear could only mean one thing: her adventurous half had died, had curled up inside her and passed away, and those spots of blood were the only visible traces of this tragedy that had taken place inside her body. Still, she couldn't help clinging to the hope that maybe her adventurous half wasn't dead, but merely wounded, in which case it could potentially be revived if Charlotte could think of something that might help.

  Turning to look out the window, she thought of something. She smiled.

  "So we'll look into a few other things we need to do for you," her mother said eventually, "and I'll show you how to use certain products that a woman must get to grips with. I hope, also, that you might stop talking about various infantile matters that have been consuming your time lately. All this talk of witches down at the bottom of the garden or living in a cave, Charlotte... It's childish nonsense, and it has to end. People are going to laugh at you and question your intelligence if you persist with such rubbish." She waited for a reply. "Charlotte?"

  Slowly, filled with a great plan but aware that she had to keep it to herself, Charlotte turned to face her mother.

  "Will you abandon all these childish thoughts about witches and suchlike?" her mother continued. "Will you try to be more grown up, now that your body has shown that it's starting to mature?"

  Charlotte nodded.

  "Thank you," her mother said with a smile. "You know, in a strange way, this has all happened at a very opportune moment. If you can approach the changes with intelligence, I think the whole thing could be the making of you."

  Charlotte smiled. She was lying, of course, but she also knew that grown-ups tended to lie. A lot. Therefore, she was 'growing up' by lying, which meant keeping her thoughts and activities a secret from her mother. If other people wanted to believe strange stories about girls' bodies shedding linings from inside, Charlotte felt that this was entirely up to them and she had no interest in proving them wrong. She, however, was going to focus on her own beliefs, which she felt made far more sense. Besides, she knew her body better than anyone else. It was fine and dandy for her mother to suddenly start making a bunch of absurd claims, but Charlotte felt that it couldn't be a coincidence that the blood had arrive the morning after she'd felt her adventurous half disappear.

  "Ruth will have a lot of questions," her mother added. "If it gets too much, tell her to come and ask me, okay?"

  Charlotte nodded.

  "Maybe you'd like to go outside and play now?"

  Getting up from the chair, Charlotte walked carefully over to the back door. She wanted to run, but she knew she had to be more careful and at least pretend that she'd listened to her mother's words. As she reached the door and pulled it open, she glanced back at her mother and saw that she seemed satisfied and confident, as if she felt that she'd 'fixed' her troublesome wayward daughter. Charlotte hated letting her think that she'd won, but she figured that this was only a battle, and that the more important thing was to focus on the overall war. Confident that she'd be proved right eventually, Charlotte headed outside into the bright sunny day. As she spotted Ruth playing in the grass, she suddenly felt as if she'd somehow overtaken her sister. She'd go and join in the game for a while, of course, but her participation would be a charade to cover up her true plans.

  In this way, at least, Charlotte felt that maybe she had become a little more grown-up after all.

  Today

  "Sophie!" Ruth shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth as she stood on the riverbank. "Sophie! Where are you?"

  As she caught up to her sister and brother-in-law, Charlotte felt a pang of fear in her chest. She kept trying to tell herself not to be scared, that everything would be okay, but deep down there was a long-dormant kernel of panic starting to sprout again. It seemed utterly impossible that Sophie could have come to any harm, especially down here by the river of all places, but every time she reassured her sister that things would be okay, Charlotte heard a nagging voice at the back of her head that told her maybe she was wrong.

  "Jesus Christ," Ruth said as she hurried along the path, "where the hell is she?"

  "I'm sure she's around here somewhere," Tony said, clearly forcing himself to stay calm even though his eyes betrayed the same doubts and fears that Charlotte was feeling. "She's a sensible girl, Ruth -"

  "It's not about being sensible," Ruth replied firmly, "it's about being safe!" She hurried a little further along the riverbank, before stopping again and pausing, as if she was waiting for a hint of movement. "Sophie!" she shouted at the top of her voice. "It's Mummy! I need you to come back immediately!"

  "You're not in any trouble!" Tony shouted, hurrying after his wife. "We just want to make sure you're okay!"

  Walking after them, Charlotte couldn't help but keep glancing down at the river, as if she expected to see a limp little body go floating past. Something deep inside was already telling her that there was a problem, and she knew that Sophie was at heart a very timid and smart girl who'd never disappear like this on purpose. There was just no way that the events of twenty years ago could be playing out all over again. No family could be so unlucky.

  "She's only been gone for a few minutes," Tony said, putting a hand on Ruth's shoulder. "Let's not panic just yet, eh?"

  "And when do you think we should panic?" Ruth asked. "After six minutes? Seven? An hour? A day?" She glanced back at Charlotte. "A year?"

&nb
sp; "Don't overreact," Charlotte muttered, although she immediately knew that she'd chosen the wrong words.

  "Don't overreact?" Ruth replied, her voice filled with scorn. "Is that the best advice you can offer right now?"

  "Fine," Charlotte said. "Overreact. Go for it!"

  Ruth stared at her for a moment, unable to disguise her anger, before turning and continuing her way along the riverbank, pulling free of Tony in the process. She was clearly getting worked up into a tighter and tighter ball of energy, and it was only a matter of time before she'd explode. Charlotte knew her sister too well, and she knew that even without any cause, Ruth was capable of causing a real scene; with Sophie missing, it was clear that there'd be no limits to the woman's anger.

  "She's just worried," Tony said.

  Charlotte nodded.

  "She thinks -"

  "I know what she thinks," Charlotte replied.

  "It's just that -"

  "I know!" Charlotte insisted, keen to avoid talking about the specifics. "I know exactly what she's thinking. You don't need to tell me. I'm thinking it too. I'm sure we're all thinking it."

  "It's nonsense, of course," Tony continued, "but Sophie's eight, the same age as you when -"

  "I know!" Charlotte said firmly, before realizing that she was letting her concern show. "Come on, it can't be happening again. That's a ludicrous idea! She's going to come running out of some bush somewhere any moment, probably covered in mud, with some crazy story about where she's been, and then... and then Ruth'll blow a gasket and act like something awful's happened, and then there'll be lots of drama and things'll start to settle down." She paused, hoping to God that she was right. "Sophie's fine," she added.