trees that line the edge of the park, all the lamp posts and most of their neighbours’ front gates. Amber knows they are meant to be a symbol of hope, but to her they look morbid. How long will they remain there, she wonders – until the rain has washed away their colour or they’ve grown tatty in the wind? Until some other child is taken and needs ribbons of their own, perhaps.
‘Are you sure you’re okay about this?’ says George. ‘If you want to go back to your mum’s …’
She looks up at the dark upper windows of their flat. ‘No. It’s going to be tough but we need to be here – for when she comes back.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I think. It’s the right thing to do.’
They get out of the car and shut the doors as quietly as possible to avoid alerting the neighbours. George lets them in and they hurry up the stairs.
‘It’s bloody freezing,’ he says. He takes their bags up to their bedroom, leaving Amber hovering on the landing. She’s suddenly seized with a crazy idea that this has all been a huge mistake. Mabel is in the nursery, fast asleep in her cot. If not there, she’ll be in the kitchen, sitting in her high chair, or in the bathroom having her nappy changed. Or maybe she’s asleep in the buggy at the bottom of the stairs and they stupidly walked straight past her. Yes, that’s what’s happened. For the last four days, naughty little Mabel has been playing hide-and-seek, but the fun’s over now – she needs to reveal herself.
She walks into the nursery, turning on the overhead light, willing her eyes to make the fantasy real. But of course the cot is horribly empty, as is the changing unit and the play mat. The surfaces are covered with fine grey fingerprint dust, and the laminate floor looks as if it’s been sprayed with something and badly wiped clean. The SOCOs were looking for traces of blood, she guesses. A vision of Mabel explodes in her brain, bile rises into her throat and she rushes out, gagging.
She goes into the kitchen next, where Mabel is not in the high chair, although there are a few indistinguishable crumbs lurking on the tray. Nor does she find her in the sitting room, playing with her Sea World Activity Gym; or in the bathroom, lying on her changing mat, legs kicking the air. There’s not even the merest trace of a baby smell, unpleasant or pleasant.
Amber feels sick with guilt. She used to resent somebody so small and powerless having so large and dominating a presence. Mabel descended on them like baby royalty, accompanied by a huge train of equipment, soaking up as many people as there were available to attend to her every need. She took over the flat, squeezing Amber into the corners, making her feel like a low-grade servant with no right to a life of her own. But now there’s too much freedom, too much space, too much air to breathe. Mabel’s absence is more overwhelming than her presence ever was.
She wonders what they will do with all this stuff if Mabel never comes back. How long is ‘never’ – five, ten, twenty years? She suspects it’s a state of mind rather than a measure of time. The Mabel who remains alive in their hopes will grow like any other child. One day she’ll be too big for the high chair and baby bouncer, even for the cot that converts into a toddler bed. The toys and books will no longer amuse her and none of her clothes will fit. What then? Her belongings will serve as nothing more than an emotional obstacle course, tripping Amber up whenever and wherever she tries to move.
Unable to bear being in any of the rooms, Amber retreats to the landing and sits on the bottom step of the upper staircase, folding herself into a ball. She doesn’t know why she’s allowing such dark, negative thoughts to torment her. Coming back here was supposed to be a positive step forward, a sign that they weren’t skulking away guiltily but actively joining the campaign to find Mabel – although for Amber it was more about getting away from her mother. George is all for leading new search parties and raising funds for advertising campaigns; he’s even considering an appearance on breakfast TV. Amber doesn’t want him to do any of it. The more public his appeals,