I wish for a breeze as I drive, opening all my car windows to cool the sweat prickling under my arms. It’ll be fine, I tell myself. Don’t think what it could be, don’t think what they could have found. But I know what that means, that polished professionalism, before they break some new horror to you. ‘Mrs Harlow, we have video footage of Sophie at a bus station.’ What could they need to tell me now – what have they found …
Stop it.
I switch on the radio and turn it up loudly. It’s the news. A shadow minister caught on a walkabout being rude about the voters, not realising the cameras were still rolling, will probably have to resign. A big-name footballer’s been caught up in a tax row. And now the weather: the hot spell is going to stick around. There’s a drought warning in five counties, please don’t use your hosepipes …
It’s soothing, to me. By the time I’m at the police station, waiting in another of their small rooms, I’m almost calm. The building’s all carpeted corridors, muffling its sounds. I start as the door opens and DI Nicholls walks in. He nods at me and drops something bulky on the table, in a clear plastic bag.
The pages have warped at the edges. Brown spots fleck the cover – damp? The diary still has the sticker on, a large white rectangle – a car bumper sticker from our last holiday to Florida: ‘Mickey me.’ I didn’t know you still liked Mickey, I’d teased Sophie in the gift-shop queue.
No, Mum, it’s cool, she’d explained patiently. It’s ironic.
I reach towards it, automatically, and he touches my arm, just gently. Hold on.
I sit back, startled by the contact.
‘Do you know what this is, Mrs Harlow?’
‘It’s Sophie’s.’ I sound angry. Another shock. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘Why do you think it’s Sophie’s?’
‘I bought it for her. Back to school.’
‘Do you remember when you last saw it?’
‘No. Yes. I mean – not recently. Years ago. When …’ When Sophie was still around.
It must have been a few months before she went, just before Christmas. I’d been in her room while she was at school. They were finishing late that year, it was how the dates fell. I’d been putting away her washing, when I’d found it at the back of a drawer. I recognised the chunky little notebook, a week across two pages of thin paper, and I reached for it before I let myself think it through.
The first few pages were full of details of her homework, reminders of what she had to do for school, but after a few weeks she’d abandoned those good intentions. She’d started to use it like a normal diary: recording details of what had happened in class, funny comments that her friends had made. And all her little doodles and sketches, cartoon animals peeking out from the page at me, hiding behind flowers. I’d smiled to see them, as I flicked through. Danny got the odd mention; they’d got together earlier that year, not that she really told me. But it was obvious, when he and Sophie started doing more things together just the two of them, without Holly and that crowd.
6 December, 2015
Cinema with Danny. Holly wanted to come too, so I said she could. He was a bit annoyed. I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but why shouldn’t she come? I don’t care. The film was great, so interesting to look at, the colours they’d used …
She spent more time writing about what the film looked like than what happened.
I leafed through the rest quickly. There was nothing particularly personal, really. Still, I must have spent twenty minutes sitting there, glorying in getting to know my teenage daughter, always so closed now, and all the things she’d stopped telling me.
Then I caught myself. What on earth was I doing? I’d have been furious if my own mother read my diary, however innocuous. Embarrassed, I put it back.
She noticed, of course – I should have known. I replaced it in not quite the right way, displaced something balanced in the drawer. Or perhaps she’d just guessed: she’d always found it easy to read me. She’d stood at the door of the kitchen that evening, her face serious.
‘Mum. Did you read my diary?’
I’d actually blushed.
She’d moved it after that. I hadn’t checked where – I’d felt so guilty – but I’d never seen it again. After she left, we looked, of course we did – the police too, after we mentioned it – but there was so much that was missing. She could be ruthless in throwing things away.
‘I haven’t seen it for a long time,’ I say now. ‘Where on earth did you find this?’
‘Amberton Grammar called in. There’s a common behind the school, behind its own grounds?’
‘Yes, I know it. The kids play sport on it sometimes, and there’s cross-country.’ I’d gone to watch Sophie run a couple of times. It’s a huge grassy field, far too uneven to mark a pitch, fringed by scrubby trees.
He nods. ‘The school secretary rang us. Apparently a dog walker saw it and handed it in – he thought it must belong to one of their pupils. Of course the woman in the office knew who Sophie was, and so it came to our attention.’
‘Can I have a look at it?’
‘Let me.’ I notice now that he’s wearing those plastic gloves. He opens it at the front page. ‘Do you recognise this as Sophie’s handwriting?’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘She’s filled in all her details.’
It’s one of those old-fashioned diaries asking you for your name, address and the rest. I don’t remember her having filled it in when I’d seen it before. I follow the script with my eyes, relishing the familiarity of those shapes, her letters all fat round bubbles and short spiky stems.
Name: Sophie Harlow
Age: 15
Address: Oakhurst, Park Road, Vale Dean, Cheshire.
Contact details: [email protected]
He holds the paper down. She’s used blue biro, pressing down hard. She always wrote like she’d punch through the paper, her teachers gave up trying to get her to use a fountain pen – too many bent nibs.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That’s definitely her writing.’ I frown: there’s something about it … but he’s already turning the pages, then he stops.
12 November, 2015
Hockey today. Freezing cold rain. Mrs Wilson – that was her PE teacher – was on at me again. Can you try harder, what’s wrong with your attitude. I wasn’t in the mood. It was too cold. Holly had skipped it. She said I should too. Took the dog for a walk. So much homework.
I nod. You’d never guess it from reading these entries what was to come.
He keeps flicking through the pages, slowly. But the words stop meaning anything. How can this have happened to us, I think, yet again. How can this be my life? Disassociation, my counsellor called it – I’ve refused to accept my reality. She told me so, in the months straight after.
‘Mrs Harlow?’ I’ve almost forgotten he’s here.
He raises his eyebrows, letting the pages flutter back round.
‘It’s hers. Can I look myself, now?’ I reach out again, wanting just to touch something of Sophie’s.
‘Just a moment, please.’ His gloved hand hovers over the diary. ‘You see, there’s some detail in it that surprised us.’ He pauses. ‘Did Sophie tell you she was pregnant?’
‘No, she didn’t,’ I reply automatically. ‘I mean— No, she wasn’t pregnant.’
‘She thought she was, according to this,’ he says. ‘So you didn’t know then?’
‘That – that’s never been a line of inquiry.’ The phrase, out of officialdom, sounds somehow false in my mouth. ‘I mean, her friend – Holly Dixon from school – I told you I spoke to her the other day. She said that Sophie took a pregnancy test, yes. But that it was negative.’
‘I see.’ Carefully, he starts to leaf through the pages again and I crane to see Sophie’s handwriting. But soon they go blank – charting the months after she caught me, I realise. The new year’s empty.
But only for a while, I realise. Nicholls stops, then turns the diary around so it’s facing me, and pushes it closer. In thick blue biro, the words are almost etched into the pages.
10 April, 2016
I haven’t written in this for a bit. She found it. I didn’t feel the same afterwards. But now I just need to tell someone, even if it’s just this stupid diary.
Mum found the test, too. She’s such a nosy bitch. Holly took the blame. But I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I don’t really want to tell Danny. He won’t react well, but he’s got a right to know, I suppose. I wish I could just get away – I just need to have some time to think. I’ve had enough of all this.
He turns the page. She’s left a few days left blank, then just one line:
I was right. I saw another side to him this time. He scared me, a bit, that’s all. It’s silly, really.
‘Is this Sophie’s handwriting, Mrs Harlow?’ His tone is neutral.
My thoughts are a tangle. ‘Yes. Yes it is.’
‘There’s not many references to it. Just a few entries after she found out. You said her friend said it was her test?’
‘That evening. Yes.’ I feel hot and cold, my head buzzing.
He won’t stop talking: ‘There’s something else.’ Does he look uncomfortable, just for a second? ‘This pregnancy test she did, she writes about having to “fix it”. This is the bit.’
He finds the section and holds the pages open for me. The first couple of lines come into focus.
22 April
So now it’s all sorted. It was horrible. But I do feel relieved. I went to school after, it was like it had never happened really. I said I’d not felt well, I’d had to go to the doctor, which was kind of true. No one checked. No one knows anything.
I know though. I just wish I could get away. Start afresh.
And on the following page, another entry:
Danny’s being difficult again. I thought if I did what he wanted, fixed things, he’d back off, but I don’t know.
So I’ve decided, I’m going to go. I want to live a different life. I’ve got a plan. I can work, cash in hand somewhere. Then later, maybe I can go abroad. I don’t know how, not yet. But there will be a way. A new start, just until I’m feeling better about everything. I just can’t keep on like nothing’s happened.
I’m not sure what I’ll tell him. If I should tell him.
P.S. I’m going to stop writing in this, too risky. I need to hide it. Somewhere she won’t find it.
‘There’s nothing after that,’ he says.
‘Can I take it home?’ Tears are thickening my voice. It’s a piece of Sophie, my daughter.
‘We’ve got to keep hold of this, for now.’
‘So you’ll be investigating again?’
‘The case was never closed, of course.’ I give him a look – he must know that nothing was happening any more. ‘But we’ll be making a few enquiries.’
‘In what way? Danny said they didn’t sleep together. He told me to my face. Do you think— Do you think he did something bad?’ My breath quickens, but he’s shaking his head.
‘We’ve no reason to think that. But it might be a little clearer now why Sophie’s gone, and why she’s stayed away so along.’
Danny, I think. Or us? How we’d react?
‘She’s sounds so angry,’ I say.
‘I know this must have been hard to read. But you’ve done the right thing: letting us know about the call, and about your concerns. Because it meant that Sophie was on our radar again, when the diary got handed in. These things shouldn’t get missed, of course, but sometimes the significance isn’t always quite obvious …’
I can picture it. The diary handed in, dutifully put in a file, left somewhere safe with a note for Kirstie to look at it, maybe return it to the family, once she was back from maternity leave. If she ever did come back. The thought chills me; how lucky they realised what it meant.
‘So you think that’s why she ran away? Because she was scared? Or that he scared her off?’ I can’t square it with Danny, that quiet figure. But, unbidden, I see his grandfather Len’s red, spitting face.
‘I’ll let you know when I’ve information I can share,’ says Nicholls, standing up.
I do the same. There’s so much to take in. ‘So what happens now?’
‘We’d better take down a statement, confirming what you’ve told me about the diary, and the pregnancy test and the rest of it. My colleague will do that now, if you can just wait in here.’
‘OK.’ Outside there’re voices, one getting louder. ‘But I mean, longer term, what happens?’
‘I’ll keep you informed,’ he says.
The words outside are suddenly clear: ‘… Well, why? Why can’t you tell me—’
Mark. ‘Sophie’s dad – he’s here too?’
‘I didn’t think, necessarily, that you’d want to speak to me together,’ he says, his tone dry. ‘If you’d prefer not to see him now—’
I hear a woman’s voice now, quieter, then his rises over it: ‘Well, I’m a busy man, you know. If you ask me to come in …’
‘It’s fine,’ I tell Nicholls. I pull open the door and Mark’s right there in the corridor, a uniformed officer behind him, only her sharply arched eyebrow betraying her annoyance.
‘Kate,’ he says, startled. ‘And you’– rudely, as Nicholls steps past me – ‘I believe I need a word with you. Well? What’s happening?’
‘Mrs Harlow?’ The officer is holding the door open for me. ‘I’m DS Hopper. Shall we go in?’
I follow her back into the room. I forgot how Mark gets when he’s flustered, reverting to his most pompous. At least it saves me having to talk to him myself.
Afterwards I stand outside the station, leaning on the wall, and breathe in big gulps of the evening air, cool in my lungs. The statement didn’t take that long really. I’ve done it before.
She was good, the officer who took it, very thorough. She got everything down that I remembered about the night I found the test, what Holly said the other day, then Danny, and ran through again why I know it’s Sophie’s diary, how certain I am it’s my daughter’s. But I feel like I’ve run a 10k, my legs shaky.
Now I’ve time to think, my body’s reacting to what I’ve heard. Sophie. My little girl, scared. Alone. I can’t bear it. And Danny – what did he do? Threaten her, scare her – what?
But at least now we know. We are getting closer to what happened, what drove her away. This is it, this is what I wanted. Things are moving again. It was never going to be easy.
I breathe in, out again, then I straighten up. So maybe this is what it feels like. Progress.