Page 39 of The Mistake

‘Thank you, Emily,’ DI Travis says, ‘you’ve been really helpful. Can I just have a quick word with your mum, though? Perhaps you could go out in the garden and see if your dad’s back yet? Someone said he’s gone out to look for Erin.’

Emily nods and, with one last anxious look at Natalie, slides off the sofa and heads for the patio doors, where Stu holds out an arm and wraps it around her shoulders. Mari comes to stand on the other side of her, forming a protective barrier. Zadie hovers at Mari’s side, staring at Natalie, still with her thumb in her mouth.

‘Natalie?’ DI Travis pulls Natalie’s attention back to her. Her mouth is pursed, and Natalie can see tiny fine lines etched around her lips, and at her eyes. She must be the same age as Natalie, or thereabouts. ‘Did you know the battery on the baby monitor has run out?’

Natalie looks up, her brow creasing. She didn’t know that, did she?If I had known I would have plugged it in at the wall, she thinks. She was always nagging Pete to do it. ‘No,’ she whispers, ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘OK,’ The detective says. ‘It’s OK, Natalie. It just means that if someone did go into Erin’s room, nothing would have been picked up on the monitor down here, that’s all.’

Natalie swallows, a sick feeling cutting through the drugged numbness.Is this detective implying it’s my fault for not charging the baby monitor? Is it my fault?‘I didn’t … No one would need to goup there. She was asleep.’ Even as she says it, Natalie is aware she probably isn’t making any sense.

‘I have to ask you,’ DI Travis says, ‘is there anyone you can think of – anyone at all – who might have wanted to harm Erin?’

‘Erin?’ Natalie sits up, pressing one cold hand to her mouth. ‘She’s … She’s just a baby. Why would anyone want to hurt a baby?’ A fuzzy half-formed thought tries to break its way through the cloud of diazepam. No one would want to hurt Erin, would they? She’s only been on this planet for eight months, has never done anything to warrant anything bad happening to her.

The detective gets to her feet, wincing as she does so. ‘No one at all?’

Natalie shakes her head, but the half-formed thought persists, becoming clearer the longer she holds on to it. There is no one who would ever want to harm baby Erin, but after the events of the past few hours, there are plenty of people who might want to hurt Natalie directly, including her own husband.

Pete. Vanessa. Eve. Maybe even Jake. The list of names pours through Natalie’s mind like quicksand, none of them certain enough to stick. Her head spins, and her stomach pitches; she thinks she might be sick.

‘Sorry. Excuse me.’ Without waiting for the detective to stop her, Natalie gets to her feet and rushes from the room, one hand clasped tightly over her mouth.

Pete

At the edge of the woods, looking out on to the main road, Pete presses his hands over his face, fighting back the sobs threatening to choke him. The idea that someone could have come through the woods to a waiting car makes his blood run cold, makes him want to scream and rage until his throat is raw. Dropping his hands, he looks up and down the road, almost hoping for any sign of disappearing tail lights, but there is nothing.

She has to still be here. She has to be in the woods.Pete knows he could be fooling himself, but he refuses to give up hope, refuses to give up on Erin. Turning back towards the pitchy darkness of the trees, he steps into the shadows, his pulse thudding hard and insistent in his ears. He had raced along the forest path earlier, scrambled through bushes, skimmed past the stream in his haste to find her, but now he pauses for a moment. He needs to think logically, to comb every inch of the woods, searching for any kind of clue that someone had brought Erin through here. Pete’s seen enough true crime shows to know how it works – how the police do fingertip searches, collecting any tiny thing that might help the investigation. Pete has also seen enough true crime shows to know there isn’t always a happy ending.

Swallowing down his fear that Erin may not be OK – or worse, that she may never be found – Pete turns his attention to the forest floor in front of him, his eyes raking over the carpet of dead leaves for any sign of a disturbance not caused by his own harried dash.How has this happened?This is the thought that keeps springing into his mind as he searches, on high alert for any sound, wishing for the faintest whimper or cry to reach his ears. There were only supposed to be people he and Natalielove and trust in their home today, and the idea that one of them – someone heknows, for God’s sake – could be responsible for Erin’s abduction makes him feel physically ill. The idea that someone could be vicious enough to walk into his home and take his child … He shivers, his skin breaking out in goose pimples rippling along his arms. He might have been a twat, might even be a terrible human being, but he and Natalie aren’t bad parents – they’ve never left the kids alone, they’ve never hit them, they’ve only ever wanted the best for them … Pete wants to cry as image after image of Erin, alone, crying, possibly hurt, some masked captor looming over her, flash in front of his eyes.

Passing the thicket of blackberry bushes that he and Natalie take Zadie to in the summer – the one with the juiciest berries that stain Zadie’s mouth and clothes until Nat is despairing of ever getting the stains out – a flash of white catches his eye, and Pete comes to an abrupt halt, his heart stuttering in his chest.What was Erin wearing?He’s sure Natalie had dressed her in pink leggings and a white T-shirt for the party. Dread cloaking his shoulders, Pete feels dizzy for a moment as he steps forward, the faint cries of Erin’s name floating on the air every now and again as the rest of the searchers work their way through the woods.

‘Erin.’ Her name is a whisper as Pete pushes the brambles aside, the thorns clawing at the sleeves of his T-shirt. His mouth is dry, and he struggles to swallow as he fights his way in. ‘Erin … Oh, God—’ The noise that erupts from Pete’s throat is half sob, half laughter as he gets close enough to see what the brambles are hiding.A napkin. The square of white that Pete convinced himself was a scrap of Erin’s T-shirt is a paper napkin, blown in from the road. Backing out, Pete doesn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. He finds his way back to the path, his eyes straining in the dark for anything, any sign at all that Erin has been here. He calls out her name, hoping she’ll hear him and cry, but there’s nothing, just the rustle of the wind in the trees, and the faint calls of her name from the other side of the woods.

The path forks at the midpoint between the road and the house, the right-hand fork looping round towards the stream before rejoining the main path a little further on. After following the main path out, now Pete follows the right-hand fork back towards the house, and as he reaches the old oak – that sturdy, dependable old tree, the site of so many memories for Pete, from smoking his first illicit cigarette when he was fifteen, to picnics with Zadie and Emily from almost as soon as they could walk – Pete stops, overwhelmed by a crushing sense of failure. Erin isn’t here, in the woods. Surely, he would have found her by now. He rests one hand against the trunk, feeling the rough bark scratch at the pads of his fingertips, as a choking sob erupts from deep in his chest. On top of everything that has happened today, he’s going to have to go back to the house and tell Natalie he couldn’t find her. That he searched and searched but Erin is gone, and he doesn’t know what that’s going to do to her – to them. Pulling in a deep breath, Pete steps around the far side of the tree, mentally running through how he’s going to tell Natalie that Erin really is gone, when his eyes go to the hollow at the bottom of the trunk, to the faint smudge of white almost glowing in the moonlight.

‘Oh my God.’ Pete slides in the wet mud as he bends down, almost too afraid to blink in case he’s hallucinating. ‘Oh my God, Erin.’ He reaches out for the bundle tucked inside the damp hollow – something that could have been so easily mistaken for litter, casually tossed aside – and scoops it up, holding it close. The tiny body feels solid, weighty in his arms, and tears leak from his eyes, dripping from his chin onto her pale face, her lips tinged with blue as she lies there, so still and silent. Pete feels dizzy as he takes in the gnawed edges of the plastic bag that Erin was laid in, torn and shredded by razor-sharp rodent teeth, and his arms tighten around her.Cry,he pleads silently.Please, Erin, cry. Please don’t let me be too late.

Natalie

Natalie pushes open the door to Erin’s bedroom, her eyes adjusting to the gloom to see the outline of the empty cot. She still feels spacy, as though she’s not really here, and she moves to Erin’s bed, to the empty space where her baby should be sleeping.

She needs feeding, Natalie thinks, her eyes going to the tiny alarm clock that used to sit in Zadie’s bedroom. It’s one of those ones that sends gradual rays of light into the room, so you can teach your child to only get up when it’s light. It never worked for Zadie, and now she’s old enough to get up and put the telly on herself, Natalie moved it into Erin’s room for when she’s ready. Now, a knife twists in Natalie’s chest as she realises Erin might never be ready. She might never crouch beside a toddler bed, telling Erin to only get up when the light comes on.

She’ll need feeding, Natalie thinks again, still nauseous, even though she leant over the toilet and retched but nothing came up.She’ll be screaming, crying in that fierce, furious way she has, where her face is bright red, screwed up in anger, her little fists pumping.The thought of it, something that only hours ago would have caused her blood pressure to rise, makes Natalie feel oddly nostalgic. She would give anything to hear Erin cry right now.

Downstairs she can hear people talking, the solemn tones of DI Travis wafting up the stairs, and Natalie presumes she’s asking where the guests were when Erin disappeared. Footsteps creak on the landing outside the bedroom and Natalie wonders which one of the police officers has been sent up here to keep an eye on her. Probably that young one, the one whose eyes were too wide as he took in the scene in the sitting room, giving away his lack of experience. There is a grizzly cry from below, oneNatalie recognises as belonging to Zadie, an overtired whine that she wheels out whenever she’s been up too late, and then she hears Mari shushing Zadie, and imagines her wrapping her arms around her middle daughter to comfort her. Natalie knows she should go back downstairs and check on Zadie, make sure she’s not upset, but she can’t. She feels rooted to the spot; her feet welded to the floor.

Natalie’s eyes go to the window above the cot, and she reaches forward and pulls up the blind. Below, in the garden, someone has turned on the outside lights and the patio heater, and she can see some guests milling around outside. All of them wear looks of concern, Gina pressing her hand to her mouth and shaking her head, as if she can’t believe what has happened. Natalie can imagine the horror they are feeling at being caught up in something so terrible, the underlying feeling a sense of relief, that sense ofthank God this isn’t happening to me.Emily stands at the bottom of the garden, looking out onto the woods, her arms crossed over her body as if cold. She is stood by the gate, alone despite the groups of guests who still linger, and Natalie can recognise tiny Emily in her, in the way she shifts from foot to foot, a little ball of anxious energy. Beyond the garden, the trees shake in the wind and there are glimpses of light, flashes from phone torches as people – torchlight rests on a figure and Natalie can see Stu and that awful orange shirt he wore to the party – comb through the woods, searching for her missing child.

How has this happened?Natalie blinks, a single tear sliding unnoticed over one cheek.Yesterday I was miserable – I thought I hated my life, but if I had known what was to come … I would have been more grateful, she thinks. There is a shout from the woods – a hoarse cry – and her heart turns over in her chest. Flashes of torchlight whip through the trees, and then she sees Pete, emerging from the thick darkness where the woods meet the end of the garden. His trainers, new brown Adidas Munchen trainers that he spent a small fortune on, are splattered with rivermud, and it coats the bottom of his jeans in wild splashes, and in his arms, he holds a tiny bundle. His face is stricken as he races through the back gate, shrugging Stu off as he reaches for whatever Pete is holding.

Natalie presses her hands against the cold glass of the window, her heart crawling up her chest and into her throat as time slows down.This is all a dream, she thinks.This can’t really be happening, because if it was real and Pete was carrying Erin, then Erin would be crying, and whatever Pete is carrying now is still and silent.

‘Mum?’ The word is thick and heavy, pressed between lips numb with fear and dread. ‘Mum.’ Emily steps into the room and comes to stand beside Natalie, her arm wrapping around her mother’s shoulders. ‘You have to come downstairs.’

Natalie knows that. But she can’t. Because if she leaves this room, this spot beside Erin’s cot, then her world as she knows it is about to change irreparably, and she doesn’t know if she’s strong enough to cope with that.

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