Page 56 of The Mistake

Emily spits and wipes her mouth. ‘No? She’s in bed, isn’t she? Dad tucked her in when he left earlier and we haven’t heard a peep since.’

‘She’s not there.’ Natalie feels as if someone has punched her in the chest. How can she have one daughter back, only to lose another? Emily is already out of the bathroom and heading for the stairs, calling out to Jake to look for Zadie in case she’s sneaked downstairs.

On legs that feel like jelly, her knees wobbling, Natalie calls out for her middle child and runs into her own bedroom. It’s still empty – of course it is – but even so, Natalie pushes open the door to the en suite, checks the wardrobe, under the bed, and then she heads back to Zadie’s room.

It smells of Zadie when Natalie enters. There is still that faint scent of urine that she doesn’t think will ever go away, the smell of strawberry shampoo layered on top. She peers under Zadie’s bed, in her wardrobe, too. Nothing.

‘I’ll call DI Travis.’ Sally, the FLO, appears in the doorway, eerily calm. Natalie supposes she sees this kind of thing all the time.

‘Yes,’ Natalie chokes out. ‘And Pete. I need to call Pete. What if …?’ She breaks off, unable to vocalise what she’s thinking.What if the same person who took Erin has taken Zadie?

Pete

‘Nat?’ Pete can’t take his eyes off a sleeping Erin even as he answers the phone to his wife. ‘Erin’s OK, you don’t need to—’

‘Pete, oh God …’ Natalie’s voice is a broken croak, and Pete’s arms break out in gooseflesh as she gasps. ‘She’s … Zadie—’

‘Nat? Natalie, what is it? Calm down.’ Pete doesn’t mean to be so abrupt, but he can’t make sense of what Natalie is trying to tell him. He hears her draw in a deep breath and then finally, he can understand her.

‘It’s Zadie,’ she says. ‘She’s gone. She’s not in her room, she’s not here, I can’t find her.’

Immediately something sharp and spiky floods Pete’s veins, his hands beginning to shake. ‘I’m on my way.’ He hangs up and, with one last look at Erin, whispers, ‘I’ll be back, baby girl.’

Pete hurries past the ICU reception, calling out DI Travis’s name to the nurse there as he does. She points towards the waiting room where Pete and Natalie have spent so much of their evening, and he breaks into a sprint, his breath coming hard and fast in his ears as he shoves the door open, his mouth dry. Travis and Haynes are sitting closely together, Haynes talking quietly in his phone, both of them with dirty brown cups of coffee in their hands.

‘Pete?’ Travis frowns as she gets to her feet. ‘What is it? Did something happen?’

‘Zadie’s gone,’ he puffs, winded and slightly sick. ‘I need to go home, Natalie called.’

Travis immediately throws her coffee cup into the bin and pulls on her jacket. ‘I’ll take you. Tell me exactly what Natalie said.’

‘She just said Zadie isn’t in the house – she can’t find her anywhere. Erin …’ Pete feels his eyes fill with tears. ‘What about Erin? She’s going to be on her own.’ He feels torn – the idea of leaving Erin here alone, even though she’s going to be OK, is unbearable, butZadie… He needs to find his little girl.

‘Haynes will stay with Erin.’ Travis is already bustling Pete out of the door and down the corridor towards the lift. ‘We have the number for your friend – Stuart, is it? DS Haynes will call him and ask him to come in and sit with Erin, too, if you’d like? This way, come on.’

Pete lets Travis guide him on leaden feet towards her car, feeling oddly numb as his mind races.How has this happened?He’d left Zadie tucked up in bed, Emily, Jake and the FLO downstairs. Could someone have sneaked into the house and taken her? Pete doesn’t understand how, but he supposes it could be possible. He presses his pounding head against the window as Travis reaches over and switches on her siren, the scream of it cutting into histhoughts.

‘I’ve spoken to the team,’ Travis is saying. ‘Another unit is being dispatched to the house. Pete, we will find her, OK? We will find Zadie.’

And what if you don’t?Pete wants to ask. What will he do then? What will any of them do? Just when he’d thought that things were going to be OK, he’s staring down the barrel of a fresh nightmare. He can’t imagine a life without Zadie. Without her wit – so sharp for an eight-year-old; Pete was always so sure she’d be a stand-up comic one day – without her relentless questions about the most random things, without her whingeing that she’s bored the moment there’s a single minute of downtime. Pete draws his hands across his face, feeling the prickle of stubble under his fingers. That was one of the things he usually found infuriating about Zadie, especially after a long day on site, but now he’d give anything to listen to her whine about there being nothing to do, if it just means that they’ll find her.

The police car zips through the familiar streets, the speed adding to Pete’s sense of urgency. Fear burns like bile in the back of his throat as they hit the outskirts of West Marsham and Pete realises he’s utterly terrified at the thought of going home.How will we carry on, he thinks desperately, as DI Travis slows a fraction for the speed humps through the village.How will we ever go on if Zadie is gone for good?

Natalie

‘Who’s been here?’ Natalie demands as Sally, the FLO, hangs up after calling her team. ‘Was it Eve? Did Eve come back here?’

‘No, Mum,’ Emily says, her face a sickly white. ‘No one came back here. It’s just been me, Jake and Sally.’

Natalie shakes her head, pushing past Emily and Sally down the stairs and out towards the patio doors into the garden, biting her tongue. Emily was asleep; how would she know if anyone came to the house or not?

‘Zadie!’ Natalie’s voice rings out in the early morning air as a breeze picks up, cooling her hot cheeks and lifting her hair from the nape of her neck.The gate. At the bottom of the garden the gate swings open and, before she can think about what she’s doing, Natalie is running over the wet grass, dew seeping into her sandals as she heads for the woods.

‘Natalie?’ Jake appears beside her, his breathing even as he easily keeps pace with her. ‘Where are you going?’

‘The tree,’ she puffs. ‘The tree where Erin was found. What if she’s there? What if whoever took her left her there, too?’ Her feet slow as she approaches the fork in the path leading to the old oak.

‘Zadie?’ Reaching the tree, Natalie steadies herself on the trunk as her feet slide in the mud, her muscles aching as she stoops to peer into the hollow.

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