Harvest Read online

  Craig watched Vicki study her pad, no attempt at comforting her. He jumped up and gave Claire the box of tissues from the glass coffee table and dashed back to Vicki’s side. Vicki gave Craig a firm stare to catch his attention and then pointedly directed her eyes to his camera on his lap. Craig looked at her in wide-eyed disbelief and shook his head sternly in distaste. Vicki rolled her eyes at his sensibilities but her look held an edge of genuine frustration with him.

  “Sorry,” Claire apologised for her breakdown. “It’s just that this has changed everything for us. We know a lot of people on the estate and it’s so hard.”

  “You are lucky you have a lot of support from the community.”

  Craig knew as well as Vicki did that her statement was a lie, and that while the community did offer its sympathy and outrage it also held cynicism and suspicion. “Was there really no evidence left at the scene?” Craig found himself asking, hoping his incredulity didn’t sound like disbelief.

  “Nothing. No fingerprints or anything. No… DNA.” She grimaced at the foul taste the last part of her sentence left.

  “Do you feel that people may suspect you or your husband?” Vicki asked without flinching.

  Craig sensed Claire look to him for an ally but he missed his chance to support her as he was too preoccupied with trying to catch Vicki’s eye with a disapproving look. It had already been reported that Claire and her husband had been questioned concerning the disappearance as police procedure, he didn’t see the need to revisit that. Vicki had her own agenda.

  “It scares me… that some people that don’t know me – or Brian… would think that we could have… done something.” Claire caved in physically, her shoulders dropping and she sagged in her chair as if the thought defeated her. “But, then people always think the worst… Even those that do know you. That’s what’s worse than suspecting all your neighbours. Knowing… Knowing they suspect you.”

  “What do you say to people who suspect you?”

  “Anyone that matters knows me and Brian give both our girls all the love we can and we could never, ever hurt them.” Craig was pleased Vicki had offered Claire the chance for a quote in her defence. Claire looked over to a cluster of photographs of the twins on the opposite wall. “How could we?” Her eyes glazed. “It’s destroying us.”

  Craig tried to read some indication of whether Vicki believed her, Claire’s resolve hadn’t broken once and Vicki looked impressed by the conviction of her last answer. Vicki nodded a prompt for Craig to prepare his camera before addressing Claire. “Would it be okay to take a few photographs of you while we talk? Keeping your face in the paper usually stirs up more support – Keeps the story in people’s minds.”

  Claire nodded and Craig slid to his knees and prepared his camera.

  “How is your husband taking it?”

  “Brian has been wonderful.” Claire smiled back at Brian. “It’s killing him, but he still keeps it together. For my sake more than anything, I think. I wish men could talk about things more. He cries when he thinks I can’t see or when he thinks I’m asleep.”

  Vicki allowed for a measured silence then spoke again. “How about Emily’s sister?”

  “Amy hasn’t spoken since that night… Doctors have tried to get her to talk. She just won’t… They say its shock. They said to keep her to a routine…. Keep her at school. It might bring her out. I don’t think she knows how to cope with it, she has just shut herself down. The longer Emily isn’t here, the more it feels like she isn’t coming home. When I put Amy’s clothes away I see Emily’s identical things as if they were just Amy’s. They would share their toys too. They have lost their identity, as if they were always just Amy’s, as if there was always just Amy. The more I see of Amy the less I see Emily. As if I only ever had the one.” Claire wiped a tear from her face. Craig snatched the image onto his camera in a cold flash of white light. “I only have memories and photos and her empty bed. It sounds like I’ve given up hope, doesn’t it?” She aimed a bitter accusatory look at Vicki and a broad smile broke across her face that quivered in tormented anguish as she accepted her own rhetorical answer. “I’m just so scared that Emily isn’t coming back.”

  “Don’t give up hope,” Craig offered desperately in the cavernous cold vacuum of Vicki’s silence.

  “Do you fear for her? Amy, I mean?” Vicki asked cautiously. She got a warning look from Craig as he set up a shot.

  “What do you mean?” Claire frowned.

  “Do you worry that Amy may be in danger?”

  The camera flashed, forcing dark shadows into the room.

  “Emily just vanished. I never thought that could happen.” She stared vacantly at the floor, caught in her memories. “I never thought people disappeared. Now I’m scared – Yes, I’m scared it could happen again.”

  Craig’s camera ignited the air and the light burned everything briefly away in a brilliant white void.

  Vicki explained she would rush the story through for her, and they said their goodbyes to Claire on the doorstep leaving her to return to her twilight den.

  “I will get out at your floor and walk down. I hate being in lifts on my own,” Vicki reminded him as she poked the button that would summon the lift.

  “Okay.” Craig sighed, deflated. “Well – that was awful,” he summarised as they boarded the lift. He relaxed into a slouch, feeling physically drained by the meeting.

  “Yup, but it was hardly going to be a story I could get my teeth into. Pays the bills though.”

  Craig cocked his head to one side with a disdainful expression. “That wasn’t what I meant. Tragedy isn’t there to serve your career. I meant her story was terrible.”

  Vicki punched the button for Craig’s floor. “You have too much emotion to be a journalist.”

  He restrained the urge to defend his ambitions and redirected his bile into sarcasm. “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot I was talking to the ice queen. So, ‘Miss Objectivity’, what do you think?”

  The lift slowed and stopped and the doors opened on to Craig’s floor, he let Vicki out first.

  “She did it.”

  “The mother? I meant do you think the police will find some leads or whether you think the little girl will be found. After what we just sat through you think the mother did it?”

  “You hear about it all the time: happy families… Kids are a pain – the mum in the bedroom with a pillow… Twin sees it. It explains the vow of silence the other kid has taken.”

  Craig fixed her in wide-eyed disbelief. “You can say that after seeing her grief?” He held his hands up in surrender to her cynicism. “I am gonna let you go now. I’ll get the pics to you as soon as I can. Go spread your sunshine somewhere else.”

  “You’re just too innocent. Don’t worry.” She smiled disarmingly. “It’s a sweet thing.”

  Chapter Five

  Jason stood in Claire’s kitchen as his mum slid a covered plate of fish fingers and chips and a casserole dish onto the worktop. He felt afraid to move, like a time when he was in a china shop and he had been afraid that any movement he might make would result in an accident, but in this instance he was afraid of being noticed. It was difficult being around Claire since Emily had gone. He didn’t know how to act around her.

  “Here you go, Claire; something for you and Brian to dip into – plus a tea for Amy.”

  “Thanks. It means a lot to me.”

  “It’s only a casserole,” Jenny joked weakly.

  Claire walked into the kitchen and squeezed Jason’s shoulder affectionately as she passed. She had a strange smile on her face, as if she didn’t know how to use her face for that anymore. Claire leaned against Jenny in a lingering hug and he suddenly remembered being in a school play and not knowing his lines or where he should be standing.

  Claire’s flat seemed different now, as if Emily not being there had changed the flat itself. It had always been like a second home; the furniture and pictures were familiar and held memories, but the place seemed alien and f
oreign now. Somehow little things like the grain on the doors or the pattern of the carpet seemed new, as if he was seeing them for the first time although they were the same doors he had hidden behind and it was the same floor he had rolled about on in play. It reminded him of how it his own home had felt after his dad had left. Jason realised that it was the missing person and the feelings that he had about them that changed the place. The two places where he could get away from his fears of school and forget about the kids that picked on him and have fun had been ruined. His world was getting smaller.

  The embrace of the adults was disturbed as Amy stopped her playing in the lounge and dashed into her bedroom. Jason watched his mum give Claire a questioning look.

  “I don’t know why she keeps doing that. She never seems to settle. She runs from one room to the next a couple of times a day. More frequently lately though.”

  Jenny rubbed Claire’s arms comfortingly.

  “Jason, do you think you could stop for a bit, play with Amy? Keep her company. Could be what she needs.” Claire’s voice sounded strained – desperate.

  He nodded, grateful for a chance to escape from the grief that weighted the air between the two adults. His mum explained she would go home and he could come down whenever he wanted tea. He headed quickly to Amy’s room before his mum could join Claire in crying. He didn’t know what to say or do when his mum cried, it left him feeling powerless. She shouldn’t be allowed to cry in front of him, and his insides twisted as soon as he had thought it, feeling guilty for needing her to be strong for him.

  He stood in the doorway to Amy’s room and found her sitting cross-legged on Emily’s bed with her back to him as she coloured in a picture. Emily’s absence left a gaping hole in the room, and it seemed wrong to him that Amy had been left behind to play and sleep in what was now a crime scene, although Jason was unsure of what crime had been committed. It wasn’t talked about in front of him – and on some level that he would never admit to anyone, he was glad of the protection. But, it was still her room.

  What must Amy be feeling? He could hear his mum and Claire crying openly together as they parted on the doorstep. It made him think of all those nights when his parents had argued. Even now when he was trying to sleep at night he could hear his mum sobbing through the thin walls. Lately Jason didn’t know if it was because she missed his dad or because of what had happened to Emily. His mind strayed into a place in his imagination that he avoided going, where he imagined what life would be like without his mum: his dad hadn’t been back or called since he had left; they didn’t even know where he was now. Jason’s granddad was old and had cancer and was in and out of hospital, and every time he was admitted his mum told Jason how long happy and full a life his granddad had had, but his life now was painful and unhappy – preparing Jason for when he didn’t come back from hospital. So Jason knew that if something happened to his mum, he would be alone. Amy and her mum and dad must be realising something that Jason had lived with for months; that family and the love and protection it gave was fragile and could be broken at any time.

  He thought it odd how something missing could change things so drastically, like when he was younger and had seen the fairground with its bright attractive colours, madcap clowns and entertainers and its rushing and soaring rides. He had begged his dad to take him, and that night he had. The sun had gone down. The lights of the fair flashed and raced causing the shadows and the dark (which he had been frightened of back then) to leap out at him. The dark made the clowns look sinister with their blood red mouths, and it hid the ground from view making the high rides seem higher and more frightening than he could cope with.

  Now he was older, but he had other fears.

  There were so many bad things in the world, bullies, hoodies, war, perverts, murderers, bombs, fighting. They had always been there, at school, in the street as he walked with his mum, on the TV in the background while he did his homework or played, but since his dad and Emily had gone they all seemed so much more real and frightening.

  He took advantage of Amy being oblivious to him and tried to be the Jason he had always been with her. She didn’t need someone else talking slowly and clearly to her like she was deaf, as adults had seemed to do with him about his dad. Jason stepped into the room and soft-footed over to the bed and ventured a natural, “Hello.”

  Amy looked up and gave him a half-smile, her face puffy and flushed, then returned to her drawing. Seeing she had been crying, and having heard his mum and Claire’s grief in the other room, stirred something overwhelmingly sad within him. All the people he loved were hurting and he couldn’t think of a word or a gesture that could make them happy. He was powerless and wanted to crawl away and get lost in games, but he knew he couldn’t escape the worries in his head and the heaviness in his chest.

  He sat beside Amy on the bed and put his arm round her. She was shaking a little. She snuggled into him, resting her head under his neck while she scribbled on a dog-eared sheet of paper. Jason’s eyes grew hot and moist and he swallowed against the emotions he felt for his mum, Amy, Claire and missing Emily – even for his dad. Hoping Amy didn’t sense his weakening.

  “What you drawing?” Jason asked meekly, knowing she wouldn’t reply, but just needing something to say to break the quiet.

  She carried on with her idle work. Jason picked up some other scattered drawings and leafed through them. They were all of her room and her toys, but one of them featured a little girl. That’s when Amy’s reality hit Jason, without her having to speak. Whenever the girls put themselves in pictures, it was always both of them. This crayon girl was alone. He squeezed her tight.

  “You like the green and yellow crayons, don’t ya?” he remarked at the colours that swirled within most of the pictures. Behind the girl in the picture was a green scribble with yellow splodges that had some symmetry within the spirals and swirls that threatened to swamp her. Somehow there was something in that picture that teased the hairs on the nape of his neck. She scribed two words next to it. Two words that labelled the thing that was in her picture, and she looked up at him, not with tears in her eyes, but fear.

  Jason jolted when Claire’s voice broke the moment as she called for him to collect some drinks for them from the kitchen. He slipped from the bed to collect them and tried to understand what Amy had shown him in her picture and what it meant. He hesitated in the doorway and turned back to her. Amy had stopped her drawing now and was sitting bolt upright looking warily around her with awkward jerks of her head like a dog that had heard a sound only it could tune into. Claire called him again before he had a chance to ask Amy what was wrong. Reluctantly he left Amy to collect their refreshments from her mum.

  Claire passed him two large glasses of cola with lively frothing heads. She slipped a chocolate bar into the gaping pocket of his combat trousers. “Don’t tell your mum.” She winked at him in an impression of her former self.

  A door slammed shut with a terrible bang.

  Claire pushed past him and ran towards Amy’s room. Jason was so startled by the noise, the rough treatment and Claire’s fearful shouts for Amy that he didn’t have to time to think or put down his cola, but followed as fast as he could without slopping his drink all over the floor. He rounded the corner and found Claire standing at Amy’s closed door. The handle jumped up and down and urgent little thumps sound from inside the room.

  Claire grabbed the handle and plunged it down and leaned into the door. It opened a few millimetres, meeting strong resistance. A soft green light spilled out from the narrow crack before the door was sharply forced closed.

  Claire jumped back from the door in confused surprise and Jason staggered away a few shuffled paces in a defensive instinct. Amy wasn’t strong enough to force the door shut against Claire, and by the sounds of it Amy wanted out just much as Claire wanted in. His limbs felt like rubber and he crossed his legs against an urgent tingling in his bladder. The green light frightened him.

  Claire promptly regained a st
rong hold on the handle with one hand and spread another against the door, then leapt at it, throwing all her weight against the wood. The door cracked open under her exertion and Amy escaped through it. She tangled into her mum’s legs, clambering around her and frantically pulling her away. Claire instantly dropped into a crouch and swept Amy into her arms. Jason watched the door swinging smoothly and idly open on its hinges in the wake of being released from Claire’s efforts, now that Amy had escaped it didn’t seem stubborn at all. The green light was gone.

  On the twelfth floor Craig hesitated outside Kelly Mason’s front door for a moment then knocked and waited, trying to ignore a dull anxiety that squirmed uncomfortably in his stomach and tickled his throat. Craig had sat at home for an hour with Vicki’s judgement of him burning in his chest and festering in his thoughts.

  He disagreed with her; he could make an objective journalist. The things that Claire had said were fact, and the content of what she said would conjure emotion in most people. He was sure that as cynical as Vicki was, even she was only half-joking about the mother killing her daughter, and despite Vicki’s dislike of children, the human side of this story couldn’t be lost on her personally. He reminded himself that he had given up trying to work out Vicki’s mind a few weeks after they had met.

  Craig knew he could handle interviews better, but while he was a photographer he wouldn’t get the opportunity, he wasn’t qualified to approach any paper but his local rag, and Vicki’s boss, the editor of The Camden Gazette, wanted to keep him where he was; easier to employ a new writer rather than possibly lose a photographer. The Hampstead and Highgate News had shown little interest beyond their regular writers and contributions from established freelancers.

  After returning to his flat Craig had looked about his home knowing that two floors above him in another flat, a family was falling apart and a mother was losing her heart and mind. This story was too close to home for him to pass up. He had always enjoyed writing, he had poured over short stories as a kid, never really finishing anything, and even when his love of photography had taken over his writing had been knocking around in the background. He accepted he was a photographer now, but if he was to get into writing, he reasoned he had to do something sometime. If writing news was part of that then with something happening on his doorstep he had just the opportunity and the unique perspective to understand how this hit those around him. He needed an outlet for his creativity – he certainly wasn’t getting from his photography.