Repressed, page 20
Her tears are now flowing freely, and I feel the sting in my own eyes.
‘Tom tells me that you saw her recently,’ she continues.
‘Yesterday,’ I smile, thinking about the conviction Angie has shown to try and reconnect families with their lost loved ones at the helpline. ‘She’s fit and well,’ I add, remembering the two of them haven’t spoken since before Christmas. ‘Is this what caused the argument between you?’
Zara looks away before returning my stare and offering a short nod. ‘I was already having doubts at that point, and I didn’t want to admit it to myself. When she started on about pursuing some career in nursing, something snapped in my head, and I knew I needed to get out of there before I admitted the truth. Looking back on it objectively, I think I triggered the argument as an escape route. And the reason I’ve failed to contact her since is because I don’t want to lie to her anymore. I suppose that sounds pretty selfish.’
I’m the last person who can judge people for selfish motives, and if what she’s saying is true, it’s not a situation many of us would find ourselves in. It’s virtually impossible to truly appreciate how difficult it will have been to live with such pain.
‘What do you want to do from here?’ I ask, willing my own tears to stay away.
Zara glances up at Tom, who once again gives a reassuring nod, before she fixes me with a hard stare. ‘I want to find out what really happened to Zara Edwards, to provide Angie with the truth she’s entitled to. Will you help me, Emma?’
Chapter Thirty-One
Then
Edgware, London
With Emma having excused herself to make a phone call, Zara took the opportunity to step outside for fresh air, grateful that Tom joined her without the need for her to ask.
‘You won’t let me out of your sight now we’re engaged, will you?’ she teased in an effort to lighten the tension she sensed coming from the tightness of his jaw.
He didn’t share in the humour, taking both her hands in his, but holding them delicately, as if they might be porcelain capable of shattering into a thousand pieces. Leaning forward, he pressed his forehead against hers, and her heart surged with love at having him with her, even if she did sense he was about to burst the bubble.
‘Are you sure this is what you want to do?’ he asked quietly, his voice barely more than a whisper.
‘I don’t really have a choice, do I?’ she replied softly. ‘I’ve spent the last thirty-four years living a lie, and I don’t want to anymore.’ She held her breath. ‘Do you think I’m making a mistake?’
His head rubbed against her fringe as he slowly shook his head. ‘No, not a mistake, but are you sure you understand the repercussions of your choice? You told me you hated all the furore that hounded you in the weeks and months that followed your recovery from the house fire… I’m just worried about how this detail coming out is going to affect you.’
She took a solitary step backwards so he could read her eyes as she spoke. ‘I’m not planning on broadcasting this to the world. I want Emma to help me learn the truth about who I am and what happened to me and the Zara who was taken, but that’s all. As far as I’m concerned, the fewer people who know the truth, the better.’
His jaw remained fixed, and his face adopted a grey hue. ‘That’s all well and good, but surely you must see that something like this is bound to get out into the public forum; it’s inevitable. Even if you choose not to announce it, Maddie and Emma in there already know about it, and I daresay whoever Emma’s now talking to on the phone knows too. Of course you’ll have to tell your mum – sorry, I mean Angie – and how do you think she’s going to react? Even if she doesn’t believe you, it won’t stop her talking about it with her friends at the helpline. This is a huge deal, my love, and no matter how hard you try to control the fallout, it will spread.’
She broke free of his grasp and turned away, hurrying down the footpath to the main street so he wouldn’t see the fresh sheen washing over her vision.
‘Zara, wait,’ he called after her, but it only made her quicken her pace, eventually breaking into a sprint as she swallowed up paving slabs despite the slapping of her shoes against the stone.
Deep down she knew he was right, and she was disappointed with her own naivety at not realising the obvious truth. In her mind, she was old news now – a story children tell their friends to frighten them: Watch your back or you might get snatched like the Brighton Rock Girl!
But it wasn’t that simple, was it? How many people had read and empathised with Angie and Keith when Zara had been snatched? There had been nationwide sorrow. And then the outpouring of relief when the little girl with ginger hair had been found. It may have been thirty-four years ago, but there was nothing like a scandal to stir up the British media. All it would take was one slip of the tongue, or someone out to make a quick buck at her expense, and then it would be flashing camera bulbs all over again.
What was the alternative though? Say nothing and live the rest of her life knowing that she was the cause of a mother’s loss?
Tom was only looking out for her, and to his credit he hadn’t chased after her, giving her the space she needed to get her head straight. She’d told him at breakfast this morning, even though she’d been terrified he would storm off. Instead, he’d listened and considered, and then told her it was okay. He hadn’t shouted, hadn’t criticised, hadn’t blamed her even. All he’d said was it didn’t change his feelings for her, and that he would remain at her side to support her.
She didn’t deserve such kindness, she knew, but she’d accepted it at face value.
Poor Tom, he didn’t deserve any of this. He’d been nothing but supportive after the redundancy, and even after the nightmares had started, he had been her knight in shining armour. This was his perfect excuse to cut his losses, but rather than doing so, he’d asked her to marry him. Her heart filled once again as she caught sight of the beautiful stone in the ring, and she reduced her pace to a slow jog, sucking in lungfuls of breath to aid her recovery.
How would he cope with their lives suddenly being thrust into the limelight? After all, it wasn’t just her life they’d be scrutinising. She’d witnessed tabloid intrusion first hand, and it wasn’t something she’d welcome back lightly. And how long would his faith in her continue? Would he start to question other things in their time together? She’d lied to him for the best part of eighteen years, so how could he trust anything else she’d told him?
Would things have been different had she spoken up that first day? She’d tried, of that she was certain, but nobody had been prepared to listen. If the same thing happened today, DNA testing would quickly have revealed her lie. If only it had been so simple to convince the world of her lie back then.
No, she knew what she had to do, and even if that brought a mountain of trouble down on her, there really wasn’t a lot she could do about it. Walking slowly back to the estate, she found Tom waiting for her on the doorstep.
‘I’m sorry,’ he offered, before she had a chance to echo the sentiment. ‘The last thing I want is to put more pressure on you, and I—’
She stretched up and kissed him to break the apology. ‘I’m sorry too. For running off, and for keeping something so big from you for so many years. I think I convinced myself that if I kept running it would never catch up with me. But it’s time to stop running. I’m not saying it will be easy, and I don’t doubt there will be times when we regret starting out on the journey, but it’s the right thing to do.’
He kissed her back and then nodded. ‘Shall we go back inside then?’
She followed him in, and as they reached the upstairs landing, they found Emma had finished on her phone call and had set up her laptop on the large dining table in the second room.
Maddie joined them a minute later, carrying a tray of plates and glasses. ‘I ordered some pizza,’ she said as she laid out the crockery. ‘I hope that’s okay?’
Emma’s eyes widened at mention of the food, but her gaze remained locked on the laptop screen.
‘Perfect,’ Zara offered, pulling out a chair beside Emma, with Tom sitting on the next chair over.
Emma adjusted the screen so that all three of them could see it, before opening a webpage. ‘This is the missingpeople.org site that would be the first place I’d come when researching people who have gone missing in the UK. I’m assuming – given nobody reported you speaking with a foreign accent in the early days – that you were from the UK to begin with, so it’s as good a place as any to start from.’
Zara nodded at the explanation, her heart fluttering at the anticipation of starting. She recognised the cold sweat and increased heartrate from standing on the start line of a race during sports day as a child.
‘There are filters on the site to narrow down the criteria. So we’ll filter for female children who’ve been missing for more than three years initially to reduce the options. What does that leave us…?’
The three of them stared at the screen, while Maddie waited downstairs for the pizza to be delivered.
Zara watched as the list of faces refreshed slowly on the site as the filters were applied. ‘I can’t believe there are so many,’ she said, more to herself than anyone.
‘Tragically, there are more children that go missing each year than anyone else,’ Emma echoed glumly. ‘Thankfully, more are found than not, but the success rate is far from one hundred per cent. I imagine it would be a lot worse without resources like this. And locating missing people quickly has been improved by the advance of social media. Ironically, the dark side of social media has probably contributed to the increase in people going missing to begin with, so…’ She left the statement hanging. ‘Can you remember anything about the time when your disappearance started, to help narrow the list further? Do you know where you’re from, for example?’
Zara closed her eyes, but shook her head. ‘It’s difficult to remember anything of life before the fireman rescued me… I get flashes – glimpses really – of memories, but not enough to provide much insight. There’s something fleeting about an animal enclosure; possibly a memory of being at a zoo, maybe, but I can’t be certain. And it isn’t obvious whether it’s a memory from before or after I was found. I can’t think of any place other than Brighton, but that’s probably because that’s where Angie and Keith raised me after my return. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay,’ Emma soothed. ‘This is going to take us time. Look, there are some of these we can automatically rule out, based on appearance. Can I ask a personal question? About your hair. One of the corroborating factors as to why the authorities were so quick to hand you back to Angie and Keith was your fiery hair. This is your natural hair colour, I take it?’
Zara felt the locks that had helped her quash the voice of doubt in those early years. ‘Yes, it is. Darker now than it was, but I never changed it intentionally.’
‘Okay, well presumably we can assume that if you were reported missing, then the image they would have used of you would have been one that reflected the colour.’
Zara frowned. ‘Wait, what do you mean by if I was reported missing?’
Emma scrunched up her nose. ‘This website relies on the families of the absent person reporting the disappearance, specifically reporting the disappearance to the police. I would imagine, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it would be a given that your real parents or guardians would have formally recorded your absence, but… depending on the circumstances, there is a prospect that we won’t be able to find you.’ Emma quickly raised her hands in a calming gesture. ‘That’s not to say we won’t be successful; I just want to prepare you for the possibility, and the only reason I do say that is that thirty-five years ago there was no doubt in the investigating team’s mind that you were the missing Zara. I would have assumed that, given the amount of media exposure your story garnered, if there was a second family out there craving news about their missing redhead, they would have come forward to challenge.’
This was a question that hadn’t occurred to Zara previously, but now she couldn’t ignore it: why hadn’t her real family come looking for her?
Scrolling through the passport-sized images on the screen between them, panic slowly rose in her throat. What if she couldn’t find out who she really was? What if she was lost forever?
Chapter Thirty-Two
Now
Edgware, London
Scrolling through the faces on the screen, I know I need to be concentrating, but my mind is elsewhere. I’ve tried phoning Rachel four times, but the call has rung through to her messaging service each time. I’ve recorded three voicemails asking Rachel to phone me back, but as yet those messages have gone unanswered. I’m probably just being paranoid, and it could simply be that she’s just caught up with a story, or the meeting with her editor has run over, but… it’s been nearly three hours since I last saw Rachel, and I know she will have made it to her office in that time. What if the meeting was bad news, and now she’s gone to drown her sorrows? Or worse still, what if she’s been involved in an accident, and doesn’t even realise I’m trying to get hold of her?
Curse of the writer’s overactive imagination again.
I look up at Zara, forcing myself to remember how important this search is for her. It has taken tremendous courage for Zara to impart her secret to me, and she deserves my full attention and cooperation. If Rachel would just phone me back and let me know what her editor has said, I know I’d be less distracted.
My gaze returns to the screen, but there’s part of me that feels like we’re wasting our time here. Even though I’ve applied a filter to show the faces of girls who have been missing for over three years, there are still so many, and the majority have foreign-sounding names and the wrong skin tone, which means we can quickly rule them out as a match for the woman before me now. On top of that, I can’t escape the fact that if there really is a family out there looking for her true self, then surely questions would have been asked when the authorities believed they’d discovered Zara.
The breath catches in my throat as a very recognisable face suddenly appears on the screen. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise given the filters that have been applied, but catching sight of my sister sends my pulse spiking; it’s almost like coming face to face with her for the first time all over again. I don’t think Zara notices me quickly scrolling on.
Hovering the mouse over each image presents us with a name and a date from when they went missing, which is only as helpful as being able to rule out any images of girls who went missing after Zara was found in 1988. The page is slow to refresh and add new images, and while we wait I offer both Zara and Tom a reassuring smile, but neither looks comfortable with what we’re doing. After ten minutes of looking at vulnerable faces, we’re no closer to finding out who this Zara is.
‘Is that it?’ she asks when no new faces load to the screen.
I reluctantly nod. ‘I’m sorry, it appears so.’
She looks over to Tom, her lip trembling.
‘There must be more missing children than this,’ Tom says, refusing to be beaten. ‘I assume there are other websites?’
‘There are,’ I admit, ‘but this is one of the more popular ones. It’s difficult without knowing a little bit more about your life before 1988. Are you sure there are no other details you can recall from your time before you were discovered in Callum Gerrard’s house? Anything at all could be useful. A location, or a face, or a name. Anything?’
Zara’s lip continues to tremble, like that of an orphaned child being asked to trust her life into the hands of new guardians. ‘I…’ she stops herself, and a frown slowly takes control of her forehead. She closes her eyes, lowers her head, and her hand comes up and massages her temple. ‘There’s a voice… in the dreams I’ve been having. A woman’s voice, quiet, but confident… It’s… it’s angry with me, I think. It calls out when the dream is darkening from behind my eyes… right before I wake up… It’s calling out… calling out to me, I think. If I could just…’ Her eyes snap open, and she looks straight at me. ‘Ruth, or Ruthie. That’s what the voice is calling out. I think… maybe… my name might have been Ruth.’ She looks back at the screen. ‘Is there any way to look for missing girls called Ruth?’
I turn my attention back to the screen also and scroll back to the top of the page, hoping the list of faces has refreshed to reveal new images. ‘Alas, on the site we’re using, all we can do is look at the faces and names; there’s no way to filter by name. I could do a standard search for missing girls called Ruth, but is there anything else you can remember? You don’t know where you lived before Brighton?’
She shakes her head ruefully. ‘I’m sorry, no.’
Tom takes her hand and leans forwards, as if what he’s about to say will bring redemption for us all. ‘What if we tried something like hypnosis? The fact that Zara is having dreams – sorry, nightmares – about her earlier experiences suggests that the memories are there, just hidden away. I read about this hypnotherapist who specialises in unlocking repressed memories and experiences; maybe she could help unlock some of that history.’
Zara looks at me expectantly.
I so want to offer them hope, but I won’t lead them down the garden path. My face folds in on itself as I prepare for the backlash. ‘I wouldn’t place too much hope in that sort of thing. From what I’ve heard and seen of so-called hypnotic regression, it’s pretty hit and miss, and requires the subject to be open to the power of suggestion. There’s no way to prove for certain whether what the subject is revealing is actual memory, and not just what the imagination has created to make life easier. It’s why the police can’t place any reliance on witness statements based on hypnotic sessions, and why they’re not considered evidentiary in court.’
