Authors: Paul Southern
I have a confession to make. It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you; it’s more how I went about saying it. You see, most people, when they’re confessing something, want to cleanse themselves; they want some kind of absolution for what they’ve done. They want to be forgiven and made to feel better, to be able to start again. That’s why so many of them turn to God; God doesn’t remind them of what they’ve done. He forgets about it. If other people can’t get over the hump, that’s their problem: Jesus saves everyone.
Of course, I don’t believe in Jesus; at least, not in the Biblical sense. And what other sense is there? Nor am I given to casuistry; I’m not intelligent enough. I believe there was a man, a man just like me, who had things to say, and nobody would believe him. That’s the bit I buy. All the other bits about being the son and heir, forget it. My inability to see God doesn’t bother me most of the time, though it’s quite frustrating to be told he sees me. What does bother me are moments like this, when it comes to confession. I have no one to turn to.
I don’t want to cleanse myself; I don’t even know what I did was wrong. Living with the memory of it is punishment enough: more than I can bear, actually. When I tell people, they don’t really listen to what I’m saying; they listen to
how
I’m saying it; and that distracts them. They look at me, shocked obviously, and offer their best kind of sympathy - I’ve had tea and biscuits, arms round the shoulder, arms on my shoulder, more tea and biscuits and some sex, none of which did any harm, but none of which made me feel any better - and all the while the full import of what I was saying was lost. That’s what I want you to know before I tell you, so that you don’t make the same mistake.
You see, what I did was terrible.
I killed my little girl.
When I was young, I used to stare a lot at the sky. I had a book with pictures of different types of clouds in it and used to hold it up to see if I could recognise them. There were thick and heavy cumulonimbus ones gathering in their black smoke, ready to break; and high, wispy cirrus, higher even than the trails of vanishing planes. But my favourite were the cirrocumulus and altocumulus, which rippled across the sky like desert sand dunes. Argosies of fleet, white sails gliding into the west were my Trojan war, my secret odyssey. Without knowing it, they guided me through my childhood. At once, beautiful, ineffable, like a dream, they led me on jejune meanderings, framing the corners of my world. I have seen the same look on my daughter’s face at times, when I caught her looking out of the window, singing to herself.
‘I think it’s going to rain, Dad.’
‘Why do you say that, sweetheart?’
‘’Cause the clouds are big.’
That was my doing. I taught her all that. I showed her the pictures and tried to get her to remember them - though obviously not in the same detail (I was much older) - telling her to look up, not down, thinking myself very wise that I’d taught her a great life lesson and that she would, by the slow osmosis of time, realise this meant to look for the good things in life, and not dwell on the bad; and her heart (through no doing of my own - hearts are law unto themselves, just like children) followed my lead, though I think it was the pictures that really appealed to her. I told you I was a crap parent: I approved of the things I approved of, and wanted her to do all the things I wanted, and got angry when she wanted to do her own. I could as likely change her as I could the formations in the sky. The blueprint of the clouds, the tapestry of my youth, was mine alone.
The middle-aged tart was with us when it happened. We were in the lobby, waiting for the lift. My daughter had pressed the button and was dancing in front of us, gyrating her body ten years too early, swaying her hips, and singing along to a song called ‘Crazy’. The middle-aged tart smiled at her and asked her what she was doing as if she didn’t know.
‘Dancing.’
My daughter beamed at her and the tart looked at me with tears in her eyes. I didn’t think it was
that
bad. Maybe she was just sentimental. She looked at her watch. I guess she must have been late for something.
‘You’re very good,’ she said. ‘Where are you off to today?’
‘To the cinema. Daddy is taking me out.’
‘Oh…’
Before she could say anything else, the bell rang. My daughter ran to the doors. Pavlov’s dogs would have reacted slower. It was the kind of instinctive and unstoppable rush she had when she smelled sweets or chocolate.
‘Hold on, sweetheart. Wait for me.’
The middle-aged tart tried to get out of the way but my daughter ran right into her. Her bag went flying and the contents threw up like Pick’n’Mix. Personally, I think she made a meal of it. You don’t go down like that, not if a little kid hits you, but I wasn’t about to say anything. I was more concerned about my little girl.
‘Darling, what have I said about running?’
There I was again, snapping at her heels, as if running was the most unnatural activity in the world. My daughter looked back, her finger in her mouth, and looked at the things on the floor: the lipsticks, potions, tampons, tablets: the charivari of a middle-aged woman.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Let me help you.’
‘It was an accident,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’
The smell of her perfume and the sight of her intimate things gave me a gynaecologist’s sense of her. Her strawberry blonde hair was neat and tidy and fell across her ruddy cheeks. I’m not sure if it was the embarrassment or the effort of bending that gave them so much colour, but I was faintly aroused by it. All that stretching and arching revealed the full contours of her anatomy and I was not slow to trace it. Her behind was generous, although not excessive in the way of some women. It had the spring of a firm cushion which was not bad for a woman of her age. I have seen some wretched sights in my life, sights which lesser men would have been daunted by, but none have come close to the spotted, sagging, dimpled cheeks of the women I have been with. Some had barely come out of their twenties when nature dropped her bombshell. The lithe contours of youth, easily within the compass of a man’s hand, were now bulbous projections a hippo would have been embarrassed of, the skin leathery and tough like pterodactyl hide. Not that I’m an oil painting, you understand - far from it - but my skin is still roughly attached to my bones, and not halfway down my knees.
The shifting cotton of her dress left exposed her pink bra straps and stretched like cellophane across her buttocks. No panty line, I noted. I’d already undressed her from my bed, making tactical guesses of the terrain from laboured conversations with her in the corridor, and the times she popped in to see my daughter, but this clambering round on the floor, and her petty exertions, mapped her out completely. My daughter looked on bemused, torn between the magic button and the Pick’n’Mix in front of her. I should have been looking, too.
I bent down to pick up an eye-liner which had rolled to the far wall. My back was only turned for a second. It’s a bit of a cliché when people tell you that’s all it takes. You see stories about it all the time: some chav mother leaves her baby buggy outside a newsagent to get herself some fags. The next thing she knows, little Johnnie has gone; some kids have taken him to a railway line to sniff glue. People are always trying to frighten you. They like to tell you there’s another place you’re going to go if you’re not good, or you’re not careful, and you better beware, or your children better beware. There are so many things to be afraid of and they’re all out to get you.
The second the bell rang, I knew what had happened. I ran to the lift doors and hammered on them, calling out my daughter’s name. Inside, I could hear her giggling.
‘Are you the giant?’
‘No, darling. Open the door.’
My fingers pressed the button repeatedly.
‘Darling, open the door!’
‘Daddy?’
Her voice seemed more distant now and I knew by the horrible hum through the metal that she’d gone. I banged my fist on the metal doors and let out a scream. They tell you that it’s the things you don’t expect in life that eventually get you but, in my case, it was quite the opposite: I’d seen this coming a long time ago. I was given glimpses of it like Cassandra but failed to believe it. I looked at the strawberry blonde and tears were falling down her face. Women are no good in emergencies; they wither away.
‘Stay here,’ I said. ‘Please.’
I ran down the corridor and turned left into the stairwell. Looking over the banister, the bottom seemed impossibly far. Which floor? Do I check every one? Do I go to the bottom and work my way up? I couldn’t move. Sixth floor. Down. I must go down. I took whole casements, nearly broke my feet, nearly broke my jaw. I swung round the banisters, and all the time knew that the lift was ahead of me. Twelve seconds. That’s all it took. She was ahead of me. Baby, please be okay. Go to the bottom and stay there. Please. Just step out of the lift and wait. Wait for Daddy.
I passed a Japanese couple on the stairs and shouted at them - ‘My daughter’s in the lift. Can you help me find her?’ - but they stared at me like I was mad. ‘English? You speak English?’ Twelve seconds. I threw my hands in the air. I knew I wasn’t going to make it. Fourth floor. Third. I saw the lift doors opening and strange hands lifting her out. Second. Please, baby. I pushed through the fire door on the ground floor and ran round the corner into the lobby. There was an eerie quiet. No baby. No open lift doors. Nothing. I hit the button and waited.
Please
. The bell rang and light streamed out. She was going to come running into my arms.
Baby
? I looked inside. There was nothing but my ghostly reflection in the lift mirror. On the floor was a black lipstick. I wondered if it was the woman’s. I picked it up to see. I know a lot about makeup. I haven’t been around women this long and learned nothing. A middle-aged woman wouldn’t wear this kind. I looked round for anything else, a sign she may have been there, then looked at the numbers on the lift display. When I saw them, I clapped myself. It seemed so obvious. My daughter wasn’t stupid. How could she be? She was
my
daughter. She would’ve gone there.
Minus One
.
I hit the button and the doors shut immediately.
I am falling, falling as I always do remembering it. The soft thud, the doors opening, the corridors receding and my daughter calling out after me, her tiny hands reaching out of the darkness. It wasn’t going to happen to me. I’m not some underclass scally with a buggy and a craving for fags. I’m respectable. And responsible.
Now she’s gone. My beautiful little girl, my flesh and blood, the thing I treasured more than my life, has gone. I have lost her and the agony of that is an agony more than anyone can bear. Two thousand years passes in every second. It lasts forever. I can’t sleep or wake or breathe without seeing her beside me, holding my hand while I pull her along, smiling at me, looking up at the clouds, singing: Father, why hast thou forsaken me? I am not Jesus. I am her Judas. My flat has turned into hell.
Where had my daughter gone? That was the question on everyone’s lips. I stood in the lobby of the Sears building with two policemen and pleaded with them to find her. I have been an actor in my time, though not famous enough to be known - as with all things in my life, I have been a failure - and begged them to go out and get her. Yes, I’d checked all the obvious places, had even searched outside, though there was no way she could have opened the main door. Where else had I looked? Every floor. I’d called her name, knocked on every door. Everyone knew. Everyone was helping.
‘Don’t worry, sir,’ they said. ‘She can’t have got far. Just stay calm and let us do our job.’
More police arrived and hung round the lobby. They pointed to the CCTV camera above the door. There was no laughter, no jokes, no sign of camaraderie; just grim realisation. It struck me that these were fathers, too: young ones, old ones, failed ones. It didn’t take much of an imagination to put themselves in my shoes. Occasionally, one would look across the room at me and I could read every word in his face. They were looking for their own children. Everything that is good and noble about people is contained in their attitude to children. I know you’re going to point out the exceptions - the fathers who beat their offspring, the paedophiles who prey on them, the traffickers who sell them into prostitution - but, you know, they are the minority. People are cruel and selfish, consumed with the pettiness of ordinary things, blind to the extraordinary, the banks of altocumulus, but with kids, they’re generally okay.
Children hold the key. They unlock the everyday and put you back where you were. I’ve known drug dealers and smackheads who wouldn’t give a damn about breaking into your car, or ripping the chain from your neck, or kicking your front door down, who get up at seven every morning to take their children to school. They sit in the playground with them, watching the world go by, kicking stones at the passing cars, and sometimes, in their cracked, shaven-heads, I have seen their eyes flicker with love, and their hands give gestures of affection I’ve made myself, and I have felt sorry for the children, but sorrier still for them. I have seen grandmothers’ eyes shine and the leathery hide of tramps’ faces ironed into the approximation of smiles when my daughter has sat next to them. I have seen hard cases move aside, and harder faces melt when we pass; and impossibly beautiful women, with makeup that does not crack and eyes that go soft focus only for themselves, coo with maternal delight and look at me as if to say, I want one.
I wanted one, too.
The efficiency of the police operation and the determination in the officers’ faces gave my heart respite and I began to believe their words. Of course they’d find her. Where the hell could she have got to? I took them to where it all happened and saw the middle-aged tart being consoled by a policewoman. She must have felt it, too. It was
her
bag. She didn’t look at me and I didn’t really look at her, but she confirmed everything I’d said, and the officers looked at the floor and the button on the wall and said they were going to take over from here. I took them to my flat and brought out a photograph of my little girl and their mouths were set grimly when they looked at it and I knew they were thinking what the rest were thinking. One of them put his hand on my arm and the connection nearly made me cry.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll find her.’
They left me with another WPC who took all the details I hadn’t thought to offer and looked round my apartment with a faint air of curiosity and bemusement. She was probably twenty-two or twenty-three, pretty in a bland kind of way, with a starched shirt that clung to her breasts and made me think of fish and chips, all tightly wrapped. I suppose they thought a woman would be better at a moment like this; they are better at empathising and comforting than a man, and I would be less likely to shout and scream and run round the building like a maniac. They were right, but it would have made no difference if it was a man. I was thinking of my little girl and what I’d done to her.
Half an hour later, one of the male officers came back.
‘You said you’d checked the basement?’
‘Yes, I thought she may have gone down there.’
‘Did you find anything?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long were you down there?’
‘I don’t know. About five minutes, maybe.’
‘And you looked everywhere?’
‘Yes. I tried every door.’
‘Does she know her way around?’
‘Not really. We only go when we put the bins out.’
‘And you said she couldn’t open any of the fire doors?’
‘No, she’s too small. Why?’
He looked at me. ‘The bar on the emergency door was raised.’
I stared at him, knowing full well the import. It doesn’t do to be too clever, not with people in authority. They want to bring you down a peg, get one over you. I didn’t know what he was thinking, whether he thought I was lying or hiding something, so I let him draw his own conclusion. If you say too much, people think you’re up to something; if you say nothing, you’re being shifty. It’s impossible to know how to behave because everything is so unnatural. Then there’s always that nagging fear they’ll suspect you. You’ve seen it before on TV: the guy facing the press, saying how he was the last to see the victim and talking about how horrid it was, and in the back of your mind, you’re thinking, yeah, I bet you did it. The police must get that all the time, that sensation of knowing. You’d think they’d be so used to it, they’d just arrest the father, or boyfriend, or jilted lover as a matter of course.
‘So?’
‘So…’ he said, drawing out the ‘o’ like a real thespian.
This was his turn, as well, I suppose. I didn’t begrudge him a share of the limelight. I understood it perfectly. In the black quarry of your soul, the dark machinery whirrs, drilling for its own selfish seams. Even the hand on my arm was artificial. It made him feel good, too.
‘So someone else was down there.’
I looked at him and wondered what was going through his mind. I’ve always had a problem doing that. I’m always projecting out the bad parts of me and thinking the worst of people. Or maybe I’m just being realistic. I give people far more intelligence and sensitivity than they merit, and often the other way round. People I know who have appeared dumb have often surprised me. They have said things that made me think there was more going on in there than the general squelch and marrow of their banality. Sure, they have soon relapsed into their natural state, their intellectual philistinism, but for a second there has been a connection.
I had such a feeling with the officer. He was urbane and young, but not stupid young as some are; he acknowledged my age and was respectful, which was more than I expected. I imagined he was already earmarked for promotion, had ambitions far beyond the beat. I imagined him sparring with the Oxbridge types in court - what travesty it is to see the rank and file exposed on the bench, confused and bewildered by the cut and thrust of champagne drinking hoorah Henrys. I have been a juror in my time, too, and fought for justice, only to be shouted down, and I know the pain of justice not done, so when he spoke, I listened.
‘The first thing I want to tell you is try not to worry,’ he said. ‘We’re going to do all we can to find your little girl. Often, missing children are found in the first few hours. We have officers going from flat to flat, looking at the CCTV here and in the surrounding area. The city centre is covered. If she managed to get out, she’ll be found. You can help us by staying calm and telling us anything else you think may be important. The smallest detail can be vital. Do you understand?’
I nodded.
He picked his hat up, brushed his coat down and made for the door. Then he turned as if one of those details had just occurred to him.
‘You said you were married?’
‘Yes. I
was
.’
‘Have you told your wife?’
I paused. ‘No. Not yet.’
‘It might be an idea to.’
The door closed behind him.
My wife
?
I looked at the WPC and the look of bemusement had given way to one of pity. I could live with that. Just.