when he mimics our father’s reasoned tone. ‘Don’t you share it?’
‘Yes.’ I lift an eyebrow. ‘So you’d like a doll’s house?’
‘No. Of course not. I’m a boy. I don’t like doll’s houses.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with a boy liking doll’s houses.’
‘Well I don’t. But why would Granny put it out of the way like that?’
‘It hurt her to see it, Luke.’
He scowls. ‘It shouldn’t be hidden away in the attic. Get it back from her.’ He sounds like you, issuing a command that must be obeyed.
Three crows lift from a tree, squawking. Luke and I snap our heads to watch them fly off, so glossy and black they appear to have brushed their feathers with oil.
‘Do you think something startled them?’ He takes a fire leaf from his pocket.
‘Probably an animal.’
He is studying the leaf, tracing a finger over its veins. He doesn’t look at me when he says, super casually, ‘Can you make Granny give you that new box of Mummy’s things?’
There’s a funny little clutch in my stomach. I am not sure I heard him right. ‘What things?’
‘Don’t know. Stuff the police returned to Granny a couple weeks ago.’
‘Granny didn’t tell me that. How do you know?’
‘I’m a good spy. Like you. I heard her talking about them with Grandpa.’
‘Did Granny open it? Did she look in it?’
‘Not that she mentioned when I was listening.’
‘Did she say anything about why the police finally returned Mummy’s things?’
‘Nope. Get the box too. Make Granny give it to you.’
Getting that box is exactly what I want to do. Very, very much. ‘Okay,’ I say, though I mumble secretly to myself about the challenge of making our mother do anything. Our mother gives orders. She does not take them.
‘Auntie Ella?’
‘Yes.’
‘She would have come back for me if she could have, wouldn’t she?’
I think of one of the headlines that appeared soon after you vanished, claiming you’d run away. I put my arms around him tightly. We have always tried to protect him from such stories. Since last week’s spate of new headlines about Thorne, we have been monitoring Luke’s Internet use even more carefully. But we can’t know what he might have stumbled on, and I am nervous that a school friend has said something.
I kiss the top of his head and inhale. We have only been out for forty minutes but already he smells like a puppy who has run all the way back from a damp walk. ‘She would have come back for you.’ It is not raining but my cheeks are wet.
Luke wriggles out of my arms. He wipes at his cheeks too. ‘Are you sure?’
‘One hundred per cent. Nothing would have kept her from you if she had a choice.’
He bites his lower lip and looks down, scrunching his fists over his eyes.
Was I right to tell him these two true things, one beautiful and one too terrible to bear? That you were driven by your love for him, and that something unimaginably horrible happened to you?
Another thought creeps in, a guilty one. Is it easier for me to imagine you suffering a terrible death than to contemplate the possibility that you made a new life for yourself somewhere, as the police have sometimes suggested? I think of Thorne and shudder, absolutely clear that the answer is no.
‘She wanted you so much.’ It is extremely difficult to get these words out, but somehow I do, in a kind of croak.
‘It’s okay, Auntie Ella.’ He has so much courage, this boy, as he takes his fists from his eyes and comforts me when I should be comforting him. He waits for me to catch my breath. ‘I found a picture of her holding me,’ he says. ‘It’s one I hadn’t seen before. At first I thought it was you. You look like her.’
‘I think maybe that’s more true now than it used to be.’
‘Because you’re thirty now.’
‘Thanks for reminding me.’
‘I know. It’s really old.’
I stifle a mock-sob.
‘Sorry,’ he says.
‘You look stricken with remorse.’
‘I’m just saying it because now you’re her age. That’s why you’re looking so much more like her. You can see it in that newspaper picture of you too.’ He clears his throat. ‘Did you really try everything you could to find her?’
Did I? At first we barely functioned. Mum didn’t leave her bed. Dad stumbled around trying to make sure we had what we needed, cooking and cleaning and shopping, trying to get Mum to eat. I lurched through the house, trying to care for a two-and-a-half-month-old baby. Mostly we were reactive, answering the police questions, giving them access to your things. But we got in touch with everyone we could think of, did the appeals.
I stuck pictures of your face to lampposts, between the posters of missing cats and dogs. One of them stayed up for a year, fading as rain and wind and snow hit it, flapping at a bottom corner where the tape came off, dissolving at the edges but miraculously holding on.
I tell Luke as much of this as I can, as gently as I can, but he shakes his head.
‘I need you to try again,’ he says. ‘I need you to. I need to know. Even if it’s the worst thing, I need to.’ His voice rises with each sentence.
I grab a bottle of water from my jacket pocket and pass it to him. He gulps down half.
‘Is this why you want me to get her things from Granny?’
‘Yes.’ He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘You have to. Tell me you will. You have to look at everything.’
‘The police already did.’
‘No they didn’t. I hear much more than you think after I’ve gone to bed. I’ve heard all of you say how useless they are. Except Ted.’
I inhale slowly, then blow out air. ‘Okay.’
‘You’ll do it?’
I nod. ‘I will.’ My stomach drops as if I am running and an abyss has suddenly opened in front of me. Because there is something I can do that we haven’t tried before. I can request a visit with Jason Thorne. I reach for Luke’s hand. ‘But only on one condition.’
‘What?’
‘You
