As I made my way down the steepest hill in Bishoptown, I glanced in the rear-view mirror and noticed a black transit van behind me. After turning right to drive over the bridge, I checked again and there it was—the same black transit van. Even when I turned left onto the main shopping street in the village the van was there. I frowned and wondered whether it was a reporter. Bishoptown was a small place so it was just as reasonable that it could be someone following the same route through the village.
When I parked up outside the pharmacy, the black van slowed down for a heartbeat before continuing on down the street. My suspicions were raised, but it could be just as possible that the driver had been looking for a parking space and hadn’t found anything.
“Wait for me to get out first,” I said to Aiden as I checked for oncoming traffic. I was still spooked from the van, but also, Aiden’s confinement had resulted in him missing out on the kind of ‘street smarts’ that most sixteen-year-old boys would possess. I didn’t feel comfortable even allowing him to get out of the car onto the pavement without me there. Not yet.
Aiden was silent as I exited the car and hurried around to his side. He opened the door himself and I took his hand to lead him down the street. With my free hand, I clutched my cardigan more tightly around me. It was a cool day, but the heavy knitwear and the anger coursing through my body made me feel sweaty and unkempt. My heart was still pounding from the unfortunate incident with the woman at the doctor’s office, and from the strange van following me along the street. I almost walked past the pharmacy, I was so distracted. I couldn’t stop my eyes roaming the faces of those walking around the village. No doubt they were tourists, but I couldn’t stop thinking about who had taken Aiden. What if Aiden had already been face-to-face with his attacker but hadn’t been able to tell me? What if the kidnapper came back and took him again?
The pharmacy was like every other shop in Bishoptown, in a small, limestone terraced building that looked more like a house than a business. Most of the shops had quaint hanging-baskets of busy-lizzies and marigolds, but the pharmacy had only one window and a wooden door with a bell.
As I was paying for the prescription, the bell on the door jingled, indicating someone else had walked in. Eager to leave, I hurried to put the change from my purchase into my wallet so I could get out of the small shop.
“Emma?”
High on adrenaline, I spun around too fast, almost knocking into Aiden. “Oh, hi, Amy. Didn’t expect to see you here.” It was a Tuesday. Teachers never had time off in the week. “How are…” I trailed off. Amy wasn’t listening to me at all, she was staring transfixed at my son.
“It’s break time,” she mumbled. “I came to pick up my prescription.” She didn’t even look at me once. She was staring at my son in such an intense manner that I almost pulled him back towards me and away from her. “Aiden, oh my… oh my God, it’s really you.” She took a step forward with her hand outstretched, but he ducked away from her, moving behind me. Amy’s eyes raised to meet mine and she blinked away a few tears before composing herself. “I didn’t… I mean, I heard what happened on the news and I wanted to call you but…”
My spine straightened. This was the woman whose negligence had led to my child being stolen from me. No wonder Aiden was cowering behind me. “It wouldn’t have been appropriate, Amy.” My fingers tingled. After all these years I thought I’d forgiven her, but I was wrong. I’d only managed to push those feelings aside in favour of getting on with my life. Now that Aiden had come back, those old feelings had resurfaced. Perhaps it was the unfortunate incident with the woman in the surgery, or perhaps it was the strange black van following me around the village, but I was in no mood to coddle the woman who had turned her back and allowed my son to disappear from school.
Her face fell. “You’re right. Sorry. I’m so stupid. I’m just so… I’m so glad Aiden is alive. I mean, I know he’s been through…”
“Hell,” I finished for her. “He’s been through hell.” As I stood there on the street looking at Amy, our years of working together melted away, leaving only my bitterness for the woman. I forgot all about the doll she’d bought for my unborn child, and the friendship we’d tentatively garnered over the last few years. I’d been desperate for someone to blame and suddenly here she was.
“I’m so sorry, Emma,” she said. From the red flush working up her neck, and the way her bottom lip trembled I could tell she was about to cry.
I turned away. “I should go.”
“Wait,” she said. “I don’t want… Emma, we’ve been friends for a long time now. I thought we’d got past what happened.”
I shook my head. “Everything is different now. I grieved for him and I let him go; that was the only way I could look past what you did. But now he’s here and he’s in pain and I can’t help but…” I paused. For the first time I really looked at her. Why was she so emotional? Why was there a single tear running down her cheek? It all seemed… contrived. How could I trust anything she said?
I pulled Aiden away, hurrying to my car. Thinking back to the reports and eyewitnesses on the day of Aiden’s disappearance, I wondered if there was anything inconsistent about Amy. I remembered that, after she’d noticed Aiden was missing, she had asked another teacher to take care of the class while she’d gone looking for Aiden herself. She was on her own for a number of minutes. What if…? I opened the car door and let Aiden inside. DCI Stevenson had admitted that the kidnapper didn’t have to be a man, though it was most likely that itwasa man. I put the key into the ignition. Aiden would do something if he was face-to-face with his attacker. Wouldn’t he? He’d recognise them.
So why was I suspecting everyone? Why was I suddenly believing that Amy, a petite and shy woman, could have stolen my son away and kept him locked up? Because I was beginning to believe that people were capable of anything. People are multi-layered. Anyone can have a private side that verges on the dark and dangerous. Your doctor could be a sadist. Your primary school teacher could be a paedophile. Your beauty therapist could be a murderer. It could be anything.
I watched Aiden put on his seatbelt and wondered if he remembered anything from his time as a captive. He was frightened of Rough Valley Forest, that much I knew, and I understood. But would he remember his kidnapper, and how would he act if he came face-to-face with them?
As I pulled quickly out of the parking space, a black Renault Clio had to brake suddenly to avoid my car. I fumbled with the gear stick and waved sheepishly as the driver of the Clio honked his horn at me. My fingers trembled as I guided the car out of the space and onto the main street.
“Shall we listen to the radio?” I said, too brightly.
Aiden didn’t respond. He gazed straight ahead in that same uninterested way. I clicked on the radio and tried to stop myself wondering what was in his mind. All the knowledge was there but he refused to let it out. That was when I realised I was angry with him. I couldn’t help it. I was angry with Aiden for not communicating with me. And I was suspicious. I was suspicious of everything.
“Why don’t you talk?” I said, banging the steering wheel. “Why won’t you tell me?”
I ran a red light. If Jake had been there he would have forced me to pull over and driven the rest of the way home. He would have hated to see me in this state. But he wasn’t there. It was only Aiden, who didn’t seem perturbed by my unhinged state in the least. All he did was stare out through the windscreen—staring and thinking and not reacting to anything around him. Maybe Jake was right. Maybe he was a vegetable.
No, I wouldn’t believe it. A vegetable doesn’t paint. A vegetable doesn’t acknowledge my words. There was the time he nodded at me, and the time where I thought I heard him singing—unless it had been a figment of my imagination…
As the streets faded one into another, I took deep breaths and eased my foot off the accelerator. The paper bag from the pharmacy sat on Aiden’s lap. My heart was pounding all the way home. When I checked the rearview mirror, the black transit van was back. I pulled in to my drive and swore. Even more reporters were clustered all around the house.
The transit van stopped a little way down the street. I was right—they’d been following me around as I went about my day-to-day chores, hanging around in a transit van like the mob following a target.
The front door burst open and Denise stepped out. She rushed over to the door and opened Aiden’s side, as a swarm of people with cameras and microphones gathered around us.
“What’s going on?” I shouted. “How did you get in the house?”
“Jake let me in earlier.”
