Kidnap - "Cuckoo"

CUCKOO

one

The town centre is busy, but it is full of people not noticing
anything. Their attention is on the coins in their hand, the shopping
still to be done, the tub of raspberry ripple ice-cream in the bag that
will melt if they don't get back to the car soon, the tension between
partners that has been visible since breakfast.

The pinch of shoes, the inner summing of how much has been spent and
how much is left.

Nobody notices anything that isn't directly to do with them.

This becomes important, later on.

The butcher's shop, Dewhursts is set away from the main shops, in a
side street. The company it keeps is with shoe shops, remaindered
books, not Woolworths and Boots. Still, it is a good butcher's, the
place is clean and the staff are friendly. You can't mistake the smell
of meat though; it hangs on the air, just as you can tell from your
fingers when you have handled bacon.

Anne always buys her meat from Dewhursts, her husband states
categorically that he can't stand supermarket meat, shrink-wrapped in
polystyrene trays. He likes meat that 'I know definitely came from an
animal'.

Anne Feather can't imagine ever being married to a butcher, whether
that smell would come from their fingers as they plucked back the duvet
and slid in next to you, a scent of raw liver and beef coming from them
as they reached for you.

Later, Anne will become a vegetarian because of what happens to her
today. She does this, not for any ethical reasons, rather that the
memory of meat makes her feel nauseous.

This is 1979, hot and clammy and the idea of vegetarianism for Anne is
kept in the same bracket as nudism - it is something for people with
odd ideas.

Anne is buying mince, two pounds - Shepherds Pie and later in the week,
homemade burgers, which Jim likes; shaped irregularly and thick with
onions.

The butcher is weighing it out for her, lifting it out of a tray with
his hands and placing it on the scales, shaping the ball of mince this
way and that, adding and removing until the scales are right.

Her daughter Emily is twisting in her grip, she is bored. She has spent
too long in town now and is bored. She has stood next to her mother,
looking up while her mother spoke to her friend, becoming more and more
hot and tired. Emily is nearly four and has very little patience.

She twists, pulling and whining, till finally her mother releases
her.

Anne is asking for lamb now, two joints - shoulder and next she will
want pork chops. Emily doesn't like pork chops, they slide around on
her plate when she tries to cut them, knocking into the peas and
sending them onto the tablecloth.

The butcher is bagging up the mince, lifting the bag and spinning it at
the top, moving his fingers briskly to tie a knot in the bag. He is
reaching for the lamb.

Anne notices just out of the corner of her eye that Emily is no longer
in the shop, but she is not greatly troubled by this. She will only be
another minute, and then they can go home. She can buy Emily an
ice-lolly for the journey home, one of those rockets that come in four
different colours.

The butcher is finishing with her order and asking her for the money.
She opens her purse, which is leaf-green, with a brass clasp that is
stiff. Even though she has a job and doesn't read Woman's Weekly, she
has a purse like her mother had.

She leaves the shop.

It doesn't sink in for a moment that Emily has gone. She is aware that
Emily is not directly outside the shop, but she will be a few feet
away, nose pressed up against a window. Anne Feather looks around, with
a degree of annoyance at first, 'why can't that girl do as she's
told?'

A scan of the street doesn't show a girl with fair hair, two pink
bobbles in her hair, wearing a blue dress with red trim, white socks,
black shoes - dolly shoes, with little dimples and two arch-shaped
holes near the buckle. Anne can't see her at all.

She isn't aware of dropping the shopping bags, isn't aware that her
inquiring call of Emily, Emily has become louder.

Anne is still thinking about her child being lost, that soon a kindly
shopper will be bringing her back, holding her hand, the adult's hand
needs to be down at their hip, for Emily is not very tall.

This isn't what happens at all.

When the policeman arrives, the first thing he does is hand her a
tissue. Anne is puzzled by this, but she has been sobbing so much that
her nose has run and her eyes are pink.

The policeman tells her not to worry, that little Emily will have just
wandered off and got lost. He gets on his radio and tells people back
at his station, they will make sure that all the shops are aware that a
little girl has gone missing. As soon as they see her, it will all be
fine.

For Anne Feather and her husband Jim, it may never get fine
again.

This is the day that Emily Feather stops being their cheeky little
girl, who likes to sit under the table, hiding under the folds of the
table-cloth, pretending that she is in a tent, Emily who pours
invisible tea into tiny blue plastic cups for her dolls to drink. This
is the day that Emily Feather becomes public property, a news item, a
face on a poster in railway stations, a name that for four or five
years everyone sort of knows, maybe without knowing exactly why. And
then there is a burst of recognition, 'oh yeah, the girl who got
snatched from Lincoln.'

How do they manage to stay together, Anne and Jim?

At least initially, the fear and grief is tempered by hope. For the
first three days they half-expect that she is going to come home, that
she will be brought in by someone who found her crying and lost, not
knowing what to do. She has never been too good at remembering her name
and address, even though they have tried to teach her it.

This changes after three days have passed without Emily's return (the
knocks on the door are journalists, or strangers with flowers who will
not look Anne in the face, who just hand her the flowers and mumble
'we're so sorry'. What use are flowers? The house is choked with
flowers, bright, cheery and inappropriate. What replacement are flowers
for a daughter? )

Anne and Jim are now hoping, although they will never say it, certainly
not to each other, that Emily will return alive. They never say it to
each other, not ever. Anne never throws away Emily's clothes, even long
after she will have grown too big to fit her; Jim never takes down the
photograph that sits on the television, dominating every evening.

They know that she is not lost, that she has been taken. They know that
the person who has taken her is sick, that there may be things
happening to her that they can't bear to contemplate.

All that they can hope is that when those things are over, that the
person sets Emily down on a street somewhere, opens the car door and
says, 'get out'.

After six months, they have given up all hope of this. All they are
hoping for now is for a body, so that they can rest. They know that the
discovery will be more awful than they can bear, but every morning they
wake up, trying to steel themselves for the news, which never comes. At
least when the body is found, it will begin to be over.

This never happens, there never comes a point for them where a girl's
shoe is found near a canal, where a small hand is seen peeping out from
underneath a bush, no pensioners stumbling on a shallow grave while
walking their golden retriever.

Sometimes, when Anne crosses the road, her hand flicks out to hold a
smaller hand that is no longer there.

How do they cope? How are things between them? For Anne, the grief is
charged with responsibility. They live on the RAF camp, a secluded
environment, where everyone knows each other. She knows when she passes
people who used to be friends, neighbours that they don't want to speak
to her, that they don't want to ask her how she is - in case she tells
them.

It is as if they are afraid that the child abduction might be
contagious, that they are risking their own children by having anything
to do with her. But there is more even than that, she senses. Some of
them actively blame her, question what sort of mother takes their eyes
of their child, even for a second. This is natural; everyone thinks
that sort of thing, unaware that they do it themselves at least once a
month, if not more. But that is alright, because nothing
happened.

What sort of mother would do that? What sort of mother is she?

Does Jim blame her? Does he feel that she was at fault?

Jim is in the RAF; he has men under his command. He has to give orders
and know that they will be followed. He cannot allow this situation to
make him weak; people are counting on him. He never looks at his eyes
in the mirror when he shaves in the morning anymore, that seems to
help. He confines his tears to the bathroom, where he can be totally
alone and run the taps to drown out the noise.

When, seven years later, he embarks on an affair, perhaps it is partly
because he cannot bear to bring pleasure to his wife anymore, that he
wants to hurt the woman that has been an indirect cause of so much
hurt. The affair fizzles out, runs its course and he never tells Anne,
though she probably knew anyway.

Let's go right back, for a moment, to that week. They both knew that
the lapse of attention in the butcher's was what cost them their
daughter, that the meat in their refrigerator bore at least some of the
blame. But, that was food that they had bought to cook for
dinner.

Will they eat the meat - they have to eat something, after all, no
matter that their throats are raw from crying. Or will they throw it
away; not able to eat something that was a part of the problem? What
would that achieve, buying new meat would just bring back worse
memories. They don't eat the first night, Jim strides around the house,
unable to sit still for even a second; Anne sits on the settee, heaving
with tears.

The second night, Anne cooks pork chops, silently. They eat in silence,
what is there to say to each other, apart from everything? Better to
keep quiet.

The occasional scrape of the knife against the plate and the dull
munching, crushing noise of their mouths are the only sounds.

But despite all of this, they are still together. They live in the same
house as one another, sleep in the same bed. Sometimes they even laugh
at the same things on television, or in the pub.

They go on with their lives, getting back to the minutiae of everyday
life; Anne goes for interviews for new jobs, Jim chooses a new car,
they go on holiday, they buy albums occasionally, they go to the
cinema. How do they do that? (*1)

How can life ever restore itself after something so appalling? That's
the way we're designed. We are a creature built to hunt, to forage, to
survive. We may have become more sophisticated, hacked out a culture
for ourselves, but we can never escape the fact that at essence, we are
beasts.

(*1 The butcher himself, James Talbot, was not unaffected by the
disappearance. He had bad dreams for a long time, a huge weight of
guilt. People came into the shop whispering for a few months. Who
knows, people may have thought he was involved in some way. One thing
is certain, for the next four years, James Talbot found himself
frequently saying to mothers, "Watch your child madam, mind she doesn't
wander off." )

If grief really did completely destroy us, food would never have got
into our bellies. Our survival instincts are for us to eventually find
ways of coping. Our ancestors lived in a time when life was cheap and
grief was a regular occurrence. We feel grief and guilt for as long as
we need to and then our bellies tell us to get on with things.

Consider those people who were shopping, who were walking near the
butchers at around that time, on that day. Many of them simply didn't
appreciate that they were there and never contacted the police. Some
knew they were there, but hadn't seen anything so never did anything
about it. Others were more public-spirited and at least came forward,
confessing their ignorance with shamed faces.

For some of those people, there was guilt that they perhaps could have
done something, been more observant, noticed that someone was stealing
the child. But how can you tell? In a town centre on a hot day, how
many children are crying and complaining? How many adults dragging them
along, telling them to shut up? Where do you separate parent from
abductor?

The first morning that Anne wakes up without having had nightmares
about Emily, she feels so bad that she smashes a picture frame and cuts
her thumb on a piece of glass, seeing the blood drip thickly like jam,
just to feel pain that will ease with time. After two hours, she
forgets that she had ever cut her thumb until she catches the skin
whilst picking up the telephone at work and feels a tiny echo of the
pain flutter through her.

two

The first time is not all that significant, she is eight and it is
raining, fat drops on the window and she has been watching them chase
each other, trying to decide which would reach the bottom first. She
bores of this and decides to look in the cupboard for Snakes and
Ladders. Mum is at the sewing machine, foot on the black pedal, rrrrrr,
rrrrr.

Snakes and Ladders isn't in the cupboard, so she decides to look
upstairs, in mum's wardrobe. She isn't allowed in here, so she must be
quiet. She touches the sleeves of the blouses, feeling how soft they
are, holds one up against her cheek, cool to the skin. It is pale blue,
mummy wears this to work sometimes. She does the same with a corduroy
skirt, feeling the hard ridges press against her, rubbing her nose
against the lines of it.

She can smell mummy's perfume, it is sweet and faint. There are the
shoes at the bottom of the wardrobe, the boots, the rows of black shoes
that are sensible, flat and lined up like crows, then the high heels
that she always wants to try on and walk in; clipping round on the
pavement with her feet sliding about in the cavernous space. Not today,
she must be quiet.

There are boxes on a shelf, she can just reach them if she stretches,
there might be Snakes and Ladders up there. She is sure that mummy will
stop sewing and play with her. She tugs at the boxes, but tugs too hard
and they fall, thumping to the floor.

She looks at what has fallen, a biscuit tin and a scrapbook, Paddington
Bear on the cover. It is fat, thick with things that have been stuck in
it. She never gets to see what is in it, because mummy comes in, having
run up the stairs when hearing the noise.

"What are you doing in here? " says mummy, "This is private. You
shouldn't be in here. "

Mummy is very cross, she raises her hand, fingers together like a
blade, like a bird's wing, but she doesn't bring the hand down.

Alice starts to cry, she didn't want to upset her mummy. Mummy was
hardly ever cross. She doesn't go into this bedroom again for years,
even when her mother is out, there is some force which keeps her
away.

The second time, she is with a friend from school, Sarah Jane. Her
mother is out, supervising at a fete. Mother invites her to go, but she
declines, fetes aren't cool. This time, Alice is fourteen. Her friend
has a packet of cigarettes, swiped from her own mother, and urges Alice
to try one. Alice is not keen, but watches while Sarah Jane smokes one,
coughing and pulling a face.

Sarah Jane wants to look around, she looks at Alice's bedroom, with its
Duran Duran posters and scratch-and-sniff stickers that are stuck to
her mirror. She bores of this after a while and wants to look in
mother's bedroom, to see if there is anything interesting in
there.

Alice hangs back at the door. She wants Sarah Jane to like her, because
Sarah Jane is considered cool at school and Alice is not, not yet. She
hasn't told anyone that her mum is a teacher, but a few of the children
know, because she taught them at primary school.

Alice is edgy, she knows that her mother won't be back for ages, that
there is no risk of getting caught, but she is still fearful, she wants
Sarah Jane to get bored and leave. Sarah Jane can sense the danger
though and this is making the (rather dull) bedroom more of an
interesting place. She squirts some perfume onto her neck, she has a
look in a jewellery box.

When she opens the cupboard and begins pulling through the dresses,
sliding the metal coathangers along the bar, Alice begins to get very
nervous indeed, although she is not sure why. Sarah Jane reaches up and
pulls down a scrapbook.

"Look, " she says, "Your mum keeps a scrapbook. Paddington Bear. It's
probably got all your school paintings in it. "

Alice feels her back stiffen up, but at the same time she is curious,
she can't imagine her mother keeping a scrapbook of anything. She
simply wasn't the type. She didn't collect things, she didn't have any
real hobbies, she was just... a mum.

"Boring, " says Sarah Jane, leafing through the scrapbook with
increasing disinterest, "Just a load of old stuff from newspapers.
"

Alice urges her to put it away, saying that she would smoke a cigarette
with Sarah Jane if they go into the garden.

They do this, flicking the ash into the flowerbeds. Alice feels wary
later and kicks soil over the ash, to conceal it.

The third time, she is eighteen, and has just lost her virginity. Her
boyfriend Martin lies on her bed, listening to music as she uncoils
herself and leaves him there so that she can have a bath.

She is on study-leave for exams, so mum is at school, teaching the
little children about butterflies. She sinks under the foam in the
bath, feeling a mixture of excitement and disappointment. It is hard
for her to judge whether Martin is a good lover, since she has nothing
to compare it with. She is more grateful than anything, both that he
was interested enough in her to ask her out, and that it didn't hurt
very much.

When she comes out of the bath, wrapped in a mint coloured towel,
Martin takes hold of her by the waist, pulls her close and smells her
hair, breathing in deeply to draw in the scent of her. "Love the way
your hair smells, " he says.

He begins to unwind the towel and they make love again, this time it is
better.

Afterwards, he says, "Didn't know your mum was interested in crime.
"

"She's not, " Alice tells him, not particularly.

"She's got scrapbooks with cuttings in, about kidnappings and stuff, "
Martin tells her.

Alice is shocked that Martin would go into her mother's bedroom.

"You were ages, " he says, in justification and begins to twirl a lock
of her wet hair between his fingers.

They don't talk about the scrapbook again, they are young lovers, with
exams ahead of them. They have many other things to talk about and many
other things to do but talk.

And then there is the fourth time, which is why Alice came to see
me.

three

My name is Alex Chandler. This isn't a story about me, so I'll get my
stuff out of the way as quickly as possible.

I work as a private investigator, which is neither as glamorous nor as
seedy as it sounds. The bulk of my work is locating people and serving
them with court papers - 'your wife's got a non-molestation order
against you'.. I also do quite a bit of divorce work, from which I have
learned that the only guaranteed way to ensure that your partner
doesn't have an affair is to be much younger, much richer and much
better-looking than them. And if you do that, then it'll be your
partner coming to see me, or someone like me, because you will be the
one having the affair.

The really good thing about my office, is that it is just above a
dentist's surgery, so during consultations, I get to hear the sound of
a drill whirring its way through enamel. You'd be surprised how that
noise tends to make people more honest. You get the truth out of people
when they're listening to a dentist's drill.

I know the dentist, chap called Philip. I've got a bit of a thing for
magazines, I'm always reading magazines, to kill dull time. Even
women's magazines. I never keep them once I've read them, so I end up
taking a pile of them downstairs to Philip, ask if they were any use
for the waiting room. It's a regular arrangement now.

Sometimes we go for a drink. He's a nice bloke, very into films and
music. He has one dubious feature, which is his professional interest
in your teeth. When you talk, he never quite looks you in the eye, it
is always a bit lower. It gives me a slight feeling of what it might be
like to be a woman, only his gaze is about six inches too high for
that.

I get to spend too much time in my job thinking. I'm waiting in cars
with a camera or outside hotels, or outside offices for people to come
out so that I can serve them, a lot of time waiting.

The reason I first got into detective work was because of Raymond
Chandler, the writer and my namesake. He wrote all these noir thrillers
about Marlowe, a detective who was world-weary and noble and that's
what I wanted to be. (*2)

As it turns out, I stopped being those things at twenty and instead
became a different sort of person altogether. Still, I like the time
that the job allows and I like the way that you get a quick peep into
people's lives, particularly at times of extreme emotion and stress.
I've always been fascinated by what makes people tick.

Alice Neville came to see me, she had made an appointment but hadn't
told my secretary what it was about. Thinking about it, making an
appointment was exactly what she would do. She is a thoughtful person,
not a spontaneous person, and making an appointment is polite. Not just
so that she would definitely get to see a detective, but so that he
would know she was coming and it wouldn't be inconvenient.

I had a client once, wife whose husband was screwing around and I got
the proof for her. She kicked him out and wanted me to stick around,
unobtrusively in the kitchen in case he got nasty. He didn't. But the
thing was, that before she kicked him out, she handed him four shirts
that she'd ironed for him for work. Alice Neville struck me a bit like
that.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, telling you what I felt she was like,
before I've even told you about the meeting.

It is two o'clock on 26th April 2000. I have a slight headache and a
squash court booked for six, which I am considering cancelling.

My secretary opens the door and shows in Alice Neville, who is young
and fairly pretty. She isn't in tears, which is a good start. She's
wearing a white blouse, very pale lipstick and no other make-up and a
pair of smart blue trousers. She has blonde hair, natural and short;
not cropped. She has a very clean face, very understated. She's
carrying a biscuit tin and a book.

I say to her, "Hello Miss Neville. What can I do for you? "

I'm hoping that this isn't an infidelity case. This girl has a face
that doesn't deserve the unhappiness that that brings.

(*2 Not entirely the full story, but that is for another time. Let's
just say that my father was a reader too and took my decision to drop
out of Medicine pretty well. I had a problem with the smell, I have
always had a very sensitive nose and the first work placement I had, I
realised that I couldn't stand either the pervasiveness of the
antiseptic, or the smells that the chemicals were supposed to blot out.
What the heck, it was only three years of my life, after all; and I got
to go to some pretty damn good parties while I was at university.
)

"This is a little awkward, " she says, shifting in her seat, just as
the dentist begins drilling downstairs, "I'm trying to find out who I
am. "

This is a new one for me. My immediate thought is adoption, she's just
found out that she was adopted. I tell her that I'll take down some
details and begin writing in a shorthand pad - as always, I draw a
little flower in a pot before I begin taking notes, it's a good luck
thing.

"Would you like some tea? " I ask politely, I find that tea is a useful
social lubricant, can't bear the stuff myself.

Rachel, my secretary, comes in and pours the tea. I shoot the girl a
smile, trying to put her at her ease. It must be a difficult thing to
do, come in here and talk to a stranger. All the while that Rachel is
in the room, Alice sits in her chair, tight-lipped and almost stiff
with tension. It isn't until she hears the soft click of the door that
she begins to talk.

"My mother is Veronica Neville, " she says, "She's a teacher, primary
school. My father died when I was very young, I never knew him. I don't
live with my mother any more. "

I'm writing this down, I'll be opening a file once she leaves. What am
I thinking of her ? That she is pretty, about 24, 25. She seems to be,
what's the word ? Meek.

That's a word you don't hear too much these days. It's different to
timid. She isn't timid, she's come here and she's a little nervous, but
not too bad. The impression I am getting is that although she is paying
for this consultation, she feels like she may be wasting my time. This
is a girl who feels responsibility.

Her clothes too, she is dressed for the appointment as if she had
dressed for a job interview. And her hands are neatly on her lap,
crossed at the wrist, held over the biscuit tin and scrapbook.

Odd things to have brought along, I think. They are awkward things to
have on your lap, she needs to keep adjusting her balance to make sure
that they don't slip off and fall to the floor.

"I, um, my mother is in Egypt at the moment, on holiday while the
schools are off. She asked me to keep an eye on the house, water the
plants, feed Babbage. "

Babbage, it emerges is the cat, a Burmese.

Alice tells me about looking after the house and then she begins to
tell me about the time she was eight and looking for Snakes and Ladders
and the other two times. I'm beginning to enjoy listening to her, she
has a nice voice, very clear and precise.

"I didn't really even think I remembered it, " says Alice, "I don't
know, it must have been there at the back of my mind. "

Curiousity is a dangerous force. All of the people who come to me,
wanting to pay me for proof of their partner's infidelity, I sometimes
want to lean over and say, 'wouldn't you be better off not knowing
?'

I read once about a psycho-analyst, Adler, who at the onset of
treatment, would say to his patient, "What do you want to do once you
get well?" and when they gave an answer said, "Well go off and do that,
then. "

If you really, really suspect that your partner is having an affair,
well then things have gone wrong. You either decide to walk away, or
you make things better. Knowing, or not knowing doesn't really
help.

In my experience, finding out is worse than ignorance. Like I said, I
have time to think in this job and my view is that opening that
envelope and seeing the photographs brings nothing but misery. It
always seems worse if they judge that the new partner is not as
attractive as them. It's a very subjective thing of course, but that
seems to be what brings out the tears.

Of course, my living is in curiousity, so I tend not to put clients off
unless I really feel that I have to. Sometimes I see a face and can't
bear to put lines on it, can't bear the idea of them looking in a
mirror years later with a face they don't deserve and thinking, this is
because of Alex Chandler.

Alice tells me that for some reason, she was alone in the house and
began thinking about the scrapbook that she had never had the
opportunity to look at, although her friend and boyfriend had seen it.
She had never spoken with her mother about it, and didn't really think
she was at all curious. It was just, being in the house on her own, the
opportunity arose.

How long, I wonder, did it take her to summon up the nerve ?

At this point, I begin thinking about the story of Pandora's Box, in
which the curiousity of a woman (sexist tale, but it could easily have
been a man) opens a box that should have remained closed, unleashing
all the ills of the world.

I'm still thinking that she found an adoption certificate. That tends
to throw people, though nowadays, they encourage the adopters to be
up-front about it from the off, saves traumatising a child just as
they're about to take their exams and find out their mummy and daddy
aren't their real mummy and daddy. A quick glance at Alice told me that
she was in her twenties, so old enough to have been part of the
old-fashioned system, but older than people usually are when they find
out.

Tracking down someone's real parents is damn tricky, if they've been
adopted. A lot depends on what their real parents wanted, sometimes
they make it clear that they don't want some teenager tracking them
down years later and asking questions. Who wants to leave a time-bomb
like that, especially at a period in your life when, presumably, you're
lightening your load by getting rid of something that you can't
handle?

In any event, there isn't going to be much I can do for Alice that she
can't do for herself, through Social Services. I can put her in touch
with some people I know through work.

Alice stops talking and pushes the biscuit tin toward me. It is a box
of Rover biscuits, the sort I used to get at Christmas, red tin, not
quite square so that the lid will only snap back on a certain way. On
the lid is a picture of jammy dodgers, custard creams, bourbons and
those pink wafers that nobody likes.

"Make sure you keep them in order, " Alice says to me as I pop the lid
off the tin, "I'm worried that she'll know what order they should be
in. "

It is full of press cuttings, beginning to yellow a little with age.
They are not cut out in squares, whoever had cut them had cut round
carefully, to get the article they wanted and nothing else, so that
some start off wide and rectangular and then taper off to a thin tale.
The cutter had clearly bought two copies of the newspapers, because
there are clippings, which cover both sides of the page, cut to
different shapes to reflect the way each page had laid out the
story.

On the vast majority there's a picture of a little girl, three or four,
blonde hair and a cute smile. There are slightly different pictures on
each, but one keeps recurring, time and again, the girl wearing a
particular dress, standing with a stick of candyfloss in her left hand;
she has pulled off some wispy pink strands which are in the other hand.
I wonder idly why that picture was particularly chosen, some of the
others are better shots, nicer smiles.

Something in my mind ripples. I have seen these photographs
before.

I scan some of the headlines, "Girl snatched", "Tragedy for parents as
toddler is abducted", "Little Emily still missing", "Have you seen this
girl ? ". I pick up one and read it carefully, it tells of a four year
old, Emily Feather who was abducted in Lincoln while her mum was in a
shop.

It's sadly a story I have seen too many times in papers, different
children. When I saw this one, I was in a train station with my father.
He was wearing his brown spectacles, the ones that he wore for six
years, before he finally lost the small gold pin that held the left arm
in place. I had a copy of Whizzer and Chips Summer Special in my hand.
This is all quite clear.

The depth of the cuttings in the biscuit tin suggested to me that there
wasn't going to be a happy ending. The stories continued, more in the
vein of "still missing" and "no news", but as I get deeper into the
biscuit tin, the stories get smaller and smaller and the page numbers
get larger and larger.

On some, there's a picture of two adults, a couple. I guess that these
are Emily's parents. I read some more at random and realise that the
candy-floss picture is one which shows the dress she was wearing on the
day she went missing.

One consolation is that if they'd found a body, the cuttings would get
larger again and they don't. That isn't much of a consolation, because
the same would apply if they'd found the girl alive and well.

"The scrapbook is the same, " says Emily, "There's even stuff from
local papers. Lincolnshire Echo. The Chronicle. We've never lived in
Lincoln. She must have had them sent to her. "

It seems to make sense to pass her the biscuit tin back and she sits
with it neatly on her lap, looking at me squarely.

"I want to know, " she says, "Why my mother would keep a scrapbook like
that. "

A few reasons come to my mind and I toss them off, " General interest
in crime, some people are salacious. Maybe she knew the Feathers, maybe
she was touched by the story. Maybe she'd once left you outside and
thought, that could have been me. Maybe you once went missing for a few
hours. "

Alice looks sceptical and maybe I'm not all that convincing, because
this seems like a lot of work for a casual interest. This is not
someone who kept cuttings from her papers, this is someone who went out
and bought every daily paper for at least ten days scouring for
references to Emily Feather. Two copies, on most days.

"I'd like to pay you to find out for me, " she says.

The drilling has stopped downstairs, which is a shame, because I really
want the truth here.

"What exactly is it you want me to find out ? " I ask, "What's on your
mind ? "

She bites her lip and snaps the lid back firmly on the biscuit tin, "
Mr Chandler, my worry is that my mother was involved in the death of
that girl, or knew who was. "

That is a possibility which has crossed my mind.

"Or, " she says, "I think it might be possible that I am Emily Feather.
"

Later that day, I completely dominate the squash court, barely moving
off the T in the centre, pinging balls into the corners, dropping them
at the wall and smacking them to the back of the court with disguise
and aggression. Bill, my friend who is a lawyer, wipes his face with a
towel at the end. Normally we're pretty close, but today he can't get
near me. I try to buy him a pint in the bar after we've showered, (he
insists on two glasses of lemonade, he always does) and we talk about
this and that.

four

I am in Veronica Neville's house, tickling Babbage behind the ears, he
purrs and seems to like it. He emits a purr, which seems to come from
his throat and tummy all at one.

"Nice cat, " I say to Alice, and I can already see the nervous fear in
her at someone invading her mother's space, as she described to me
earlier when talking about her friend Sarah Jane. She very much wishes
that I wasn't here.

She stands very still, her back straight as if a steel rod ran along
it, her thumbs are tucked into the palms of her hands. She stands so
neatly, she still seems to be a child in some ways.

"Why don't you just water the plants or something while I look round ?
" I suggest to her, "Don't worry, I'm not going to make a mess. "

I'm not even sure what I'm looking for, but make a start anyway. If we
want to learn about Veronica and what she may or may not have been
involved with in 1979, this seems to be as good a place as any.

The house is a good size, lots of light. The kitchen is full of glass,
making it feel really light and airy and the downstairs is open plan.
There are a lot of plants, which Alice is busy watering, with one of
those bottles that squirts a spray of water. There's a sort of cool,
green feeling, a bit like walking round in a hothouse, but without the
heat.

In the living room, the sofa is covered with a throw, in a sort of
putty colour. Underneath the throw the sofa is a bold red colour, with
very high arms. It seems in quite good condition. There are some prints
on the walls, mainly modern art. Those paintings that are just a block
of red and a block of blue; that kind of thing. Some African
masks.

I check out the wine rack, about six bottles. Two white, South African,
and four red. Two Chilean, two Australian. Good stuff, by the looks of
it. There's a stopper next to the rack, a cork with a chain and loop to
keep the wine fresh. I'm guessing that she maybe has a glass of wine,
two glasses with a meal or when she's relaxing, but not that she's a
heavy drinker. Does that tell me anything ?

Books. She has a lot, mostly twentieth century American. Faulkener,
Fitzgerald, Mailer, Hemingway. The most well-thumbed is Thoreau's
"Walden", a book about a man who wants to simplify his life and goes
off to live in a log cabin in the woods, enjoying life's simple
pleasures.

She has some non-fiction too, an atlas, lots of travel books, books
accompanying David Attenborough series, books on art. What I'm not
seeing is books on crime, either fiction or non-fiction.

There's a piano in the room, against one of the walls. It is a nice
piano, but not, I think a fearfully expensive one. I lift the lid and
sound one or two of the keys. They seem to be in tune. There's some
sheet music next to the piano. Some of the music is for children's
songs, but some are for quite complex classical pieces.

I take a quick look at the video tapes lined up by the machine, too
much Merchant Ivory for my taste, but a few old Audrey Hepburn films.
One or two that she's labelled herself, "Wimbledon", "Nature", some are
titles of drama serials, "Pride and Prejudice", that kind of thing.
(*3)

On top of the fridge are some newspapers, piled up for recycling
probably. The Guardian, the Observer, Sunday Times. Someone who enjoys
their weekends, likes to give them some time. I leaf through idly, but
I already know before I check, that the papers are intact. This is not
someone who snips out pieces that interest them. Or at least, not any
more.

My attention turns to the fridge, not much in there, probably because
she has just gone on holiday, that would make sense.

The place is neat, but not obsessively so. I can tell that someone
lives in this space, sits here, reads here. There is character to it.
This is someone who comes home from work and likes to enjoy themself,
indulge.

This is backed up by the bathroom, where there are maybe fifteen
different bottles of bubble-bath, bath oil and creams. There are fat
white and cream church candles on the window ledge, some magazines
stacked neatly on the floor near the bath, Marie Claire, some about
cookery, gardening. This is someone who uses the bath to relax, to
recline, rather than just to get clean.

(*3 I have a theory about video tape labelling, that it can be a very
insightful window into someone's personality. For example, I still have
tapes that I labelled up when I was twenty, that say things like "Music
to make you slam and wanna dance" - these used to have music videos
that I taped off MTV that I thought were cool. Now they have Emmerdale
episodes and Steve Irwin Crocodile Hunter. (I love that guy, though he
scares the hell out of me. I'm a sucker for enthusiasm). If I'm trying
to gauge someone very quickly, music is the best bet, but the stuff
they choose to keep on video tapes comes a close second.)

I suppose that one of the advantages to being a primary school teacher
is that you don't have piles of marking to do when you get home. You
don't mark, you just look at paintings and say, "That's nice."

Babbage hops into the tub and looks up at me expectantly, so I gave him
a firm stroke, from the neck to the tip of the tail.

I call downstairs to Alice, "Where can I find photo albums ? "

She comes up and shows me, we sit on her mother's bed and look through
them together. Big red plastic binders with clear plastic sheets, black
hardcover ones with dark green pages to stick the photos onto, each
page separated by a sheet of thin translucent paper (what a gorgeous
noise that type of paper makes when you turn a page, an experience I am
glad to repeat.)

The early pictures, one can tell they are from a late seventies camera.
The light is all wrong, the colours are wrong. Somewhere in the
processing of films at that time, the yellows and oranges dominate and
everything else looks sort of washed out. Or maybe colours really were
like that.

There are a lot of pictures. Brief impressions.

I see a young girl in blue mac and red wellington boots walking in the
snow, with a seaside bucket and spade, making snowcastles. I see a girl
and her mother at a zoo, pointing at the penguins. I see a girl riding
on a scooter, holding up a dolly, sitting in a paddling pool in her
back garden, incongruously wearing a bikini. (Children did though, I
remember my sister wearing a green floral bikini aged 6, at a similar
time - also, clear memory of the odd pride you feel when sat in a
paddling pool, like everyone else who passes should be jealous of
you.)

Later, I see pictures of holidays, of first school uniform, of
brownies, of a girl beginning to get sulky when the photos are taken.
Other than the teenage years, which are no guide at all, Veronica and
Alice seem very close, very happy.

There are a lot of photographs, but not an excessive amount. (*4 ) What
I don't see here are baby photos. I mention this to Alice.

"We used to look through these, " says Alice, "It's funny, when you're
about nine, you really get interested in how you used to look when you
were little. I used to sit with my mother, downstairs or in the garden
and she would tell me stories about each photo. "

(*4 There are also about thirty pictures clearly taken with an
Instamatic camera, dating from the mid-eighties - easily recognisable
by their squareness and the fact that the picture is dominated by the
thick white cardboard border. Like most people, Veronica Neville was
swayed by Polaroid's high claims for the Instamatic, before realising
their limitations and going back to old-fashioned cameras that deliver
pictures you might actually want to look at, rather than white ugly
squares. My family did that too. )

She tells me, "I would ask about photos of me when I was very little,
but they were lost in a fire. That was the fire my father died in. We
were away, staying with friends. My father was a smoker and he must
have fallen asleep in his chair, dropped a cigarette. We lost
everything in that fire. "

I'm thinking sad. I'm thinking convenient.

I am also noticing the awkward way that Alice switches between mother
and mummy. She has obviously been raised to be polite, that's evident
but feels self-conscious using mother, probably as the result of being
teased at school. She never says mum. I suppose some people
don't.

There are other pictures in the cupboard, class photographs, school
photographs, charting the lives of both mum and Alice. It's weird
looking at school photographs of a primary school over something like a
fifteen year period, seeing how radically the children change. For one
thing, the older ones tend to have children who are all dressed alike,
wearing the same school uniform, whereas the latest ones are a
hodgepodge, children wearing Nike and Next and Gap.

People tend to have faces of their time. If you look at photographs
from fifty years ago, the people don't just have clothes and hair that
seem strange now, their actual faces seem different to today's faces.
Not all are in order, I guess that Veronica has kept her favourite
classes at the top of the pile. I find myself trying to guess which of
the pupils she liked the best.

Photographs always make me a little sad. I know that they are a way of
preserving memories, of saying to ourselves, 'see, that was what it was
like', but for me, it is also a failed attempt to freeze time. It's as
if we are saying, this is it, let's keep things exactly the way they
are now, just as this picture is taken. We would all prefer that cats
stayed as kittens.

Anyway, in my case, I don't need any help to preserve the past. It is
all still with me.

"Have you ever been abroad ? " I ask Alice.

She tells me that she has and I tell her that I'd like her to dig out
her birth certificate, so that I can have a look at it. There are ways
of getting a fake birth certificate, but it's not an easy thing to do,
not at all. The fact that she has documents to say that she's Alice
Neville is significant.

"Listen, " I say to her, "I can see that you're not feeling very
comfortable about being here. How about we tidy up, put everything back
where it should be and go out for something to eat. Then we can talk
about your mother. "

"If you like, " I add.

five

Veronica Neville teaches at a primary school. She has been at Manor
Vale for six years now and was previously at High Leas, where she
taught her daughter Alice for one year. She's a good teacher, popular
with the children.

She is very fair and doesn't seem to have favourites, though she talks
to Alice about particular children that are in her class more than
others. She doesn't let this show in the classroom. She is kind and
helps the children who find things more difficult. She is good at
teaching writing and spelling, and plays the piano in school assembly.
She enjoys drama, taking the children into the hall and getting them to
use their imaginations. She sings with the children and reads them
stories. She is very good with the stories and swaps voices for
different characters.

Her husband died twenty years ago and she hasn't remarried. Alice tells
me that there was a man, another teacher called Gordon, who was
visiting a lot about six years ago, but that never really went
anywhere. Veronica likes her own company too much.

After Alice's father died, the two of them moved here, to Wood Green in
London, to start afresh. Too many memories where they lived
before.

I am thinking that London is a good place to lose yourself in, whether
from things that trouble you, or from the world that might be looking
for you.

She is a good mother, easy to talk to and fair. She has things that
make her cross, the idea of Alice smoking was something she would be
very intolerant about (with good cause, given how her husband died) and
she didn't like the music Alice was listening to in her late teens, too
noisy.

Alice tells me about games they played when they were young, memories
of her mother making things for her with cardboard, inventing their own
board games with pieces and rules and cards with instructions written
on them. They would listen to songs on the radio and make up their own
dances. She remembers liking Bucks Fizz, when she was very young. She
had the sort of mother that the other girls at school always liked when
they came round, a mother who would talk to them without patronising
them.

She tells me how kind her mother was when she was struggling to fit in
with the other girls at school; how her mother sat with her after
Martin finished with her, just talking and listening.

Alice tells me that her mother helped her to study for her exams, not
pushing her, but being supportive and reassuring; letting her know just
how proud she was of Alice.

I ask her to describe her mother as a person and her first word is
"private". The second is "kind" and the third is "intelligent".

Physically, she is now in her early fifties and her hair is beginning
to grey a little. Alice doesn't think that she dyes it, but she might.
She wears glasses, but they really suit her. She still occasionally
goes out without them on, probably through vanity and ends up peering
at people that she ought to recognise.

Veronica has friends, from school and from reading groups that she
attends. No relatives though. She is an only child and her parents are
both dead. She doesn't do any sport, but likes walking and she loves
travel.

She cooks, she has always been an excellent cook. Alice remembers many
Sunday afternoons spent baking, watching her mother fill small hollows
in baking trays with cake mixture, waiting for biscuits to cool on wire
racks.

"Do you want me to keep you up to date as we go along, or give you an
answer when I've fully considered it ? " I ask her, as the waitress
leaves the food at the table.

She picks up her knife and fork and then puts them down, thinking about
this, "To be honest, Mr Chandler, I don't know what to think anymore. I
feel like I'm going mad. I can't believe that any of this can be
happening to me. I've felt like I was going to? be sick, ever since I
opened that biscuit tin. "

"Okay, " I say to her, sprinkling some salt into a little heap at the
side of my plate. I don't eat salt any more, but it's sort of a habit
to pour some, so this tends to be the best compromise, " I'll tell you
what I think, so far. "

"Alice, I think that you've got reason to be concerned. "

I don't want to pull punches here; I want to see her reaction. This
doesn't buffet Alice, her face remains calm; though I can see that her
fingers are pressing hard against the table. Her knuckles are beginning
to pale.

"There's stuff that doesn't seem right. " I say, "The most obvious
answer to your mother keeping those cuttings was that she had an
interest in crime. From her book collection, I don't think that's the
case. So, the answer lies with her personally. Maybe something about
the Emily Feather case just touched a cord in her. It might be
something that we could never really find out, no matter how much
digging we do. "

I begin to cut up my meat, "I'll be straight with you, because you
probably work hard for your money and I don't want to rip you off. The
best thing you can do, in my opinion, is just be straight with your
mother and ask her about the cuttings when she gets back. "

Alice does not like the sound of that, she begins shaking her head and
it is a while before she stops. Some other people in the restaurant are
looking at us. That never bothers me, I just grin broadly at them. If
they keep looking, I will wave to them.

"Okay, " I say, " So that's not an option for you. If the reason for
those cuttings is that she once left you outside a butcher's shop in a
pram, then I have to tell you that we're not going to find that out,
unless you ask her. "

Alice takes a long sip of her tea, composing herself before she
answers, "All I want to know is what happened to that girl. If my
mother had other reasons for keeping those cuttings then I'm not
interested. I just need to know if she was involved in Emily being
taken. "

She looks at me and she looks like she might cry, "It seems so wrong to
talk about Emily at all. To talk about her as that girl. When... she
might very well be me. "

I look her straight in the eye, to let her know that I feel sorry for
her, that I am aware, in my own dull way of the surge of emotions that
must be running through her. I really wish now that we hadn't got
anything to eat. I'm pretty sure that I won't be able to taste the
food.

"Right, well there are ways that we could find out if you are Emily, "
I say, "I'm not sure, but my hunch is that you aren't, because of your
birth certificate. Those can be bought, but they aren't cheap. "

"What ways ? " she asks.

"Well, for starters there's your eyes, " I say, " You have blue eyes. I
can find out if Emily had blue eyes. That might rule you out from the
start. "

"She did have blue eyes, " says Alice, " I read it in the description.
"

I pause for a moment, " Well, the more complex way is DNA testing. I'll
need to make some calls. I know that DNA testing can tell you if
someone who claims to be a father really is a father, but I don't know
whether it can tell you whether you are Emily Feather. I think it can,
but I'm not sure. " (*5)

"Then let's do that, " says Alice.

I take a bite of my steak, chew it carefully, trying to draw out the
flavour. This is a losing battle, I am going to have to send back my
food barely touched, which is going to get me into a whole debate with
the waitress about whether there was something wrong with the food.
This happens to me sometimes, when the texture of food makes me unable
to eat it; I just become too aware of the texture, the sensation of
eating. It only ever seems to happen in restaurants.

"The problem with that, " I tell her, "Is that I would need tests from
you and Mr and Mrs Feather. And I can't do that without their
permission. And that could be a bit tricky. I assume that you wouldn't
want the police to get involved in this. "

I tell Alice that I want to do some more digging before we get to that
stage. I want to look at the old newspapers, see if I can find any
television footage, any scraps from the police investigation. I give
her a special rate, because I like her and because the case is
interesting, but the rate isn't all that special. Still, I throw in
fourteen pounds for the two meals that neither of us ate.

After that, I feel a bit bad to have put her through this, so we go for
a walk and talk about different things, anything that isn't her
childhood. It turns out that she too thinks that The Sopranos is the
best television program ever, and she knows a bit about music, and she
likes to watch Juventus on Channel Four's Football Italia. I'm starting
to really like this girl.

When I look at my watch, I realise we've been talking for two hours
straight. This is almost more like a date than a client interview.
Never happened to me before.

(*5 My research eventually reveals that it can, it is a question of
taking blood samples from the individual and both suspected parents.
The mechanics of testing are a little complex, but the fact is that the
test will confirm with almost certainty whether the people are related
to each other. Thanks to Cellmark Diagnostics for putting up with my
questions, which must have seemed a little odd. )

six

So, I'm lying on the bed in my house, looking up at my ceiling and
thinking. I am thinking of course about Emily Feather and Alice Neville
and whether the two are the same.

My bedroom is sparse. I have a bed, which has a dark blue duvet cover
and blue pillows; a small chest of drawers and a fold up travel clock
in a leather case. The chest of drawers only needs a blue bible in the
top drawer, and it would become the hotel room that it so badly
resembles.

There is nothing of me in my house, because I don't live in my house. I
do my living elsewhere and just sleep in my house. I earn my living out
on the streets and that's really where I like to be. It's not good for
me to be on my own. I tend not to spend much time in the house, because
I don't like being alone in the evenings - so I go out, see friends. My
friends are a pretty good crowd, they've been very supportive.

I pick up my notebook and read through the notes I have made, both of
today's visit to Veronica Neville's house and yesterday's appointment
with Alice. I keep contemporaneous notes. It gets to be such a habit,
especially when I'm waiting around on jobs, to write everything that
happens as it happens. I tend to think purely in the present tense.
Everything that happens, for me, happens in a moment, and goes on
echoing forever, that moment keeps on occurring. The past is just a
long series of different presents that's the way I see it.

That is more than just this case, this tends to be how I see my life. I
have an exceptional memory, which is how I did so well at Medicine -
right up to the point where my nose and weak stomach became more
important to the job than my brain. My memory is photographic, which a
lot of people talk about having, but I actually do have.

It's more than photographic actually. I was told by an expert, when I
was thirteen that I was a panmnesiac. ( The expert was a man called
Brian Leeds, slightly balding, green woollen tie, brown shoes that had
recently been polished.) Panmnesia is a condition where the subject
remembers everything. That's literally the case with me. I remember
books, conversations, music, facts. Everything that has happened to me
since the age of four, I can still pull out the memory and see it as
vividly as if it happened seconds ago.

For ages, this seemed like a really good thing. It was very helpful for
exams, and when I got old enough to enter general knowledge quizzes, I
did very well. Everything nice that has happened in my life, I can get
the memory out and spend time with it, savouring every detail. If my
friends are ever rowing over who said what, they can ask me and I
recall it.

The negative side is, that every nasty moment, every time I was scared
at night, every time someone pushed me around or said something
unpleasant, I can remember. I remember what was said, their facial
expression, their clothing, who else was nearby, what background sounds
there were. Everything.

And I only have limited control over recall. Sometimes the bad ones
just pop into my head when I least want them. It's the bad ones that
demand the most attention. It took me a long time to pluck up the
courage to ever ask a girl out, knowing that I wasn't the greatest
catch of all time, and knowing beyond that, that if she rejected me, I
would be replaying those moments for years to come.

Even now, I have to wait until I am categorically certain.

In addition to that, I feel like I am missing out on something I can't
understand, that feeling of grappling for memory, the flash of success
when the brain captures what it is hunting. I ask my friend Will about
this process quite a lot.

As early as eighteen, my friends started to have conversations
revolving around half-remembered gems from their childhood. I remember
it all. I remember all of those obscure cartoons, I remember who did
and said what at school, I remember the plots to episodes of weak
sitcoms; like A.L.F and Laverne and Shirley. I can't get rid of this
junk. But when you start talking nostalgia with your friends, it isn't
clarity and answers they are seeking, it is the hunt, this testing of
the brain's filing that is important. It's the journey, not the
destination.

My memory system doesn't seem to have a Trash icon.

Do I think that Veronica Neville snatched Emily Feather ? Do I believe
that like Brady and Hindley, like the Wests that she was involved in
the kidnap and murder of a child who was nearly four ?

From the little I've heard of her, it seems impossible to believe. But,
how many people thought that Dr Shipman was murdering nearly a hundred
of his patients ? I've come across some disturbed people in my work and
it's often quite hard to tell. You can spot the obvious ones, but it
isn't always the most disturbed who are the most obvious. It's not
always my clients who have tattoos and big dogs and swear who end up
with their hands round their wives throat after they've seen my
photographs.

I try to think it through, imagining the life of Veronica Neville back
in 1979. She is a widow now, is moving away from her small town to live
in London, starting a new job at a new school. But it is summer, all of
that is yet to begin. She's at an interim period, frozen. Waiting for
her new life to start.

She's in Lincoln. Why ? Maybe visiting a friend, maybe sightseeing,
maybe shopping. Perhaps she has even gone there with her purpose in
mind. Lincoln's streets can be busy, but not so busy that she would
easily be caught. It is the sort of place where people keep themselves
to themselves. This sort of thing would be difficult in the
North.

I haven't heard from Alice any sort of connection between Veronica and
Lincoln, but that doesn't mean anything. Veronica would have been
careful never to say anything.

She sees the girl, outside the butcher's shop. She waits for a while,
to see if the girl's mother comes out. She maybe has a look and sees
Anne Feather talking to the butcher inside, she realises that Anne has
no idea where her daughter is.

Maybe what flashes through her head is, here I am wanting a child and
there is this lovely girl's mother, not paying any attention. She could
just wander off. It would serve that woman right if someone walked off
with her. It would serve her right if I walked off with her.

Veronica is a school teacher, well experienced with children of Emily's
age, kindly and authoritative. She selects just the right tone, just
the right words to persuade Emily to take her hand and go for a walk.
I'm sure that this isn't hard, not for a teacher.

She is thinking that if she is challenged, that she will just say that
the girl is lost and she is trying to find her mother. She is a school
teacher, nobody will think that she is lying.

But nobody does challenge her, nobody even notices. She gets Emily to
come into her car, takes her for a little drive. Here my reasoning
breaks down a little, I don't know all that much about children - would
Emily become distressed at some stage ?

Even if she does, Veronica has the skills to calm her down and she is
in no hurry, she has all the time she needs. It is the beginning of the
summer holidays, so Veronica has seven, eight weeks to spend time with
Emily, get her used to living with a new mummy, a new name. I know from
working with social workers from time to time that children in foster
care start saying "mummy" quicker than you might imagine to their new
carers. It is in our instinct to attach, to seek a parent. Geese do it
and so do we.

When Emily / Alice goes to school, she goes into the school that her
mummy is teaching at, is taught by her mummy.

Alice can't remember any of this, she was too young for it to
stick.

Nobody knows Veronica locally, she is new in the area. Nobody questions
her having a child, she has no family and has left her old friends
behind. Maybe not even leaving an address if she had this in
mind.

She buys the newspapers in a number of different trips, or has them
delivered. Nobody is suspicious, because who remembers someone buying a
newspaper? And remember, this is London and people are not looking for
the child here - and even if they were, they are looking for a
shifty-looking man in a raincoat, 'do you want to see some puppies?'
They are not looking for a middle-class woman in sensible shoes.

Why is she buying the newspapers? Is she pleased with what she's done,
proud of her cleverness? Or is she secretly appalled, she has committed
herself now, there is no way back. To go back with the child would be
to risk investigation, challenge, losing her job, her liberty, her new
child. I think that there's an element of just wanting to know, to know
how the search is going, whether anyone has seen her, but more than
that, just to know about Emily Feather, to see the photographs of her
child.

She is able to register the child at school easily; after all, she is
at the school. Her name goes on the register, Veronica probably opens a
bank account at school in her name, building up some identification.
School photographs, cycling proficiency, exam results.

Veronica knows that there will come a time when Alice needs a birth
certificate, to apply for a passport. She knows that this will not be
easy. But, hey, she's got thirteen, sixteen years to think about
that.

I can't quite decide in my imagined scenario whether Veronica is
emotionally disturbed, a woman who is desperate for a child, or whether
she is someone who acts on the spur of the moment, taking an
opportunity which presents.

Wonder how she would feel? Guilty, scared, perhaps exhilarated? I
imagine that after a few years have passed, she will begin to be
confident that she has pulled this off, that she has got away with it.
Perhaps she will even convince herself that Alice really is her child,
that the snatch never happened. She might keep the tin of cuttings as a
reminder, or she may never open the tin after the first year, but
cannot bear to get the cuttings down and throw them away.

I'm putting together a good case, but as things stand I have only two
pieces of evidence - cuttings and a lack of photographs. If I am to
effectively judge a primary school teacher as someone who kidnapped a
child who wasn't even four and raised her as her own, I feel that I'm
going to need a bit more than that.

There are checks that I can make, and I will make them; but I'm not
confident. Veronica Neville, if she really did abduct this child, had
the brains and poise to cover her tracks well. I have little doubt that
a check at the Registrar of births and deaths will come up with an
Alice Neville, but what does that prove?

If I approach things in that way, are there any tests I could conduct
that would prove conclusively to my satisfaction that Alice is
Veronica's real daughter? If we were in America, it would be
straightforward to get a glass Veronica had drunk from, test the DNA
and see if it matched Alice; but here in England, you need consent of
the person you're testing. And anyway, Alice's father is dead, so that
would make an incomplete test.

Of course, there's the reading. I will have a lot of that to do, to
really dive into the background, see if I can get hold of any policemen
who took part in the investigation, I can float the idea of a woman
abductor with a psychologist that I know.

But these are all stalls. I know, knew from the moment I started
sifting through those cuttings in the tin, that this would lead to the
parents. I am going to have to jump into their lives and they are not
going to like it. On a worse case scenario, I might be raising hopes
for them that their daughter is alive, only for it to be completely
untrue. That's the worst thing I can think of, but then, I never lost
my daughter at an early age. There are probably worse things that I
can't even imagine.

seven

I've been here for twenty minutes now, parked up outside the
red-and-white barrier to the camp, screwing up my courage before I
screw up their lives.

This is seeming to be a really bad idea. If they were civilians I could
wait in a bar, watch them, get a feel of them, strike up a
conversation. Follow them and take pictures, weight them up, form a
judgment of them.

But if I want to get onto this RAF camp and speak to Jim Feather, I'm
going to have to talk to someone with a hat and insignia, and then they
will have to speak to someone else on a radio and so the long day will
wear on.

My courage deserts me and I turn on both the ignition and the stereo,
playing some Scott Walker to boost my flagging spirits. If I'm going to
break someone in two, then I ought at least to do it myself, rather
than through intermediaries.

And I don't feel that I have the right here to follow these people
around, even if I could. They have done nothing wrong. I don't suspect
them of domestic violence, or breaching a court order, or of having an
affair.

I find a small village and park the car, buying some items from a post
office and sitting down at a bench in a pub beer garden. In a throwback
to my youth, there is actually a sign which says, "Beer Garden". It's
tempting to ask for a glass bottle of coke, a green-and-white striped
straw and a bag of viciously flavoured salt-and-vinegar crisps.

Writing the letter isn't all that hard once I get going. I address it
to Jim Feather; it seems fairer to approach him first. I tell him who I
am and that I might have some information about his daughter. I tell
him straight that I don't want any money from him and that I don't want
to raise his hopes; that this might all turn out to be a mistake, but
that my client does seem to have a reasonable cause to suspect that she
could be his daughter. I advise him not to involve his wife until he's
heard what I have to say. I want to leave a contact point, but I
haven't got one.

Inside the pub the names on the beer pumps are different and tempting
and I can see the thick creamy head that sits on the top of other
customers' beers; and I ask the barman if he can recommend a hotel in
Lincoln.

I'm near Digby; about ten miles out of Lincoln, but it doesn't seem the
type of place where one could find a hotel. The barman tells me that
The White Hart is posh, so I use my mobile, book in and get their
telephone number.

I add to the letter that I will be at the White Hart for two days if he
wants to contact me and give the telephone number. I seal the envelope
and I drive back to RAF Digby and leave the envelope with the guard at
the gate, a Scottish fellow who assures me that Jim Feather will get it
very shortly.

It is only at this point that I realise that I could have just left my
mobile number and instead have spent good money on a hotel. Still,
compared with London prices the hotel is not expensive, and I am able
to read through the documents I have bought with me. Besides, I want to
be in Lincoln to talk this through face to face if at all
possible.

While I eat a very good hot beef sandwich in the bar of the White Hart
I start to look through the papers I have brought. These are copies of
newspaper reports downloaded from the Net, some internal police memos
which a friend of mine in the force was able to lay his hands on for
me, and some psychological reports about female abductors. (*6)

I do a bit of work every now and then in custody cases and sometimes I
go out to socialise with solicitors, which is how I got to know Dr Leo
Kane, Clinical Psychologist. He's the second-brightest chap I know and
also the only one who drinks bitter with neat Gin chasers. I always
like to watch him do this, it is an entertainment in itself. Both he
and I have only recently developed a passion for opera after years of
being utterly mystified by it, and we now tend to see each other every
couple of months.

He supports Man City and I support Spurs, so we have a common
background in misery and disappointment.

(*6 The psychological stuff is published by an organisation called
NCMEC in the States and it contains studies by the FBI into a number of
child abductions. Over a hundred thousand attempted child abductions
every year in the States, and those are just the ones not involving
family members. Add in the abductions as a by-product of custody
disputes and the numbers are even more shocking. All of the studies are
about children under 6 months old, so I don't know how useful it is.
The upshot seems to be that only real sickos take children over 6
months old if they are not related to them. Under 6 months, the
abductors are generally women, ranging from 14-48, takes a child of the
same race and there is a tendency to keep newspaper clippings relating
to the abduction. Often the abduction is for the purpose of obtaining a
child to keep a relationship going, although the motivation can be to
replace a lost child or miscarried baby. The abductors have been
resourceful and cunning, even those who were not considered bright seem
to display intelligent behaviour in this area, after the child has been
taken. It is usually someone within the abductor's own social network
who reports them. Of course, Veronica took steps to remove herself from
her old social network and form a new one. )

Leo's given me what he can in the way of background reading for this
case, but there aren't many reports of women abducting children. Most
of the ones that do exist deal with babies rather than toddlers.
Chillingly, Leo has also put in some brief articles on Rose West and
Myra Hindley.

But I'm still hoping that Veronica isn't going to turn out that way.
I'm beginning to get involved, emotionally with Alice and I'm finding
it hard to imagine anyone as nice as her having a demon for a mother.
Besides, where is her Fred, her Ian ?

I don't know; there doesn't seem enough data to draw firm conclusions.
Leo tells me that this is the case with all offender profiling - it can
tell you that a person is more likely than someone else to do
something, but it can never tell you exactly whether they did it or
not.

The one thing I do feel though, is that if Veronica had abducted Alice/
Emily, she would have become very attached to her and treated her
exactly as if she really was her birth child, maybe even better.

Of course, when I checked with the Registrar, Alice's birth certificate
details were correct, but that doesn't mean a lot. Veronica could have
paid someone off, or even just adopted the name of someone she knew had
a real child called Alice Neville. What might be significant is that
Alice's birth date is exactly four years to the day before Emily
Feather was kidnapped. Maybe Veronica really did have a child named
Alice who died, and the memory of what would have been her birthday was
what drove her to the abduction.

It's always easy to drive on with a theory that you are fond of,
regardless of the evidence, so I have from time to time to remind
myself of Occam's Razor - the principle that the simplest solution is
usually right.

In this case, the simplest solution of course is that Emily Feather was
abducted and murdered and that Veronica Neville had nothing to do with
it.

Do you know anything about Godel's Incompleteness Theorum? It's a maths
thing. Kurt Godel basically managed to demonstrate that in maths, that
most solid, most definite of subjects; that there will be things which
are true, but can never be proved. He demonstrated, once and for all,
that there is a difference between truth and proof.

I pack away the documents in my case, they're making me maudlin, that
and the wine I'm drinking. I take out the photographs - some I blew up
of Emily, a couple that I palmed while looking through Veronica's old
photographs and two that I asked Alice to provide, of what she looks
like now.

Before I head off to Lincoln, we meet in a Pret a Manger, near her
work. I have a Thai chicken sandwich and milky coffee; she doesn't eat,
but has a coffee. I tell her that I haven't found any hard evidence one
way or the other and that in my opinion, the evidence isn't there to be
found. At this point, I should tell her not to proceed, tell her that
by digging further she runs the risk of at the very least upsetting her
mother. After all these years, whose child is she really? Even if she
was born to someone else, the person she is now is because of
Veronica.

I don't tell her this. I tell her that I have located the Feathers, who
still live in Lincolnshire and that I have made time in my diary to go
to see them, if this is something she wants me to do. I warn her that
they may not be interested, that they may not believe me. I wouldn't
believe me, if I were in their shoes.

"They may not want to know me, even if they do believe it, " she says
sadly.

"Don't you believe it, " I tell her, urgently, "Anybody would be damn
proud to be a part of your life. "

She likes that, I can tell. What I like most about Alice is her
transparency. Her honesty can be seen on her face. She has evaded
seeing her mother since her return from holiday, speaking to her only
on the telephone. I wonder whether she will be able to conceal her
recent discovery from her mother. I hope she'll manage.

I take a quick look at her face, marvelling at the combination of
simplicity and prettiness. Her features are almost perfect, clean and
fresh. There's something similar in her face to Molly Ringwald in the
mid-eighties. The hair is different of course, but there's the same
clarity to her face.

The coffee is pretty good, although it is a little hot for me and I
need to lift off the lid and blow on it. I tell her that I need some
recent photographs, to show Jim and Anne. She agrees to get some and
says that she will drop them in at the office for me, before I head off
down to Lincolnshire.

I tell her that the photos are for Jim and Anne, that maybe they will
see something in her nose, her eyes, her chin which says to them, 'yes,
this is my daughter'.

Is this the reason? Well, it's a reason. I was thinking the other day,
just before I drove to Lincoln, before I'd asked Alice for the
photographs. Every single one of my files, when I'm finished, when the
job is done - do you know what is at the top of the file, the only
thing you see when you open the file?

It's an invoice, with the amount owed set out in an itemised manner and
a date and a date to be paid, and then in blue biro a circle saying
"Paid by" and then a date.

When I think about that, I don't want Alice Neville's file to end up
that way, just another way of paying the bills, just money coming
through the office. I'm beginning to think that I might be falling in
love with her, although I'll never do anything about it. I just want to
hold time still, so that it's now forever, so that I always have an
excuse to ring her and talk to her about the case. This is one where no
matter how clear my memory is, memory isn't going to be
sufficient.

And the best I can do, really, is leave her file with a photograph of
her at the top when I close the case, so that I can always pick up the
file and take a brief look, just to keep some part of her with
me.

eight

He isn't what I expected at all. Of course, I had a rough idea of how
he would look, since I've seen photographs of how he looked twenty
years ago, but the changes I expected to see weren't quite there.

What do I mean by that? Well, I tend to think that experience leaves
its mark on your face - someone famous once said that by thirty, we all
have the faces we deserve.

I hadn't taken into account that what would be missing from Jim's face
are twenty years of his child's life - the good and bad, but if she had
been with him, she would have left her mark. Jim has never had to worry
about boyfriends, or lipstick, or school discos. But he missed out on
all those years of pride.

Jim Feather doesn't deserve the face that he has got. I can see the bad
but not the good. He hasn't aged too badly, except that he doesn't seem
to have any light. There's something not right in his eyes. He dresses
a bit like Ken Barlow, light-blue jeans that are rather too tight, a
check shirt (yellow, pale blue and white checks) and a brown belt. I
can see from the belt that he has put on weight, because there is a
well-worn hole further along the belt that he is no longer using.

His fingers are tight round his pint of bitter, Sam Smiths. We are in a
pub called the Wig and Mitre, his choice because it is quiet and we are
able to find a nook to talk in. He is deeply suspicious. I have a
strong sense that he would rather have crumpled up my letter, thrown it
away. Indeed, he may even have done so, but then felt bad, retrieved it
from the grey bin and smoothed it out. How could he face his wife if
he'd had the chance to find their Emily and turned it down?

I make it plain, "I'm grateful for you coming, Mr Feather. I want to
make it plain that I've no hidden motives. A girl came to see me and
asked me to find out whether she was your Em... your daughter. "

He sinks a good three inches of bitter in one gulp, placing his glass
down on the table rather heavily, so that the liquid lurches in the
glass.

"I've had a long day, " he says. He doesn't say any more than that, but
implicit in this is every hour of pain, every attempt to move on and
forget, every clutching in the stomach when the news tells of another
missing child.

Jim is a man who has become tired, not of life, but by life. I am
feeling a horrid guilt shifting around in my stomach, if I was wearing
a tie, I would be loosening it, in an attempt to breathe more
easily.

I can sense that this man doesn't talk very much. He tells people,
quickly and precisely what needs to be done and they do it. He probably
doesn't chat, even with his wife. Maybe he did, once, but now the
prospect of small talk unnerves him. He was terse with me on the
telephone at the hotel, not wanting to talk, just telling me where he
would meet me.

Just how much does something like the loss of a child affect someone ?
How much of the natural personality is stripped away and replaced by
something different ? For all I know, this man could have once been
hearty and jolly, full of jokes and banter, first to the bar. Is your
personality an internal thing or is it really something which is
created by the circumstances of your life ? I don't know.

He's not a talker and I am much more of a listener, so the conversation
is pretty minimal. I'm glad that I have my glass of orange juice as a
prop, something to keep my hands busy.

"What makes this girl think that she's our Emily? " he asks
finally.

"My client, " I say, "Recently found a set of newspaper cuttings in her
mother's effects. Those cuttings all related to the disappearance of
your daughter. "

With each word, the things I'm not saying are knocking in my throat,
'body', 'never found', 'unsolved' 'sexual abuse'. That kind of
thing.

"We have tried to establish other reasons for the possession of these
cuttings but have drawn a blank. My client is approximately the same
age as Emily, and I have seen photographs of her aged five. "

I lay some photographs on the table, which Jim Feather doesn't
particularly want to see, but takes a brief look at.

"This girl. Your client. What do you know about her? She might be
mental or something. "

For some reason, this makes me feel outraged on her behalf. The words
feel thick in my throat, "She's very respectable. Good job, bright.
She's not mental Mr Feather, I assure you. At the moment, she's very
confused and a little upset, but she's not doing this for any reason
other than to find out the truth. "

Maybe that was a bit too strong, my feelings are clouding my judgment
here. I decide to press the photographs again.

"These photographs, " I say, "I can see similarities, but of course,
I'm not the best person to judge. I have a more recent photograph of my
client. "

Jim looks at the photographs and then turns them over and pushes them
back towards me.

"I don't think so, " he says.

"You have to understand, " he says, "That it took us seven years, to
really accept that she was gone, that she was... dead. It's not easy
for me to say it, even now. My daughter was taken by some sick bastard
and killed. I can't undo the last thirteen years and suddenly believe
that she was alive all that time."

When he says this, it is sharp and clear. It becomes evident to me that
this is a man who has been broken by what happened. This is not
something that you can cope with, or learn to live with, this is
something which tests him every single day, and the only relief he has
had is in the knowledge that his daughter is dead and at peace
finally.

Alice may be his daughter, she may not, but he is at the end now, it is
simply less painful to accept her death than to start off the whole
process of hope all over again. I talked earlier about Pandora's Box
and all the evils of the world and the one good thing, Hope, limping
out at the end. Well, maybe for some people hope is the greatest evil
of the lot, because it never lets you alone.

He gets up to leave, standing in the pub with an empty glass in his
hand and his shirt-sleeves rolled up halfway up the forearms. He seems
very very old at this point, as if he has spent so much of his life
pretending and can't keep it up any more.

"Is she, is she a nice girl? "

I can answer this without any hesitation, " I think she's turned out to
be a wonderful girl. She's a credit. "

Ah, but a credit to who?

Shouldn't I argue with him, convince him that he should face things,
resolve the matter and find out for certain? Tell him about the DNA
test they could all take? My duty is to my client, she wants to know
the truth, I can demand to speak to his wife, we'll see what she has to
say about all this.

How is any of that the right thing to do?

I should stick out my hand and say something like, "I'm really very
sorry to have troubled you with this, sir. You won't hear from me
again. "

That's what I should do. That would be the decent, the honourable thing
to do. Instead, I am faced with a man whose past is crippling him and I
hurt him some more.

"Don't you think your wife should have a say as well? "

He turns and for a second I think he's going to hit me. I clench my
teeth, if I get belted here, it's no less than I deserve. As I watch,
he draws in several breaths, trying to calm himself.

I tell him about the DNA test that he could do, I tuck the photograph
of young Alice into his pocket. I can't look him in the eyes, I feel
terrible about what I'm doing; but remind myself that just possibly, I
might have something that would start to rub away that pain of the last
twenty years. It will never go completely, but better to have that
chance of seeing their daughter, holding her, getting to know
her.

He is crying a little as he stands up, but silently. He has learned how
to cry quietly over the years. I feel that I owe him something, some
gesture.

"Whatever you decide to do, " I say, "That's your decision. I will be
in Lincoln another day, on the same number. If I don't hear from you,
you won't hear from me. I leave it entirely up to you, tell your wife
or don't tell her. Only you can make that decision. "

By the time I get back to the hotel room I feel sick to my stomach and
spend ten minutes leaning over the basin, wondering if I should throw
up, whether that will help. I bought a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin
earlier in the day, thinking that things might go badly. If things had
been okay, I would have left it in the hotel with the cap still
unbroken, I swear it.

It always had the potential for Jim to shout abuse at me and maybe even
take a swing at me. Maybe that would have been better. I use the
tumbler sat on the basin and fill it halfway up with gin, gulping at it
as I flick through the channels on the television. I always wish that
the gin was the same wonderful shade of blue as the bottle, but still
it has a delicious thin transparency, it always seems clearer than
water, even bottled water.

If they've decided that their daughter is dead, haven't they earned
that peace after all these years? What gives anyone else the right to
shake them out of that peace and roughly say, what if she's alive, what
if she's this girl here?

Because, what if she's not? And the conviction they have built that
their daughter is dead, the solidity of "it was awful, but it is
finished" then it gets fragile and maybe this girl wasn't Emily, but
the next one might be. I could be condemning them to a life without
peace forever.

And who says that even if Alice and Emily were the same person that
this would make things any better. She isn't the same girl that they
lost twenty years ago. They don't know her and she doesn't know them.
She has a mother, someone different. Alice is more a part of Veronica
now than anyone else. This knowledge might well destroy the
relationship she has with Veronica, sour everything they have had
together.

The glass is empty, so I pour myself another.

I'm not proud of this, I want you to know that. I'm supposed to be the
valiant knight, the pursuer of truth. Loyalty to my client, that sort
of thing. But I feel, in my teeth that what I am doing is the wrong
thing.

There is a large part of me that hopes that Jim Feather tears up the
photograph on the way home and never tells his wife a damn thing. That
we never speak again and I have to screw up some courage and tell Alice
that the case is over.

The glass is refilled and I then sit and write out the invoice. I don't
include the hotel bill and I underestimate my times where
possible.

Do you know what Raymond Chandler has Marlowe say at the end of The Big
Sleep, after he has solved the case ?

"Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the
big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you
fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. "

The room spins as I lay back on my bed, on top of the covers. My shoes
are kicked off and I have unbuttoned my shirt, but am still wearing it.
I don't have the coordination to get my arms out of the sleeves. I'm
not at all sure what I'm doing with this case.

I always manage to pick the wrong cases to get interested in. Like I
told you earlier, I spend too much time thinking, and that just gets
you nowhere.

When I see them the next morning, they both look very tired. She has
obviously been crying and he doesn't seem to have anything left in him.
It is odd, after all those years of him being strong and solid, it is
Anne that is the strong one now, the one who can open herself up to the
risk of further hurt, to take the chance of the possible reward.

She talks a lot, about the abduction, about how they have learned to
cope. About the day, seven years on when they decided once and for all
that Emily was dead and that they would never see her again. They had
bought flowers and had a small quiet funeral, at the side of her empty
grave. While she talks, Jim goes outside for a cigarette, he can hardly
stand to be near me.

Anne has straight hair and wears a little make-up. My guess is that she
usually doesn't wear any, but has put some on today to make an effort.
She has on a red sweater and some smart beige trousers, with pleats.
She is wearing Eternity perfume, which is always too sickly-sweet for
my tastes. Her wedding ring is very tight on her finger, but she still
tries to turn it while she talks, a nervous action.

"Jim said that you had a photograph of her, what she looks like now.
Can I see it? "

I show it to her and she takes a long look at it, as if she's drinking
it in; then a slender finger reaches out and gently touches Alice's
hair in the image.

"Can I keep this? " she asks.

My excuses don't sound true, even to myself. What sort of a man would
deny a mother this, in the midst of all this misery, a tiny piece of
comfort? Still, I can't bear the thought of being parted from the
photograph and I tell her that I can't let her keep it, I'm
sorry.

I give her another photograph of young Alice though, that means nothing
to me at all, it is a cheap gesture. It helps Anne though. She holds it
closely to herself.

"So difficult, " she says, "I was looking at the other photograph for
hours once Jim showed me. He didn't want to look at it at all. It's so
hard to tell. Twenty years ago. She looks like Emily, I know that. But
how can you tell that it isn't just chance. "

"She does look similar then? " I ask.

"Oh yes. Definitely. Not so much now, but the old photographs. I could
swear that these were our own photos, if it wasn't for the fact that
this isn't our house, isn't our garden. "

Jim comes back in, scowls at me, but it is half-hearted. I can tell
that he is still waiting for me to ask for money, just to cover
expenses.

"The testing, " says Anne, "We've decided that we'd like to do it. What
does it involve? "

I give her a brochure from Cellmark, it explains everything fairly
clearly. I tell her that my client is prepared to pay for
everything.

"Can we meet her? " asks Anne, with excitement in her voice, "We'd like
to see her before the test."

I wonder to myself whether this is wise - are they setting themselves
up for a bigger disappointment if we are all wrong? I tell them that I
will talk to my client about this, that it is something she will need
to think about. Inwardly, I am delighted, because it will give me a
chance to see her face-to-face again. They give me a telephone number
and tell me to contact them as soon as I know. She says that she is
happy to travel down to London.

nine

"I'm sorry, " she says.

Here I am, fresh from opening up ugly, infected wounds in people,
having unpicked the stitches that were keeping their insides from
rotting and this is what she says to me. She is wearing a
cornflower-blue dress, the most wonderful shade of blue I've ever seen;
the dress has a scoop neck and ends just below the knee. Alice has on
Angel by Thierry Mugler, my favourite perfume, it smells of sweet
fruits that you have never eaten. Her shoes are black, with only a
small heel. Nearby, a man is talking to two young boys about elephant
tusks.

"I'm sorry, " she says, "But I can't go through with it. "

The Smiths once wrote a song called, "I started something I couldn't
finish", about someone embarking on a romantic course of action and
getting cold feet - even the chorus is half-finished, never getting out
the full song title. I used to listen to The Smiths a lot, when I was
younger. The passing of time, and all of its sickening crimes.

She is still lovely, even though at this moment I can feel a clear
physical pain focus in on my cheekbones, a dreadful angry pain in my
face, my bones ache. What the hell am I going to do now ?

"Do you mind telling me why ? " I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.
I'm going to need to get to a chemists as soon as this conversation is
over, get some pills - either to a chemists or to a pub, whichever
turns out nearer.

We're in the Natural History museum, a place that I really love. We are
standing underneath a huge model of a blue whale, it is immense and
truly beautiful. I suggested that we meet here, hoping that we might
walk round afterwards, I could talk to her about the exhibits, about
the volcanoes and the process of natural selection, about why peacocks
tails are the way they are. Hoping that a business meeting might turn
into a date.

How do you go about that anymore ? I am out of touch. I know that when
I was a teenager it was just, "Will you go out with me ?" , but you
can't say that to an adult. And the other things you say, the codes you
can use, "Would you like to come out for a drink ? " They just don't
feel right for me.

"I saw my mother last night, " she tells me.

For a moment I think that she told her mother about all... this. But
Alice has such an honest face, I can see that she didn't. I feel like
we are really starting to know each other, to connect.

"She knew I was upset about something, but I didn't tell her what. She
just sat with me and we talked for hours, about all kinds of things.
Nothing very important, but she was just there for me. "

"It's silly, I know, " she tells me, "But just spending that time with
her, really helped me to think things through. I don't care who I am or
what she might have done, she's my mother and I love her. That's all
there is to it. "

I nod my head. I can hardly get angry with her, can I ? Not even if I
wasn't in love with her and was just impassionate and neutral. I had
thought about this earlier myself, about who Alice was now, even if she
had been Emily before.

Veronica is that girl's mother and no amount of testing is going to
change that. You can't wipe out twenty years of history, not on either
side. And there is always the risk that the Feather's might not feel
too forgiving about Veronica's part in the whole drama. I didn't see
them ever sitting down for tea together. If Alice ever got married, she
wouldn't be able to have both of her families there.

All that's happened here is that Pandora walked up to the box, took a
long peek into the contents and decided to shut the lid and go home.
The question is, how many of the contents managed to get out while that
lid was open a crack ?

There's no way that I can put pressure on her, try to persuade her
otherwise. I told her about the Feather's and how they were, what I
felt they were like. I told her that they were curious and wanted to do
the tests, wanted to meet her.

There's nothing else that I can say. This is none of my business.

What do you know, the pub really is nearer than the chemists.
(*7)

(*7 This sounds a little like an aphorism. It has that ring of deep
truth to it. You know, like the pen is mightier than the sword. Or
more, aptly, Ogden Nash's poem - Candy is Dandy, But Liquor is Quicker.
)

Unsurprisingly, Jim Feather doesn't take the news well when I tell him
on the telephone. I can hear Anne in the background saying, "Put me on,
let me talk to him", I can imagine how close they are, I can imagine
his hand flapping at her in frustration, trying to get her to back
off.

I tell them that there is nothing that I can do, that I am sorry, but
that my client has just got cold feet. I have given her their telephone
number, maybe she'll get curious and call sometime.

They aren't going to settle for that. I knew that they wouldn't. Who
could in their position ? You can't just ignore news like that, shrug
your shoulders and say, well our daughter might be alive but we'll have
to wait and see.

It is at this point that I am very glad that I was selfish and teenage
crush pathetic about keeping that photograph of Alice. I know when I
put the telephone down that they will be doing one of two things. They
will either get another private investigator to follow me and hope that
I lead them to Alice, or they will get in touch with the police.

Sometimes it's very helpful to be paranoid and make all of your calls
to clients from payphones. Nobody will be able to track Alice through
any of my telephone records. Why do I bother having a mobile phone and
never call anyone on it ?

There are other steps that I will need to take to protect Alice, and
more particularly her mother. If the Feather's find Alice through me,
the police would have to question Veronica. And even if she's proved
innocent, what would that do to the relationship between mother and
daughter ? To find that your daughter feels that you might be capable
of snatching a child, to find that she distrusts you so much that she
pays a private detective to find out ?

If that happened, Alice could lose everything. Have no family at all. I
care too much about her to let that happen.

The first step is to telephone Alice from a payphone. It is one near a
tube station, a good way from my office. I'm sure that nobody has
started to follow me yet, but it is always worth being careful.

"Alice, " I say, "It's me, Alex Chandler. Listen, I've got to say
something. Don't worry about it. "

This immediately makes her worry of course, but what else could I have
said?

"I've spoken to the Feather's. Now, they didn't take it well. They
weren't happy. Now listen, I think that they may not leave it at that.
"

"What else could they do ? " she asks, rather breathlessly.

"They could pay someone to find you, the way you paid me. Or, " and
here I pause, "They could go to the police. "

"Now don't panic, " I say, "The only way you can be found is through
me. They don't know your name and they don't have any details. They
want you, they have to come through me. "

This calms her down a little.

"And that isn't going to happen, " I tell her, "You are safe with me.
"

Her gratitude just makes the next part even harder to bear.

"Now listen carefully, " I say, "I'm not going to be able to speak to
you again, in case I'm being watched. I won't be able to speak to you
again, and I won't be able to see you again. And you're not to ring me,
okay ? No matter what happens, even if I'm in the papers. I will tough
it out. You and I, can never have any contact again. "

This is terrible. I can't believe that things have come to this. I feel
like there's something in my chest, squeezing hard at me. I might as
well just tell her, just say how I feel. I know nothing can come of it,
but it should make the probable rejection easier. Just tell her that
I'm in love with her. (*8)

In the end, all I say is "Goodbye" and she says, "Thank you. Thank you
so much for what you've done. I'll never forget you. "

Which I suppose is close enough; and I already know that I'll never
forget her. As soon as I put down the receiver, I feel like feeding
more coins into the machine and ringing her straight back to hear her
voice again. But I know that would be stupid, so I don't. I just turn
away and walk back to the tube station.

I still have the file in my hand, with her picture inside. Together
with the appointments diary, taken from Rachel. The last connection
between Alice Neville and myself. The last link.

It would be pretty stupid to burn it at home, the police have got
experts who can reconstruct stuff from ash, I know all about that. I
book into a hotel room, I pay cash and give a false name. I burn the
file over the sink, as the waste paper basket is wicker and would catch
light.

(*8 To introduce a note of realism, even if this situation hadn't
occurred, and I had found the courage to ask, and she actually felt the
same way - how would we have ever dealt with me meeting her mother ?
The inevitable question of how the two of us met ?)

I burn the photograph last of all, watching the flames lick hungrily at
her features. After the burning is all done, I take the pieces, the
bits of ash and divide them in two. The first half I flush down the
toilet, the rest I put in my jacket pocket. Then I check out of the
hotel. I dispose of the second half later on, gently scatter them on
the tracks in the tube as I wait for the train.

When the train arrives, dashing energetically into the station all
breathy and lit up, I get on the train and it takes me somewhere else.
That is all there is of Alice Neville and me. It is all done.

There is no way, no matter what the Feather's do, that they can get to
Alice anymore, I have protected her. It is funny how quickly my mind
has accepted the idea of them as villains, the enemy; when in fact of
course they are the real victims in this, if anyone is. They are the
ones who were getting on with their lives and had hope dangled before
them then yanked away.

So who is the villain ? Is it Alice ? She just decided to stick with
what she knew, rather than leap into the unknown. That's human nature,
you can't criticise someone for that. Is it me ? I don't have quite
such a ready answer for that, which is why Jim and Anne Feather slot so
easily into the role of villain for keeping me apart from Alice.

The additional irony of course is that now that I can never contact
Alice again, the invoice I've just burned will never get settled. So
nobody benefits from this, even on a financial basis.

I ring Bill later and tell him that I would like a brief chat with him
about a certain situation and get some free legal advice, after the
squash game. I let him win, so that he feels better about dishing out
the advice. It is pretty much as I suspected. I am going to have to
tough it out and hope that they don't have the guts to charge me as an
accessory to kidnapping. Legally speaking, they can't make me say a
damn thing. Bill rubs his hands briskly, telling me to make sure that I
call him as soon as the police turn up.

The next day, as I sit in my office and doodle a flower in a pot on a
piece of paper, waiting for the police to arrive and ask me their ugly
questions; I can't stop thinking about this case. There is nothing left
now, I've considered everything, there is no physical connection
whatsoever between Alice and me. There is no evidence at all to link
us.

All I have left are my memories. And for the first time in a few years,
I am grateful for the clarity of my memory. I will always be able to
look at that photograph of Alice in my mind. Not as clear as the real
thing, or the paper equivalent, but it is mine and nobody can ever
touch it. Nobody will ever see it and ask questions of it, or about it.
It is mine and mine alone.