99 Red Balloons: A chillingly clever psychological thriller with a stomach-flipping twist

Chapter Four

Stephanie

The detectives have gone. PC Nadia Sharma, the Family Liaison Officer, is opening and closing cupboards in the kitchen, too polite or too considerate to ask where the cups are.

My eyes feel red raw and twice their normal size. Emma’s gripping my hand so hard it’s numb, but it doesn’t matter. Her eyes are glazed and fixed on the carpet. She hasn’t spoken for nearly half an hour. I can’t ask if she’s okay, because I know she isn’t. I can’t ask her if she wants a drink because her mind won’t care what her body needs. I release the hand she’s holding and put my arm around her shoulders.

‘They’ll find her soon, Em,’ I say. ‘She’ll walk back through the front door, you’ll see.’

It’s almost cruel to say it, but it feels like Grace will come home. Any minute now.

Where is she? She’s eight, but she’s not a street-smart eight. Perhaps she’s had an accident, fallen somewhere and can’t get up. She tries to be brave when she’s hurt, especially if she’s in front of Jamie. She fell off her bike last summer. Jamie helped her into the house, her knees and elbows grazed. I’d carried her up the stairs as Jamie watched from the hallway, biting his lip. As soon as we reached the bathroom, the tears rolled down her cheeks.

‘Mum should be here in a minute,’ I say. ‘But with me and Jamie being here, there might not be enough room for us all to stay the night.’

‘I want you here,’ she says, her eyes still focused on the carpet. ‘All of you.’

I reach into my bag and check my mobile. It’s been almost an hour since I managed to get hold of Mum. She said she’d been in the bath when I’d called. I had to tell her about Grace, otherwise she might not have come.

‘But I’ve already dressed for bed,’ she said. ‘She’ll have gone to a friend’s.’ She sighed when I told her that none of Grace’s friends had seen her since she went into the shop. ‘I’ll have to get some proper clothes on then and wait for a taxi. She’ll probably be back by the time I get there. You girls were always home late from school.’

‘But we weren’t eight,’ I said.

Mum only lives ten minutes away – traffic can’t be that bad. I don’t know how she stayed so calm. If it were my granddaughter, I’d run as fast as I could to get here.

Matt can’t keep still. He sits in his chair for only a few seconds before going to the window.

‘I shouldn’t be here doing fuck all. I should be out looking for her.’

‘I ought to know where she is.’ Emma’s voice makes me jump. ‘I’m her mother, I should be able to sense it. I keep trying to picture where she is, but I can’t.’ She turns to face me. ‘Why can’t I picture it?’

The tears betray me and trickle down my face.

‘I don’t know.’

I wish I knew.

‘She wanted French toast with Nutella for breakfast this morning,’ she says. ‘Don’t be silly, I said. That’s a weekend breakfast. Coco Pops I gave her.’ She starts rocking back and forth again. I’m rocking with her, my arm across her back. ‘Shit. Why didn’t I just make her the French toast? Fucking work. Rushing out of the door every morning to make it there on time. Why do I work? If I stayed at home, I would have made it for her. And then maybe she wouldn’t have gone for sweets after school.’

Matt strides over and crouches at her feet.

‘How can it be about that? How can she have vanished just because you work in a fucking office?’

He’s almost shouting. He stands while fresh tears pour down Emma’s face.

I wish he hadn’t snapped at her, but then who am I to monitor his behaviour when their child has just disappeared?

‘What is it?’ he says, to himself rather than us. ‘What are we missing? Perhaps she has met someone on the internet – maybe a friend from school told her which sites to go on.’

He looks around the room and walks towards the computer desk.

‘Where’s the laptop?’ he says.

Emma doesn’t move, just stares at the carpet.

‘Did you see them take it?’ he says to me.

I shake my head.

‘The police always take things like that, don’t they?’ I say.

‘How the hell should I know?’

Matt puts both hands on top of his head.

‘Shit.’

Emma said she was going to the bathroom, but she’s been upstairs for twenty minutes. I climb the stairs, but not so quietly that I startle her.

The bathroom door is open; she’s not in there. There’s a glow from underneath Grace’s bedroom door. There’s a sign on the door – one like Emma used to have on hers, only Grace’s is purple and has her name written in silver. I gently push it open.

‘It’s only me, Em.’

She doesn’t look up. She’s sitting on the edge of Grace’s bed. The quilt cover’s laid diagonally across it, and her giraffe teddy bear is near the pillow – she’s had it since she was a baby. Emma’s switched on the fairy lights, which twinkle on the headboard. Loom band bracelets are piled on her bedpost, untouched for months as the phase was replaced by another. I kneel on the floor, not wanting to disturb anything. Under the window is her dressing table, covered with pens, three jewellery boxes, and two mugs that she decorated herself. Above her headboard is a photo collage of her friends from school, and pictures of Emma, Matt, Jamie and me stuck to the wall with Blu-tack. Alongside them are posters of Little Mix and One Direction. One of the boy band members’ faces has been obliterated with a black marker.

Emma’s holding one of Grace’s books. She lifts it up: Everything You Need to Know About Horses.

‘We got it from the library two weeks ago,’ she says. ‘It’s due back on Friday. She’s decided she wants to be a vet. Last week she was going to be a hairdresser. Matt said he’d buy her a shop. At the time, I thought, Don’t be so silly, we can’t buy her a whole hairdresser’s.’ She places the book back on Grace’s bedside table. ‘When she gets back, I’ll get her anything she wants – anything.’

Emma looks around the room. Her eyes rest on a little shoebox that Grace made into a bed when it was her turn to look after the school teddy bear a few years ago.

‘I need to do Grace’s washing,’ says Emma. ‘I’m so crap.’ The white plastic laundry basket next to the desk is overflowing, the lid three feet away from it. ‘But what if I do that and she never comes back? I won’t be able to smell her any more.’ A tear runs down her cheek. ‘Where is she, Steph?’

I crawl to her and rest my head on her lap.

‘I don’t know.’

I try to picture Grace, like Emma tried before, but all I see is her cold and alone, the rain falling on her face as she lies in the dirt. It’s not even raining outside.

On the day she was born it had been snowing. I held her in my arms and looked out of the hospital window; the car park and the treetops were covered in a snow blanket. I hadn’t yet seen her open her eyes, but when I said, We’ll have to wrap you up warm when we take you home, little one, she gripped my finger a little tighter.

She didn’t have a name for the first week. Emma and Matt hadn’t wanted to know if she was a boy or a girl before the birth. They expected a boy, simply because Matt’s family were mainly men. ‘I must get her name right,’ Emma said. Every day they tried a different one for her: Jessica, Natasha, Lily are the few I remember. When Emma said Grace, I knew it was the perfect name for her.

‘You will stay here tonight, won’t you?’ says Emma, breaking the silence.

‘Of course, but—’

‘It’s fine that Jamie’s here. I need him here too. Will you both be all right in the spare room?’

‘We’ll be okay anywhere, don’t worry about it.’

There’s a growl of a diesel engine outside. We both jump to the window.

‘Oh.’

We say it at the same time.

It’s a black cab: Mum. She hasn’t driven since 1996, or whenever she had an experience with an HGV. I can’t remember her ever driving us anywhere before that though – it was always Dad.

Dad. What would he have been like in this nightmare? He’d have come straight over and taken control of everything. It’s been four years since he died. Sometimes it feels a lifetime ago; at other times it seems like yesterday.

I rush downstairs and open the front door, waiting while Mum pays the driver.

‘Where have you been?’

She rakes her fingers through her hair as she walks through the door. Her face, usually impeccably made-up, is red with broken veins on her cheeks. Her eyes are surrounded by puffy skin.

‘I had to get myself together. How’s Emma bearing up? Is she okay? And Matt?’

I narrow my eyes at her. Get herself together? Is she really going to be like this now?

‘Emma’s been asking for you. I rang you ages ago.’ I reach into my pocket for my phone. ‘It was five to six when I finally managed to talk to you after God knows how many times I rang – you said you were on your way. It’s gone seven o’clock.’

She frowns at me; her eyes are bloodshot.

‘It’s not the time to be pedantic, is it? I said I was sorry.’

No, she didn’t.

Jesus. My heart nearly pounds out of my jumper. I can’t think.

‘Where is she?’ she says.

For a moment I think she means Grace.

‘Upstairs.’

In the kitchen, Jamie’s sitting at the table, his face a hint of blue from the light of the laptop he takes with him everywhere.

‘Bedtime soon, love.’

‘It’s only early.’ He glances at me and nods. ‘Okay.’

‘Has there been anything on the internet about Grace?’

‘Not yet.’

How long does a child have to be missing to make it onto the news?

My phone vibrates three times in my pocket. It might be Karl. He and I have only been seeing each other a month, but we’ve worked together for years. This is the first time I’ve thought about him since Grace went missing; should it be like that? I take out my mobile.

It’s a message from Matt.

My heart flips. He’s sitting in the other room – he’s barely looked at me since I got here hours ago. I promised myself I wouldn’t think about him in that way any more. Grace is missing. What kind of person would that make me?

My hands are almost shaking as I click to open the message. Jamie’s standing at the doorway, waiting for me to show him to bed in a house where he seldom spends the night.

The message opens: I forgot to delete the emails.

Chapter Five

Before I open my eyes I feel that I’m rocking. Where was I before? With George, the man wearing the woolly hat. We were in his car. ‘Ninety-Nine Red Balloons’ was on the radio.

I open my eyelids just a little bit, so I can look around without him noticing I’m awake. It worked last week when Mummy came into my bedroom at night to put a coin under my pillow. She couldn’t tell that I waited up until she went to bed. I knew the tooth fairy wasn’t real anyway, so I wasn’t that sad.

I’m lying on an orange seat and there’s a table near my head. I can see his legs under it. He’s wearing the same trousers as before: grey with multi-coloured bits on them – like little dots of rainbow.

‘Ah, you’re awake, little one,’ he says.

I must have opened my eyes properly by accident. I pretend to yawn and sit up.

‘Where are we?’

‘Change of plan. Your mum is planning an even bigger surprise. We’re on the ferry.’

He looks around. I do too, but I can’t see Mummy. There’s hardly anyone here.

‘Are you hungry?’ he says. ‘I picked you up a few things from the café.’ He puts some food in front of me: a bread roll, Jacob’s crackers, and a Mars Bar. I shouldn’t eat the Mars Bar as I’ll get hyper. I’ve never eaten a whole one before – not this size.

I look around again. It’s the biggest café I’ve ever seen, but no one else is eating. I can see other people now, lying on the sofas under the tables like I was. They must be sleeping. I don’t think there are any bedrooms on this boat. Through the windows is blackness – the only thing I can see is the moon.

‘How did you get me here from the car? Did I sleepwalk?’

He laughs. ‘Well aren’t you a clever little thing – thinking about logistics.’

I don’t like him calling me a little thing. My teacher, Mrs Wilson, says that people can’t be things; only objects are things.

‘I pushed you in this.’

He reaches behind the pillar next to him and pulls out a buggy. It has red and white stripes like the one in my gran’s shed. My face feels hot. Everyone must think I’m a big baby. Mummy used to call me that when I couldn’t walk all the way home from the shops without whining.

‘But it doesn’t matter,’ he says, leaning closer. ‘I’ve seen at least four big girls in buggies. It’s night-time you see – how else are they meant to sleep?’

I shrug and swing my legs off the seat. I pull the Mars Bar closer. I slowly unwrap it, looking at George, wondering when he’s going to stop me.

He doesn’t.

He just shakes his head, smiles and goes back to reading the paper.

I take a bite of the chocolate bar and it’s delish – that’s what Mummy says.

There’ll be no sleeping for me tonight.

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