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unstoppable.
She told me that the website advised that bloodhounds are essential for a proper search. That they
can follow the scent of a child even if their abductor has picked them up and carried them away. She
asked me what dogs the police had used in the woods. I said they’d been German shepherds. She
continued to read quietly, scratching notes out on a pad, keeping it shielded from me, her mouth set in
a grim line.
After a time she said, ‘Did you see John after your interview?’
‘No, they took him somewhere else.’
‘You should ring him. It would be good to know what they asked him.’
‘He blames me.’
‘This is not your fault.’
I knew it was.
‘What did they ask you? Can you talk about it?’
‘They asked me everything, they wanted so much detail: family history, everything to do with Ben
since he was born; anything you could think of basically.’
I didn’t mention that they wanted to know what Ben had had for lunch on Sunday.
‘Did they ask about our family?’
‘They wanted to know everything.’
‘What did you tell them?’ Her eyes lifted from the screen and they were red-rimmed.
‘I told them what happened. What else would I tell them?’
‘Yes, of course.’ She turned back to the screen. ‘It says here that the family should try to agree on a
tactic for how to approach relationships with the police, that it’s really effective to do that.’
‘I can’t phone John now.’ I couldn’t face it. I’d committed the worst sin a mother can: I hadn’t
looked after my child. ‘I’m going upstairs.’
In Ben’s bedroom I could see very little sign that the scenes of crime officers had been there. One of
Ben’s favourite toys lay nestled on his bed, in the tumble of bedding that Ben liked to sleep in. It was
Baggy Bear, a doe-eyed teddy with chewed ears, floppy arms, soft fur and a blue knitted scarf that
Ben liked me to tie in a certain way. I held Baggy Bear to my chest. I thought, I can’t leave this house
now, in case he comes back here. Everywhere, the silence, the absence of Ben, seemed to swell. It
felt hostile, like the furtive spread of a cancer.
I lay down on Ben’s bed, and curled up. There was something making me uncomfortable and I
shifted position, felt for it. It was his old cot blanket. He called it ‘nunny’ and he’d had it since he was
a baby. It was very soft and he would wrap it around his fingers and stroke his face with it to get
himself off to sleep. He’d never admit it to anybody but me, but he couldn’t sleep without it. I tried to
push away the thought that he’d already had to spend a night without it, that that might have been the
least of his worries.
I balled it up, hugged it to myself, along with Baggy Bear. I could smell Ben on the nunny, on the
bedding and on his teddy bear. It was the perfect smell that he’d always had. It was the smell of baby
hair that has no weight to it, and of the skin on his temples, which was still velvety smooth. It was the
smell of trust, freely given, and a perfect, innocent curiosity. It was the smell of our dog walks and the
games we’d played together and the things I’d told him, and the meals we’d shared. It was the smell
of our history together. I inhaled that smell as if it could revive me somehow, give me some answers,
or some hope, and, like that, I just waited. I didn’t know what else to do.