‘It was down to me.’ She takes a long, juddering breath.
‘I can’t bear it if you blame yourself.’ I can feel my own tears building. ‘I hate that this whole thing has driven us apart. I need you, Marie.’ I rest my forehead against hers. ‘Sometimes I feel I’ve lost you,’ I whisper.
‘You’ll never lose me,’ she says. ‘But it was me that threw Bruno’s ball over the fence. If it wasn’t for that—’
‘Enough. This is precisely why we shouldn’t do the interview,’ Carly says. ‘We each think we’re at fault and maybe it’s time to let it go. All of it.’
Carly’s right. We all blame ourselves. Twenty years on and we all still blame ourselves. Marie for throwing the ball over the fence, me for not shutting the gate properly and Carly for taking us with her to look for Bruno. We’ve heard a million times that it wasn’t our fault. Our parents repeated it endlessly when we first came home, as did the police officers, the therapists we’ve tried and discarded over the years – but hearing something is different to feeling it. Guilt is corrosive. It eats away from the inside out. We paint on smiles and it looks like we’re coping but we’re not, not really. I don’t think we ever will. Two years, twenty years, it still feels the same. I know we weren’t the first children to be snatched and we won’t be the last, but the why – I can never get my head around the why. How different our lives would have been if we had never been taken. But I can’t allow myself to think that way. If I had a different life I might not have George and Archie.
‘It is time to let go. Twenty years of suffering is twenty years too much. That’s why I thought opening up might help. It wasn’t all about the money,’ Marie says. ‘Although God knows, I could do with it.’ She gestures around her tiny flat. ‘But it’s been a lot to carry, hasn’t it? Sometimes I feel I’ll snap under the weight of it all. I don’t know how you both cope, living in the same town full-time. At least I get to leave, go on tour.’
‘But you always come back,’ I say quietly.
‘I come back for you two,’ Marie says. ‘And it’s hard. Every bloody time I drive past that place. How can you bear it?’
‘I think it’s easier, staying. Everyone knows us and what we’ve been through but because of that everyone protects us – or tries to, at least.’
There was a shift in the town when we had finally been found. The streets, once filled with kids kicking footballs, racing around on bikes, were empty. In supermarkets mothers would tightly hold on to their children’s hands. Cars jammed up the residential roads around the primary school. Nobody let kids walk anywhere. There was a sharp decrease in independence for the kids. A sharp increase in fear for the parents. And guilt. Neighbourhood Watch groups were formed and Mum had said they were full of the ‘if only we’d all been more vigilant’ and the ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ brigade.
It’s all changed now of course, but nobody has really forgotten and it’s because the community felt they had let us down that they close ranks when reporters ask for snippets of ‘What are the Sinclair Sisters really like?’ gossip. If we moved away people would still find out who we were and we wouldn’t feel as… safe, I suppose, although I don’t think any of us have ever felt completely safe since before we were snatched. It wasn’t only our physical selves that were taken away but our innocence and our inherent naive faith that people were good and adults could be trusted.
‘At least here I know that no one will ask me out,’ Carly says.
‘I wish you’d meet someone,’ I reply. Carly, more than anybody, deserves to be happy.
‘I can get you not wanting kids,’ Marie says, ‘But… you must get lonely.’
‘Not really. I’ve got you two. And Archie and that’s enough for me. Imagine falling for someone and they turned out to be… bad. You never know who to trust, do you?’
I know what she means. Monsters walk among us and sometimes they look like you.
Sometimes they look like me.
The conversation stutters again. Carly wipes away tears that are streaking her cheeks. I want to tell her that letting George into my life was the best thing that ever happened to me. That she too can learn to allow someone in – but I think of the secrets I carry inside and outside of my marriage and I know that would make me a hypocrite. Who am I to give life advice when I am making such a mess of mine?
‘You should speak to someone, you both should.’ I’d tried to get them to see my last therapist. Francesca. I had connected with her in a way I hadn’t with those who had come before her. She seemed to genuinely care, spending more time with me than she was obliged to, making sure she understood our family’s dynamics. She even helped explain to George what was happening mentally to me a few years ago and because of this he tried his best to support me through it. Love me through it. Of course I didn’t tell her everything, I’ve never told anyone everything. I haven’t seen her for months but I know what she would advise us to do right now. ‘Francesca says—’
‘No offence, Leah,’ Carly says. ‘But we’re indoors and you’re wearing gloves. I love you but you’re the least sorted of us all.’
‘I don’t want to hurt you, either of you,’ Marie says. ‘I thought it might help. Really. Not just sharing what happened but talking about how we’ve felt, I suppose, since.’
‘We can do that without an audience,’ I say.
‘I guess,’ Marie says. ‘It’s just that with an interviewer present I thought we’d all be more… in control of our feelings, I suppose.’
‘Feelings. Everyone’s obsessed with feelings,’ Carly says. ‘I was coming out of Tesco’s last week when a journalist showed me a picture of the grave and asked me how I felt about it now. I told them I felt nothing. Nothing. I wish now I’d told them I felt glad.’
I tell Carly that I was shown the same photo too. The cemetery where one of our abductors was laid to rest. His plot a tangle of weeds. Unkept and unloved. No flowers, no sense that anyone ever visits. They probably don’t. I don’t say that, unlike her, I felt something when I saw it. In fact, I felt everything: sadness, remorse, anger, regret and relief. I had felt relief that he, at least, couldn’t hurt anyone again. But he hadn’t acted alone.
Our rare openness of a few moments ago vanishes. The air chills and I know we are all thinking the same thing.
‘He’s due out of prison again next year.’ Carly doesn’t speak his name. None of us do. I’ve tried but the letters twist and tangle and form a ball in my throat.
Him.
The air chills.
‘Let’s talk about something else.’ Carly lifts her mug and gulps coffee that must be cold. ‘Tell us how Archie got on with his first swimming lesson, Leah.’
‘Oh God.’ My cheeks colour thinking about it. ‘The instructor sat the kids down before they even got wet and asked them the things people worry about when they go swimming so he could set their minds at rest. One little girl said she worries she’ll swallow some water. Another that the pool would be too deep and she wouldn’t be able to touch the bottom. Archie said… no. Archie shouted, “My mummy worries about wearing a costume because her bum is wobbly and her legs look like orange peel.” Honestly…’ I shove Carly. ‘Shut up. It wasn’t funny. Everyone stared at me.’