Her Last Tomorrow

Chapter 7

7 Nick

I do as I was told and jog down the street, searching gardens and knocking on doors, trying to rouse my neighbours’ attention. I’m four houses down on our side of the road before anyone answers. I’m now opposite the man on the ladder and he’s looking at me strangely again.

An old lady answers the door. She must be in her nineties.

‘Hi. I live a few doors down and I’m looking for my daughter. I think she might have run into someone else’s garden or house. Have you seen her? A young girl, about this tall,’ I say, holding my hand out to my side.

The woman just looks at me. Considering the number of chains and locks she had to take off the door just to open it a moment ago, I’m guessing there’s no way Ellie’s in here.

‘I’ll just look in your hedges to see if she’s hiding there,’ I say. The woman still says nothing.

I turn and look more closely at her front garden. The grass is overgrown and the ‘hedges’ are mostly weeds and thistles. I move a few clumps aside with my foot and call Ellie’s name, but there’s nothing.

At the next two houses there’s still no answer, but before I can try the next one I hear the sound of a car engine increasing in volume. I look. It’s the police. I jog up the road and wave my arms as they round the corner and pull up alongside me.

‘Are you here for my daughter?’ I ask.

‘Mr Connor, is it?’ the middle-aged uniformed policeman asks as he gets out of the passenger-side door.

‘Yes. Nick Connor. I don’t know what you’ve been told, but she was in the back seat of the car for a few seconds, if that. I went into the house to get something she’d forgotten and I came back and she was gone.’

‘Right. Which house is yours?’ he asks.

‘Down there,’ I say. ‘Number forty.’

He gestures to his younger counterpart with a flick of the head and they both follow me down the road towards the house.

‘Thank you for coming so quickly,’ I say, trying to act as normally as possible, a large part of me realising that they’d probably think I was completely overreacting. ‘I thought you usually left it a day or two before looking for people.’

‘Depends on the circumstances,’ the younger officer says. ‘With young children it’s a bit different. Especially if there’s a chance someone else might’ve taken them.’

The older officer darts a look at him, thinking I won’t notice.

‘You seem quite calm, Mr Connor,’ the younger officer says. ‘Does this sort of thing happen often?’

‘No, of course not,’ I reply. ‘I just didn’t want to seem like some panicking lunatic, that’s all. Inside I’m a wreck. Trust me.’

The older officer nods. ‘I’m PC Briers, by the way,’ he says. ‘This is PC Robinson.’

I nod. ‘That’s mine, there,’ I say as we get closer to the house. ‘She was in the back of the car.’

‘Was she strapped in? Was the door locked?’ PC Briers asks.

‘It wasn’t locked, no. I was only gone a few seconds. She was strapped in, though.’

‘Was it a safety catch at all? Could she have undone it herself?’

‘Well, yeah, she could. She has done before. She’s five, for Christ’s sake. She’s always fiddling with everything.’

Briers and Robinson look at each other. I can tell what they’re thinking.

‘But she’s not the sort of kid to just walk off or disappear. She knows about things like this. We talk about it all the time at home, keeping safe and things like that.’

‘You say she can’t have disappeared on her own, though?’ Briers asks. ‘Why’s that?’

‘I dunno,’ I say. ‘It just doesn’t seem possible. There’s no way she could’ve got to the end of the road on her own in the time I was inside.’

‘Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to take Ellie?’

I can see the way he’s looking at me. We walk up the driveway to the house.

‘No. My wife, Tasha, was at work. She’s on her way back but it’ll take a while as she works in London.’

‘That’s Ellie’s mum?’ he asks. The question strikes me as bizarre, but I guess it’s reasonable in the modern age.

‘Yeah, it is.’

‘Did you hear a car outside while you were in the house?’ PC Robinson asks, making himself useful for the first time as I let the officers inside.

‘I don’t think so. I don’t remember hearing anything,’ I say. ‘Anyway, should we not be outside, looking?’

‘That’ll all be taken care of,’ PC Briers says, smiling as he tries to reassure me. ‘There are certain procedures we have to follow. PC Robinson and I are here to speak to you and find out a little more about Ellie, perhaps try to ascertain where she might have gone and why.’

I nod silently. In my very British way, I do all I can do in times of tension and put the kettle on.

I feel helpless and useless as I sit quietly sipping my tea. What is the right thing to do? Should I be here giving as much information as I can to the officers in my living room, or should I be out pounding the streets doing all I can to look for Ellie? Both options seem futile, and PCs Briers and Robinson remind me that there are officers out looking for her. They tell me that my efforts are best put to use at home, providing information and waiting for some further news. There’s nothing much more we can do, they say, which just makes me feel useless.

I look at the empty photo frame on the side unit, the photo of Ellie that was in it now sitting on PC Robinson’s lap. This is what they’ll circulate with a description, they say.

‘Is there anything else we should know about Ellie?’ PC Briers asks.

I want to ask why the police have only sent two lowly PCs, but my guess is that they’re hardly likely to ship out the local equivalent of Sherlock Holmes or Columbo when, as far as they’re concerned, it’s probably just a case of a wandering child who’ll be back home in half an hour.

I shake my head silently. ‘She’s just a . . . normal girl. She likes all the normal things. Playing with her friends, watching TV, making things. None of it makes any sense.’ There’s a bizarre haze in front of my eyes as I speak, both mentally and physically. My eyes are clouded with tears and my mind with confusion.