atlantic-books

Mum, your heart is the same size as your fist,_ she told me once in delight, and we both made our hands into fists and held them against our chests and bumped them together: hands as hearts.

Where I__ taking you, no one will ever find us. We__l have all the time in the world for you to grow to love me as much as I love you.

She said that the mummy and the daddy took their daughter up onto the moor. They had a picnic. They__ brought all of her favourite food _ cheese sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off and strawberry-pink cupcakes _ and when the little girl had finished eating, she looked around for her mummy and the daddy. But they__ gone. They__ left Evelyn on the moor by herself.

Hello my darling, I__ your real father. I__e been searching for you ever since you were stolen from me. I love you so much. Daddy

It__ as if he__ trodden in my footsteps, seen what I__e seen, felt what I__e felt, as I__e criss-crossed the moors countless times.

She shivers. __ can__ understand why anyone would want to live out there. You__ be totally isolated.__ I do. I could imagine waking up each day and instead of looking out of the window and seeing the moor in the distance, you__ be in the heart of it, feeling the wind turn, the storm rage, the rain lash, hear the plovers piping.

Evie is our beautiful, dark-haired, green-eyed child,_ I say. I can hear the tremor in my voice. __ike many seven-year-old girls, she__ obsessed with princesses. We think she looks more like a fairy. She loves Lego and painting. She laughs easily. She has pretend tea parties in a tree in our garden and invites all her dolls. She wants to be an artist when she grows up. Please find her. Please bring her back to us. We miss her beyond measure. She is the love of our life.

My husband hands me my glass, full to the brim with green-gold wine and I stifle my resentment and attempt to smile at him. I mustn__ lose sight of what we have _ two beautiful children; an amazing house that I never, in a million years, thought we__ be able to afford; Gill and Andy, my best friends _ and this perfect day. I take a deep breath and feel my shoulders relax. I can smell the faintest trace of heather, drifting down from the moor.

Tesco at the best of times is soulless _ but it__ so much worse at 6 in the morning. It__ not as empty as I thought it would be. Who the fuck shops at 6 a.m.? e florescent lights flicker. e shelf upon shelf of coloured cans make my eyes go funny. Everything is hard and shiny and there__ so much fucking choice. Why do I have to choose from thirty kinds of granola? Do I want Country Crunch or Rude Health? Raisins and almonds or tropical? Goji berries and chia seeds or Strawberry Surprise? I__l just buy the Tesco range _ that__l be easiest. No, wait, there__ Tesco finest*, Tesco Everyday Value and Tesco Free From. What can be so damn fine about granola? You eat it everyday and what could it be free from? It hasn__ got anything unhealthy in it! What could one possibly take out? Actually, we don__ need any fucking granola.

He places the skull in the palm of my hand. There are four canines; the top two are so long and curved I can feel them pricking my skin. There__ a green tinge round the eye socket and in a fine line across the cranium. I__ not sure what animal it__ from. __toat,_ Harris says, as if I__e spoken out loud. __hey hunt grouse and partridge. I found it behind my house. I buried the body in the furze until it was just bone._ His hand is still beneath mine, supporting it. I think of him seeing the small dead creature and digging a tiny grave for it. Planning ahead for all those months just so he__ see the skeleton. Or maybe he severed the animal__ head and that was the only part he buried. __t__ been waiting for you all this time. Like I have.

Make no mistake, my darling. I am coming for you. I will take you back.

I don__ believe he was deliberately taking indecent pictures, they__e too artistic; he__ managed to capture that magical moment when a child__ mind spins into a make-believe world. But actually, what Jack did is steal something _ a child__ innocence _ whilst creating something darker that will resonate with the adults looking at these photos: themes of sexuality and death, the leitmotifs that run through fairy tales, the stories that we tell ourselves about our children.

I think about the story I always tell her _ of the kind lady who gave her to us. I suppose that must be how she imagines her father _ as a kind man who gave her away too, as if she were a gift. Only now he wants her back.

Here we are, squabbling over tuna fucking sandwiches and there she is _ almond-shaped green eyes, snub nose, lopsided grin, the hint of a dimple in her cheek. __ISSING_ is stamped over her face in large black letters.

The dark edge of the moor and the Cow and Calf rock are crisp against the blue-black sky. I can__ see anyone outside, watching us. As I shut the door behind me, I hear a noise. It came from the hall. I feel the hairs rise on the back of my neck.

The moor has always been part of my life. It__ like a muse: the colours of the heather and the sky; how you can see the savagery of the wind in the way the dwarf pine trees are bent double, the bleak lines of the landscape in winter when everything save the moss and the grass are dead, stones like bones, poking through a thin skin of bilberry bushes, rushes reflected in black bog water.

It__ quiet in the suburbs. It__ too cold for people to be in their gardens; and it__ not a thoroughfare so few cars drive by. I look past decaying roses and through the first flush of Michelmas daisies, blazing a glorious purple, into the darkened windows of the houses we walk by. Who lives here? Are they watching us? Did one of our neighbours do something seven years ago that he now regrets? How little we know of the people who surround us.

I can__ believe I ever thought reading to her was a chore. I__ sit here some nights, fidgeting, thinking of all the things I needed to do, my voice hoarse, reluctant to read, __ust one more chapter,_ wishing I could escape to my glass of wine. What did I have to do that was so important? What could be more important than reading my daughter a bedtime story?