The Road from Midnight Page 7

  Lawrence was nowhere to be seen. I presumed he had gone on his own search and couldn’t help noticing he’d taken the camera with him, no doubt imagining a fantastic story arc in his documentary where he finds his lost daughter on the train.

  But he never found her. What happened from there is clouded in the fog of shock. I know I went to the toilet and threw up. I know the Italian mother, whose name I would later learn in newspaper reports was Bianca Chiara held me as I cuddled Charlotte’s teddy Charles and sobbed all the way to Venice. I had tried to get off the train where she had gone missing but the guards wouldn’t let me. They told us it would be better if we continued to Venice and the police could keep us informed there of their findings.

  I don’t remember Lawrence much at that time. He could have been there or he might not have been. I can’t be sure. All I know is that I was lost in a horror so mind numbing that my mind just stopped working for a time. I sat there and waited for Charlotte to turn up at the door of our cabin and say: “Are we in Wenice yet?”

  11

  I’ll tell you eight things I remember after my daughter was taken from me.

  The police being very kind but I didn’t understand a word they said.

  Arriving in Venice and wondering why something so beautiful and serene was showing itself to me in the middle of the hell I was in.

  A deep, aching, groaning hole in the middle of me. It ground on and on inside me waiting for the return of my daughter to fill it up again.

  A dreadful guilt that I had left Charlotte on a railway station somewhere in the middle of Switzerland and my belief that she was standing there crying and waiting for us to come back.

  Going to our hotel, going to bed and not getting up.

  Listening to Lawrence in the lounge doing interviews with the media back in New Zealand.

  Taking sleeping pills I had brought with me for the flight for three days. Every time I woke up I downed four more. I didn’t care. I wanted to be deaf, dumb and blind.

  Dreaming about Charlotte being taken from me. Seeing a man’s face over and over in my dream. He spoke Russian.

  On the third day after Charlotte disappeared I woke to find Daisy by my bed. I was so drugged up I thought she was a dream at first and had a five-minute conversation with her in which I believed she had brought Charlotte safely to me before she realised I was still half asleep.

  “Oh Christ, Jane, what a state you are in. Where’s Lawrence, why isn’t he here looking after you? Wake up darling, wake up!”

  I drifted back into the relative safety of unconsciousness. I was numb and unable to feel anything. On the one hand I dreaded going to sleep because I feared my dreams. But then I hated waking up because it meant remembering.

  Lawrence had managed to find a hotel in the only ugly building in Venice. The Hotel Bauer intrudes upon Campo San Moisè giving the impression that no architect has ever been anywhere near it. The ancient San Moisè church with its cherubs and wreaths of grapes suffers in silence as the hotel casts its afternoon shadow on its façade. Lawrence had apparently been won over by its proximity to gondolas in the canal running alongside it, plus the fact that they were happy to waive the 700€ a night fee for a suite in return for ample coverage in Lawrence’s Stars on Holiday show. As it turned out they got more than they were hoping for with Lawrence’s frequent press conferences held in a range of their conference rooms with their “Hotel Bauer” logo prominently displayed in the background, and once he even had the commercial sense to stage himself in the window of the lobby where the gondolas bobbed up and down behind him.

  Since my arrival I had seen nothing of Venice, nor did I want to. I was grateful for the luxury of the suite which the hotel described as “the comfort of modern convenience with the unaltered magic of Venice’s past in an eclectic mix of Art-deco and Venetian style”. I just felt like I was in an episode of To the Manor Born. Velvet, satin and far too many sumptuous floral furnishings for my liking, but it was comfortable and warm and I was asleep most of the time.

  “Here you are, luvey, time to wake up now … come on sweetie” trilled Daisy in her happy voice attempting to ply me with some foul-smelling tea.

  “I can’t. Leave me alone. No. Sorry. It is you? When did you get here? It’s so far to come. Oh Daisy, help me. Have they found Charlotte yet?”

  “I’ve run you a bath. You know how much you love a good bath and it doesn’t look like you’ve had one since you arrived,” cooed Daisy.

  “Daisy, thank God that you are here with me. Where’s Charlotte, why haven’t they found her yet? What have they done to her? This can’t be happening!” I screamed before bursting into floods of tears.

  “Sweetheart, everyone is doing their best. But first you need to get strong and get yourself out of this bed. When they find Charlotte you need to be here for her and ready to look after her not wallowing around in bed. This isn’t like you, you’re a fighter. You’re the editor of Fabulous Day. You’re the magazine queen. Come on now.”

  And slowly over the next few hours Daisy coached me into a bath full of healing but foul-smelling oils, washed my hair and dressed me. She sat me on the couch and ordered chicken soup from room service. The first meal I had eaten in days.

  “Where’s Lawrence,” I asked. “Where are the papers? What are they saying? Where are the police? Why haven’t they found her?”

  “Sshhh now, one thing at a time. Sip your soup while I hang up these crystals and then we’ll have a talk and I’ll bring you up to date.”

  And so Daisy told me everything. How Charlotte’s picture had been splashed around the world in one of the biggest missing children hunts in years. How Lawrence had also been splashed around the world as the anguished father. How I had been written off as having a major breakdown. How the police had searched every town and village between Venice and Paris and come up with nothing.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Daisy opened it to reveal a man I vaguely recognised.

  “Bonjourno, Signora Cunningham. How are we today?” he said before re-introducing himself as Inspector Leggièri from the Venice caribinieri

  “Hello, Inspector, this is my friend Daisy Norton who has come from New Zealand to help me,” I replied doing my best to take control.

  “Ah that is good, I can see you are much better already. You may remember I took a statement from you soon after you arrived in Venezia and I promised you then that I would visit you every day to give you update on how our investigation is proceeding.”

  “Oh fantastic so you have some news. You’ve found her!” I screeched.

  “Non, signora, our inquiries are proceeding but it pains me to have to tell you that we have nothing. Our force has been unable to … ” he paused as if searching for the right word.

  “Find?” inquired Daisy, ever helpful.

  “Yes, thank you, find a single piece of evidence that your child ever left the train. There have been no sightings, and we have found no articles of clothing or any other belongings of your child, nor have forensic experts found any hairs or body fluid samples outside of the cabin she went to sleep in. It is as if she vanished into thin air.”

  “I really didn’t want to hear that,” I said as once again I collapsed into floods of tears, grasping Daisy’s hand as I did so.

  “Signora, I will leave you now. This is a very difficult time for you I know. If it is any help this is a very unusual case and we are calling in as many experts as we can. I also came here to tell you that we will be releasing your husband today.”

  “What!” said both Daisy and I simultaneously.

  “Your husband has been with us since yesterday. We took him in for questioning because we were a little concerned at his behaviour following the disappearance of your daughter.”

  “What did he do?’ I asked feeling momentarily guilty that I had deserted Lawrence in his time of need, and perhaps he had collapsed also, drunk and drowning in a canal.

  “Oh, nothing illegal. He just seemed to b
e…how do you say it ‘protesting too much’. He was holding frequent press conferences and we felt his behaviour was a little suspicious,” said Inspector Leggièri.

  “Ah, you don’t know my husband very well then, Inspector. Back in New Zealand he is a … how do you say it in Italian … a celebrity.”

  “Celebrità,” he said. “Yes, we know this. The police from your country were very helpful.”

  “He has lived his life out in front of the cameras, so I’m sure he felt his reaction was a perfectly natural thing to do.”

  “Yes, Signora Cunningham. We have come to that conclusion, especially after we were telephoned last night by the Prime Minister of your country, a very amusing and intelligent man.”

  Suddenly Lawrence’s appalling but entirely predictable behaviour had made me angry and therefore strong. It may have been the chicken soup but somewhere from within a barely functioning heart I felt a slow stirring of the old Jane.

  “Inspector, thank you so much for taking the time to see me. You speak very good English which is a relief, because unfortunately I know no Italian,”

  “It is a pleasure. I am one of the few inspectors in the Veneto area who can speak fluent English. I am originally from Sicily, but my mother was English so I have spoken it since I was a little boy. I was transferred here because Venice now has so many American tourists who are by nature very impatient and they needed someone who could understand them, and that is also why I have been put on your case.”

  “Inspector, can I ask two things of you? Please do not come to see me unless you have some good news. I think daily visits from you saying you have nothing new will simply encourage me to take to the bath with some razor blades. And secondly, when you release my husband can you please ask one of your men to take him out the back way and into our hotel without alerting the world’s media. I think they can be spared the latest sensational chapter in his nightmare life,” I attempted some humour.

  Inspector Leggièri smiled and gave me a long thoughtful look. “Of course, Signora, thank you for your understanding. I must also warn you however, that you and your husband are still under scrutiny and we have taken possession of your passports. Please do not plan to leave Venice in the near future,” his tone had become cold.

  And with that, he abruptly turned on his heels, and left.

  “Was it something I said?” I asked Daisy.

  “I think he quite likes coming to see you. Maybe he was looking forward to his daily visits,” she suggested. “He’s actually quite cute don’t you think?”

  “Mmmm,” I mumbled, not listening, my mind settling in for a hate session directed at Lawrence.

  Daisy closed the door and looked at me sitting on the couch thoughtfully twirling a lock of hair in my left hand.

  “Ah the hair twisting, that’s better. You’re coming right.”

  Despite the intense longing I had for the return of my daughter and the black mist that was settling in around me, I found myself smiling up at Daisy. The muscles were tight, I hadn’t smiled for so long.

  While we waited for Lawrence to turn up, Daisy fussed around the room tidying up, putting clothes in wardrobes, opening windows and lighting innumerable candles and filling the air with strange smells I could only assume found their true calling in an ashram.

  I left her to it and turned my attention to the piles of paper on a table by the door which appeared to be messages from various journalists back home, no doubt all wanting an exclusive. Who could blame them? I threw them out and then picked up the telephone to call my parents, who were by now beside themselves with worry. Dad was still mute having not uttered a word since picking up the newspaper announcing Charlotte’s disappearance and Mum had been trying to contact me without success ever since. She had finally managed to get hold of Daisy and she had assured my Mum I would call as soon as she got to me.

  I kept the conversation short and tried to be reassuring when I had nothing to be reassuring about. Charlotte was still missing, no one knew where she was. I left out the stuff about Lawrence and simply told her everyone was doing as much as they could. I told them to stay at home, where their family doctor could keep an eye on Dad. There was nothing they could do for me, or Charlotte, in Venice.

  Later that morning Lawrence stumbled into the room, more dishevelled and filthy than I had even seen him.

  “Where were you!” he demanded glaring at me across the room. “I’ve been in prison, locked up for 24 hours. They thought I had killed Charlotte. This is all just too crazy!” and with that he locked himself in the bathroom for an hour in an attempt to restore his movie star good looks and judging by the sounds emanating from behind the locked door a full body scrub and a facial.

  It didn’t surprise me that he had no concern for my well being or the fact that I had been in a drug-induced coma for the past 72 hours. In times of crisis there was one person who mattered and that was Lawrence. I had come to live with his inflated idea of his own importance and like the patient wife of an alcoholic I had become co-dependent. I accepted his behaviour as the norm.

  But that was all about to end. They say that a shock can bring about huge changes in a woman. Through the fog of grief and disbelief, one thing shone through to me. Lawrence and I were about to have a conversation. A very big conversation that would seal the fate of our relationship forever.

  As I waited patiently for him to finish his ablutions, Daisy picked up on my dangerous silence and left us to it.

  “I’ve just got some things I need to sort out in my room and then I’ll see if I can pick up a few bits and pieces you need. See you in an hour or so, will you be okay till then?”

  “Daisy you’re the best friend in the world,” I answered as she quietly closed the door behind her.

  Lawrence came out of the bathroom with wet hair, freshly shaved and smelling like he’d dumped a whole bottle of cologne on his head.

  He collapsed on the sofa with a sigh, pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one up.

  “Was that Daisy I saw in here before?” he inquired vaguely.

  “Yes, nice of you to say hello, and since when did you smoke?” I asked, remembering the much touted celebrity endorsed anti-smoking campaign he had launched on television the year before.

  “Since I was imprisoned,” he replied with all the gravitas and mystery more often found in conversation with a former prisoner of war. “It was all I had to do in there, it was awful, Jane. You have no idea.”

  “Lawrence, we’ve lost our baby,” I stated, anxious to return to the real issue in the room before bursting into tears.

  Finally, Lawrence noticed me. He stubbed out his cigarette and gathered me into his arms as we both sobbed uncontrollably into each other’s hair. For the first time since we’d left Paris on the train three nights ago we managed to break through the shock and find each other. As the tears rolled down our cheeks we couldn’t let each other go, painfully aware that we were all we had in this darkness. We were the only ones who understood how each other felt, we were the only ones who had lost our child. No one would ever be able to understand what we were going through.

  “Lawrence, what happened? How could we have lost her?” I asked, through what had now become gut-wrenching sobs. For the first time since Charlotte had disappeared I felt the most pure and unsolicited pain. A wrenching of my whole being, like something was tearing my ribcage apart and plunging its fist deep down inside me. I needed to hold my daughter and hug her, but all I had was Lawrence.

  “Please tell me we are going to find her, Lawrence, please tell me she will turn up,” I pleaded, still unable to comprehend what had happened.

  “I don’t know what to say, Jane,” he answered, pulling away from me and putting his head in his hands. “I don’t know what to do.”

  We sat together on the couch for twenty minutes, while he smoked cigarette after cigarette and poured us glasses of duty-free whisky, and we attempted to piece together what had happened.

  “I remember
kissing her goodnight,” I volunteered. Then we both burst into tears.

  “I talked to her before she went to sleep about waking me if she needed to go to the toilet,” he said.

  “Do we still have her suitcase, I can’t find it?” I asked

  “No the police took it. They said they’ll give it back.”

  “I really need to smell something that belonged to her.”

  “I’m sure they won’t keep it much longer.”

  “Do you think she was abducted?” I asked. “She must have been, but the Inspector says there is no trace of her outside that cabin.”

  “Maybe they put her in a plastic bag or something,” said Lawrence.

  “What an awful thought. How could that have not woken her, or us for that matter? Surely one of us would have woken up?”

  There was a long silence.

  “I didn’t tell you but I took sleeping pills to help me sleep,” said Lawrence quietly. “I’ll never forgive myself because I wouldn’t have heard an elephant enter our cabin I was so out of it.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I sat looking at him, wishing I’d never heard what he had just told me.

  “You didn’t. Not after we discussed how important it was to keep an eye on her. How could you? What happened to telling me you’d keep your eyes and ears open, you promised me,” I felt sick. And very suddenly I felt a sharp white hot rod of anger pierce my body.

  “I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry. Just don’t tell anyone alright. If this gets out, God knows what everyone will think of me.”

  “It’s always about you isn’t it?” I screamed. “It was your fucking stupid idea to come away on this dreadful holiday. And you weren’t doing it for us were you? You were doing it for your fucking career, your star profile. Why aren’t you out looking for her now? Why are you hanging around here? I’ll tell you why, because you couldn’t resist parading yourself in front of the cameras. You’re a fucking vain, useless prick.” I continued on, feeling the hit of adrenalin coursing through my body and loving the life and vitality my anger was giving me.