The Ones You Trust
Dedication
For Michael and Chloe,
again and forever.
‘This is obviously a terrifying situation . . . we wish we had more information to give you but, at this point, all we can say is a mum has apparently turned up to collect her little girl from daycare and she’s not there . . .’
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Monday 12 October: 1 PM
Before Monday 12 October: 3 AM
Monday 12 October: 3:45 AM
Monday 12 October: 9:45 AM
Monday 12 October: 10 AM
Monday 12 October: 7:30 PM
During Monday 12 October: 8:55 PM
Monday 12 October: 9 PM
Monday 12 October: 9:10 PM
Monday 12 October: 9:20 PM
Monday 12 October: 9:45 PM
Monday 12 October: 9:50 PM
Monday 12 October: 10:05 PM
Monday 12 October: 10:15 PM
Monday 12 October: 10:25 PM
Monday 12 October: 10:50 PM
Monday 12 October: 11 PM
Monday 12 October: 11 PM
Monday 12 October: 11:10 PM
Tuesday 13 October: 4:55 AM
Tuesday 13 October: 5:40 AM
Tuesday 13 October: 6:15 AM
Tuesday 13 October: 8:30 AM
Tuesday 13 October: 8:35 AM
Tuesday 13 October: 8:40 AM
Tuesday 13 October: 10 AM
Tuesday 13 October: 11:30 AM
Tuesday 13 October: Noon
Tuesday 13 October: 1 PM
Tuesday 13 October: 2 PM
After Tuesday 13 October: 3:20 PM
Friday 16 October: Noon
Wednesday 25 November: 8 PM
Monday 7 December: Noon
Monday 14 December: Noon
Friday 15 January: 8 AM
Wednesday 27 January: 4 PM
Thursday 28 January: Noon
About the Author
Praise
Copyright
Monday 12 October
1 pm
KIDS get lost in shopping centres all the time, which maybe explains why nobody was all that worried when they saw a small child standing alone near the bottom of an escalator at Gallery Main Street.
She was obviously lost. You could tell by the way she kept turning around like, Where’s my mummy? She wasn’t crying but she did look miserable.
A couple of shoppers hesitated, but the first person to actually approach the girl, at least according to the CCTV footage, was a lean security guard in the Gallery Main Street uniform.
He asked her, ‘Are you lost?’
The little girl didn’t answer, and because the guard was young and had no children of his own, and because he therefore wasn’t sure how much children of her size could understand, he got down to eye level with the girl, and simply repeated the same question. ‘Are you lost?’
The child turned, considered him for a moment, then drew her mouth down in a comical way and nodded.
‘Okay, don’t worry,’ the guard said, rising to full height. ‘We’ll find your mum.’
He reached up to his shoulder to press a button on his walkie-talkie. At the same time he took a quick look around, scanning the gleaming shopfronts and the polished floors for somebody who might be missing a child. They were standing exactly one floor down from a daycare centre called Crayon and Clay but, at that point, nobody made the connection, that maybe the little girl had come from there, and why would they, because at that moment, he saw her: a chunky woman – maybe sixty, maybe a little older – was puffing her way through the crowd towards them. She was wearing three-quarter-length pants with a drawstring waistband, and a loose T-shirt with a scooped neckline, and she was carrying a coloured backpack.
‘Wait, wait,’ she huffed, waving her free hand. ‘I’m here.’
The guard released the button on his walkie-talkie and watched as the woman hurried up, leaned down, and brought the child into her knees.
‘Oh, thank God,’ she said. ‘I found you.’
‘She’s with you?’ said the guard.
‘Yes, yes.’
The woman was puffed from her exertions, finding it difficult to talk as she tried to catch her breath.
‘She ran off,’ she said. ‘I’m meant to be getting her home. Oh, Fox, you scared me.’ Holding the girl closer still, she added, ‘Please don’t run off like that again.’
The security guard said, ‘Fox?’
‘Yes, yes, her name’s Fox. She’s Fox-Piper. You’re Fox-Piper, aren’t you, honey?’ Then she said, ‘We should go now. Thank you for looking out for her. Thank you again.’
The security guard nodded. ‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’m just glad you found her.’
The woman agreed, saying, ‘I’m glad, too.’
And that was where the footage ended, with the woman heaving Fox up from the floor into her meaty arms and – with the little girl’s boots and the backpack dangling – the two of them just walked away, without anyone saying, ‘Wait . . . who exactly are you?’
BEFORE
Monday 12 October
3 am
Bzz, bzz, vibrate, bzz.
Emma Cardwell’s day was starting as every weekday morning started, with the buzzing of her smartphone. She reached up to remove her satin eye-mask and down to turn off the alarm.
She could not have failed to notice the time. It was 3 am.
Emma swung her legs out of bed and padded across the soft carpet in the darkness to her ensuite. She flicked on the lights and the taps, and showered quickly. She wrapped a thick towel around her body, used her fist to rub the steam off a magnifying mirror, and peered in.
Emma was a natural brunette, lightened to blonde, with green eyes. She was forty-three years old and her face had begun to show the first signs of ageing. She came in close, checking for wiry hairs in her parting, and pulled her face a bit, like women do when they’re wondering – only idly, but still wondering – about a facelift.
‘Stop it,’ she said to herself. ‘You look fine.’
Emma’s early morning outfit had been laid out on an ottoman inside the walk-in robe. She pulled on a velour tracksuit, shuffled her feet into velvet slippers and went down the hallway into the kitchen, where she switched on the light over the rangehood.
The oven clock said 3:17 am, which gave Emma a bit of a fright. Even at this hour her schedule was tight. She was supposed to sit down for breakfast at 3:15 am precisely, because tick, tick, tick.
In Emma’s world – TV world – the clock was always ticking.
Emma sped up her movements. She put her phone on the kitchen charger and quickly prepared her breakfast. She had the same thing every day: a quarter cup of muesli with full-fat yoghurt, half a banana and a small handful of blueberries.
And coffee.
Plenty of coffee.
She lifted one of the kitchen stools from under the granite bench and set up her iPad. By the soft glow of the device, she scrolled a practised finger over all the social media sites before rising from her stool, placing her breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, and going to check on her children.
Emma’s house was gracious and beautiful. It had a traditional facade, but many of the internal walls had been knocked out to create a wide open living space, with high ceilings and polished concrete floors smothered in luxurious rugs, and an open kitchen with windows overlooking the pool and garden. There were three bedrooms on the lower level, not counting Emma’s own, and there was a home office near the side of the house, with cherrywood fittings and plantation shutters, overlooking a pebble garden in the right-side laneway.
Em
ma opened the door to Hudson’s room first. At age seven, he was the eldest of her three children, sleeping in a bedroom devoted to his hero, Michael Schumacher. Hudson had kicked off his covers, and his arms and legs were splayed and his mouth was wide open. Emma’s face softened with love as she placed the back of her hand against his forehead – an old habit, to see if he was running a temperature, as he’d often done as a baby – before kissing two fingers to place on his lips.
Hudson’s mouth moved, as if he were tasting the kiss, but he slept on. It was not his mum’s job to wake him. It was in fact her job not to wake him at this hour.
Emma tiptoed from the room and gently closed the door. Seal’s room was next along the hallway. Two years younger than Hudson, he was in the pirate stage, sleeping in a bed shaped like a ship. Emma stepped up, and peered over the side. Seal – Furry, they called him – was dressed only in his boat-patterned underpants and he too had thrown off his covers. His legs were akimbo, and his white-blond hair was plastered to his forehead. Emma kissed her fingers a second time, and pressed them against Seal’s foot. He pulled away, but didn’t wake.
She came next to Fox-Piper’s room.
Fox-Mox-Sox.
She was the youngest child in Emma’s family, the one upon whom they all doted. Impish, and delicious to look at, with wild blonde curls caught in a thatch at the back of her head because she hated having it brushed, and resisted brushing, often furiously. She was Emma’s only girl, and Emma had gone all out in her nursery, splurging on a Scandinavian cot with smooth struts, pretty pink curtains that tied at the waist, and a three-storey doll’s house with plumbing and lights and a family of badgers in smocks.
The nursery.
That’s what Emma still called her daughter’s bedroom, although Fox technically wasn’t a baby anymore. She was seventeen months old, a toddler with pink cheeks and soft, pink lips; a little girl who liked to sit on the potty she couldn’t yet use while looking through books she couldn’t yet read; who loved bubble baths, and dried apricots, and chasing next door’s cat until its tail twitched; and choosing her own outfits, however mismatched, to wear to daycare, three days a week.
Emma stepped up to the cot, expecting to find her daughter with her nappy-clad bottom up beneath the grey-felt dolphin mobile – a picture of innocence in her patterned pyjamas.
And she had been right there.
Fox was sleeping on her side, one cheek flattened, the other in bloom. Her lips were making a sucking motion, like she was nursing on a sipper cup in her dreams. Her long eyelashes were resting on her cheeks. Emma paused. She took a moment, and later she would be glad she did. She reached in and transferred a kiss from her fingers to her daughter’s face, keeping her touch as light as a feather.
‘I love you Fox-in-socks,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll see you soon, sweetheart.’
She left the room quietly, closing the door behind her.
There was one other person in the house that morning: Emma’s husband, Brandon, but Emma did not go to him. Although married, they often slept apart on weekdays, with Emma downstairs and Brandon upstairs in the master bedroom. This they did because of Emma’s alarm going off at 3 am every day. It wasn’t fair, they both agreed, to wake Brandon so early, especially because he was in charge of what they called ‘the morning shift’ meaning he had the children to get to school and, in Fox’s case, to daycare. And so she turned away from the staircase and returned to the kitchen, where she collected her cavernous leather tote, her phone and her keys from the bench, and went out the front door.
In the pre-dawn darkness, a man stood waiting.
Monday 12 October
3:45 am
He was never late.
One of the many things Emma liked about her driver, Liam Painter, was the fact that he was never late. He knew she had to leave the house at precisely 3:45 am to get to the Stellar Network TV studios on time, and Emma would have been surprised not to see him on the porch. She whispered a quiet hello, and stayed by the front door while Liam made his way down the garden path to check for what he called ‘hazards’, beyond the gate.
Hazards.
That was Liam’s word for those strange and occasionally scary people who plagued Emma’s life: the crazed fans, the stalkers, the determined paparazzi that had been known to hide in the bushes, desperate to snap Emma’s picture as she emerged from the house in the early hours. Why did they bother? It wasn’t like Emma was hiding from the spotlight. She was the co-host, with PJ Peterson, of a morning TV program called Cuppa that went to air on the Stellar Network for five hours every day from 5 am. She was out and about at charity functions several times a week; she regularly talked about her family for magazine specials; she posed for the cameras on the red carpet, at fundraisers and opening nights, several times a month. But Emma going about her business wasn’t what the paps wanted. They wanted Emma without make-up. They wanted images that would make people – other women, mainly – click, or think as they flicked through magazines: Oh, okay, she’s not perfect. And I don’t even look that bad beside her!
Emma watched as Liam poked his head out of the gate. He was a tall man with a broad chest and a strong jaw. He had gone from high school into the army, and while he hadn’t stayed long, he still had the upright bearing. His hair, once ginger, had faded to a colour like desert sand, and though he did not wear a uniform, his clothes seemed like a uniform, since he wore the same ones every day: canvas pants – in a colour that was not khaki, but something like it – and a button-down shirt, and boots in a size fourteen.
‘Clear,’ he said.
Emma nodded her thanks. Making sure to firmly close the front door behind her, she stepped off the porch, walked briskly down the path and slid into the warmed back seat of the sleek, company-owned car supplied to Liam for the purpose of getting Emma around town. She buckled herself in, took her iPad out of her handbag and tapped the screen, bringing the apps to life. Liam took up his position in the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. The headlights came on, and he eased the car gently away from the kerb.
There was never any traffic at that hour of the morning and so the ride into work was smooth and trouble-free, with Emma reading through Twitter and Facebook, and with Liam the expert navigator. Upon arrival at Stellar, Emma lowered her tinted window in order to show her smiling face to a security guard who sat in a tiny portable, near the boom gate. He made a note on his clipboard, raised the boom, and waved Emma through. Liam followed the road around, stopping under a six-point red star that was the Stellar Network logo. He exited the car, came around the front, and opened Emma’s door.
‘Okay, so I’ll see you later?’
Liam nodded.
‘Okay, great.’
The doors in front of Stellar didn’t automatically open – it was too early for that – but the security guard paid to sit in the foyer overnight had seen Emma coming and hit the flat green button on the wall.
‘Good morning, Ms Cardwell,’ he said.
‘Good morning,’ said Emma, her tone bright and light. ‘What do you think: are we in for a lovely day?’
‘That’s what they’re saying.’
Emma fished around for her security pass. She checked her watch on her way down the hallway to Hair and Make-up, and saw that they had made up some time. She popped her head through the door, expecting to see her regular make-up artist preparing her station – a white fluffy towel, laid out with Q-Tips, make-up palettes and brushes – but the young woman standing there wasn’t somebody Emma had ever seen before. She was younger than Emma’s usual make-up person, and she looked a little nervous. She was wearing black leggings with a billowing black smock. But none of those things were the most obvious thing about her.
The most obvious thing about her was that she had a hugely pregnant belly.
‘Hi there, I’m Emma Cardwell.’
Emma strode across the make-up room with her hand extended. The young pregnant woman extended her own youthful hand, saying, ‘I can’t believe
this. I’m Edie Sampson.’
‘Edie and baby by the look of it,’ said Emma, smiling as she signalled towards Edie’s tummy.
‘Oh! Yes.’ Edie ran a hand over her stomach, her expression bashful. ‘I guess I can’t hide it anymore.’
‘You definitely can’t,’ said Emma, as she climbed into the make-up chair.
Edie stepped forward to pin a cape around Emma’s neck.
‘And you’re new here?’ asked Emma.
‘I am,’ said Edie. Her hands trembled a little as she continued, ‘I only just graduated from beauty school. But I know Kate, your regular. She had to call in sick, and when she said it was you she was doing, I jumped at it. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Of course I don’t mind.’
‘Some of the stars, they like particular people to do their make-up.’
‘It’s really fine.’
With the cape in place, Emma closed her eyes, ready for Edie to start the process of transforming her face. She understood that Edie would be nervous, being new to Stellar and doing one of Cuppa’s star’s make-up for the first time, and she was keen to put her at ease.
‘So, tell me about the baby,’ she said. ‘Is it your first?’
‘It is,’ said Edie, nodding and smiling as she prepared Emma’s foundation on a mirrored plate. ‘You have kids, don’t you?’
‘Three.’ Emma kept her eyes closed and her hands clasped on her lap as she spoke. ‘Hudson’s my eldest, then we’ve got Seal, then Fox-Piper. She’s the baby.’
‘Fox-Piper,’ exclaimed Edie. ‘I just love that name. How did you choose it?’
‘I kind of didn’t choose it,’ said Emma. ‘I liked both names. Fox and Piper. I was trying to decide: Fox, Piper, Fox, Piper. And my husband, Brandon, he suggested, “Why not both?” And I thought, why not both! So Fox-Piper it is. Do you have any names picked out?’
‘We do, but we’re not saying yet,’ said Edie. ‘We want it to be a surprise. Okay, look up for me.’