I still had the flowers in my hand as I knocked on her bedroom door. When she did not answer, I entered and found her bed empty and cold. She was not in the privy, nor the back yard. She was nowhere to be seen when I went to the front window and looked out over the village green, but by then the men had come. They were men in long boots, jackets and caps – men who stood together as they talked and smoked, warming their backs in the first weak rays of the sun. They carried binoculars and shooting sticks, their feet circled by a pack of yelping foxhounds. I recognised Harry from the butcher’s, the village handyman, the solicitor and the old post master’s son, and some men who I had seen working on the farms. There was also Roy Astley, the young constable, and a couple of other officers, long truncheons swinging from their belts.
‘Be sure to keep an eye out, Mrs Ryland,’ they shouted, when they saw me at the window, and as I opened the front door, young Roy called out, ‘Have you heard there is a girl missing, madam?’
‘Nell!’ I said, running over to him, wondering how he already knew. ‘Yes, Nell is missing.’
‘Nell?’ he repeated, blushing, and a few others said the name as if it was a foreign word new to their tongues.
‘No,’ he said. ‘The girl’s name is Iris – Iris Caldwell. You are mistaken.’
‘Iris?’ I whispered, and then I saw a man take his hand from the muzzle of one of the dogs, a small scrap of fabric between his fingers. It was something that I recognised, although in my state of panic, I could not think from where. It was a little glove, a reddish-brown stain covering most of the material – delicate lace that I knew should be white.
‘Iris is missing,’ I said staring at the glove, ‘and my Nell.’ I left the men without a farewell and ran towards the high street.
People were already heading towards the blacksmith’s yard, and I ran past them, pushing my way into the throng that gathered around the forge. Above the sea of neatly pinned hair and wide-brimmed hats rose the willow arch, the thin boughs woven with hawthorn blossoms and daffodils. There was bunting and flower garlands and little girls skipping about in frothy lace tea dresses, everywhere chatter and laughter.
These were people from the farms and towns, and day-trippers who had taken the omnibus from the city – people that I neither knew nor recognised. Most must not have heard the news of the missing girls, and those who did must have spread it quietly – spoken of it behind hands and whispered it into ears while smiles were forced on to lips. This was a special day and there was no reason to scare happy children with news that would probably amount to nothing.
I said nothing to the people at first, for I did not know what to say. I could not say that Nell was in danger as I had no idea how long she had been missing. Missensham was a safe village and my daughter often went out on her own. I could not tell them what it really was that made me fear for her – the things that ran through my mind as my eyes searched the crowd frantically.
I could not tell them how my daughter was living a life without prospects – a life that only moments before I had begun to finally understand and to pity. I could not tell them of the way she buried her head in bad novels, the disrespectful way she spoke to me, and of the bad influences she was drawn to – the common stable lad, and the suffragettes. Now I saw these things not as rebellion, but as little cries for help that I had overlooked, and what scared me most was the madness I had seen brewing inside her. I thought of my daughter with the patched scalp and the clumps of hair between her fingers, but I no longer saw the disgrace she had brought on the both of us. I thought only of how she had looked so small and alone, like a terrified animal in a trap.
‘Has anyone seen my daughter?’ I cried. ‘Has anyone seen Nell?’ but when they heard me, the people all turned towards the throng of white – the little girls in tea dresses who were gathering at the back of the yard where the willow arch was propped against a wall.
‘Her name is Nell,’ I said. ‘She should be with the May Queen.’
‘The May Queen,’ they echoed and fingers pointed to the willow arch.
I pushed past them and forced my way to the back of the yard and there, before me, was the May Queen in her long white dress and white slippers, a crown of irises perched on her head of long fair hair. Then I saw a white bonnet in the crowd next to her and I laughed with relief. There had been some mistake – here were Iris and Nell, and they were both fine. I hurried over to the bonnet and grabbed the girl by her shoulders, spinning her round to face me.
‘Oh, Nell,’ I began. ‘I was so worried. You know that you should never…’ But the words caught in my mouth because the girl in front of me was not Nell and I realised that her head barely came up to my chest. It was a face I recognised from the school, the large eyes and chubby cheeks of a child. Nell had always said that the bonnet I had forced upon her was the kind of thing a child would wear, and now I realised that she had been right, and I remembered that the daughter I missed was not a child but almost grown.
‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered, and took my hands from her. Then I looked to the May Queen – Emma Flanagan, fair of face with long blonde hair – but she was just a child, and she was not Iris. I thought of the men and the dogs on the village green. It must have taken them a while to round up such a search party and a replacement May Queen had already been found. Iris Caldwell, and maybe Nell too, had already been missing for some time.
I walked slowly out of the yard and back on to the quiet of the village green. The men and the dogs were long gone with only their footprints pitting the mud under the oak tree. I looked to the maypole, its wind-blown ribbons now hanging in tatters, and sat on the bench.
There were no long tables set out on the green, no bunting and no canopies. The posters that had publicised the event had been ripped down from the trees, leaving only colourful tags of paper hanging from nails. The day-trippers would see their procession, but then they would return to the city. The May Queen was missing and the rest of the celebrations would be cancelled.
I did not go back in the house, because it did not feel like a home without Nell, and then I heard the dogs again. The sound was distant, faint as if carried on the wind – high-pitched yelps tumbling over each other, sounds that signalled the end of the hunt. It was not until later that day that I learnt of what the dogs had discovered on the lonely common over by the wych elms – the same thing that the foxes had found earlier that morning: a petticoat soaked in blood, which they had dragged with them, deep beneath the earth.
* * *
But all that had happened twenty-five years ago, and now I was old. The men and dogs had headed to the common once more, but they were long gone. I was startled by the spatter of rain on the window and saw the world outside again, as if the memories had been so deep that I was only now waking from them.
I looked to the window and the rain. Even in a place such as Missensham things had moved on from when Nell had known them. There were motorcars parked on the edge of the green, so many now that people no longer stopped to look at them. The blacksmith’s yard had become a bus station and the Flanagans’ dressmaker’s shop had become a tearoom. The people had changed too – they were no longer farmers and tradesmen, but secretaries and bank clerks. The women wore their hair curled about their shoulders and showed not only ankles but calves as well.