Free Nowhere Girl by Ruth Dugdall Page A

must be calling the police again, urging them to do more. He had spoken with the school and insisted that they send an email to all parents. Hoping that by doing so someone would remember something, maybe a friend they weren’t aware of would share a secret.
    Bridget knew it was a waste of time. She knew that Ellie should already be back and things had gone wrong. While Achim was driven to act, she could do nothing but sit and wait for her daughter to arrive home.
    The police had eventually called at the house. A detective named Olivier Massard had told them that cases like this were often resolved by the teenager arriving home of their own volition. Achim had become furious, and Detective Massard has assured him that they were indeed taking the matter seriously, that everything was being done according to procedure. Achim didn’t accept that, so now he was busy doing his own detective work upstairs when she wanted him to sit beside her, to comfort her. This could be a moment that united them; God knows they needed it.
    Bridget feared that if she went upstairs and saw him in his study she was in danger of grabbing the laptop and smashing it into his face, just to make him bleed. Make him wounded like she was, because she could do nothing. Life could not carry on for her until Ellie was home, and all she wanted from Achim was love, tenderness. Not his activity, his futile phone calls and trips out, scouring the areas that Ellie loved.
    She took the notepad from the drawer again, finding the permanence of ink on paper, of the words, comforting. The only comfort she could find.
    Dear Ellie
,
    There are other things you should know about me, and forgive me for not telling you before. You don’t always hear my voice, so I stay silent, but once my voice was important. Or not even my voice, but my hands. Back when I was an MSF nurse my skills were valued, I was respected
.
    What we had to work with in the field was so basic, you wouldn’t believe it, even if I showed you photos. How could you, with your privileged life, even begin to understand how people live in houses built of tin sheets, how they clamber on rubbish heaps for food, how they lack shoes. It was amazing to behold, and I saw it often, how tough the soles of their feet became, as if the foot took on the thickness of leather. Maybe their hearts had the same protection, because I honestly don’t know how so many people continued to shuffle forward with such huge burdens of loss. I remember a woman shouting at gunmen, and seeing behind her the shape of a boy, blood seeping beneath him. Yet she had the energy to shout. Maybe she was asking them to shoot her too, I know I would have
.
    Even then, and this was years before I had you or had even met your father, I knew that I could never bear such loss. So many nights I would torture myself with the images of the day, and I would add up my failings with this patient or that. If I had made a different decision, had more energy, palpitated the heart for longer… Each evening, late, I drank and I smoked, like we all did, because it was something to keep the demons at bay
.
    If you were here now you’d call me a hypocrite. I was so mad at you when you came home after that night at Joe’s house with a hangover. And furious when I smelt the cannabis in your bedroom. But you never asked how I knew the smell, and I should have told you. So I’m telling you now that I used drugs often, because it helped
.
    But what excuse do you have? What suffering have you seen, what life-changing decisions have you made? I know it’s not your fault, but I got angry with you, and I’m sorry for that
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    I’ve always tried to protect you, Ellie. I never want to be that woman, standing over her child and crying out for mercy. I’ve seen, first hand, the very worst of human behaviour and it scares me. I’ve always done what I can to protect you from that, but you won’t listen. You won’t have me tell you that world is a dangerous place,