Lanny Read online

  I know you.

  I know what you’re up to.

  Give the boy back.

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  Different dogs, mate, won’t smell a living kid.

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  Authenticity competitions, striving to be the one that most belongs here, guarding their own special spot in the picture. All this has shown what a bunch of wankers most people are.

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  His hair, his eyes, his gait, his front teeth, his ankle socks, his scarred knee, his laugh. You will know him by the golden fluff on his shins. I would know him by his milky morning-breath. Findhimfindhimfindhimfindhim.

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  Jen was refreshing every five minutes, Lanny, #Lanny, #Lannynews, #findLanny, but unlike Jen I’d actually been on the news so I was also kind of addicted to looking out for myself on telly and everyone said I looked fit. Really sad obviously but also fit.

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  Just to let you know that we are thinking of you every second of every day and this evening we said a special group prayer to St Anthony for Lanny’s safe return and we hope you will open your hearts to God’s love so that by his good grace your child will be returned. All things are possible to them who believe.

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  I met him off the bus, little shit, little privileged berk with his hundred-quid backpack and his tan from a half-term ski trip and I asked him, ‘Oi, plonker, did you do that Toothwort graffiti?’ and there was a brief flash of something like confidence, something like chippiness on his blushing face but then it was gone and he was in tears saying sorry sorry sorry I’m so sorry and therefore, two hours later, there we were, him and his dad with his brother and me, scrubbing it off, silent, none of us saying a damn thing and the thing is, what I didn’t say, obviously didn’t mention, was how when my pets died my old man always used to say ‘Toothwort’s took ’em.’ Perhaps that’s why the whole thing freaked me out so much and I just wanted it gone.

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  I never properly introduced myself, I am Angela Larton, Lanny’s neighbour, and I act as unofficial liaison between the authorities and the village association.

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  I’m not genna lie to you mate it’s boom time in the pub. No complaints.

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  No secret that the police gave Noddy a warning about his prank phone calls, way back. Anyone think Noddy’s a kiddie-killer?

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  Did Lanny ever mention any other people when he was building his bower, any grown-ups he met in the woods?

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  Yes yes, my duchess, Pete is a solid bloke, Pete has a heart of gold, Pete is salt of the earth, Pete wouldn’t harm a fly, and other well-known clichés which I will regurgitate until ye my sturdy wench bringeth me my tea.

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  Talk of the village ghoul and how to appease him. I said, Peggy you’re not cheering me up much old girl.

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  I was thinking about Caroline Freeman the liaison officer, in her tight pencil skirt and patent-leather high heels, so I snuck up to the bathroom to have a wank. Self-loathing, sneaky pleasure, Caroline Freeman’s skirt up round her waist, Caroline Freeman reddening, sex-blush rushing up her neck, looking over her shoulder to say don’t worry, nobody can hear us and yes, yes she’d like a wet thumb in her arsehole while I fuck her, yes please, Robert, oops, good god, shame and flushed relief and guilt.

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  First I heard talking and I didn’t think much of it because Alice often talks in her sleep, but I realised it was two voices, two child voices, so I woke up Gary and he heard them too, heard Alice talking to another kid, and we got up and went down the corridor and could hear, swear on my mother’s life, two voices, Gary will tell you the same, and we stood outside Alice’s room and listened, and they were chatting away like old friends about this and that, about their favourite foods, Alice was saying how she can’t stand peanut butter and the other voice, the boy’s voice said, ‘Me too, peanut butter is gross!’ and Gary pushed the door open and Alice was sitting up all alone on her bed and we said who are you talking to, who’s in the room, Ally sweetheart, and Gary was looking in cupboards, looking behind the door, and Alice said, ‘Lanny. I was talking to Lanny.’ And I know people will judge us and say that we’re making it up, but I believe our family has witnessed a miracle.

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  I wouldn’t say this to her myself, but someone should, that it might not harm her cause if she put some makeup on. She looks so rough it’s hard to sympathise, you get me?

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  If he was your kid and he did come home after all this kerfuffle how cross would you be? I’m not even joking I’d pop a gasket.

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  She was more upset – WAIT, HEAR ME OUT – she was more upset when Pete got beaten up than we’ve seen her about Lanny, WAIT, SHUT UP, WAIT, all I am saying, all I am saying, is that something is, OK forget it none of you want to listen to proper ideas you can all fuck off.

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  I admire what you guys do and all that, but I don’t think an open-mic fundraiser is what the poor little fella would want. Not quite yet eh? He’ll stay stolen if he hears the Sultans of Bling are playing.

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  What’s grotesque, Theresa, is the ungodly speed of the thing, how quickly a missing child becomes a booming industry. How well-practised must we be?

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  Darkness falls at thy behest dear lord, no sin goes unpunished.

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  Dear Jolie, I don’t know if you remember me but I’m Alyssa, one of the midwives who delivered Lanny. I remember him, and you, and your nice husband. I just wanted you to know that I’m thinking of you and your precious baby every day and I hope he comes home.

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  Copy gets filed, pints get poured. ‘The village seems complicit in a mythologising of this unusual child, as if to accept that he is just another missing child is to do a disservice to the place, this charming village, this extra-special place.’

  I phone my boss and he accuses me of being caught up in the place. Says I’ve gone native, gone soft. He does an impression in my accent; ‘The kid was different, let’s call off the search and paint some pretty pictures of him. He must have turned into an owl and flown to fucking Hogwarts to have dinner with Princess Diana.’

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  I have never seen a more guilty woman in my whole life and they need to dig the Lloyds’ garden up A-sap.

  Guiltier.

  What?

  Guiltier, not more guilty.

  Do you want a smack?

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  The nice lady says, You will feel like he is calling you from the dark, like all you have is uncertainty, and there are voices, and you will remember that a child goes missing in this country every three minutes, then it will start again, You will feel like he is calling you from the dark, like all you have is uncertainty, and I look at the ceramic edge of the sink and wonder how hard I would need to throw myself at it to smash my skull open, to break open my head and rush towards the end, and remember that a child goes missing in this country every three minutes.

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  LATCHKEY LANNY: FREE TO ROAM

  Parents of missing Lanny admit he was free to wander the village and they often had ‘NO CLUE’ where he was.

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  I stood and looked into the village and thought of Robert and Jolie in there with god knows what going on, poor Pete alone and terrified, accused of the worst possible things, and the press queued up, camped out, this hideous ecosystem of voyeurism feeding on the two of them, and these few sleepless days which feel like years, and I had a complete crisis, standing there by the stile. How can we trust anything? How can we trust other people with our children? How can we trust ourselves? How on earth have humans lived in groups? I knelt down by the stile and prayed. I felt acute despair, I felt that the missing child was the thing we most deserved, the only story left to us, lost children, and the cruelty of the thought made me retch.

  I coughed and sniffed and sat there in a right godless pickle until I saw Paul Shilton coming along wi
th his black Labrador, so I pulled myself together.

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  Specialist teams, I’m sure they are, but they have trashed the lawn and there is a broken biro in the birdbath.

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  Shook his hand actually, offered him some help with fixing his house.

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  It’s been five days; it feels like months.

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  I am not ‘making light of it’, Marion, but let’s be honest, every stiff little dick trying to be the hero of the hour, behaving as if they’re action stars of a soap opera, canonising St Lanny, people who don’t lift a finger for anyone else their whole miserable existence suddenly springing into Search-and-Rescue Save-the-Child-of-Light mode. Sorry if I find that a bit rich.

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  Pete?

  Jolie stood gazing at me. I couldn’t remember answering the door. I didn’t know what time of day it was.

  Pete.

  She looked drained. Grisaille. She looked semi-transparent and spectral.

  She looked as mothers presumably all over do, when the worst thing in the world is happening to you.

  I couldn’t move. I stood completely locked in place like a crumpled St Sebastian, pierced from head to toe by her having come down here to see me.

  Oh god Jolie.

  She looked about my broken home, at the graffiti and ruined things, at the police tape and duplicate copies of official papers, at the paint thrown across my sink and sideboard.

  She looked at the sprayed magenta word PEADO on my kitchen wall.

  She walked to me and laid her forehead on my shoulder.

  I didn’t hold her I just stood.

  She said Sorry and I rested my cheek on her head and said No.

  No.

  She said Sorry.

  Sorry.

  She said I know you would never

  I shook my head and held her.

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  Propped on the bar, Mick is telling me, Don’t be so naïve, sweetheart, missing kids, murdered girls, raped and hunted women, trafficked youngsters, killer parents, sex dungeons, bodies in bags and under patios, it’s a billion-dollar industry actively encouraged by the powers that be oop – he bends to pick a dropped peanut up off the patterned carpet and rises reddened from the exertion.

  Always, oop – he belches in his cupped hand – Always follow the money. He is telling me about tabloid economics and who sits at the tables of power. The hairs in his nostrils, coated with amber tar, waggle as he talks, as he gazes constantly at my tits, as he unlocks the mysteries of the world and I wonder what to cook for my tea.

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  Readers of this column will know that I like to take a situation at face value. So let’s look at her face. This woman, this model of English pain, with her nice bone structure, natural hair and kissable lips, this woman is clearly living every mother’s worst nightmare. Oh yes, she’s quite the tragic queen of England; our Terrified EveryMum specially selected from all the mums in similar situations because her face and her village are so picturesque. So far so familiar. But what if something is hiding in plain sight? Isn’t it, dear reader, our job to peek behind the performance? I’m not alone in this country wondering what it is about Mrs Lloyd’s performance that doesn’t sit right with me. What is it about this professional actress, trained to manipulate and convince audiences, that isn’t quite convincing me? What is it about this writer of an (according to the would-be publisher) ‘immaculately plotted psychological thriller’ (if you’ve read the leaked pages you know it’s a vicious book) that doesn’t seem quite able to convince as the star of this family drama? To be clear, I don’t think she’s a murderer, and we’ll see what comes to light in the weeks and months, maybe years to come, but let me say now, dear readers, there’s something about Jolie Lloyd that rings alarm bells with me.

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  Out of control now, this miracle stuff. A four-year-old boy who can hardly hold a pencil has written a letter from Lanny, saying he’s fine, but he’s with the angels. Handwriting and vocabulary categorically beyond the reach of any four-year-old and his nursery teacher was there the whole time, watching it happen. The TV cameras have descended and the family are turning down six-figure sums, the whole thing’s deeply worrying if you ask me.

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  I spoke to him all the time. I knew him really really well. And my mum once went in their house for a coffee.

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  If you want to know about miracles ask Peggy, I said, knowing full well Peggy hasn’t said a single word to any journalist and nor would she.

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  You’ll never guess what I’ve just seen. I have just seen Robert standing in the pub car park with Pete and they were hugging each other. I don’t mean like a quick crisis hug, I’m talking they were squeezing the life out of each other. Pete with his black eye for god’s sake it’s just heartbreaking. Both of them shaking and clinging to each other. I’ve got a heart of stone as you know but I was very moved by the sight.

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  We are but pitiful narrative creatures, Mrs Brailsford, obsessing over the agony of not knowing. Sisyphus, Atlas, Echo, all those poor souls, now us. It is the oldest story of them all; never-ending pain.

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  I’m not listening to a single word of what this well-meaning psychologist or officer or doctor or liaison person or whatever she is is saying to me, but my parents are listening, and Robert’s usually good at listening, Robert’s all smart and smelling nice after his shower, my hands are so dry they’ve cracked open across the knuckles, what a good listener, writing stuff down and then, what?

  What did you say?

  You.

  What did you say?

  She said, We’ve recovered a packet of Lanny’s letters, they were handed in this morning, they were in the bracken bushes along the side of the common by Ghost Pilot Lane and at present they’re being looked at by …

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  And that’s when Jolie went completely fucking mad.

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  And that’s when I went completely fucking mad.

  I caused a decent scene. I just could not sit there listening to that woman tell me that we had to seriously consider that Lanny had done something to himself, that Lanny was ‘evidently’ based on this latest ‘evidence’ up to some unusual stuff and the psychological profiler would like to come back and ask some more questions about Lanny and his behaviour and conversations you might have had with him, and yes, the dam broke and I had a violent rage the like of which I never imagined I was capable of, and I would like to not apologise, not one bit, no regrets. I would have liked to keep smashing and screaming. I told that woman that if she didn’t phone her superiors and bring me those letters within the hour then I would gouge the pretty blue eyes out of her head and eat them.

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  I was thinking they were beginning to understand Lanny, his ability to wriggle and twist free from every attempt to grasp him. I was used to this. I’ve been asking myself Where is Lanny for years. What is up with that boy?

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  A team of six of us, back out looking. Combing the woods.

  Pete joined us later, calling up at the orchard and back around to Howarth’s fence. You never know. Can’t just hope and wait.

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  It’s hard to describe the disruption, the damage it does to normal thought processes. It’s hard to convey the sheer trauma of it, everything warped, inarticulate longing, unquenchable thirst for information, smashed right up against mundane orders from the brain or belly. A most tiresome dialogue all the time; look at me drinking a cup of tea while my grandson is still out there, look at me folding my daughter’s clothes as if that will bring back the missing child. Lanny Lanny Lanny all of us, the drone of his name buzzing in every possible bit of mental space. The closest experience to it I can think of is when I hid under a desk in 1963 with my classmates waiting for a nuclear bomb to drop on us. It was coming. It is coming.

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  Half a dozen bits of paper, tied with green garden string, wra
pped in clingfilm. Everyone whispering, That’s them. That’s the notes. Lanny hid notes in the bushes.

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  No adequate response that I know of to such a thing.

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  Now beneath us is growing, up above us is growing.

  Make a sword!

  Collect rainwater.

  Mix it with human spit and a pinch of earth

  And the mixture will be magic, only for you,

  The green man mixes his potions