Page 78 of Darling Girls

‘She’ll say she was teaching her to swim,’ Jessica said, ‘but she’s only two years old. You don’t let a two-year-old flounder underwater for a whole minute.’

The policeman nodded, but he didn’t look as horrified as Alicia had expected. ‘And have there been other instances of . . . abuse?’ he asked.

‘Miss Fairchild dropped her on the highchair and she hit her head,’ Norah said.

The policeman raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘She dropped Amy? On purpose?’

‘Amy kicked her in the face as she was putting her in the highchair,’ Norah said. ‘Miss Fairchild let her go and she hit her head hard. Then Miss Fairchild wouldn’t let us comfort her. She said she had to realise there were consequences to her actions.’

The policeman nodded. ‘I see.’

‘She barely feeds us,’ Alicia said.

‘She’s obsessed with cleanliness and makes us clean for hours every day,’ Jessica said.

‘She drinks,’ Norah said. ‘At night she roams the halls and sometimes comes into our room and wakes us all up.’

They did their best to report each incident in detail, and Max paid close attention, taking notes and asking questions, but an hour went by and Alicia could see that they hadn’t given him nearly enough. Miss Fairchild had been clever. None of her abuse had been clear-cut. In every case, there was a way for her to spin it as discipline or an accident or lies. They didn’t have any tangible proof. It was their word against hers. The whole thing came down to who the cops chose to believe.

‘What else can you tell me?’ Max said.

‘She went through a period of fostering babies through respite care,’ Alicia said. ‘When she tired of them, she left their care to us. Check with the school. Our school attendance would have been fifty per cent at best. It was because we were looking after the babies that Miss Fairchild fostered.’

Max made a note of this.

‘And there was one day she made me take Amy down into the basement when the social worker came to visit. She locked us down there for nearly an hour. That was kind of weird.’

There was a knock at the door.

‘Phone call for you, Sergeant Grady,’ Mr O’Day’s secretary said.

The police officer assured the girls he’d be right back and left the room.

‘Do you think they believe us?’ Jessica said.

‘It’s hard to tell,’ Alicia said. ‘But he’ll have to investigate. He can’t just ignore us without looking into it.’

The door opened again. As Max re-entered the room, Alicia noticed a difference in him. There was something slightly stiff about his movements, a kind of tension.

‘Sorry about that,’ Max said, resuming his seat on Mr O’Day’s desk. ‘That was my colleague. He’s at Wild Meadows right now.’

Norah was already on her feet. ‘Is Amy okay?’

‘Don’t tell us we were too late,’ Alicia said.

Jessica was trembling, as if she’d already decided the worst had happened.

Max didn’t reassure them. His face was perplexed, his brows so tightly furrowed they almost touched. ‘The police at the house conducted a thorough search,’ he said finally. ‘They didn’t find Amy.’

Alicia looked at Norah and Jessica in horror. ‘But where else would she be? Miss Fairchild never takes her anywhere.’

‘Did they check the basement?’ Norah asked.

‘She must besomewhere,’ Alicia said.

Max shook his head. ‘They didn’t find any sign of a toddler at all. Not a nappy or a highchair. Not a single piece of baby clothing. Nothing.’

He waited, perhaps hoping they’d have an answer for this. But they all just stared back at him, bewildered.