Chapter 3: What Mia Saw
I stayed crouched on the floor next to Mia for a moment, my hand on her knee, keeping my voice as level as I could.
"Mia.
You're not in trouble.
I promise.
But I need you to tell me what Chloe said."
She looked at the sofa cushion.
Picked at a loose thread.
"She said if I told, she'd know.
And she'd be really, really angry."
My husband was standing in the doorway.
I didn't look at him.
I didn't want Mia to feel surrounded.
"Chloe's not here right now," I said.
"It's just us.
You can tell us."
Mia pulled her knees up to her chest.
"There were lots of people.
They were loud.
Chloe told me to stay on the sofa and watch my tablet and not come out no matter what."
"Did anyone come into the living room?"
"Some of them did." She paused.
"One boy sat next to me for a bit.
He smelled funny."
My husband's hand found the doorframe.
"Funny how?" I asked.
Mia wrinkled her nose.
"Like when Grandad has his special drink."
I stood up slowly.
My legs felt strange.
"Did anyone touch you, sweetheart?
Did anyone hurt you?"
"No." She shook her head quickly, like she'd been asked before and knew the answer mattered.
"I just didn't like it.
It was too loud and I wanted you to come home."
I sat down on the sofa next to her and put my arm around her and she leaned into me and I stared at the wall above the television and I did not say a single word for a long time.
My husband disappeared into the hallway.
I heard him on the phone, voice low and controlled, the way he gets when he is working very hard not to shout.
After a few minutes he came back to the doorway.
"I want to check the bedroom," he said quietly.
I nodded.
"Go."
He was up the stairs and back down in under two minutes.
He stood in the doorway again and his face had changed.
"You need to come and see this."
I settled Mia with her tablet and followed him up.
Our bedroom door was open.
It is never open when we leave the house.
I always close it.
I closed it on Saturday before we left — I remember because I checked it twice, the way I always do.
The wardrobe on my side was open too.
Not wide.
Just enough.
My jewellery box was on the bed.
Not thrown.
Placed.
Lid up, the way someone leaves something when they've looked through it carefully and put it back to look untouched.
I crossed the room and stood over it.
The everyday pieces were there.
The earrings I wear to work, the silver chain my mother gave me, the bracelet Mia made at school from plastic beads.
The other things were not.
My grandmother's ring.
The one she left me when she passed.
White gold, small diamond, worn smooth on one side from sixty years on her hand.
My husband's watch.
The one his father gave him the day we got engaged.
He'd left it home because he didn't want to risk it at the wedding.
Gone.
I picked up the jewellery box and set it back down and picked it up again and my hands were shaking.
"She went through our room," I said.
"Or someone she let in did."
I turned around.
He was standing with his arms folded, jaw set, staring at the wardrobe.
"The camera only covered the living room," he said.
"We have no idea what happened up here."
I set the jewellery box down on the bed very carefully.
"We need to call the police."
He was already reaching for his phone.
We went back downstairs.
Mia was still on the sofa, headphones in, watching something on her tablet, completely unaware that anything had shifted.
I sat beside her and kept one hand on her back and waited.
The call took four minutes.
An officer would be with us within the hour.
I looked at the front door.
Then at the hallway.
Then at the mess still covering every surface of my home.
Somewhere in the middle of all of it, a thought arrived that I hadn't let myself think yet.
Chloe's parents were still eleven meters away.
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And they didn't know any of this.
Not yet.
