Oxford’s News @OxfordNewsOnline
BREAKING Reports coming in of considerable police presence on the Canal Manor development – no further details as yet . . .
02.49
Julie Hill @JulieHillinOxford
@OxfordNewsOnline I live on Canal Manor – there was a party last night and the police are here now questioning the neighbours
02.49
Julie Hill @JulieHillinOxford
@OxfordNewsOnline No one seems to know what’s happening – there are about 15 police cars
02.52
Angela Betterton @AngelaGBetterton
@JulieHillinOxford @OxfordNewsOnline I was at the party – it’s their daughter – apparently she’s gone missing – she’s in my son’s class
02.53
Julie Hill @JulieHillinOxford
@AngelaGBetterton Oh that’s awful, I thought it must be drugs or something @OxfordNewsOnline
02.54
Oxford’s News @OxfordNewsOnline
@AngelaGBetterton What’s the little girl’s name and age?
02.55
Angela Betterton @AngelaGBetterton
@OxfordNewsOnline Daisy Mason. Must be 8 or 9?
02.58
Oxford’s News @OxfordNewsOnline
BREAKING Reports coming in of possible child #abduction in the Canal Manor development. Sources say an 8-yr-old girl is missing from her home
03.01
Oxford’s News @OxfordNewsOnline
If you hear more on the Oxford #abduction tweet us here – bringing you Oxford local news and more throughout the night
*
Just after three the media team ring me to say the news is out, and we may as well make the best of it. Twenty minutes later the first outside broadcast van arrives. I’m in the kitchen; the family are still in the sitting room. Barry Mason is lying back on an armchair, his eyes shut, though he’s not sleeping. When we hear the sound of a vehicle drawing up he doesn’t move, but Sharon Mason rises from the sofa and looks out of the window. She sees the reporter get out, and then a man in a leather jacket with a mike and camera. She stares a moment then glances in the mirror and reaches a hand to touch her hair.
‘DI Fawley?’
It’s one of Challow’s team, halfway down the stairs. A girl, but I think she must be new because I don’t recognize her voice. I can’t see her face either, what with the hood and the mask. Contrary to what they’d have you believe on telly, forensic fashion is far more chicken-packer than TV CSI. They drive me crazy, those sodding shows – the last thing a real forensics officer would ever do is contaminate a crime scene by flicking their bloody hair extensions about. The girl beckons to me, and I follow her up to the landing. The door in front of us has a neat plaque announcing
Daisy’s Room
and a piece of paper stuck to it with Blu-Tack saying
KEEP OUT!!
in large untidy capitals.
‘We’ve got what we need,’ she says. ‘But I thought you would want to see the room. Even if we don’t go in.’
When she pushes open the door I understand what she means. No kid’s room ever looked like this outside of a sitcom. Nothing on the floor, nothing on the surfaces, nothing shoved under the bed. Comb precisely parallel with the brush. Soft toys sat in a line, staring at us with their small beady eyes. The effect is more than a little disconcerting. Not least because the boisterous, bubbly child I saw on the video footage simply doesn’t fit with a room as preternaturally neat as this. Some empty rooms echo with the people who once inhabited them. But this is the emptiness of absence, not presence. The only sign she was ever here is the Disney poster on the far wall. The princess from Brave, alone in the forest with her defiant bright red hair, and across the bottom in big orange letters CHANGE YOUR FATE. Jake loved that film too – we took him twice. It was a good message for kids – that it’s OK to be yourself; you just need the courage to be who you really are.
‘Horrible, isn’t it?’ says the girl beside me, breaking into my thoughts.
At least she has the tact to keep her voice down.
‘You think so?’
She’s taken her mask off now and I can see her wrinkle her nose. ‘Talk about over the top. I mean, absolutely everything matching like that? No one likes their name that much, believe me.’
And now that she mentions it, I see it. It’s all daisies. The whole bloody lot. Wallpaper, bedspread, curtains, cushions. All different, but all daisies. There are plastic daisies in a green pot, and a bright yellow daisy headband hanging on the dressing-table mirror. Glittery daisy hairslides, a daisy lampshade and a daisy mobile hanging from the ceiling. It’s not so much a bedroom as a theme park.
‘Perhaps she liked it that way?’ But even as I’m saying it I’m not buying it.
The girl shrugs. ‘Maybe. What do I know – I don’t have kids. Do you?’
She doesn’t know. No one’s told her.
‘No,’ I say.
Not any more.
*
BBC Midlands Today
Wednesday 20 July 2016 | Last updated at 06:41
Police appeal for help in search for missing Oxford girl, 8
An 8-year-old girl has gone missing from her home in Oxford. Daisy Mason was last seen at midnight on Tuesday in the garden of her family home, where her parents Barry and Sharon Mason were holding a party.
Daisy is described as blonde with green eyes, and was wearing a flower fancy dress with her hair in bunches. Neighbours say she is outgoing but sensible, and is unlikely to have gone willingly with a stranger.
Police say that anyone who sees Daisy or has any information about her should contact the Thames Valley CID incident room on 01865 0966552.
*
By half seven the forensics team have nearly finished in the garden, and uniform have started another search of the area in and round the close, every movement watched, now, by a bank of hungry TV cameras. There’s the canal as well, but I’m not even going to think about that. Not yet. Everyone is going to assume this girl is still alive. Until I say so.
I stand on the tiny patio looking down the back garden. There are scraps of burnt-out firework littered across the flower beds, and the dried-up summer turf has been trodden to scrub. That uniform was right: chances of a decent footprint, or anything else remotely useful, is practically zero. I can see Challow down by the back fence, bent double, picking his way along the undergrowth. Above his head, a balloon is caught in the bushes on the towpath, its silver streamer rippling gently in the early air. As for me, I’m desperate for a fag.
The canal curves slightly here, which means the Masons’ garden is a little longer than most of those in the close, but it would still be pokey for that many people. I can’t decide if it’s the swing in the corner, or the crappy pampas grass, or just the lack of sleep, but it’s unnervingly like the garden we had when I was growing up. Boxed in with all the other identically dreary houses in a dismal ribbon development that owed its entire existence to the Underground – a stop on the final stretch, thrown down randomly in what had once been meadows, but were long since concrete by the time we lived there. My parents chose it because it was safe, and because it was all they could afford, and even now I can’t argue with them on either score. But it was horrible, all the same. Not a place of its own at all, just ‘south’ of the only thing resembling a real town for miles around. The same town I went to myself – to school, to my mates’ houses, and later, to pubs and to meet up with girls. I never brought a single friend home; I never let them see where I really lived. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on these Canal Manor people: I know what it’s like to feel you’re on the wrong side of the glass.
* * *