Page 21 of Caught in the Middle

'Can you put the news on please?' She asked, calmly.

Oliver sighed. Clearly, he had changed the channel so abruptly on purpose.

'No can do, love.'

'Why?'

He paused, trying to grasp for right words.

'It's just... best not to know.'

'But what if my parents are looking for me?' She could feel herself beginning to well up. She just wanted to hug her mum.

'You'll be back with them before long, don't worry.' But she knew he didn't mean it.

With a lump in her throat and watery eyes, she sat upright to face him. 'Please,' she begged, 'please. I just need to know.'

He eyed her for a minute, assessing her red face and quivering lip. 'Fine.'

He flipped the channel back over, muttering something about how, in all the years he had done this, he had never had someone so bloody difficult.

When the newsreader popped up on the screen, her heart lurched to her throat.

'Good evening, you're watching Channel 4's evening news, I'm Anita Birch.'

Lucy studied her face. She was chipper, she didn't look like she had an important announcement of a missing girl to report.

'Today a train derailed in Watford, Hertfordshire after mass flooding caused a landslide on the train tracks. Although a carriage was separated from the rest of the train, miraculously nobody was hurt.’

Lucy breathed the tiniest sigh of relief. She wasn’t the headline news story, hopefully not on the news at all.

Oliver didn't take his eyes off of the screen, the vein in his temple pulsated as the news anchor droned on about the train crash. Lucy couldn't listen, she just stared at the images of the wreckage and the videos of survivors being interviewed blankly.

If she had been back in Swansea, and had flicked on the same news, then it would have definitely peaked her interest. But right now, as bad as it may sound to admit aloud, her issue was far more important.

Anita moved onto another segment about some neighbourhood in Yorkshire who had started planting a community garden... Jesus. How boring. She soon realised that, if the news bulletins were to go in order of importance, a missing girl was most certainly not to be reported.

By the time the reporter wished the audience a lovely evening, and pretended to shuffle her papers around as the camera panned out, Lucy's heart felt heavy, and she couldn't put her finger on why. She was dreading being on the national news... worried about how her family would be feeling. But... now she wasn't on the news, she felt almost disappointed.

She thought back to the major missing persons cases over the last few years. All of the ones that stuck out in her mind and that gained nationwide media coverage were first announced within 24 hours of that person being missing. And Lucy knew that she was a prime candidate for a headline missing girl story. She was young, pretty and... As bad as it was to say, white.

So why wasn't she making headline news yet? She swallowed hard as she came to terms with the answer.

Because nobody cared enough to look for her.

Sure, she had friends at university, who no doubt were wondering where she was, and who were no doubt blowing up her phone with calls and texts. But they probably assumed she was asleep, lazing in bed watching Netflix as usual, hungover or feeling sorry for herself.

And usually, they would be right.

Lucy could go a week without communicating with the outside world, just simply moping in her room out of sheer laziness.

What she lacked was not only motivation, but presence. She gave nothing to the university, and that's why nobody noticed she was missing. She didn't play a sport for anyone to notice if she didn't attend practice, she didn't ever go to lectures for any professor to be alarmed that she wasn't in the class.

She realised, with a great sadness, that she was indeed probably the most forgettable person on the planet.

'See, no news is good news!' Oliver chirped, flicking the channel back over to the nature documentary. Clearly, by his newfound light demeanour, he was very relieved by this.

Lucy curled herself up into a ball on the bed, feeling very sorry for herself. In that moment, she didn't care what happened to her, whether Oliver saved her life or not. Apart from her family, and handful of friends, she had very little to live for.

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