Page 74 of Just Another Missing Person

You turn away from me and look into the distance.

“You had spoken to Olivia Johnson. You weredatingSadie. Who’s Prudence Jones?”

“I’ve said—I have no idea.” You look at me sharply, now, your gaze as direct as a snake’s. “I’m going to walk,” you say. You don’t say anything else; you just turn those eyes away from me, and trudge across the car park, looking as defeated as I am.

I see you on the way home. It’s only a couple of miles. You’re on a side street, busy, a school halfway along it, and you’re caught up in the throng of school-gate parents, kids, dogs. I slow the car and watch you, wondering, wondering what’s going on in your mind, wondering if you’re going where you say you’re going, wondering if you’re who I think you are. I idle in the traffic, glad of the opportunity to watch you. You sidestep out of the way of a kid on a scooter, smiling at him. It’s nothing, really, something small, but something I’ve always taught you to do, to be kind, to be polite. And look: you are.

And yet.

***

Later that day and I have in my hands a prized possession, only recently relinquished by the police, only very much temporarily surrendered by you: your mobile phone. You were taking in an Amazon parcel, and I took my opportunity.

I have less than thirty seconds, but I’ve googled this, over and over.How to tell if teen is hiding something.What to look at on teen’s phone.These searches throw up all sorts of things. I felt like a fraud reading them, articles aimed at mothers worried their children are doing anodyne teenager things like smoking, drinking and sex, not kidnap and murder, but I kidmyself that it’s a spectrum of sorts. That—whatever it is—it is somehow fixable, though I know some things just simply aren’t.

Telegram. Kik. WhatsApp. Location services. TikTok. Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. Those are my hits, in priority order. There are messages to a couple of friends on Telegram and Kik, nothing more, which makes me sad, in a way: that whatever it was that happened last summer severed you so completely from your friends. If you’re innocent, it’s a tragedy. Maybe it is if you’re guilty, too. I don’t know, can’t even consider it.

“Let me just take a photo,” the Amazon driver says to you.

“Sure,” you say cordially.

You’re a member of a few football groups on WhatsApp, still message the odd person who was loyal to you when we used to live on the other side of Portishead.

No messages to women on WhatsApp. Well, good.

I open the settings, then location services. This part will tell me where you’ve been going.

“Yeah, thanks, thanks,” you’re saying. The Amazon driver is handing you the parcel. I must have less than ten seconds.

Common locations—work: Portishead One. Home: 1 Glasgow Place. Other most frequent locations: 3 Streetsbrook Avenue, 292 Shirley Road, Tandy’s All-American Diner.

I throw the phone back on to the arm of the sofa just as you arrive back, addresses memorized. “Vitamins,” you say. “Matcha,” you add, like that’s a thing, tearing open the parcel to show me.

“What exactly is matcha for?” I say. “Especially”—I reach to look at the packet—“matcha collagen latte?Latte?”

You shrug. “Seems to be good for you,” you say with amoody smile. You saunter off into the kitchen, matcha vitamins in hand. You don’t want to speak to me.

As soon as you’re in the kitchen, I have the addresses up on Google on my phone. Number 292 Shirley Road is owned by Kevin and Beverley Rogers, one of your remaining friend’s parents, and I instantly dismiss it. And Tandy’s All-American Diner is exactly what it sounds like. Streetsbrook Avenue is a storage center. I stare into space, trying to think. Have I ever seen a letter about a storage unit? Any way to know which is yours? Any way to get in?

Eventually, it comes to me: the four-digit PIN I found in your room the other day. Could it be?

Looks like I have two places to visit. Two places I had no idea that you went to.

***

The storage center—called Boxes and More—is unmanned. There is something futuristic about it. I find it especially intimidating, as a woman who likes houses with owners and flowers on mantelpieces and freshly hoovered rooms in stripes. This is the exact opposite. A reception desk for nobody except a cluster of cameras that display your face and body at all angles as you walk through the foyer, presumably cleaned by robots, too, after hours. Stark metal floors, like a ship. Bright yellow plastic skirting boards.

I have the PIN I found, but nothing else. I have no idea if I’ll be able to get in.

A yellow phone sits on the reception desk next to a plastic sign sayingRing this for help, so I lift the receiver and listen. Eventually, an operator answers.

“Hi there,” I say. “I’ve, er, forgotten my storage number. Ihave my PIN if you need to know it’s me. Name is Zamos.” I look up at the suspended ceiling, hoping it’s under your old name. Hoping too that the operator doesn’t ask for my first name—I can hardly say Andrew—or for ID.

I hold my breath and she clicks something on a keyboard. “PIN?”

I read it out dutifully. “2740.” I decided to bluff it. “The locker number’s just gone clean out of my head.” A fake laugh escapes, no doubt born out of hysteria.

“Forty-one,” the operator says after a pause, evidently unconcerned by somebody who has the PIN.

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