Page 31 of Just Another Missing Person

“So what’s your plan?”

“Uniform are doing house-to-house inquiries. We’re doing a voluntary screening for the DNA evidence. Anyone nearby and male to come forward. Question anyone who doesn’t give it.”

“Big budget, that.”

Julia spreads her hands wide. She genuinely believes this is what she would do even if she hadn’t been told to convict Matthew. “You know me,” she says. “I always spend too much. And I very often find the misper.”

“Except Sadie,” Alfie says. He walks away from the blinds, the room now darkened.

“Has something been said by Olivia’s family?” Julia asks, ignoring the wound caused by Alfie saying that name.

“Let me know how you go. Hopefully the weather will warm up,” he says conversationally, walking across the room with one hand in his pocket, not answering her question.

***

Art and Genevieve have been to the theater in Bristol. They’re back late, almost one.

Julia is watching the car idle on the drive outside, sipping coffee in the kitchen and thinking about Olivia, awaiting the commingled joy and trepidation that now accompanies the homecoming of her child and husband. Respectively.

She has been a whirlwind of productivity tonight. Reviewing the fingertip-search results, chasing up Olivia’s Twitter, Instagram and Facebook account releases, reviewing yet more footage that might include the alleyway. Her brother called her, too, for half an hour, said he was rewatchingSouth Park, and Julia felt such a strong pang of longing it was almost like nausea. For that uncomplicated, free life. And for their childhoods, too.

And now she’s standing here in the kitchen. The only light comes from under the cupboards. Her legs are illuminated in one clean, white slice, the rest of her is in darkness.

Lonely, alone, in solitude. Whatever you call it, Julia is an island. Somebody who has now done unspeakable, awful things that no one knows about. Suddenly, for the first time, she understands the desire some criminals have to confess. To end the uncertainty, and be punished. She closes her eyes as she sips the coffee, tips her head back as she swallows. Let it end. If it was only her, she’d do it. Take the jail term. But it’s Genevieve, too. Genevieve’s sentence, her own reputation, her own mistake compounded by her mother’s.

Art turns the headlights off, then the security light illuminates them as they pile out of the car, turning Genevieve into a strobing picture, fragments of color here and there, her outline a silhouette in the darkness.

“That sand is extra tonight,” Genevieve says as they come through the door. “There’s so much of it.” Sure enough,it crunches under their feet. Julia has never once swept it up, and she thinks guiltily that Art must do it. She suddenly misses texting and emailing him with a ferocious roar. Their relationship was so often conducted in writing—led by him. He is a texter, an emailer, a wordsmith. Out at dinner with other people, a text from him to her from the toilet: “God, Janet is boring, isn’t she?” and from her to him: “I know! Share a pudding?” Words: the second love of Art’s life, or so she hoped.

“How was it?” she asks, stepping out of the kitchen.

“Why are you lurking in there?” Genevieve says, and Julia blushes in shame. Teenagers. You can never conceal anything.

“Was just having a coffee,” she says lamely.

“You do you, Mum.”

Julia raises her eyebrows at her daughter. She sometimes feels her more argumentative persona is aimed precisely at Julia.

Art has on a wrinkled T-shirt and—somehow—wrinkled jeans. That shabby, comfortable, unpretentious way he always is. He once said he looked like a dog in a suit, and Julia knew exactly what he meant.

She thinks of her yearning to know anyone at all who isn’t a fucking cop, and look: here he is.

“All right,” he says, avoiding her gaze. This week, she noticed he had moved his summer clothes into the spare room and out of what might once have been their bedroom, had things been different. An extra commitment to their estrangement.

“It was very long,” Genevieve answers Julia’s question. “Could’ve left in the interval.”

Julia catches Art’s eye. She had said this exact sentence to him many times when they were dating. Funny how you pass things on you’d forgotten you even did yourself.

“I always think that,” she says. “Three hours is two hours too long.”

“Two and a half,” Genevieve says.

“It’s Tennessee Williams. You’re meant to be bored,” Art says.

“And it’ll improve your concentration,” Julia adds.

“What’s wrong with my concentration?” Genevieve says sharply, so sharply that Julia wonders if thereisa problem with it.

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