Page 36 of Just Another Missing Person

I wish you hadn’t said it, not the first part. I worry that therapy, to the general public, and most certainly to the police, means madness. Clinical rooms. Mental health problems. Some sort of darkness. To you, to us, it means Linda’s lovely conservatory, softly lit. A kind woman who allows you to be completely yourself.

“Out where?”

“Portishead One.”

“And then?”

“Home.”

“At home alone?” Poole asks.

“Hang on,” I say, springing to life. “What sort of interview is this? Have you cautioned him?”

“We’re just trying to figure out the facts,” DCI Day says. “How your son’s DNA came to be in Olivia’s bedroom.”

The mirage flickers and disappears. Your DNA in her bedroom. Alibi notwithstanding... how can this be? Onefalse accusation is bad luck. So what is two? Who gets accused twice?

“What’s her address?” you ask.

“Seventeen East View Lane.”

“I don’t—I don’t think I’ve ever been there?” you say, getting your phone out to google it. I’m relieved, because it’s exactly what I would do.

“Erm,” you say, turning the map this way and that. “Right, okay, one street off the main road—I mean, I don’t think so? But I do... I don’t know. I have been to some friends’ houses and parties and stuff. I’m rubbish at geography.” A truth: you really are. Could not direct yourself to the Spar down the road.

Poole exchanges a glance with Day. It is as though you have agreed you are a criminal.

“When did you go to this house?” Poole says.

“I’ve never been to that house,” you say. “I have probably walked past it, because I live around here.”

“When was the party?” Poole says.

“What party?”

“You just said you have been to some friends’ house parties and stuff: when and where, and was one of them here?”

“No, I’ve never been there—that was hypothetical—just, parties in the past.”

“When was the hypothetical party?”

“There was no party,” you say.

“So why did you say there was?” Poole tilts his head to the side. It is interrogation masking itself as concern, interest, confusion even. He’s tied you up in knots.

“So you’re saying you’ve never been inside it?” Poole says. “At these parties, and so on?”

“I don’t think so,” you say.

“Certain about that?”

“Well, clearly not,” you say. “But I’m as certain as I can be. Can you say for sure you’ve never been to a random house? I don’t think I have ever been there,” you say. “That’s all I can say. Surely?” You look at them, and then at me, just the way you did when you were a baby making sense of the world, like,This okay?I nod at you. Your phone, facedown in front of you on our driftwood coffee table, begins to vibrate, slowly skittering across the surface like a beetle. Everybody ignores it. I am struck with a sudden urge to pick it up, to see who it is, to get inside your interior, and know for sure. Before the thought is even finished, you pick it up, make a few swipes and replace it.

“Okay,” Poole says, his eyes on your phone and your fingers. “A glass and a cigarette containing your DNA were found.”

My heart seems to explode with fear. A cigarette. You smoke. One of your only remaining vices.

“I hardly ever smoke!” you say.

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