Page 42 of Just Another Missing Person

“Yes, on the news tab.” She looks back at the station, from where an older man is emerging. “Look, I’ll be in touch,okay?” she says. “But remember, Lewis: Andrew has this alibi.”

“I know that.”

“There is no way he could have taken your daughter.”

“So that’s that,” I say flatly.

“I have to go. Lot of balls in the air here.”

And, just like that, she turns and walks out of the station car park, and down into the evening air. A complete dismissal of me by the woman paid to find you.

I have no choice but to see where she goes. The first time I did it, I followed her for less than five minutes. Felt weird about it, my urge to know what the people in charge were doing with their time, and stopped. This time, it’s longer. She heads to Portishead High Street, and I follow, just a few paces behind her.

I’m cringing as I walk along the street. This isn’t me, is it? What am I doing? Trying to find you, that’s what. No matter the stakes.

Day is weaving through the soup of shoppers milling around her, me several people behind her. I think it is that I want to know she is following a lead, not going out for dinner. You know? I want to know it reallyisin hand, that she is doing everything she can.

And there she is: the place where you were last seen, turning a full circle in the street, just looking. My shoulders drop in relief. After hours, staring at the ground, at the walls, at the cars passing, evidently lost in thought. I stand and watch her from my vantage point a few feet away, obscured by shoppers, by the busy high street, by life. Julia turns another circle, searching upward now, for CCTV cameras, her eyes scanning carefully, checking them off against a list she pulls out of her pocket.

There’s a lump in my throat as I watch her. Working ashard to find you as we are. I turn to leave her there, satisfied, carrying that heavy guilt of somebody who’s taken a risk in order to prove something, and failed to. I’m a man going through my wife’s texts, and finding nothing.

A young woman ambles up after a couple of minutes and greets her. Unmistakably her daughter: same hair, same bone structure. I hesitate, just watching them hug, but then leave them there. It’s too much of an intrusion. God. I’m a normal person, and this is definitely, absolutely abnormal. They head together into a McDonald’s, laughing, arm in arm, and I feel a dart of jealousy so strong it’s like an arrow hitting me out of nowhere, fired straight at my back.

***

Tonight, we marked your disappearance for the first time. The time you were last seen by anyone, by the people who loved you, by the universe. By the person who took you. Unspoken, we sat there with a tea light burning as we marked the hour you went missing, an unofficial, unplanned vigil, but one that felt right. Gone, at this hour.

Now that Yolanda’s gone to bed—she has started sleeping, here and there—I look at the investigation progress on Twitter. Share after share after share. No information, nothing useful: that’s Twitter. Just virtue signaling, arguing, and retweeting the same old stuff to a pool of people who have already seen it.

These people, they don’t know you. They don’t know your politics, your feminism, your liberalism. They don’t know how much you love candles, that you can’t possibly sit and watch the television without ten burning, like you were some sort of effigy.

I flick off and back to Facebook. My message inbox is rammed. Old acquaintances. People I went to university with. All expressing condolences, but there’s something more, too. I click on to one of them, from an old colleague, Ray.

Lewis, long time. Just wanted to express my sadness at what’s happening. I hope she is home soonest. Anything I can do, mate, any time, do call. R.

I look at his time line. He’s shared the police’s post about you, and added the narrative:One of my oldest friends’ daughters. Please help find her.

I sit back on the sofa, one eye on the mullioned windows, still looking for you, still hoping you’ll appear there, rueful, not really getting the big deal of your disappearance... and wonder why Ray’s post has irritated me. Yolanda would tell me he is being kind, helpful: she sees the best in people. But is he? To me, that message is a horrified reflected glory.I know them!!!is the subtext of that share. I am not one of Ray’s oldest friends: he’s never even met you.

I log out of Facebook in anger but, just before I confirm it, I see it: suggested friend. Andrew.

I know I’m going to do it before I actually do. I resist it for a few seconds, eyes on the window, hand hovering over the button, and then I give in and look at his profile, as I have many times before.

And that’s when the thought occurs to me. Arrives fully formed, as though not truly from me, but from someone else instead: Andrew would be good to talk to, but he will be more useful if he doesn’t think he’s talking to me.

17

Olivia

Instagram photo:A Diptyque candle in the scent Baies.

Instagram caption:Okay, but why do these smell so good? Isn’t it so weird when high-end stuff genuinely IS better than drug store?

Tweet:Am I going to think this knot in the wood of my new stairs in my new shitty house share is a spider every single day for the rest of my life?

Fifth Day Missing

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