Page 45 of Just Another Missing Person

“Does it? I have loads of online friends I haven’t met.”

“What did you think we’d do—not investigate?”

“Maybe. How could anyone say she’s missing if she wasn’t ever seen?”

Julia stares at Annie. She stares for so long that it becomes awkward. “What?” Annie says, and Julia waves a hand in response. Is Annie right? Yes and no, Julia concedes. They would still have investigated. But they might not have started from this point: with the knowledge that these housemates had never, ever seen Olivia.

“So let me get this straight—she did move in, right?”

“Oh, yes—weheardher. She moved in super late, midnight. She texted that she was on her way, and then we all heard her unpacking, but we thought we’d say hi in the morning. Then one of us heard her shower. Then in the morning, she messaged to say she was going to an interview, and she’d see us later.”

Julia sighs. Meeting somebodydoesmatter, for all sorts of reasons. The housemates now have no idea of Olivia’s emotional state, actually. And the police have no true idea about her whereabouts. Who moves in at fucking midnight?

“Don’t worry,” she says softly, thinking that some knowledge is coming about Olivia that Julia soon won’t be able to unsee.

***

Jonathan is getting his coat on when Julia arrives back. He is folding up a Pret bag and putting it in his desk drawer.

“You all right?” he asks, looking closely at her.

“I need to brief the team about this,” Julia says. “The housemates haven’t sodding met her. Olivia.”

“What?”

“Yep. Clean lied about it.”

Jonathan pauses, Pret bag still in hand, looking at her. He passes Julia his phone, Olivia’s Instagram displayed on it. “I have been wondering, you know, if she has a second phone somewhere. Might be something and nothing, but...”

“Why?” Julia says in surprise. She grabs the phone and begins scrolling through the Instagram posts, thinking about the drug store language and wearing an eye mask outside and the bloody whorls of wood. It’s like... some sort of persona.

“Almost everyone she has contacted on this phone, this WhatsApp, this email, this Facebook, have two things in common.” He puts the bag away. It’s stained with grease. He eats the same thing every day: a pastrami deli sandwich. Not a bad choice at all, but every day? “One,” he ticks them off on his fingers. “A recent friend. Or, two, an acquaintance. Never an old friend, never a family member.”

“Right,” Julia says, nodding quickly. “The housemates fit that, too. When was her Facebook set up?”

“A year ago, same with Instagram. It’s only her email—the Little O email—that goes back—way, way back. Almost a decade, though scant at times. I just wondered, though. It’s all surface deep. I don’t know. Women her age, you’d expect... in my experience,” he says, and Julia cocks her head, listening intently to him. Jonathan has serious expertise, the kind only gathered from doing this same thing, day after day after day. “Deep chats, sometimes on voice note. A lot of texts. Close, close, close girlfriends. This is totally different. Like—herdad never did send us her old housemates’ details, did he? And she hasn’t contacted them?”

Julia blushes with shame. She hadn’t followed it up. Another missing person. Another ball dropped. Both times, she had good reasons, but does that make it okay? She’s been too busy trying to save her own skin, and her daughter’s. Too busy, too, focusing on what really matters on this case. Trying to find Olivia with the hottest leads she’s got, and trying to convict Matthew. Those are the things she has to do.

“And now this,” Jonathan continues, “the housemates haven’t met her. The only useful people have been the dad—who is kind of difficult, let’s be realistic—and a guy she temped with, years ago? I rang a bloke she went to uni with, too. But—Julia, it’s so flimsy.”

“Is she kind of a loner? Maybe? She speaks to her family, but...”

“Maybe. Often those with the largest online social networks are the most introverted and lonely in real life, yes,” Jonathan says. “But—there is... I don’t know. Something weird about it. The housemates add to that.”

“I know,” Julia says softly. “I think meeting in person matters less to their generation, though. They texted a lot. They heard her move in. To them—that is the same.”

Julia puts his phone down, Olivia’s Instagram still displayed. “Don’t you think her Instagram is—I don’t know. Almost staged? The Zoflora, the overkill millennial slang, something in every single post... sometimes weird phrasing, likedrug store.”

“That’s because of YouTube. Beauty tubers,” Jonathan says immediately. “All American.”

“Yeah. All right. But—I don’t know? It’s almost like—I don’t know?” Julia pauses. She knows from the way thewords taste and feel in her detective mouth that she’s on to something. “I don’t know what I mean,” she adds, while she thinks that it isn’t the lie the housemates told that bothers her: it’s that they plain haven’t met Olivia.

Jonathan picks the phone up. “She says she saw a golden retriever on the beach near you—Sugar Loaf,” he says, “but dogs are not allowed at that beach. I looked. I meant to say. Something and nothing. Do dogs go there?”

“People break the rules all the time. But it’s things like that,” Julia says. “She said she wore an eye mask out of the house. And—I mean... that is seriously bizarre. Almost like she doesn’t know that?”

“How interesting.” Jonathan pauses, fiddling with the lock on his drawer while he thinks. Julia knows his thinking face well and, God, it’s nice to be here, chatting it through with somebody rather than hiding things. He’d pull this exact face when he was an analyst who wanted to be an officer. Julia’s so glad he made it happen. And she’s glad she helped him, too.

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