Page 47 of Just Another Missing Person

“The prosecution will infer that you’re protecting him.”

“Right, so their evidence is cast iron, and ours is made up.”

“You have a cast-iron reason to give an alibi for your son.”

“Yes: because he was with me,” I say. And you were. Youwere. You went upstairs, after therapy, as you often do. I was in the garden, weeding. You rang me from your bedroom, as you also regularly do, wanting to go out to Portishead One, and we did. You met me out front.

“The issue,” Mr. Jackson says tightly, “is that Matthew can’t account for why his DNA was found in Olivia’s bedroom. If he had put forward some sort of story regarding the DNA, then we would have something to work with.”

“There is no story because I’ve never been there,” you say. “If I had, given everything you’ve just said, I would actually tell you.”

“And you’ve never met her?” Mr. Jackson says. The pen lid is off again.

“No,” you say carefully. Not a lie, not technically. God, I wish you had been more specific. That I had pressed you further while the chaos broke out around us. I currently don’t even know the lies I am hearing, what their significance is.

“And you don’t know who she is?”

This is the moment. I hold my breath.

“No.” You don’t move as you say this. And that isn’t the worst part, your lie. You know what is? It’s that—if I didn’t know—I wouldn’t be able to tell you were lying. There is no clue whatsoever. You hold his gaze, your body still, face relaxed. Goose bumps break out across my back, a chilled, feverish, panicky feeling setting in across my body.

And so, after the meeting, I go home, and I begin to search your room.

***

Old schoolwork that you never threw away from under your bed. A payslip. Half a packet of Polos from your desk drawer.An empty can of Coke Zero. A used match—you like to light cigarettes the old-fashioned way, said it made you feel like you were in a book—and a pound coin. What looks like perhaps a PIN written on a piece of paper. I stare at it. How curious. It isn’t your bank card; I know that one. This is something else.

So far, these are the fruits of my search, of the things the police left behind. You are still in custody, and I am here, alone. The way I thought it might end up last spring, when your girlfriend disappeared. Only I didn’t think it would take so long.

The police discounted your involvement so quickly last year, but nevertheless, several newspapers ran stories about you, in the aftermath. Not nationals, only locals, only speculation, skirting as close to the line of libel as they could—alleged,on suspicion of—but people are people, and they began to talk. At your job, at mine, on our street. Eventually, we moved away, but only across town. I wanted to cut and run entirely, but you wouldn’t, you wanted to stay close to Portishead. I wonder what you’d do now. You look different, with that beard, hardly get recognized. Maybe you’re glad we didn’t go far.

After the fruitless search, sweaty and grimy, I go elsewhere, across the hall to my bedroom—minimalist, modern—and out again, back downstairs, to the kitchen. Where would I hide something? Somewhere strange. I check the shed outside, cold spring air biting at the back of my neck like a pair of eyes. I check the garage. I check in the log burner, my fingers coming away covered in ash. I scrutinize it, but it’s just firewood, burned out. Jesus, what did I expect? Finger bones? Teeth? I turn away from it, revulsed.

I check in drawers containing light bulbs and chargers and old remote controls we’ve for some reason kept. I check inmugs we never use at the back of cupboards. I check along the tops of the kitchen cabinets, my ashy hands now covered in fuzz and grease and fat. I check along the tops of doorframes.

I check the toilet cistern, underneath your mattress, down the back of the sofa, like a Mafia wife, like a drug baron, like a gullible fucking mother.

As I check and check again, mad places, looking for crazy items—what? Bodies?—I think of her, your girlfriend. Of Sadie, walking home one night and never seen again.

And, finally, I check above the bathroom cabinet. And there it is, the thing I’ve been searching for: evidence. A piece of paper, on it a QR code. It definitely isn’t mine. It is a torn A4 page from a notebook, the QR code printed sideways across the lines. Without thinking too much about it, I get my phone out and scan it. It says, “Bitcoin transfer incoming—I have Prudence Jones for you.”

20

Lewis

I have my head under the spare bed, in search of an identity. Do you remember? The summer you worked with me, we messed up that run of blank passports, shipped to the office from Holland ready for us to stamp, personalize, hologram. The passport office is, quite understandably, fastidious about disposing of bad runs, but we had ruinedso many. We sneaked them out, put them under the spare bed, laughed about it every now and again, worried about it even more so. Passport after passport sits in there, printed skewed to the side, printed too lightly.

They’re here somewhere, I think, rifling past drifts of dust and shoeboxes and lever-arch files until I find them: in the pink folder, exactly as I remember. I open it on my lap, sitting on the woven carpet that you chose with Yolanda. There are five copies of the same passport, a woman. Tens of other, different ones. I select one, open Facebook and finish setting up my new account, ticking hobbies, interests, bands my new persona likes. After that, I sit back, and look around me.

You were the last person to sleep in here but, already, ithas that chilled, dusty feeling empty rooms have. I try not to read into it. Try to stop being superstitious. A room’s smell doesn’t mean you’re gone. Itdoesn’t.

I return to Facebook, and find Andrew, under my new, female name.

Hi, couldn’t resist messaging, I write.Love your profilexx. I then pressAdd friend.

Let’s wait and see.

Yolanda walks into the guest room, hands on her hips. Wearing a strange outfit—sweatpants and an old winter jumper. Bare toes in the deep carpet.

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