Page 48 of Just Another Missing Person

“What are you doing?” she says plainly to me, but indulgently so.

“Nothing,” I say petulantly, like a teenager.

Yolanda isn’t a suspicious person. For somebody who knows me so well, she sometimes seems to have no idea that I am almost always doing something semi-dysfunctional. Usually of the benign variety—ordering megapacks of sweets, et cetera. Perhaps she just knows this and ignores it. “DCI Day called,” she says.

My heart immediately seems to expand widthways in my chest. “And?” I say urgently.

“They’re looking again at the place she disappeared,” she says. “That’s all. Well—almost. Did you know DCI Day didn’t interview Andrew? She wasn’t in that day—something to do with her daughter.”

“What?” I say, my world rocked. “So—she just didn’t... didn’t bother to look at the whites of his eyes herself? How can they test his amazing alibi?”

“I know,” Yolanda says thoughtfully, her gaze on me.

“Why didn’t she get him back in, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“I...” I say, looking at her bare toes and thinking how like yours they are: long and elegant.

But, just as I’m about to reply to her, engage with her, apologize, Andrew sends me a message back.

Sixth Day Missing

21

Olivia

Instagram photo:A Starbucks peach tea on a bench in the sun.

Instagram caption:It may be March, it may be fucking freezing, but I have had fourteen of these peach teas in eleven days. And has the barista realized how addicted I am yet? No. Do they know my order, like I’m in a NYC-based movie? Also no. Maybe fifteenth time lucky.

Facebook post:I have about eighteen friends lol and am scared to post every day because of Zuckerberg’s attitude to capitalism mostly, but I’ve got a new phone, add contacts below, please.

Comment by Michelle Smith:Text me, hun, I don’t put my number on Facebook (for the same reason).

Comment by Doug Adams:Yet you’ll use WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook? Okay, then...

Tweet:Maybe this is just day thirty-two of my cycle talking but I really want to toast a loaf of bread.

Sent item:

26/04:LittleO@gmail.comtoreturns@boohoo.com

I’ve been trying to reach you on the phone but unable to. I wish to return order number #78304. They’re trousers and they don’t fit (sad face). Please call me on...

22

Julia

Price picks up on the first ring. “DCI Day!” he says. Julia is standing a safe distance from the police station, cold wind whipping her hair around her face. Even now, standing on a frozen street still reminds her of her years on Response, when she first joined the police. Drunks, domestics, she loved it all. That first day, she stood on a street not unlike this one, and read out her first caution, later told the victim, who cried with relief, and that was it: she was in occupational love. Not only—she is slightly ashamed to admit—because she had helped somebody, she had stopped something, the way she hadn’t been able to stop her father’s suicide, but also because she had found it thrilling.

“Can I see you?” Julia says, no preamble, “I need... I need somebody to be—I need some...”

“Spit it out.”

“Are you still at the same address?”

“Of course,” he says, Julia thinks jokingly, but isn’t sure.

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