Page 53 of Just Another Missing Person

“I was never missing,” she says, cutting across Julia. Olivia’s slender hands rest on her lap, both of them spaced evenly. Certainly not the posture of somebody returned from somewhere. Goose bumps sweep over Julia.All is not as it seems,the detective instinct says, and Julia listens to it. “I should’ve come earlier, I know,” she says, holding up a hand.

“Why didn’t you?” Julia looks at her closely. A couple of the lights in the foyer click off around them.

“Hang on,” Olivia says, digging in a satchel she has slung crossways over her body. She’s in faded jeans rolled up at the ankles, must be freezing. Julia finds this sartorial impracticality not very surprising.

Olivia begins to explain, while Julia thinks about how Matthew must be released now, about how Genevieve might be okay now, but Julia doesn’t believe it, feels uneasy at being let off the hook. Who knows what else might be demanded? “I honestly thought it couldn’t be real. I mean—I wasn’t in that alleyway. I didn’t disappear,” Olivia says.

“Sorry?” Julia says. Her gaze roves over her face. It’s like trying to solve a logic problem. She ought to take her into a meeting room, take a formal statement. But, somehow, Julia already knows the answer to the question she needs to ask. “Did you live in that house share?”

Olivia meets her eyes. “No.”

“Were you in the alleyway—off Portishead High Street?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, it isn’t you?”

“This is why it took ages for me to come in. The first night it broke on the news I thought, how weird, my name—but not exactly an uncommon one. Then the second night—the photo... it’s my passport’s. But I don’t live where she does. None of the details fitted me.”

Julia’s jaw drops. It isn’t Olivia. Not the Olivia she’s looking for, anyway. “You left it several days, though?” Julia says curiously, needling at this. Anyone would have come forward, wouldn’t they? So why hadn’t she?

“We were away... a family wedding, five-day affair. Super-remote area.”

“I see.” Julia shakes her head. “So the Instagram isn’t yours?”

“No. I don’t have any social media. You see?”

“But it is your photograph. And your name.”

Olivia hands her a passport, held between thumb and index finger, like a ticket. Julia takes it, and sure enough, it’s the same photo: identical. Issued a year ago, in May 2022. The spring of Genevieve’s crime. It’s 2023 now, though it feels more than a year ago.

There’s only one problem: Julia already has Olivia Johnson’s passport in the evidence room.

24

Emma

It’s taken me a full day to decide what to do, and it’s one o’clock in the morning when I do, as it often is. At night, you can acknowledge things to yourself that you can’t in the daytime.

I’m sitting at the kitchen island, and I’m thinking about your ex-girlfriend. I’m smoking a single cigarette. It won’t matter that the house smells—you’re not here; you’re still incarcerated, extension after extension granted to your detention, while the policemake inquiries. Vague speak, I suppose, for trying to find the evidence to charge you. So I don’t need to hide the cigarette, or take it into the garden. I have out a single glass ashtray that I used to have with me when you were a baby and—forgive me—that single cigarette in the garden, late, was the best part of my day. Now, I watch the perfectly straight line of smoke rise slowly upward and disperse to nothing.

Two women, both missing. Your ex-girlfriend, and Olivia, a woman you were messaging. And now a third woman, too.I have Prudence Jones for you. I have no idea what it means, what a QR code is in this context, what bitcoins are for. All I know is... what? What do I know? I stare at the smoke, trying to read it like tea leaves, waiting for an answer to emerge fromthe toxic mist.I have Prudence Jones for you. What else could it mean other than what it sounds like?

It’s like swallowing an ice cube. There should be a name for that specific feeling that comes when you realize something is right but wish it wasn’t. When you know you need to leave a job, a partner, a town, just like we did. We cut and ran last year, after everything, and yet still we couldn’t escape it, not fully. We didn’t go far enough.

I pick up the cigarette and drag on it. My fingers will be stained yellow. The kitchen will smell. It’ll never come out, not truly. That’s what happens with cigarettes. I’ll remember this night, at this kitchen island, forever.

Never once have you given me an explanation for your girlfriend’s disappearance. And maybe there isn’t one. But worse than that, never once have you acknowledged that I might wonder what happened, might have doubts.

Cigarette still in my mouth, I start to pull on my jacket and trainers, the names of the three women swirling around me like the cigarette smoke. Olivia. Prudence. Once is bad luck. Twice is... three times is... the cigarette feels like it’s choking me. I can’t believe this is happening. That these are my choices.

I have spent so long arguing with myself over your innocence I have forgotten something: that, sometimes, parenthood isn’t an internal argument, assessing and reassessing your child. Sometimes, it is action.

Keys in hand, I press the button and watch the car blaze the street amber outside. Is this tough love? No, I don’t think it is. It’s something else.

Remember her father? God, you know, his heart was fucking broken. Absolutely cracked in two. That man would never be the same again. It was obvious. His whole body seemed tochange, like the pain of losing her had carved him open and left him hunched over what remained.

He deserves to know what happened. Everybody does.

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