Page 69 of Just Another Missing Person

The bed is still a single. We bought it in a hurry when we moved, after we changed our names, after I left Cooper’s—stepped back, withdrew as a director, retired, whatever we want to say. We’ve come up with so many stories for it, depending on who we’re talking to. That’s the thing about changing your name for the reasons we did; you have to tell people different things.

This bed—cheap pine, a blue checked duvet cover on it—was one of those things that seemed to take up more time and headspace than we intended. Messages back and forth about it, an arranged time to collect it that fell through, another one booked.

It’s because we moved quickly. We’d decided, after the latest slur—HR taking you aside and saying there were afew members of staff uncomfortable with working the bar alone with you—that we had to go, and we found a rental and went fast. I wanted to go further—anywhere, really, Somerset, Devon even, Bristol at the least—but you only wanted to hop across town. I still don’t know why. You never see anyone from your old life. But in the mess of it all, and the haste and the trauma, I’ve never felt able to ask why you wanted to stay so close.

And so we bought this bed, for ten quid, from Facebook marketplace, because I didn’t want to spend the capital I made when I sold Cooper’s. The sellers didn’t live quite where we thought, and we got lost. It took all evening, and we left with it one cool early-autumn night, only just inches into September, walking slowly down the street, you holding one end, me the other. Right then, on the street, you said over the headboard, “I have nightmares about the moment she went missing.”

“Do you?” I’d said, my shoulders up, thinking a confession was coming. I always thought that, though I tried not to let you know.

Sadie’s father had called you five times the morning after Sadie disappeared. You were sleeping in. You hadn’t been at work the night before, but you were still on a shift-work sleeping pattern. Sometimes I’d hear you come in around two or three, watch some television, have a beer, like a lot of people with a job like yours. You’d sleep until eleven or twelve, once called it your natural pattern anyway, which is true: even as a baby, you were a night owl, never had the unhappy, tired witching hour other children did. You were always at your happiest and most relaxed in the evenings, grumpy if woken before nine in the morning. The dream baby. The dream kid.

Sadie had been walking home by herself—hadn’t called you, or anyone—but never arrived. Disappeared somewhere between Portishead High Street and her house share. As simple and as complex as that. Seen on one CCTV, outside a corner shop, and not on the next, around the corner. Multiple vehicles were traced, multiple men questioned, but none ever arrested.

“I dream about my phone lighting up when Lewis called me,” you said. “I don’t know why.”

I nodded, understanding. The trauma wasn’t those Lewis calls, not really, but I can see why you have latched on to them.

The thing about a missing person is that it’s an ongoing trauma. That’s something I’ve recognized and learned, over the past year. There wasn’t one singular moment when you understood she was missing, probably in danger. It was—has been—a series of moments, each worse than the first. The first night she didn’t return was a fluke. The second a warning, fired deep into the night. The third—a tragedy. And it went from there, until it became your tragedy, or maybe it always was.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say, didn’t want to scare away this creeping revelation, either.

We’d had to park almost half a mile away, and we marched with the bed right up the street, like something from aCarry Onfilm. It would’ve been funny if anything about it actually was. We’d moved into an unfurnished rental. You’d got a new job. I’d sold my stake, was figuring out what I’d do next. And the bed, that cheap, second-hand bed, was a shitty emblem of it all.

The weather was the spindly kind where you know you’re on borrowed time, summer’s gone, autumn not yet fully arrived. You were in a coat and I was in a T-shirt: the way wewere—you closed and me open. One lone, thick, curled autumn leaf drifted down, and we both watched it, thinking—I’m sure—about how long she’d been gone.

“Do you wonder why she didn’t call you?” I asked. You looked at me briefly, then away, down the street. It still had the last of that summer feel to it. Pale, dry pavements. Cut grass. But the air had cooled already, like somebody had begun to turn off the lights one by one at a party.

“No,” you said, and I tried not to judge. At twenty, to have a girlfriend disappear... I couldn’t begin to imagine the effect it would have on your psyche. “But...”

“But what?”

You shrugged, then, not wanting to elaborate. This is how it always was, with you, since she disappeared—how it’s remained, too.

“I miss her, is all,” you said. Another shrug. “Stupid sentiment, but a true one. The papers wouldn’t believe it.”

“Fuck the papers,” I said.

You stopped, then, rested your end of the bed on the pavement and looked at me. Some anguished expression crossed your features. You bit your lip with just one front tooth, still staring at me. And, God, I swear, something seemed to pass between us, something significant, but then it vanished, just like the coming autumn season would, and the next. You picked up your end of the bed again, and we walked on.

We carried it all the way to the van. I didn’t say much after that, and neither did you. That conversation, your sadness, had somehow made me more secure that you weren’t lying. Until Olivia disappeared.

Now, I wonder if that sadness was really guilt.

I take a breath, now, on that very same bed, and dial Linda, your therapist.

“Hi, Linda Shepherd here.”

“Yes, hi. I was calling about—about Matthew James,” I say. “I’m his mother.”

Linda says nothing and I prattle to fill in the gap. “I mean—it’s just... Linda, he was arrested four days ago. And I wondered if you knew...”

Linda still says nothing, a therapist’s iron will forcing me to finish the sentence. “If you knew anything,” I finish lamely.

“What for?” she says eventually. “The arrest.”

“Kidnap. Of that missing woman. Olivia Johnson. And I found—I’ve found other evidence, in his room.”

A loaded silence plays out between us. Perhaps Linda is shocked, perhaps she is working something out, piecing some things together that I’m not privy to. Perhaps you never told her about Sadie, kept up your alias, your pretenses. I have no idea. I’ve tried so hard to give you space, to respect your privacy. Perhaps too hard.

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