Page 6 of Just Another Missing Person

“Sorry—but yes,” Julia says. As her daughter’s voice choruses down the phone to her, Julia thinks: it’s okay. She’s okay. “Did you get me a doggy bag?”

“We ate it all,” Genevieve says, not even sheepishly. “I’m doing mad cramming,” she adds. Underneath the snark, Genevieve is one of life’s conformists, happy to work hard and buy into the system. And, underneath that, well, who knows?

Julia’s breath makes cirrus clouds in the cold April air as she walks. She cuts through a park, the iron gate singing behind her, the sky a dark blackberry beyond. There’s nobody around, except her; except them.

Art confessed to her the Christmas just gone. She should’ve seen it coming. She had hardly seen him all summer and autumn.

It was one of those milky-light mornings. The weather mild, rainy, intermittently sunny. Their street completely silent. The air full of the hum of nostalgia, of things only done once a year: cooking turkeys, East 17’s “Stay Another Day” playing, dusty decorations out that they’d had for twenty years. Genevieve unwrapping gifts, Julia peeling sprouts into a colander on the sofa even though it was ten in the morning. Julia remembers Genevieve saying, “Not Mariah Carey, no,” to Alexa,right before Art got to his feet and walked into the kitchen. He did it so quickly, so without ceremony, in the middle of the present-opening, that Julia followed him in surprise.

He was looking at her as she walked in. “I slept with someone,” he said. “Else,” he added, because even in trauma he is a grammatical pedant. Four words. Five. The worst of Julia’s life. The tips of his fingers blanched white where he leaned on them on the counter.

She’d done what she thought her past—and future—selves would have wanted, even though it had felt like she was in an alternate universe, without a brain, or any emotions at all. She’d asked him not to speak to her any more. And, really, since, they truly haven’t. They’re in a hinterland of a marriage. Julia hasn’t asked him to leave. She is suspended in animation. They sleep either side of a thin wall, separate bedrooms, though each can hear the other.

Genevieve guessed it after a week. “Well,something’shappened,” she said, in that teenage way. They had no choice but to explain, and Genevieve turned to Julia and said, “Can’t people make mistakes?” and, Jesus, teenagers can be cutting, but Julia hadn’t been braced for that. She felt like she wanted to put on a bulletproof vest. Of course, it was clearly about Genevieve’s own mistake earlier that year, and Julia had wanted suddenly to just trade in that whole past year for something better.

“Where are you?” Genevieve asks now. “Nearly home? I can make hot chocolates...”

“Almost at the car,” she says.

“Is it a bad one?” Genevieve asks. “The misper?”

“Very.”

“Oh—how so?”

“Disappeared into an alleyway—only it’s blocked up. Noescape. Riddle me that,” Julia says, admonishing herself for sharing too much with a daughter who is already too interested, but unable to stop herself.

“Wow,” Genevieve says. “That’s so weird. You need the TikTok detectives on the case.”

Julia has to laugh. “Maybe I actually do.”

“What’s that saying? You can’t hide one body, but you can hide a body in a hundred pieces?”

“Jesus, Genevieve,” Julia says. Genevieve previously seemed to find Julia’s career both mundane and frustrating, had the impression Julia spent her days missing family dinners in order to arrest petty criminals. But now look. She’s coming up with disposal methods. The thought unsettles Julia.

“Right—home in ten. Love you.” She hangs up. It isn’t even a ten-minute drive to home, new home, anyway. After everything with Art, they moved, even though it felt like the wrong thing to do, to uproot together, still as a family, while she and Art continued to sleep in separate bedrooms and ruminate (Julia can only speak for herself here). But she’d seen a house that they had been looking for for years. And Art came with them because neither of them could think of a better decision at the time.

But now they have the most coveted of things, even if it came at a price: a new semi-detached house overlooking Sugar Loaf Beach at Portishead. During winter storms, the sand glasses the windows and blows in the cracks. Julia finds it everywhere. It is unimaginably lovely.

She emerges from the park. It’s surrounded by iron railings that blend into the dark air like the tops of mountains in mist, their sharp knife points almost completely invisible.

Footsteps.

Julia doesn’t react, has trained herself not to. She reminds herself of the power the police hold. To arrest, to flash a badge. Julia should feel untouchable.

She keeps her pace measured, allows her phone to glow. If they want to mug her, let them, make the target bright and obvious.

She looks casually over her shoulder. It’s a man in a hoody. A kid, really, maybe sixteen, seventeen. She hopes she has never arrested him.

Everything about his body language says that he has a problem with the world. Arms criss-crossing in front of and behind his body as he walks. Hood pulled down, pace slow, like he has all the time in the world. Julia has met many men like him. Has arrested them, pressed them for information. Has taken victim impact statements from them, too. Has met their parents, their children. He could easily be an enemy of hers.

She takes a quick left, just to see what he does. He smiles a half-smile, then walks on past her. Julia watches him go. He looks back just once. She hopes he has a home to go to with somebody who cares.

She reaches for her car keys, and only unlocks the door when she’s as close to it as can be. She lets a sigh out as she gets in. It smells of Genevieve’s McDonald’s.

The fabric of the seat is cold against Julia’s skin. She allows her heartbeat to slow, thinking of Olivia and where she could be. That distinctively female fear she must’ve felt, that text to her housemates. Is that what Julia would send, if she were in real trouble?

She starts the engine, turns her lights on, then the heat up. Her phone vibrates in the cup holder, but she ignores it. She knows it will be Genevieve, having thought of some suggestion or other.

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