Page 73 of Just Another Missing Person

“What?” he says slowly.

“Jonathan—you know I am not a bad person,” she begins.

“Absolutely,” he says, and the way he says it, with total conviction, makes Julia’s heart sing.

She pauses just slightly, looking at him in the moment right before she tells him.

“Whatever it is,” Jonathan prompts, his eyes on her, “we will sort it. Together.”

Julia closes her eyes, relief ebbing across her chest like a tide. “Promise?” she says.

“Promise.”

33

Emma

You have been bailed, for now—that’s what you said on the phone to me half an hour ago. And Olivia: found. It is as if a big, hopeful bird has taken flight in my chest. Momentarily, Prudence and Sadie don’t seem to matter. It’s irrational, I know.

I’m trying not to think that it might be you who has organized her safe return somehow.

And now, I’m here, collecting you, the way I have done a thousand times before. Only this time, it isn’t football, or cubs, or the cinema: it’s a police station, and everything that holds with it. Official forms to fill out, your belongings in ziplocked bags, picked over and sampled to see if you kidnapped and murdered a woman. And I’m wondering, of course, if you know that I handed you over. Your Judas.

But you didn’t kidnap or murder her. She’s been found. Evidently alive and well, according to the short news report. There’s something slightly strange about it, slightly off, that I can’t put my finger on. Maybe it’s because women who go missing in these circumstances are not often found—I don’t know... but they haven’t said where she was, or how they found her. The police case closed, the media seeminglysatisfied with a nonexplanation. And, of course, you say you have no idea.

I brought you a change of clothes and—right in the foyer—you take the hoodie from me now and swap it out, evidently desperate to be out of the police-issue tracksuit. You immediately smell of home, and not of police custody, and I unconsciously step closer to you.

You’re signed out and are told the police will be in contact, and it amazes me, this process. They don’t have to tell you anything, even though it’s your life, and it’s their job. DCI Day is nowhere in sight. Just custody officers, receptionists, people writing your name on forms and swigging coffee and testing pens on pieces of scrap paper when they stop working. Just mundane work life—to them. Regardless of my own thoughts about you, you deserve better.

“Just waiting on the final few bits now,” an officer says to you, nodding to one of the banks of chairs where we’ve spent so much time recently. You sit in the very corner, one skinny shoulder wedged next to a coffee vending machine that has a sign on it saying OUT OF ORDER. You fold your arms inside the front of your gray hoodie, but you don’t look at me. And that’s how I know that you know.

“The QR code,” I say.

“I don’t know anything about a QR code.”

I exhale heavily. “It’s the same stories,” I say softly. “You deny all knowledge of everything, every time.”

You cross your legs at the ankles in front of you. Almost every time you do it, I remember the twenty-week scan, when you were doing just that. The sonographer said you had lovely long legs, while I laughed in total joy and happiness and thought I might just be okay: we might just be okay, together, the two of us; we already were.

“I don’t know anything about a QR code, but I’m really very interested as to why you felt you had to tell the head of the fucking police,” you say, and, honestly, your tone chills me so much that I shift away from you just slightly.

An officer brings a final form over and you scribble your looped signature along the bottom without even taking the clipboard from him, just let him hold it for you like he’s your servant. You’re pissed off, and this is not the place to lose your temper. You stand up, ignoring me, and stride out into the spring sunshine. I have no choice but to follow you.

I don’t unlock the car, which forces you to stand by it, doing nothing, but you still don’t look at me. Hands in your pockets, gaze down. How has this happened? Until last year, you were shy, awkward maybe, but nothing like this. And now, accused twice. Has the system broken you? Or is it something else?

“What would you have done?” I ask. “Two different missing women. A third—who is alive and well, apparently. Against all odds?”

If Matthew is surprised at the mention of the three women, he doesn’t show it. “What do you mean—against all odds?”

“Well, it’s a payment for something, isn’t it? The QR code—the bitcoin?”

You laugh softly, darkly, then try the car door again, but I don’t open it. Eventually, you look at me over the roof, but again say nothing. The car reflects shards of bright white light that dance in my vision as I meet your blue eyes.

“What would you have done? You won’t talk. You won’t explain it. Everyone is just left wondering,” I say.

“Yeah—to think the worst.”

“Okay—what would be an explanation that sits in the middle, then?”

---