Page 80 of Just Another Missing Person

“Fucking hell,” you say. Your hands are on your head now, and the atmosphere crackles like there’s a storm surging. Thunder, lightning, anger, regret. Everything is here in our living room with us. And even though I’m afraid of what’s about to happen, I’m ready for it, too. The gasoline has been laid since last year, but finally, now, you’re about to light it. “Fucking hell,” you shout now. You pace out from between the sofa and the coffee table. “I’d tell you,” you say. “If it—”

“If itwhat?”

You don’t answer this. It occurs to me that the no-comment interview Mr. Jackson recommended would have come so naturally to you anyway. You have no-commented since the moment Sadie went missing. Only none of us can work out why. Or, rather, we don’t want to consider why that might be.

“If you got arrested? If three women disappeared? If damning evidence after damning evidence appeared?”

I glance desperately around the living room. Suddenly, I want an ally. Not your father, but someone else, somebody useful. Somebody I got intentionally pregnant by, aged thirty-five. Somebody with a good job with a briefcase and a commute. Somebody who would have a plan. And, most importantly, somebody who would be able to say, “No, you did everything right. It’s not you, and it’s not your fault.” Or even, “If we fucked it up, it was both of us, and not just you.”

“You shouldn’t have said you were my alibi for that night,” you say. “I was out when I called you. I said I was upstairs, but I was just arriving home.”

A terrible shudder moves through me, like knowledge imparting itself into every cell of my body. “For Olivia?” I ask. “But she’s been found?”

“I’m just saying you don’t always know what’s been going on.”

“Where did you put Sadie?” I say. I can’t stop staring at the lock of hair. Such a gruesome token; worse, somehow, than the blood on the clothes. I wonder if you snipped it off while she was still alive, or after she had gone. The thought makes my stomach heave over, an internal avalanche.

You still haven’t looked at the pile of possessions since that first time you noticed it.

You rub your nose roughly, saying nothing. The rims of your eyes have gone red, like somebody has lined them delicately in rose pink. The way you get when ill, when tired, when you’ve been crying. And when you’re angry, too. Funny. You used to have tantrums over not being allowed chocolate biscuits, and now look what they’re over.

“I was supposed to meet Olivia, but she didn’t show,” you say in a low voice.

I groan, a painful, guttural moan, the kind I made in labor when I birthed you. “Please explain to me—everything,” I say.

You say nothing.

“These will be going to DCI Day,” I say eventually, loyalty severed. My actions are no longer in your best interests. They’re for these women, these poor, dead, missing women. Prudence Jones. Olivia Johnson, returned. And whatever happened to Sadie Owen?

“Fine,” you say, your voice as tense as a tightrope. Even in your monosyllables, there is zero vibration, no shaking, no hesitation. You have total conviction in your staunch denials.

“Fine?” I say. I get my phone out. “Sure?”

“Tell her what you want. Pretty sure she wants to rearrest me anyway for whatever the fuck she can.” You look at me now, standing a few feet from me. Your hands are in your pockets, shoulders up. Feet bare. Waiting. For what, I don’t know. “Odd,” you say. “Both nights, I was with you almost all of the time. And yet, in your eyes, I’m still guilty.”

That’s enough for me. “Two arrests. Bitcoin transfers. Two passports. A lock of hair. I mean...”

“You’re my mother,” you say, and I realize now: your voice is so tight because you’re trying not to cry.

“So tell me your side of the story.”

You turn away from me. “I shouldn’t have to,” you mutter.

And I have no choice. I must have been doing it wrong all of these years. Cutting you too much slack. Not demanding enough from you. Giving you always the benefit of the fucking doubt.

You walk away from me.

I find Julia’s number. The tones ring out between us as I tap. You stop, but you don’t turn around.

“Also odd,” you say. “You’re proving exactly why I can’t tell you.”

“What?” I say, four digits dialed, the rest unsaid.

“Evidently, I can’t trust you.”

“Is that why you go to that diner so often?” I say. “To get away?” I went, but it was nothing. Just a diner.

Your body stills again. Very slowly, you turn. “Do not tell Julia about that diner,” you say.

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