Page 83 of Just Another Missing Person

The hallway is cold, colder than she would expect, actually, but everyone’s been out, no teenager flicking the heating on. Nothing is disturbed. Shoes in a pile on the shoe rack. Coats hanging on the balustrade. No lights on in the lounge. Art usually leaves one on.

“Okay,” Emma says. “Okay. Where are you based?”

And that’s when Julia sees it. A twitch, just in the living room. Somebody all in black. A hot flash runs up Julia’s arms and down to her hands. She has no time. She has five seconds, ten. She could use it to tell Emma her address, to call a police officer. To save her own soul.

But she doesn’t.

The figure has noticed that she’s seen him, emerges and advances toward her. No balaclava, unlike the first time. Gloves. Black clothes. And a face she knows well. He snatches her phone, pockets it, and passes a hand across her mouth, silencing her entirely. He’s dragged her out and into his car less than five minutes later.

Part III

Julia

First Day Missing

40

Lewis

Julia’s phone rings out and out. The text message she has sent is cryptic at best, deliberately misleading at worst.Welcome to the Vodafone messaging service, it says over and over when I call her. It reminds me of when you went missing, though, of course, nothing compares, really.

It’s midnight. Why would Julia send that text, and then do nothing? I stand in my kitchen, not wanting to wake Yolanda, not wanting to make a decision, really, just staring at those words.Tandy’s All-American Diner. According to Google, it’s a beaten-up American-style outfit the other side of Bristol, at least an hour’s drive away, open twenty-four hours, frequented by truckers, port workers, people going nowhere. One of the Google reviews says,Shit coffee, shit atmosphere, shit food, which seems pretty accurate, from the photos.

Am I supposed to go there? I walk around my kitchen island and, I swear to you, Sadie, it is one of those situations where I know what I’m going to do, I just have to justify it to myself first. So I call the station and try to get hold of Julia, but, of course, that’s impossible: like trying to speak to MI5, or, even harder, an NHS GP. I don’t wake Yolanda, because I know what she’d tell me: don’t bother, don’t go there, ignorethe text message. Or, worse, the refrain of the calm person:Why don’t you wait and see?But I can’t. It isn’t me.

So on my second lap of the kitchen island, I admit it to myself: I’m going to Tandy’s All-American Diner, whether or not I should, whether or not it’s midnight. Because the police officer in charge of finding your killer has told me to go there.

***

A diner in the very center of Bristol, a backstreet two alleys away from the river. An inconspicuous kind of place. Not so tucked away as to draw attention, become some hidden gem. Not so obvious as to have large footfall.

Nobody knows I’m here. Only Julia, I suppose.

It’s American-style, but actually Americana: an uncanny approximation of American culture that probably bears no resemblance to the reality. It sits in between a bathroom shop and a white-painted pub called the Swan. It has a red-and-white awning, a neon sign and a blue-and-white-striped door. It looks more like a movie set than a café.

Just as I reach to push open the door, I think it: what if Julia didn’t send that text? What if someone else did? And set me up? I shiver, and dismiss it. Well, you know? So be it. I’m here.

A bell trills above me as I enter. The place is deserted, as you might expect at one o’clock in the morning, and I quake with it. With—what? With something. Some knowledge that something is about to change, for good or for bad. I scan the bar, just looking, but there’s nobody. Five stools covered in cracked red leather. A jukebox. A milk shake machine, endlessly stirring pale sludge for nobody. Striped straws in sundae glasses. Ten or so booths, a handful of red tables withmenus on, plate-glass windows that look out onto the black street, but not a single person.

The room to the back is empty, so I head there. It houses a storeroom that looks like a kind of messy, industrial pantry. It contains ready-made everything. American-style pancakes. American-style milk shake mixes. American hotdogs in cans, American-style foot-long buns packed away in cellophane, bursting out of the shelves like foam fingers.

There really is nobody here. My back begins to prickle, like somebody has run their finger down my spine, a single, sharp stroke. Why am I here? Have I mindlessly trusted Julia?

The door bangs behind me, the door to the toilet. Footsteps. I hold my breath. I close my eyes and wait, content to stand and do nothing. This is what happens when you lose everything.

And then I turn around.

And—I must be dreaming, I must have died and gone to heaven—because it’s you.

It’s you. It’s you, it’s you, it’s you. I’m awake. I’m here. And you’re real.

I feel my soul rise up out of my body as I stumble toward you, drifting unsteadily like a happy hot-air balloon buffeting this way and that. And, oh, my God, the flesh on your arms is real. The tears you start crying are real. You are warm-bodied, alive you. “Dad,” you say, your voice thin and watery. You’re skinnier, your hair dyed dark.

“It’s you,” I say. Is all I can say.

“It’s me.”

In response, I simply sink to my knees, holding you, your wonderful, real, yielding body, and I thank every single lucky star in the sky that you are here, that you’re mine. That you’re you.

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