Page 89 of Just Another Missing Person

The judge is a circuit judge called Daniel Dever—pronounced Diva. Despite his fun name, Julia has never once observed him having a sense of humor, and she could really do with some today.

“If I may begin,” the prosecuting lawyer says, rising to her feet. It’s Patricia. She has rights of audience—permission to speak in open court—so doesn’t ever use a barrister, but, nevertheless, seems to transform into somebody else when in the courtroom. Her voice a deeper register, her body language more upright.

“Please do,” the judge says, his voice clipped.

Bill looks up, and Julia feels a crest of hope ride up and across her chest. She trusts him. She trusts hardly anybody, but she trusts him with this: her freedom.

The public gallery where Art and Genevieve are sitting is elevated. A wood-paneled box suspended above everybody else. Up there, next to the rafters with the public, the police and the journalists, Julia can see a window to outside. Christmas lights just appearing in the lanes off the high street, spitting winter rain blurring them into kaleidoscopes.

She wonders if her family are ashamed of her, or proud of her, like they say. She can’t tell for sure.

The night she got back after being questioned, the night everything changed, she emailed Art, the way she always used to. Within one minute, he’d read it, and called to her to come into his room. She told him about the mugging—a version of it, anyway. Sitting with him in that shabby little guestroom, both on the bed. He listened in the way only Art can: fully.

“What?” he said when she had finished, at first genuinely not seeming to comprehend.

“It was in a multistory,” she’d said. “He came out of nowhere. I used too much force.” The lie had come easily to her. She hoped this was the solution Genevieve could live with: a way to pay the price, without paying it herself.

Art had lifted his chin as he looked at her, digesting this.

“I didn’t tell you because I was ashamed,” she said, and this sentiment must—of course—have appealed to him, because he dropped his head, rubbed at his hair.

“But...”

“You blame my job,” she said.

“Only because it takes so much of you,” he said, and the pureness of his honesty had hit Julia like a clear spring sunbeam.

“There’s a lot left for you,” she said simply.

“Why are you telling me now?” he’d asked.

“I need to—I need to... it’s been hanging over me. Somebody knew,” she said.

“I see,” he said, quietly, in that way that he did.

She leaned her head on his chest, not looking at him, and then she said it: “It wasn’t just that you slept with her.”

Art heaved a sigh that moved Julia’s head up and down slightly. “I know.”

“It was who she was.”

“I know that. If I could go back... it is the one thing I’d change. Not even what I did. It would be that,” he said.

“Thank you. Thank you for saying that.”

“It could’ve been anyone,” he said. “I was so drunk. I would’ve—I would’ve fucked a—a mop.”

A burst of surprised laughter had left Julia’s throat and landed in the room like a spark. “How?” she asked.

“It wouldn’t even have mattered to me.”

Julia had left his room shortly after that, the unsaid things spoken. But she returned there the next night. And the night after that. She has returned every night since, and hopes she will until—until she’s put inside, and can no longer.

Julia turns her gaze back to Patricia. “The State has a submission they’d like to make,” Patricia utters as she rises to her feet. Julia blinks in surprise. A submission at the beginning of a trial isn’t normal. She tightens her hands in her lap, and holds her breath, her eyes only on the lawyers, waiting.

“Go ahead,” the judge says benignly.

“The State would like to withdraw its case. And the charges against Julia Day.”

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