Where the Missing Go

by Emma Rowley

  This morning I woke up late, groggy and off balance, then I remembered what had happened. Then my next thought came: Lily. Now I find myself hurrying to get ready.

  I want to check on her myself. I’m sure she’ll be fine, but I don’t bother showering, just pull on my running kit, and take the shortcut through the bushes between the plots again, quick as I can.

  There’s an anxious minute after I knock and then let myself into Lily’s house, stepping slowly through the hall.

  “Lily? It’s me. Are you there?”

  It’s quiet. Perhaps she can’t hear me? I can feel my heartbeat quickening.

  But she’s in her sitting room as usual, in her comfortable chair, and my shoulders relax.

  “Oh hello, dear,” she says, turning toward me with a smile. “This is a bit early for you, isn’t it?” I normally come in the afternoons.

  “I just thought I’d pop by on the way to the supermarket, see if you needed anything.” I’ve already decided I’m not going to mention last night. “I haven’t seen you for a bit. How have you been?”

  “I’m fine, dear. How are you?” No, she definitely wasn’t disturbed in the night, I can tell.

  I ask her what she’s been up to these past few days: how was her coffee afternoon at the church last week? She makes me laugh at how another of the ladies, Violet, is pursuing the lone gentleman Sidney—she seems to be wearing him down.

  But I’ve heard this story before, down to her withering verdict. “She’s a trier, that one. I’ll give her that.” I wonder how much of the last gathering she actually remembers. She doesn’t mention me coming round at the weekend, finding her sleepy and disorientated after her nap.

  Yet she does seem more like the old Lily now, more alert and herself than she’s been for a while. Younger, even. Perhaps she’s better in the mornings.

  We chat for a while, talking about her soaps, then there’s a lull.

  “I wanted to ask you something, Lily.”

  She tilts her head a little. “Yes?”

  “About Nancy.”

  “Who, dear?

  “Nancy. The girl you mentioned the other day, who looks like my Sophie?”

  There’s a beat, then she shakes her head, slowly. “I don’t think I know a Nancy.”

  “Nancy Corrigan? You know, she used to live in the big house. Years ago, now.”

  “No, dear, I don’t know.” Her pause is almost unnoticeable. “I do hope I haven’t forgotten again.”

  I decide to leave it, for now. I don’t want to push it further, and upset her by chasing yet another thing that’s slipped from her memory. Before I go, I head into her loo upstairs. I’m mulling over our conversation as I wash my hands.

  So Lily doesn’t remember mentioning Nancy. Well, maybe she wasn’t even referring to the Nancy who used to live at Parklands. In fact, I ask myself, why would she even know about her? Nancy. Sophie. It could just be a coincidence; they don’t sound too dissimilar—a slip of the tongue.

  I shake my head in the mirror. No, I don’t believe that. That’s too neat. I think the thought of Sophie the other day jogged her memory in some way—she remembered another girl who went away.

  So at some point, she must have heard about Nancy. That would make more sense, if she’s lived here a while. People do talk. And then she forgot about it, I think, drying my hands on her embroidered white hand towel. Because she does forget things, all too often, nowadays.

  But I feel cross that I’ve got no further. Frustrated. And now I feel the impulse, like an itch under my skin. I don’t need to. I shouldn’t. It would be an invasion of privacy. I don’t—Before I can think about it any further, I just do it: I open the bathroom cabinet above the sink.

  Yardley lavender scented moisturizer. Elizabeth Arden’s Blue Grass scent. That face cream she’s told me about, that Joanna Lumley uses. And her medicine bottles.

  I pull out one of the brown glass bottles, filled with clear liquid. I don’t know the brand name, I don’t think—I squint at the smaller print label, wishing I had my glasses: “. . . contains morphine.”

  Jesus. I know what this stuff is. Liquid morphine, a powerful painkiller. I knew she had a bad hip but, wow. Poor Lily. She must be in real pain. And there’s so much of it—at least half a dozen of these bottles, some already near empty. How much morphine does she need?

  I glance down again at the label: Mrs. Lily Green, The Carriage House, Park Road, Vale Dean. It’s hers, of course. “To take as and when, for pain.”

  There are pills too, I see, carefully easing out a packet: more of the same stuff in capsule form, with directions to take twice daily.

  The doctors will know what you can take, of course they do. But even so . . . I frown. It’s trusting her a lot, with this stuff, to keep on top of her dosage and timings and the rest. Should she really have so much of it? They might not realize how she’s been, more recently. No wonder she’s been so dopey and confused—and if I’m right that she’s showing signs of dementia, as I fear, couldn’t all this be making it worse?

  I glance at the bottle in my hand again. I’ve still heard nothing back from the council. I can’t ask Lily. She’ll think I’m prying and just won’t see the danger.

  For a moment, a wave of hot emotion rises up over me: I feel so overwhelmed. I lean against the basin. I can cope, I can. But it’s all coming at once. Sophie. Lily. Nancy.

  Lily pretending not to know about Nancy.

  Why do I think that? “I hope I haven’t forgotten again.”

  Why is that worrying at me? She didn’t seem distressed, like it touched a chord. Quite the opposite in fact: she was calm, resigned even. Even though she’d forgotten something. Again.

  And then I get it. That was it: this time, she wasn’t the least upset.

  Checking in on Lily as I leave, I see she’s asleep in her chair, and pull the curtains closed, so the sun’s not shining on her face. I’m not in a hurry now, so I’ll walk down the drive—fewer insects, and branches—rather than the cut-through between our houses. And I am about to turn left, back down to my house, when I pause.

  Instead I turn right, following the rest of the drive up to Parklands. Because what if there was someone in my garden, and they were heading this way? You hear all sorts about squatters. I’ve an idea that’s normally in cities, not places like Vale Dean, but I just want to see for myself, in broad daylight.

  It’s just another fifty meters perhaps, but I feel almost like I’m trespassing as I walk up—I’ve never come up here before, close as it is. It’s even quieter here than at my house; further back from the road, with the trees around blocking out the sound. You could be anywhere at all, really.

  There’s the iron gate, a big chain clasping the bars closed. But I simply walk over where the wooden fencing’s collapsed to one side of it, and then back onto the driveway.

  It’s even bigger than it looks from further away: solid and imposing, the overgrown garden making its grand proportions look too big for its plot. It must be what: three, four stories? The front lawn’s like a meadow now, the long grass brushing my hands.

  I shiver. What am I doing here? What do I do if I find that there is somebody coming in here, a squatter or—what? Some confused junkie, jumpy and aggressive when he’s disturbed? I don’t know what I’d do. I should leave this to the police.

  But still I keep going, my feet crunching up the path, stepping over a smashed purple-gray slate that’s fallen from the roof. Up close I can see how old and tattered the plastic sheeting is up there, the remaining legs of scaffolding looking less like a support than some structure simply abandoned by builders. Someone probably stopped paying them. It’s still beautiful though, the soft Cheshire brick banded with pale stonework that runs round the building, carved with rosettes. There are hundreds of these shapes—roses, not rosettes, I realize—spiraling over the brickwork.

  And now I’m going closer still, up the stone step onto the roofed porch where the air is cooler, old leaves filling its tiled
corners and piled up against the heavy double doors. It’s still impressive up close: the stone door arch carved with more of the pretty floral motifs, each with its neat little inner ruff of petals. But the paint on the doors has bubbled and warped, the paler wood showing through in places.

  I reach for the brass door knob on the right and twist gently, then harder. Of course it’s locked. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been through for years, judging by the drifts of leaves everywhere, but I reach for the one on the left and—

  I whirl around. “Oh!”

  The man’s a dark silhouette against the sunshine, black against the green of the trees and the yellow grass behind him. Then I place him: Nicholls, incongruous in his suit and tie.

  “God, you scared me.” I didn’t hear anything, I don’t know what made me turn round. I start to laugh nervously, my hand to my throat. “What are you doing here?”

  “I wouldn’t want to scare you.” He’s not smiling. “I heard there might have been an intruder round this way. Last night?”

  “Oh, of course. That’s quick.” I didn’t think a detective inspector would be that interested. The officers last night seemed much more junior. “Have you found anything?”

  “There’s no evidence of any break-in here. It seems secure. But all the same,” he says, “I wouldn’t suggest you start trying to find any trespassers yourself.”

  “Ah no. Of course not.” I put my hands behind my back guiltily. A thought occurs to me. “Is your car down there on the road then?” I didn’t pass it coming up.

  He shakes his head. “Turns out you can park in the lane, that way,” gesturing to behind Parklands. “There’s a little path that cuts through to the road behind.”

  “Oh,” I say uselessly. “I didn’t know that.”

  “I can walk you out, if you like.”

  I bristle a little at being dismissed. “Actually, I wanted to ask you—what’s happening now, with Danny, now you’ve got Sophie’s diary? So, would he be out on bail now?”

  “No, he’s not out on bail.” I close my eyes, relieved. “Because he hasn’t been arrested, or charged with anything.”

  “He wasn’t? I assumed from the way you were treating the diary that . . .” I trail off.

  “We’ve no reason to do so, Mrs. Harlow. There’s no suspicion of a crime.”

  “So are you even talking to him still?” I say sharply. “And what about the call, have you got anywhere with the charity?”

  “When I’ve information I can share with you, I will of course do that.” His face is a blank.

  “I see.” So Danny’s out and about, to do what he wants. And they haven’t traced the call, I’d put money on it.

  Suddenly I want to go home again. “Right I’d better be off,” I shake my keys, a meaningless gesture. “I’m just back down the drive. Bye.”

  “Goodbye, Mrs. Harlow.”

  I can feel his eyes on me as I walk away, my footsteps loud on the gravel. It’s stupid, I know, but for some reason, I feel like I mustn’t turn round, or hurry—like it would be a mistake, somehow. Just act normal. Everything is fine.

  But my heart’s still thumping in my chest as I get back into my house.

  I don’t know why I feel like I just escaped something.

  CHAPTER 19

  I spend the afternoon inside, with the study blind drawn against the sun, trying once more to get into the email account from Sophie’s diary. I’m optimistic at first. Surely inspiration will strike, it can’t be that hard.

  But I still can’t do it, locked in a cycle of getting the answer to her security question wrong and freezing the account. After that, I focus on trying different passwords, typing in different variations of her “loopysophie” password, before starting to randomly type in words that she might have chosen instead. Amberton, for her school. Charlotte, her middle name. Lilac, her favorite color. What bands did she like? Pop stars? I start typing in names, and then names with numbers—2000, for the year she was born. 99, just because. Eventually I break, my eyes gritty and tired.

  I will sleep on it. And then if I can’t get into it, I will tell the police.

  I groan, my head in my hands. I can just imagine Nicholls, polite as ever: “And what exactly do you think it means if a teenage girl has more than one email address, Mrs. Harlow?” He’ll think I’m looking for a way out. That I just can’t accept that Sophie went through all this alone. That she would rather run away than confide in me. Which is true, I suppose. I can’t.

  I’ll sleep on it, I tell myself. And then I’ll decide.

  I’m winding down for the night, pottering about the kitchen and wiping down surfaces that are already clean—there’s less mess with everyone gone—when the phone rings. I consider letting it ring out.

  “Who the hell’s this?” I mutter to the cat. Charlotte and I used to say this to each other if anyone rang after dinner, parroting our favorite Peter Kay sketch. I check the oven clock: 9:35 p.m. Even by my family’s standards, I’m keeping old lady hours. I reach for the phone.

  “Hello?”

  For a heartbeat, the faint crackle on the line catches at me, casting me back to the other night, at the charity....

  “Mrs. Harlow?” The woman’s voice is soft, American vowels. I relax, a little. It’s not Sophie again.

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “It’s Olivia Marnell. I got your message, about the house.” It still takes me a second to place her, then I do. Not American, Canadian. “I used to be Olivia Corrigan.”

  She’s very polite, apologetic even. I’ve explained who I am, and talked—tactfully at first—about the state of Parklands. I got the impression she doesn’t realize in quite how bad a state it is. Eventually I tell her more bluntly: it’s been pretty much derelict now, at least since I’ve moved in. The trees are so big they could be undermining the houses around it, let alone hers.

  Finally she gets it. “Oh dear.” She sighs. “I do apologize. My parents—they didn’t want to deal with it, really. For personal reasons. And now it’s fallen to me, there’s been a surprising amount to take care of this end, in terms of arrangements, after my mother died.” She sounds tired. “But I’m going to get on top of the house now. I’m going to decide what to do with it, in terms of selling or getting it redeveloped. It shouldn’t go to ruin.”

  “No,” I say. “It could be a beautiful property again.” How can I bring it up? I decide honesty is the best policy. “I can understand it must have been hard for your parents, though, if they were getting older. I heard”—I pause delicately—“I understand there was a family tragedy. In the past.”

  There’s silence on the line.

  “Sorry,” I say hastily. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  “No, that’s OK,” she says slowly. “I’m just not used to talking about it. My husband, my kids—they never knew my sister. And after we lost my dad, then Mom—well, nobody really knows.”

  “So—what happened? I read that she ran away.”

  “Yes,” she says simply. “That’s right.”

  “And after that you didn’t ever hear from her?”

  “No. We never heard from her,” she echoes.

  I’m shocked, somehow. For some reason I thought that there’d have been some sign, at least, some phone call or . . . I don’t know, something they hadn’t mentioned in the papers.

  “But people don’t just vanish, not now. . . .” I stop myself from saying anything else clumsy.

  “I’m afraid they do. It was a different time then, too, no Facebook, nothing.”

  “Even so,” I protest, feeling irritated. How can this woman sound so . . . resigned to it all? Suddenly, I realize that I was hoping to hear what I wanted to hear: Nancy had come back.

  “What was Nancy like?” I ask. “If you don’t mind.” I just want to keep her on the line.

  “What was she like?” She sighs again. “She was clever. She did well in school. She liked horses—she had a pony, Blossom, that she loved.” She laughs
. “He was vicious. He was sold, afterward.”

  “But what was she like to you?”

  “To me? I don’t know. She was my big sister. There were six years between us, so I looked up to her. She used to tease me sometimes, and I’d cry. But she’d braid my hair, sometimes, and let me play with her makeup. And she could make me laugh like no one else ever has.”

  “And what about, erm, boyfriends?”

  I can hear the smile. “I don’t really know. I was only ten when she went. But she was very pretty. She loved attention. I can’t imagine anything got that serious.”

  “I read that he, Nancy’s boyfriend, was questioned by the police, afterward.” She doesn’t bite, but I press on. “I don’t suppose you remember his name?”

  “No, I don’t. They spoke to lots of her friends.” Her voice hardens. “Are you a journalist?”

  “No, absolutely not. Sorry. I don’t want to pry. I just—I’m sorry.”

  But she’s upset now. “This is exactly why my parents left, to escape all the curiosity. To protect me from all the questions. We came to Canada for a new start.”

  I feel bad: I can hear the quaver in her voice under the anger. “I really don’t mean to upset you. It’s just—my daughter’s gone missing too. She ran away.” I might as well admit it. “Your family’s story struck a chord, that’s all, being local, and I wondered what had happened.”

  “Oh,” she says, mollified. “Well, you should have said. You don’t meet many . . .” People like us, I fill in. The ones left behind. “I guess then I’m some years ahead of you.” She doesn’t offer any reassurance, or platitudes.

  “So what do you think happened to Nancy?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know, and there’s where I leave it. I leave it in the hands of God. Or whatever there is.”

  “Why do you think she went?”

  “Well. They were going to send her to boarding school. My parents thought it would be best for her—they were traditional, you know? I’ve wondered if maybe that was why . . . she never seemed that upset. But you just don’t know, do you?”