Mid-afternoon, there was another loud knock at our door. Two police officers, not in uniform. A fair-haired woman and a fat guy, wanting to talk to me. We went into the kitchen, sat around the table, and they told my mum she’d have to stay with me while they asked me questions.
‘Where did you think I would go?’ she said. She parked herself in a chair next to me and caught hold of my hand. There was a time, and it wasn’t even all that far back, when just my mum being in the same room meant that nothing could possibly hurt me. I wondered when that changed. When she lost that power.
The fat guy was Rob Somebody and the woman, who was a bit nicer, was a sergeant, I think, and her name was Sandra Something. I couldn’t always take in what they were saying and the weird thing was that I knew this even as they were talking to me, like they were speaking in Dutch or like something was blocking my ears. They went over and over the last time I’d seen Kerry. At first, I tried to make out I couldn’t remember. But I couldn’t keep it up. So I admitted we’d seen her in The Cut around half-past eight on Halloween night.
‘Where did you go after that?’
‘To a party,’ I said, avoiding Mum’s eyes, but sensing her looking at me with a question on her face. I was going to have to own up about the non-existent Emma Wood.
‘With Zoe Sawyer?’
I nodded.
‘But Kerry didn’t come with you? Why not?’
I bit my lip. ‘It was a Halloween party. Kerry’s church doesn’t like her doing that sort of thing.’
‘You don’t know where she went?’ Sandra asked. ‘You sure about that?’
I shrugged, not meeting anyone’s eye. ‘I just thought she went home, that’s all.’
They asked me about Kerry’s other friends and I had to say she didn’t have any. She really didn’t. Just me and Zoe. No, in fact, just me, and I’m not very good at it, was what I didn’t say.
Fat-Cop was scribbling stuff down all the time. My mum squeezed my hand. The little squeeze somehow made tears prick at my eyes.
Sandra Nice-Cop flicked at her notebook. Then she said: ‘Tell me about Luke Jones.’
I could feel myself blushing. ‘What about him?’
‘He’s Kerry’s older brother. He’s, what, seventeen? And he’s your boyfriend, right?’
I glanced at Mum and back down at the table. ‘Sort of.’
Sandra raised her pale eyebrows. ‘Sort of? He says he is your boyfriend. He says you started going out together back in the summer.’
I nodded. ‘Something like that.’
‘He’s a step-brother, isn’t he? What sort of a relationship does he have with Kerry?’
I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
Sandra smiled at me. ‘Do they get on?’
‘Yes. Yes. He – he tries to look after her. She – he – he’s great with her.’
Sandra flicked a page in her notebook. ‘Perhaps you can help me with something else.’
I nodded, saying nothing.
‘Does Kerry have a mobile?’
‘Umm…’ I thought about how to answer.
‘Only her mum says she doesn’t have one. But her brother texts someone called Kerry quite often. He’s been texting all day asking where she is and if she’s okay. A bit odd, don’t you think?’
I breathed out, hard. ‘I’m not sure.’
Sandra looked at me steadily. ‘You would know, if Kerry had a mobile, wouldn’t you? I know what you girls are like – never off their phones. But that number Luke’s texting – it’s also registered to him. So it could be that Luke’s pretending to text his sister, to cover up for something. See what I mean?’
Heat rose up my neck and face. ‘She does have a mobile,’ I mumbled.
Sandra sat forward. ‘She does? You’re sure?’
‘Yeah. It’s Luke’s old phone. He gave it to Kerry so she could message him if… if…’
‘If?’ Sandra prompted me.
‘Like, if some of the girls at school were after her.’
‘Does she get bullied a lot?’
‘Sometimes.’ I stared down at my hands. ‘Once she got beaten up, in The Cut. It was a few months ago. Luke gave her the phone after that. She really only used it with him. Her mum doesn’t know.’
I looked at the coppers and tried to work out what their faces were saying. They were like blank screens.
‘He was just looking after her, like I said. He tries to keep her out of trouble. Including with her mother.’
My mum chipped in. ‘Are you nowhere near finding the poor girl, officers?’ She was still clutching my hand, a bit harder now. ‘What do you think has happened?’
Sandra shook her head. Like she was going to tell my mum whatever she was thinking. ‘We just don’t know right now, Mrs Ellis, but we have some leads to follow. It’s very possible she’s quite safe, somewhere. But the problem for us is that the family didn’t report her missing until quite late. That means if someone has taken Kerry, they could have gone a long way by now.’
She gave me a one of those smiles where people just move their lips and crinkle their face up, but it’s not a real smile because their eyes don’t flicker. ‘If you think of anything else, Anna. Anything at all.’ And she put a card with her telephone number on it down on the table.
November 2
Twenty-four hours later, there was still no sign of Kerry. I’d told the police what I knew. Well, some of it, anyway. I wasn’t about to get Zoe into any more trouble. She still wasn’t answering her phone and my mum wouldn’t let me out of her sight, so I couldn’t call at the flat. My dad called at her house, but he said there was no one there – it was all in darkness. I had no way of knowing whether the police had got to her. I just told them that we’d seen Kerry at The Cut and we’d left her to make her way home.
It wasn’t quite all the facts of the matter. I left out a lot of stuff about the flats and whose party it was, because I reckoned all that didn’t really matter. Except to get us into trouble – and maybe Jodie too, if they found out who let us into the flat in the first place. We were squatting and using illegal electricity and the place was kitted out with stolen stuff. And what if they found Zoe’s knife? We could actually end up in some sort of prison.
The thing was, at first I didn’t really think Kerry would stay missing. I didn’t imagine she was in any kind of proper danger. I just expected that she’d soon come wandering back home, with some kind of a sob-story.
I texted Luke: Any news x. He texted back: 0. Can’t talk now. He didn’t return the x.
The coppers came back twice that day. The second time, they asked me questions for more than an hour. Mum sat alongside me all the time. The police asked me quite a bit about the empty flat, because by now Luke had told them everything about it and thought she might’ve gone there. But she hadn’t.
Before the officers left, I asked them if they’d spoken to Zoe.
‘We can’t say,’ Sandra said, as she marched out of the door.
I texted again, for the hundredth time. Zoe, where r u? Pls call. x.
After the coppers left, I tried texting Luke again but I didn’t get a reply. I called his number. His voice, when he answered, sounded heavy and flat.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked, knowing as the words came out that this was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever said.
He was silent for a few seconds. ‘Not really.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘That must’ve sounded so stupid.’
More silence. Then Luke said: ‘Do you know anything? Do you know where she went?’
‘I promise I don’t,’ I told him. ‘If I did, I wouldn’t keep it to myself.’
‘Not even to protect Zoe?’
‘No, of course not.’ I leaned against my bedroom wall, bile in my throat. ‘I just want Kerry to come back safe.’
‘
They keep calling her the Mis-per,’ Luke said, sounding suddenly furious.
‘What’s a Misper?’
‘It’s short for missing person. Like she’s not real, she’s just a ...project. A job. I keep saying, call her Kerry. Her name is Kerry.’
I didn’t know how to reply to that.
‘They’ve been searching our house. They’ve been in every room and every cupboard and up in the loft. They think we’ve done something to her.’
‘Is that why they keep taking stuff from your house?’
Luke sniffed. ‘They just say it’s routine. That’s their answer to every question – routine. But what they really mean is, they think we’ve hurt our Kerry. How could they think that, Anna?’ It sounded like Luke was crying. Actually crying. I felt like a big stupid lump of uselessness. And guilt.
November 3
Monday. And still no Kerry. Almost everyone at school knew she was missing, because it had been on the local TV news and the ones that didn’t soon found out, because the police came into assembly and said anyone who could help their enquiries should get in touch.
Some of the girls came up to me in the toilets, wanting to know all the details.
‘She knows more than she’s letting on,’ one of them said. ‘I can tell by her face.’
‘And if that Zoe was involved,’ another one of them started and they all agreed that Zoe would have had some hand in Kerry’s disappearance. ‘She was always picking on her.’
‘You were all always picking on her,’ I burst out and somehow, I found the nerve to walk through them towards the door. One of them pushed me hard so that I stumbled, but I kept walking.
The best parts of that day where when people left me alone. Even the teachers kept giving me that sad, sympathetic look and Mrs Bennett said if I wanted to talk about anything, I could always come to her. Like I would talk to a teacher.
And afterwards, when the police women said that Zoe was in hospital, I begged and begged them to tell me what had happened. Eventually Jenny said that when they’d gone to check out the flat, the day after the party, they’d found Zoe there, on her own. She’d taken some kind of pills and drink and they’d had to rush her to hospital. They’d known this all the time and hadn’t bothered to tell me. I asked if I could go and see her, but Jenny the Scarecrow shook her head.
‘Not right now,’ she said. ‘Let’s wait and see how she gets on, eh?’
‘Her mum,’ I blurted out. ‘Have you spoken to Zoe’s mum?’
Another silence. More loaded looks between Sandra and Jenny.
‘She hits Zoe,’ I said, before I could stop myself. ‘She makes her life a misery. That’s why Zoe’s been staying at the flat. It’s to get away from her.’
‘Let’s take you back home,’ Sandra said. ‘We need to ask you more questions about this, I’m afraid. The fact is – Zoe’s mother is in hospital too. She has a head injury and we think Zoe may have had something to do with it.’
I heard myself moaning and clapped my hand to my mouth. Jenny’s arm around my back kept me upright as I stumbled back along The Cut.
That evening, there were TV cameras in the street and journalists came knocking on the door. My mum told them to get lost. When a second set of reporters came around, she actually swore at them. Then she called Dad and he came over to sit with us.
Mum just left me alone, knowing I didn’t want to talk right then, but my dad couldn’t do that. He kept quizzing me about what had happened the night before and where the party was and what was this about my having a boyfriend?
‘You’re worse than the police,’ Mum said to him. ‘Leave the poor girl alone. She’s in shock.’
‘I’m sorry, Anna,’ he said. He sat beside me on the sofa and put a big arm around my shoulders. I breathed in the smell of his suit, his aftershave. ‘What do you want me to do?’
I couldn’t find anything to say. I shook my head.
‘Some people are out helping the police to search for Kerry,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to do that?’
‘No, don’t go away,’ I pleaded. ‘Just… just for now.’
We watched the local news. It showed Kerry’s school photo and talked about what she was wearing the night before. Sandra the nice-cop was interviewed, but just for something like twenty seconds. It was long enough for her to say they were now concerned about Kerry’s safety and that if anyone had any information – even if they didn’t think it was important – they should call the police as soon as possible. Then they put a number up on the screen.
November 4
Still no Kerry.
Last night a programme called CrimeSeen filmed some sort of reconstruction of the last things Kerry did. Or, the last things they knew about. An actor girl who didn’t look very much like Kerry at all was shown wearing the same chain-store jacket and waving goodbye to some out-of-shot friends in The Cut. So not how it happened at all. But it was supposed to make someone remember something. Something that would help find Kerry. It would be broadcast early next week, Sandra told us.
‘You’re not expecting to find her before then?’ Dad asked.
Sandra didn’t answer.
Mum let me stay away from school, because I couldn’t eat or sleep. A doctor came and left some pills, but I wouldn’t take them. I sat staring at the darkness outside, past my ghost-white reflection. In my head, I kept going over and over what happened on Halloween night. We left Kerry in The Cut, absolutely terrified. Why did I not just take her home? What made me think it was more important to look after Zoe? But I didn’t even do that. I left the party when Zoe was in a half-dance, half-clinch with Goth Boy. And what happened after that? Did Kerry turn up? Did Zoe go back out to find her? Knots tightened and twisted in my insides when I thought how I dreaded Kerry turning up at my door and about all the times Zoe and I schemed to get rid of her. And now, I’d give just about anything to hear her knock.
Every now and then, the faint sound of squeals and muffled explosions cut through the heavy silence, as people set off early fireworks. I pressed my fist into my forehead and screwed up my eyes. I couldn’t make sense of anything I’d done that night. Why did I leave the party so early – and what had Zoe done afterwards? She wasn’t right that day – I knew it at the time. Why didn’t I ask more questions?
Who did the police talk to about Kerry? Was it Dave and Jodie? Why should it be? What had they ever done but be kind to her? Kinder than Zoe and I were. I hoped the police wouldn’t come back and ask me about them.
And why were the police taking things out of Kerry’s house all the time?
There were so many questions. And no answers.
I don’t know how long I sat there, not moving, staring out of the window as it grew darker and darker. I think at some point Mum must have come in and talked to me and put a blanket round my shoulders, because I can’t remember how it got there. I talked to Zoe in my head and asked her all my questions, but I didn’t get any response.
November 5
And still no Kerry.
Another visit from Jenny the Scarecrow and Sandra. I heard them murmuring to Mum and I saw their grim faces before she called me down to speak to them. They both gave me over-bright smiles.
It was becoming a routine. They told me to sit down; Mum made them both cups of tea; they asked how I was today. I asked how Zoe was. No change. And then they got to the point.
‘We’ve gone through Zoe’s phone,’ Sandra said.
‘And?’ I thought I knew what was coming: that Zoe had asked Kerry to meet her that night in The Cut. But it was something else.
Jenny leaned forward. ‘There was a message for you on it. Zoe texted you around three o’clock on Sunday morning. You never got that message, did you?’
I shook my head.
‘No. It looked like Zoe saved it into her phone, but never sent it.’
I waited. �
��And? What did it say?’
Sandra and Jenny flicked looks at each other and away again. Sandra coughed. ‘Oh, look, here’s your mum with that tea. You should have some, Anna. Put some sugar in it.’
I shook my head. ‘What did the message say?’
‘Sweet tea’s good for shock.’ Mum handed me a mug.
My fingers felt slippery as I grasped the handle. ‘What did the message say?’
Jenny put her hand on my knee. I could smell her musky perfume and faintly, cigarette smoke. ‘Zoe was in a very disturbed state of mind that night, wasn’t she?’
I blew steam across the surface of the tea, took a sip and pursed my lips at the taste.
Jenny went on. ‘We have pieced some things together. Zoe had a big row with her mum and it got violent. We understand Zoe pushed her mother and she fell, hitting her head hard. When Zoe left home, her mother was unconscious and bleeding.’
I nodded.
‘Mrs Sawyer is going to be all right. That’s the good news,’ Sandra cut in.
‘What did the message say?’
‘Zoe thought her mum was … She thought she may be dead.’
The mug felt heavy and all my limbs felt light. I put the tea down on the table and clasped my hands together to stop them trembling. ‘Zoe thought she’d killed her own mum?’
Jenny gave a little incline of her head. ‘She did. She wrote a text to tell you. She saved it as a draft on her phone. And then she took some of her mother’s tablets.’
Mum passed me a tissue and put a firm arm around my shoulder.
‘The message said, the magic’s gone all bad. What did she mean, do you think? Zoe says…’ Sandra glanced down at her notebook. ‘She says, You were right. It’s gone too far. Do you know what she’s talking about?’
The Misper Page 18