When You're Gone

by Marguerite O'Callaghan

  9

  Lydia unlocks the front door to be greeted by a very excited Molly in the front hall. She kicks off her ankle boots on the way towards the kitchen and calls out to see if either of her parents are home.

  As she waits for the kettle to boil, she leans on the counter, flicks through a celebrity magazine and a few pages in, spots a photo of Kate at a glamorous fashion event in Mayfair. She smiles and looks a little closer. In the photo, Kate is growling like a wild cat with one hand in a claw-like position. She’s wearing a leopard-print, oversized t-shirt as a dress, bright red lipstick, and a green baseball cap. She’s probably the only person in the world who could pull off an outfit like that, thinks Lydia. The other girl in the photograph is a pretty, wholesome-looking blonde, wearing a coral maxi dress, black cropped blazer and simple silver earrings. Lydia knows that if Kate saw this photo she’d find it highly entertaining and would enjoy seeing herself being so outrageous next to a sweet stranger she probably spoke to for two seconds before abandoning forever, their short friendship immortalised with the flash of a camera.

  Lydia pulls the page out, makes some tea, and realises that this is the first time she’s been able to smile in over a week. The thought washes over her, making her feel cold and ashamed, like she shouldn’t be smiling. She grabs her bag, shoves the magazine cut-out inside then walks up towards her bedroom on the second floor, followed closely by Molly.

  As she passes her parents’ bedroom on the first floor, Lydia peeks inside to find them asleep on top of the bed covers, a red woolen blanket over their legs.

  Her dad is spooning her mum, his mouth wide open, and he lets out a snore that gives Lydia a fright at first, then makes her smile. He’s in a deep, exhausted sleep and looks kind of silly and vulnerable to Lydia, who isn’t used to seeing her parents like this. Her mum is fast asleep too and looks more serene. This is the first time in a week where the couple don’t look like frantic traumatised ghosts.

  Lydia takes a few steps into the room, and Molly follows. She allows herself a minute to gaze at her parents, and the sight makes her suddenly feel strange. They look so adorable she almost lets out a sob and has the urge to climb into bed with them like she and Kate used to when they were younger.

  Lydia’s heart is flooded with love and emotion at seeing her parents looking so peaceful and ordinary. She knows she’s lucky to have been raised by them. They’re good people who love whole-heartedly, and she knows their hearts must be breaking right now, just like hers is.

  As she moves quietly out of the room, Lydia feels different somehow, like she knows what she has to do. She must be strong. She must take action and be brave for her parents and her sister.

  When she gets to her own room she takes a hot shower in the ensuite and hums to herself. She knows that she needs to make a plan. There are things she should be doing and people she needs to speak to, to learn more about Kate’s life and where she could be.

  When she’s showered and towel-drying her hair, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the sink. The condensation means her reflection is blurry. It could be anyone in the mirror. It could definitely be Kate. She wipes the wet surface to reveal a cheek, then another bit so she can see some of her mouth and nose. Then, she wipes a little more so she can see the reflection of dark wet hair and a few inches of pale collar bone. She uses her finger to write ‘I miss you’ on the mirror and watches as the letters drip and become distorted. Then, catching her mind drifting away from the task at hand, Lydia wipes the mirror totally clean and stares resolutely into her dark eyes for a second or two before turning and leaving the bathroom.

  She isn’t sure why, but she feels the need to take a look in her sister’s room and doesn’t want her parents to see her doing it. It’s strange, because this is not a time to be careful with privacy and respecting family members’ space, now that Kate has pretty much disappeared from the face of the earth, but it’s been drilled into Lydia to stay out of her sister’s stuff for so long that it seems like a betrayal to do it. Especially now.

  A few minutes later, she quietly makes her way down the hall to Kate’s room, closes the door behind her and starts to go through the dresser drawers.

  She finds postcards and letters from Kate’s friends and classmates, and a few cards from their family in Florida, but nothing particularly interesting at all, and certainly nothing that indicates where Kate might be.

  Then, Lydia tackles the wardrobes, pulling out coats, shoes and several dresses. Before she knows it, the room looks like a bomb has exploded in it, but she doesn’t stop. There are large storage boxes under the bed, so she makes some space near the window and starts to pull them out. As she’s going through the first one, filled with old issues of Vogue, Lydia realises that she hasn’t come across anything in Kate’s handwriting yet. If someone were to go through Lydia’s stuff, they would find so many random notes, diary entries, or doodles she’s kept, never mind the bad poetry she’s written over the years. But Kate has none of that stuff, and Lydia thinks she was probably too busy living life to actually plan it or think about it. Lydia is the daydreamer in the family, whereas Kate made her dreams up as she moved from one adventure to the next.

  After a few minutes, she comes across a box of new, unopened make-up, and she thinks Kate must’ve been given it after a modelling job. She was always getting freebies like that. Lydia opens a black eyeliner stick, and using a compact mirror, puts some on her lower lids, just the way Kate does; taking it right to the inner corner of each eye, and making the line slightly thicker towards the outer edge. Lydia smiles and feels closer to her sister, now that they have matching make-up.

  Then, she comes across an iPhone, and wonders if that was a freebie too. It doesn’t have a box, so Lydia thinks it could be from when Kate was on a job in Japan six months ago. They sometimes gave them phones and iPads so they could stay in touch with everyone on the team during the project. Lydia sets the phone aside with the make-up and goes through the remaining boxes, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary in any of them. They’re mostly full of shoes, belts, handbags, and old school books.

  When the room is almost back to normal after a quick tidy up, Lydia runs back to her own bedroom with the phone and make-up. Her parents are up, she can hear them moving around downstairs and she doesn’t want them to come looking for her until she’s had the chance to remove all the eye-liner and take a look at the phone.

  She plugs it in, and waits for the light to come on. It needs a passcode. Her heart sinks. But, on the off-chance that there could be anything on there that could help to find Kate, she resolves to unlock it, and tries ‘1234’, then ‘0000’.

  Neither guesses are correct, and Lydia is afraid she’ll be totally locked out of the phone if she enters another incorrect number. She takes a chance, and tries their birthday: ‘1008’ for 10th August, and it works!

  Her heart is racing, she goes straight to messages on the phone and scrolls through them. There are a few in the inbox from someone called ‘Gig Guy’ from nine months ago that seem a little flirty, and then suddenly come to an abrupt end. Then there’s loads from someone called ‘Matt’ that are much older; from about eighteen months ago:

  ‘Can you call me?’

  ‘You’re late’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Did you get my message?’

  There are several from Kate in response. Lydia thinks it’s a little strange because she’s never heard of anyone by that name. She will have to give the phone to the police, and they can figure out who these guys are or if they know something. The texts are from ages ago, but maybe Kate still talks to them now on her new number.

  She goes to the photo gallery on the phone and opens up the first image. At first, Lydia thinks it’s a modelling shot from one of Kate’s hyper-sexed lingerie campaigns, but she quickly realises what she’s seeing is like nothing she’s ever seen before.

  In the photograph, there is rope tied around someone
’s wrists so that the flesh is red and bruised. Lydia sits down on the bed and stares at the image for a second, then swipes to the next one, which is even more shocking. It looks like Kate’s mouth, and it’s gagged with a scarf, or material of some kind.

  It’s too much for Lydia to take in; a cold sweat breaks out on her forehead, and she feels very light-headed. What were her parents going to think?

  10

  Barbara Stone has been on the phone all night. Since the police aren’t getting very far with finding her daughter, she has decided to take action herself and is contacting everyone Kate has ever met, or spoken to, to tell them she’s missing. Lots of people in the US haven’t even heard the news yet, and it’s important they’re on the look-out for any sign of her.

  After calling about twelve people, Barbara spends an hour talking to her sister, Jane about what’s been going on, and although Jane offers to get on the next flight from Orlando to London, Barbara asks her not to. She appreciates the offer but tells Jane they are coping just fine on their own for now; they’ve had the media hounding them for interviews, and they’re just trying to keep their heads down and stay focused on finding Kate.

  Upstairs, on the second floor, there’s a light on in Kate’s bedroom. Fingers slowly trace over the pink floral sheets on her bed, over ornaments and books, then land on a photograph of Kate taken a few years ago.

  A drawer is opened, and a black lace bra is carefully pulled out, examined, then put back in the drawer. A heavy, wooden jewelry box on the dresser is opened, and a delicate silver dragonfly choker pulled out. The person pushes the necklace into their pocket.

  Suddenly Barbara sees that it’s nearly 2AM, and decides to go to bed. She feels like she can finally sleep tonight. All the talking on the phone has left her feeling drained.

  As she reaches the first-floor landing, she notices the light is on in Kate’s room on the floor above, and for half a second she thinks it’s all over, and her daughter is back. But then, she realises it must be Lydia; upset or unable to sleep, and decides to go and see if she’s okay.

  When she reaches the door, Barbara jumps, and lets out a squeal of surprise. Simon puts his hands up and apologises profusely, looking embarrassed and shocked. He stutters and blinks at Barbara.

  ‘I’m so sorry Mrs Stone... I just... I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted to come in here and just say a prayer for Kate, kind of, and... I’m sorry, I’ll go!’

  Simon pushes past her, and disappears down the hall to Lydia’s room. Barbara takes a look around, then turns out the light and goes back downstairs to her own room, wondering why it felt so wrong to have him in there; like it was a violation of her daughter’s space.

  11

  Lydia has been on social media constantly and if a notification comes through in the middle of the night on the ‘Find Kate Stone’ page she checks it immediately and makes sure the volume on her phone is at its maximum and right next to her head all night long.

  But so far, no-one seems to know anything, and the messages haven’t given her any new information about where Kate might be. She hasn’t told anyone about the phone she found in Kate’s room, either. But she can’t stop thinking about it. She wants to know who ‘Matt’ and ‘Gig Guy’ are, but if she hands the phone over to police, they will see the weird photos of Kate. And the more Lydia looks at the photos, the more she thinks Kate took them for someone else; like some sexual fantasy, maybe. People are already saying awful things about her because she’s a model and went to Haven, and strangers are jumping to wild conclusions that she is a high-class sex worker or on drugs. Some people have even started saying that she’s faking her own kidnapping for media attention. Lydia knows that if these photos are leaked, they could end up all over the place. She will have to think very carefully about this, and part of her feels like Kate wanted it to be her that found them. Now was her chance to do something helpful and courageous for a change, not just sit on the sidelines like a scared little girl.

  Lydia takes the phone out of a bag on the floor, and looks at the images again. A couple of them are just selfies that Kate could have done for fun, or as some weird experiment, but the one where she is gagged is disturbing. It looks so real. In fact, if the other images weren’t there with it and obviously taken at the same time, Lydia would be terrified. She looks at the date and time on the images. They were all taken on July 18th, 2014, between 6.15pm and 7.00pm. Lydia imagines Kate took them in this house in her room, alone, and then just forgot about them or sent them to someone. Maybe a guy she was dating who asked for them. Lydia reads back over the messages from Matt and Gig Guy, but they seem so boring and innocent. It had to be someone else.

  She opens her laptop and types ‘fetish dating’ into Google. She’s not even sure what she’s looking for, but part of her wonders if Kate could have had friends or boyfriends that no-one else knew about, people she went to Haven or other fetish clubs with. If people on the fetish scene know Kate, then they might know where she is now or who she was with that night at the club. The police haven’t found anything yet, so she needs to do something that might help.

  There’s one site that keeps on popping up: ‘FetWorld’, and Lydia looks at it. It seems to be a lifestyle website with a forum, dating ads, a way to build profiles, makes friends and find out about events. Lydia sees a thread in the events forum about Haven, starts reading, and after half an hour, she’s totally engrossed and mesmerized. She can’t believe that there’s a whole world out there, in this very city, that she had no idea existed. The profile photos people use on the forum are pretty scary; there are lots of piercings, tattoos, corsets, latex and usernames like ‘Dom4babygirl’ or ‘DaddysAngel’. Lydia clicks into a few of the profiles and learns that there are all kinds of labels for all kinds of fetishes or desires, and generally, people are looking for someone to either dominate them, or submit to. Most of the people on the forum are also involved with, or want to be involved with multiple partners. Lydia sees the word ‘play’ a lot too, and assumes it means something sexual. She can’t believe that her eighteen-year-old sister went to events with people like this. How involved was Kate with the world of S&M? Some of the photos that girls put up are also eerily similar to the ones on Kate’s phone and like lots of the images on the site, you can’t actually identify Kate in the shots. Lydia only knows it’s her on the phone images because she’s so close to her, but on a site like this, it would be very easy to remain anonymous, as most of the profile pictures were body parts or masked faces.

  Lydia scrolls through page after page of dating profiles, scared that she is going to see a photo of Kate, and simultaneously hoping for it. Then, she decides she’s going to start a forum thread; there’s no harm in it, and this is exactly the kind of place that people who go to Haven will see it. She sets up a profile as quickly as possible, and writes a post in the forum, asking anyone who knows Kate Stone, or thinks they may have seen her at Haven on Friday 6th May, to please get in touch. She attaches two photos of Kate; one modelling shot where she is wearing a PVC catsuit, and one taken from the school graduation ball. Lydia hopes that the PVC catsuit is closer to what she may have looked like at Haven. She clicks ‘post’, and is filled with hope; all it takes is for one person to see this, recognise Kate, and the door to her secret life could open, overnight.

  Lydia rummages around in the make-up bag on her desk and pulls out the eyeliner she took from Kate’s room, applies a thick line under each eye, and admires the effect in the mirror. She takes her hair down and realises that like this, she is much more like her sister. Lydia would have never worn eye make-up like this in the past; at most she wears a little bit of light brown eyeshadow and mascara if she has a big night out, and pretty much always ties her hair up. But she feels different now; braver, and wants to test drive her new look. Lydia looks at the clock. It’s five-thirty PM; she has enough time to walk into the village and get a green tea before dinner.

  She goes downstairs and slips out the front door wi
thout telling her parents. She doesn’t want them to comment on her new look.

  Lydia walks down East Heath Road, along the crumbling footpath at the edge of the woods, and glances occasionally into the trees. Spring is in full bloom now and she inhales its wonderful scent and thinks about the wild flowers she and Kate would pick, and give as gifts when they were younger, tying the little bouquets together with pieces of pink ribbon their mother cut up for them.

  Birdsong drowns out the sound of the occasional car driving past, and the place is thick with growth and new life. Lydia longs to go into the heath, to walk through the wild grass, and see the squirrels climbing the trees, and the dogs out for their evening runs. But it will be getting dark soon, and it’s not a place you want to be at night. Instead, she crosses the road, and walks the short distance into the village. There are lots people around, but none that Lydia recognizes and she’s suddenly aware that with her hair down and all this eye make-up on, she looks very different, and wonders if she’ll bump into anyone she knows.

  It also occurs to Lydia that she’s pretending to be Kate. In fact, she really feels like her right now, with her hair and make-up this way, and she finds herself trying to walk more confidently and quickly, like Kate does.

  She buys a green tea from a stall near the station, finds a bench and sits down to check her email. There’s a new message from FetWorld, and her heart skips a beat when she sees the notification. It’s from someone called ‘YS13’ and has: ‘A friend of Kate’ as the subject line. Lydia can barely breathe as she reads:

  ‘Can you meet tonight at seven outside London Bridge station? I want to help.’

  Lydia is on her feet immediately. It’s six o clock now. There’s time. She types: ‘YES! I’ll be there!’, presses send, then power-walks up the road towards home. She needs to grab her bag, charge her phone a little bit and call a taxi to take her into town.