When You're Gone

by Marguerite O'Callaghan

  12

  The sky seems to have taken a turn and is suddenly overcast and about to get dark.

  Barbara is in the kitchen, washing dishes and notices the change in weather.

  Then, she sees movement at the blue gate at the end of the garden and takes a few moments to let her eyes adjust.

  She leans forward and stares, open-mouthed as Kate runs up the path towards the back door.

  Barbara has spent eighteen years looking at her twin daughters and although they’re identical, she can tell them apart, even from behind.

  But this evening, when Lydia runs towards her in the half-light, she sees only Kate and cannot believe she’s come home, alive and well.

  She reaches the back door just as it’s being pushed in and when she catches her daughter’s eye, for a second, she still thinks it’s Kate she’s looking at.

  When Barbara realises her mistake, she breaks into a sob.

  ‘Lydia... your eyes... you look like...oh my God!’

  Barbara goes to hug Lydia, but disappointment has flooded her body and she finds herself stumbling backwards instead.

  She puts her hands out to steady herself, finds a chair, and collapses into it, head in hands.

  Lydia immediately knows what’s happened and glancing in the mirror across the room at her wild hair and the glint in her dark eyes, she can see why her own mother mistook her for her twin.

  She instantly feels guilty and squats down in front of her mum to apologise.

  ‘I know I look like her today. I’m so sorry, Mummy.’

  Barbara takes a deep breath and shakes her head.

  She stands up and so does Lydia. She whispers that it’s okay, she had just been thinking about Kate and wondering where she was, then looked up and it was like she was there, running to her.

  Lydia has imagined the same thing about twenty times a day for the past ten days, so she knows exactly what her mum is going through, but she doesn’t have time to stop and apologise any more.

  ‘I’ve got to go out, Mum. I’m sorry. I’m meeting some friends in town that might know stuff about this club, Haven. I’ll let you know how it goes, okay?’

  With that, Lydia runs upstairs. She needs to be out of the house in twenty minutes.

  13

  McCarthy and his team are having a meeting about Kate Stone. On the wall behind them is a large whiteboard with trafficking, kidnap, runaway, accidental death, cover-up and murder written in black marker. Under each heading are various scenarios, suspects, motives and outcomes.

  McCarthy is pacing up and down the room. He’s frustrated that they still don’t have any information about who Kate was with at the club on the night she went missing. All of the bar staff and door men have been questioned and nobody can say with any certainty that they even remember seeing her.

  The problem is that she may have been wearing a costume, mask, even something that covered her whole head. The police have spoken with the team who run the ‘Play Room’ and none of them recall seeing Kate that night either, although one or two say they might have seen her there before.

  McCarthy has had another thought about how Kate may have left the club, although it’s far-fetched, even for him.

  He can see from the security footage that most of the performance equipment and dungeon set-up is event-specific and does not belong to the club. That means it was brought as a whole piece or assembled inside. What if Kate hid, or was hidden in one of these pieces and carried out, somehow?

  McCarthy gets a small team looking at this theory. He needs a detailed list of everything that was in the club that night and information about who brought it in and out. He also wants a series of still images collected from the night, showing every time a piece of furniture, box, even a large suitcase that could potentially conceal a person or a body inside was moved in or out.

  After the meeting, Jared Cooper knocks on the door, and introduces himself to McCarthy and Davies. Jared is a human trafficking expert, and has been called in to help locate possible places that Kate may be if she has been kidnapped and sold for sex. He suggests they start searching for her online, and explains that he and his team are dedicated to infiltrating and exposing criminals who use the dark web to advertise people who have been trafficked. The dark web exists in parallel to the internet as we know it, but to enter the forums and chat rooms there, you have to know exactly where to look, and what to say. Jared tells the detectives that he’s familiar with Haven, and is certain that quite a lot of the people that hang out there are also involved with some very disturbing and illegal things. But he also thinks that Haven is nothing compared to the other clubs that exist in London. There are some really weird, twisted people out there, who know exactly how to groom a young girl, reel her in, and before she knows what’s happening, she’s isolated, and in danger.

  Jared seems almost certain that Kate has been sex-trafficked, and although McCarthy is happy to have his experience and vigilance on the case, he’s also slightly disturbed. Jared tells them that he and the team will start looking for anyone or anything that might lead them to Kate, using the aliases and profiles they have been working on.

  Infiltrating a highly exclusive and secretive criminal circle takes months, sometimes years, but Jared is confident that they are in a good position to find out if Kate is out there; assuming the person or people that took her are trying to make money from her.

  ‘The only problem is if she was a hit for someone, and they paid up-front. That way, they won’t need to sell her now, and she could be anywhere... fingers crossed though!’

  McCarthy watches Jared make his way down the hallway, and is pretty sure he can hear him whistling Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’.

  To McCarthy, Jared Cooper is worryingly upbeat for a sex crime expert.

  14

  In the taxi, Lydia tries to stay calm, but nerves get the better of her and she starts to feel disoriented and a bit nauseous. When the driver tries to make conversation, she comes across as rude and disinterested, but she’s just trying to stop herself from going into panic mode, crying or throwing up on the back seat.

  They arrive at London Bridge just a few minutes before seven and Lydia fumbles with cash to pay for the fare. The driver has kind eyes, and smiles at her in the rearview mirror, asking if she’s alright. Lydia is breathing quickly and barely able to speak, so she nods instead, holds out two twenty pound notes, and tells him to keep the change - almost nine pounds - as she grabs at the door handle to get out.

  Once on the street, she realises how mad this whole thing is, and how unlikely it is, that this person she is meeting, whoever it is, knows anything about her sister. She had been so excited to get the message on FetWorld, that she hadn’t really thought it through, and now that she’s here, Lydia feels stupid and vulnerable for putting a post on a fetish website, expecting to get a normal response.

  She starts to panic further and is convinced it’s probably going to be some weird pervert that turns up, or worse, no-one at all. How will she even know what they look like? She doesn’t have a phone number for this person, and there are three exits from the station. She has no idea which one to wait at.

  Lydia chooses the busiest exit and stands right outside. She assumes that this person, if they really exist, has seen the photographs she put on the forum, or better yet, if they actually really know her sister, they will not have a problem recognising her. She is Kate’s identical twin, after all.

  Lydia checks the time on her phone, sees that it’s four minutes past seven, takes a deep breath, and looks around. Everyone seems to be staring at her. She feels dizzy and reaches into her bag for the bottle of water she threw in there on her way out the door, then leans back on the tiled wall of the station entrance, and asks Kate to give her some courage to do this. She doesn’t feel strong, or brave. In fact, she feels completely out of her comfort zone and lost.

  It’s extremely busy at the station too with a constant stream
of city workers, students, and people on nights out. The shouting, noise and movement makes Lydia feel paralysed, like she’s drowning in it all. She feels the familiar slow numb of panic start in her legs and creep upwards to her stomach and chest. She tells herself to concentrate on breathing and everything will be alright. Her phone rings, and she nearly jumps out of her skin. It’s Simon.

  ‘I’m at your house with your mum and... well... you’re not here?’

  She’s actually kind of happy to hear from him for the first time in days. He tries to be cute, and says the last bit of the sentence in a sing-songy way, but Lydia finds it irritating; she can feel the anger rising in her chest, and she rolls her eyes. But, as annoying as Simon is, he is helping with the panic and Lydia can’t help but be grateful for that.

  ‘Sorry Si, I forgot you were coming over. I have to meet someone. Can I call you later?’

  Simon says something in response, but Lydia doesn’t hear; there’s a woman standing about four feet away, smiling right at her.

  Yukio Shimada introduces herself to Lydia and tells her quickly that she’s a performer at Haven and knows her sister. When she hears this, Lydia feels confident that she’s done the right thing in coming. She thanks Yukio profusely for responding to the message and tells her how desperate she is to find her sister.

  They walk across the busy street, away from the crowds, through Borough Market, and towards the river. Yukio looks at Lydia very closely and smiles.

  ‘You’re a hundred percent identical. I can’t believe it. Someone at the club told me that Kate was missing and they had read about you. I didn’t know she had a sister until then, nevermind a twin.’

  Yukio goes on to tell Lydia that she had met Kate a few times at Haven and they had got along very well. Lydia immediately fires a million questions at her, wanting to know what she did at the club, what she said to Yukio, who she was with, did she see her on Friday 6th? Yukio smiles, and suggests they sit on a bench, overlooking the river.

  ‘I am so sorry, but I really don’t recall many details of who Kate was with. One of the times, I spoke with her for about thirty minutes, and she seemed like she was there alone. I saw her in the crowd another night when I was performing, and she was having fun and dancing but, again, I didn’t notice who she was with, if anyone.’

  Lydia is frustrated. Why did Yukio meet her if she can’t help? She tells her that it came as a shock to her parents to even find out that Kate was in any way interested in the fetish scene. In fact, they’re deeply in denial about all that stuff.

  The pair sit in silence for a minute or two and Lydia stares down at her hands, desperately trying to think about what to ask next. She glances up at Yukio, who’s staring ahead now, in an almost meditative state. What a strange person, Lydia thinks. She has no idea what sort of performer Yukio is, but assumes she’s a stripper or dancer of some kind.

  Lydia has always been fascinated with Japan and Japanese people; especially with the contradiction in their culture; they could be so traditional, submissive, punctual, and at the same time, celebrate the quirky, cute and strange in a way that no other people seemed to. Yukio is a great example of this, she’s demure, softly spoken and calm, with an air of integrity and grace about her, but she works as a fetish performer and is part of the S&M world. It seems like such a contradiction to Lydia and she struggles to believe it. But lately lots of things were hard to believe and her sister was maybe part of this world too, perhaps more than anyone could ever imagine.

  Suddenly, Yukio starts to speak, but continues to stare ahead blankly and the words come out in quick succession, so that Lydia struggles to hear all of them. Her voice is so soft and so quiet, that Lydia has to lean in very close to catch any of it.

  ‘Two beautiful princesses live in a castle in the middle of a huge, scary forest. The castle has three fierce dragons protecting it: one that breathes fire, one that breathes icy water, and one that breathes strong wind. If anyone tries to get inside the castle walls without the king’s permission, the dragons will kill them, and likewise, if anyone tries to leave without his permission, the dragons will kill them, too.

  One night when the princesses are falling asleep, a witch appears to them, and warns that if one of them doesn’t leave, the whole castle with fall to the ground, killing everyone inside. And they must do it by their sixteenth birthday.

  The princesses are terrified, and the next day they run to the king and queen to tell them about the witch. Of course, their parents convince them it was just a bad dream, to just ignore it and after a few months they start to forget about the witch and are happy again. Until, a week before their sixteenth birthday when they wake in the middle of the night and the ceiling is caving in around them. In the rubble and dust, the witch appears, and once again warns them that one of them has to leave before their sixteenth birthday or everyone around them will die. They must choose.

  When the witch leaves, the princesses collapse in tears. They cannot decide which one of them should leave and they decide that they will both go because they want to stay together. But the night before they are supposed to leave, one princess stays awake while the other sleeps, and slips out into the night. She leaves a note to tell her sister not to follow her and to lead a happy life. She knows she’s strong enough to get past the dragons and one day she’ll return to the castle.’

  Yukio turns and smiles widely at Lydia, as if she has given her some vital information. Lydia stares back, coldly, shaking her head in disbelief. She asks Yukio what her point is. There’s an anger swelling in Lydia now. Yukio looks ashamed and apologises.

  ‘What happens at the end of the story, anyway? At least tell me that much?’ snaps Lydia.

  But Yukio says that that’s all she remembers of the story.

  ‘What a load of crap! Do you know anything about my sister at all? What kind of freak are you?’

  Lydia’s on her feet, and paces up and down in front of Yukio. Her hands are shaking. She’s never spoken to anyone like this before, but a rage is growing inside of her. She glares at Yukio, who continues to sit silently on the bench, looking out over the river.

  Lydia walks away, lighting a cigarette to calm her nerves. She walks as far as Embankment station, across the bridge to Trafalgar Square and once she’s calmed down, she calls her mum to tell her about Yukio.

  Tears stream down her face as her mother’s soothing voice tells her it will all be okay and to just get in a taxi and come home.

  15

  Lydia wakes in the middle of the night, covered in sweat. She’s been having strange nightmares involving fetish scenarios with Yukio, Hugh Thomas, Simon, even her parents.

  The trauma of her missing sister, mixed with the uncertainty of what has happened and all of the research she has been doing into Kate’s secret life is making her feel like she’s losing her mind and this is the third night in a row she’s had a dream like this.

  Lydia turns to see Simon sleeping soundly next to her. This is the first night he’s stayed over in about a week and she’d hoped that having him close would mean the nightmares would stop.

  She longs to have a hot shower, but it’s not even 5AM and the noise is bound to wake Simon, so she decides to put on her dressing gown and go downstairs, instead. Camomile tea and maybe some television might help to relax her a bit and clear the dark thoughts of torture chambers and whips from her mind.

  Lydia creeps down the stairs and gets Molly from her dog bed in the kitchen, pats a spot on the sofa for her to lay on and flicks through the channels, looking for something light to watch.

  About five minutes into an episode of ‘Friends’, Lydia hears something that makes her jump. It sounds like someone whispering her name. The hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and she reaches for the remote to turn the volume down. Molly stirs at the movement and looks at Lydia out of one eye.

  ‘Molly, did you hear something?’

  Lydia is trying to comfort herself by talking to Molly
and the dog cocks her head to one side in response to Lydia’s question.

  She listens for the voice again, but hears nothing, and stays on the sofa for the next few hours, occasionally dozing, but unable to sleep properly. She rests her hand on Molly’s head, grateful for the comfort of having her close. As soon as she hears movement upstairs in the morning, Lydia goes to have a shower. She needs to get out of the house to clear her head.

  Once on the heath again, Lydia immediately feels more normal, although she can’t shake the memory of the voice she heard in the living room just a few hours previous. It had sounded so much like Kate.

  She walks around the pond, and contemplates making an appointment with Dr Hendry. She is now, technically, hearing things and thinks that talking to a professional might help. She slows down and takes out her phone to find the surgery number.

  Dr Hendry is a very friendly, wholesome woman who knows the Stones well and Lydia feels like she can trust her. But at the last second, she decides not to call, just yet. She can’t bear the thought of one more person looking at her with sympathy. She already feels pathetic. Instead, Lydia decides to check her messages on Facebook and see if anyone new has contacted her about Kate.

  There are three hundred new notifications on the ‘Find Kate Stone’ page and Lydia has to go through them one by one. Most are just people commenting on how sad they feel and saying how beautiful Kate is. Quite a few people have shared the story to their Facebook walls with words of condolence, but Lydia doesn’t recognise one single name. At this stage, the story is all over the web, and strangers come across it as they scroll through videos of funny cats, cute babies or celebrity gossip. Kate is becoming a ‘story’.