Moth Girls

by Anne Cassidy

He was the one person she could talk to about Petra and Tina.

  She went on to the sixth form common room. Her class wasn’t until eleven fifteen. There were a few students dotted about and she could hear snatches of music escaping from various sets of headphones. She got herself a drink from the dispenser and sat down. She blew across the top of the cup and saw that there were ten minutes or so to go before the current lesson ended. It was history and she usually sat with Tommy at the side of the classroom next to the window. If she was late he would save a seat for her and vice versa. Today he wouldn’t have bothered because she’d texted him to say she was going to the house, to watch the start of the demolition.

  He would miss her, she thought. He was always writing notes on bits of paper and passing them to her. He liked to comment on the clothes the teacher was wearing or the mood they were in. Then he wrote completely irrelevant points about things that were going on in the world. Once or twice he put little kisses at the bottom of the note and she felt embarrassed by them and found herself looking out of the window in case she blushed and he noticed.

  She remembered the first time she ever saw him. It was at the preliminary meeting of the new sixth form intake where Miss Pearce was welcoming them all. He came in a few minutes late. Mandy was on the end of a row but there was a spare seat next to her so she moved along and let him sit down.

  She was startled by his appearance.

  He had longish hair and wore a suit jacket over skinny trousers and patterned DMs. The buttons of the jacket were done up to the top. Underneath there was a glimpse of a silver T-shirt. On the floor was a briefcase. It was made from hard brown leather and seemed sturdy and old fashioned, something a boy from a private school might carry.

  He looked so different to the other boys in the sixth form. Finally after five years of blazers and dark trousers they were allowed to wear their own clothes. Most of them had on jeans and sports tops and trainers. They’d gone from one uniform to another. Mandy was no different. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, not unlike the other girls in the sixth form.

  Tommy was completely unselfconscious about how he looked and had taken a large pad out of his briefcase and was making notes about what Miss Pearce was saying. He was the only one taking notes. After the talk Mandy noticed some of the boys looking at him warily or dismissively. Tommy seemed unconcerned and struck up conversations with anyone who wanted to talk to him.

  He talked to Mandy for ages and he told her how he was looking forward to university so that he could live away from home and make all his own decisions. He was going to be a journalist, he said, and expose wrongdoing. He’d seemed a little intense then, but he cheered up quickly and made jokes about his old school. The next day, at the first lesson of her English course, he was there early and called to her, ‘I’ve saved you a seat!’ And she sat beside him and they became friends.

  They’d been like that for seven weeks and during that time her feelings had grown and become something else. Every day she looked forward to seeing him and felt aggrieved if he wasn’t around. When she was with him the day seemed brighter somehow, with stacks of time for doing things. She even looked better, her hair fuller, her smile wider. She longed to tell him, to say something to him about the way he made her feel but she did not know where to start. On good days she thought that the same thing might be happening to him. He was instantly popular and chatted to loads of people but he always seemed to look for her as if she were his anchor. If she was around he seemed to feel a need to touch her: lightly on the shoulder, his fingers on her arm, a loose clasp of her wrist or a pat on her back.

  He was genuinely interested in her. He knew about the missing girls, he’d passed the remembrance garden often enough, but when he realised she had been the third girl he was shocked and full of sympathy. To other kids the story was old news but to him it was as if it had happened the previous week.

  The buzzer went for the change of lessons, followed by the noise of doors opening and voices spilling out into the corridors. In moments the sound was louder, as if someone had turned the volume up. The common-room door burst open and several students came in, some chattering, some shrieking, others looking at their mobiles.

  Tommy appeared. He looked round the common room and smiled when he saw her.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘You didn’t miss much in history …’

  She smiled.

  ‘See the house demolished?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He sat down in the next seat, his legs straight out in front of him. He was humming under his breath. He’d moved on from the comment he’d just made. It was another reason why she liked him. He didn’t dwell on her bad experiences. He was upbeat, ready to change the subject. She appreciated that. With him she felt there was the possibility that she could enjoy herself again.

  He was wearing a Fair Isle jumper and loose jeans with plimsolls. His briefcase was sitting on the floor between them. He didn’t look like anyone else in the sixth form. She knew his clothes were from charity shops. He created his own style and boasted that he almost never wore anything that was new. She looked down at her own clothes: dark trousers and the hoodie she had worn to the demolition. Underneath it was a black T-shirt. Not exactly imaginative. She had no style at all but his clothes seemed to tell some kind of story. She wasn’t quite sure yet what that story was.

  ‘History was full of the usual stuff. Imperialism and the Scramble for Africa. Got a couple of new essay titles. I’ve made notes.’

  ‘On a memory stick?’

  ‘No. With a pen. On a piece of paper. I told you I remember it better if I actually write it down. I can photocopy it for you?’

  ‘I can’t read your writing.’

  ‘I’ll go through it with you.’

  ‘A memory stick would be easier.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a misnomer, really. A memory stick that remembers nothing. It should be called a copy stick, as in, there’s a copy of what you want on this.’

  Mandy sighed. It was so easy to get into some kind of profound conversation with Tommy. On the other hand it was difficult not to admire his passion for stuff, even something simple like a conversation about history notes. He was always involved in something. One week he was making music videos, the next he was setting up a joint blog and taking part in writing a novel set in the distant future.

  ‘You do the Shakespeare essay?’ he said, gulping down some water from a bottle.

  ‘I made a start.’

  ‘It’s due in tomorrow.’

  ‘I know. I’ll get an extension.’

  ‘Isn’t that just piling it up to be done later? To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.’

  ‘You sound like Miss Pearce.’

  ‘That reminds me, there was something I wanted to ask you.’

  He picked up his briefcase and sorted through some papers. It was always full of handouts and pages of notes. He religiously printed everything out. ‘I don’t trust computers!’ he’d said over and over. Now he pulled some sheets of paper from a folder and handed them to her. Mandy was expecting some notes from the session she’d missed. Instead it was a printout of a newspaper report. ‘Mystery of Missing Girls’ was the heading.

  ‘What’s this?’ she said, even though she knew full well what it was.

  ‘Miss Pearce has asked me to do a talk about it. For the fifth anniversary.’

  The fifth anniversary was in two weeks.

  ‘It’s just for the sixth form. I think I’ve been asked to do it because I’m one of the few people who weren’t in the school at the time it happened. Thing is I feel a bit awkward about it. I wasn’t sure whether you’d be all right with me doing it.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  Miss Pearce had talked to her about it a couple of weeks before. She’d said she planned to ask Tommy to do it and hoped that Mandy wouldn’t mind.

  ‘I just wanted to check with you. And, she also wants me to write something for the school website. I’ve been doing some research
, I mean, I know you told me all about it but I thought I’d better read up on stuff. Those are some of the documents that I’ve downloaded. If you’re all right with what’s there then I can use them for my research. I hoped you wouldn’t mind looking through and just telling me if they’re accurate.’

  She frowned at the papers in her hand. He looked worried.

  ‘You want me to tell Miss Pearce I won’t do it? I don’t want to upset you,’ he said, reaching across and touching her hand.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I’ve got a free period after English. I’ll look these over and give them back to you at lunch.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The common room door opened and Toni and Leanne came in. They walked straight over to Tommy and Mandy and began talking breathlessly about a party that was happening on Saturday.

  ‘Zoe, in business studies? Her mum and dad are away at the weekend but her older brother is there and he says he’ll make sure the party doesn’t get out of hand. We’ve been invited and you guys as well,’ Toni said, looking from Tommy to Mandy and back again.

  Tommy immediately started to talk about the party. Toni and Leanne pulled up chairs. Mandy folded the papers he’d given her and slid them into her bag. She slipped away while they were all talking.

  ‘Wait,’ he called.

  She turned round and saw him walk towards her. Leanne and Toni looked a bit miffed.

  ‘The thing is … I might not have explained it all that well but this talk I’m going to give is meant to be a sort of final goodbye to the girls? And that will mean that you can surely put it all in the past? What with the demolition and this. It’ll all be gone for you. You can get on with your life.’

  He was looking right into her eyes. She softened. He had it all worked out.

  ‘Course,’ she said. ‘I’ll look at the stuff and get back to you.’

  ‘You will come to this party on Saturday? It’ll be fun.’

  ‘Probably,’ she said.

  Walking away, along the corridor, she thought about what he’d said about her getting on with her life. You can surely put it in the past. ‘The past’; as if it were a box of some sort in which she could lock away troublesome things. He wasn’t to know how often people had said this to her. It wasn’t his fault that he was just echoing words that she’d heard for years.

  Everyone wanted her to move on. Maybe one day she would.

  Five

  After art, Mandy found a quiet carrel in the library and sat down. There were other students about, some with headphones on, most of them focused on writing or reading. She pulled out the printouts that Tommy had given her. She flicked through. They were in date order: the top one was the oldest, from a few days after Petra and Tina had gone missing. ‘Mystery of Missing Girls Deepens.’

  The text was simple and straightforward and summed up the facts of the story.

  At five o’clock on Thursday 28th October, 2010, two twelve-year-old friends, Petra Armstrong and Tina Pointer, entered a house in Princess Street, Holloway, North London. A third girl, unnamed, was due to accompany them but did not.

  The house was owned by George Merchant, seventy-nine, a retired accountant. Sources say that Merchant’s health had been poor and he was mostly housebound. He lived in one room of the large property and the girls, according to their friend, were intent on exploring the dilapidated building. There had been talk of ghosts and hauntings.

  When police entered the property they found George Merchant dead from head injuries. The place had been ransacked and there was evidence of theft. There was no sign of the girls. Forensic examination of the house is continuing. An extensive search of the property and the garden is still ongoing. As yet there is no information on the fate of Petra and Tina. A nationwide search has been set up and their pictures circulated in the media and on social networking sites.

  In the middle of the article were school photographs of Petra and Tina: small rectangular pictures of two smiling girls, taken a few weeks before they went missing. The photographer had come into school in the early weeks of term. Mandy looked at Petra’s photograph. Her hair was long and parted in the middle. It hung smoothly down each side of her face. She had a half smile. She looked demure, shy even. How different to the photos of her dressed up in her girl-band outfit. The Red Roses pictures were posed and showed a made-up face with white teeth. Then Petra looked pouty and grown-up. In real life Petra didn’t smile a lot. She seemed to spend a lot of time chewing at the side of her lip.

  Mandy focused on the picture of Tina. Tina always looked the same. She had curly hair which she held back in hairslides or hairbands. Her smile was wide, showing dimples on each cheek. Her eyes were bright, as if someone were holding a gift for her that she was just about to open. Her Red Roses pictures were exactly the same. Tina was Tina but Petra had different faces that she showed to different people.

  Mandy carried on reading the article.

  The two girls have vanished. The police are following various lines of enquiry. Although these two girls are very young, there is the possibility that they have run away and are hiding. Police forces all over the south-east are asking holiday-home owners to search their properties and outbuildings. The police say they are robustly pursuing their investigations.

  Mandy remembered this story. In the days after the girls went missing there were constant reminders for people to check their outbuildings, sheds, empty flats, holiday homes. Mandy had been baffled by this. She had seen the two girls go into the house. She had told the police this. Why would the police think that they had come out of it again and run away? Mandy remembered Tina had been wearing an old hoodie, the sleeves too long; it looked as though it belonged to her mother. Petra had on a light jacket and was shivering as she stood on the street.

  Why would Petra and Tina have gone into the house, come back out again and then, on a moment’s whim, decided to run away to the country? How could they have been hiding, unnoticed, in some flat or cottage or caravan? Something inside her had told her firmly that this wasn’t what had happened. Five years later it sounded just as preposterous.

  The next article Tommy had printed off was from a few days later. This was when the police had a new theory. Mandy remembered the excitement of her mother and father when this news had spread. It seemed like a possible answer.

  Missing Girls May Have Witnessed Murder

  Despite a nationwide search, there are still no clues to the whereabouts of Petra Armstrong and Tina Pointer. The two twelve year olds went into the house of an elderly man on October 28th and have not been seen since.

  At a press conference late last night Chief Inspector Malcolm Roberts made a statement. ‘It is our conviction that the events that took place in 58 Princess Street may have happened simultaneously. That is to say the murder of Mr George Merchant may have taken place in the same window of time that the two young girls entered the house. In this case we are looking into the theory that the two girls could have witnessed the murder of Mr George Merchant by a person or persons unknown. This may have provoked an abduction of the girls and for this reason we believe that the girls may be being held against their will in some unspecified location.’

  Appeals to the public have identified a van that was parked outside the property on the night of the incident.

  Police say that investigations into Mr Merchant’s past show that, as an accountant, he had dealings with some clients who were linked to organised crime. ‘This could have been a payback killing for some wrongdoing,’ Chief Inspector Roberts said.

  Meanwhile police are looking for a white Ford van with a scrape along the driver’s side and possibly a 2007 registration plate. They are also asking the public to be vigilant and report any unusual activity in their local vicinity.

  Mandy sat back. She pulled at the chain around her neck. There was a piece of amber on it that her mother had given her from an old brooch that she’d found in a collectibles market. Mandy had made it into a pendant. It felt slippery under her fingers and sh
e pulled it up and pressed it to her lips.