by Rosie Walker
Then he goes into his bedroom and hides the iPad under his pillow, so Maggie doesn’t use it.
It was the last thing Dad gave him before he disappeared.
Helen
Huge thumps down the stairs herald Zoe’s re-entry into the room, the air around her crackling with chaos.
‘Thought you were running late ten minutes ago?’ Now she’s had a few minutes of quiet, she’s ready to tease Zoe and be friends again.
Zoe groans. ‘Yeah, yeah. If I didn’t have to get the stinking bus, I’d have loads more time. It’s full of wankers, by the way.’
Helen chuckles. ‘Did you find your folder?’
‘Yes, but not the homework. Mr K is literally going to shit on me.’
‘I don’t think you mean that literally.’ Helen suppresses a smile. ‘And watch your language, Zoe.’
‘Whatever,’ Zoe mumbles, grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl and shouldering her backpack. ‘Don’t suppose you could give me a lift?’
‘Sorry. Got a conference call in ten minutes.’ Helen grimaces.
Zoe pulls a face right back. ‘Sounds boring.’
‘Probably will be quite boring, yep. Building regulations, council regulations, and historical considerations and blah blah …’
Zoe pretends to fall asleep, making enormous and exaggerated snoring noises as she pulls open the front door. ‘Have fun with that, Mum! Laters.’
Helen gathers up her breakfast dishes and stacks them in the dishwasher. ‘Looks like it’s just me and you for the day now, Alfie.’
In his bed in the corner of the kitchen, Alfie thumps his tail in acknowledgement, his head resting on his paws. He’s always a little glum when someone leaves the house. When Tony left, Helen worried about Alfie more than Zoe – he wouldn’t get out of his bed for three days except for wees in the garden. That suited Helen at the time, however, because she couldn’t get out of bed very easily either.
Helen pours herself another tea and carries it to the desk in the living room. Piled high with papers and tucked into a corner surrounded by bookshelves, this desk is exactly what teenaged Helen would have imagined as the ideal workspace. The only difference from her youthful imaginings is that instead of drawing elaborate children’s book illustrations, she drafts architectural concepts for the NHS’s Property Services, getting outline planning permission for the sale and eventual redevelopment of former care homes. It’s Helen’s job to visualise the transformation of large crumbling buildings into perfect little units for upwardly mobile young professionals, so that big property companies will buy them and inject much-needed cash into NHS coffers.
Secretly, Helen thinks the kind of apartments she designs on projects like these are soulless and identical, like a dozen prefabs stacked on top of each other. And the insides of these beautiful buildings are often gutted, with only the outer walls remaining to fulfil a local council’s minimum preservation requirements for maintaining the historical features. There’s no real desire for anything with aesthetic merit; just box ticking to avoid getting sued. Still, at least these buildings no longer get demolished under the guise of ‘progress’, like in previous decades. Helen shudders to think of it; such waste.
In Helen’s ideal world, the Lune Hospital would be made into a museum, exposing and showcasing the evolution of mental health treatment and its brutal history. They could start on the ground floor with the unethical freak shows of the Bedlam era, where the nobility used to pay to gawp at the poor souls. Then move up the floors ascending through lobotomies, ECT and padded cells to modernisation and the present day, which is hopefully much more civilised. Unfortunately, Helen is an architect, not a museum curator.
She dials into the conference call and waits on the line, listening to the tinny music piping in her ear before the next attendee dials in. She opens Firefox and clicks to the news, trying to find that news story from the TV earlier – she’d only caught the last few seconds before the next story began, but something about the faces in the picture looked familiar.
Alfie shuffles into the room and flops down in the corner to watch her from his paws.
‘Hey doggie,’ she says, glancing over to smile at his furry face. ‘Have you come to join me on this deathly dull conference call?’
‘TREVOR has entered the call!’ a computer voice announces.
‘Morning Trevor,’ says Helen brightly, hoping he didn’t hear her. She minimises the browser window and clicks through to the conference call agenda. ‘How are you today?’
Trevor is the NHS’s Historic Buildings Regulations Officer, seconded from Lancaster City Council, appointed to respond to every one of Helen’s designs with a mealy-mouthed whine of ‘I’m afraid the regulations won’t allow you to do that.’
They make small talk until Pam hops on the call thirty seconds later, followed by Craig. Pam and Craig both work for the property development firm which might buy the Lune Hospital; they are driving the redevelopment into ‘luxury living spaces for professionals’. They want it to look great, but to spend no money achieving that.
Helen sits in the middle of all of them, feeling like the only voice of reason and the ambassador for good design, fighting off bad decisions with her drafting board and carpenter’s square.
Today’s call is particularly frustrating because it’s about the basements: big storage chambers connected by breeze block-lined service tunnels with concrete floors. Pam and Craig want to cram as many ‘apartments and townhouses’ into the Lune site as possible, and that includes extending development into the basements.
Helen finds a gap in the chatter and tries to break into the call. ‘I just think that these flats—’
‘Luxury living spaces,’ interrupts Pam. ‘We need to use the right words, Helen, so we keep in mind that we’re not building anything less than luxury. Flats is just so … brutalist.’
Helen runs her hands through her hair and grits her teeth. Just a few more weeks and this project will be over, planning permission granted and all the contracts signed. ‘We need to incorporate larger windows. If we’re extending into the basements, they need light so they aren’t depressing caves of misery. It’s dark down there with the current windows; they’re like letterboxes.’
‘It would compromise the façade of the lower levels,’ whines Trevor. Helen can hear him shuffling his papers on the other end of the phone.
‘If we can’t put windows in, we shouldn’t extend the living spaces into the basement,’ says Helen. ‘They should be storage only.’ She lowers her forehead to the desk and clunks it gently against the wood a couple of times, taking deep breaths. There should be a Project Manager to handle these tedious conference calls and just relay any decisions back to Helen, but sadly Maxine went on maternity leave a couple of months ago, and the NHS decided they didn’t need to replace her. Helen suspects the pregnancy was purposely timed, and respects Maxine’s well-planned reproductive decision to avoid this particular part of the development process.
Nothing gets decided about the basements, and the call veers into ways to decrease space and cram in extra units. Pam asks whether people really need all that storage space when minimalism is so chic right now.
Helen clicks back to the news website and opens the headline article.
Lancaster’s lost girls: Runaways, or something more sinister?
By J. Mitchell
Parents of missing teenager raise questions for Lancaster’s police
Five years ago, the mysterious disappearance of 17-year-old Sadie Duncan shocked the market town of Lancaster. It was the end of August, and Sadie’s suitcase lay half-packed on her bedroom floor, never taken to Leeds University as planned.
Sadie’s mother, Charlotte Duncan, 45, still holds out hope that she’ll come back home. ‘Maybe she just didn’t want to go to university. She was nervous about it. But she’s just not the type to leave and not say goodbye, you know.’ Tears slide down her cheeks, as they have every day for the past five long years.
The da
y she went missing was just like every other day, with nothing unusual and no arguments. Sadie went into Lancaster with her friends for a birthday drink and has not been seen since leaving the pub alone at 10.30pm.
With no sightings and very few working CCTV cameras in Lancaster’s pedestrianised city centre, the hope of tracing Sadie’s movements quickly faded. Her bank account remains untouched, her belongings and bedroom exactly as they were the night she disappeared.
Work of a serial killer?
‘I think it was a serial killer,’ says Charlotte’s husband, Bill, whose hands shake as he talks of his missing daughter.
Bill continues: ‘There are other teenage girls gone missing from roundabout [the local area]: Preston, Manchester, and one from Garstang a couple of years ago. They’re all our Sadie’s age. The police call them runaways but most of the parents are like us, with good kids from loving homes.’
I looked into Charlotte and Bill’s claims, finding a rate of missing teenagers slightly higher than the national average. Potential victims include Joanna Bamber, 18, from Heysham; Roberta Clarkson, 16, from Morecambe; and Anna Keyne, 18, from Caton.
Police refuse to comment
Lancashire Constabulary refused to contribute to this story, stating that they could not comment on an active or unsolved investigation. Does this mean that there is an ongoing investigation?
With little forensic evidence and no bodies, it’s hard to determine if this is the work of a serial killer or just a coincidence that these girls have all disappeared within the same area.
Anyone with information about any of the missing women in this article can contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or email [email protected].
‘Helen?’
She shakes her head, trying to forget the news story now rattling around her brain.
‘Sorry – what was that?’ she asks, minimizing the browser. ‘The line went fuzzy for a second.’
Pam clears her throat. ‘Craig was suggesting that nobody needs kitchen worktop space, because they just put their dishes in the dishwasher and they’re all probably going out for dinner every night anyway.’
After more than an hour, she finally hangs up the phone with very little decided except for the date of the next conference call.
‘What a waste of time. Glad that’s over,’ she says to the dog. ‘Now to start actual work.’ She opens her A1 folder of sketches, floor plans and sepia photographs of the old hospital, but something niggles. What is it?
She flicks back to the news article, skims the text, but can’t find what she’s looking for. When she read it the first time, on the call, there was something familiar.
She reads it again, but nothing resonates now.
She lets her eyes wander over the web page, blurring the words. And there it is, like mist burning off on a warm spring day:
The author at the top of the article. How does she know that name?
Thomas
‘I reckon the blue flame would be the worst, though,’ Maggie says, colouring in their Science homework; a flame to show when there’s oxygen in the pipe (yellow and wavy) and no oxygen (blue and straight). ‘You know, if we put one of Josie Steadman’s plaits into the burner.’
‘I bet Josie would be bald on one side so fast that you couldn’t even put the fire out before all her hair goes.’ Thomas laughs at the idea of Josie bald on one side of her head. It’s the best type of giggling because he knows he shouldn’t be laughing at all. ‘It’d be funny, but we might get in trouble.’
‘Yeah. I don’t need any more de-merits this term.’ Maggie looks at her new smartwatch she got for her birthday last week. Maggie’s mum and dad don’t need to be careful with money, and she gets loads of new stuff whenever she wants it. But she still prefers coming over to Thomas’s house after school instead of going over to her own house.
‘Why do you like coming to my house anyway? You’ve got a giant TV and a PS4.’
Maggie shrugs. ‘Duncan and Sandy never let me play on it. And Auntie Janet lets us do whatever we want.’
He supposes that’s true: even when Mum’s at home, she’s busy with house stuff or Important Top-Secret Research. Or falling asleep in front of their TV, which is much smaller than Maggie’s.
Mum is sitting with them at the dining table, but she’s not paying attention. The overhead kitchen light lights up her hair, so shiny it’s almost like she’s wearing a gold crown. She props her chin up with her hands and stares at an old book, newspapers spread around to cover every inch of the table. Her face is blank and her eyes unfocussed, like she’s been hypnotised by that guy Derren Brown from the TV.
Mum looks up from her papers, frowning. ‘Guys, you remember I asked if you could play outside while I finish this article?’ She looks out of the kitchen window. The sky is blue tinged with pink and the oak tree in the garden looks dark against the bright sky. ‘You’ve still got another few hours of daylight. Could you go to the play park? Take a torch so cars can see you on the way back – and look both ways crossing that road. Back at nine for bed.’
Maggie taps her posh watch. ‘Back at nine, no problem.’
‘Okay Mum!’ Thomas pulls on his wellingtons and grabs the massive torch from the shelf by the door. Then he looks around the porch.
‘What else would be useful?’ He picks up Dad’s posh birdwatching binoculars from the coat hook, the ones he’s never allowed to play with because they’re not a toy. ‘If Dad’s not coming back, he won’t need them,’ he says, watching Maggie’s expression.
She scrunches her nose and shrugs. ‘They’re practically yours now anyway.’
He loops the leather cord around his neck and lets the weight of the binoculars hang from his shoulders. They’re surprisingly heavy, but the cord feels soft against his skin, which makes the weight bearable.
Maggie leans over to whisper in Thomas’s ear: ‘I stole a penknife from Duncan’s drawer this morning. We can cut up sticks and build a campfire for our den.’
Thomas unfolds his arms. He can’t help but smile back; Maggie looks so excited and making a den does sound really fun. He nods. ‘Good idea.’
He’s always wanted a penknife, but Dad wouldn’t let him; said it’s too dangerous. Well, Dad’s not here anymore.
They call goodbye to Mum and set off along the garden path and onto the road, which is too narrow to have pavements, so they walk single-file near the hedge, facing oncoming traffic like they were taught.
‘Where are we going, then?’ asks Thomas, as they walk past the play park.
Maggie stops walking and grabs his arm. ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I didn’t tell you yet. I didn’t want your mum to hear, because she’d not let us go out if she knew.’
She pauses for dramatic effect and Thomas frowns. ‘We’re not building a den in the woods?’
Maggie jumps up and down with excitement, her heels bouncing off the pavement. ‘We don’t need to build a den, because there’s a whole den ready out in some trees, and no one goes there anymore.’
Maybe it’ll be a little tumbledown shed, like the one their Grandpa has on his allotment. It would be fun to have one like that of their own. Or a treehouse, that would be even better.
Thomas is getting excited. ‘We can hang posters and play noisy games with no grown-ups to tell us to keep the noise down. And maybe next summer when it’s warmer, we can have sleepovers out there and keep each other awake telling ghost stories! I hope the roof doesn’t leak. Grandpa’s shed roof does.’
Maggie shrugs. ‘Duncan told me about it. He said your Dad took him there once.’
A thrill of excitement; this is his Dad’s secret, too. They’ve never had a secret together before. He skips a little. ‘I can’t wait to tell him we’ve been there! I wonder how Dad found it.’ Thomas peers into the hedge alongside them, checking for creepy stuff. ‘This den’s not, like, haunted or anything? Where is it?’
‘In the woods, near the old asylum. The one that’s falling down. Properly hidden in
the trees, though. Barely anyone knows it’s there anymore because everyone’s forgotten about it.’
‘Is it a shed?’
‘It’s an old caravan. Someone dumped it years ago.’
Thomas knows he should feel excited, but there’s a part of him deep in his stomach that feels afraid and hopes they don’t find it. It’s probably mouldy and damp. If they don’t find it then they can have fun exploring the woods, but they don’t actually have to go inside and get all dirty. And in the future, they can talk about that fun day they went looking for the caravan and didn’t find it, instead of talking about that time they found a caravan and Thomas didn’t want to go inside. Yeah, Thomas hopes they don’t find it.
He slows his steps a little and fiddles with the strap on the binoculars. They’re actually quite heavy. Maybe he could hide them in a hedge and pick them up on the way home.
‘What if someone’s living in it? It could be some homeless guy’s house or something.’
Maggie looks at him, wide-eyed. ‘That would be so cool.’
Thomas doesn’t say anything to that. He doesn’t think that would be cool.
‘Duncan says they used to play poker there, it was their gambling den. Some kids from his school used to go there but no one uses it anymore.’
‘Why not?’
Maggie looks at Thomas and purses her lips. ‘Probably because they’re too old and boring now.’
Thomas feels a gnawing, uncomfortable clenching in his gut, like when he’s on a long car journey and is worried he needs to pee. ‘Yeah, but why, though?
‘Doesn’t want to share the fun, I bet. He made me promise I’d never try to find it.’
Helen
Helen’s cutting cloves of garlic when the doorbell rings. Her fingers are sticky with residue.
‘Zoe, can you get that please?’ she calls up the stairs, where Zoe’s packing her bag to stay overnight at her Dad’s.