The Missing

by C. L. Taylor

  “I didn’t know I was coming back today either,” I say.

  I want to tell her everything. I want to let every last worry and fear spill out but I haven’t got the energy. I need to save what little I have left for my conversation with Mark.

  “Liz,” I say instead, “did Caleb ever mention anything to you about Billy being in love with someone? Maybe Jake told him—”

  I’m interrupted by the sound of the back door opening.

  “Claire!” Kira says. “You’re back.”

  “For now.” I keep the smile fixed on my face. “How’s college? It must be your exhibition soon.”

  “Yeah.” She lowers the art folder she’s carrying to the floor and wiggles the fingers of her left hand.

  “Can we come and see it?” Liz asks. “Is there any nudity? I can’t remember the last time I saw a naked man.”

  The base of Kira’s throat turns red as Liz laughs raucously. “No, not really,” she says.

  “So what’s it about then?”

  Kira’s tongue moves back and forward in her mouth as she clacks her piercing against her teeth. “Tattoos.”

  Tattoos? Jake told me Kira wouldn’t let him go to her exhibition because it was too personal. What’s so personal about photos of tattoos?

  “Hey, Kira!” Liz lifts her top and flashes her tummy. “You could have taken a photo of my dolphin. Although I’m such a fat fucker now it looks more like a whale.”

  “Do you regret it?” Kira asks as she peers at it.

  “Cheeky bitch!”

  “No, no. That’s what my project is about. Tattoos and regrets. I’ve been taking photos of tattoos that people regret and then interviewing them. The project’s a mixture of photos and words. It’s all anonymous. There are no faces and no names.”

  “Then you should have given Lloyd a ring. He’s got a fuckload of tattoos, most of them grim. Apart from the one of my name. Obviously that’s a beauty although I bet he bloody regrets it now! Oh, that reminds me, Claire. Guess who texted me yesterday?”

  “Lloyd?”

  “Yep. He’s coming to Bristol this weekend.”

  “To your house?” Kira asks. She looks as horrified as Liz does.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Liz nods. “I said I’d meet him in Charlie’s Bar but he wouldn’t have it. He’s insisting on coming to the house.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe he wants to get back with you?” Kira says.

  “No chance. I wouldn’t take him back even if he begged. No, my guess is that he wants to meet at home because he doesn’t want a row in public. Or tears,” she adds quickly. “I think he’s going to ask for a divorce.”

  “Why not tell you that over the phone?”

  “Because he’s a sadist?”

  “Will he be coming around here?” Kira asks. Considering she normally takes the first opportunity to escape from the kitchen and go up to her room she seems unusually interested in this conversation.

  “Yeah.” Liz laughs. “I thought we’d throw a welcome-home celebration for him and parade him around the streets. The prodigal fuckhead returns! Why the hell would he come around here?”

  Kira shrugs. “To see Mark?”

  “Yeah, like they’re the best of friends. I think they only tolerated each other because Claire and I are such good mates.” She looks at me. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.” It’s a lie, but only to spare her feelings. It took our husbands a while to warm to each other but they did get on and by the time Liz and Lloyd’s marriage was on its last legs they were definitely friends. Not that Mark has heard much from Lloyd since he walked out on Liz; a couple of replies to his texts but never more than a terse I’m good, mate or I’m living up north.

  “Kira, are you okay? You look a bit pale, sweetheart.” Liz pulls out a chair. “Have a seat.”

  “I do feel a bit light-headed.” She presses a hand to the side of her head. “I think I’ll have a lie-down upstairs.”

  She makes a move toward the hallway but I move to intercept her.

  “Kira, before you go. Could I talk to you about something?”

  “Um . . .” She touches the side of her head again. “I’m really not feeling very—”

  “I know what happened in the Lodekka last year. I know why Jake hit Billy.”

  She says nothing, but her gaze flicks from left to right as though she’s looking at each of my eyes in turn. She’s trying to work out how I’m feeling.

  “It was about Mark, wasn’t it?” I say. “About him kissing Billy’s form tutor.”

  I hear Liz inhale sharply behind me but don’t turn around.

  Kira looks down at her feet. “Yes,” she breathes.

  “Jake told you?”

  “Um . . . yeah. He said it was bullshit and Billy was shit-stirring because he had nothing better to do. He said Billy wanted to fuck everyone else’s lives up because he couldn’t stand anyone else being happy.”

  “Did Jake ask Mark if it was true?”

  She chews on the side of her lip and says nothing.

  “Kira? Did Jake ask Mark if it was true?”

  She nods, her eyes still downcast.

  “And? Did Mark admit it?”

  Her gaze flickers up and her eyes meet mine. “Yes,” she whispers. “Yes, he did but—”

  “One more question,” I add quickly, before she can leave. “Did Billy ever tell you that he was in love with someone?”

  Her gaze flits toward Liz, still sitting at the kitchen table with a shocked expression on her face, then returns to me. “I heard Caleb and Jake talking once, about a girl Billy liked. Jess, I think her name was. Is that who you mean?”

  “Did he love her?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter 48

  “How are you feeling?” Liz asks for what feels like the hundredth time.

  Physically I’m fine. I’m sitting on a wooden chair across the table from my best friend with my arms crossed. Emotionally I am numb. I can’t process what Stephen told me earlier. Billy was in love with someone he couldn’t be with and Mark’s been prosecuted for sleeping with an underage girl. And he’s cheated on me. More secrets. More bloody secrets.

  Mark and I have been together for over twenty years and it’s always been there, that fear that he might have strayed at some point in our relationship, but I never truly believed he was capable of that kind of deceit.

  “Men are such shits,” Liz says. “I swear. I’m going to delete Tinder and go celibate. Do you think there’s an app that teaches you how to be a nun? How best to style your habit? How to get the no makeup look? That sort of thing.” She pushes her chair back from the table and sighs. “It’s not the actual shagging that’s the problem, is it? It’s all the lying and the sneaking around. I know they lie to their mistresses and say they’re not getting any at home but Lloyd and I were still having sex until the month before he—”

  “We didn’t have sex for nine months.”

  “Sorry?” She shuffles her chair closer to the table.

  “By last summer Mark and I hadn’t had sex for nine months. I remember thinking to myself at the time that it was the longest I’d gone without sex since I was a teenager.”

  “Are you blaming yourself? Because if you are we’re going to have words. It’s totally normal for couples to have dry spots when they’ve been married as long as you two have. Some couples stop shagging completely. It’s no excuse for an affair.”

  “I know. And Mark didn’t put any pressure on me to have sex. He didn’t seem that bothered either, if I’m honest. He was tired, I was tired and suddenly nine months had gone by.”

  “Well, it happens, doesn’t it?” She shrugs. “Sorry, that doesn’t really help, does it?”

  I force a smile. “Talking to you does help but there’s no point analyzing it to death.” I glance at the kitchen clock.

  “Shit.” Liz glances at the clock too. “Caleb’s motorbike is in the shop and I said I’d pick him up from work and
give him a lift to the mechanic’s. Are you going to be all right?”

  When I nod she says, “Whatever happens you’ve always got me. Come and stay at mine if you want. The storage room’s a mess but you’re welcome to share my bed if you don’t fancy the sofa. I promise not to poke you in the back with a hard-on in the middle of the night.”

  “Thank you.” I reach for her hand and squeeze it. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Well, you’d probably drink less,” she says and laughs. “Seriously, Claire, if there’s anything you—”

  She’s interrupted by the sound of a car drawing up outside the house. The familiar sound of late-nineties drum and bass drifts through the window and then stops.

  We share a look.

  “It’s Mark,” I say.

  Chapter 49

  If my husband is surprised to see me sitting at the kitchen table after two nights at Mum’s house he doesn’t let on. He gives me a nod as he steps into the room. He is dressed in a dark blue suit with a white shirt and a gray-and-white-striped tie. His black shoes are shiny. His hair is neatly brushed back from his face. The only thing out of place is the position of his laptop bag. Normally he wears it casually slung over one shoulder. Today he is clutching it to his chest.

  Liz’s eyes narrow as he walks into the kitchen.

  “All right, Mark?” she says in a tight voice.

  He doesn’t acknowledge her. “Claire, could I talk to you? Alone.”

  Liz looks at me and raises an eyebrow. So many emotions in one look—irritation, anger, worry—one wrong word from my husband and she’ll go off.

  I reach for her hand. “I’ll come and see you later? Okay?”

  She nods, her lips pressed tightly together and stands up.

  She leaves the kitchen, deliberately taking a wide arc around Mark. He barely registers her departure. His eyes are fixed on me as he sits down stiffly at the table, hugging his laptop to his chest. “Is he here?”

  “Jake? No, but Kira’s upstairs.”

  “Right.” He looks from the hallway to the kitchen window. “We can’t talk here. Let’s go to the garage.”

  I am so stunned, so wrong-footed by the look on his face, that I do as I am told and follow him out of the house and into the garage. He turns on the light and then sits down on Jake’s weight bench. He pats the space beside him and waits for me to sit down. He looks surprised when I shake my head.

  “Claire”—he places the laptop bag on his knees and presses down on it with the heels of his hands—“I don’t know how to tell you this.”

  “You’re having an affair.” The words sound ridiculous as they come out of my mouth. I feel as though I’m playing the role of the wronged wife in a soap opera.

  “What?”

  “With Edie Christian.”

  “Edie Chr—” He tips back his head and laughs.

  Irritation bubbles inside me. “Mark, I know. Stephen told me. Billy saw you kissing her in a pub last year.”

  Mark’s laughter stops as quickly as it started. “What?”

  “Billy was there. He was outside, waiting for Alfie. He saw you, he heard your phone conversation with your boss outside, he saw the kiss.”

  “He . . .”

  “He was hiding behind a skip. He heard and saw everything. That’s why he defaced all the photos of you in the album. I checked the dates on the calendar. It happened last summer.”

  Mark doesn’t say a word. He stares at me dumbly, his bottom lip wet with spittle. He blinks several times, then looks down at the laptop on his knee.

  “Mark?”

  His Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows. “I can’t . . . I can’t take it in. I came home to talk to you about something else. I wasn’t expecting this.”

  “When did the affair start?”

  “Affair?” He frowns. “I haven’t had an affair.”

  “There’s no point denying it. I’ll ask her.”

  “Ask who?”

  “Edie Christian.”

  “Oh God.” He runs a hand over his hair. “Claire, I’m not having an affair with Edie Christian, or anyone else for that matter.”

  “So you’re denying that you kissed her? You’re saying Billy was lying.”

  “No. He wasn’t. But he didn’t see what he thought he saw.”

  “So tell me what happened then?”

  “Oh God, Claire. It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.”

  “You kissed another woman.”

  “I tried to.”

  “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “We . . .” He puts the laptop down on the bench beside him and stands up so he’s facing me. “We hadn’t been getting on for a while and—”

  “So it’s my fault, is it?”

  “No! God, no! It was me, it was all me. I was stressed. Dad had been ringing me up to moan about how unreliable Stephen was but when I tried to ring Stephen he laid into me. He said they were overworked and understaffed and if I gave a shit about Dad I’d do the right thing and join the firm. Then Dad had his heart attack and I was so scared. I thought he was going to die and it was my fault for being ambitious and thinking a builder’s merchants was beneath me. Then there was work—my work—and the pressure I was under to hit my targets. The kids were fighting at home. You and I weren’t getting on. And I couldn’t deal with it, Claire. I didn’t have anyone to talk to.”

  “You’ve got friends.”

  “I know. But no one wants to be the boring bastard bringing the mood down on a night out by complaining about how stressed they are.”

  “You could have talked to me.”

  “Could I? We were jumping down each other’s throats every other day.”

  “And you thought kissing another woman would help?”

  “No!” He reaches for me but I shift back before he can touch me. “I was drunk. I was drinking alone and then Phil Jones called. He said I hadn’t been performing well and my figures were shit and that he’d have to let me go. I begged him. I begged him not to and I told him everything—all the reasons why I’d been struggling—and he said he’d give me one last chance. A written warning and if I put one foot wrong I was out. I was a mess when I went back into the pub. Miss Christian was there with some of her friends and she came over to the bar to see if I was okay. She was so nice to me and I was drunk and I was so stupidly grateful that she gave a shit that I . . . I . . .”

  “Tried to kiss her.”

  “Yeah.” He briefly closes his eyes. “She pushed me away. She was so shocked. Really embarrassed. I tried to smooth things over but she ran off to her friends and then someone over by the window stood up and asked if anyone had a Ford Focus because someone had just chucked a rock through the window.”

  “It was Billy.”

  “What?”

  “Stephen told me.”

  “Stephen knew all this and he didn’t say anything?”

  “He was protecting Billy. He’d been confiding in him. You should understand that.”

  Mark shakes his head, his cheeks flushed red with anger. “Why should I?”

  “Because apparently you had no one to talk to either.”

  “Claire?” He reaches for my hand. “Please don’t cry. Please. I can’t bear it.”

  “I’m not crying because I’m upset. I’m angry. I’m so bloody angry that—”

  “It wasn’t even a kiss, not really.”

  “It’s not that!” I throw his hand away from me. “It’s you. You and Billy and Stephen and Jake. Things go wrong in your lives but instead of talking about them you smash things up and drink and cheat and lie. What’s wrong with you? What the hell is wrong with all of you?”

  Mark stares at his feet as I scream in frustration.

  “Why didn’t any of you talk to me? I could have helped.”

  “Could you?” Mark says softly.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “There are some things you can’t control,
Claire—some things you can’t fix. It might not make sense to you, the way we deal with our shit, but it’s our way of coping.”

  “So Billy was right to throw a rock at your car, was he? Graffitiing his school was a good thing? So was teasing his brother and insulting you?”

  “I don’t know.” He sinks back down onto the weight bench and rests his head in his hands. “I don’t know anything anymore. I knew we were going to have a tough conversation tonight but not about this.”

  “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “This.” He touches the laptop bag on the bench beside him.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I found some photos on it,” he mumbles through his fingers. “Photos of little boys. Naked photos.”

  A cold chill runs through me. “Whose laptop is that, Mark?”

  He looks up at me. “It’s Jake’s.”

  Chapter 50

  Neither of us speak as we stare out from the garage. The laptop, resting on top of the bag, is on the floor in front of us. Neither of us want to touch it.

  Mark told me he borrowed it from Jake’s room this morning, after his own laptop had failed to boot up when he’d installed an update. Jake had already left for work and Kira was still asleep in bed. She stirred when Mark knocked on the door, then waved a hand toward the desk when he’d asked if he could borrow Jake’s laptop.

  Mark didn’t try to log on until he reached a service station on the M4 on his way to Chippenham. We bought the laptops for both boys for Christmas two years ago. Mark set them up. He created their accounts and gave them both the same password—BRISTOLCITY123. Jake hadn’t bothered to change his and Mark was able to log straight in. He downloaded some PowerPoint images he needed from OneDrive. And that’s when he discovered the pictures in Jake’s downloads folder.

  Boys. Loads and loads of images of boys in their early teens. Some standing casually in front of the camera with their arms crossed over their chests and erect dicks proudly on display. Others adopting different positions, bent over, on all fours, or else sucking on dildos or the erect penises of men or boys out of shot.