I go upstairs and look in on Isaac. He’s awake but seems woozy, eyes bleary.
‘You had a drink?’ I touch his forehead, definitely hot.
‘Yes.’
‘More?’
He nods. I pass him the water and he shuffles up and takes it, has a sip.
‘Poor Isaac. Did you eat your lunch?’
‘No,’ he says.
‘Did you feel sick then?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think we’ll get the doctor to have a look at you and see if you need some medicine.’
He nods solemnly.
‘You have a little rest, then.’
In the bathroom I soak a cloth in disinfectant and go to clean the wall in the hall. This way Nick won’t see me completing his efforts and have the chance to take my action as criticism. Pussyfooting around each other, that’s what we’re doing. Skirting hostilities. Somehow no longer on the same side.
Sunday, and we’re unloading the car. A trip to B&Q. I’ve been buying bedding plants and bird food, and he’s got all the materials for a DIY project. He’s going to move the boys into Lori’s room, set up their bunk beds in there, move her bed into the garage for now, then convert the boys’ room into a home office. He’ll start offering freelance consultancy work. I’m relieved that he’s got something constructive to do, something where he can see results, feel he’s achieved a goal even if it doesn’t mean any paid work yet. He’s asked a mate to do him a website design. Nick doesn’t particularly want to be a one-man business – he would much rather have the stability of employment and a regular income, along with paid holidays and the like, but needs must. Thanks God he’s recognized the need.
‘I’ve still not heard from Lori,’ I say to Nick.
‘You think she’ll complain?’ he says, meaning about the room.
‘No, I wasn’t thinking about that, just that it’s over a week since I emailed. And I texted, too. Nothing.’
He puts down the wood he’s carrying. ‘Try ringing?’
I nod, glad he’s not dismissed my concern. It will be seven in the evening in Chengdu. Lori teaches on a Sunday; she might still be at work.
Once we have brought everything in, I try her number. A recorded message tells me that it’s not been possible to connect me. Her phone is off.
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I’ll see if Tom’s heard anything.’
‘OK.’ He gestures upstairs and goes off to begin packing up the boys’ things.
Finn is out in the garden, jumping around on the trampoline. Benji is dozing on the ground underneath. It’s a dull, warm day, the sky grey chalk. The blackbird is chinking an alarm call, though I can’t see any cats about. We’ve sparrows nesting in the eaves and I can hear them squabbling too.
Tom answers, ‘Jo?’
‘Hi, how are you?’
‘Good. You?’
An urge to tell him the truth, to share, which I squash down. ‘Fine, but we’ve not heard from Lori for over a week now, wondered if you had.’
‘No. We Skyped for my birthday.’
The start of the month, April Fool’s. It’s the thirteenth now.
‘Her last blog was posted on the second,’ I say.
‘The one about the weather,’ Tom says.
‘I’ve tried emailing, calling and texting – nothing,’ I say.
‘She mentioned the idea of a holiday,’ Tom says.
‘Yes, to me too. Did she say when or where?’
‘There was nothing definite.’
Finn is on his back, arms and legs spread out like a star. Nick moves something heavy upstairs and the whole house shakes with the vibration.
‘See if anyone else has heard from her,’ Tom suggests. ‘Give it a few more days?’
And then what? ‘Yes. Do you have a number for Dawn?’
‘No,’ he says.
‘Me neither.’
Someone speaks in the background, a woman, though I can’t make out the words, and I realize with a jolt that Tom’s not alone.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Let me know if you hear anything.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Straight away.’
I can tell he’s smiling as he says, ‘I promise. She’ll be fine. You know Lori.’
We say goodbye and hang up. I think of who else she might be in touch with, who else I can contact. The list is small: I’ve numbers and emails for Jake and Amy, the couple she had been travelling with in Thailand and Vietnam, who should now be back in the UK. And I’ve a phone number for Erin, the only person from school whom Lori stayed in touch with. We don’t have details for any of the friends in China Lori has told us about.
I play down my unease as I talk first to Erin, then to the others. No one has heard from Lori this month. I ask them to spread the word among their social networks, Twitter, Facebook, whatever, and ask anyone who’s heard from Lori to please contact me.
Isaac comes into the kitchen and catches me staring into space. The jotter on the table is scored with numbers and notes, some words from the conversations I’ve just had.
‘Where’s Finn?’ he says.
‘On the trampoline. You could go out.’
He shrugs.
‘I’m going to come out soon and plant my flowers.’
‘Will you twirl me?’ he says.
‘OK.’
Outside Isaac lies on his stomach on the swing, arms and legs hanging out either side. I twist the swing round, winding the ropes together, he inches higher from the ground. When I let go, the swing unwinds fast, spinning him round, him yelling.
Then Finn wants a go.
They take turns. My stomach feels tense, knotted together like the ropes.
I replay the phone calls I’ve just made as I tap out the plugs of bedding plants and tamp them down into the troughs we have on two sides of the patio.
‘I messaged her on Saturday,’ Amy said. ‘I thought she might have her phone off if she was teaching. But she didn’t get back to me.’
‘And she usually would?’ I said.
‘Most times, eventually.’
The blackbird chinks again, insistent. And Finn sings ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ at the top of his lungs. I stare at the lobelia, the petunias, the pink and white verbena and the fuchsias, and feel the dread grow in my chest. I set down the watering can, brush the worst of the compost from my hands before going in.
Nick has dismantled Lori’s bed and stacked it on the landing. He’s taking apart the bunk beds. ‘Great,’ he says, when he sees me. ‘You can give me a hand carrying the double mattress down.’
‘Nick,’ I say, ‘nobody’s heard from her. Nothing since the second of April. Eleven days.’
‘Right,’ he says slowly.
‘I’m really worried,’ I say, and the words spoken out loud make my legs weak. I take a breath, ignore the way my heart stutters. ‘I think something’s wrong,’ I say. ‘I think we should go to the police.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Penny, a friend I made way back when I used to child-mind her sons, comes to stay with the boys while Nick and I go to the police station. I’ve rung Tom back and told him I want to report Lori missing.
‘Do you really think it’s necessary?’ he says.
‘Yes.’
‘Fair enough.’ His voice sounds tight. ‘I’m in Dublin. I’ll be home later.’
I wonder about the woman I heard before. Is she travelling with him? Or has he been to visit her over there? If Lori were here I might know more.
Seeing people out for their weekend walks, pushing buggies, following kids on scooters and rollerblades, others sitting outside the Italian restaurant in their summery clothes as we drive by, feels unreal. A pretty façade plastered over an ugly reality.
The waiting area is small, tidy, half a dozen plastic seats on a rack bolted to the floor, and posters on the wall. There is a receptionist at the front desk. She wears a white shirt, dark skirt and small rectangular glasses perched halfway down her nose. ‘Can I help?’
‘We want to report a missing person,’ I say. My throat is dry and I sound whispery. I speak louder: ‘My daughter. She’s in China, missing in China.’
‘Right.’ She nods, as though people pop in every day with this sort of information. Though I suppose her training leads her not to react with shock or surprise to the things she hears. ‘Can I take your names?’ she says. She looks at me first.
‘Joanna Maddox.’
‘Date of birth?’
‘Eighth of September 1970.’
‘And your address?’
I reel it off.
‘And you are her mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you, sir?’
‘I’m her stepfather,’ Nick says, ‘Nicolas Myers, twenty-third of August 1968, same address.’
‘You’re married?’ she says to us.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I didn’t change my name this time.’
‘And your daughter’s details?’ She peers at me over the top of her glasses.
‘Lorelei Maddox – shall I spell it?’
‘Please.’
I do that and give her the date of birth.
‘So she’s twenty-three?’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘And how long is it since you had any contact with your daughter?’
‘Eleven days,’ I say. ‘The second of April she posted a blog. And she Skyped with her dad the day before.’ Not even two weeks. Not very long at all, really. Am I being neurotic? Should I have waited? I expect her to send us away, tell us to come back when it’s been a month, but she says, ‘If you’d like to take a seat, I’ll see if there’s anyone upstairs can come and talk to you.’ She goes out of the door behind the desk.
We sit, not speaking. My toes are curled rigid in my shoes. Outside, wind plays through the trees and the shrubs and flowers along the side of the path; yellow forsythia, purple and white tulips, golden spurge shiver in its wake.
I start at a thump on the window. A bee the size of my thumb careers about and bangs the glass again, then zigzags away.
Perhaps there’s no one here, I think. It’s a weekend, after all. She’ll send us away. Tell us to try normal office hours. I hear the wall clock ticking. Two o’clock. Nine at night in Chengdu.
The receptionist comes back and says, ‘Detective Inspector Dooley will be down shortly.’ My skin turns to gooseflesh. Nick glances at me, sombre. He rubs his forehead and shifts in his seat.
Another five minutes, then a woman comes in through a door to the side of the waiting area marked ‘Staff Only’.
‘Mrs Maddox? Mr Myers? I’m Detective Inspector Dooley.’ An Irish accent. She holds out her hand. We shake. Her hand is cool and dry, the pressure swift. I catch a trace of tobacco smoke and imagine she’s been having a smoke before meeting us. Her hair is dark and curly, salted grey. She is sharp-featured; lines furrow her brow and fan from the corners of her eyes and mouth. Her eyes are a washed-out blue. She carries a plastic folder and pen.
I’d like to pinch myself. But this is no dream.
‘I’m very sorry to hear about Lorelei,’ she says. ‘If you’ll come with me I’ll take some more details.’
She uses an electronic swipe card to release the door and takes us along a corridor to a small meeting room with four low easy chairs arranged around a coffee table. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ she offers. ‘Only a vending machine, I’m afraid.’
‘Some water,’ I say. ‘That would be great, thanks, just tap water.’ Don’t drink the water – Lori’s rule number one.
‘Yes, water, please,’ Nick says.
‘Of course. Please, take a seat.’
She’s back in no time with two tumblers. Parched, I drink half of mine.
‘Let me just check I have all the details correct,’ she says, sitting down. She consults her file and goes over what we have told the receptionist. It’s all there.
‘And Lorelei is in China?’ she says.
‘In Chengdu,’ Nick says. ‘Sichuan province, the south-west.’
‘What’s she doing there?’
‘Teaching,’ I say. ‘English. She went travelling in September and ended up in China.’
‘She has a work visa,’ Nick says, ‘for a year.’
DI Dooley notes it down. ‘And when did she acquire the work visa?’
I think. ‘That would be February.’
‘And you last heard from her on the second of April?’
‘Yes,’ I say. I explain about the blog. ‘And she Skyped with her father, my ex, the day before.’
‘His name?’ she says.
‘Tom Maddox.’
‘And his date of birth?’
‘First of April 1969.’
‘Is Lorelei good at keeping in touch usually?’ DI Dooley says.
‘It can be a bit random,’ I say.
‘Have you spoken to her friends or colleagues in China?’ she says.
‘We’re not in touch with them,’ I say. ‘She had been talking about a holiday, so it might be that she’s gone off somewhere and can’t use the Internet or get a mobile-phone signal.’
‘A holiday to . . .’
‘She never said.’
‘On her own?’
‘Possibly,’ I say. ‘Her friend out there couldn’t get the time off.’ It all sounds so vague and imprecise.
‘Things can be quite last-minute with her,’ Nick says.
‘We’ve spoken to her friends here. We’ve emailed and phoned and texted her . . .’ Faltering, I reach for the water glass and take a sip.
DI Dooley says, ‘And while she was still in touch was Lorelei having any problems – health, money, relationships?’
‘No.’
‘No previous incidents of going missing?’ she says.
‘No,’ I say.
‘Any history of mental-health problems?’
I balk at this, recoiling from the scenarios that it makes me think of, but DI Dooley says calmly, ‘We have to consider every eventuality.’
‘No, nothing like that,’ I say.
‘Was Lorelei living alone?’
‘More recently, yes.’
‘And before that?’
‘She was sharing with Dawn, a friend she met in Thailand. Dawn’s Australian – she’s the one who might have been going on holiday with her. They were seeing each other.’
DI Dooley nods and adds to her notes. ‘Do you have a surname for Dawn?’
‘Sorry, no.’
She lays her pen down, lining it up so it is parallel with the top of the paper. ‘There is a limit to what we can do, given this is a foreign jurisdiction. At this point I will make some enquiries and see if there’s been any recent activity on her phone, for example, any deposits or withdrawals from her UK bank accounts and so on. Depending on the results of that, if we don’t have any news, we’ll approach the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and ask them to liaise with police in the Chengdu area who would carry out their own missing-person inquiry there. I’m going to give you a list of information I need to get the ball rolling.’
I nod, a bit stunned that she’s geared up and ready to act.
She takes a blank page from her file and writes down the things she needs from us. ‘You can get these to me some time tomorrow?’
‘Lunchtime?’ I say.
‘Fine. My shift starts at one o’clock. Shall we say half past?’
I’m feeling numb. My brain and my heart feel frozen, as though I’m absent, have slipped away from inhabiting my body.
‘There is a charity, Missing Overseas,’ DI Dooley says, as we get to our feet. ‘They have a website. You might find it useful.’
So that’s it. It’s official. Lori is missing. Those three words fill me with such anxiety that I have to stop outside and cling to Nick’s arm, my heart thumping, wild and irregular, against my ribs, my head buzzing black.
* * *
At home, Penny takes one look at us and sends the boys out to get themselves ice creams from the corner shop
. She opens a bottle of wine and pours us each a glass. I tell her what the detective said, feel the pressure of tears behind my eyes and force them away.
‘Don’t tell them yet,’ I say, as we hear the boys coming back. I know we can’t keep it from them for very long, but I’m hoping DI Dooley might bring us good news and it would be awful to upset Finn and Isaac if we weren’t absolutely certain of the situation.
We need to choose a recent picture of Lori. I run through the ones on the computer. Nick points to the snap at the airport. Lori and her backpack.
‘Her hair’s still pink in that,’ I say. I’m worried that people will notice the colour and that’s all they will notice so they’ll immediately disregard it because they don’t recall an English girl with pink hair.
There is one picture from her website, from her blog, that she sent just after arriving in Chengdu. She’s seated in a teahouse but there’s a clear view of her face. Her hair is an in-between length, without the pink. You can see her eyes are a mid-blue. She’s smiling – you can see her dimples. She’s wearing a lilac and cherry-red blouse, crinkly material that’s good for travel, easy to wash and dries in minutes. ‘This one I think.’
The doorbell rings and Tom is here. ‘What did they say?’ He doesn’t bother with any niceties as he steps inside.
‘We go back in tomorrow – there’s a list of stuff they need, all her details, passport number, bank account, phone, email, when we last heard from her, who we’ve spoken to. And a photo.’ I clear my throat. ‘Look.’ He follows me through to the computer. ‘This one?’ I say.
‘Fine, and then what?’
I repeat what DI Dooley has said. Tom is agitated: it’s visible in the way he holds himself, the set of his shoulders. Nick stares at the floor.
‘So we just wait?’ Tom interrupts me. ‘Why not go straight to the Foreign Office now?’
‘The police have to check it all out,’ Nick says, ‘make sure the information’s correct and clear before they involve the Foreign Office or the authorities abroad.’
‘You’ve given them most of the information,’ Tom objects, running his hand through his hair, turning away, then back again.
‘There are things they can verify that we can’t,’ I explain, ‘like when she last used her bank account or an ATM, where she was then. Like . . . I don’t know . . . phone records. They know what they’re doing.’
Half the World Away Page 5