‘Bloody hope so.’ His shoulders drop, he exhales noisily. ‘I’ll come with you tomorrow,’ he says.
‘One thirty, the station on Elizabeth Slinger Road. Bring anything you have, your laptop, emails, texts, times you Skyped.’
‘Why is Tom here?’ Isaac has appeared, his face slack with sleep, scratching his belly with one hand, the other clasped at the back of his neck.
No one speaks for a moment. Then Isaac says, ‘Is Lori here?’ His face alert with excitement.
‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘Tom just popped in. And you need to get back to bed.’
‘Come on, Tiger,’ says Nick.
‘I want Mummy.’
‘Go on,’ I say. ‘Daddy will piggy-back you. I’ll be up in a minute.’
Nick crouches and Isaac climbs onto his back.
Once we’re alone Tom just stares at me. I don’t know what he wants and wait for him to speak. He stuffs his hands into his pockets. ‘She could just have taken that holiday,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ I say. But it’s more of a prayer than a belief.
Something has shifted. I half hoped that the detective would send us on our way, belittle our concerns, ridicule our fears. The fact that we were taken so seriously, attended to, and that the wheels will be set in motion to investigate, gives a cold, dense weight to my worries.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I’m an automaton at work, answering the phone, taking in absence notes and completed parents’ evening slips from the most organized families. I deal with little Martha Kentaway, who has a ferocious nosebleed.
At break I am suddenly self-conscious in the staffroom. Pam picks up on my stiffness. She stops her anecdote about a family barbecue and says, ‘Jo, are you OK?’
‘Not really.’ I place one hand over my mug. The steam from the tea is hot, too hot really, but I leave my hand there. ‘We’ve reported Lori missing.’
There is a collective double-take, a one-two punch of surprise, then a ripple of emotion. I see it in Henry’s eyes, in the way Zoë’s hand flies to her throat, and hear it in the soft exclamation that Sunita makes. Grace and Pam both speak together, asking questions.
‘No one’s heard from her since the second of April,’ I say. ‘We have to go back to the police station at half past one.’ I glance at Grace.
‘Of course,’ she says, ‘and if there’s anything we can do . . .’ Her mouth twists, a shrug, as if.
I can feel the rigidity in my neck, in my back, under my skin. Like those pieces of plastic they insert under shirt collars, keeping the thing in shape, invisible until you open the packet and lift the material up to remove it.
I’m back at the police station. Tom is late. Late for his own funeral. This trait is not amusing, if it ever was, or endearing. I apologize to DI Dooley, who asks me if I’d like to make a start or if I’d prefer to wait.
It’s a simple enough question but I gasp and stutter, not knowing what the right answer is. She puts me out of my misery: ‘Let’s give him another five minutes.’ She checks her watch. The bulky black dial looks too big for her wrist. She leaves me waiting in Reception.
I check my phone again for messages, though I would have heard the notification sound if Tom had texted me.
Last night, after Tom had gone, I looked up the Missing Overseas website, a salutary litany of British people who have disappeared, all ages, in places all over the globe. One had been missing for twenty years. Good God. I closed that page and went instead to their guidelines. Where Do I Start? What Can Missing Overseas Do? I read them. We were doing the right thing in going to the police here. The website also recommended speaking to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office straight away. I checked and found that they were open only during office hours.
Missing Overseas had a contact form to fill in and a phone number to use in an emergency. Is this an emergency? I wondered. Would I be sitting here with the kids asleep in bed, methodically gathering names and numbers, if it was a real emergency? ‘Should we fill this in?’ I asked Nick. We decided to wait. The list of how they could help was both reassuring but also unnerving because each bullet point – Handling All Media; Providing 24-hour Hotlines – forced me to think that further down the line we might need them to do that. And I didn’t want that. I didn’t want Lori to be one of those pictures.
Just a mix-up, I keep praying, false alarm, crossed wires.
Now Tom is here, striding up the path, unshaven and rumpled. ‘Sorry,’ he says, as he comes in, ‘traffic.’
There is always traffic. Any normal person would’ve allowed for that.
‘She’ll be down again in a minute,’ I say.
‘Shit!’ He turns to go. ‘Laptop.’
‘For God’s sake!’ If he has to drive across town and back . . .
‘In the car.’
When DI Dooley returns she takes the list I’ve made and works through it. Lori’s passport and national insurance numbers, bank account details. The names and numbers of all the friends I can find. Also an outline of the emails, texts, Skype calls we made in date order.
She holds the pen horizontal below each item as she reads it, occasionally checking things with us.
‘Was this an email to all three of you?’
‘She has just one account?’
‘This is the phone number she’s using now?’
‘Yes, she got that one in China. It’s cheaper to use a local number,’ Tom says.
‘And you have copies of the emails?’
‘Yes.’ I’ve printed out Lori’s emails to us and copied our texts from the last few months.
‘Screenshots,’ Tom says, holding up a pen drive.
‘You have her blog address?’ I check with the detective.
‘Yes. So as of now the last communication was definitely the second of April?’
‘That’s right,’ I say.
‘So this is totally out of character?’
‘Not exactly,’ I say, as Tom says, ‘Yes.’
He glares at me.
I look at DI Dooley. ‘It’s just that Lori doesn’t always pick up her messages or maybe she sees them but it can be a few days before she replies. There was a time too . . .’ I feel traitorous raising it but it’s been on my mind. I’ve been turning it over and over, like a set of worry beads, thinking, If she did that then, well, maybe this is something similar. ‘. . . when she was at uni, in Glasgow, we didn’t hear from her for a couple of weeks. She didn’t respond to an email and then we found out that she’d been on some party trip to Skye, a last-minute invite. And forgot her phone charger. And now . . . well, we often don’t hear anything for a couple of weeks and she can be slow to reply to things – but for no one to have heard, for her to be ignoring us all, something’s not right. I spoke to the Foreign Office this morning,’ I say. ‘I gave them the details and told them we had seen you.’
She nods. ‘Who’s your contact there?’
‘Jeremy Chadwick.’
Tom moves the hair off his face. ‘Can’t you get the Chinese police to look for her – Interpol or whatever?’
‘If necessary, once we’ve done what we can at this end.’
‘Which is what exactly?’ he says.
‘You’re worried,’ she says, ‘anxious to find Lorelei. I understand that. There are procedures in place that have been built on the experience of previous missing-person investigations. It’s the most effective way of working. I do realize how difficult it must be, the sense of being kept waiting, but I need you to give me a couple of days while I carry out my own enquiries.’
‘OK,’ Tom says, though he doesn’t sound convinced. He sits back in the chair.
‘Have there been any family arguments between any of you and Lori?’ DI Dooley says.
‘No,’ I say.
‘Any hint of trouble with her friends or colleagues?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Do you have the name and address of her current employers?’
‘Just the name,’ Tom says. ‘Five Star En
glish.’
‘Thank you.’ She scans what she’s written. Then picks up our printouts and the pen drive. ‘And thank you for these.’
‘What can we do?’ I say. ‘There must be something.’
‘Carry on as you are, make sure as many people know as possible. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can. And if you do find out anything else or hear from anyone, please let me know. You have my direct number.’
* * *
Outside it’s bright and I have to squint. I left my sunglasses at home, forgotten in the morning’s rush.
‘We were looking at the Missing Overseas website last night,’ I say. ‘It’s useful.’
Tom nods, rubs at the bristles on his cheek. ‘You think she knows what she’s doing?’ He tips his head back towards the building.
‘More than we do,’ I say.
‘Do you want to get a coffee?’
‘I’ve got work,’ I say.
An almost imperceptible shake of his head, the release of breath in his nose. I am a disappointment. Dull, hidebound.
‘Who’s to know?’ he says.
And perhaps this isn’t Tom wanting to play hookey for the hell of it. I’ve had Nick to talk to about Lori. Has Tom been able to share it with anyone, the woman in Dublin, say? If he has, then it’s not the same as family, as people who know her.
‘Half an hour,’ I say.
There are plenty of small bars and cafés on Burton Road, among the hairdressers and boutiques. The area is known as ‘fashionable West Didsbury’ in all the estate-agent blurbs. Tom wants to sit outside to smoke, so we pick the first place that has a pavement table, order two espressos.
‘If she’d had an accident . . .’ he says, lighting his cigarette, one eye screwed up against the smoke.
‘We’d know, surely. Any hospital, they’d notify someone, notify us.’
‘What if she had no ID on her?’ he says. ‘And they didn’t know who she was?’
‘They’d get someone to speak English, and ask.’
‘And if she was unconscious?’
Couldn’t communicate. It’s not something I want to think about but it’s in my head now, along with all the other unspeakable possibilities. ‘They’d put out an appeal, surely,’ I say. ‘They must have a way of informing the ex-pats. Through the embassies or whatever.’
He smokes, taps ash into the ashtray. ‘Or kidnapped?’ he says. ‘A way of making money.’
‘Tom, don’t—’ My voice shakes.
‘You must have thought—’
‘Of course. But . . . Look, there’d have been a ransom demand, wouldn’t there?’
‘I just feel so bloody helpless,’ he mutters.
‘Join the club.’
‘She’s not stupid,’ he says, as we part.
‘I know. But she can be caught up in the moment . . .’ Twelve days.
We leave it hanging. Go our separate ways.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Isaac complains that the pictures on Lori’s wall are spooky and horrid. He’s right about some of them.
‘We can move the wardrobe and drawers to that side,’ I suggest to Nick. ‘That’ll cover most of it. And put some of their posters over what still shows.’ It feels odd to be reorganizing the rooms when everything with Lori is up in the air. Normal life should be suspended, paused, until we know where she is, but it doesn’t work like that.
I’ve an irrational urge to tell him to move it all back, put everything how it was, as if by rearranging the furniture we can return to some time before 2 April. Put Lori back in place where she should be posting a new blog about her escapades: So I am sticky and itchy and STILL having an amazing time. Lxxx
Finn wants to help but is just getting in the way so I give him the pile of posters and tell him to take them downstairs: he and Isaac can pick three each to go up on the wall.
I empty the wardrobe of the boys’ clothes, which are on the shelves at the right-hand side. Neither of them has anything that needs hanging up. Between us, Nick and I lug the wardrobe over to the wall. As we edge it into the corner, I try to see the collage afresh, look for surprises in it, but I’m too familiar with the components: the family wearing gas masks, her landscape photos from Skye, the cityscapes of Glasgow and Manchester, the picture of a skeleton draped with feather boas.
Nick removes the drawers from the chest and puts them on Finn’s bunk, then hefts the carcass over and puts it next to the wardrobe. The bedroom door will only open ninety degrees but that will have to do.
There’s a wail from downstairs. Finn. I find him standing disconsolate, holding two halves of a poster.
Isaac has a beetle brow, mouth pursed with defiance.
‘He tore my picture.’
‘I did not,’ Isaac yells. ‘You snatched it.’
‘It’s mine,’ Finn says.
‘I was giving it to you.’
‘Isaac—’ I say.
‘I was! He shouldn’t pull.’
‘We can fix it,’ I say, ‘with some tape.’
‘It’ll still be torn,’ Finn says.
‘Put it there.’ I nod to the table and fetch the Sellotape from the basket on the shelf. The rip is more or less straight so it’s easy to repair. When I turn it over, Finn inspects it. ‘It’s still torn. You can see the mark. I want a new one.’
‘OK, but for now we use this. Have you chosen your others?’
‘No,’ Finn says.
‘Two minutes,’ I say, ‘then if you still haven’t I’ll pick for you.’
‘You tell Isaac off.’
I cannot face this. ‘It’s a shame the poster got ripped but we will get you a new one.’
‘You tell Isaac off.’
I’m saved from having to launch into a reprimand by Nick calling, ‘Jo, can you bring up the extension lead from the shed?’
‘OK,’ I shout, then remind the boys, ‘Two minutes.’
Nick shows me the little room. He’s not bothered repainting so the wall is scuffed where the bunks used to be and there are stickers here and there, little dinosaurs, dogs, and large round ones from the dentist that say ‘Hero!’ or ‘Champion!’ The curtains show cartoon kid astronauts floating among rockets and planets. The computer desk is L-shaped and fits into the corner, giving work space each side. On the shelves where the boys had their toys, Nick’s put books and folders from his work.
‘You could take those down.’ I signal to the curtains. ‘Have a blind – or nothing at all. No one can see in.’
‘I might,’ he says.
‘It’s fine, though,’ I add, wondering if I’ve struck the wrong tone in implying he could do more.
My phone goes. DI Dooley. My stomach drops.
‘I’ve no news,’ she says first of all, which helps me stay upright, ‘but I’ve verified there has been no recent activity on Lori’s phone or her bank accounts so you should go back to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, tell them that, and ask them to request the assistance of the Chinese police.’ My face freezes as I take this in. Nick stares at me intently. I grimace at him. He moves closer so he can hear.
‘Will you let Mr Maddox know or shall I?’ DI Dooley says.
‘I’ll do that. So, erm, what happens now?’
‘The Chinese police will do a welfare check on the ground there, then instigate a missing-person investigation. It’s not something I’d have any involvement in, other than assisting with forwarding any information we already have. And if Jeremy Chadwick needs anything from me, please tell him to call.’
‘Yes. We’ve been looking at the Missing Overseas site,’ I say. ‘We could ask them to put Lori’s details up there.’
‘I think that would be a good idea,’ she says. ‘If you prepare what you need for that, then liaise with the FCO as to the timing – they may want to make some initial checks over there before going public.’
‘Yes.’ I look at the helmets and inflatable suits on the astronauts, the perky grins on their faces, the red stain on the flying saucer where Isaac
had written Finn pig and I’d tried to scrub it off.
‘Yes,’ I say again.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ she says. ‘Get back to me if there’s anything you need, anything you want to ask.’
‘Thank you.’
Stupefied, I close the cover on my phone.
‘Shit,’ Nick says.
I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. ‘We’ve got to find her,’ I say.
‘We will,’ he says, but I read the flicker of doubt in his eyes.
‘Can you ring Tom?’ I say.
There’s a moment’s pause. How can he hesitate? He gets out his own phone. I’m wiping my nose and trying not to beat myself up for crying. What’s the point of bottling it all up? Of course I should fucking cry. What sort of mother am I? What mother wouldn’t?
I sit on the floor while Nick talks to Tom. From his side of the conversation I can tell Tom’s asking a whole lot of questions, none of which Nick can answer. Then Nick covers the phone and says to me, ‘He wants to come round.’
The thought exhausts me but who am I to shut him out? We have things to do, things to prepare, like the detective said.
I nod to Nick, blow my nose and wipe my face.
‘These ones.’ Finn comes up the stairs holding posters. ‘And Isaac has four, not three. But I don’t mind.’
I can’t speak for a moment, still full of tears. Finn watches me. Can he tell I’ve been crying?
‘Get the Blu Tack,’ I say, as brightly as I can, ‘and we’ll put them up now.’
Once he is out of earshot I ask Nick to do it with them. I don’t want to. I don’t want to cover up her lovely riot of pictures.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The GP is new to me. We never seem to see the same one twice. It’s a group practice, and although we have a named individual as our primary carer, she only works two days a week and her appointments are like gold dust. So Dr Munir has never met Isaac. He listens while I go over our worries, the run of fevers, the vomiting. Choosing my words carefully, I also talk about his outbursts, the anger and biting.
Half the World Away Page 6