The Missing

by Daisy Pearce

  Mimi has her eyes closed, leaning back against the pillows, hands folded on her lap. I move the bowl of oranges gently aside, so as not to disturb her, and let the silence spool out. I wonder how she would react to the real story of William and me meeting: the smell of white spirit, the dingy studio flat, the word Whore in bold letters that would only fade and not disappear, not even beneath three coats of paint, my pupils inky-black pools, white spittle collecting at the corners of my mouth because I’m still high. Even when we got together years down the line, it wasn’t simple, our jerky, stop-start relationship characterised by reluctance and hysterical bonding, punctuated by my abrupt disappearances, sometimes for whole weekends. All the times he came to help me, all the comedowns he nursed me through, all those nights he carried me to bed after too much wine, too many cocktails. The states he found me in. My white knight.

  ‘Your white knight,’ Mimi says quietly, the way she always does when I reach the part of the fictional story where William catches me at the ticket barriers. ‘Just think of all the ways it could have been different. If one of you had sat in a different seat, if you hadn’t left your purse behind, if William hadn’t jumped off the train in time – all these little things we don’t know are actually cogs in the engine.’ She leans forward, smiling tightly as if imparting a great secret. ‘You know how Edward and I met?’

  I’ve heard this one before. Sunday. At the bandstand, listening to jazz. Eighteen years old. He asked her to dance and showed her all the flowers in bloom on the village green. They never spent another night apart. Since his death, whenever she tells this story her eyes fill with tears and she has to dab at them with a hanky, even now.

  ‘I do, Mimi. I remember.’

  ‘Do you know how he died, Frances?’

  I stiffen. In all the years I’ve known her, Mimi has never spoken about his death with me. Not in real detail, and certainly not without dressing it up in euphemism. Despite my interest I try to look nonchalant, reaching for the bottle of nail polish on her bedside table beside the phone. My heart skitters, my mouth dry. This man, this man. He’s everywhere, still.

  ‘I don’t think so, Mimi. Shall I do your nails while you tell me? It’s such a pretty colour.’

  She extends a thin pale hand over the coverlet and I lift it into my own, surprised at the lightness of it. Bird bones.

  ‘It was a car accident. Something on the road, they said. An animal maybe. He skidded off the bridge. It was autumn, and it was dark and maybe he was going too fast. That doesn’t sound right, though, does it? He was always so careful. Such a careful man.’

  ‘He was,’ I say, although I never met him. I don’t want to interrupt her flow. Her eyes have misted over with recollection.

  ‘I had a knock at the door about four o’clock. When I answered, it was the police. They both removed their hats. That’s when I knew something bad had happened. They said, “Are you Mrs Thorn?” Of course I said yes. I had an apron on and my fingers were shaking too much to untie it. They said, “There’s been an accident, Mrs Thorn”, and I said, “Not my boys, please. Not my boys.” There’s no worse feeling in the world.’

  I think of Samantha, still searching. All these years doing it alone. No worse feeling in the world.

  ‘He said, “It’s your husband, Mrs Thorn. It’s Edward.” And then do you know what happened?’

  I shake my head, still stroking the brush over her short square fingernails.

  ‘Edward walked past the doorway. Right there, clear as day. He looked in at me, but he didn’t say a word. I think it was his ghost just coming to say goodbye to the house and his garden. It sounds silly now, of course, but at the time it was the most normal thing in the world. It gave me strength to keep going, Frances.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it, Mimi.’

  She falls silent and after a moment I’m starting to wonder if she’s fallen asleep; then when I lift my head I see her eyes are open, but heavy. Her voice is starting to slur.

  ‘I wonder where he is now.’

  I finish her nails, blow on them gently before asking, ‘How long were you together?’

  ‘We met when I was eighteen but didn’t wed until I was closer to thirty. I was beginning to think he’d never ask, but Edward was a cautious man, didn’t like taking risks. Of course we thought we’d start a family right away, but we didn’t have our boys for another seven years. We didn’t think we could have any. That’s what the doctors said. “This union will not bear fruit.” But then we were blessed, weren’t we? Not once, but twice.’ She sighs, looking out towards the garden again. ‘He died the year of our twenty-fourth anniversary. I found his present to me the day of his funeral. Pulled it right out of the drawer as if I’d always known it was going to be there. He must have bought it months in advance.’ She extends her arm to show me the slender bracelet of silver.

  A question occurs to me then, and it comes out of my mouth before I can hesitate. ‘How do you know it was for you?’

  Mimi looks up at me, face blank.

  I flush, suddenly embarrassed but unable to help myself; I’m still talking. ‘I mean, how can you be sure?’

  Mimi swallows, her thin fingers going to her neck, fluttering against the thin skin that hangs there. ‘He wouldn’t. Not him. Not my Edward.’

  There, I think, with a jolt of surprise, you have a tell too, Mimi. For William it is the tugging of the hair that coils at his neck; for Mimi it is playing with the loose skin below her chin. Do we all have them, these little tics that betray us? I watch her eyes begin to close, her breathing deepen. The reflection of the rain plays the shadows softly across her face.

  He wouldn’t. Not my Edward. Ah, Mimi. How little we know these men.

  In the evening I find myself in front of William’s laptop. I’m meant to be looking for a divorce lawyer, something I’m keeping hidden from William for the time being, but instead I have spent the last hour on websites dedicated to missing people, reading up on those who vanished like ghosts or just drifted away from their lives, their jobs, their families. I learn that teenage runaways are overwhelmingly female, and that ninety-three per cent of missing teenagers are, like Edie, from single-parent families. I read that children with no siblings are more likely to disappear than those with. I find a website dedicated to missing children, which has age progression photos of the long-term missing. I find photographs of children disappeared from care homes and institutions and vulnerable teenage girls trafficked from Thailand and China and Vietnam. Slowly I discover that media coverage is mostly absent for teenagers who are black or of mixed ethnicity, those with foreign-sounding names or piercings or the skinny self-harmers, the streetwise repeat offenders, hooded and scowling, unphotogenic and tough-looking from a background of crime and estates and high-rises. These children are the dark undertow, drifting below the surface.

  I find a site dedicated to the thousands of unidentified bodies on police files in the UK, listing clothing and tattoos and jewellery in the hope of a loved one being able to identify the deceased. I scroll through the contents of their pockets with a pain in my chest that burns as bright and singularly as a candle flame. ‘Unknown male, 18, Asian: Black disposable cigarette lighter, William Hill winning slip, tobacco, phonecard (for India), orange soft drink.’ ‘Unknown female, 14–20: Silver ring, conch shell design worn on index finger of right hand.’ I wonder if Samantha knows what Edie had in her pockets the night she walked out of the churchyard. I check my own, pooling their contents on the table. An apple sticker, thirty pence, a bus ticket stub. These are the things that would remain. I read until my eyes are dry and sore and my stomach feels heavy as concrete. There but for the grace of God.

  I climb into bed next to William and lie very still, watching him. He lies with one hand on his chest, lifting and falling with his deep, measured breaths. Something uncurls softly inside me, a slight loosening of the tension I’ve been feeling since we arrived. His lips are parted and I have an urge to reach over and touch them with the pad of
my thumb, feeling for the warmth of his breath. William would know what I was carrying in my pockets. He saved me. A resolute protector.

  William stirs and looks at me in the half-light, frowning. ‘Are you okay? You’re not asleep?’

  ‘Will you give me a cuddle?’ I ask him, and allow myself to be folded against him, the warmth of his skin, the tight curls of his chest hair pressed firm against my cheek. All those stories have needled their way into my gut, acid burning a hole through the lining of my stomach. It’s upsetting. So many lives in limbo; I can’t sleep alone. I need the comfort of the man I married.

  William falls back to sleep right away but I lie awake in the dark with my eyes wide open, listening to the night sounds: the creaking rafters, the rattle of the water pipes, the lonely, plaintive cry of a tawny owl. In the end I reach for my phone and sketch Samantha a quick text. I’ve been trying to imagine what it’s been like for her all these years with no answers, no leads. Just that emptiness, hollow as a cave. I don’t know how much longer I can sustain the hope before I fucking sink, she said, and I think of her, that slim knife in her hand, fighting against the world the way she has been for eighteen years. That hope, the kind you carry everywhere with you, gestating like a foetus. It nails you to the earth, because without it you would simply float away like smoke on the breeze.

  Samantha – Now

  The calls have started again.

  About a year after Edie went missing I was getting as many as nine a night. My landline would bristle with the faintest crackle, like static from an untuned radio. I would wait, hoarse with anticipation, clutching the receiver in both hands.

  ‘Edie?’ I would whisper, my breath snagged like a fishhook. ‘Is that you, baby? Say something.’

  Nothing. Some nights I would hear the wind on the line like ghosts whispering into my ear. The longest call lasted seven minutes, the shortest just four seconds. The calls came as late as three o’clock in the morning, when I’d take the phone from the cradle and nestle it into the empty pillow next to me so I could hear her breathing in the dark.

  Then, for a time, they stopped. The last one I had was nine months ago, just as dusk was settling into the hollows of the Downs. I had a glass of white wine in my hand as I picked up the phone, sliding a Rizla into the folds of my paperback to mark my place. That time, the last time, I was convinced she was going to speak to me. I felt so sure I’d hear her voice that my legs grew weak and I let my back slide down the wall to the floor.

  ‘Edie?’ I said gently. ‘Talk to me. Please, just say hello.’

  Nothing. I let the silence fill the line. I told her I loved her and missed her and that I was sorry, so sorry I hadn’t been enough for her. I told her I hoped she was well. ‘Well’ was the word I used, but what I really meant was ‘safe’. Be safe, my baby.

  Since then, nothing. Until this afternoon.

  Despite what I’ve told Frances, I am still searching for Edie, unable to resist carving my way through the scant online information about Peter Liverly. His name circles my skull, a constant orbit. I’ve updated the ‘Where Is Edie Hudson?’ website and posted the new picture of her that Frances showed me. The last few nights, sleep hasn’t come so easily so I spend the long night lying and staring at the ceiling with my hands folded over my chest, a cigarette smouldering in the ashtray, the shipping forecast playing in the background. ‘Westerly or southwesterly six to gale eight, occasionally severe gale nine in Southeast Iceland. Rough or very rough, occasionally moderate at first. Rain or drizzle. Good, occasionally poor.’

  The call came at four thirty, as I was hauling the wet washing out of the machine. I reached for the phone – the landline, always the landline; I’ve refused to change the number since the day Edie left, in case she ever needed to contact me again. It’s that hope, you see, stretching its long, leathery wings about my ribs, crushing my chest.

  I didn’t say hello this time. I didn’t say, ‘Is that you?’ either. I let the silence stretch out and I pressed the phone against my cheek and said, ‘I know about the baby, Edie.’

  Was that a gasp? A quick indrawing of breath? Or was it the wind making the lines shiver? I pressed the phone more tightly in my hand, letting the washing drop to the floor at my feet.

  ‘Who was it, love? Was it that man from the church, the caretaker? You could have told me. I would have helped you.’

  Silence. Then, a rustling. Very quick, like Edie was scrabbling for the phone. In the background I heard a voice, a woman – maybe Edie herself saying something. I could only make out one of the words. It sounded like nosebleed.

  Then, a click.

  ‘Edie? Edie?’ I reached out to the phone and tapped the button inside the cradle. ‘Edie? Hello?’

  The dial tone, flat and monotonous in my ear. I quickly hung up in case Edie was trying to call. I lay back on my elbows, thinking. That voice. It was so familiar. I knew it. It had to be her.

  I dream about Tony Marston and wake up imagining the phone is ringing. The surface of my sleep is thin, and breaks apart easily. I’m panicking, reaching for my bedside drawer out of instinct, even before my eyes have opened. Tony told me that Mace was illegal but he didn’t take it away from me. It is still there, a small metal canister featuring the silhouette of a cowed attacker being repelled beneath the words Take Down Spray.

  I let my hand drop away from the drawer and release a shuddering breath. There’s a memory lodged in my head, the way they do sometimes, like a squeaky wheel needing oil.

  It was more than two years since Edie’s disappearance. I called Tony on a grey February morning and asked him to come over. The smell of frost and woodsmoke filled the air, and the heavy grey clouds were threatening snow. I stood in the garden smoking cigarette after cigarette, waiting for him to arrive, and when he did he was barely out of his coat before the anger overtook me, breathless and shaking and spitting words like bullets.

  ‘Do you know who this is?’

  He looked over at me, puzzled. I was holding a newspaper out to him. Not a local; a national. A broadsheet. I’d bought it in the supermarket earlier that morning. He took it from me, studying the photograph of the girl on the front. I bit at my nails, already wishing I could light another cigarette.

  ‘Her name’s Jemima Kennedy. Middle name Avaline. She’s fourteen. Blonde-haired, green-eyed. Tall, sporty. Approximately five foot two—’

  ‘What’s going on, Frances?’

  ‘—weighs about ninety-eight pounds. It’s all there, that information. In the article. She went missing on Sunday evening.’

  ‘Okay—’

  ‘Her father owns a chain of car dealerships. That’s in there too. She went to Roedean School for girls, where she was a straight-A student with a flair for languages and music. Her parents had asked her to come straight back from a friend’s house, where they were watching a video. Austin Powers, her friends said. Jemima left their house at nine. It’s a twenty-minute walk along well-lit streets to her parents’ house on Roedean Crescent. She never came home. You know they’ve given her a nickname?’ I laughed, although it wasn’t funny. I was so angry I could feel the heat of my blood through the skin. ‘They’re calling her the “Brighton Belle”. I mean, fuck!’

  I slammed my hand against the wall, hard enough that my palm rang with pain. It was satisfying to watch Tony jolt a little, his expression sharpening, becoming more watchful. I wondered if he thought I was going to attack him with the Take Down Spray. Who knew? I might.

  ‘Read it!’ I told him. ‘Read the fucking article! Someone in Whitehawk has opened up the community centre – they’ve had hundreds of volunteers out looking for her, putting up posters. Read what the police spokesman was quoted as saying.’

  ‘I’m getting to that; hold on.’

  I snatched the paper from him. He looked at me despairingly, his coat half-shrugged from his shoulders.

  ‘Here. Look. “We will not rest until this girl is safe and home with her family.” That’s pretty – that’s pretty
noble, right? Constant vigilance. She’s been all over the news. I saw it last night, and again this morning. You know what I just heard on the radio? They found her. Alive and well, just hiding out at a friend’s place.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘She’s only been missing thirty-six hours and look at the fuss. Look at the coverage. I can hardly get Edie’s name into the local rag – don’t touch me!’

  His hand, which had been edging towards me, dropped.

  ‘Why didn’t you ever say that to me? Why didn’t you not rest until my daughter was home?’

  ‘Samantha, here. Let me make you some tea. Sit down. Come on. Please.’

  I stared at him. ‘I remember you saying to me that girls like Edie will always find their way home. I didn’t know what you meant by that then. I do now. You mean girls like Edie aren’t photogenic enough. Girls like Edie have been in trouble at school and have a bad home life. Girls like Edie don’t warrant the same level of attention the Brighton Belle got. For one thing, girls like Edie can’t be relied upon to make a nice story at the end of the news. Girls like Edie never do.’

  Tony looked at me. He didn’t tell me what I was saying wasn’t fair. He didn’t tell me they’d done all they could. He didn’t tell me about the slashed funding, the budget cuts, the lack of resources. He didn’t try to explain at all. I was sobbing, great wracking gulps that squeezed my chest like a vice. He ran his hands over his face and gestured for me to sit. He made us tea in silence, watching me smoke in quick, darting puffs.

  ‘I let her down,’ I said. ‘Edie. If I’d worked harder, if I’d got her some help – she was disadvantaged from the start with her shitty father and me, desperately trying not to sink. I couldn’t scrape together a search party if I fucking tried.’