What You Wish For

by Mark Edwards

  ‘And she gave you no other clues at all over the weekend?’

  ‘No. We stayed in on Saturday night with a DVD. I spent Sunday preparing my photographs for Theresa Smith. Marie sat at her computer. I think she was just browsing the web.’

  ‘So you’ve got no clues at all?’

  ‘No.’

  He sighed. ‘For a photographer, you’re not very observant, are you?’

  ‘I didn’t know I was going to be investigating her disappearance.’

  ‘Hmm. And you’ve tried to contact everyone she knows?’ Simon said.

  ‘I don’t have any of her friends’ details.’

  ‘Aren’t they on her computer? I take it you’ve looked?’

  ‘I would, but it’s password protected.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘You’re not very good at this stuff, are you? Listen, try all the passwords you can think of. Including “password” itself. If you can’t crack it we’ll take it to someone who can.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘If you really want to find her you’re going to have to start thinking like a detective. Try to put aside your angst and grief and be logical.’ He swallowed. ‘If you need any help, I’ll be there for you. Although I still reckon she’ll turn up.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Didn’t she used to go to a lot of conferences on UFOs? You should find out if there have been any this week. Think, Richard, think. Stop sulking and moaning and do something.’

  We left the café and I thanked him.

  ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘if you need any help . . .’ He barked a laugh. ‘You’re definitely going to need it.’

  8

  I sat in front of the PC. What was her password?

  First, I tried vanity and typed richard.

  No joy.

  I tried again. I looked over at the windowsill, where Calico looked out at the street. I typed the cat’s name.

  Access denied.

  I had a horrible feeling that if I failed a third time I would be locked out. I thought hard. With my heart thumping, I typed chorus.

  I was in. I hissed, ‘Yes.’ I wasn’t such a shit detective after all.

  I started to click through the address book, which was sorted by first name. The top entry was Andrew, with his phone number, home address and email address. Well, that wouldn’t be much use, would it? I moved to the next one, then flicked back and forth through the addresses.

  There seemed to be the phone number of everyone she knew, as well as the addresses of various organisations, such as the Ministry of Defence, the British UFO Research Association, UFO Magazine, Quest International. One that caught my eye was ‘Mum’. As far as I knew, she hadn’t had any contact with her mum while we’d been together.

  I exported the address book, after a lot of fiddling, onto my phone and felt my despair lift a little. Now I could make a start.

  The first number I called was Marie’s mum’s. There was no answer. Did anyone ever answer their phone? Then I called some of the other numbers. First, I phoned Kathy, who told me she hadn’t seen or heard from Marie for a few weeks. Not since she’d stormed out during our argument about Sally.

  ‘You’ve got me worried now,’ she said. ‘I can phone around people from college if you want, see if anyone’s heard from her?’

  ‘That would be great.’

  While waiting for Kathy to make her calls, I phoned the college itself to see if they’d heard from Marie. The woman on the switchboard put me through to a Pete Stapleford, the head of the computing department.

  ‘Let me check,’ he said, putting me on hold for a minute. ‘No, she hasn’t been to any of her lectures this week. We left her a couple of messages asking if she was sick. You’ve got me worried now. I’ll ask around.’ I asked him to call me if he found anything out.

  I scanned the list of addresses again. Kathy was taking care of most of the names in the file; I tried a few other local numbers, but they were all people who hadn’t seen Marie since she had left school. There were a few other private numbers, scattered around the country. My finger hovered over the phone, undecided. I sat and waited for Kathy to call back.

  When she phoned, an hour later, Kathy said, ‘I’ve spoken to Narinder, Tracey, Zoe and Amanda. None of them have heard from her since the end of August. Amanda’s on the same computer course as Marie and she said she hasn’t been to any classes.’ She spoke breathlessly. ‘I feel sick with anxiety. What if something awful’s happened to her?’

  I took a deep breath. All of a sudden I felt terribly cold. ‘Can you think of anyone else who might have seen her?’

  ‘No. I’ve been racking my brain since I spoke to you. There’s no one. The thing is, Marie kept herself to herself. It’s like she had two sets of friends: her friends at college and . . . everyone else. The spooky lot.’

  ‘Spooky?’

  ‘Yeah, you know. The “We Are Not Alone” brigade. That creepy Andrew bloke. I know you’re not one of them. Marie always said you were a cynic.’

  ‘She talked about me, then?’

  ‘Oh yes. She told us all about you. She really liked you.’

  Suddenly, I wanted to get off the phone. I didn’t like the way Kathy kept referring to Marie in the past tense. Like she was dead.

  ‘Well, thanks for your help,’ I said.

  Kathy exhaled loudly. ‘I’m sure it will be all right, Richard. She’ll come back. Just wait and see.’

  But she didn’t sound very confident.

  The spooky lot. I wasn’t the only person who wasn’t a big fan of Marie’s alien-obsessed friends. But it made me think. Marie was always on an internet forum called Experiencers Unite. Sometimes she sat up late into the night sharing her opinion with fellow enthusiasts. I went onto the site now and scanned the list of recent posts, skim-reading a few of them.

  I shook my head. All of the posts were about abduction experiences, UFO sightings around the world, talk of the ‘coming revelation’, arguments about the New World Order, a long discussion about how aliens were more likely to visit pregnant women . . .

  I wasn’t sure what Marie’s user name was so couldn’t tell which posts she’d written. I searched the site for her name but got no results.

  I had nothing to lose, so I registered on the site and wrote a post:

  My girlfriend, Marie Walker, is a regular user of this site. I’m not sure of her user name – sorry. But she’s on here all the time so I’m hoping some of you will know her by her real name.

  Marie has gone missing and I’m worried sick. I came home two nights ago and she wasn’t here. I can’t believe she would leave without letting me know she was safe. But she has been very upset recently after her friend, Andrew Jade, was killed in an accident.

  Marie, if you read this, please call me to let me know you’re OK.

  If anyone else knows where Marie is, please contact me.

  Thank you.

  I hit refresh multiple times over the next half hour. Although the number of views ticked up, there was no response for ages. Then, after fifteen minutes of growing anxiety, I saw that I had a reply. I clicked to read it.

  Maybe she’s been abducted. The wife of a friend of mine vanished WITHOUT TRACE a few years back. He never found out what happened to her but in the days before she went she had unexplained cuts and bruises on her body, all signs of an abduction, and he is SURE the extraterrestrials came back and took her PERMANENTLY.

  I stopped reading.

  I hit refresh a few more times – and then noticed my forum post had disappeared. There was a message in my inbox from a moderator. I thumped the desk and swore at the computer. My message had been ‘deleted for breaching forum guidelines around using real names’.

  I shot back a reply – thinking this moderator might know Marie, or could look up her details – asking for help. Could they put an appeal on the site for information?

  I waited, growing increasingly irritated, my feeling of helplessness intensifying as they didn’t reply. Finally, I turned off the PC.

&nb
sp; It was getting late. The sun was going down, dipping behind the hill. I tried to call Marie’s mum again but there was still no answer. I checked the address. It was only a five-minute drive away. That surprised me. Marie’s mum lived just around the corner yet Marie had never taken me to meet her. I had no time to waste so I got in my car and drove to the Walker residence.

  Marie’s mum lived in a new terraced house on a council estate. Rows of identical, pebble-dashed houses with off-colour lawns. I rang the bell.

  There was no reply so I rang it again. Nothing. I pressed my face to the window and looked inside. There was no sign of life. I pushed open the letterbox and peered through it into the gloom. Unopened mail lay in a pile on the doormat. My stomach lurched. Had she disappeared as well?

  I hung around for a few minutes, wondering what to do next. Just as I was about to get back in my car, a man with incredible sideburns came out of the next house.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he said, narrowing his eyes. I couldn’t take my eyes off his sideburns. He looked like he’d been going to the same barber and tailor since 1973.

  ‘I’m looking for Mrs Walker.’

  ‘And you are?’

  I admired his directness. ‘I’m a friend of her daughter’s. She sent me round with a message for her mum.’

  ‘Marie? Christ on a bike, I haven’t seen her for years.’ He shook his head. ‘Little Marie. Tut.’

  ‘Maybe you could give Mrs Walker my phone number,’ I said, reaching in my pocket for a pen.

  ‘Give it to her yourself,’ he said. ‘She’s in the Conquest.’

  I hate hospitals. The smell of death and disinfectant, the ghosts that stalk the sterile corridors, the pain and suffering and germs. I have a horror of ending up in one, sometimes have nightmares in which I’m lost, wandering the maze-like corridors of a hospital like every other, in my pyjamas, searching for an exit, unable to find it.

  Kate Walker was a pale, fragile-looking woman. She looked exactly how I imagined Marie would look if the next twenty-five years of her life were full of nothing but pain and misery. Kate was in a ward with seven other women, most of them lying quietly, watching TV or fiddling with their phones. Most of them had visitors, but there were no signs that Marie’s mother had been visited by well-wishers. There were no flowers, no bunches of grapes or even cards.

  I pulled up a chair and sat beside her. I felt nervous. Would this woman be able to tell me something that would help me? Would she be able to shed any light on the dark space her daughter had left behind?

  ‘I’m a friend of Marie’s,’ I said.

  She inspected me, then nodded. She didn’t smile. ‘Richard.’

  I was taken aback. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Marie told me she had a new boyfriend. She came to see me a couple of weeks ago, just before I came into this place. You’re a bit younger than I expected. She’s always gone for older men in the past.’

  ‘I’m twenty-seven.’

  ‘That’s young for Marie.’ Before I could ask more, she said, ‘So what brings you here? Did Marie send you? Couldn’t she come and see me herself?’

  I decided to get straight to the point. ‘Mrs Walker . . .’

  ‘Call me Kate. Please.’

  I paused. ‘Kate. Marie went missing last Monday. That is, I went out for the day and when I came home she wasn’t there. I haven’t seen or heard from her since. None of her friends have seen her either. I’m going insane with worry. And I came here to find out if you’ve heard from her.’

  Her mouth opened and she shook her head. After a moment she said, ‘Just like her father. He did the same to me, when Marie was little.’

  ‘Yes, she told me.’

  ‘And I expect she told you all sorts of horror stories about him. About how he used to beat her and beat me.’ Bitterness tainted her voice.

  ‘Are you saying it’s not true?’

  She pursed her lips, revealing the puckered pout of a long-time smoker. ‘Her father was a good man. Yes, he used to lose his temper sometimes, but men do. My father was always losing his temper. Marie’s so intolerant and blinkered. All she sees is the bad side. She doesn’t appreciate that her father always loved her. He doted on her.’

  ‘That’s not what she says.’

  She tutted. ‘Life’s not black and white, Richard. Family life, especially.’ She laughed humourlessly. ‘It’s funny. Marie hates her father, and now she’s gone and done exactly what he did. Buggered off.’

  No wonder Marie rarely visited her mother, if she had to listen to her defend the bastard who had made her childhood a misery. I was tempted to get up and leave, but I still had questions to ask. And something made me identify with this woman. We had both been left behind. Perhaps I was as deluded as she was.

  ‘Would you be a good lad,’ Kate said, ‘and get me a cup of tea? There’s a vending machine just down the corridor.’

  ‘OK.’ I stood up and made my way to the machine. I bought a tea for her and black coffee for myself.

  ‘Thank you.’ She sat up as straight as she could. ‘Why are you in here?’ I asked, feeling awkward.

  ‘You mean to say Marie hasn’t told you? That girl . . .’ She looked me in the eye. ‘I’ve just had a mastectomy.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ I squirmed. ‘I’m sorry, I had no idea.’

  ‘Obviously not. Marie probably didn’t think it was worth mentioning.’

  ‘She knew?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘Where did I go wrong?’

  I couldn’t believe this. I hadn’t even known that Marie had been to visit her mother. I tried to work it out: it must have been just after Andrew’s funeral. Why on earth hadn’t she told me?

  ‘Did she tell you about her friend Andrew?’ I asked.

  She nodded. ‘Yes she did. She was quite upset, although she didn’t really want to talk about it. We talked about me, mostly. The cancer.’

  ‘Is it . . . are you going to be all right?’

  She tried to smile. ‘Oh yes. I’ll be fine. Tough old bird, I am. Tough as . . .’

  She trailed off and silence fell over us. I could hear birds outside the window, the distant quacking of the ducks that lived on the hospital grounds.

  My mind raced. Marie knew her mother had cancer. Whatever the problems between them, surely she wouldn’t vanish deliberately, leaving her mother alone? It made me shudder. It pushed me into thinking that Marie hadn’t chosen to vanish. Something had happened to her. But was it an external force, or an internal one? Had the news about her mother, coming so soon after Andrew’s death, torn her sanity from its hinges, pushed her over the edge?

  ‘When she came to see you,’ I asked, ‘did she say anything at all to suggest whether she was planning something? Like going away?’

  She touched her forehead with thin fingers and thought. Eventually, she shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry, but I can’t think of a thing.’ A look of desperation replaced the one of bravado. She clutched my hand, squeezing my fingers until they hurt. She started to cry, her body shaking with the attempt to hold back the tears.

  ‘I need to see her,’ she said. ‘She’s all I’ve got left. You’ve got to tell her to come and see me.’

  ‘But I don’t—’

  She squeezed my fingers even harder. Her grip was shockingly strong. I thought my bones were going to crack.

  ‘You have to find her and tell her to visit me. I need you to promise.’

  ‘OK.’ I tried to extricate my hands from her grip. ‘Yes, yes of course.’

  ‘Say it. Say you promise. You won’t give up. People always give up, they always let you down.’

  A nurse appeared and stared at me disapprovingly. Kate’s body shook with fresh sobs.

  ‘I promise,’ I said. ‘I’ll find her.’

  On the way home I listened to the news on the radio. I kept expecting them to say that the body of a young woman had been found on wasteland somewhere, or discovered by a dog walker. But the world didn’t know, let a
lone care, that Marie was missing.

  Approaching my house, I noticed that the front gate was open. As a habit, I always shut the front gate when I go out – a trait that was drilled into me by my dad when I lived at home. To him, leaving the gate open was like inviting burglars into your house. I paused. Had I left it open in my rush to visit Marie’s mum? Or . . .

  I rushed up to the house, scrabbled for my keys and thrust the door open, shouting Marie’s name as I went in. I heard a movement and for a second I felt a pulse of joy, like that moment when you wake from a nightmare.

  But it was only Calico, who had jumped down from his spot on the windowsill. I ran from room to room but, of course, she wasn’t there.

  So who had left the gate open?

  It was probably me. Or someone delivering leaflets, or a pack of Jehovah’s Witnesses. But there were no leaflets on the doormat and the Jehovahs usually came in the morning. Feeling spooked, I went out into the front garden. It was fully dark now, the stars bright in a clear black sky.

  There was a window box on the sill beside the door. Marie had put it there, one of the things she’d done when she moved in, to add a splash of colour and character to the house. I made a mental note that I needed to remember to water it. But as I was about to go back inside, I noticed that the heads of a few of the flowers were broken, hanging as if in shame towards the window. There was dirt on the floor too, just visible in the poor light. It looked like someone had knocked the window box off the sill before putting it back again. Carefully, I lifted it down so I could get a better look.

  This window, which looked into the living room, was one of the original features of my Victorian house: a sash window that rattled when it was windy, that let in drafts and noise. It was painted white, and a few weeks before, after Marie had pointed out how shabby it looked, I had given it a fresh coat.

  There were dirty fingermarks on the paintwork now. Like someone, having knocked over the window box, had tested the window with muddy fingers to try, unsuccessfully, to open it.