Local Girl Missing

by Claire Douglas

  ‘Because now we know for definite that she’s dead,’ I snap.

  He looks taken aback. ‘I’ve never been to Oldcliffe-on-Sea,’ he muses, picking at a non-existent spot on his upper arm. If he’s hinting to accompany me I ignore it.

  ‘You’re not missing much.’ I pull a silk camisole over my head. There is no way I want him to come with me. I need some breathing space.

  ‘It must have been fun growing up by the seaside.’

  I smile stiffly, trying not to shudder at the memory of growing up in that pastel-pink monstrosity overlooking the sea. Thank goodness Dad had the sense and money to sell up and buy a place in London before the property boom. I tug back the duvet and slide into bed next to him.

  ‘So, how long will you be gone?’ He pulls me close, nuzzling my neck.

  ‘Not long,’ I say, switching off the lamp. ‘I’m hoping just a few days. I can’t leave the hotels for too long, not now that Dad’s …’ I swallow. I still can’t bring myself to say the words. My dad, always so strapping, so capable, now reduced to a shadow of his former self as he lies, day after day, in that hospital bed, unable to speak, hardly able to move. It still feels too recent, too raw. I inch away, feigning tiredness, and turn my back.

  I lie still, waiting until I hear his rhythmic snores, his limbs heavy against mine, before grabbing my dressing gown from the back of the door and tiptoeing downstairs to sit at the kitchen table in the dark. I pour myself another glass of red wine. The smell of beef stew still lingers in the air. The little red light on the dishwasher flashes and beeps to let me know it’s completed its cycle. It sounds strangely alien in the dark empty room.

  I’ve tried so hard over the years to keep my life in order, to be successful, to move on, to not think about you every day. It’s as though I’ve been cocooned inside a ball of wool, but now that wool has started to unravel, and when it does I’ll be laid bare for all the world to see.

  Jason. His name pops into my head, unbidden.

  I take a large slug of wine but it doesn’t stop my heart palpitating. Because the truth is bound to come out, Soph, and with it the dark secret we kept back then; the one thing we could never tell anyone else. Ever.

  2

  Sophie

  Thursday, 26 June 1997

  It’s late as I write this. I doubt it will make much sense, I’m a tad wasted. But I have to scribble it down now so that I don’t forget it in the morning.

  Frankie’s back!

  I saw her tonight. She was standing at the bar in Mojo’s, flanked by two guys I didn’t recognise (one of whom was totally lush – just saying!). She had her back to me but I knew straight away it was her. I’d know that hair anywhere. It still hung in a perfect dark, glossy sheet. Doll’s hair, that’s what it’s always reminded me of. The thick, luscious hair of a china doll. She was wearing a camel-coloured fake fur coat (at least, I hope it was fake) and long, black knee-high boots and as I watched her through the crowds I felt that familiar twist of envy in my gut because she’s even more bloody beautiful than I’d remembered. I immediately felt under-dressed and dowdy in my jeans and Adidas trainers (although they’re new, the navy blue Gazelle ones that I’ve wanted for ages!).

  Then she turned, her eyes locked with mine and her face broke out into a huge grin. She excused herself from the honeys she was with and parted the crowd towards me like a glamorous film star from the 1960s. Francesca Howe. Frankie. My best friend. And instantly everyone else seemed to fade into the background, as if they were all in black and white and she was in colour.

  ‘Sophie! Oh my God, I can’t believe it! How are you?’ she shrieked, jumping up and down and waving her arms about excitedly. I think she was pissed, although it was only 8.30 p.m. She never could take her drink. She pulled me into a fierce embrace, engulfing me in the heady cloud of YSL Paris, her signature scent even when we were at school. My nose was pressed into the shoulder of her vintage fur coat. It smelt musty, of mothballs and second-hand shops.

  She pulled me away from her so she could survey me, holding me at arm’s length. ‘Wow, you look so different. Truly amazing,’ she said and I know she was taking in my highlights, my eyebrow wax, my contact lenses. ‘And look how tall you are! I feel so short,’ she laughed. I didn’t want to admit to her that I felt hefty compared to her delicate petite-ness. She’s as tiny as Kylie Minogue but with huge boobs. I always was jealous of her chest at school. I’m still ironing-board flat.

  ‘What has it been?’ She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow while contemplating how many years must have passed since she left our school. I remember exactly. It was 1993, four years ago. ‘That long?’ she said when I told her.

  She’d left at the end of Year 12. Her parents pulled her out of our under-achieving sixth form to send her to a posh boarding school in Bristol to finish her A-levels. We’d promised to keep in touch, and we did for a while, but then her trips home became less and less frequent. In the end I worried that my letters would seem boringly provincial and inane compared to the exciting life she was living with the Millicents and Jemimas of this world away in a big city like Bristol. How could the housing estate I lived on (still live on now that I’m back from uni) with Mum and Daniel compare to that? Eventually the correspondence petered out and I didn’t see her again until we left school. We hung out a few times that summer but things were a bit strained between us when I got into Warwick and Frankie had to go through clearing. She didn’t say it, of course, but I knew she was thinking it should have been the other way around, what with her private education. Whereas I was the first person in my family to even go to university.

  I expected to see Frankie in the holidays, but she hardly came back home. I bumped into her mum once in Safeway and she told me Frankie and some ‘wealthy pals from her course’ had rented a house where they could live all year round and not just in term time. Maria had looked annoyed about it and made reference to it being Frankie’s father’s idea and how he was always spoiling her. I never blamed Frankie for staying away, not really. If I’d had somewhere else to go in the holidays I wouldn’t have come back here either.

  Sometimes I wondered if she stayed away because coming back was too painful. It reminded her – I reminded her – of what happened with Jason when we were sixteen. Our friendship had never been quite the same after that summer. We’d always been able to talk about anything and yet we were suddenly unable to talk about him, because just mentioning his name would voice the awful thing that we had done.

  ‘So how was Warwick?’ she added. ‘You always were the brainy one. You did English Lit., didn’t you? Like you always wanted.’

  I nodded. I was beginning to feel embarrassed by her attention. That was the thing about Frankie. She always had this innate way of making you feel like you’re the most important person in her world. ‘What about you?’

  She waved a hand at me. Her nail varnish was a pale blue, like a corpse. ‘I got into Cardiff in the end. Did Business Studies.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s what my dad wanted me to do.’

  ‘That’s great,’ I said, but thinking how boring. ‘Are you staying for the summer?’

  She looped her arm through mine. ‘I am. Dad wants me to have a career in hotel management.’ She threw her head back and laughed. ‘As if. What about you?’ Her voice sounded posher than it once had, more clipped, as if her boarding school had filed down all those harsh West Country Rs.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m applying for jobs. I’d like to get into publishing.’ I didn’t want to tell her of the doubt that gnawed away at me late at night, that I’d never find a decent job, that I’d be stuck in Oldcliffe like my mum and brother for the rest of my life working in that greasy kiosk near the beach with pervy Stan, despite my ‘good brain’.

  That wouldn’t happen to Frankie. I might have done better in my exams, gone to a highly regarded university, but that didn’t mean anything. Not when your parents were well off and threw money at you like Frankie’s parents did. Those three years in Warwickshir
e might have been the only chance I had to get out of this town.

  ‘Aw, I’ve missed you, Soph,’ she said, suddenly serious while she appraised me fondly. ‘It wasn’t the same – school without you.’

  I agreed with her. The weight of her absence bore more heavily on me than I cared to remember. She was my first best friend. My only best friend.

  She frogmarched me to the bar, pulled out a wad of cash and ordered two Diamond Whites. Then we spent the next hour talking non-stop about those missing years; the music we liked, the bands we were into. Typically we have the same taste. And as we chatted, the last three years fell away and it was as though I’d seen her only yesterday. She told me about this new club called The Basement that’s opened up in the high street and plays indie music, promising me that we would go together and, before I knew it, the staff were calling last orders. I looked around for Helen, the friend I had come with, but she had long gone. Frankie ordered another Diamond White and as we clinked the bottles together she said, ‘Cheers, Soph! Here’s to one last summer of fun. One last summer before we’re forced into the real world, where we have to be grown-ups, with jobs and responsibilities.’

  We didn’t go home straight away. We zigzagged towards the beach, arms linked, giggling and tiddly and overflowing with Diamond Whites. We perched on the sea wall, watching the water lap against our feet. The air was still humid after a hot day. We couldn’t stop talking.

  I didn’t get home until gone midnight and now I can’t sleep because I’m too excited.

  She’s back. My best friend is back. I’ve missed her so much. I had fun at uni and met some great friends. But nobody has ever compared to her.

  She’s in some of my most treasured childhood memories: her teaching me to roller skate; sleepovers in her cosy loft room at her parents’ hotel; brunch in their formal dining room with views of the sea (which made a change from me, Mum and Daniel eating tea on our laps in front of the TV); drinking cans of lager on the old pier; making up dance routines to Madonna and Five Star in my (much smaller) bedroom; giggling in the back of the classroom at Mr Marrow’s toupee.

  And she’s in some of my worst. That’s the downside of knowing someone as long as I’ve known Frankie. But I won’t let that spoil my mood, I’m still buzzing.

  This is going to be the best summer ever!

  FRIDAY

  * * *

  3

  Frankie

  The sky is grey and oppressive as I drive through the centre of Oldcliffe-on-Sea, the clouds so low it feels as though I could reach out and touch them. To my left the sand is as brown as mud, the sea the colour of dirty dishwater and so far out I have to squint to determine where the shore ends and the waves begin. There are a few solitary people in wellies dotted about on the beach, their coats pressed firmly against their backs by the wind, throwing sticks for scraggy, wet dogs.

  I pass what was once the outdoor lido, where we spent most of our summers as kids. It was where my dad taught us to swim. It’s now boarded up; abandoned and sorry-looking, like a lover who has been stood up on a date. The Grand Pier, further along the coast, has hardly changed, with its opulent art-deco facade and bright red lettering.

  Rearing up on the other side of the road, facing the sea, are the Victorian terraces of hotels and guest houses. I pass what was once our hotel, the one I grew up in, its candy-pink walls now a more refined powder blue.

  The centre has been gentrified a little – a few upmarket cafés and smart restaurants have popped up amongst the discount shops and greasy spoons – but for the most part the town is unchanged, as if time stopped somewhere in the mid-1950s. Unfortunately the amusement arcades are still here, with their loud, grating music and garish, flashing lights. We loved them as kids. We would spend all our pocket money on those ten-pence machines.

  I imagine in the summer the town is bustling, just as it used to be, full of tourists; couples strolling along the front, kids building sandcastles, pensioners squashed on benches and gazing out to sea with their flasks of tea and home-made sandwiches, teenage lovers clasping hands as they ride on the big wheel. Today it’s like a ghost town. Today it brings back every unwanted memory of the past that I’ve ever had.

  I drive away from the centre of town and follow the coastal road around to the left. And then I see it. The Victorian relic rises out of the turbid sea like a decaying monster with steel legs that look as though they’re about to buckle under its weight. The old pier. The place where you disappeared. You were fond of the pier but I hated it. And I hate it even more now. It’s obvious, as I drive closer, that it has become even more dilapidated since I left. If I drive further on, I will reach the sprawling estate where you and Daniel grew up. It’s all still so familiar to me, as though I have a map of this town tattooed on my brain.

  I pull my Range Rover into a lay-by, turn off the engine and sit and stare at the pier, letting the memories wash over me of all the times we went there, as teenagers with Jason and later with Daniel and his friends. It closed to the public in 1989 but that didn’t stop us. It was a great place to hang out away from the main town, somewhere we could sit and drink our Red Stripe lagers in peace, listen to Blur and Oasis on my portable CD player. We made sure never to venture too far onto the pier and certainly never as far as the old deserted pavilion at the end. We had heard whispers of ghost stories bandied about in pubs: the builder who had fallen from the pavilion and now roamed it at night; the woman dressed in Victorian nightwear who threw herself and her new-born baby into the sea after her husband left her. We doubted any of these stories were true, but we liked to scare ourselves nonetheless.

  Now the pier is cordoned off and deserted, with a large, red DANGER: DO NOT ENTER sign at the entrance, although it would still be easy enough to climb through the makeshift fencing; if it had been there in our day, I’m sure that’s what we would have done.

  I sit for a while longer, listening to the rain tap-tapping on the roof and windscreen, watching the waves whipping themselves into a fury like rabid dogs frothing at the mouth. On the journey down I stopped at the petrol station on the outskirts of town. It’s no longer an Elf garage like it was in our day, Soph – it’s now Shell. Newspapers lined the entrance. HUMAN REMAINS WASHED UP ON BEACH was emblazoned across the front page of the local rag. It seemed so impersonal somehow, so wrong, to talk about you in that way.

  I’ll never forget when you first went missing. The next day your mum raised the alarm after realising that you had never been home. To begin with she thought you might have stayed with me or Helen, so she waited and waited and, after calling all your friends to no avail, she rang the police. By then nearly twenty-four hours had elapsed since anyone had last seen you. The police interviewed all of us, the coastguard searched for a few days, but you had simply vanished. Nobody could understand it. The only thing they found was your trainer at the edge of the old pier. After that, the investigation tailed off. The police clearly believed that you had fallen off the pier and drowned. There was no official ruling. Your family never requested an inquest, so you’re still a ‘missing person’.

  And now … the newspaper headline flashes in front of my eyes again and I blink it away.

  I need to go. It’s nearly 3 p.m. and I can’t put off meeting Daniel any longer. Reluctantly I turn on the engine and I’m about to leave when something on the pier catches my eye. A figure is leaning so far over the railings it looks as if any minute they could tumble into the choppy sea. It’s just a dark silhouette, but with the long hair whipping a heart-shaped face it looks like a woman. It looks like you. My stomach lurches. It can’t be you. It can’t be anyone. The pier is fenced off, the planks rotten and full of holes. Nobody could walk on that pier now without falling through the boards.

  Suddenly the low sun breaks apart the grey clouds, shining down on the pier and almost blinding me. I’m forced to close my eyes, black dots swimming behind my lids. When I open them again the sky has reverted back to greyness and the pier is once again empty. Ju
st the light playing tricks on me.

  The holiday apartment is high up on the cliff top overlooking the old pier. My mouth is dry as I turn right. I’m no longer on the coastal road but driving up the steep Hill Street, my car making light work of the potholes. The road levels off and I kerb crawl until I spot Beaufort Villas, a lemon and white Victorian apartment block with huge bay windows and ornate, pointed roof gables. It stands in a row of almost identical buildings in ice-cream colours, facing Oldcliffe Bay and looking down on the old pier like a line of disapproving aunts in their Sunday best. This part of town has always been more prestigious, with its grand houses and residents-only park, in spite of the now decrepit pier.

  I pull into the driveway, my tyres crunching over the gravel, and park next to a gold Vauxhall. A man is sitting on a low wall by the front door, one leg crossed over a knee, scribbling something in a notebook. I know it’s Daniel even after all these years: the curve of his chin, the line of his long nose and the cowlick which meant his dark hair never sat straight but flopped over his forehead, so that he was continually forced to push it out of his eyes. He looks up at the sound of my car, his face expectant, and places the pen behind his ear.

  My hand trembles slightly as I pull on the handbrake. Why does coming back here make me feel so nervous? Holding meetings, appeasing difficult clients, dealing with disillusioned staff is all a breeze compared to the way I feel right now. I get out of the car, making an effort to be graceful in my skinny jeans and stiletto-heeled boots. The cold air that greets me is like a slap in the face.

  ‘Frankie?’ He leaps off the wall and ambles towards me, still slim and rangy and extremely tall. He’s wearing black jeans, a long dark overcoat and a striped scarf pulled up to his chin. He slips the notebook into the front pocket of his coat. From a distance he looks like the twenty-three-year-old he was when I last saw him, but as he approaches I can see that age has softened and plumped out his once-sharp features, and streaked his nearly-black hair with the odd flash of white. His skin looks rougher, less translucent. My first memory of him is on his BMX, riding around the estate and trying to impress us with his wheelies. He was nine. Now he’s forty-one and very much a man. The thought makes me blush.