She squeezes my shoulder. “Take care of yourself. And get me a coffee.” She winks, though, and I can’t help but smile. I think she’s all right, beneath it all. And I like that she doesn’t bother telling me it’ll be okay, or that Erin will turn up, or that the police are doing all they can and they’ll find her eventually. She’s an intelligent woman. She knows neither of us believe that. She knows I know how black the world can be.
The fashion cupboard feels like a house left empty after a divorce. If you associate a place closely enough with a person, one without the other seems impossible.
Her stuff has been tidied up and I hate it. The reusable coffee mug with a bespectacled owl, the polka dot umbrella she keeps here in case it rains on a coffee run, the sleek black-and-gold pencil case with the posh fountain pen Smith bought her for starting law school. It’s all been put in a shoebox and tucked away to the side of the room. I can’t even look at it. The only belonging I’ve seen of hers since she went missing is her toothbrush, taken away by detectives to use for DNA sampling. I don’t think my fragile mind could handle fixating on a quirky owl or a sparkly pen or a funky umbrella, all so quintessentially her.
I flop to the ground. There are no chairs in here; there’s no room. Just a fraying blue carpet we’ve spent hours and hours and hours cross-legged on, surrounding by postage labels and compliments slips and clothes we could never afford. We were a good team. She had the eye for fashion, I had the knack for organization. I try and bring order to my own mind every minute of every day. A glorified wardrobe was no challenge.
Deciding to start sending back the A/W lines we’ve already shot, I get to work, losing myself in the monotony of folding and labeling and franking. Every time I want to make a wisecrack comment about a ridiculous product name (Hobo Camel Dungarees are set to be big this season) or an overly enthusiastic PR pitch (“I just superduper absolutely think Northern Heart will totes adore this fabulous clutch!”), I have to catch myself. I have to remember I’m alone.
Still, I’m getting through it; I’ve almost made it to lunchtime. But then I find it.
Her leather jacket. It’s somehow gotten mixed up among the branded clothing, and I’m so wrapped up in my routine I barely notice until I realize there’s no tag. I hold it away from me and gasp; the flood of emotion is overwhelming.
Black with chunky zips and an androgynous cut, all sleek edges and cool angles. She loved this jacket. Splurged on it one lunch break a few days after the fight with Smith. Her very own brand of “fuck you, I do what I want.” I loved her for it. We went to a creepy old churchyard after work and I photographed her wearing it for her blog.
It still smells of her. Chanel No 5, coconut shampoo and the occasional cigarette she sneaked at particularly stressful times and thought nobody noticed. I drop it. Press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry.
No use. The tears come anyway. Clumps of watery mascara cover my palms. I pick it up again. Hold it close to my chest. Erin.
I squeeze the fabric harder, but something rustles in the inside pocket. A receipt? No. It’s more like a plastic wrapper—Haribo? She loves jelly sweets.
Careful not to jam the zip, I slide the pocket open, but inside it’s just a plain white packet with a simple black code. A corner is missing. It’s been opened.
Nausea sweeps through me, cold and sudden. I know what these are. I’ve used one myself, after a drunken slip with a guy in my journalism class.
Pregnancy tests. There’s one missing.
Think, think, think.
I have no idea how long they’ve been in there. We’ve been at Northern Heart together for nine months, and she bought the jacket three weeks into the internship. It could’ve been any time.
But it wouldn’t have been. The packet is bulky and it rustles—she wouldn’t have carried it around for so long.
I try to remember the last time I saw her wearing it. It was pretty warm before we left for Serbia, one of those random weeks of actual sun we rarely see in the North East, so she’d have baked liked a jacket potato in thick leather. Maybe late June? Early July?
It’s just a stab in the dark and I know it. I can’t remember when she last wore it, had no idea it’d ever be important.
How little attention we pay to those we love.
Again, I’m thrown that she didn’t tell me. We had—or at least I thought we did—one of those beautifully candid friendships borne from both proximity and a genuine, soul-deep bond. She never hesitated to tell me about her bowel movements or the kinky things Smith asked her to do in bed. There was no such thing as too much information.
Maybe she spouted off about the little stuff so I wouldn’t notice the big stuff. A jittery Erin before meeting her father in prison, a nervous Erin before taking a life-changing test, a hurt Erin after someone grabbed her. All hypotheticals, but all founded in fact.
It must have been negative, though. She was drinking in Serbia. Not as much as usual, but I just figured that was because money was tight. And she didn’t look pregnant. I know girls with a petite frame like hers don’t really show until later on, but surely I’d notice? I think back to her outfits in Serbia.
Baggy tees. Every day.
No, this is ridiculous. She wasn’t pregnant. She couldn’t’ve been.
But there’s a scenario, flashing through my head. One that fills me with horror.
Erin, falling pregnant by the man who resents her for following her dreams.
Erin, panicking, not knowing who to turn to.
Erin, confronting her dad, him grabbing her.
Erin, full of fear, screaming at him to get off her, because she’s carrying his grandson.
Him. Grabbing her harder.
I have to know. I have to know if she was pregnant.
SMITH LOOKS LIKE hell.
I had his number saved in my phone, from the time Erin’s ran out of battery and she needed to keep him updated on what bar we were in so he could meet us. My last outgoing text to him was See you soon baby zxx—obviously sent by her. It killed me to read it.
He wasn’t surprised to hear from me, he said. Agreed to meet me on my lunch hour. Suggested a coffee shop, but I needed somewhere nobody would eavesdrop. Besides, I’ve had too many public breakdowns lately. Preemptive action seemed necessary. We’re in the churchyard down the street from my office, sitting on a memorial bench, surrounded by gravestones.
My memory of Smith was a clean-shaven baby face, perfectly styled brown hair, expensive suits and a watch you’d assume to be fake if you didn’t know his family. Too much aftershave. Eyes that never quite focused on anything in particular; he’s too good to listen to you, too good to pay proper attention.
Today, he’s the more disheveled of us two, and that’s coming from the girl with a mascara-stained face and fading streaks of violet in her coarse black hair. His top button’s undone, the knot on his tie is too small; he hasn’t shaved in a few days. I smell deodorant, lots of it, but no aftershave. His eyes are red and puffy.
“I miss her,” he murmurs, voice hoarse. He’s staring at a gravestone, engraved with the words Loved by All, Taken Too Soon.
“Me, too.”
“Tell me about it,” he says. “Tell me about the last time you saw her.”
I tell him. The music, the humidity, the emotional conversation, the offhanded goodbye. Not goodbye. “See you in a minute.” I’m still waiting for that minute to end.
“Was she happy?”
That catches me off guard. What a morbid question. It’s like asking, “Did she die happy?”
I shrug. “I think so. She always lets you know if she isn’t.” I throw the word always around pretty loosely. “Anyway, Smith, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. I . . . there’s something I have to ask. About Erin. In the last few months.”
I study his face
for a sign he might know what I’m talking about, but as usual his eyes are vacant. The placid expression has gone, though. In its place is a frown carved in cement. His pain is written in his hunched brow and tensed jaw.
“I . . . found this.” I pull out the twin pack of pregnancy tests. “One’s missing. Did you . . . was she . . . ?”
“The fuck is that?” He snatches the packet. Pulls the other one out. Goes white. “What the—”
“You didn’t know.”
He looks at me now, for the first time. Gapes. “Was she?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. That’s what I wanted to ask you. She didn’t mention it?”
“No, she . . .” He trails off as his voice catches in his throat. “No.”
I don’t know what to say. I rest a hand on his shoulder, but he jerks as if I’ve shocked him. “You all right?” I ask tentatively.
His head drops into his hands. “I just . . . we had it all in front of us, you know? Our future was so fucking bright, a future we’d worked for since we were sixteen. I’d be a successful architect, she’d be a partner in a law firm. We’d have three cars and a nice house, kids we could afford to send to private school. A dog. Were things rough when she changed her mind and dropped out of school? Yeah. But we were getting through it. We were. And now . . .” He pounds the bench with his fist. “Fuck. It’s all just gone to shit, hasn’t it?” A bitter laugh. “She’s gone. Vanished off the face of the earth. How am I supposed to live now? How the fuck do I carry on breathing when everything I wanted in life has been taken away from me?”
I’m kind of not loving the self-involved way he’s voicing his heartache, but I do feel for him. Still. You’d think his main concern would be her: what she’s been through, where she is now, whether she’s hurt beyond repair.
Whether she was carrying his child.
“In the last few weeks, before we went away . . .” I start. “Was she herself? Or did anything seem off?”
A silence—too long. Maybe he’s trying to decide whether I know about her dad. “She, uh . . . she had something coming up. Something she was worried about. But beyond that . . .” He shrugs helplessly. “I mean, how do I separate one from the other? Like, yeah. She was worried. Who wouldn’t be?”
I let my silence tell him I know what he’s talking about.
“She was drinking. In Serbia.” I dig some dirt out from underneath my fingernail. Flick it onto the churchyard path. A raven watches us from a tree. “And . . . well, she didn’t look pregnant. I never saw her out of a baggy T-shirt, but I don’t think there was a bump.” I shudder. “I don’t know. Fuck.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “Fuck.”
Chapter Eleven
July 28, England
AT FIRST I’M not sure whether to tell Officer Tierney about the possible pregnancy. It just seem so uncertain. A game-changing prospect we have no way of proving.
Unless . . . unless the police can access her medical records. I think they can in serious cases like this. I remember once reading a comment piece in The Guardian on how police want unconditional access to such information, because when they’re answering a 999 call from a vulnerable individual at three a.m., they need the right details there and then, not during office hours once they’ve finally got the proper permission from the relevant department.
So I’m assuming they can . . .
But if Erin really was pregnant, would she even have gone to see a doctor? It depends. On whether she wanted to keep it, on how far along she was, on whether she’d told her family or Smith—which it sounds like she hadn’t.
Andrijo. Father. Bruise. Baby.
Each tangent I find myself latching on to feels so pressing, so fundamentally crucial to the investigation, and yet they can’t all be relevant. And even then, the only thing I know for sure is that her father’s in jail, soon to be released. My feeling about Andrijo could just be a feeling. My hunch about the bruise could just be a hunch. My fear over her carrying a child could just be a fear.
I’m sitting where I always am at nine-thirty on a Tuesday morning—cross-legged on the floor of the fashion cupboard. Erin’s jacket has been folded carefully into the box with the rest of her stuff. I don’t even remember whether it was me who did it.
The card Paige Tierney handed me at the end of our chat is already dog-eared around the edges. I jammed it in my jeans pocket, and now it’s gone soft like cotton.
She told me to contact her if I needed anything, or if I thought of anything else I needed to tell her. She even said I could get in touch about Erin’s work belongings, and she’d liaise with the family about having them picked up.
That’s it. I’ll arrange a meeting, citing the jacket and other miscellany as a reason, then also happen to bring up the test. Or I could put the test back in the pocket, pretend I never found it and hope Paige checks the pockets and reaches her own conclusion? No. Too risky.
Why am I so scared to tell her? Because it’s probably irrelevant, and definitely won’t help the Serbs find her. And maybe she’ll think I’m stupid, think I’m wasting police time, think I’m a paranoid little girl with nothing better to do than . . .
Enough. I need to stop this cycle of obsessing over what people think. I’m pissing myself off in the way I use anxiety as a crutch.
This is important. This is Erin.
Imagine this was the one thing that could help her? That could make a difference in the search? They could understand her state of mind. Understand her rationale—or lack thereof.
An image comes back to me, for the thousandth time since I half-dreamt it at sunrise in Novi Sad.
Erin, devastated, clawing a cubicle wall like a lion who’d lost her cub.
Sadness was so raw, so deep, it was like she wasn’t her anymore.
What could an unwanted baby do to her?
Or . . .
Another thought chills me to my core.
What could an abortion do to her? Could it unhinge my best friend entirely?
Shaking pathetically, I pull out my phone, check Lowe isn’t about to charge in, pull the cupboard door shut and type out a poorly worded text to Tierney.
At this point, I have nothing to lose. But Erin does.
In fact, Erin might have already lost it.
I’VE SPENT MORE time in police stations in the last few weeks than in my own bed.
“And you have no idea how long the tests could’ve been in her jacket?” Officer Tierney asks, peering at the ripped-open twin pack over her glasses.
I shake my head. “Nope. No receipt either. I checked.”
Her expression is grave. “And the police think she had her wallet on her when she disappeared, so there’s no way of checking for a receipt there. I’ll have them scan her bank statements, see if there’s a transaction at a chemist or pharmacy which could fit. Hard to tell, though. They aren’t itemized, bank statements.”
I look at the bar code—it contains an abbreviated reference to the firm who produce them. “It’s a well-known brand,” I say. “I’m sure the RRP wouldn’t be difficult to find. Then you could cross-check that.”
“True. But if she picked it up at a supermarket with her bread and milk, the price would be skewed. It’s a long shot.”
I must look downtrodden, because she adds, “You did the right thing bringing it to me, though, Carina. Really. Thank you. This could help.”
I force a smile, even though it’s the last thing I feel like doing. “Will you tell her mum?”
She chews her bottom lip, smeared with rose-colored lipstick. “I’m not sure yet. It could upset her more, and until we’re certain . . .”
“Will you ever be certain?” I ask.
“Maybe not. But if there’s nothing on her medical records and we can’t find a match on her bank statements, it’d probably do more harm than go
od to bring it up.”
“But she might know something,” I point out. “And there might be something in the house. Like . . . the other pregnancy test.”
She looks deep in thought. “I’ll see how the other checks come back and take it from there.”
“Is there anything else I can do to help?” I ask. Probably a stupid question. I’m no detective. I regret asking as soon as I do.
“Just look after yourself, sweetheart.” A warm, maternal smile. “And get some rest. You look exhausted.”
That’s one word for it.
IT’S WELL OVER an hour by the time I get back to the office from the police station, and even though Lowe peers down from her mezzanine, she doesn’t say anything. Just nods. It’s a weird moment. Normally I’d be hung, drawn and quartered for taking too long on my lunch break.
I pause before I turn down the mini-corridor to the fashion cupboard. Psyche myself up. Turn, head up to Lowe’s mezzanine.
She looks utterly alarmed. I’ve never had the guts to enter her space uninvited.
It’s a clean, urban space. Apparently the company who rented the office space before Northern Heart had a peace-and-love hippie of a CEO—she lit incense and invited all her staff to meetings on beanbags surrounding her desk. Lowe did away with all that nonsense. Now it’s all quirky ladder bookshelves, oversized floor lamps and a huge desk piled high with back issues of Vogue and Tatler.
There are two sleek blue-and-silver chairs—the most uncomfortable on the planet—in front of her desk. She gestures to one. Before I can change my mind, I hastily grab one and plonk myself ungracefully down.
“I, uh . . .” Oh, for goodness’ sake. After everything that’s happened, you’re still afraid of your dragonness editor? “Erin’s stuff. In the shoebox. I wanted to take it back to her mum. Is that okay?” I don’t mention the jacket. Paige has that now.
She looks surprised. Proactivity in the face of tragedy probably doesn’t seem like it’d be my strong suit. “Sure. You know her mother?”
“I met her once.” It’s not a lie. Erin had a bad stomach flu around Easter, and though she tried to stick it out at work, I made her go home at lunchtime when she nearly passed out on me. Called her mum on her behalf, waited with her outside, piled her into the ancient tin can of a car. Explained how I’d already cleared it with Lowe, which was a lie. Like I say, I’ve always been scared of her. Anyway. Karen Baxter was grateful, and Lowe got over it.
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