by Rosie Walker
‘Well, that’s just it. I don’t know. She’s gone out, says she’s gone to the pub with some friends.’
‘Hmmmmm. She did she say she was going to do that. Which friends? Which pub? Did you ask?’ Helen tucks her feet under the blanket and settles in for a long chat. She can hear the kids in the background, their high-pitched chattering to Melanie, and Melanie’s lower-pitched replies.
‘Of course I asked. She said she’s with her boyfriend, Don?’
‘Dane.’
‘Yeah, that’s the one. He’s fifty-seven years old apparently.’
‘That’s about right. Who else?’
He pauses for a long time. ‘She did mention someone …’
Helen runs through the mental list of Zoe’s friends. ‘Sarah?’
He’s still quiet.
‘Abbie?’
‘Yeah, that’s one. Don’t think she mentioned any others.’
‘Okay, well make sure you wait up for her. I’m not sure about that Abbie. Bit of a troublemaker, I reckon.’
‘Takes one to know one.’ He chuckles. ‘But yeah, I’ll wait up. She promised she’d be back by half ten anyway.’
‘That’s good. If you’re lucky she’ll be back by midnight,’ Helen laughs. Tony joins in.
There’s whispering on the other end of the phone. ‘Gotta go, time to put the kids to bed.’
Helen’s used to this; when they’re getting on best, Melanie’s always hovering nearby, ready to pull Tony back and away. It wouldn’t matter if it was only Helen, but Melanie’s just as weirdly jealous when Zoe needs her Dad.
‘Wait, there’s something I need to ask you about.’
Tony’s quiet on the other end of the line.
Helen is unsure whether to ask – whether she wants the answer. ‘I saw an article in the newspaper today, some investigation about some missing teenage g—’
‘That journalist’s sniffing around again, is she? Janet Mitchell.’
Helen suddenly realises. J. Mitchell – the author of the article. Janet. Of course. That’s why the name sounded familiar. ‘You know her?’
‘Well, I’ve not met her. But she’s been pulling stories out of her arse for months. One of my old colleagues told me about her the other day. No substance to any of it.’
Helen giggles. ‘This is so funny, she—’
‘She’s a doorstepper, nothing more. Worse than the paparazzi. Has a bee in her bonnet about the local force, has had for years – even before I retired. Thinks they’re all incompetent and wants to expose them, or something. She’s really ramped up her game lately too.’
‘Her article said there’s a serial killer, after teenage girls.’
‘Is she still on that? Absolute nonsense.’
‘Ah, well. I guess I can ask her myself.’
‘No evidence at all—’ Tony stops talking. He’s just registered what she said. ‘Ask her yourself? What?’
‘She lives next door. I knew I recognised the name when I saw the article earlier. I didn’t know she was a journalist.’
Tony chuckles to himself. ‘Good quality neighbours you have over there.’
Helen thinks about the family next door: an adorable little boy, with blue-framed glasses that magnify his blue eyes. And Janet: always gives a friendly wave. ‘They’re fine, thanks.’
Tony splutters. ‘Sure, until you get involved in a scandal, she’ll be all over it. And none of what she writes will be accurate. Or true.’
‘Well, luckily I wasn’t planning to participate in any scandals soon.’
He’s not listening. ‘Oh, and the husband too. We had him for questioning as a suspect for some serious shit a few years ago, when I was in the force. Couldn’t pin it on him, but right place and right time; no smoke without fire.’
She has a vague recollection of the husband but hasn’t seen him around for a while. Good-looking guy, although not Helen’s taste: tattoos and muscles. She sits up, pulling the towel tight around her chest. ‘Alright, thanks for ringing. Text to let me know when Zo gets in.’
Helen drops her phone on the bed and folds her arms across her chest, chilly from sitting wrapped in a damp towel. Zoe’s responsible and Dane will look after her, but this age is tough on Helen. Zoe tests the boundaries all the time and Helen wants to let her.
But Helen remembers what it’s like to be seventeen. She remembers the stupid decisions and dangerous choices she and her friends made. Sleeping in the back of a hippy man’s van on the seafront throughout the summer of 1983 was one particularly low point. He sold cannabis to local teenagers and she thought he was dreamy. She’s lucky nothing terrible came out of those bad decisions. She wants to let Zoe make some mistakes, but none drastic or unfixable. And she doesn’t want to cling onto her too hard, because that’s even more dangerous, making kids lie and pull away even faster. It’s a tough balance, and a tough age.
She texts Zoe: Have a good night. Be safe. Go home when you said you would – Dad’s worried. Love you x
Her thoughts drift back to the faces of the missing girls in the Lancaster News. She can’t shake the story from her head. All so young, skin still smooth, long hair worn thick and loose, smiles still hopeful.
She hopes they were runaways, not something worse.
Him
Even when she slips into unconsciousness, she seems to possess an unnerving control over her body. She’s easy to pick up and slide into the boot of his car. Her legs tuck neatly under her body and she curls up, like a sleeping child on the bare metal of the stripped-back car. Her breath steams from her mouth.
There’s a flutter of excitement in his chest as he looks down at her. She’s perfect, just as he expected when he first saw her.
It is all working out very well tonight. He had waited outside the pub, skulking around the car park in the dark waiting to see who went in. No need to commit to entering until there’s a viable target, he’s very clear on that.
He settled himself on a stool, watching the quiet one in the mirror behind the bar. The quiet ones are always the most fascinating: they suffer in silence but fight hard, clinging to life for longer than the others. You really see the light in their eyes fade away as they die.
The evening passed quickly, watching these teenagers and their interactions. The curly-haired boy out of his depth, struggling to keep up with his feisty and unpleasant girlfriend. He’ll soon outgrow her. The older guy, new to the group and not fitting in, and unsure whether he wants to anyway. He sits apart, joining in the conversation but never driving it.
He is a good judge of character and can assess a situation accurately with just a glance. The prey doesn’t stand a chance against a hunter like him.
He drank more drinks than he intended, blending into the background, watching this group. Watching Abbie attempt to control everything around her: the music, the conversation, her friend and the boys. And when her iron grip on everyone started to slip, she began to act out and flail. That was when she wandered over to him, quietly minding his own business at the bar.
Even then, though: at that stage it wasn’t the right environment for him to make his move and start the hunt. Abbie’s too easy, like bait tied to a stake.
But then she called over her friend. Zoe.
Pretty, apple-cheeked Zoe who’s quiet in a powerful, controlled way. Zoe has no fight to impress, doesn’t talk to be noticed. She’s confident that she’ll be noticed for herself, not for her bids for attention. He likes the way she moves, gracefully and with purpose. Just right. Even then he didn’t intend to do anything; not with the two guys hanging around. There will always be others: other girls, other days. His thumb moves to the circular scar on his arm: his mother taught him patience, to wait his turn and bide his time.
But then Abbie said the words that sealed little Zoe’s fate. She’s from around here, her dad’s a policeman and her mum’s rebuilding that creepy old mental asylum in Flagstone Woods. And he knew why this girl looked familiar. And Abbie delivered her to him.
And then the boys left, and everything shifted. It was a gift. This opportunity was just too good to miss. Little Zoe was all-too-quick to accept an extra drink, and then her eyes glazed over. She relinquished all agency as her friend stumbled around the car park, staring at her phone, mumbling about getting a taxi home.
***
Tonight will be excellent fun, he can tell. It’s been too long since he had one like this, clean and untainted.
To an ordinary male, he’s sure she would look sexually enticing, particularly with her dark hair all ruffled and her cheeks reddened with alcohol and benzodiazepine. To him, she is alluring in a different way. She’s the most expensive dish on the menu, and he’s selecting her for consumption.
Her wrists are tender and thin, incapable of much physical strength and unable to fight back if he pinned her down and crushed her windpipe with his thumbs. Her skin is so white it’s almost see-through. It would tear like the skin of a peach if he bit into it.
‘You’re such a pretty girl,’ he whispers. ‘I bet you’re exactly right.’
He has no idea what will happen next; it’s out of his hands. If he’s lucky, he’ll have her all to himself. He closes the boot lid and sits in the driver’s seat.
He glances into the rear-view mirror to check the girl’s companions haven’t returned, but they’re nowhere to be seen. His reflection in the mirror reminds him he’s still wearing the repulsive baseball cap on his head. He rips it off and throws the hat out of the window onto the tarmac of the car park. Next he removes the stocking from his head and puts it in his pocket to dispose of later. He rubs his hands over his scalp as if to erase the hat’s presence.
Even if her mother never finds out where her precious little girl went, he will know. If you take something of mine, I’ll take something of yours – that’s the way it goes. So, he did.
Zoe
She opens her eyes and it is dark all around her. She’s so tired. Her eyes keep closing even though she doesn’t want them to. She wants to be awake.
Where is she? It’s freezing cold and she can’t stop shivering, her teeth chattering and her muscles almost frozen in place. Her mouth is dry and there’s the faint tang of vomit lurking at the back of her throat.
She tries to sit up but it’s hard, her body doesn’t want to obey her instructions. She tries again, but she bangs her head on something and slumps back down.
It’s noisy. There’s a rushing noise, like a river. Like water?
Like an engine.
Is she beside a road?
Her brain just won’t work. It’s worse than the most intense hangover she’s ever had.
Beside a road in a box.
A box? Why would she be in a box? Why would she be beside a road?
She’s lying on hard ground, like metal covered in harsh scratchy carpet. It’s definitely not a bed.
So tired. She could just go back to sleep for a while.
The rushing noise sounds like an engine – is she in a car? She looks around but she can’t see anything in this darkness.
She’s getting jostled around and the rumbling has muffled, but she’s moving more even though there’s less sound. She’s still in the box.
Jostle jostle jostle.
Her eyes float closed once more.
Thomas
Maggie’s ignoring Thomas, clutching her notebook and writing as fast as she can. Her pen is clutched in her balled fist, the way teachers tell you not to.
‘So, what do you know about Dad?’ he asks, pacing the caravan.
She stops writing and shakes her head. ‘Nothing. No one tells me anything, same as they don’t tell you anything either.’
He reaches the far wall, the one with the locked door, and turns back to Maggie. ‘But there’s something.’
A small smile crosses Maggie’s lips. Thomas frowns. How can she be smiling about this?
‘Look, I might have overheard some stuff. But I don’t know what any of it means. I’ll tell you – and we can talk about Uncle Tom – but you have to agree to something first.’
‘Agree to what?’
‘I’ll tell you what I know if we can go into the old creepy mental hospital tomorrow night.’
Thomas shivers. He crosses to the caravan window and presses his face close to the glass. It’s getting dark, and all he can see is the tops of trees. His stomach feels acidic. He doesn’t want to go inside that building, where there’s probably mice and cobwebs and everything rotting. But his Dad, his lovely Dad who used to play football with him in the park and was supposed to help with homework and give him advice about how to be braver and better and bigger … he’s gone, and Thomas wants to find him. That’s more important than anything else. Thomas shrugs. It isn’t easy to talk with his throat feeling scratchy. ‘Fine.’ He swallows. ‘We’ll go in the asylum tomorrow.’
Maggie grins.
‘Now tell me what you know.’ He sits back on the table, his feet swinging in the air.
‘Right, well, my mum said something about him going down somewhere. She said he would be away for a while,’ Maggie shrugs. ‘But Duncan said it’s nothing to do with holidays. He says that Uncle Tom didn’t want to go.’
Thomas breathes in, his ribcage expanding as he draws air into his lungs. Dad didn’t want to leave him. Maybe he’s coming back. It’s as if his chest was tied up with rope, and someone just untied him. But then another thought occurs to him. ‘What, like, Mum made him go?’
Maggie shakes her head. ‘You can tell Auntie Janet is sad. I don’t think she wanted this. And you’re poor now. You weren’t poor when your Dad was here, and I don’t think Auntie Janet would have wanted that to happen.’
Thomas frowns. He doesn’t like Maggie saying it like that. You’re poor. Her posh watch glints in the torchlight and he wants to hit her. Not enough to hurt her, but just enough to make himself feel better.
‘When did you last see him?’ she asks.
‘Summer holidays, I think.’ His voice is quiet.
‘Right. So, it’s October now, and that’s about, what? Two months ago? Three? Maybe three.’ She counts on her fingers. ‘He could be anywhere by now.’
Thomas folds his arms over his knees and digs his chin into his wrist. He remembers the night his Dad came into his room to say goodbye. It was dark and Thomas was asleep, that deep, deep sleep when you first go to bed, where anything could happen and you’d sleep through it. Dad had to shake him a lot to wake him up, and when he finally did wake up, it was difficult to make sense of anything Dad said, but he thinks Dad might have been crying. It was all scrambled up with his dream, where someone was shouting ‘Thomas! Thomas!’ over and over while Thomas paddled closer and closer to a waterfall and could feel himself getting dragged downstream.
‘Thomas?’
‘Hm?’
Maggie’s looking at him with a frown. She must have asked a question he didn’t hear. ‘And then I heard Grandma say that Uncle Tom just has something wrong with him and needed to get it out of his system. That he’ll be fine when he comes back. She thinks he’ll be back in time for Christmas.’
‘What could be wrong with him, though? Nothing’s wrong with Dad.’
Maggie shrugs. ‘I don’t think they want us to know everything that’s going on,’ she says in a low voice.
Thomas scuffs his shoes on floor, pushing his toe into a little hole in the lino. ‘I heard Auntie Julie tell Mum that Dad wouldn’t come back if she didn’t fight for him. She doesn’t look like she is fighting much. She’s too busy working.’ She should fight, Thomas thinks. It was more fun when Dad was around. Everyone laughed more, Mum wasn’t so tired, and Dad helped Thomas with his Maths homework when it was too hard. Since Dad’s gone away, no one has time and Maths isn’t going very well.
Maggie closes her notebook. ‘Look, I don’t know anything. But Duncan said something weird about it.’
‘Weird how?’
She’s quiet, and unusually for Maggie, doesn’t seem to want to talk any more.
She looks at her feet. ‘I didn’t understand what he said, but it was something like how everyone thought he was the golden boy and the mighty have … fallen?’ Her voice goes up at the end of the sentence like a question, but Thomas doesn’t know what she’s asking.
Dad is so much fun, always playing jokes and acting like a kid too. Mum says he needs to grow up, but Thomas disagrees. Maybe that’s what Duncan meant; like he’s a golden boy: like a kid.
Maggie shakes her head, with a sad look on her face. ‘He said that Uncle Tom’s not as great as everyone thinks he is.’
Thomas balls his hands into fists and hits his own thighs. ‘What? That’s rubbish. How could Duncan say that? Dad’s really cool. He’s the reason we found this clubhouse. Duncan’s an idiot, and he’s telling lies.’ His thighs ache where he punched himself.
Maggie’s wrapped a curl of hair tight around her index finger, and watches as the tip of her finger turns red, then purple. ‘Anyway, that’s all I know.’
Thomas opens his mouth to ask Maggie again; to make her promise she doesn’t know anything else. But he stops, and listens. The caravan’s thin walls let in a lot of sounds, like crows cawing from their perch in the trees above.
Maggie puts her finger to her lips, she can hear it too.
The faint rumble of a car engine hums in the distance.
Zoe
She’s not afraid yet. She will be soon.
Something bad is happening, but her brain is just operating at, like 7 per cent battery – like when her phone battery runs low, the display dims and all the apps start to shut down – that’s how she feels. Her brain has closed the app she needed to feel anything except sleepy, cold and slow. She’d be fast asleep again by now if it wasn’t for this jostling.
Then the jostling stops, and she can finally get some rest.
But the lid of the box opens and it’s that creepy guy from the bar, the one Abbie knew. His hat is gone, and his face is meaner, like he was pretending to be nice before. And he’s right there, looking down at her in her box and she knows.
