The Missing

by C. L. Taylor

  “Hmmm.” Dr. Evans’s frown deepens. “And have you ever heard voices, Claire?”

  “No.” I shake my head, suddenly agitated. “I’m not schizophrenic. I’m not mad. I just . . . I just don’t want to black out again.”

  “No one’s saying you’re mad, Claire, but you have been under a lot of stress recently and I think a referral to the community mental health team might help.”

  Mental health team? That sounds scary. Liz leans forward in her chair. “How long’s the waiting list?”

  Dr. Evans grimaces.

  “Worse than the CAT scan?”

  “I could make it an urgent referral. They might be able to see you in the next few weeks.”

  I grip the arms of the chair. Anything could happen to me in the next few weeks. “Is there no one else I could see? We can’t afford to go private but I could borrow some money.”

  Dr. Evans gives me a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry, Claire. It’s as frustrating for me as it is for you and I wish there was some way of speeding things up but the NHS is stretched to—”

  “I’ll pay!” Liz says. “I’ve got a bit put away, from when Mum died. It’s yours, Claire.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “I couldn’t.”

  “Think of it as a loan if that makes you feel better. You’ll go back to work eventually and, when you do, you can pay me back.”

  Dr. Evans looks from Liz to me and presses her lips together.

  “If you’re desperate to see someone you could Google Bristol-based psychotherapists who specialize in stress and anxiety disorders. I’m afraid I can’t recommend anyone specifically but make sure they’ve got proper accreditation. And in the meantime I’ll put in the referrals for you. I’ll do everything I can to get you seen sooner rather than later.”

  “There you go then,” Liz says, half-rising from her seat. “Everything’s going to be fine. Isn’t it, Claire?”

  “Yes.” I force myself to smile.

  I’m not sure who I’m lying to. Her, or myself.

  Chapter 26

  Kira sniffs the air as she shuffles through the back door, bent almost double under the weight of her camera equipment, but there is no chicken in the oven, no spaghetti bolognese bubbling away on the stove. There are no knives and forks laid out on trays. No cookbooks propped open on the kitchen counter with a spoon. It’s been half an hour since I left Liz’s house and came home. We spent what was left of the afternoon together, sitting in her living room watching old episodes of Friends and drinking tea. She said she wasn’t going to let me leave until Jake came home so I lied and said he was getting back early today. The truth was I needed some time to myself, time to just think.

  “Oh.” Kira pauses in the entrance to the kitchen and glances up at the clock. Her pale skin looks almost translucent under the glow of the spotlight, her hair loose around her shoulders, a black silk lily clipped behind her left ear. “Did I miss tea? I’m sorry I’m late but the bus was delayed and—”

  “We’re not having tea tonight.”

  “Oh.” She carefully lowers her camera equipment to the floor and rubs at her right shoulder with the heel of her left hand. “Takeaway, is it? Or would you like me to cook?”

  My right foot judders up and down on the lower bar of the stool I’m sitting on. Shake-shake-shake. Shake-shake-shake. I focus on it, willing it to stop and it does just for a split second before starting up again.

  “Could I ask you a favor, Kira?”

  “Of course.” She shuffles from foot to foot. She reminds me of a horse, edgy, quick to startle, unpredictable. She needs careful handling, a deft, confident hand, and I’m not the right person to do it. I’ve never ridden a horse in my life. Never raised a daughter either. Not that Kira’s mother did any better. It angers me how much damage that woman did to her own child.

  “Is there a friend you could go out with for a few hours? I can give you some money for the pub or the cinema or something.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  She glances out of the kitchen window, her lips part ever so slightly and then there’s the distinctive clack-clack-clack of her tongue stud against the back of her front teeth. “Where’s Mark?”

  Why is she asking where he is? Does she feel uncomfortable being alone in the house with me? Or is she hoping he’s not home?

  “Mark’s still at work,” I say. “But he’ll be back soon.”

  “Right. Okay, then.” She crouches down, grabs the strap of her photography bag and hauls it back onto her shoulder. “I’ll just dump this lot upstairs and get changed and then I’ll—”

  “Kira.” I stand up. “There’s something I need to ask you.”

  “Oh God.” She lowers her head, cringing into herself.

  “It’s not about what I saw this morning,” I say quickly. “In fact, I should apologize to you. I know you and Jake don’t get much privacy in this house and—”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She tries to move past me.

  I step to my right, forcing her to stop. “Hang on a second.”

  “What is it?” There’s a pained expression on her face now. It’s the same one I’d see on Billy’s face whenever I asked him if we could have a chat about school or whether he had a girlfriend.

  “Do you know anything about that?” I point at the photo album on the kitchen table.

  “What is it?”

  “A photo album.”

  She shakes her head. “Should I?”

  “Some of the photos have been defaced. Do you know anything about it?”

  “No.” She stares at me with huge, round, uncomprehending eyes. “Why would I? I’m a photography student—I take photos. I don’t destroy them. That goes against—”

  “Okay.” I reach out to touch her, to reassure her, but my hand falls back to my side before it makes contact with her arm. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I was just wondering if Jake or Billy or”—my throat is so dry it hurts to swallow—“Mark said anything to you about them?”

  Again she moves to step around me and reaches for the album.

  “Please don’t.”

  She snatches back her hand. “Why?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  She inches forward, her eyes trained on the photo album, her slender body rigid apart from the fingers of her right hand which twitch against the thin denim of her skirt.

  “What’s in it?”

  “Just family photos. The boys at school, family holidays, that sort of thing.” I move so I am standing between her and the album, the stool pressing against the backs of my thighs. As Liz pointed out earlier, if it is evidence then we’ve already contaminated it by touching it. The police will want to take fingerprints. That’s if I do give it to the police.

  “You said they’d been defaced,” she says. “How?”

  “I’ve said too much, Kira. I’m sorry. I don’t know what any of this means. I only found the album this morning. I’m still trying to decide what to do.”

  Her eyes meet mine. “Are you going to take it to the police?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Her gaze flicks toward the kitchen window again. The only car in the street is Liz’s. “Does Mark know about it?”

  “Not yet. That’s why it would be easier if we had the house to ourselves. Here”—I reach around for my handbag and pull out my purse—“twenty pounds. Take it. It’s the least I can do for kicking you out.”

  Kira shakes her head. “I don’t want it, Claire. Honestly, it’s fine.”

  She returns to where she left her camera equipment, picks it up and heads for the hallway. She pauses at the entrance and glances back at me, then at the photo album, then her footsteps thump-thump-thump up the stairs as she heads for her room.

  “So what do you think?” Mum asks and I have no idea what she’s talking about. It’s been half an hour since Kira left the house with a small rucksack over her shoulder and a resigned look on her face but I’m still standing at the kit
chen window. I texted Jake after she left and explained that I’d had another blackout but that I was okay. No point telling him what I found in the garage or on my phone until I know what I’m dealing with. I didn’t text Mark. I need to talk to him face-to-face about what happened. Seconds after I messaged Jake the phone rang.

  “Sorry, Mum. I was miles away. What do I think about what?”

  “About the psychic.”

  “What psychic?”

  She exhales heavily and the sound makes a hissing noise in my ear. “The one I just told you about.”

  “I’m sorry, Mum. I wasn’t listening. I was . . .”

  “You’re not still worrying about the backlash after the appeal, are you? I told you, I’ve got that in hand. I was telling you about the email I received from a psychic. I’ve got it in my handbag. Shall I read it out to you?”

  I hear the sound of a zip being pulled, then a clattering sound, presumably as she tips the contents of her bag over the floor or table. Mum’s predilection for filling her handbag with absolute crap is the last-gasp hoorah of a horrible hoarding habit that lasted until I hit my teens. When people ask me what my childhood was like I tell them that I shared it with my mum, dad, a dog, two cats and “the clutter.” According to Dad the first house they bought together was clean and tidy for all of an hour. And then Granddad turned up in his battered van and brought out box after box of Mum’s stuff. She moved everything in—her childhood toys, every book and magazine she’d ever been given, every drawing she’d done at school, dried-up makeup and empty toiletries bottles and a mountain of clothes. Mum’s family were poor and she inherited the “make do and mend” mentality from her own mother but, unlike Gran who’d actually mend and use the things she wouldn’t part with, Mum kept everything; piling it all up in bin bags, filling the hall, the utility room and every available space in our bedrooms.

  Mum and Dad argued a lot back then, about the mess, about the fact that Dad spent most nights down the pub. I was constantly afraid that my parents were going to split up. Now they seem happier than they’ve ever been. Maybe Dad got used to Mum’s messy ways, or maybe she made an effort to change, or perhaps they just learned how to rub along together. They’ve been together for forty-five years.

  I press a hand to the side of my head. “Mum, I told you. No more stuff from psychics. Please.”

  “But it says here that she’s worked on some very high-profile cases with the police and they’ve helped retrieve the bodies of—”

  “Mum!”

  “They weren’t all dead, mind,” she adds quickly. “She’s found runaways too. All she needs is something of Billy’s, something he—”

  “Wore or loved and touched frequently so she can tune in to his vibes. I know, Mum. We’ve heard it all before.”

  She sighs. “But she’s provided a whole page-worth of testimonies from people she’s helped.”

  We were inundated with offers of hope from psychics after Billy first disappeared. I warily welcomed them into my kitchen and sobbed and sobbed as they consulted their cards or their runes or their stones or simply stood in the middle of the room with their eyes closed and told me how in tune they were with my distress and how the spirits would lead us to Billy. They told me that he was alive and well and living in a squat in Milton Keynes. They told me he was trapped in an underground cave in North Wales or held in a cellar against his will. They said he was in deep water, in the earth, across the sea. Alive. Dead. Alive. Dead. Hope. Despair. Hope. Despair.

  I went from psychic to psychic, desperately hoping that this time we’d find one that wasn’t a fraud. I spent half the money we’d saved over the course of our twenty-year marriage paying for Jake to go to Wales, Milton Keynes and Dover to look for his brother. I went to seances. Dozens of them. Mark refused to come with me so I went with Liz or Mum instead. I was convinced that the next seance would be the one that would reveal Billy’s whereabouts. And then a psychic told me that Billy had committed suicide. “Why didn’t you save me, Mummy?” he wailed in the voice of a much younger child. “You could have saved me, Mummy.” I stopped going after that.

  “Okay. All right.” I hear rustling as Mum shoves the piece of paper back into her bag. “I understand. I don’t mean to clutch at straws but it’s been a while since we’ve had an email through the website. It’s gone very quiet on the Facebook page too.”

  I start at the sound of tires on gravel. Mark’s Ford Focus is pulling up outside.

  “It’s okay, Mum. I know you’re trying to help and I’m sorry if I snapped. It’s been a tough day today, you know?”

  “Is there anything me and your dad can do?”

  “You’re doing so much already. I couldn’t get through this without you, you know that, don’t you?”

  “We do, babe. We just wish that none of this had ever happened.”

  “I know,” I say as the car draws to a halt and the engine noise dies. “Can I give you a ring back tomorrow, Mum? Have a longer chat?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “I love you, Mum. Dad too.”

  “Speak soon, love. Take it steady.”

  As I press the end-call button, Mark walks through the door, his briefcase in one hand, his jacket thrown over his shoulder and the neck of his shirt undone.

  “Everything okay? I saw you on the phone from the driveway—” His gaze flickers toward the kitchen table, and the photo album sitting on top of it. “What’s that?”

  “One of our photo albums.”

  We have been married for just over twenty years and, in that time, I have seen my husband’s face register dozens of emotions—fear, regret, anger, happiness, sadness and pride—but there haven’t been many occasions when I’ve seen him look the way he looks now, with the color bleached from his cheeks.

  He doesn’t ask me where I found it or who I think put it there. Instead he puts down his briefcase on the chair by the door and folds his jacket neatly over the arm. He traces a finger over the edge of the album but he doesn’t pick it up.

  “You’ve seen what’s inside, haven’t you?” His question is little more than a whisper.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you rung the police?”

  “Not yet.”

  “‘Yet’ being the operative word.” He laughs drily.

  A bead of sweat dribbles down my lower back. “Tell me what it means, Mark.”

  He laughs again. It’s a low rolling sound in the back of his throat. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Why are you laughing?”

  His laughter halts and he presses his lips together but the edges turn upwards, his cheeks bulging as he smiles.

  “Mark, talk to me. Tell me what you know about the photo album. Tell me what it means or I’ll ring the police.”

  His smile vanishes instantly. “Go on then.” He nods toward the phone in my hand. “Ring them.”

  Why is he being so weird? I prepared myself for all kinds of reactions—denial, blame, shock, regret—but not this one. Not a smile and a strange, glassy stare.

  “No, Mark, you ring them!”

  He ducks as I hurl the phone across the kitchen. It smashes against the wall and then drops to the floor. The battery door scuttles back across the tiles toward me as the phone spins around and around before it finally lies still under the kitchen table.

  “Jesus Christ, Claire!” Mark stares at me in shock and I’m pleased. Finally, he’s acting normally.

  “Tell me what you know about that!” My hand shakes as I point toward the photo album. “Now. Or our marriage is over.”

  “What’s the point? You’ve already decided that I’m the villain of the—”

  “Stop with the ‘villain’ shit, Mark! What is it with you and that word? You throw it at me every time we have an argument and I’m sick of it.” I drop to my knees and reach under the table for the phone. “If you won’t speak to me maybe you’ll speak to the police.”

  “No.” There’s a screech of wood on tile as he shoves
a chair away from the table and reaches beneath it for my hand. His thick fingers are around mine before they can make contact with the phone. “Don’t.”

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Okay.” His grip softens. “Okay.”

  Tuesday, November 4, 2014

  Jackdaw44: You kissed me.

  ICE9: I was drunk.

  Jackdaw44: Not that drunk.

  ICE9: I fucked up. I’m sorry.

  Jackdaw44: I can’t believe you kissed me.

  ICE9: Please don’t tell anyone.

  ICE9: Are you still there?

  ICE9: Say something! I’m sorry.

  Jackdaw44: You already said that.

  ICE9: Please don’t tell anyone what happened. I was drunk and lonely and I felt a connection with you. I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.

  Jackdaw44: Chill out. I won’t tell anyone.

  Jackdaw44: P.S. Now we both have a secret.

  Chapter 27

  “I found the album in Billy’s room,” Mark says, sitting forward on the sofa, his fingers interlocked between his knees. “Before he went missing.”

  I am sitting on the opposite end of the sofa, a cushion clutched to my chest. “When?”

  “A few months before he disappeared. It was a couple of days after Mr. Edwards called us in to talk about the graffiti. The second time he called us in. I wanted to check Billy didn’t have any graffiti pens or cans stashed in his room.”

  “Where was Billy?”

  “In town with you. It was a Saturday and you were getting him some new shoes for school.”

  I remember the trip. I dragged Billy around shop after shop while he rejected every single pair of shoes I pointed out, telling me they were sad or gay, arguing that he should be allowed to buy the “sick” pair of black sneakers he liked because “everyone else wears them” and anyway, “clothes should express who you are.” Wearing the same uniform was enforced conformity, he told me. “If I wanted that I’d join the fucking army.”