The Missing

by C. L. Taylor

  And then I’m in.

  A train rumbles on the tracks, deep and bassy in the distance as I stumble through the dense wood. A bird squawks as it flies out of a bush, then falls silent as it soars into the air. I hear Billy swear loudly. He’s managed to get in. I quicken my pace, crashing through the bushes and swerving around trees. It’s pitch black away from the headlights of the road and I can barely make out my hands as I swipe at branches and leaves. The wood seems to go on forever but the fear that Billy will catch and stop me propels me on. And then I break through the trees and my left foot slips as the ground drops away and I fall, tumbling into a bracken-covered ditch between the wood and rail track. The undergrowth is so tall it reaches up to my throat and scratches at my hands, arms and legs as I scramble up the bank and into the bushes that separate the ditch from the train track.

  “Shit!” Billy shouts and I hear the sound of branches snapping and leaves rustling as he escapes from the wood. “Bloody bag, caught in the bloody . . . someone needs to cut this shit. It’s a jungle.”

  The rain is falling heavier now and my hair is clinging to my cheeks.

  I can still remember the day I found out that Dad had killed himself like it was yesterday. I was in math and Miss Ramdas from student support knocked on the door and asked Mr. Price if she could talk to me. I was really pleased—any excuse to get out of algebra—but I freaked out when I saw the look on her face. It wasn’t a “you’re about to get a bollocking” look. It was an “I feel really sorry for you” grimace.

  When I got to her office Mum was standing by the window with her best mate Sharon. They were hugging and Mum was crying. She opened her eyes when I walked in and she gave this huge gasp and started crying even harder. That’s when Miss Ramdas sat me down and said she had some bad news.

  She didn’t say much, just that my dad had died. When I asked how she looked at my mum who nodded and Miss Ramdas said he’d killed himself by walking in front of a train. It wasn’t until a few months later, when Mum was drunk, that I got the whole story. Dad had been on his ride-on mower at the boules club. Someone in the clubhouse saw him stop it suddenly, right in the middle of the green with the grass half-cut, and get off. They thought he’d run out of petrol or something but he didn’t go back to it. It was half an hour before anyone thought to find out where he’d gone. An hour or so after that the police arrived. Dad had cut through the wood and walked several miles up the railway line and then lain down on the tracks as the train drew closer. There was no way the driver could have stopped in time.

  “Kira?” Billy grabs hold of my wrist. His hair is plastered to his face and there’s a scratch on his cheek. “This isn’t funny anymore. We’re going back.”

  “To what?” The rumble of the train is louder now, more like a rushing sound, accompanied by the high-pitched noise of the horn. The rain lashes down and the wind whips my hair around my face. It’s so dark I can’t see more than a few feet in front of me but I can make out the train track: a dark stripe beyond the bushes just six or seven feet ahead of me.

  “Home.”

  “That’s not my home.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Come on.” He yanks at my arm, pulling me back toward the ditch. The train sounds its horn again, louder this time and I swipe blindly at Billy. I won’t let him take me back to Bristol. My fingernails connect with his skin as I scrape them down the side of his face.

  He shouts in pain and lets go of my wrist. The train clanks on the tracks, louder and louder, roaring and whistling, and I spot the cab through the branches, speeding toward us.

  I plow through the bushes, away from the wood and toward the track. The train is so close I can see the windscreen wipers swiping from left to right. The wheels clank-clank-clank on the tracks. The beams from the headlights temporarily stun me and I close my eyes, just for a split second. I need to do it. I need to do it now.

  I can’t move.

  I’m frozen to the spot.

  The train rushes closer and closer. One more step. One more step and I’ll be out of the bushes and in front of the train. But I can’t move. I feel frozen to the spot.

  The engine roars past me. The wheels pound the tracks. The noise is overwhelming. It’s not too late. I take a step forward. I can do it. I can still—

  “No!” I hear a scream above the roar of the train, then there’s a weight against my shoulder and I’m knocked from my feet. There’s a dull thump, a rush of air hits me in the face then there’s a crashing sound as though something has been thrown into the woods from a great height. And then everything goes quiet.

  Chapter 67

  CLAIRE

  Sunday, August 30, 2015

  I do not feel relieved or angry or shocked. I do not feel sad or vengeful or scared.

  I feel nothing.

  I am aware that I should react, that I should cry or scream or shout, but I feel no compulsion to do so.

  I feel nothing.

  It is as though someone has scooped out my heart and replaced it with sand. There is nothing inside me apart from a strange, dull ache in the center of my chest.

  Kira’s face is still hidden behind her hands but the cotton pillow beneath her head is wet with tears. I didn’t think she was going to talk to me but once she started she couldn’t stop. The words poured out of her; the words, the pain, the fear.

  “Billy saved you,” I say. “He pushed you out of the way to save your life.”

  Kira says nothing. So talkative and now so silent.

  “And you left him there, dead or dying in the wood, and you drove back home. And then you crawled into bed with his brother as though nothing had happened.”

  She sobs, audibly this time, and pulls the blanket up and over her head. I gaze down at her, at the slender figure shrouded beneath the blanket. Seven months. For seven months she’s watched me lose my job, my marriage, even my sanity and she hasn’t said a word. All this time she’s idly stood by as Jake and Mark have torn themselves apart.

  “You could have told me. If you’d said that Billy was blackmailing you I would have done something. I would have made him stop.”

  The shape beneath the blanket moves as she shakes her head.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  The sheet shifts as she pulls it away from her face and looks up at me with red-rimmed eyes.

  “You’d have thrown me out.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because you thought Billy was perfect.”

  Did I? Doesn’t every parent? I wasn’t blind to Billy’s faults. I knew there was a reason he was acting up at school and getting into trouble for graffitiing. Something was making him unhappy but I didn’t know what because he wouldn’t let me in. He could have told me what he’d seen outside the pub that night but he kept it to himself. Did he do that to protect me? Or did he think I thought Mark was perfect? There’s a twisted irony there that I can’t deal with right now.

  “How could you do it?” I say. “How could you carry on living in our house? You saw how upset we were. How could you watch that, knowing what you did? We were searching for our son, we were desperate and all along you knew . . . you knew where Billy was.”

  “I didn’t know he was dead.” She glances away.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I didn’t. I swear. I heard him hit the side of the train when he tripped, but when I got up I couldn’t see him. He wasn’t by the tracks. And I got scared. I ran back to the van. I thought he’d come after me.”

  “You can’t have been that scared. You went back to our house and got into bed with Jake.”

  She shakes her head. “Not straightaway. I sat up in the kitchen. Granddad was dead. I couldn’t go to Mum’s. And I told myself . . . I convinced myself . . . that there was another way out. I decided that if Billy came back . . . when Billy came back . . . I’d tell him that I’d keep having sex with him. I’d have told him anything to stop him from telling Jake what we’d done. I love Jake. I love him so much.”
<
br />   “Maybe you should have thought about that before you slept with his brother.”

  “I know.” She closes her eyes tightly.

  “Kira, you went back to our house! You sat in our kitchen like nothing was wrong when Billy was lying in the undergrowth dying. You could have rung an ambulance. You could have saved him!”

  “I was scared. I thought he’d hurt me.”

  “Hurt you?”

  “You don’t know what he did, Claire.” Her eyes glisten with tears. “The things he’d seen on the Internet . . . the things he made me do—”

  “No.” I hold up a hand. “You could have stopped that, Kira. You had a choice.”

  “Did I?” She looks at me, her eyes lifeless.

  “You must have realized that Billy was dead when you woke up the next morning and he hadn’t come back.”

  “I . . .” She runs her hands over her face. “I went along with what Mark said—that Billy had run away because of the argument. Jake said he was doing it for attention. I let myself believe that. I told myself that he’d got up after the train hit him but was staying away to freak everyone out, to freak me out. And then when the police got involved I made up new stories in my head—Billy was staying with mates, he had amnesia and didn’t know who he was, he’d hitchhiked somewhere.”

  “You saw us, Kira! You saw how distraught and scared we were.”

  “I know. And it tore me apart. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. The only way I could live with it was to tell myself that what had happened was an awful accident but it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t force Billy to come with me. I didn’t push him in front of the train.”

  “So why didn’t you tell anyone? If you really believed that it wasn’t your fault why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t look you in the eye and tell you that he was dead. Not when you were so hopeful. Not when you kept telling everyone that you’d find him.”

  “So you knew he was dead then.”

  “I don’t know.” She curls into herself and begins to cry again. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t tell Liz that I was fucking Billy.”

  That’s what I heard Kira say to Lloyd when I was pushed into the café.

  I only remembered when Liz came around and was talking to me about Lloyd. That’s why I dropped my wine glass. It all came rushing back—the conversation I’d overheard and the tattoo on the back of Kira’s neck when she’d taken off her cardigan. I’d seen it before—when I’d interrupted a private moment between her and Jake in the kitchen—but I’d mistaken it for a bruise. Everything suddenly made sense—why Kira had freaked out when Jake had pulled her dressing gown away from her neck, why she wouldn’t sleep with him anymore, why she always kept her hair down.

  “Kira, how did Lloyd know you were having sex with Billy?”

  “He saw us, in the park one night. We thought he was going to the pub and he’d tell Liz when he got home. But he didn’t. That was the night he left her.”

  “And when Liz mentioned that he was coming back to see her . . .”

  “I panicked. I thought he’d watched the appeal on the TV and he wanted to tell her what he’d seen. I had his number from when I’d photographed him so I asked him to meet me. We always got on. He’s a nice man.” She starts to cry again.

  “Just me!” The nurse pops her head around the curtain, making me jump. “The psych team are here so if you could say your goodbyes now, please.” She gives me a small nod.

  “Please.” Kira looks imploringly at her. “Just one minute.”

  “Thirty seconds.” The nurse pulls the curtain back over.

  “Claire.” Kira’s eyes well with tears as she looks back at me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I hate myself for what’s happened. I wish you hadn’t found me. If you hadn’t then now I’d be dead.”

  I give her a long look but say nothing. I don’t trust myself to speak.

  Chapter 68

  Sonia glances at her notes. “Am I right in thinking you got the results of your CAT scan last week?”

  I nod. “Yes. It was clear.”

  “That must be hugely reassuring.”

  “It is, yes.”

  Eight months ago I would have been terrified, being slid into a small, claustrophobic space. Eight months ago I was a different person.

  “And is it tomorrow that you’re going to hold the memorial for Billy?” She crosses one leg over the other and rests a hand on her calf.

  “It’s not a memorial as such.” I reach for the glass of water on the table in front of me and take a sip. “It’s a family thing. Just me, Jake and Mark. We’re driving over to the rail tracks to lay some flowers. The boules club have said it’s okay.”

  “Good. I think that’s important.” She eyes the box of tissues beside the water jug; tissues I have left untouched since I walked into her office fifteen minutes ago. “And how are you feeling, Claire, now the investigation has been closed?”

  “Relieved. It means we can start planning the funeral.”

  “Of course. Will you be taking that on yourself or—”

  “We’re going to do it together,” I say. “Jake’s spoken to some of Billy’s friends about the sort of songs he might like and Mark will give a reading. Stephen asked if he could deliver the eulogy.”

  “And how does Mark feel about that?”

  “He’s okay.” I nod. “They’ve been spending a lot of time together recently. There’s still some . . . tension . . . between them but they’re working through it. Stephen has started going to AA and Caroline’s moved back in.”

  Mark and Stephen had several heart-to-hearts after we found out what had happened to Billy. Stephen admitted to being jealous of Mark for forging his own career and having a family. He said he couldn’t bear how ungrateful he seemed, despite having so much and that he wanted to take him down a peg or two. Mark is still angry but I think he’ll forgive him, eventually. It’s not as though he hasn’t said and done things he regrets.

  “And Jake?” Sonia asks, “How is he?”

  I look down at my hands. “He’s very quiet. He was really angry when it all came out, when he found out what had happened between Kira and Billy. He threw out all her stuff. He was going to burn everything in the garden but Mark stopped him. That first week was . . . it was awful.”

  “I can imagine.”

  I twist my wedding ring around and around the finger of my left hand. “He hates her but there’s a part of him that misses her. He won’t admit it but he does.”

  “Where is Kira?”

  “Living with a distant relative on the outskirts of Bristol according to DS Forbes. He said they’re considering prosecuting her for perverting the course of justice.”

  “And how do you feel?”

  “About Kira or the verdict?”

  “Both.”

  “Misadventure.” I pull my wedding ring clean off my finger, then push it back on. “It’s such a strange word to describe a death, isn’t it? It sounds like something fun that went horribly wrong. Although”—I look across at Sonia—“maybe there’s some truth in that. Neither Billy nor Kira really knew what they were getting themselves into.”

  “Is that how you see it—that they were mutually responsible for what happened?”

  I shrug. “I’ve thought a lot about that. At first I was too angry with Kira to think straight. I kept remembering all the times we’d talked alone since Billy’s disappearance, all the opportunities she’d had to open up to me about what had happened and all the times she’d lied. I wanted to charge back into the hospital and shake her and scream in her face that she’d destroyed all our lives . . .”

  “But?”

  “Then I started thinking about what Billy had done, the messages he’d sent to her. The police found his phone. Did I tell you that?”

  She shakes her head.

  “It was in a Tupperware container in his bag, in the undergrowth. They found his . . .” I take a deep breath, “. . . body
in the wood next to the boules club. The land belonged to a farmer but it was overgrown and neglected. He never set foot in the wood he said, he only ever went into the field on the other side to see to his sheep. The police told us the brambles and bracken were six foot high. Billy’s body . . . it . . . it crashed through the undergrowth. He was completely hidden.”

  “And the train driver didn’t see them? He didn’t”—she pauses—“feel any impact?”

  I shake my head. “It was dark and raining heavily and they were both wearing black and hiding in the bushes. It was a goods train, one of those huge great things. The driver didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Oh, gosh.”

  “Billy might have been found if the railway company had cut back all the bushes and hedgerows. They do it every six months according to DS Forbes but there was some kind of dispute with the company they use and it was delayed. Billy could have been found months ago.”

  “And no one from the boules club thought to investigate the hole in the fence?”

  I shake my head. “There wasn’t one. When Kira climbed back through she bent it back so it looked like no one had ever been there.”

  Sonia presses her fingers to her lips, momentarily stunned. “Gosh,” she breathes when she finds her voice again.

  “I know.”

  A silence falls between us and then Sonia says, “You mentioned something about messages . . .”

  “Yes, on Billy’s phone. Because it was sealed in Tupperware the police were able to retrieve some data. Images. Pornographic ones of Kira. And some of their Snapchat conversations. He’d saved screenshots.”

  “You saw them?”

  “No, but DS Forbes told me about them. They were pretty bad. He was blackmailing her. It started off as a harmless flirtation but it went too far and when she put an end to it he began blackmailing her. He made her act out some things he’d seen in hardcore porn videos and filmed it.” I drain the last of my water before reaching for the jug and topping up the glass. “It’s been hard, trying to reconcile the boy I thought I knew with who Billy actually was. He said and did all those horrible things but then he died trying to save her life. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?”