The Missing Read online

  I rest my hand on the column. It feels cold and damp under my palm. “Do any of you know Billy Wilkinson?”

  “Why?”

  “He’s my son. He’s been missing for six months.”

  “I know him,” pipes up the smallest boy in the group. It’s the first thing he’s said since I appeared in the clearing but I’ve seen him watching me, tracking me with his half-closed eyes.

  “Shut up, Gray. We don’t know who this woman is. She looks like police.”

  “Undercover mum,” says Spliff Boy.

  The lad with the beer can swipes him around the head. “Don’t be a dick.”

  “This is Billy.” I unfold the flier I carry everywhere with me, and take a step toward them. It’s very nearly dark now, the last of the sunlight is fading away and they peer through the firelight at the image of Billy’s face. “He’s fifteen. He does . . . he’s really into graffiti. Have you seen him? Recently, I mean?”

  My question is met with shrugs and glazed looks.

  I step around the group and crouch down next to Gray. The air surrounding him is thick with the scent of woodsmoke, weed and beer.

  “You said you knew him. How?”

  He inches away, pressing up against the boy sitting next to him.

  “I know of him,” he says as he’s shoved away. “I heard of him.”

  “How?”

  “From the news, like.”

  “Are you sure?” I look him straight in the eye but he’s unable, or unwilling, to meet my gaze and he fiddles with the laces of his sneakers. “Please, it’s important. I know he’s been here before. I know he wanted to tag the bridge. Have you seen or heard anything unusual?”

  “Naz’s face is unusual,” says Spliff Boy and they all laugh. Everyone apart from Gray who is twisting a lace around and around the index finger of his left hand. He’s hiding something from me. If the others weren’t here he’d tell me the truth. I feel sure of it.

  I dip my head down to his and lower my voice. “Could I just talk to you? Alone? Just for a minute?” I touch his shoulder and he jumps away from me, as though electrocuted, narrowly missing the fire as he scrambles to his feet.

  “Whitey alert!” shouts Naz as Gray runs toward the river, then drops to his knees and pukes all over his hands. My heart sinks. He wasn’t hiding anything from me—he was trying not to be sick.

  I get to my feet, unsure whether I should check if he’s okay or just go. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I notice Naz whispering something in Laughing Boy’s ear. He stops talking the second I turn my head.

  “What is it?” I say. “It’s Billy, isn’t it? You know something about him?”

  There’s a sound from the bushes behind me. The sound of someone crashing through the undergrowth, snapping off twigs and scraping past branches in their desperation to escape.

  “Billy?”

  Bushes and brambles scratch at my chest, arms and hands as I force my way through them, following the sound. My dress catches on a briar. It rips as I tear it free and continue to run.

  “Billy, stop! Stop!”

  He’s fast, so much faster than me. My smooth-soled sandals have no traction on the gnarly ground and I trip several times as I scramble through the near-darkness. The sound of laughter follows after me. Thorns tear at my palms and something sharp whips me across the cheek as I pick myself up and stumble after my son. He’s been in the bushes the whole time, watching me, listening to me talk to the boys. Why would he run? Why?

  “It’s Mum! Billy, it’s Mum!”

  And then it stops. Almost as suddenly as it began, the noise of crashing and snapping stops. The only sound is the thud, thud, thud of my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

  No, I can hear footsteps too. The faint pad of someone running. He must have made it onto the pathway.

  “Billy, wait!” I wrap my arms over my head and plow through the bracken in the direction of the sound. My foot hits something solid, the path.

  “Billy, it’s—”

  A hand grasps my wrist and a concerned face peers into mine. It’s a woman’s; she’s roughly the same age as me, with her hair tied back in a ponytail. She’s dressed in a neon vest, shorts and running sneakers. “Are you okay? I heard screaming and shouting coming from the bushes and—”

  “Did you see him?” I look up and down the path but all I can see is near-darkness, stretching away from me in both directions.

  “See who?”

  “My—” Something brushes against my ankles; a border terrier with its tongue hanging out and bits of twig woven into its thick fur.

  “Have you lost your dog?” the woman asks, following my line of vision. “I thought a dog would be a great idea. He can come on runs with me, I said to my husband, but I think I’ll have to start leaving him at home. He’s a bugger for disappearing off into the bushes. I wouldn’t have heard you shouting if I hadn’t run back to see where he’d got to.” She crouches down and picks a piece of bark from his fur. “You’re a bugger. Aren’t you? A little bugger.”

  Chapter 22

  I don’t recognize the woman looking back at me from the bathroom mirror. She has dark circles under her eyes, sallow skin and two deep ridges between her brows where, only six months ago, there were light frown lines. But when I gently tap my fingers against my cheekbones, checking for pain or tenderness, the woman in the mirror does the same.

  I covered myself in Savlon and arnica before I went to sleep and the scratch on my face has faded overnight, leaving behind the faintest of red marks along the length of my right cheekbone. There’s a bruise on my collarbone too, where a branch smacked me straight in the chest, but it’s mercifully small. I apply makeup to both areas, dabbing concealer onto the purple blemishes, and set it with powder. There’s no disguising the deep scratches on my forearms—I look as though I’ve been in a fight with a wildcat—so I change out of the long-sleeved pajama top I put on when I went to bed last night and pull on a pale blue shirt. Mark didn’t comment on my injuries when he slid out of bed this morning. My right cheek was buried in the pillow and the rest of my body was hidden by my pajamas and the duvet.

  I attempt a smile and the woman in the mirror curves her lips in response but it doesn’t reach her eyes. She looks tired and uneasy. I feel the same. I was an idiot for going out alone last night. I was lucky it was a group of teenage boys that I stumbled upon under the bridge, and not someone more dangerous. And what if I’d had another of my blackouts? No one knew where I’d gone. Anything could have happened to me.

  The woman in the mirror shakes her head.

  Liz was right. I need to stop looking for Billy and let the police do their job.

  I reach for my phone, on the closed toilet lid, and reread the texts I missed when I was asleep.

  Mum. 11:35 p.m.:

  Hope this doesn’t wake you. I don’t suppose you found the photos, did you? The journalist is threatening to pull the story if we don’t get them to him soon. Some crap about his work schedule and deadlines. Want me to come and help you look?

  Liz. 7:10 a.m.:

  Don’t suppose I could borrow your sonic screwdriver again, could I? I’ve got blisters on my blisters from trying to put together a bastard flat pack bookcase.

  Stephen. 7:15 a.m.:

  Claire, there’s a reason I said what I did. We need to talk. Give me a ring please. S.

  The text from Stephen makes me feel twitchy. I still haven’t told Mark what happened when I went back to work. I keep meaning to, but I can’t find the right moment. Our relationship is so fragile I’m loath to bring up anything that could cause another argument.

  I tap out my replies to Mum and Liz:

  Hi Mum, I had a look the other day but I can’t find it. Will another photo do? We’ve got lots of the two of them playing in the garden or on holiday. X

  Course you can, Liz. It’s in the garage somewhere. Are you still on lates? I’ll drop it around in a bit if so.

  I deliberate over Stephen’s text. Do I want to re
ply? No. Do I want to talk to him? No. Do I care if he sacks me and I have to find a new job? Definitely not. He’s a shit-stirrer and a troublemaker. No job is worth that.

  Jake and Kira are in the kitchen. She’s in a terry cloth dressing gown, munching on a piece of toast, while he’s making the tea, already dressed for the day in his trademark uniform of scruffy jeans, sweatshirt and sneakers. They remind me of me and Mark, pootling around in the kitchen of our first home, excited to have escaped from our parents’ houses, joking that we were playing at being grown-ups.

  I watch from the bottom of the stairs as Kira finishes her toast and drops her plate in the sink. Jake watches as she turns on the tap, then abandons his tea-making and crosses the kitchen. He presses his body into hers and wraps his arms around her, then ducks down to kiss her on the side of the neck. She jolts in surprise and half-turns, the sweetest smile on her face, as she tilts her head to kiss him. Jake’s hands move to the neckline of her dressing gown. He eases it down over her shoulders and I catch a glimpse of a bruise or a birthmark at the top of her spine.

  I take a step backward, suddenly embarrassed to be watching such a tender, intimate moment between my son and his girlfriend.

  “Jake, don’t!” Kira’s shout is like a whip crack that cuts through the air and I knock into the table in the hallway, sending a plant crashing to the ground.

  “Mum!” Jake turns around and Kira twists away, hugging the dressing gown around her neck.

  “I’m sorry.” I crouch down to pick up the pot. It was plastic and hasn’t broken but there’s soil all over the carpet. “I didn’t mean to intrude—I was just . . .” I feel my face flush red. “Sorry, I—”

  “It’s okay, Mum.” Jake glances at Kira, then shakes his head. “It’s cool. I’m off to work anyway.”

  He reaches for his tool belt and straps it around his waist, then retrieves the dustpan and brush from under the sink and sweeps up the soil at my feet.

  “You okay?” he says as he straightens up.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Cool. I’ll see you later then, Mum.” He doesn’t so much as glance at Kira as he crosses the kitchen. “Oh”— he stops as he reaches the back door and looks back at me—“I’m on a late-night job and I won’t be back until eight at the earliest. Don’t bother making me any tea. I’ll grab a burger or something.”

  As the back door clicks behind him Kira makes her escape.

  “Sorry,” she mutters under her breath as she squeezes past me and thunders up the stairs, two at a time. “I’m really sorry, Claire.”

  I pick my way through the garage, sidling sideways past Jake’s weight bench, stepping over the patch of lawnmower oil that Mark still hasn’t cleared up, and approach the shelves. They’re piled high with gardening and DIY paraphernalia: tins of assorted screws, half-empty pots of paint, crusted paintbrushes, rusty shears, trowels, netting and plastic plant pots.

  I shift things around as I search. I find the drill and several ratchet and wrench sets the kids gave Mark for his birthday one year, but not the black plastic box containing the electric screwdriver that Liz wants to borrow.

  There are several cardboard boxes crammed with clothes on the floor. We’ve been meaning to take them to the charity shop since we decluttered the house a year ago but no one’s got around to doing it yet.

  I open the flaps of the box nearest to me and root around inside but it’s all clothes, mostly mine. I open a second box and dip my hand inside, searching for anything hard and plastic, but my delving only reveals more clothing. My heart catches in my throat as the arm of a bright red football hoodie rises to the surface. It’s Billy’s. Mark bought it for him when he was twelve after a Bristol City match one weekend. We couldn’t get Billy out of it. He wore it on top of his uniform on his way to school and over his T-shirt on the weekends. He continued to wear it even when his wrists poked out of the sleeves and he could no longer zip it up over his broad chest. He said he’d keep it forever and then pass it on to his own kids. I couldn’t believe it when I found it in one of the black bags during the declutter. I thought it was a mistake and put it back in his wardrobe.

  “Mum,” he shouted, a couple of hours later. “Why is this in my room?”

  He dangled the top over the banister when I came out of the living room.

  “Because it’s your favorite top.”

  “No, it’s not. I hate football.”

  He’d always been the first out of the door on match day, woolly hat on his head and scarf wound around his neck regardless of the weather, but he hadn’t been to a City match with Mark and Jake for a while. He didn’t even bother to shout goodbye to them when they left.

  I tried not to read too much into it. Kids’ passions can be fickle. When I was little I wanted to be a ballet dancer one year and a flight attendant the next and I’d lost count of the number of toys that the boys had been obsessed with for months and then tossed aside, never to be played with again; but football was the one thing that bonded the three men in my life. It was their shared obsession. And then suddenly Billy didn’t want to go anymore. I didn’t know if someone at school had teased him about his shrunken hoodie or if his love of computer games had superseded his love of football but whenever I tried to talk to him about it he’d close like a clam.

  As I yank on the arm of the hoodie, something else rises to the surface of the box. The corner of a gray photo album. The one I was looking for. I tuck Billy’s hoodie under my arm and flip it open.

  There’s Jake and Billy at primary school, Jake aged nine proudly displaying his big teeth, Billy aged five, with his dark hair sticking up at ridiculous angles. I turn the next page, smiling at the memories and trying to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach. When I get to the middle of the book the school photos end. On the next page are photos of our last family holiday. Billy was thirteen. Jake was seventeen. We went to Weston for the day, then drove down to Bude in Cornwall to stay in a caravan for a week. There’s a photo of the two of them sitting on the wall near Weston beach, both staring down at their mobiles. It was an awful holiday. The weather was terrible and with all of us cooped up together in a tiny caravan, the bickering reached new levels; Jake wound Billy up, calling him a little kid, and Billy bit back calling Jake a boring arsehole. Mark cracked before I did. He packed up the car after three days and said we were never going on another family holiday for as long as he lived.

  I turn the page, wondering what’s next.

  My breath catches in my throat.

  There’s a photo of Mark and Jake having a beer under the awning as the skies opened. One of Billy and Mark messing about in the pool. Another one of us sitting around a table in the “entertainment hall,” giving the thumbs-down as we listened to the world’s worst comedian. There are more recent photos too: of Mark and Jake when he graduated from college. Me, Mark and Kira with our arms around each other’s shoulders, valiant after winning a game of bowling against the two boys.

  Only Mark isn’t in the photos any more. He’s been blacked out, his face and his body obliterated by thick black marker. And there are words scrawled over the top of each photo—WANKER, TOSSER, DICK. I turn over page after page after page but they’re all the same; Mark has been blanked out from each and every image. It’s as though he no longer exists.

  Friday, October 10, 2014

  Jackdaw44: Hey.

  Jackdaw44: Hello?

  Jackdaw44: You there?

  Jackdaw44: I know you’re reading these messages.

  Jackdaw44: Oi!

  Jackdaw44:

  Jackdaw44:

  Jackdaw44: You suck. Just like everyone else in my life. I thought you were different.

  Chapter 23

  Why is Mark blacked out in every photo in the album? Who did that? And why hide it at the bottom of the charity box? It doesn’t make any sense.

  Pain rips through the side of my head and I screw my eyes tightly shut to block it out.

  Did Billy do it? But why? What could Mark possi
bly have done to make him that angry?

  CLAIRE!

  I jolt at the sound of my name and smack my knee against the driving column but there is no one sitting next to me in the car. The windows are still wound tightly shut. No one is knocking on the glass. No one is outside the car looking in. The street is still quiet. And the keys swing back and forth in the ignition. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  Did Mark come back from the pub early, drunk and angry? Did Billy say something awful? Something so awful that Mark lashed out? Is that why Billy defaced his photos? Because his dad hit him? But why would he hide the album in the garage? Why not destroy it?

  The pain spreads across my forehead and I clutch my hands to my head. My brain is in a vise that’s being wound tighter and tighter and tighter. I can hear it. The vise. It makes a high-pitched squeal, like metal on metal. I plug my fingers into my ears but the sound gets louder.

  “CLAIRE! I AM CLAIRE!” The voice cuts through the metallic screech but I keep my eyes closed. I need to think. If I could just think clearly I could work out what this means.

  Did Mark threaten to hit him again? Is that why Billy fled? Is that why he didn’t take anything with him? He was afraid and he ran. Or was he taken? Did Mark hit him too hard? Did he panic? Did he try and get him to a hospital and then . . .

  “Mum? Help me, Mum!”

  The scream goes through me, cutting through the whine and whirr of the vise. Brakes squeal. Something flies through the air, hurtling toward the car, and I bury my face in my arms. There is a thump as something hits the hood and the whole car shakes. A loud crack follows and I am showered with glass.

  And then silence.

  A silence that seems to last forever.

  Whatever just happened was so terrible, so traumatic, I know that there is no way I can have survived it.

  Silence.

  The traffic doesn’t roar. The road doesn’t shake. The birds don’t sing and no one speaks.

  I peel myself from the steering wheel and raise my head.

  A body lies slumped across the hood, one arm twisted behind its back, the other reaching for me. I can’t see a face, just the back of a head, the dark hair slick with blood. The face is angled away from me, toward the doors of the doctor’s surgery.