One Small Mistake(53)

I am furious, which is better than unloved and wrecked. I take Jack’s glass from his hand. ‘You’re right. Fuck ’em.’ Then I knock back the burning whisky.

For the rest of the day and well into the evening, Jack works hard to bring me out of my stony mood, but I am Pygmalion’s wife; ivory-made. Cold. He tells me I am loved. He insists, but my ears are unhearing, marble shells. He gets Kathryn’s old record player and vinyl records from the loft. We sit on the rug in the lounge, drinking wine and listening to music from our youth. He’s trying to take us back to a time when things were simpler, when we weren’t faking an abduction and hiding out from the police. ‘My Girl’ by The Temptations is playing, and I feel myself become warm like candle wax. When I was little, me and Mum would dance around our living room to this song – just the two of us – my feet in her white patent stilettos.

I could cry.

He strokes my hair, and I close my eyes to trap the tears.

With Noah gone, Jack is the only person left in my life who truly loves me.

This thought rises, then floats; it is both comforting and sad.





Chapter Twenty-Six


25 Days Missing


Adaline Archer

Since the appeal, things have been unbearable intense. Mum and Dad get dozens of letters every day, ranging from kind to cruel. We had the option for them to be opened and read by police before being passed to us. Mum refused. She wants to read Every. Single. Letter.

Most are from people wanting to tell us we’re in their thoughts and prayers, one or two are from those who’ve also had a family member disappear, the odd few are from sociopaths who get a kick out of sending letters claiming to have you chained up in their attic. I pass letters like that on to the police. It’s strange to think that one of those letters could be a confession from your abductor and I’ve held it in my hand.

For weeks, I was desperate for Mum to rejoin reality and accept you were taken, and now she has, I think she was better off before. She cries and mithers and scrolls endlessly through the internet, reading facts about missing people, then spouting them at random.

A couple of days ago, over slices of cake at Kathryn’s house, she said, ‘Around 100,000 adults go missing in the UK every year.’

‘Oh gosh,’ said Kathryn, then we all stumbled through the resulting silence.

It made me think though. That’s a huge number. Missing people are like bobby pins; over time so many of them vanish, but where do they go?

When I popped over to our parents’ yesterday, she said, ‘Sex trafficking doesn’t just happen in foreign countries, you know, it happens in the UK too.’

Dad goes on long walks late at night. He says he’s thinking but I’m sure he’s looking for you. He came by my house the other night with his toolbox and walked around fixing things that didn’t really need fixing.

‘I’ve ordered you a security light,’ he told me.

‘I have one.’

‘This is better. Brighter.’

‘We don’t need it.’

‘It’s coming tomorrow.’

‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘You don’t rent. You own. What’s the problem?’

‘No problem, but—’

‘Let me install the damn light, will you?’

I looked at our dad and I had that feeling again that he’s shrunk since you were taken. When we were kids, I thought even a bus couldn’t take him down. That childish belief he is indestructible hasn’t ever faded. Until now, when it seems all it would take is a strong gust of wind. Dad is practical, not emotional. If I take after anyone in our family, it’s Dad. If our roles were reversed and he appeared at your door late at night looking small and desperate to do something, to fix something, you would fling your arms around him and shower his face with kisses while he grumbled and half-heartedly pushed you away. But I am not you and you are not here.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘So, it’ll be here tomorrow.’

He nodded.

‘I’ll, uh, make lunch when you come over then, shall I?’

Another short nod. And there we have it. He fixes lights and I fix lunches.

The next morning, in the supermarket getting ingredients for his visit, I was stopped eleven times by people who recognised me. I assumed a new identity the day I went from Miss Fray to Mrs Archer, but that was a choice. I had no say in becoming that missing woman’s sister.

Like the letters, it was a mixed bag. Some wanted the inside scoop, sidling up close and talking in low conspiratorial voices to ask if there was any news. Others approached with a sympathetic head tilt and well-meaning smiles and wanted to tell me I was in their thoughts. It’s the criers I can’t cope with, middle-aged women with red eyes and dripping noses telling me how sorry they are, how awful it is. I become ironing-board-stiff in their arms, and they seem disappointed and confused I don’t dissolve with them. I’ve decided all food shopping will now be done online.

By the time our parents arrived, the tea was made and the biscuits were out. Mum adores the Waitrose chocolate biscuits I bring out for guests. As always, Dad moaned you can buy the same thing far cheaper in Lidl, but still took three from the tin and popped them on his plate. Dad hadn’t even got his screwdriver out before there was a knock at the door.