Seven Days(18)

We’ll put out an alert, the officer he spoke to said, but she’s probably with a friend. More than likely she’ll turn up in the morning.

Except he’d spoken to all her friends and she wasn’t with them, and they didn’t know of anyone else she would have been with, any boy or man she’d mentioned.

So he and Sandra and James and his brother, Tony, and his friend from work, Reid, and Freddie, his neighbour, had spent the day looking for her. Between them they’d gone to every pub in Warrington and Manchester and Liverpool and Wigan and St Helens and anywhere else they could think of, and shown them a photo of Maggie.

None of them remembered seeing her. Quite a few said they couldn’t be sure.

Busy night, mate. Lots of people in here. Have you tried the cops?

He had. They hadn’t done much. They were looking for her, but they still thought she’d show up.

He’d lost track of the number of times he’d heard someone say most of the time teenagers do.

Most of the time wasn’t good enough. And Martin knew his little girl. She hadn’t gone off with a new boyfriend, enjoying herself while her parents worried. Some teenagers would – and maybe they were the ones that showed up – but not Mags. Not his Fruitcake.

If she was missing there was a reason, and he needed to find her.

He hadn’t, though. He came home, eventually, at one a.m., flat and exhausted and terrified. He’d slept, for those two hours.

And now he was awake. He didn’t know when he would ever be able to sleep again.





2


Next to him, Sandra rolled on to her side. Her breathing quickened and she sighed.

‘Are you awake?’ he said.

‘Yes. I barely slept.’

‘Me neither.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘It’s four thirty-seven.’

Their bedroom door opened slowly. James stood in the frame. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘I was waiting for you to wake up.’

‘You should have come in,’ Martin said. He felt a surge of love for his son. ‘Anytime you need me, I’m here.’

‘It’s early.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Dad,’ James said. ‘Can we go and look for her?’

Martin replaced the nozzle in the petrol pump and walked across the garage forecourt to pay. The car had been full the day before, but he had driven every street and park and country road for miles around. Martin had marked the ones they had driven on a map with a fluorescent marker and there were very few left. He had driven slowly, James looking out of one side, him looking out of the other. At every open pub or newsagent or café or clothes shop or place that looked like it might have attracted a fifteen-year-old they had stopped and shown photos of Maggie.

No one had seen her.

He scanned the shop as he entered, in case Maggie was inside buying chewing gum or a magazine or a packet of cigarettes. He hoped she was. He hoped he found his fifteen-year-old daughter buying cigarettes, because then he would know she was safe.

Because then he would have her back, and he could sleep and eat and breathe and live again.

He handed his card to the shop assistant.

‘Number six,’ he said. As she rang it up, he put the photos of Maggie – one a close-up of her face taken a couple of weeks ago, the other her school portrait – on the counter.

‘You haven’t seen this girl, have you?’ he asked.

The woman – about his age and with a pinched, smoker’s face – gave him a suspicious look.

‘No,’ she said. ‘She missing?’

‘Yes. She’s my daughter.’

The looked softened into one of sympathy.

‘Oh. How long’s she been gone?’

‘Two nights.’

Just saying it made him feel sick with worry. It had a similar effect on the woman.

‘Two nights is two nights too long,’ she said. ‘Hold on. I’ll be right back.’

She picked up the photos and walked through a door into an office. A few minutes later she came back holding a sheaf of paper.

‘Photocopies,’ she said. ‘I can hand them out, see if anyone recognizes her. Give me your number and I’ll make sure we let you know.’

Martin wrote down his phone number, in part glad of the help, and in part terrified.

Because it suddenly felt all the more real.





3


They got home at nine. There was a car parked in the driveway next to Sandra’s red Ford Focus. A dark blue Honda Civic with a large dent in the boot. Martin stiffened.

‘Who the hell’s that?’ he said. He pulled up at the side of the road and opened the car door. ‘Let’s go and see.’

James followed him into the house. He had large dark circles under his eyes and a drawn look. Martin put his arm around him and kissed his forehead. It was oily; his son was giving off a pungent, hormonal smell.

‘It’ll be OK,’ Martin said. ‘Really, it will.’

He was trying his best, but he wasn’t sure he was able to sound like he really believed his own words.

In the living room, Sandra was perched on the edge of the sofa. She had a mug of tea in her hands. A woman with short, dark hair was sitting in the armchair opposite her.