The Other People(4)
Missing is different to being dead. In a way, it’s worse. Death offers finality. Death gives you permission to grieve. To hold memorials, to light candles and lay flowers. To let go.
Missing is limbo. You’re stranded; in a strange, bleak place where hope glimmers faintly at the horizon and misery and despair circle like vultures.
* * *
—
HIS PHONE BUZZED from the holder on the dashboard. He glanced at the screen. The name on it made the hairs stir on his neck.
The other thing you found, if you spent your time traveling the tributaries of the country in the dead of night long enough, was other night people. Other vampires. Lorry and van drivers on long-haul deliveries. Police, paramedics, service staff. Like the blonde-haired waitress. She had been on again tonight. She seemed nice, but she always looked worn out. He imagined she had had a husband once, but he left. Now she worked nights, so she had time for her kids in the day.
He often did that with people. Invented back stories for them, as if they were characters in a book. Some you could read right away. Others took a little more time. Some you could never fathom, not in a million lifetimes.
Like the Samaritan.
“Where r u?” his text read.
Normally, Gabe couldn’t stand people using abbreviations, even in texts—a throwback to his former profession as a copywriter—but he forgave the Samaritan, for a number of reasons.
He tapped the microphone icon on the phone’s screen and said: “Between Newton Green and Watford Gap.” The words flashed up as a message. Gabe tapped send.
The text came back: “Meet me @ Barton Marsh, off J14. Sndng direcs.”
Barton Marsh. A small village not far from Northampton. Not very pretty. A good fifty minutes away.
“Why?”
The reply was just three words. Words he had been waiting to hear for almost three years. Words he had dreaded hearing.
“I found it.”
TIBSHELF SERVICES, M1 JUNCTIONS 28–9
Fran sipped her coffee. Well, she presumed it was coffee. The menu said it was coffee. It looked like coffee. It smelled vaguely like coffee. But it tasted like crap. She shook out another sachet of sugar. The fourth. Across the sticky plastic table, Alice picked halfheartedly at an anemic-looking bit of toast that was doing only a slightly better job than the coffee at fitting its purpose under the Trades Description Act.
“You going to eat that?” Fran asked.
“No,” Alice replied absently.
“Don’t blame you,” Fran said, smiling sympathetically, even though the effort caused her cheeks to hurt…which at least matched her eyes and head.
Her head was throbbing harder than ever in the bright fluorescent light. She hadn’t eaten anything since the previous morning. Her belly was past food, but her head was pounding from the lack of nutrition and sleep. That was part of the reason she had decided they should stop for coffee and sustenance. Ha bloody ha. Probably served her right that they weren’t getting either. She pushed the coffee away.
“D’you need the bathroom before we go?”
Alice started to shake her head then reconsidered. “How far do we have to go?”
Good question. How far? How far would be enough? She had no idea, but she didn’t want to say that to Alice. She was supposed to be the one in control, the one with a plan. She couldn’t tell Alice that she was just driving, as fast as she dared, trying to put as many miles between them and their last address as possible.
“Well, it’s a long way, but there are plenty of other service stations on the way.”
Until they got off the motorway, of course, and then the only option would be a lay-by at the side of the road.
Alice pulled a face. “I suppose I could go now.”
Said with the same amount of enthusiasm as if she had asked her to step into a cage with man-eating lions.
“You want me to come with you?”
Another hesitation. Alice had, among other things, a phobia about public bathrooms. However, at almost eight, she also had a bigger phobia about acting like a baby.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Sure?”
Alice nodded and then, with a grim-faced determination that made her look oh-so-much older than her years, she rose from her seat. After another momentary hesitation, she reached across the table for her bag: a small pink rucksack decorated with purple flowers. Alice never went anywhere without it, not even to the toilet. As she slung it over her slight shoulder, it rattled and clicked.
Fran tried not to frown, tried not to let the fear show on her face. She lifted her coffee cup and made a pretense of drinking from it as Alice walked away; long, brown hair caught up in a high ponytail, jeans tucked into fake Uggs, a large duffel coat swamping her skinny frame.
A surge of primeval love overpowered her. It got you like that sometimes. Terrifying, the love you have for a child. From the minute you cradled that soft, sticky head in your arms, everything changed. You lived in a state of perpetual wonder and terror: wonder that you could have produced something so incredible, terror that at any moment they might be taken from you. Life had never seemed so fragile or so full of menace before.
The only time you shouldn’t worry about them, she thought, was when they slept. That’s when they should be safe, tucked up tightly in their beds. The problem was, Alice didn’t sleep in her bed. Not always. Alice could fall asleep anywhere, at any moment. On the way to school, in the park, in the ladies’ toilets. One minute awake. The next gone. It was scary.