Where the Missing Go(19)

‘Do you want me to help you look?’ I say slowly. I seem to remember you’re not supposed to contradict them when they’re muddled.

‘I’ve looked all over. I’ve been all round the house, I called in the garden. But I couldn’t remember his name!’ She’s clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. ‘He’s gone, he’s gone.’

She’s so upset that I try to bring her back to the present. I kneel down by her side.

‘I don’t think there is a little boy. Do you remember, Lily? It’s OK, no one’s here now.’

She seems to calm down, after that. But I make a mental note to find out what help there is for her. Because this is not working.

I don’t bother making dinner myself. I assemble crackers on a plate, a smear of hummus, cut up an apple, and eat it standing up, trying to work out the source of my unease. Lily will be OK, surely. I can sort it. But my conversation with Holly has got under my skin. I feel fidgety, off-kilter.

Even I can see that Sophie’s friends need to get on with their lives, that they can’t stay stuck in the past, like me. But our conversation has shifted my view of their friendship, something that had seemed as clear to me as the sky was blue: Sophie was the quieter, responsible one, Holly the adventurer, pushing the boundaries. Was that not quite the case?

I wonder what else I might be wrong about.

I sit on the sofa and flick on the TV with the remote, scrolling through the channels, unseeing. I flick it off again, then pick up one of my old magazines from the coffee table. The silence I welcomed when I moved here presses down on me, a thick blanket I can almost feel. My beautiful, empty home. Suddenly I’m shockingly, furiously angry. How could she do this to us? To me?

I can feel the tears pressing in my throat, the grief about to come. I’d rather stay angry. I throw the magazine in my hand, the pages arcing through the air to the carpet. I don’t feel better. So I go, quite deliberately, to the mantelpiece and knock the vase of flowers onto the floor, water and petals spilling everywhere.

It’s satisfying. So I make a clean sweep of my tasteful ornaments. The heavy jade elephant, there it goes. And there goes the carriage clock, a present from Mark’s parents. I never liked it much anyway! The cards behind it flutter to the floor in its wake.

I stop short, remembering that I keep them propped up there. I didn’t know what else to do with them. I didn’t want to hide them away: the reason we think she’s OK.

I crouch, carefully plucking them out of the debris on the carpet. I’m sorry, Sophie. I’m not angry. Fat tears drop down. I make sure they don’t mark the cards, as I lay them on my glass coffee table, pictures up, in a row. They’re fine. Then I turn them over. No smudges. No bends. They’re fine. The card on top is showing signs of age, the biro ink darker. I’d recognise that handwriting anywhere, though.

The first one arrived a fortnight after she’d gone. I came downstairs that morning and saw it on the mat, under a gas bill and a circular for a new Chinese takeaway. The photo was of a beach, curving yellow sand under a bright blue sky, the red script in the top left-hand corner shouting: SPAIN! I turned it over. The address started ‘Kate and Mark Harlow’. The message itself was brief.

I know you’ll be worrying. Please don’t. I’m safe and I’m well. I love you.

Sophie xxx

The card trembled in my hand. Sophie had always written like she was in a tearing hurry, her words looping across the page. And there was her doodle in the corner next to her name, like she always did, a happy little flower.

Everyone had been positive. This was what we’d been waiting for: a solid development. Not only that, but Sophie had deliberately got in touch, reached out to us. We’d handed it into the police. They’d been circumspect as ever, but I could see it in Kirstie’s face: this was Good News.

What it meant was less clear. It was postmarked London. ‘Could she could have got someone to post it for her, maybe? A friend passing through?’ Mark wondered aloud.

He took it upon himself to make the calls, spread the news through the web of friends and family, his parents, my dad, my sister, all the rest.

‘Well yes. It’s very encouraging really … we can all breathe a little easier.’ There’d even been some rueful laughter. I could imagine what they were saying at the other end of the line. That Sophie. Well, really. But we knew she’d come back home eventually, they always do.

Afterwards, he’d opened a bottle of champagne, poured it out into our best flutes and handed me one. As I stayed silent, he’d gripped me by the arms. I’d been shocked. There were tears in his eyes, I registered, as he told me: ‘It’s going to be OK, I promise. Maybe you can relax, just a little?’

I think I nodded. But I couldn’t. It was like hoping that turning off a tap might halt a flood.

Soon, the police came back to us: the expert agreed that this was her handwriting. But as to how it got to us, they didn’t know much more. My visions of them tracking the card back to the postbox where it was sent, pulling CCTV to show a small figure slipping it into the slot, soon faded. The postmark showed it was processed in north London, that was all.

We learned that what goes through the postal system gets covered in strange traces of all sorts, chemicals and blood and things you would rather not know about. Still, they managed to collect some prints off the card, ran them through the database just in case: nothing alarming came up, no matches with sinister prison escapees, anything like that.