Reported Missing: A gripping psychological thriller with a breath-taking twist Page 5

  I told him, ‘No. It’s a waste of time.’ I hadn’t even taken my bag off but I was already tidying up around him, making my point, whatever it was. ‘I’ve seen it before, Chris.’

  I missed my chance.

  Had we had drifted apart? Maybe it was too hard to see it at the time, when you’re right up close. Like when you go for a meal or on holiday. You’ve put the time in, spent the money. ‘How is it? Are you enjoying it?’ In the moment, no one wants to say, ‘It’s cold,’ or, ‘It’s not as nice as the last time. It isn’t what I expected.’ It’s only later when someone will break the ice and admit, ‘It wasn’t that good, was it?’ It’s too risky at the time. When you’re right there in it, you think you can still salvage something, things might get better.

  There’s Kayleigh’s page too. I can rarely stop myself looking at that, either, scanning through as I have already done hundreds of times before, to see if there’s any trace of him, a shared link, a like, a comment – God forbid, a photo that I might have missed before. No privacy settings enabled, access open.

  ‘They haven’t got a clue, these kids. They just don’t care. Their lives just out there for everyone to see.’ I heard someone say that on the bus. She told her companion that her granddaughter had been contacted ‘over the internet’ by ‘some bloody fella three times her age’. ‘We didn’t have to worry about all this type of stuff,’ she said. ‘It’s a bloody nightmare.’

  I wondered if she had seen me, recognised me, and was making a point, but I think she was just talking to her friend.

  I don’t really expect to find photos of them right there on Facebook. Even if any of this were true, Chris surely wouldn’t be so naive as to have photos on Facebook with a teenage girl, even if she might. But surely the real reason there’s nothing there is because they had no contact at all. They went missing on the same day but they must be two strangers, parallel lines.

  At first I was alarmed when Kayleigh started posting again, there was even a small well of hope. But her family obviously just gained access, and now they post to the account to keep Kayleigh’s friends updated and to keep Kayleigh in their minds. The change in tone is stark, jarring. She grew up in an instant. From posts about tickets to see Nicki Minaj and showing off her latest bright blue nails and pouty photos, so many photos – the camera face perfected just so – to the latest posts since she went missing. One just after her disappearance reads:

  Kayleigh Jackson: Still no news about Kayleigh. Please keep searching, everyone, and keep Kayleigh in your hearts and minds. Lifeboats and helicopters out to sea today. Thankfully, nothing was found. We have to believe Kayleigh is still out there somewhere. Someone must know where she is. If so, please speak up. We, her family, are going out of our minds. Kayleigh, if you see this, we love and miss you. Please come home. Janice Jackson (Kayleigh’s mam).

  Comments underneath addressed to Kayleigh: ‘We miss you babe. Cum bk.’ ‘See you soon Kayleigh English lesson isn’t the same without you!’ ‘Miss you bb.’ ‘We won’t give up KJ.’ Sixty-eight comments, rows on rows. I can’t say the same about Chris’s page.

  I watch the video of Kayleigh again, the one I always watch. It’s in the park, on a sunny day. It must be this summer because I remember the song was in the charts – Chris used to listen to Radio 1 in the car. He said it made him feel young; ‘I like to be down with the kids,’ he joked. I wince to remember stuff like that now. A throwaway comment now imbued with new meaning. They said this one was the ‘soundtrack of the summer’. Chris and I laughed about the daft lyrics – something about being a wizard of love and having a magic wand.

  In the video, Kayleigh’s in the park with her friends, standing on the edge of the roundabout facing outwards. She’s wearing cut-off denim shorts and a cropped vest.

  When I first heard the song, I thought it was called ‘Cherrypopper’ not ‘Cheerleader’ – but I’ve looked up the lyrics online since finding this video. Now, I could recite the whole song. Kayleigh pushes the roundabout slowly with one leg then lets it glide for a while, the song playing out of someone’s mobile phone close by, a tinny, hissing sound. Then she’s dancing, arms in the air, whirling round on the spinning roundabout, her top riding up, slim white tummy on display, a green jewel sparkling in her belly button. Then there’s a flash in my mind again, so sudden and violent it makes me jump, like a baseball bat full force into a mirror. Kayleigh’s stomach, that glinting green jewel, Chris’s hands. I have to shake my head to clear it.

  Someone passes Kayleigh the phone and spins the roundabout faster, and she turns it around to film the park whizzing by, a series of coloured lines.

  In another time, another circumstance, if it was Ellen, Jeannie’s daughter, I’d be cheered by the film – a show of teenage jubilance – but now it just gnaws at me, twisting the knot in my stomach tighter. I see my own reflection in the computer screen, Kayleigh flying across it every now and then like a tiny cartoon Tinkerbell. My hair is lank, greasy, eyes circled with grey.

  When the roundabout slows down, Kayleigh’s friends are all laughing, bent over and pointing. When she steps off she can’t walk straight, zigzagging all over until she falls, and the camera goes black to the sound of laughing.

  Six

  Monday, 9 November

  I try to avoid going back to the house as much as possible. But I have to go today because I am going to be out of money again soon. It’s only a matter of time before the credit cards I have are maxed out or blocked. Borrowed money, borrowed time.

  The fact he took the money still stings. It doesn’t chime with the version of Chris – of me and Chris – that I know. It was partly his money, it’s true. But it was our money; that’s what hurts. Would he really take it and use it for something so hurtful? There’s an explanation; there has to be.

  After he’d gone, I went to take money from the joint account so I could move to the caravan: pay the first month’s rent, get a few essentials. I just wanted to escape from the house, stay in the caravan where no one would come and find me.

  It even occurred to me that Chris might be annoyed at me for using our joint money like this, without consultation. We were saving together bit by bit, £100 a month, for… we hadn’t quite decided what for yet. A trip around the world one day maybe. More likely a new kitchen or a loft conversion, if I’m honest, but something for us. I was definitely angling more for the holiday-of-a-lifetime option, but having savings for the first time ever gave me some comfort. I didn’t feel so trapped. If one of us lost our job, or if an opportunity for something came up… we had choices.

  But the machine said: ‘Sorry there are insufficient funds in your account to complete this transaction. Press OK to continue.’

  What if it wasn’t OK, though? No option for that.

  I tried again – perhaps I had typed the pin in wrong, encountered a glitch, a ghost in the machine, but the same thing happened again. I marched into the bank straight away, full of indignation. It didn’t even cross my mind that he had taken it, on top of everything else.

  When I finally managed to get someone to see me, she explained calmly, matter-of-factly, that all the money from our savings was gone. All £6,000 of it.

  ‘There’s just sixty-seven pence, I’m afraid,’ she told me. She couldn’t meet my eye.

  I couldn’t focus on the information. I tried not to give too much away to her, to keep myself together. But she probably still thought that I was another daft woman who was too lazy to look after her own finances and had been left high and dry by her husband. And she might have been right.

  Probably left her for someone younger, perkier, I bet she was thinking. Again, possibly true. Although most of them probably didn’t have a missing fourteen-year-old girl factored into the equation; I had that on them.

  I demanded a statement from her, just to get past standing there looking helpless more than anything, to look purposeful. The print-out she gave me showed that the money had been withdrawn gradually, in dribs and drabs over a
bout three months before he went missing. The numbers and transactions jumbled before my eyes. Cash, no paper trail.

  Had he spent it as he took it out, something impulsive? Presents and treats for someone. Perhaps it was a demand, I grasped, something beyond his control. Or was he squirreling it away, a longer-term plan?

  It’s eerily quiet on the housing estate, few lights on. Too cold to be outside, a night to huddle indoors with loved ones. Chris and I might have opened a bottle of red wine, watched a box set. I’ll never finish Breaking Bad now, not without Chris. We’d be on the sofa. Heating on. My legs draped across his lap. I press my lips together and breathe through my nose slowly to kill the memory, quash the emotion.

  The housing estate where we live – lived? – is deserted like always: beige identikit houses, still so new and pristine. We moved here from London last summer, when Chris finished teaching. I needed to be nearer to Mum and it was a chance to make a new start.

  Chris loved London. So did I, but I needed to get out too. Friends were shocked that we’d move back here. ‘You know what they say about those who tire of London, Becs…’ Perhaps I was just a little bit tired of life by then, though. I was tired of the commute, the work-eat-sleep routine, the non-stop people, the tiny flat, the constant social whirl, the mice, the litter. I needed to get off the wheel for a while, rest and recuperate. We needed to.

  I didn’t think I could tolerate one more summer in London. Not the way I was feeling then. Once I had been excited when it was all new. But it had lost its shine for me, and deep down I really thought Chris was ready for something new too.

  There were good things about living in London, of course. I miss the balmy evenings drinking in Soho and Covent Garden after work. Walking home late on warm summer nights, the streets still buzzing with activity. The exotic fruit and veg at corner shops, open all night – huge tomatoes, bright peppers, fruits I had never heard of. It’s true that there’s a thrill in the air in London that you don’t get anywhere else in England – definitely not in Shawmouth. A sense that something exciting could happen. Maybe I talked myself out of London because I needed to be with Mum.

  ‘We’ll walk on the beach all the time, eat healthy, save up. We need to slow down a bit. It will be good for us, it's what we need,’ I’d said, and I’d meant it.

  Some weeks in London we barely saw each other, Chris and I, with early starts, meetings, drinks in the evening. We were so paranoid about not seeing friends, about drifting away from people in adult life, that we sometimes forgot each other, snatching a quick kiss before passing out asleep or rushing out of the door to work.

  ‘We’ll see friends all the time. You can pretty much walk anywhere,’ I’d told him. And I know that is true now because I have done it so many times looking for Chris, rediscovering places I had long forgotten.

  I’m standing outside the house now, our house. 12 Primrose Close. I used to think it was cute but now I hate the way all the streets here are named after flowers. It’s twee and cloying. I just think of the flowers withering and dying, dried-out husks tied to lamp posts, like the ones that I saw outside Kayleigh’s house, left by local people as a mark of support for her family.

  I look up at the windows, almost expecting to see him appear. People say that, don’t they? ‘I just expected him to walk in one day.’ It’s a cliché but it’s true. Except in my case, I don’t know what I’d do if he walked back in. I think it’s better than the alternatives but I can’t be sure. Another reason I can’t live here at the house. Everything; it’s all Chris. The thoughts come even thicker and faster here.

  We bought this house with what was left over after selling my parents’ place when Mum went into the home, and some money from Chris’s parents to make up the deposit. I knew it's what my parents would have wanted, for me to get my own place. Dad didn’t agree with renting. He was keen that the money from him and Mum was put to good use. I never wanted to discuss it, because it was talking about when they were gone, but he’d plough on anyway, good-natured but serious. ‘I’m telling you, Rebecca, don’t squander it all on bloody clothes and shoes and daft holidays. You need to put down some roots, get a place of your own.’

  ‘I prefer old houses, with a bit of character, you know?’ Chris had said. We’d rowed a bit when I told him it was such an obvious thing to say. ‘Oh, of course, shall we get one of the fancy three-storey Victorian ones on The Parades? Silly me. I hadn’t thought about those.’ I didn’t need to be so sarcastic. Sometimes I just can’t help myself.

  Of course everyone prefers old houses with solid wooden floors, high ceilings, sash windows. ‘But it just isn’t practical, is it?’ I’d said, internally rolling my eyes at myself as I heard the words come out of my mouth. But it was true. We didn’t have the time or skills to do up an old place. And we certainly didn’t have the money. I just wanted somewhere to live, somewhere that was ready to move into. With Mum and everything, I just didn’t have the mental space to think.

  Sandra and Geoff, Chris’s parents, said if we must move up here – were we really sure? – that the house was a good investment, the right time to buy. The value would go up, it would be in a catchment area eventually. I winced at that. Chris listened to them, more than he listened to me on this particular issue, it has to be said. So he came around to the idea and then we just got swept up in the whole thing. Before I knew it, it was done. I was waking up in Primrose Close. Maybe it was a distraction, for us both – for me from Mum, for him from the massive change to his life this would be. The house, the planning, it was something to focus our energies on.

  The plans for the estate looked cosy. It had a holiday village charm. ‘Community focused,’ they boasted. Everything was supposed to be developed with community in mind. There’s a communal space, a little garden for each set of houses for the neighbours to sit and chat. Bins and parking spaces are designed to be set a little away from the houses, for the aesthetic appeal and also to give people the optimum chance of bumping into each other and interacting. This was all the spiel we got anyway. It probably did sound fake, but by a certain point we both blocked out any doubt. It was happening.

  The one catch, though, which was mentioned less – but to be fair wasn’t hidden from us – was that the development wasn't finished. They still hadn’t built the school or the shops. The village pub was on its way and the rest of the houses would be finished soon, they said. Demand was strong for the properties, it wouldn’t be like this for long. We got some money off for that, for the inconvenience of temporarily living on a building site.

  But even after months, no one else came. The pub didn’t materialise, neither did the school or the shops we’d been promised. It became harder to contact the company we bought from; they just fobbed us off. It was all still in the works, they promised; there had just been a slight delay. It was clear what the real story was. The economy suddenly tanked and the work just ground to a halt. They had our money, our signatures. We had the house. All the other stuff was hardly going to be a priority for them. Will it be even harder for them to sell the houses now that Chris’s name is attached to the estate?

  I try not to look at the house, keeping my eyes fixed on the keys and the lock, the task at hand. Despite this and the fact that I have no real affection for the house itself, the memories still flood in. Good memories, mostly. Chris and I, we were happy here. The day we moved in, Chris scooped me up and carried me through the front door, kissing me as we went in. I said he would hurt his back. We ordered pizza and slept on a mattress in the front room the first two nights, before we bought a bed. It’s already too much.

  Inside I slump down against the wall in the cramped little hallway. I have to pull my knees right up to my chin to be able to sit down in the narrow space. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes and breathe slowly. I am glad to be alone, cocooned for a moment, calm in the silence.

  The door between the tiny entrance space – you can’t really call it a hall – and the rest of the house taunts me. Pa
rt of me wants to go inside, perhaps lie on the bed or take a bath. I miss the full-size comfortable mattress and a hot bath when I’m at the caravan.

  In through the nose, out through the mouth. Breathe. I put my hand on the handle but I can’t do it. I can’t go in. I am scared it will overwhelm me; that it will set me back. I’ll be in bed again, like before.

  I search the drift of post instead, adding most of it to the rest piled on the windowsill, starting to block out the light. Official letters for Chris. I open most of them now, just in case there’s a clue, but there’s nothing. Marketing sent in brown envelopes to scare you into opening it, fast food offers, bank statements, the emptiness of the account unchanging. My new credit card and the pin number have arrived – another temporary reprieve. Along with it, overdue bills that need to be paid, some with a reminder of what the consequences will be if I fail to send what I owe.

  I stuff the most urgent ones in my bag and leave.

  Seven

  Monday, 9 November

  This isn’t my first experience with a missing person. The common denominator is me.

  Mum went missing for a whole day before she moved into the nursing home. She was living in sheltered accommodation then. She wanted to live as independently as possible and in her own flat for as long as she could, and that made us feel better too. We went around to see her, Chris and I, the same as every other week, but she’d gone. We knew straight away something was wrong because the door to her little flat was open, not just unlocked but wide open, and banging against the wall as we approached. A boiled egg with toast sat uneaten on the table, just the top of the egg taken off, the gas ring was still burning, the TV blaring out. I was afraid there’d been a break-in, rushing into the bedroom, worried that Mum had been tied up and robbed. My racing mind even considered that she might have been kidnapped. Perhaps she’d be in the communal games room or someone else’s flat, chatting. But she wasn’t.