The Missing: The gripping psychological thriller that’s got everyone talking... (10 page)

Jackdaw44:
Yesterday was cool.

ICE9:
Until your mates turned up.

Jackdaw44:
What’s wrong with my mates?

ICE9:
They’re immature.

Jackdaw44:
And I’m not?

ICE9:
Would I have been having a drink with you if I thought that?

Jackdaw44:

Jackdaw44:
Hey?

ICE9:
What?

Jackdaw44:
We should do beers more often. I like talking to you. Feel like you get me.

ICE9:
Maybe that’s because I do.

Jackdaw44:

ICE9:
Why are you punching me?

Jackdaw44:
That’s a fist bump, you twat!

ICE9:
Ha. Ha!

I am sitting on the floor on the upstairs landing, photo albums scattered around me.

Mum’s text arrived half an hour after Kira left.

Don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to find those school photos of the kids yet, have you? Ben from the Bristol News said he’d run the feature but he needs them NOW. Can you have a look and let me know.

I still hadn’t moved from the kitchen. There was a part of me that could relate to Kira’s outpouring of emotion. I’d felt the same way about Mark when I was her age. Your emotions are so big when you’re a teenager, so powerful. It’s as though they’re a violent storm, sweeping you from one day to the next. My worst fear was that Mark would realize that he could do better and dump me. I want to shake my eighteen-year-old self now. That wasn’t fear. It’s not until you have children that you truly know what fear is. After Jake was born I had to stop watching the news because the world seemed so terrifying. What chance did I have of keeping my tiny baby son safe when there was danger around every corner? How the hell was I supposed to protect him from that?

I’ve found the album with Mickey Mouse on the outside that’s full of photos of us and the kids at Disneyland Paris. I’ve also found the blue, slightly battered album with photos of Jake as a baby, crammed full of images of his tiny, soft shape, taken from every conceivable angle. There’s Jake and me in the hospital bed, Jake in the pram for his first walk, Jake having a cuddle with Granny, Granddad hanging Jake upside down by his ankles, Jake in the bath, Jake going down a slide. It’s as though we captured every waking moment of the first year of his life.

There’s a similar album for Billy, with a pale green cover, but there aren’t as many photos. I swore we wouldn’t be one of those families that take fewer photos of the second child but, with Jake to look after too, I didn’t have the time to luxuriate in Billy’s first smile, his first word, his first step. Now I wish I’d recorded every single second of his life.

All the photo albums are here apart from the one I’m looking for, the grey album crammed with the children’s school photos: staged poses and watery backdrops, the only way to distinguish one year from the next the number of teeth showing in Jake and Billy’s rictus grins.

Where is it?

Perhaps Mark took it? The police requested photos of Billy after we reported him missing but I was in no state to help so he took charge.

I try ringing him but it goes straight to answerphone. Do I keep looking or wait until he gets home? That’s if he does come home.

I throw open the door to Mark’s bedside cabinet and scoop coffee-stained paperbacks onto the floor, then flip onto my stomach and haul two dusty suitcases from underneath the bed. I rifle through them. Then I search through the wardrobe and chest of drawers. I search every last centimetre of our bedroom but there is no sign of the album.

Maybe Jake took it? Maybe he wanted to show photos of the two of them as kids to Kira and—

Kira. Photography. Film Studies. Billy. Photos.

And there it is, a memory, sparked into life – Billy, telling me about a project he was doing at school in his media class. His teacher wanted them to make videos and he’d been inspired by something he’d seen on Facebook about a man who photographed his daughter every day of her life and then put the pictures together into a time-lapse video.

‘You literally see her grow from a baby to an eighteen-year-old,’ he said. ‘And you’ve got all those photos of us at school. I want to do one about how school changes you.’

I barely even registered the request the first time he made it. I heard the word, ‘Mum!’ and automatically pointed him in the direction of the fridge.

Now I take several deep breaths before opening the door to his room. It is not how he left it. It’s not a mess of clothes flung onto the floor, empty crisp packets jammed down the side of the bed and exercise books and pens strewn all over the floor. It’s tidier than it’s been since he was a baby and I made him the most lovely nursery room with framed photos of Winnie-the-Pooh on the wall and soft toys lined up on the dresser.

The police searched every inch of his room after we reported him missing. They took away his computer, his games console and all of his books, comics and sketchpads. I stayed downstairs, in the living room, and listened to the floorboards creak under the weight of their footsteps. When they left I ventured back upstairs. I cried when I saw the room. Not because they’d left it messy – they hadn’t – but because it was as though all traces of Billy had been wiped from the room. All that remained was his bed and his posters of graffiti, rap stars and skateboarders.

His belongings were returned a few weeks later. A forensic examination of his computer had revealed nothing apart from the fact that he spent a lot of time surfing for information on his favourite graffiti artists and watching YouTube videos of skateboarders. And accessing hardcore porn.

‘It’s increasingly common for young males to access this kind of material,’ DC Forbes told us. ‘It can become quite a compulsion for teenage boys. It becomes addictive. I’m not suggesting this was in any way connected with Billy’s disappearance but it has been noted in his file.’

Mark wanted to know what kind of hardcore porn Billy had been watching and DC Forbes was quick to reassure us that it was nothing illegal but it was quite extreme.

‘What about his mobile phone?’ I asked. ‘Have you found it?’

He shook his head. ‘GPS tracking failed to reveal anything and triangulation showed that it was last used in this house or street. We haven’t located it yet, I’m afraid.’

‘So nothing in his room has given you any clues what might have happened to him?’

‘No, Mrs Wilkinson, I’m sorry.’

I push open the door to Billy’s room and inhale deeply but all trace of him is gone. I used to tell him off for piling up his stinking trainers behind his bedroom door because you could smell them from the landing. There were other smells too: unwashed clothes, half-eaten burgers sweating in their white polystyrene boxes shoved under the bed, and the pungent chemical scent of his thick-nibbed marker pens.

I rifle through Billy’s bookcase but there’s no sign of the missing photo album amongst the neatly stacked comic books, graphic novels and the incongruous pile of Harry Potter books we used to read together before bed. When he turned eight he told me that being read bedside stories was babyish but he still insisted on Harry Potter each night. We made it all the way through the
Deathly Hallows
. I like to think he did that for me.

As I yank open the drawer to his bedside table the sketchbooks that are piled up on the top spill to the carpet. I pull one onto my lap and flip through it. Unlike reading, Billy’s interest in drawing has never faded but it’s been a long time since he’s drawn robots, dinosaurs and flying cars. For the last couple of years he’s done nothing but scrawl graffiti tags over every available surface.

Fliy – that was the tag he came up with first, but he changed it to DStroy when Jake teased him that he wanted to be called Fliy because he made a lot of noise and was dirty and annoying.

And here it is, page after page of thick black scrawl.
DStroy
.
DStroy
.
DStroy
. The letters becoming more and more illegible, turning into a spiky dark hieroglyphic as he worked on his design. He made no attempt to hide the fact that he was DStroy – that’s why it was so easy for the headmaster to identify him as the culprit behind the graffiti at school.

The first time we were called into Mr Edwards’s office Billy tried to explain that graffiti was his way of leaving a mark on the world. He might not be remembered for winning a trophy for sport or drama but everyone knew who DStroy was. DStroy didn’t care how tall a building was or how risky it was to tag it. DStroy thought his teachers and the police were sleepwalking sheep carrying out the orders of hypocritical politician scum. Who were they to say he couldn’t express himself the way he wanted? Tagging wasn’t vandalism – it was art.

Mark called him a fucking idiot. He said respect was earned by working hard, not by scribbling on school property, and he was ashamed to call Billy his son. I saw Billy flinch just for a second before he muttered, ‘You’re one to talk about respect,’ under his breath. Mark didn’t hear him and I wasn’t about to ask Billy to repeat himself.

I hoped it was a phase, the graffiti and the defiance. I fell out with my own mum when I was about the same age as Billy. I felt so grown up and independent and I struggled with the fact that my parents still had so much control over my life. If Mum insisted Dad pick me up from a party at 10 p.m. instead of letting me stay until 11 p.m., or confiscated a lipstick I’d bought because it was ‘tarty red’, I’d argue back as though my life depended on it. I knew what was best for me, not her. Didn’t she know how pathetic it made you look in front of your friends to be picked up before all the others? Didn’t she remember how important it was to have the same shade of lipstick as everyone else?

I wasn’t soft on Billy when he got in trouble with the school. I backed Mark one hundred per cent when he told him he was grounded for a month, but I felt it was important to talk to Billy too, to understand why he’d done what he’d done so we could prevent it from happening again. Mark accused me of mollycoddling Billy but I wouldn’t back down. Shouting and screaming at him would only widen the gulf between us and I didn’t want to be a stranger in my own son’s life. But he wouldn’t let me in.

I turn another page of Billy’s sketchbook and dab at the tear on my cheek but I’m too slow and it drops onto the paper. The ink escapes from the edge of the design and creeps, frond-like, through the fibres of the page. I never should have spent the night at Mum’s house. If I’d just been stronger. If I’d held my ground and told Mark to get out instead then Billy would never have disappeared.

I would have woken up. I would have heard him creep down the stairs. I would have told him that we loved him, no matter what he did.

The police say there was no evidence of forced entry that night. And no sign of a struggle. Billy wasn’t smothered in his bed and carried out of the house. He left of his own free will. Did he come to Mum’s to look for me, then carry on walking when there was no answer at the door? Did he head for a friend’s house and run into trouble en route? Did someone offer him a lift and then—

I drop the book and press my hand to the side of my head as a dark thought creeps into my brain.

‘No.’ I say the word aloud, to try and block it out. ‘He’s not dead.’

Billy’s alive. He ran away because he felt ashamed, unloved and rejected. He’s hiding out with a friend. He’s seen the TV appeals but he’s still angry, still hurt. Or he’s sleeping rough and hasn’t seen the appeals. He thinks we don’t care enough to come after him. But it’s been six months. Surely after this long he’d have got in touch? He knows how much I love him. He wouldn’t put me through this kind of torment. The only reason why I haven’t heard from him is because—

‘No!’ I say it again. ‘No! No!’

‘Claire?’

‘No!’ I won’t believe that. I won’t.

‘Claire?’ The voice is louder this time and I screw my eyes tighter shut.

‘No! No! No! No!’

‘Claire!’ I feel a heavy hand on one shoulder. ‘Claire, stop it! Stop it! Stop shouting.’

Mark is crouched in front of me. He’s wearing his suit trousers and a white shirt. The top button is undone and his chin is speckled with stubble. ‘What are you doing? Why are you shouting?’

I stare at him as his lips continue to move but I can’t make sense of the words that come out. It’s as though someone has woken me from a nightmare and there is a glass wall between me and reality.

‘Claire. Oh God, Claire.’ He pulls me into his arms and the scent of his aftershave fills my nostrils; a sharp citrus note against the stench of cigarette smoke. Mark hasn’t smoked for years. He must have started again on the sly. ‘Claire, I’m sorry.’ He runs a hand over my hair, then does it again and again; firm strokes from the crown of my head to the nape of my neck. ‘I’m sorry we argued last night. And I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your texts. I was so angry and I needed to cool down.’

I wriggle my arms from where they are tightly pressed against my chest, then slip my hands around his back and press my palms to his shoulder blades. His shirt feels cool and soft.

‘I’m sorry too,’ I whisper, then I pull away so he can see my face but I don’t let go. Holding on to him makes me feel real. Grounded. If I let go I’ll drift away. ‘I don’t know why I said that. I’ve been feeling so guilty and—’

‘Claire, there isn’t a single day I don’t feel guilty about what I said to Billy that night. You were right when you told me to be a parent and keep control of myself. You’d have thought I’d have learned that by now. I’ve already lost one son.’ He glances away, his teeth clenching as he tries to hold back tears. I pull him in to me, cradling his head with my hands.

His body judders against me as he cries silently. Then he coughs, takes a deep breath and pulls away, reaching for my hands, wrapping them in his.

‘I’m just so angry with myself. I swore that I wouldn’t be like my dad. I wouldn’t laugh at my kids’ ambitions. I wouldn’t tell them that a job in a builder’s yard was the best they could hope for in life. I was going to tell my kids that they could be anything they damn well wanted to be.’

‘You did. You’ve always said that to the boys, ever since they were little enough to have ambitions. Remember when Billy said he wanted to be an astronaut? You said there was no reason he couldn’t be if he just worked hard at school. You’d save up to take him to the NASA space centre in Florida if he passed his maths GCSE, remember?’

‘Claire, he was eight!’

‘But you told him you believed in him. You made him think he could achieve anything.’

‘So what went wrong?’ The light dulls in his eyes. ‘Why throw it all in my face? Why skive off school? Why turn to vandalism? Shoplifting, for God’s sake. I don’t think my dad did a great job bringing me up but I turned out okay. What did I do so wrong?’