The Missing: The gripping psychological thriller that’s got everyone talking... (12 page)

‘Have you lost your dog?’ the woman asks, following my line of vision. ‘I thought a dog would be a great idea. He can come on runs with me, I said to my husband, but I think I’ll have to start leaving him at home. He’s a bugger for disappearing off into the bushes. I wouldn’t have heard you shouting if I hadn’t run back to see where he’d got to.’ She crouches down and picks a piece of bark from his fur. ‘You’re a bugger. Aren’t you? A little bugger.’

I don’t recognize the woman looking back at me from the bathroom mirror. She has dark circles under her eyes, sallow skin and two deep ridges between her brows where, only six months ago, there were light frown lines. But when I gently tap my fingers against my cheekbones, checking for pain or tenderness, the woman in the mirror does the same.

I covered myself in Savlon and arnica before I went to sleep and the scratch on my face has faded overnight, leaving behind the faintest of red marks along the length of my right cheekbone. There’s a bruise on my collarbone too, where a branch smacked me straight in the chest, but it’s mercifully small. I apply make-up to both areas, dabbing concealer onto the purple blemishes, and set it with powder. There’s no disguising the deep scratches on my forearms – I look as though I’ve been in a fight with a wildcat – so I change out of the long-sleeved pyjama top I put on when I went to bed last night and pull on a pale blue shirt. Mark didn’t comment on my injuries when he slid out of bed this morning. My right cheek was buried in the pillow and the rest of my body was hidden by my pyjamas and the duvet.

I attempt a smile and the woman in the mirror curves her lips in response but it doesn’t reach her eyes. She looks tired and uneasy. I feel the same. I was an idiot for going out alone last night. I was lucky it was a group of teenage boys that I stumbled upon under the bridge, and not someone more dangerous. And what if I’d had another of my blackouts? No one knew where I’d gone. Anything could have happened to me.

The woman in the mirror shakes her head.

Liz was right. I need to stop looking for Billy and let the police do their job.

I reach for my phone, on the closed toilet lid, and reread the texts I missed when I was asleep.

Mum. 11.35 p.m.:

Hope this doesn’t wake you. I don’t suppose you found the photos, did you? The journalist is threatening to pull the story if we don’t get them to him soon. Some crap about his work schedule and deadlines. Want me to come and help you look?

Liz. 7.10 a.m.:

Don’t suppose I could borrow your sonic screwdriver again, could I? I’ve got blisters on my blisters from trying to put together a bastard flat pack bookcase.

Stephen. 7.15 a.m.:

Claire, there’s a reason I said what I did. We need to talk. Give me a ring please. S.

The text from Stephen makes me feel twitchy. I still haven’t told Mark what happened when I went back to work. I keep meaning to, but I can’t find the right moment. Our relationship is so fragile I’m loath to bring up anything that could cause another argument.

I tap out my replies to Mum and Liz:

Hi Mum, I had a look the other day but I can’t find it. Will another photo do? We’ve got lots of the two of them playing in the garden or on holiday. X

Course you can, Liz. It’s in the garage somewhere. Are you still on lates? I’ll drop it round in a bit if so.

I deliberate over Stephen’s text. Do I want to reply? No. Do I want to talk to him? No. Do I care if he sacks me and I have to find a new job? Definitely not. He’s a shit-stirrer and a troublemaker. No job is worth that.

Jake and Kira are in the kitchen. She’s in a towelling dressing gown, munching on a piece of toast, whilst he’s making the tea, already dressed for the day in his trademark uniform of scruffy jeans, sweatshirt and trainers. They remind me of me and Mark, pootling around in the kitchen of our first home, excited to have escaped from our parents’ houses, joking that we were playing at being grown-ups.

I watch from the bottom of the stairs as Kira finishes her toast and drops her plate in the sink. Jake watches as she turns on the tap, then abandons his tea-making and crosses the kitchen. He presses his body into hers and wraps his arms around her, then ducks down to kiss her on the side of the neck. She jolts in surprise and half-turns, the sweetest smile on her face, as she tilts her head to kiss him. Jake’s hands move to the neckline of her dressing gown. He eases it down over her shoulders and I catch a glimpse of a bruise or a birthmark at the top of her spine.

I take a step backwards, suddenly embarrassed to be watching such a tender, intimate moment between my son and his girlfriend.

‘Jake, don’t!’ Kira’s shout is like a whip crack that cuts through the air and I knock into the table in the hallway, sending a plant crashing to the ground.

‘Mum!’ Jake turns round and Kira twists away, hugging the dressing gown around her neck.

‘I’m sorry.’ I crouch down to pick up the pot. It was plastic and hasn’t broken but there’s soil all over the carpet. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude – I was just …’ I feel my face flush red. ‘Sorry, I—’

‘It’s okay, Mum.’ Jake glances at Kira, then shakes his head. ‘It’s cool. I’m off to work anyway.’

He reaches for his tool belt and straps it around his waist, then retrieves the dustpan and brush from under the sink and sweeps up the soil at my feet.

‘You okay?’ he says as he straightens up.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Cool. I’ll see you later then, Mum.’ He doesn’t so much as glance at Kira as he crosses the kitchen. ‘Oh –’ he stops as he reaches the back door and looks back at me – ‘I’m on a late-night job and I won’t be back until eight at the earliest. Don’t bother making me any tea. I’ll grab a burger or something.’

As the back door clicks behind him Kira makes her escape.

‘Sorry,’ she mutters under her breath as she squeezes past me and thunders up the stairs, two at a time. ‘I’m really sorry, Claire.’

I pick my way through the garage, sidling sideways past Jake’s weight bench, stepping over the patch of lawnmower oil that Mark still hasn’t cleared up, and approach the shelves. They’re piled high with gardening and DIY paraphernalia: tins of assorted screws, half-empty pots of paint, crusted paintbrushes, rusty shears, trowels, netting and plastic plant pots.

I shift things around as I search. I find the drill and several ratchet and wrench sets the kids gave Mark for his birthday one year, but not the black plastic box containing the electric screwdriver that Liz wants to borrow.

There are several cardboard boxes crammed with clothes on the floor. We’ve been meaning to take them to the charity shop since we decluttered the house a year ago but no one’s got round to doing it yet.

I open the flaps of the box nearest me and root around inside but it’s all clothes, mostly mine. I open a second box and dip my hand inside, searching for anything hard and plastic, but my delving only reveals more clothing. My heart catches in my throat as the arm of a bright red football hoody rises to the surface. It’s Billy’s. Mark bought it for him when he was twelve after a Bristol City match one weekend. We couldn’t get Billy out of it. He wore it on top of his uniform on his way to school and over his T-shirt at the weekend. He continued to wear it even when his wrists poked out of the sleeves and he could no longer zip it up over his broad chest. He said he’d keep it for ever and then pass it on to his own kids. I couldn’t believe it when I found it in one of the black bags during the declutter. I thought it was a mistake and put it back in his wardrobe.

‘Mum,’ he shouted, a couple of hours later. ‘Why is this in my room?’

He dangled the top over the banister when I came out of the living room.

‘Because it’s your favourite top.’

‘No, it’s not. I hate football.’

He’d always been the first out of the door on match day, woolly hat on his head and scarf wound round his neck regardless of the weather, but he hadn’t been to a City match with Mark and Jake for a while. He didn’t even bother to shout goodbye to them when they left.

I tried not to read too much into it. Kids’ passions can be fickle. When I was little I wanted to be a ballet dancer one year and an air hostess the next and I’d lost count of the number of toys that the boys had been obsessed with for months and then tossed aside, never to be played with again; but football was the one thing that bonded the three men in my life. It was their shared obsession. And then suddenly Billy didn’t want to go any more. I didn’t know if someone at school had teased him about his shrunken hoody or if his love of computer games had superseded his love of football but whenever I tried to talk to him about it he’d close like a clam.

As I yank on the arm of the hoody, something else rises to the surface of the box. The corner of a grey photo album. The one I was looking for. I tuck Billy’s hoody under my arm and flip it open.

There’s Jake and Billy at primary school, Jake aged nine proudly displaying his big teeth, Billy aged five, with his dark hair sticking up at ridiculous angles. I turn the next page, smiling at the memories and trying to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach. When I get to the middle of the book the school photos end. On the next page are photos of our last family holiday. Billy was thirteen. Jake was seventeen. We went to Weston for the day, then drove down to Bude in Cornwall to stay in a caravan for a week. There’s a photo of the two of them sitting on the wall near Weston beach, both staring down at their mobiles. It was an awful holiday. The weather was terrible and with all of us cooped up together in a tiny caravan, the bickering reached new levels; Jake wound Billy up, calling him a little kid, and Billy bit back calling Jake a boring arsehole. Mark cracked before I did. He packed up the car after three days and said we were never going on another family holiday for as long as he lived.

I turn the page, wondering what’s next.

My breath catches in my throat.

There’s a photo of Mark and Jake having a beer under the awning as the skies opened. One of Billy and Mark messing about in the pool. Another one of us sitting around a table in the ‘entertainment hall’, giving the thumbs-down as we listened to the world’s worst comedian. There are more recent photos too: of Mark and Jake when he graduated from college. Me, Mark and Kira with our arms around each other’s shoulders, valiant after winning a game of bowling against the two boys.

Only Mark isn’t in the photos any more. He’s been blacked out, his face and his body obliterated by thick black marker pen. And there are words scrawled over the top of each photo –
WANKER
,
TOSSER
,
DICK
. I turn over page after page after page but they’re all the same; Mark has been blanked out from each and every image. It’s as though he no longer exists.

Jackdaw44:
Hey.

Jackdaw44:
Hello?

Jackdaw44:
You there?

Jackdaw44:
I know you’re reading these messages.

Jackdaw44:
Oi!

Jackdaw44:

Jackdaw44:

Jackdaw44:
You suck. Just like everyone else in my life. I thought you were different.

Why is Mark blacked out in every photo in the album? Who did that? And why hide it at the bottom of the charity box? It doesn’t make any sense.

Pain rips through the side of my head and I screw my eyes tightly shut to block it out.

Did Billy do it? But why? What could Mark possibly have done to make him that angry?

CLAIRE!

I jolt at the sound of my name and smack my knee against the driving column but there is no one sitting next to me in the car. The windows are still wound tightly shut. No one is knocking on the glass. No one is outside the car looking in. The street is still quiet. And the keys swing back and forth in the ignition. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Did Mark come back from the pub early, drunk and angry? Did Billy say something awful? Something so awful that Mark lashed out? Is that why Billy defaced his photos? Because his dad hit him? But why would he hide the album in the garage? Why not destroy it?

The pain spreads across my forehead and I clutch my hands to my head. My brain is in a vice that’s being wound tighter and tighter and tighter. I can hear it. The vice. It makes a high-pitched squeal, like metal on metal. I plug my fingers into my ears but the sound gets louder.

‘CLAIRE! I AM CLAIRE!’ The voice cuts through the metallic screech but I keep my eyes closed. I need to think. If I could just think clearly I could work out what this means.

Did Mark threaten to hit him again? Is that why Billy fled? Is that why he didn’t take anything with him? He was afraid and he ran. Or was he taken? Did Mark hit him too hard? Did he panic? Did he try and get him to a hospital and then …

‘
Mum? Help me, Mum!
’

The scream goes through me, cutting through the whine and whirr of the vice. Brakes squeal. Something flies through the air, hurtling towards the car, and I bury my face in my arms. There is a thump as something hits the bonnet and the whole car shakes. A loud crack follows and I am showered with glass.

And then silence.

A silence that seems to last for ever.

Whatever just happened was so terrible, so traumatic, I know that there is no way I can have survived it.

Silence.

The traffic doesn’t roar. The road doesn’t shake. The birds don’t sing and no one speaks.

I peel myself from the steering wheel and raise my head.

A body lies slumped across the bonnet, one arm twisted behind its back, the other reaching for me. I can’t see a face, just the back of a head, the dark hair slick with blood. The face is angled away from me, towards the doors of the doctor’s surgery.

My hands shake as I fumble with the seat belt. Glass shards fall from my thighs and tumble into the foot well as I grip the steering wheel and ease myself up.

‘Billy? Billy is that—’

I clutch my hands to my head as a pain unlike anything I have ever known tears through my brain. And then everything goes black.

There is something hard and leathery under my fingertips. Curved, solid. I grip on to it as my vision zooms in, zooms out, zooms in, zooms out. Focused, blurred, focused, blurred. The windscreen – clean apart from a dribble of bird shit, a street, a building, a road, the windscreen. Why do I keep looking at the windscreen? An image flashes through my mind, of Billy’s lifeless body on the dashboard. I thought I’d run him over but I can’t have. There’s no glass, no blood and the windscreen is still intact. A wave of nausea courses through me. It’s so powerful, so sudden, that I vomit over the dashboard, the steering wheel and my hands. The world spins and I squeeze my eyes tightly shut as the car fills with the stench of puke.

A voice whispers, ‘It was another blackout. Oh God. Not again.’

My voice.

My name is …

I search for a name, for something solid to hang my identity on, but my mind is so muddled, so grey. There is nothing behind my eyes but inky darkness.

Who am I?

My chest tightens and I gulp air into my lungs. Breathe slower.

Claire!

I open my eyes.

Claire. My name is Claire Wilkinson. There is a gold band and a sparkling engagement ring on the third finger of my left hand, smeared with bile. I am married to Mark. I have two sons. Jake and Billy. Billy!

I undo the seat belt and open the driver’s-side door. There is a flash of colour, a squeal of brakes and someone swears loudly.

‘Fuck’s sake!’ A face in a bicycle helmet looms towards me, a man’s face, his eyes wide with anger, his lips twisted into a snarl. He waves in front of my face, slicing his hand through the air. ‘Watch what you’re fucking doing. You nearly had me off my bike.’

I am so shocked, so terrified, I swing a leg out of the car and kick out at him. My shoe connects with his knee and he jumps back, doubling over, one hand pressed to his knee, the other wrapped around the handlebar of his bike.

I slam the door shut before he can recover and turn the key in the ignition. I press my foot to the accelerator and the car lurches forward. Somewhere behind me someone presses their horn. The sound reverberates in my head as I speed away, the cyclist shaking his fist at me in my rear-view mirror. There’s a woman standing beside him, a white Vauxhall Astra pulled up behind her. She’s got her phone in her hand.

I drive down street after street. I don’t know where I am or where I’m going. There are no thoughts in my mind, just an angry buzzing as though my head is a hive, crammed with bees.

There’s a light, blinking red on the dashboard. I’m running out of petrol. I need to stop. I need to find a garage. The buzzing in my head dims as I pull in to a large Tesco but, instead of parking by one of the petrol pumps at the service station, I drive into the car park and turn off the engine. I pull a packet of wet wipes out of the glovebox and wipe my hands, the steering wheel and my jeans. I work methodically; wiping, then dropping the used wipes into an empty plastic bag until I am clean. Then I reach for my bag. It’s on the passenger seat. Underneath it is a photo album and an A4 diary, opened at today’s week.

Mark’s appointment book.

Why have I got Mark’s appointment book? He normally keeps it on his desk in the corner of the living room. Did I take it? He’s methodical about diary-keeping, entering everything into this book as well as his phone, just in case his phone dies or is stolen. I open it and run a finger down the appointments he’s got listed for today:

9.45 a.m. – Fallodon Way Medical Centre, 3 Fallodon Way, BS9 4HT

10.45 a.m. – Nevil Road Surgery, 43 Nevil Road, BS7 9EG

11.45 a.m. – Horfield Health Centre, Lockleaze Road, BS7 9RR

2 p.m. – Gloucester Road Medical Centre, BS7 8SA

Where am I? I open my handbag and take out my phone. It’s 2.30 p.m., Friday 14th August. Five hours have passed since I went into the garage to look for the screwdriver set and …

I see an image in my mind of a photo album, the photos defaced and scrawled on, but that’s it. That’s all there is.

I must have gone back into the house and picked up Mark’s diary but I don’t remember doing that. Or getting into my car and driving. Oh my God. I could have killed myself. Or someone else.

I look back at the phone and open Google Maps. The red location dot blinks several times, then the map comes into focus. Tesco Lime Trees Road. So I am still in Bristol. I enter one of the postcodes from Mark’s diary into the app and a tiny red line appears, connecting my location with the address I’ve just entered. It’s three minutes’ drive away. I zoom in on the location and turn on street view. That’s where I was just parked, outside Gloucester Road Medical Centre. Did Mark ring me and ask me to bring his diary to him? It’s the only logical explanation but it only takes twenty-five minutes to drive from Knowle to Gloucester Road. What else have I been doing in the last five hours?

I exit the Google Maps app and I’m just about to ring Mark when I spot the WhatsApp icon at the top of the screen. Someone’s sent me a message in the last five hours. I tap on the icon and Liz’s name appears on the top of the list. Three new messages:

Where is that?

She’s replied to a photo of a row of houses I must have sent her. One of them has a sign outside that says
Fallodon Way Medical Centre
.

Why have you sent me a picture of a doctor’s surgery? Do you need me to pick you up or something?

Then there’s another image. One I must have sent. It says
Nevil Road Surgery
above the door.

Claire? Is that Mark? Who is he with?

I look closer at the photo. Yes, it is Mark and he’s standing outside Nevil Road Surgery with a willowy blonde. His hand is on her arm. I zoom in on the image. It takes me several seconds to work out who she is. It’s Edie Christian, Billy’s form tutor. And she looks worried.