Chapter 7: Chapter 7

TEN

Julia snatched the poster from the lamp post. It had only been up a week and already someone had defaced the picture of her little girl. ‘Bastards,’ she yelled as she pulled a fresh poster from her satchel and taped it around the post. She almost lost her balance as the breeze dropped, making the afternoon heat overpowering. The rain mac she’d chosen to wear was her biggest regret, making her sweat profusely, but then again, had it poured down like the weather forecasters had promised, she’d have been happy to have it. She dropped the satchel to the floor and peeled the plastic from her sticky arms before folding the mac and placing it in her bag. She continued to the next post.

Roy’s words ran through her mind. ‘She’ll be back. It’s just a teenage protest thing but you were right to not let her walk all over you. She’ll come home when she’s finished sulking.’ She didn’t believe him though. Her daughter hadn’t even made contact once and three months went way beyond a sulk. She dropped the pile of posters from her trembling hands. A light breeze began to whip through her hair. As she gathered them up, a few of them landed in the river before being carried away downstream, alongside a couple of swans and several cygnets.

‘No.’ She kicked the bench before almost stumbling on it. All it would take was a phone call. Why hadn’t Christina called? Maybe she was in trouble or was she administering the cruellest punishment ever? Wiping the sweat from her forehead she checked her phone. Another day would pass without so much of a word from her daughter.

It was obvious Christina had left voluntarily and they had been arguing a lot. Her suitcase was gone. Her toiletries had been taken. All that was left were gaps in her drawers where all her favourite jeans and tops had been. Her saver account at the post office had been emptied, evident by the paying in book showing the withdrawal in the bedside table drawer. She’d tried to call her daughter but the calls had been rejected. With only three hundred pounds to her name, her daughter can’t have got far. She trembled. How far could she have got? She could get the train to anywhere in the UK with that much money. But then what if she’d run out of money and hitchhiked? Some drug-dealing pimp could have got his filthy hands on her. Every possible scenario seemed to run through Julia’s mind.

The posters wouldn’t distribute themselves. She began walking back towards the city centre. The cathedral stood tall to her right as she continued checking that all the posters she’d put up were still there and easy to see. They were. Taking a right, she spotted Roy sitting on a wall reading a newspaper while drinking a takeaway coffee. ‘Have you put all those posters up, already?’ She still had loads to do. She planned to hang posters by the river, he was meant to be doing the streets through the city centre.

‘I was taking a break.’

She grabbed his bag and pulled out the posters. ‘You haven’t done any, have you?’

‘Look, I just wanted a coffee. When I finish, I’ll go and do the posters.’

‘You don’t care if she comes back, do you?’

He placed his coffee on the paper to weigh it down and stood. ‘Of course I do, darling.’ He put his sunglasses on and went to kiss her.

‘Don’t you darling me. If you cared, you’d be sticking posters to boards, walls and lamp posts. Instead, you sit here, reading crap and drinking coffee.’ She glanced down. He’d been reading the sports pages, some news about the World Cup over the past few weeks. ‘You never did care when she left.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Isn’t it?’ She watched as his thin reddish hair blew in the warm breeze. She couldn’t see his reaction with his sunglasses covering his eyes. As she waited for him to answer, only the tangled hair covering her face reflected back at her in his mirror-finished glasses.

Her once chestnut-brown glossy hair that she’d always tied up was left free around her face. She hadn’t washed it for days. She’d tried to act normally but it hadn’t been easy when all she could think about was Christina.

‘We need to move on because doing this, every weekend, is driving you mad. She’ll come back when she’s ready. She was pissed off when she left, you saw her the day before. Give her time.’

‘Give her time! You’ve never been a parent. If you had, you wouldn’t be standing there like a prick telling me to give

her time. My daughter has been missing for months and I will not, just, give it time. I’m looking for her and I’ll find her.’ A woman with three young children crossed the road to get away from her raised voice. ‘Hey.’ The woman glanced back at Julia. ‘If one of your three little girls ran away from home, would you sit back, do nothing and give it time? That’s what this idiot here is telling me to do. You’d do everything you could. You’d be out there day and night, looking for her, wouldn’t you?’ The youngest girl, who can’t have been more than seven, began to cry.

‘It’s okay, sweetie. The lady’s just upset.’ The woman gave the little girl a hug. Julia almost wanted to cry as the youngest girl stared at her. She looked so much like Christina when she’d been that age. She even had a similar lemon-coloured dress and chubby knees.

‘You’d be out there every day…’ Julia felt a tear slip down her cheek.

‘I’m sorry. You’re upsetting my children,’ the woman called back as she grabbed the child’s hand and hurried away.

‘Now look what you’ve done. That poor woman was trying to cross the road in peace. This obsession has to stop. Christina chose to leave. She will come back when she’s ready.’

‘She wouldn’t punish me like this.’

‘Wouldn’t she? You saw the way she changed, the way she was with both of us.’

He was wrong. The more she looked at him, the more she could see he had his own agenda. He never liked Christina and he was probably glad she’d gone. ‘Christina was angry but she wouldn’t go anywhere for this long. None of her friends have

heard from her. The police are doing sod all. Appeals have come up with nothing. All she has is me. I don’t care if you want to sit here, wasting time drinking coffee and reading your shit. I will never stop looking for my daughter. That’s what being a mother means.’ She snatched the rest of the posters and continued into the town.

‘Julia? Bloody hell.’ As she turned she noticed him, paper in hand, striding towards the car park. She’d get the bus home at her leisure, when she’d finished putting posters up.

A car horn buzzed as she stepped out. ‘Get out the road,’ a man shouted. Her heart pounded. If she’d been walking a little bit quicker, she’d have been knocked over. Holding her hand up, she continued crossing and headed towards the library.

The new building stood out like a honey themed beacon. The Hive was built with golden coloured tiles, making it look like a large beehive. That’s where she’d start. With the city centre posters in her firm grip, she jogged towards the main entrance. She would find Christina. As she swallowed, she almost choked. The possibility that Christina would never come home hadn’t crossed her mind. For a second it did, sending her legs into a wobble and almost collapsing beneath her. Tears began to flood her face. Never seeing her daughter again was too much to handle. She fell to the floor, gripping the posters as people passed with their shopping bags, not one of them stopping to ask if she was all right. Now she knew what true loneliness felt like.

ELEVEN

Heading back to the living room, Gina closed her curtains and sat on the floor in front of her computer as she finished eating a small wedge of cheese. It had been a long day. Ebony, her little black cat, meowed for attention. ‘Not now. Some of us have work to do.’ She pushed the cat from her lap and continued looking over the case notes and photos. The young girl’s sunken closed eyes stared back at her, taking her back to a moment she’d rather forget. Hannah’s fourteenth birthday which had been a chilly October evening. She ran her fingers through her matted hair as she ruminated over her argument with Hannah.

Back then, Hannah had said she was only going to the cinema with friends. When she hadn’t returned by ten in the evening and wouldn’t answer her phone, Gina had been pacing the floor, calling all her friends’ parents to no avail. She’d spent the next two hours searching the streets in Birmingham City Centre, around by the Electric Cinema and along Station Street. She’d frantically run back and forth, taking in the faces of all who passed by. People shouted noisily as they headed towards clubs and fell out of pubs. Little pockets of homeless people gathered in doorways, begging for spare change. Gina pulled her attention back to the computer screen and zoomed in on a photo of the girl’s face. Her eyes were drawn to her

teeth. Yellow and furred, like they hadn’t been brushed in a long time. A few strands of straggly hair stuck to her cheek. She flinched. Some mother out there had a daughter who sadly wasn’t coming home.

Hannah had eventually came home that night. Her teenage girl had looked childlike as she tried to creep through the door, smelling of cider.

‘I’ve pounded the streets tonight, looking for you. Do you know how scared and worried I was?’

Hannah giggled as she tripped up the first step, trying to escape to her room. ‘Mum, just chill out. I’ve been enjoying myself with friends. It’s my birthday,’ she slurred.

‘It may be your birthday but what you put me through, I’ve been beside myself all night. Anything could’ve happened—’

‘But it didn’t. I’m all good. I bet Dad wouldn’t have moaned so much if he were here—’

‘How dare you!’ Everything Gina had been through and protected Hannah from had now been thrown in her face, and not for the first time. Gina had been doing her best to make sure that her daughter didn’t end up with a man like her dad.

‘Whatever, I bet he would’ve been a cool dad. He might have even had a birthday drink with me, not like you.’

‘Ouch,’ Gina whispered. She was certain that Terry would have had a birthday drink with his child daughter; that was the problem. ‘Time for bed.’ Gina kept close behind her, slowly steering her up the stairs until they finally reached the landing. ‘Come on. We’ll talk about this in the morning.’

‘I want to talk about it now,’ Hannah said as she held onto the handrail at the top of the stairs, swaying. As she lost her footing, images of Terry’s body falling backwards from the top

step flashed through Gina’s mind. Her heart began to pound as she gasped for air and gripped her daughter’s arm. There were things that Hannah would never know.

‘I won’t let you go,’ she yelled as she gripped the girl. ‘I would never let you go.’

As Hannah found her footing, Gina realised she was still gripping her arm. ‘Fuck off, that hurts. Let me go.’

‘What did you say to me?’

Hannah hiccupped and the colour drained from her face. Gina pushed her daughter towards the bathroom and listened as she retched. ‘Happy birthday,’ she whispered as the bathroom door slammed with a force that almost shook the top floor.

The computer screen had gone black but the picture of the girl in the hospital was still etched in her mind. Gina shifted the mouse, bringing the image back up. The girl was a little older than Hannah had been but not by much. Had she left home to be with friends and not returned that night? Maybe her mother had been pacing the floor, then the streets, looking for her missing daughter. Maybe she’d run away from something or she may have met someone she knew, someone she trusted. What had happened after?

She checked her phone. There was a message from Wyre.

We have the van on CCTV. White Transit with green lettering.

Gina finished the last of the cheese as she powered her laptop down. At last they had a lead.

TWELVE

MONDAY 16 JULY 2018

Her bones ached, especially her legs. Miley grabbed the bucket of soapy water and lugged it from the bathroom to Jackie’s room. Where Jackie would be was always a mystery. On the floor, in bed, facing the wall, trying to clumsily pace until she tripped over, remaining on the floor, waiting to be helped up. Miley was meant to change the bed sheets but Jackie hadn’t stepped out of the bed at all the day before and lifting the woman when she didn’t want to be lifted was near impossible. She unlocked the door by sliding the lock, then she pushed it open, dragging the bucket behind her, water slopping over the edges.

‘Morning, Jackie. How did you sleep?’ The woman repeated the same incoherent words over and over while sitting on the edge of the bed. Miley opened the orange and yellow drapes, allowing some sunshine into the room. She held her arm across her face to shield the odour from entering her nostrils, being careful as she stepped across the uneven wooden floor. The room was in a state, no wonder her boss had been angry the previous night. ‘Right, let’s get you washed and dressed.’

Sweat beads began to form across Miley’s brow as she lifted the woman’s soiled nightdress over her head and pulled down her padded underwear. While trying to control her own

light tremor, she bathed the woman with the warm soapy water, making sure she worked through the creases around the woman’s stomach area. Her lower abdomen lay like a deflated balloon over her thighs, like she had once been a lot larger, but had lost the weight. Now, she was simply bones with a lot of skin.

The world seemed to tilt and Miley’s mouth felt dry. She stopped and stared out of the window ahead, leaving the woman naked and damp, covered in soap, muttering to herself.

Caring for people hadn’t been Miley’s first option when it came to a career but it was money in the savings pot. By her calculations, soon she would have enough to start the life she really wanted to live. She leaned on the wall and closed her eyes. Where was her medicine? She held her hand to her brow. She needed her medicine and she needed it now. Her underarms were damp. Clammy and hot. Well, it was summer. Maybe it was because it was a scorching day and the windows were closed. Waves of nausea passed through her and blood began to pump around her body, filling her ears with a drumming noise. The beating quickened. Take a deep breath.

She inhaled and counted to three and filled her mind with pleasant thoughts of her past. In her mind, she was with one of her best friends, Stacey, outside the newsagent’s. Stacey asked her to go in and buy twenty Bensons for them to smoke in the park. She smiled as she remembered their joy when she’d been served. Wearing one of her mum’s jumpers over her school shirt had done the trick. They ran all the way to the park, hiding under the little wooden house that had been built under the slide. That was their mischief den. Miley had written in Sharpie that she loved Freddie. At the time she thought she and Freddie would be together forever. Writing it in a permanent marker seemed like the best thing to do. When they

were old and married, they’d bring their grandchildren to see the graffiti. Stacey giggled when she wrote that she’d only ever love Jitterbug, her Labradoodle. They’d both been in stitches as they lit up. But that was then. She began to weep as she thought back to all those uncomplicated times.

Deep breath in, slow breath out, back to the present. The nausea had subsided. Her stomach groaned and grumbled as she grabbed a towel and began to dry Jackie. As she lifted the woman’s breast, she almost heaved with the smell. The flesh looked infected. She’d report her findings later when the boss came home. Jackie clamped her breast down as she continued to murmur nothings. ‘Jackie, just let me help you. I need to clean the wound.’

The woman brought her stick thin arm down and caught Miley across the face, catching one of her spots. She felt a wet trickle fall down her cheek and wiped it away, leaving a red streak across the back of her hand. Caring was hard, one of the hardest things she’d ever done in her life, but it was a grown- up thing to do, and she was a grown-up. She’d prove it. ‘I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, Jackie.’ She tried again. This time the woman allowed her to wipe away the pus. Miley almost gagged as she lowered her breast, grabbed a fresh nightdress from her top drawer and began redressing her.

‘That’s better. We’ll do your hair and make you all lovely,’ Miley said as she brushed Jackie’s thin greying strands behind her ears. For a moment, Jackie looked back, her eyes red as if she might cry. She slapped her liver-spotted hand over Miley’s. Miley wasn’t sure if she’d meant to do that as a gesture of affection or if it was another one of Jackie’s random acts. She placed her hand over Jackie’s. The woman went back to staring at the window, making her incoherent noise.

The woman kept murmuring as she gripped Miley. The bed dampened underneath them. Miley hadn’t replaced her incontinence pants and now the bed was wet. She jumped up before the wetness soaked through her leggings.

‘Jackie. Damn it!’ The woman rocked back and forth and waved her arms about. Miley kneeled in front of her. ‘I’m sorry.’ The woman looked away. Jackie didn’t mean anything. The grip of her hand had just been random. She wished that, only for a minute, Jackie would acknowledge who she was. They could be friends. They were friends but they never had a conversation like friends did, not like her and Stacey. She missed Stacey, their slide and bunking off school.

As she stood, she almost toppled over. The shakes were getting the better of her. She needed some medicine soon. She needed a hug, some reassurance. Leaning over, she embraced Jackie. The woman didn’t flinch, pull away or respond. ‘Please can you hug me, Jackie?’ The woman began to rock until Miley let go. Tears ran down her cheek. It was just a hug. She wanted a hug off the only friend she had left but that friend didn’t even acknowledge her. She grabbed the knitted doll from the bedside table. The thing had seen better days with its faded colours and its one button eye. She threw it back on the table as she felt the room make a sideward shift, causing her to lose her balance and sway a little.

Her stomach kept turning. She needed air. Stumbling to the window, she opened the small catch at the top and the faintest of warm breezes came in through the inch that the window would open. She rattled the main window but, as usual, it was locked. Body crumpling at the middle, she slid down the glass and sat on the ledge. She couldn’t do this job alone. Miley fiddled with the little friendship bracelet that a special friend had made for her and she twisted it around her skinny wrist.

She needed a lie-down. After she’d had a few minutes to ease her discomfort, she’d bring Jackie some food. The other boss always left their meals at the top of the stairs. Miley staggered across the landing with the filthy bucket of water and stopped. The porridge was on the top step, as it always was. Two bowls, one for her, one for Jackie. She placed the bucket down and slid the bowls out of the way.

Taking one shaky step at a time, she eventually made it to the door at the bottom of the stairs. As she reached out to turn the handle, her trembling knuckles scraped the coarse wooden door, missing the handle completely. ‘Try again, idiot.’

After a few attempts, her hand finally made contact with the handle. She turned and pushed, but it too was locked. It was always locked. The boss said it was to keep Jackie safe. Miley wanted to go for a walk in the fields outside, to smell the grass, just for an hour. That wasn’t going to happen today. It didn’t happen any day, despite her asking.

She gazed back up the stairs and closed her eyes. Through blurred vision, the stairs looked as though they were moving, like an escalator. Maybe it was the hideous brown swirly carpet, the pattern was confusing her eyes. She bent down and felt the stairs. They were still. It was definitely her mind playing tricks on her again. She crawled back up, using her hands until she reached the top. Porridge. Jackie needed her breakfast.