Where the Missing Go
Emma Rowley
PROLOGUE
The night is mild, but the girl shivers. The few cars passing by her look so cosy somehow, their drivers ensconced in their own little worlds, hurrying home to shut out everything.
If any one of them turned their head to look at the slight figure on the pavement, then maybe they would notice that the girl looks a little nervous. Apprehensive, even.
But none of them do notice her, walking just outside of the yellow cones of light from the streetlamps, her long hair hiding her face.
It seemed like such a good idea, at the time. The best idea, in fact.
Now? Now, she’s not so sure.
The girl pushes down her unease. Oh well. Too late now to go back.
He’ll be waiting.
Article in the Manchester Evening News, 17 February, 2017:
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MISSING SCHOOLGIRL CASE GOES COLD
By Staff Reporter
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Detectives investigating the disappearance of a Cheshire schoolgirl are scaling back their enquiries, it has been announced.
Sophie Harlow, 16, was reported missing from her home in leafy Vale Dean village before her GSCEs last year, sparking an intensive police hunt.
However, officers downgraded the search in the weeks following her departure on the night of Friday 13 May, after the former Amberton Grammar student made contact.
It is understood that although the case remains open, detectives will no longer be actively investigating her whereabouts.
A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police defended the ‘scale and commitment’ of their efforts so far.
‘It is our belief that there are no suspicious circumstances around Sophie’s disappearance,’ she said. ‘We are now treating her as a voluntary runaway. As with any missing persons case, we will of course follow up any new lines of investigation and we urge Sophie to maintain contact with us or her family to confirm that she is safe and well.’
Miss Harlow’s parents were informed of the decision in a meeting with detectives earlier this month.
Mark and Kate Harlow, who are believed to have separated since their only daughter’s disappearance, declined to comment yesterday.
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Part 1
1
Two Years Missing
I’m a bad mother. You’re not supposed to say that. Everyone was very keen that I didn’t blame myself. At first, anyway.
And they were right, there were plenty of things that we – that I – did get right. Bedtime stories, balanced meals, a lovely, elegant home. Holidays abroad, tennis camp and piano lessons, a maths tutor when Sophie was struggling a little at primary school. We even made a brave stab at the violin when Sophie was seven, although she was so extravagantly out of tune, the sounds so painful, that Mark and I once creased up laughing when we met outside the living-room door, not that we’d ever have let our little daughter know. But if Sophie didn’t have much of an ear for music, she had everything else. We even had a dog – of course we did – a black Lab called King, as friendly as he was greedy. Mark chose the name. He’d grown up with dogs like that and he wanted Sophie to have one, too. I miss King.
And yet maybe I’m getting it all wrong, even now. Maybe it wasn’t down to me or Mark that we seemed to find it so easy, that our little family bubble seemed to be floating through life – but down to our daughter, always laughing and sweet-natured, eager to please.
‘Your little shadow,’ Mark used to call her. She was always there, trotting behind me, happily joining in with whatever I was doing. She had a talent for being happy. When she hit the teenage years, she had her moments of course, but I knew that was to be expected. It’d be all right in the end.
I was wrong.
But I’m making excuses. Because all the stuff I did, the car trips, the noses wiped, the kisses-to-make-it-better, the years of love and care, none of that counts now. In the end, there’s only one conclusion, when you look at it. I’ve failed.
Mornings can be the hardest. Just getting started, deciding that there is a reason to get up after all. ‘I don’t know how you carry on, Kate,’ people have said to me. I don’t know how they decided that I was doing so. For a long time, it felt like I’d just ground to a halt.
I’m past that now. I don’t work in an office, not any more, but I do keep busy, in my own way. There’s so much to do: phone calls, emails, letters. Articles to read, online forums to keep up with.
Sometimes it can feel quite overwhelming. People think I’m hiding away here doing nothing, but they don’t understand how much work I still do. Although, if I am being honest, I don’t always manage to get out of bed until the cat starts padding around crossly, hungry to be fed.
The trick, I find, is not to think too much about it. Today, I was helped by the sunshine making a hot streak across my pillow, too bright in my eyes. The sky was already a shocking blue slice between the curtains I hadn’t quite pulled shut. So I made myself put both feet on the floor and then sat for a moment, still light-headed from sleep, thinking about the day ahead.
It’s not exactly a full diary these days. Not like those weekends where we’d be out every Friday and Saturday, dinner parties and work dos and big birthdays – there was always something to celebrate. Mark was so social and I was happy to be pulled along in the slipstream.
But I do have plans tonight, so that’s something. And now I’ve showered and made strong coffee, to clear my head, because I’ve set myself a task for today.
The first photo album has a layer of dust on it that makes me sneeze as I pull it down from its place on the living-room shelves. I was always good about keeping these updated and making sure that we turned our digital snaps into glossy hard copies that I could paste into their pages. But I don’t dwell in the past, contrary to what some people think. I rarely look at them.
Today I need to, because I’ve decided that the picture I have been sharing online and in the letters and emails I write – Sophie’s last school photo – could be misleading. As of this summer, she wouldn’t have been at school, she’d have just finished sixth form. So I worry that it could give the wrong impression – that it could even be a bit unhelpful, to use one that’s clearly of a schoolgirl: Sophie’s white shirt bright against her navy jumper, her shining blonde hair pulled back into a neater than usual ponytail. She got her hair from me, though mine has long needed some help from the hairdresser to maintain its fairness. The smile’s all hers though – sunny, with a twist of mischief, lighting up that sweet round face.
Today I want to find a good, clear one of her out of uniform. I wipe my grey fingertips on my shorts and carry the album over to the coffee table, opening it carefully – and I feel my stomach sink. I thought I’d put the albums in order on the shelf ages ago, but this isn’t the one I wanted to look at. This album is one of the very first ones, the photos already looking dated in that peculiar way. How does that happen? It can’t just be our clothes – they’re T-shirts and flip-flops, evergreen summer wear.
Yet this first shot belongs to a different age. It’s Mark, Sophie and me, sitting on some anonymous park bench, each one of us with an ice-cream cone in our hand. Mark’s thinner than he is now, and I look rounder, rosier, but that’s not what makes our photographic selves seem like strangers to me. Maybe it’s something in our expressions: we’re both so carefree, ready for a future that would, surely, bring only more good things. And of course there’s Sophie, a chunky two-year-old with a tuft of fair hair, her legs sticking straight out in her dungarees, too short to reach the edge of the seat.