She seems to calm down, after that. But I make a mental note to find out what help there is for her. Because this is not working.
I don’t bother making dinner myself. I assemble crackers on a plate, a smear of hummus, cut up an apple, and eat it standing up, trying to work out the source of my unease. Lily will be OK, surely. I can sort it. But my conversation with Holly has got under my skin. I feel fidgety, off-kilter.
Even I can see that Sophie’s friends need to get on with their lives, that they can’t stay stuck in the past, like me. But our conversation has shifted my view of their friendship, something that had seemed as clear to me as the sky was blue: Sophie was the quieter, responsible one, Holly the adventurer, pushing the boundaries. Was that not quite the case?
I wonder what else I might be wrong about.
I sit on the sofa and flick on the TV with the remote, scrolling through the channels, unseeing. I flick it off again, then pick up one of my old magazines from the coffee table. The silence I welcomed when I moved here presses down on me, a thick blanket I can almost feel. My beautiful, empty home. Suddenly I’m shockingly, furiously angry. How could she do this to us? To me?
I can feel the tears pressing in my throat, the grief about to come. I’d rather stay angry. I throw the magazine in my hand, the pages arcing through the air to the carpet. I don’t feel better. So I go, quite deliberately, to the mantelpiece and knock the vase of flowers onto the floor, water and petals spilling everywhere.
It’s satisfying. So I make a clean sweep of my tasteful ornaments. The heavy jade elephant, there it goes. And there goes the carriage clock, a present from Mark’s parents. I never liked it much anyway! The cards behind it flutter to the floor in its wake.
I stop short, remembering that I keep them propped up there. I didn’t know what else to do with them. I didn’t want to hide them away: the reason we think she’s OK.
I crouch, carefully plucking them out of the debris on the carpet. I’m sorry, Sophie. I’m not angry. Fat tears drop down. I make sure they don’t mark the cards, as I lay them on my glass coffee table, pictures up, in a row. They’re fine. Then I turn them over. No smudges. No bends. They’re fine. The card on top is showing signs of age, the biro ink darker. I’d recognise that handwriting anywhere, though.
The first one arrived a fortnight after she’d gone. I came downstairs that morning and saw it on the mat, under a gas bill and a circular for a new Chinese takeaway. The photo was of a beach, curving yellow sand under a bright blue sky, the red script in the top left-hand corner shouting: SPAIN! I turned it over. The address started ‘Kate and Mark Harlow’. The message itself was brief.
I know you’ll be worrying. Please don’t. I’m safe and I’m well. I love you.
Sophie xxx
The card trembled in my hand. Sophie had always written like she was in a tearing hurry, her words looping across the page. And there was her doodle in the corner next to her name, like she always did, a happy little flower.
Everyone had been positive. This was what we’d been waiting for: a solid development. Not only that, but Sophie had deliberately got in touch, reached out to us. We’d handed it into the police. They’d been circumspect as ever, but I could see it in Kirstie’s face: this was Good News.
What it meant was less clear. It was postmarked London. ‘Could she could have got someone to post it for her, maybe? A friend passing through?’ Mark wondered aloud.
He took it upon himself to make the calls, spread the news through the web of friends and family, his parents, my dad, my sister, all the rest.
‘Well yes. It’s very encouraging really … we can all breathe a little easier.’ There’d even been some rueful laughter. I could imagine what they were saying at the other end of the line. That Sophie. Well, really. But we knew she’d come back home eventually, they always do.
Afterwards, he’d opened a bottle of champagne, poured it out into our best flutes and handed me one. As I stayed silent, he’d gripped me by the arms. I’d been shocked. There were tears in his eyes, I registered, as he told me: ‘It’s going to be OK, I promise. Maybe you can relax, just a little?’
I think I nodded. But I couldn’t. It was like hoping that turning off a tap might halt a flood.
Soon, the police came back to us: the expert agreed that this was her handwriting. But as to how it got to us, they didn’t know much more. My visions of them tracking the card back to the postbox where it was sent, pulling CCTV to show a small figure slipping it into the slot, soon faded. The postmark showed it was processed in north London, that was all.
We learned that what goes through the postal system gets covered in strange traces of all sorts, chemicals and blood and things you would rather not know about. Still, they managed to collect some prints off the card, ran them through the database just in case: nothing alarming came up, no matches with sinister prison escapees, anything like that.
And the news that she’d sent us a postcard sparked more media interest, the articles taking on a lighter tone that I didn’t expect: Sophie appearing as a cheeky rebel on a jaunt, sending a postcard home to the parents. One columnist asked if she should be commended for her spirit of adventure, another if her departure would have drawn the same concern if she were a boy. There was a warning note, however, about the drain on police time, a reminder that serious cases needed attention.
And then … nothing happened. Not for a while.
Eventually I did stop going out searching, which made Mark calmer for a bit, reassured that I wasn’t wandering through some abandoned warehouse in the city. Wherever she was, I’d realised, it wasn’t within my reach – not physically.
Going out had got trickier, anyway, close to home.
‘So. You only had the one child,’ the woman said to me, rearranging her handbag on her arm. ‘And then you went back to work?’
‘Yes,’ I said, taken aback. I tried to place her name. A mother from the school? She’d come up to me outside the newsagent’s, patting me on the arm: ‘How are things? Any news?’
‘So why was that?’ she said, then, not hiding her curiosity. No, I didn’t know her at all.
‘Why w— I’m sorry, my parking’s about to run out. I’d better go.’
So I went online, where I started trawling message boards, special ones for runaways, expat communities that a traveller might pass through, forums for postal workers who might keep an eye out on their rounds. I’d leave a photo with a note: ‘Have you seen Sophie Harlow?’ Keeping my messages loving, worried, but encouraging. Never desperate, never angry. Keep it together.
There was no end to the task I’d set myself, really. There didn’t seem to be so much reason to leave the house then, after that, or to step away from the laptop in our study. I drank, a little, to help me relax. And I had the pills, of course, to soften things round the edge, to help me sleep. I kept busy.
Mark tried to talk, a few times. He even suggested, sheepishly, that he ‘explain about that weekend’. I knew he meant the night he missed Sophie’s note. There hadn’t been many slip-ups over the years. But now I didn’t care. ‘I just don’t want to talk about it,’ I told him. He looked relieved. He’d started going back into the office, just ‘keeping on top of things’.
The journalists didn’t bother to call me any more. Though that was all the police seemed to be interested in, now: a phone call. Could Sophie please ring them so they could establish her safety? In my mind, I filled in what was unsaid: so we can close your case.
The second postcard came in December, dropping onto the mat like before.
You’ll want more than a postcard. But I’m fine, really, and I’m happy. I don’t want you to worry.
Sophie xxx
With her usual flower signature. ‘France’, read the script across the front, on top of a dated-looking photograph of the Eiffel Tower. Again, the postmark was London.