And I haven’t forgotten about Lily. I finally got put through to an ‘away on annual leave’ voicemail at the council and left a message. Well, it is August. I want to find out what’s happening: I’ve yet to see any sign of anyone else checking on her.
In the meantime, I’m taking a new tack, starting when I visit her this afternoon: I’m going to stop contradicting her, however politely, when she gets mixed up, and try to draw her out a bit more. I’ve been reading about it: the idea is that it’s less confusing. We can all do with a bit of time indulging in our dreams.
I’m not quite sure how to get on to the subject, as she chats about her programmes – Coronation Street’s her favourite. Mark never liked me watching it, and the moaning got so annoying I’d switch over. Since he’s gone I’ve made a point of getting back into it. And I chat to her about the charity, about Alma and her dog, the other volunteers sometimes rota’d on with us. I’ve not much else to tell her, otherwise.
In the end she brings him up, as we sit on her flowered sofa with cups of tea. It’s so soft you sink right in, knees almost higher than your head. ‘The little boy,’ she asks. ‘Where’s he gone?’
‘I don’t know, Lily. When did you last see him?’
‘A while ago,’ she says. She looks sad, unusual for her. ‘Why won’t he come back?’
I don’t know how to answer. ‘Tell me about him, Lily. What’s he like?’
Her eyes brighten. ‘Oh, he’s such a lovely little boy. Such a tinker. And those blond curls!’
‘Blond curls?’
‘Oh yes,’ she says confidently, ‘just like me, when I was a girl.’
‘Lily,’ I say carefully, ‘I didn’t know you and Bob had any children.’
I know they didn’t. Bob, Lily’s husband, is long departed but honoured with a photo in pride of place on the hall table, in a fancy gilded frame. When I first met her, she made discreet references to their ‘disappointment in the family way’. She’d run a shoe shop in Leeds before she met Bob, and they’d made a good life for themselves, she told me.
She doesn’t reply. ‘So what’s his name, Lily?’
‘I don’t know … I’ve forgotten, haven’t I. Do you know?’
‘I don’t. But I’d love to meet him,’ I add.
‘Well …’ Lily glances sideways at me. ‘I don’t know when he’ll next be here,’ she settles on.
I’m reassured by that. If Lily is imagining a little boy to keep her company – the child she never had? – then her reluctance shows that, deep down, she still knows I couldn’t meet him.
‘What about you, dear?’ she says now. ‘Have you heard from your Nancy?’
I didn’t know she remembered. It had upset her, when I’d explained that my daughter had gone away, and I didn’t know where she was. I’d ended up telling her she was travelling.
I clear my throat. ‘I had a phone call, yes. Recently. But it’s Sophie, not Nancy.’
She nods. ‘Nancy was the other one, then. Oh, she was trouble.’ She looks downcast. ‘I get a bit confused these days, don’t I?’
It’s hard when she realises what’s happening to her. ‘Just a bit, Lily, but that’s OK. Now. I think Corrie’s about to start.’
I’m suddenly awake. I lie there, the bedclothes clammy around me, the dark room hot.
The run worked just as I hoped. I fell asleep quickly, no thoughts crowding in. Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think. My mantra, until sleep descends.
But now I’m awake, in the dead hours. Yet again.
And then I feel it. It’s not so much a prickling of the skin as something else, some older sense, the quiet, electric awareness. The presence in the room. Slowly, inevitably, I turn my head.
The figure in the doorway is quite motionless.
I close my eyes, reopen them. And still he’s there.
He slowly takes a step towards me …
And then I wake up again, for real this time, and grasp for the light.
Of course, there’s no one there. But my heart is still thundering, my whole body flushed with adrenaline. Another dream I’ve had before. Quite common after trauma, my counsellor Lara once told me. A physical manifestation of the perceived threat to my world – my brain making sense of things.
It still scares me though.
I reach for the pills in my drawer. This time, I take two. Just to be safe. They’ll work, as always, and I settle down with a book, keeping my thoughts occupied, till I start to feel drowsy.
As I fall asleep, fragments of my day appear before me. Len’s face, red and angry. That collie dog, whining and afraid. The black shape bursting from the bush. And Lily: ‘Nancy was the other one.’
Just as I slip under, a question bubbles to the surface and stays, for a second. Who’s Nancy?
14
I’m so sick of staring at my computer screen. I’ve spent the morning falling deep into an internet hole, bogged down in the rules around teenagers and privacy. Dr Heath’s right, of course. If a teenager gets pregnant, medical workers don’t have to keep her parents informed if … I don’t want to think about it. But Sophie could have done anything, and I wouldn’t know. They respect her privacy. And she can just go into any of the centres in town for help, there’s no need for her to involve the family doctor at all.
Or maybe I’ve got this all wrong, am jumping to conclusions. This feels so pointless and familiar, immersed in web pages, digging and digging, getting nowhere.
I stare out of the study window. It’s been so hot the trees are already yellowing. Or could it be autumn starting early? It’s so hard to keep track. I feel stupid and drowsy. I could take a nap …
And isn’t there something else I’m supposed to do, something I should check? It’s dancing on the edge of my consciousness, like when you can’t remember something just as you fall asleep … I fell asleep quickly last night, tired out after my run. But I’m sure I still woke up again, took a pill or two …
And then I catch my thought again: who’s Nancy? That Lily mentioned. I’m always intrigued by Lily’s life, she can be really quite guarded.
I don’t really expect to find anything, but I type it in anyway. Just to check.
Nancy – I pause, type more – Vale Dean. That’s all I know.
Oh. I see. I lean forward.
New appeal over missing Vale Dean girl
Sister of schoolgirl missing for 20 years says she’s never given up hope.
Twenty years after she vanished, Nancy Corrigan is still missing
Missing
Missing
Missing
So there was another girl, who went missing too.
Nancy.
It doesn’t take me long to read what’s online. The articles are sparse, archive stuff that local papers have put on their websites. The twentieth anniversary they’re marking was back in 2012, before we moved here. But I quickly glean the basics.
Nancy Corrigan was a local girl, who went missing in April 1992. Sixteen years old.
She’s not one of those that I’ve heard of, that I try not to think about any more.
The housewife who stepped out and left a note ‘back in two minutes’. The baby left in the rear seat of a car, just for a moment, and never found. The children known by their first names only – or over-familiar nicknames that their families never used. And all the pages devoted to them online, articles and discussion forums. What happened? Where did they go? Without a trace.
My family told me to stop torturing myself. Eventually, I listened.
And it’s so very different to our situation, I tell myself. Thank God we heard from Sophie, that she didn’t just disappear. But they fill me with cold horror, all the same.
I make myself continue, but I can’t find much from the time it happened, just the few marking the twentieth anniversary and repeating the appeal for information. There’s a sister who’s quoted.
‘This is a difficult time of year,’ said Olivia Corrigan, 29. ‘I have never lost hope that we will hear from her again. I think about my big sister a lot.’
There’s not much else, but I keep scrolling.
Oh, I see. That’s why I haven’t heard of her. Not such a mystery, after all. She ran away. So that’s why Lily got mixed up.
Nancy left a note, too.