I feel a bit flat after he’s gone. It’s nice to have company, even a professional. And his visit has reminded me of all sorts of things. My limitations. My mistakes.
But he’s given me an idea. I’m going to further a relationship, I think, as I dial. Even if I’m not sure Nick Heath would quite approve of why I’m doing this.
David, the librarian from the other day, is surprised but pleased to hear from me as I remind him, as casually as I can manage, of his suggestion that I speak to his sister. When people know you want to know something, they can clam up. But he doesn’t.
‘Why don’t I give you Vicky’s number? I did mention you, but she’s busy with the kids. And she’s not the most organised person I know, I have to admit …’
I don’t know if I’ll ever get over how helpful they are up here.
‘Thanks very much, David. I’ll do that, right away.’
She doesn’t pick up the first time, but she does ten minutes later.
‘Hello?’ She sounds harassed. ‘Jesse, no. No! Put it down!’
‘Hi, Vicky?’ I say. ‘My name’s Kate. Your brother may have mentioned that I might call?’
‘Hiya, yes. He did, didn’t he? So how can I help?’
Quickly, I tell her that I’m doing a project on missing people, with a focus on the local area. ‘Social studies,’ I say, knowing it’s a flimsy excuse. But like her brother, Vicky likes to chat.
‘Nancy Corrigan.’ She sighs. ‘I thought she was so pretty.’ Nancy, she says, just had the best kind of hair. ‘Unlike my own frizzy mess! I had a perm back then, could I have picked anything that would have made it look worse? On top of my puppy fat, if I can call it that now I’ve still got it.’ She laughs, unbothered. ‘She was just one of those girls, you know. Someone you want to be.’
But she’s short on detail about how she left.
People said, in that random way that gossip goes around a school, that Nancy had gone to London. ‘God knows why she would, looking back now. What’s she going to do there?’ But it seemed she’d cut ties with her friends, as well as her family, and they weren’t any better informed. She’d packed a bag, taken money – people said.
Soon, two policemen had come into school and, one by one, Nancy’s friends had been called out of lessons to talk to them in the headmistress’s office. But they couldn’t tell the police what they wanted to know: where Nancy was. Eventually the police had gone away and the school had returned to normal routines, before lessons gave way to the long summer.
Nancy’s year, upper fifth, hadn’t all come back for sixth form anyway. They’d done, oh, cooking courses and things like that, and some had gone off to the sixth-form college in the next town, where you could wear your own clothes all the time. With Nancy’s year dispersing, it didn’t seem so strange, in a funny way, that one girl had gone so suddenly. Almost as if she’d just got a head start on everyone.
‘Now it feels different,’ Vicky tells me. ‘I do think about her sometimes, even now. I must have been, what, fourteen then. I don’t think I quite got it. Now I’m a mum, I look at my little boy and his sister – she’s a baby, but she’s so easy, honestly – and I think, those poor parents, what did they do?’
I don’t want to talk about the poor parents: I sense she could go on for a while.
‘Yes, it was very sad,’ I say, knowing how heartless I sound. ‘And there was a boyfriend, I think, when she left? Who I’m trying to find out a bit more about. So I can speak to him.’
I’m half-expecting her to say, no, like Olivia, she doesn’t remember, but she chuckles.
‘He was a bit of a hunk. Dark hair.’ Clearly, teenage Vicky was more informed about teenage romance than Nancy’s ten-year-old sister.
‘Oh?’
‘They weren’t my year though; he must have been a couple of years above, too.’
‘So what was his name?’ I try not to sound impatient.
‘Hm, let’s see … James, Jack. J-something. Jay!’ she crows. ‘That’s it, Jay.’
‘And his surname?’
‘Ooh, I couldn’t tell you. He moved away. And the prices have gone up so much round here, I don’t know how anyone could afford to move back!’ she says happily, vindicated in her decision to stay. She lowers her voice a little. ‘People talked, of course.’
‘They did?’
‘Oh, you know.’
No, I don’t know. ‘In what way?’ Be nice, Kate.
‘Well, teenagers argue, don’t they? Some people said Nancy and Jay had broken up, that that was the real reason she’d gone. I mean, I couldn’t be sure about that. Nothing concrete. But anyway, his family moved away, it must have been that summer. He didn’t come back to school.’
Half a name. ‘I see.’ Back to square one.
‘But you know,’ she says, enthusiastic again. ‘I’ve got all my old school photos at my mum’s. I could have a look next time I’m round, if you like. It might jog my memory.’
‘Could you? I’d be grateful.’ It sounds like a long shot.
‘No bother at all. Thing is – Jesse! Careful with the baby! Put her down! – Thing is,’ she says confidingly, ‘they did have a leak in the garage that soaked all the boxes, all my old stuff.’ She laughs. ‘I should have sorted it all out years ago. So I don’t want to get your hopes up.’
‘Well, thanks anyway.’ I make sure she’s got my email, and my phone number, knowing I’m never going to hear from her.
‘Don’t mind at all. So, where’s this going to end up? Will you write some kind of paper? I don’t mind if you quote me, you know.’
21
I hang up when Jesse picks up on another handset and starts nonsense-talking down the line. I’ve got what I can from Vicky.
Back online, I’m methodical, searching for combinations of Jay with ‘Nancy Corrigan’ and ‘Amberton Grammar’ and whatever I can think of that might lead me to his full name; where he is now. I just want to know what happened: I want to know that he had nothing to do with Nancy’s disappearance, that he ended up living a predictably normal, respectable existence in some semi somewhere, his school girlfriend’s disappearance now just a mournful episode from the past. Something that he thinks about at Christmas, or on her birthday. Just sad. Nothing more.
And that’s as far as I’ll let myself think about why I need to know this, now.
I spend a while looking at the updates they send to alumni, saved as PDFs online, to see if there’s any mention of a Jay. There’s not.
When the phone call comes I’m still in the kitchen, the sun lower now through the windows, making myself a cup of tea. Out of habit, I let the landline ring out. It’s bound to be some cold caller, or Charlotte again. The man’s voice breaks in on my thoughts, making me start.
‘Mrs Harlow, this is DI Nicholls. Please could you give me a call back—’
I’m across the room and seize the handset before he can finish. ‘Hello? I’m here.’
He tells me he’s got some news that would be better explained in person.
‘Have you found her?’ I hear myself saying, pitched too high.
‘No. No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get your hopes up. Are you free now? I tried your mobile.’ I glance at it on the table – I’ve let it run out of battery once more.
‘Yes, of course. Should I come to the station again?’
‘No need for that. I’m in the area now and I’ll explain face to face.’
After I hang up, I bend to pick up the cat, burying my face in his fur. He mews in protest.
‘Another visitor. It’s quite the social whirl in here,’ I tell Tom.
But I’m nervous. Doubly so. Because sleeping on it hasn’t offered any flash of inspiration to getting into Sophie’s other email. I’m going to turn it over to the police.
Yet first I’ve got to make them understand how important this could be.