Zoe, Jodie and Josh are with me, Richard’s pottering around elsewhere and we’re talking about doing some kind of Facebook page. It’s Jodie’s idea, I think she wants to do her bit to try to find Amy. ‘I just feel so helpless, Kat,’ she said, when she told me about her idea. I understood exactly how she felt. Now Josh is showing me the ‘Find Amy’ page and talking me through it.
‘Amy will love this,’ I say, and he nods, awkwardly. I wonder how he feels about all this, I still don’t know what happened between them, and perhaps I overreacted in blaming him. There are always two sides, and he’s been so good coming over every day. I’m grateful for his help.
Heather walks into the kitchen and no one looks up, all four of us in a kind of huddle, keeping out the rest of the world. She pours herself a glass of water and leaves the room and I feel slightly guilty. Under normal circumstances I’d go out of my way to make this woman feel welcome in my home – after all, she’s a guest – but events change you. And here I am again, being tested. I’m polite, kind, thoughtful, compassionate – and yet I’m not, because here in my home my own feelings encompass everything, and there’s no room for anyone else’s. Even Heather’s. My filter went with Amy and now it’s okay for me not to offer hot drinks to everyone who turns up at my home or ask how they are or provide cake and comfort. I only spend time with the people I want to, and I fill the space with Zoe, Jodie and Josh, because we all know Amy, and we all share the same feelings, the same desire for her to come home.
There’s a certain liberty in my current situation, I’m the mother of a missing child and will be forgiven anything. I have permission to say and do what I like without being concerned about how it affects other people, because my pain is worse. I’m a different Kat, not the one I thought I was, and can focus only on the horror hanging over me like a dark, sticky cloud.
Through all this, Richard and I have operated in separate spheres, he’s there but I don’t feel his presence as much as I do Zoe, Jodie and Josh’s, which has kept me sane. From the minute this started, they’ve been here listening to my rants, wiping my tears, making food and drinks. I’ve been so low, so desperate since Amy went missing, it feels like Jodie and Josh, these two kids, Amy’s friends, provide the antidote; the house becomes a home when they’re around. Without Amy, there’s this big vacuum in my home and in myself and they distract from the void she’s left, they bring the outside world in the way Amy does when she’s here.
Jodie played me a song this morning on her phone, it was a new singer I hadn’t heard before, he had an amazing voice.
‘I love it,’ I said, as she hummed along.
‘I knew you would, you like a bit of Ed Sheeran and he’s a bit like him.’
‘That’s something I miss now Amy’s away at uni,’ I said. ‘She played music all the time, I don’t hear it anymore.’ She brought so much into this home – the music, funny videos on her phone, shared snippets about her friends, and the big stories from her day. My daughter offered these precious things to me in the same way she’d bring in a beautiful butterfly from the garden when she was small – fluttering colour cupped in her hands.
‘Kat – I can always download you a playlist,’ Josh offered.
I was so touched, I felt my eyes sting and I had to turn my head so they didn’t see me cry. ‘Thanks Josh,’ I croaked, seeing the little girl in the kitchen doorway, cupped hands reaching out to me, that smile that makes everything worthwhile.
‘I used to make playlists for Amy – until she went off me.’ He’d looked over at Jodie and she gave an awkward laugh.
‘I’m sure she didn’t go off you, Josh,’ I offered.
‘Oh, she did. She hated me.’ I see the sadness in his eyes and realise that perhaps things weren’t black and white between him and Amy.
‘No, that’s not true – is it, Jodie?’ I’d looked at her and she’d shrugged, and turned slightly pink. I hoped I hadn’t embarrassed her, the last thing she wanted to get into was a discussion with her best friend’s ex about what went wrong. I, on the other hand, wanted every little bit of information because it might just lead me to Amy.
‘I think you and Amy must have got your wires crossed,’ I said, turning to Josh. ‘You were living far apart and sometimes conversations over the phone are open to all kinds of misunderstandings.’
‘But this was when I went there, to see her. She just didn’t want me around, I could tell.’
‘It’s difficult because when you haven’t seen someone for a few weeks it takes a little while to get back to where you were. I mean, you’ve both been in different environments, you’re bound to have different expectations…’
‘Yeah, I guess,’ he’d said. But he seemed doubtful.
I had said all of this for Amy, really. I don’t know how she’ll feel about anything when she comes back, but I’m sure she still cares about Josh. I just hope that he doesn’t meet someone before she’s home, I know it would break her heart. He obviously cares about her, he’s been here religiously for the last few days, helping out and just being there. The other day I went upstairs and found him looking through the door into Amy’s room. He’d jumped when I walked up behind him, but I told him not to be embarrassed – ‘I’m always in Amy’s room,’ I said. ‘It makes me feel closer to her.’ He’d nodded and headed back downstairs, but it made me realise how much this is getting to him.
Today his focus is completely on this Facebook page – he seems desperate to find her. Does he blame himself, perhaps? I know that feeling. I’m permanently on high alert, anxious, longing for some news, some tiny flake of hope that never seems to come, and like Josh, I’m always looking for her in everything. It isn’t hard to be with her in this house, because she’s been away such a short time. Yesterday I came across a pair of her summer sandals on the shoe rack in the hall, they were slightly askew, just as she’d left them, and I didn’t move them. It reminded me of last summer when the two of us went for afternoon tea in Malvern, a small town on the outskirts of Worcestershire. Rolling green hills, blue skies and scones with jam and clotted cream, Amy’s favourite – and as I think about it I can hear her laughter and feel the sun on my face. For a few, blissful moments I’m not scared, the absolute terror of what might have happened leaves me, and I bathe in the past. Then Heather offers me a cup of tea, or Zoe tries to engage me in some gossip to take my mind off things, and I’m plunged back into reality. Horrible, dark reality.
The past twenty-four hours have been a mosaic of nothing. Lots of little bits of nothing stuck together to make another meaningless, heartbreaking day where there’s no news. I constantly check my phone, my eyes are sore and my throat hurts from crying. Tonight Zoe makes a valiant attempt to inject some punctuation into this endlessness by suggesting we get a Chinese takeaway for dinner, but I can’t eat.
‘Love, you have to keep your strength up. You need to be well for when Amy walks through that door.’
‘You know it’s all I want, all I need,’ I say, with a smile. I hear my voice cracking, tears prick my eyes.
Zoe understands. We met at the school gate thirteen years ago, when our little girls were just five years old, and became firm friends, just as our daughters did. We always said that being mothers of only children is what bonded us, we have to get it right the first time because we don’t get a second chance. Later, our husbands were included in our friendship, and even though Richard has never been a Zoe fan, he kindly went along with social events. Now Zoe and Pete are divorced, things have changed, but our friendship remains incredibly strong, and these past few days have proved that – I don’t know what I’d have done without her. It’s good to have Jodie and Josh around too, I can see a lot of Amy in both of them, the way they live on their phones, speak their own language with the phrases they use, the way they react with WTF? And OMG! Every five minutes. And I love that they are here every day, because she isn’t. Jodie’s lip balm is the same, sickly sweet vanilla that Amy wears, and each waft gives me fresh hope that all will be okay again one day. The four of us have formed an unlikely little group, sharing our stories about Amy, and we spend hours discussing various theories of what might have happened, where she might be.
I can see what Amy saw in Josh. Before I always saw him as ‘Amy’s boyfriend’, an extension of her, and someone I knew because of his relationship with my daughter. But in the past few days I feel like I’ve got to know him, and understand the kind of person he is independently of Amy. I know Josh’s mother died of cancer when he was quite young, but it was fascinating to discover just how much her death has impacted on his life and his future.
‘I want to be an oncologist,’ he told me yesterday when we talked about next year, when he starts his university course. ‘I know medicine is intense, it’s gonna be hard, but if I can stop one kid like me from losing their mum, then it’ll all be worth it.’
‘Wow,’ I said, ‘I’m impressed.’ And it struck me how mature he is for a boy of eighteen. It made me think about Amy saying he was ‘a child’ and really immature, and it doesn’t make sense. She just wouldn’t say something like that.
‘You know that Amy had cancer…’ I’d said.
‘Yeah – it would be so fucking shit if anything’s… happened. I mean, after all that.’
‘Yeah, Josh, you’re right – it would be so fucking shit,’ I’d said. I find his and Jodie’s honesty, their teenage lack of filter so refreshing. They just say what they feel, they don’t keep asking me how I am, or hiding how they feel or talk in low voices around me like they’re at a bloody funeral.
This morning, Josh arrived earlier than the other two and it gave me a chance to have a chat with him about Amy. I think yesterday our conversation was a little awkward for him with Jodie there.
‘What really happened, between you two?’ I asked.
Initially he seemed reluctant to say too much, but then he confided. ‘Amy changed once she got to uni,’ he said. ‘I reckon she’d met someone else and she went off me.’
I found that hard to believe. ‘I was under the impression she still liked you,’ I said.
‘When I went to see her, it just felt like she didn’t want me there, I was supposed to be staying a few nights, but I came back early.’
‘Oh, I didn’t realise. What made you think she didn’t want you there?’
At first he looks uncomfortable, and I don’t think he’s going to say anything, but then he just blurts it out. ‘She said I was boring, that I was “a child”, and that now she was at university she’d grown out of “little boys”. I just felt so pissed off I came home.’ I see a flash of hurt in his eyes, and I feel for him.
‘Oh, Josh, do you think you might have been mistaken?’ I ask.
He shrugged. ‘She could be mean sometimes.’
‘I’m sure she can be mean,’ I said, subtly correcting his past tense, and feeling slightly irritated that he seems to be blaming Amy for the break-up. ‘But perhaps she was feeling insecure. You know sometimes people play hard to get, or appear to be a little cold because they feel like they’re the ones who are being rejected.’
He nodded slowly without making eye contact.
‘Amy wouldn’t be mean to anyone, let alone you. In fact the last time we spoke she told me she thought you were being off with her. These things can get blown out of proportion, you might have both misinterpreted what was said.’
‘You weren’t there – I was,’ he says, and for the first time I see anger in his eyes.
‘Oh, Josh, don’t take this to heart – especially now. Let’s just see what happens when she gets back, you two need to talk.’
He shakes his head. ‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘It will if you want it to.’
‘It can’t. Not now.’
‘Why – what do you mean?’ I ask, suddenly feeling a little uneasy about this conversation.
‘Nothing,’ he says, standing up. ‘Oh, I forgot – I have to go, Kat. I told my dad I’d give him a lift this morning to the builders’ yard – I’m late.’
‘Okay,’ I say – and before I can say anything else, he’s gone.
Now Josh has gone, I wander the empty house, checking my phone, picking up photos of Amy that are perched everywhere. I wonder what time Jodie will get here? It sounds weird, but she’s the nearest I get to Amy, the similar mannerisms, the clothes, even that welcome waft of vanilla. She hugs me like Amy would, leans on me when I’m nearby and makes me consistently revolting cups of coffee and presents them with the sweetest smile – just like Amy does.
Everyone else, even Richard, seems uneasy with me in my agony, like I might blow up or spontaneously combust if they do or say anything out of place. Then again, I might. I feel like a balloon filled with water, wobbly, and unreal.
Richard isn’t so comfortable with the daily visits from everyone – especially Zoe. ‘That woman’s so opinionated, so bossy,’ is his usual comment after her departure. But I’ve always welcomed her strength, and so-called bossiness – especially now. Zoe has my back, she’ll take control if necessary, and right now she’s just what I need.
Zoe holds me, and like a sponge I can feel her soaking up my pain, my uncertainty. Where is Amy? Will I ever see my child again?
Heather eventually leaves for the day. As with every evening she’s been here, she offers to stay if I need her. As with every other evening, I don’t. Zoe’s on the phone ordering Chinese, having told me that, ‘When you smell that sweet and sour you’ll change your mind about not being hungry.’ I won’t. Richard’s finally joined us downstairs and, in the absence of a laptop or a golf club, has started watching an old black-and-white film on the TV.
‘I don’t know how you can focus to watch a film,’ I say. I can’t concentrate on anything, and every single moment not spent searching for her online or anywhere else is wasted in my view. I resent the fact that he can do something other than worry about Amy.
‘I’m not watching the film. It’s just washing over me,’ he replies.
While Zoe is on the phone ordering enough Chinese for an army, I stand in the middle of the living room not sure what to do. I feel like an actress who’s forgotten her blocking during a play. I am lost, what do I do next? I’m in need of a shower, I’m not wearing make-up, my hair’s a mess, and none of this matters. I feel flayed by worry, and my skin hurts, the only things I can bear to wear are soft jogging bottoms and a huge jumper. I don’t feel like me. I don’t want to be me. Josh and Jodie left just after lunch, and I miss them, the place is quiet again and everyone’s on their best grown-up behaviour.
‘What’s Jodie been up to this afternoon?’ I ask Zoe as she comes back into the living room.
She sits down and looks at me. ‘Actually, she’s been talking to the police, Josh too – they were there all afternoon at ours,’ she says. ‘They asked really probing questions, it was quite gruelling. Jodie’s in bits.’
‘Oh, poor Jodie, she doesn’t need this. She’s finding it difficult enough,’ I say.
Zoe nods. ‘She just wants to find her, she’ll do anything to help – she thinks the world of Amy.’
‘I know she does.’
‘She keeps asking, “Where is she, Mum?” It kills me.’
I hate that this is affecting Jodie, who can be fragile at the best of times. She’s been checking the ‘Find Amy’ Facebook page all day, but of course so far no one has anything useful to say. Zoe said there are already loads of people following the page. I’m grateful for any kind of publicity – even if it does involve the participation of some people who don’t wish us well, nasty trolls infecting all the good messages of hope and love. Over the years I’ve seen mothers on the TV begging their kids to come home, or asking whoever may have taken them not to hurt their child. I never thought of myself as one of those women – but I’ve now joined that select club. As soon as Amy was declared officially missing, the local paper called and asked if they could do a piece and I couldn’t say no. Then the local TV news got in contact and worked with Heather to liaise with us and come over and film us asking what all those mothers have asked before. It was pretty traumatic, but has to be done.
Please don’t hurt her.
I’m looking at the latest edition of the local paper now on my phone. ‘No News on Missing Amy’ is apparently the highest-trending news story. No news is news then? I’m a journalist so I understand how it works, but experiencing it from the other side is painful.
I’m suddenly shocked out of my thoughts by the sound of the doorbell, and though both Zoe and Richard leap up to answer it, I insist on going. I have this wonderful vision of me opening the door to Amy, she might be slightly dishevelled, a little tired, but unhurt and home after an adventure. I know it’s more likely to be the police informing me of some horrific find, but I’m so numb with waiting I just want to feel something. I open the door with my heart in my mouth, holding my breath and for a split second I think my ridiculous dream has come true because instead of uniformed men with grim faces or women pretending to be my friend in powder-blue jumpers, it’s a blonde eighteen-year-old. It’s Jodie.
Both Jodie and I burst into tears and hug each other. ‘Did Mum tell you about the police?’ she says as I walk her into the house and close the door.
‘Yes, and I’m so sorry, darling.’
‘It’s not your fault, Kat, I know the police have to ask questions, but…’ and she starts to cry again.
‘You and Josh must have had a horrible afternoon,’ I say, hugging her close and shaking my head. Her hurt is mine too and I find it hard to see funny, sweet Jodie like this.
She sits down next to me and, looking from me to her mum, asks if there’s any news. We both just shake our heads, it’s hard to keep saying no to people. I’ve had so many messages in texts or online from friends and friends of friends asking – and I just feel like copying and pasting ‘no news’ so I don’t have to keep telling them the same thing. It’s kind of everyone to be thinking of us, but every time the phone pings or the Facebook icon shows a message, my heart soars thinking it might be Amy. Zoe realised this and she’s sent a global text message and done the same on Facebook saying thanks for all your kind wishes and offers of help, but the police are now dealing with the investigation and we need to keep all channels of communication clear. I wasn’t so sure about the blanket ban. ‘What if someone has information and they want to tell me?’ I’d said.
‘Babe, they can go to the police, I’m not having you distressed every time that bloody text goes off. Jesus, it’s giving me palpitations, so God only knows what it’s doing to you.’
Zoe was right, and it’s a great relief now the pinging has stopped. But I still keep checking and rechecking my phone.
‘How’s the page doing today?’ I ask Jodie. She’s so pleased to be able to do something to help Amy I want to take an interest, show how proud I am. Zoe’s never been very strong on positive encouragement, she’s always erred on the side of the stick rather than the carrot when it comes to Jodie.
‘The Find Amy page now has two thousand followers,’ Jodie says proudly.
‘Wow, that’s shot up.’ Zoe smiles, proud of her daughter’s efforts, and so she should be.
‘Jodie that’s brilliant,’ I add, just like I used to when I picked the girls up from school and they showed me their drawings, or their crazy poems, or mad dancing.
‘You two are both brilliant,’ I’d say. ‘But who’s the brilliantist?’ Jodie would ask, and I’d laugh, and try to be diplomatic and say they were both the ‘brilliantist’. The problem with being the mother of an only child, is that you have to remember when another child is around. I once told Amy she was ‘the most gorgeous girl in the world’, forgetting little Jodie was there, and Jodie wouldn’t speak to me for at least an hour.
I smile now, looking at her scrolling her phone, going through the Find Amy page to see if anyone’s made any comments that might give her a clue to finding her friend. I remember the girls in their matching Disney costumes at eight years old. They both wanted to be Cinderella, so Zoe and I bought the costumes together so they’d be exactly the same, because if they weren’t there’d be trouble. And now they’re grown and Jodie’s gathered together all these people in cyberspace in a valiant effort to bring her best friend home.
‘I’ve put loads of photos on Facebook and if anyone contacts me with anything useful, I’ll send it straight to the police,’ she says. I’m so moved by what she’s doing, and the fact that so many people are engaging.
‘Actually, someone did say they’d seen a girl that looks just like Amy in London, walking through Camden,’ she says.
My whole body starts to tingle, it isn’t impossible that she’d be there, Tony loved London – he might have taken her there. ‘Was she with anyone?’
‘Not sure,’ she says, ‘I’m just trying to find it… here it is,’ she offers me her phone and sure enough someone says they saw Amy.
‘Can you send that to the police? I’ll tell Heather too,’ I say. It’s another little moment of sunshine in a dark day.
She nods. ‘Actually, Kat, I’ve been thinking…’ she says. ‘Would you mind if we printed some missing posters? People could put them in their cars, their windows, we can plaster them on bus stops. We could put them all over the Aberystwyth campus too.’
‘Better check with the police first, Jodie,’ Richard says, tearing his eyes from the TV.
Jodie’s face drops slightly. She was so proud of her idea, I wish he’d have been more positive, or at least said it in a less lawyerly way. He made it sound like a reprimand, and despite the situation, I’m slightly embarrassed by his curtness towards her. She’s trying to help, and at this stage anything is better than nothing.
‘Richard has a point,’ I say tactfully, because he does. ‘But I think it’s a great idea, what harm can it do?’ I ask pointedly in his direction.
Zoe clocks what I’m doing and gives me a sly wink, a little thank you for saving her daughter’s feelings.
‘A local printer has offered to do them free of charge, I could get a few hundred done and we could start,’ Zoe says, with a sidelong glance at Richard. I think we’re all waiting for him to raise an objection in his bloody courtroom voice, but before he does, I leap in.
‘Yes, let’s do it,’ I say, and for the first time since Saturday, I feel like I’m doing something proactive.
Later, when Jodie and Zoe have gone home, Richard and I look at each other and he asks if I’m okay. I find this to be a rather ridiculous question, of course I’m not okay – but I don’t want to snap at him. I don’t have the energy to fall out with him.
‘I find it hard to go to bed,’ I say.
He turns off the TV, says he had to ‘drown out that woman’, meaning Zoe, and I roll my eyes.
‘Richard, not now… she’s my friend.’
‘She might be your friend, but she’s also a bossy woman.’
In the middle of the horror, I have to smile. He sits opposite me in the easy chair, a fresh mug of coffee on his knee, he’s just brought a camomile tea in for me and it’s steaming fragrantly on the coffee table. His outrage at Zoe is vaguely amusing, she just winds him up, she can’t help it and he can’t help how he feels, it’s just personalities clashing.
‘What?’ he’s saying, as I shake my head.
‘Poor Zoe can never do anything right as far as you’re concerned. What is it about her that makes you so cross?’
‘Every day in every way she makes me more cross. Tonight she force-fed me sweet and sour pork – and I don’t even like it.’
I smile indulgently through the pain, and try to imagine, just for a moment that Amy is at uni, and this is like any other Thursday night. But as hard as I try, I can’t. Because it isn’t.
‘I understand how you must feel regarding going to bed – and at the risk of sounding like a boring old sod, you must try and get some sleep,’ he says.
‘I know, but I can’t. I hate turning off the lights and going upstairs. It’s like saying goodbye to another day without her, like I’m accepting that she won’t be back today. But I can’t accept it. I’ll never accept it. I want to keep the lights on and the front door open all night.’
‘Of course you do. But you need to be strong, you need to sleep and eat and look after yourself. When she comes home, you must be well for her – who knows, she may need looking after.’
I think about a conversation I had earlier with Heather. She asked me if I thought Amy might have run away, or be capable of doing herself harm. I was horrified at the mere suggestion, but it’s an avenue I’ve been down in my head, and though at first I wouldn’t have countenanced it, I’m beginning to wonder. What if she comes home and she’s different? What if she’s run away and doesn’t want to come home? As Mather said a matter of days ago – that now feel like weeks, ‘sometimes people don’t want to be found.’
‘It’s the not knowing. I don’t know where she is, or if I’m ever going to see her again. What if it ends badly, Richard?’ I hear myself ask out loud for the first time. Of course I’ve been thinking it, I’ve had those constant intrusive thoughts that I’ve pushed away, tried not to see. But the perhaps inevitable conclusion to all this keeps knocking on my brain and pushing its way in, the unbearable idea that I may never see her again.
‘I feel like I’m back in that hospital room waiting for scan results and blood tests. And every time the front doorbell rings, or the police phone – I dread the prognosis.’
Richard gets up from his chair, and bringing his coffee with him, sits next to me on the sofa. He puts his arm around me, and we both sit in silence, in our own heads, unable to say some of the unspeakable thoughts running through them.