It’s Saturday morning, I can’t believe it’s a week since I last heard from Amy. It’s been the longest and most painful seven days of my life, and I’ve tortured myself with all the possibilities of where she might be and why. Heather says they are looking into all the lines of enquiry, including Tony, who I think would be very capable of doing something to cause me great pain as an act of revenge. And of course there’s Dave Olsen who is a shadowy figure I didn’t even know existed until after Amy went missing. And there’s Amy’s relationship with Josh, which according to him seems to have been far rockier than she let on. Looking back, I realise that this time last week I felt like I was holding Amy’s hand, guiding her home – this morning I can feel it slipping from mine.
I still can’t sleep, though eventually drifted off about 5 a.m. this morning, and when I woke at nine-ish Richard had left a note to say he’d gone to the supermarket. I can’t even think about food – the fridge is empty and where once I enjoyed grocery shopping, I’m not remotely interested and have no intention of leaving the house in case something happens.
I wander the rooms, silent, no teenagers – no Amy. The Find Amy page has, as Richard predicted, had to be suspended at the request of the police – it happened late last night, and I know it makes sense, but as I have said, it gave me hope – and I feel bad for Jodie and Josh who’d put so much time and energy into it.
I go upstairs, feeling like a ghost in my own home, and wander into Amy’s room, sit on her bed, and I do what I have been doing every day this week. I text her. I tell her what’s happening, how the case is progressing, how annoying Heather is, how I wish I could talk to her because I miss her so much. I also tell her what she’d say is ‘the vital shit’, like which celebrity relationship has collapsed/reunited/started, and the scandal surrounding any of these. I press send and sit and wait for the ‘OMG!’ or ‘NO!’ at my Z-list revelations. We’re both aware of the meaninglessness of all this, but somehow these people and their stories bond us over the miles – I hoped they always would. But as the silence creeps through her bedroom and wraps itself around me I know today will be the same as yesterday, and the day before. Nothing. I check her social media, and then I check Tony’s, which seems to be filled with stuff about some sad band he’s in and I can’t bear to look at it. My days have no structure, I’m constantly searching for clues and finding nothing, and sometimes I feel so scared I have to put my fist in my mouth to stop myself screaming.
I lie down on Amy’s bed, stretching out, breathing her pillow, pretending she’s fine and enjoying her new student life. I’m falling asleep but something wakes me and coming round I hear a tentative tap on the door, which I think might be in my head, then it comes again and I sit up. In my heightened state I imagine it’s Amy at the door, but the door slowly opens and it’s Jodie, she’s tearful as always and, when she sees me on the bed, she starts crying again.
I move to the end of the bed and put my feet on the floor, still drowsy and disorientated, but before I can say anything Jodie’s standing in front of me, wiping her eyes.
‘Kat, I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘Okay,’ I say, trying to sound calm, unflustered, but I have to stay seated on the bed, braced for what she’s about to say. Some new piece of information about my own flesh and blood that might floor me, or petrify me, or both.
‘It’s Amy… it’s all my fault,’ she sobs.
‘Jodie, you can’t keep blaming yourself.’
‘No.’ She puts her hand up to stop me, and I see a flash of Zoe – strong and assertive – she has some backbone after all.
‘I think she ran away because of something I did.’ With that, she almost falls next to me onto the bed. She’s so distressed, I think she may be having a panic attack and I don’t know what to do.
‘Jodie, Jodie, it’s okay. Whatever happened you can tell me,’ I say gently. I’m holding onto her shoulders, looking into her face, a million things are running through my head. I’m trying to make her focus, and eventually she looks at me.
‘Go on… you can tell me.’ I nod, grabbing a tissue from the box on Amy’s bedside cabinet, which Jodie takes from me.
‘I went to the pub a few weeks ago… with a load of our old school friends.’
‘Yes?’ My heart’s thudding, how on earth can this lead to Aberystwyth and Amy?
‘Josh was there.’
‘Okay.’
She looks up to the ceiling, her hands twisting at the tissue, her mouth quivering, not knowing how to tell me what she has been holding in all this time. ‘He’s lovely and kind and… he said Amy was being mean to him and… I was drunk, and he was drunk.’
I’m not sure I want to hear the rest, I don’t know how to feel. But I need to know, for Amy’s sake.
‘So you’re telling me that you and Josh hooked up and…’
She nods. ‘Yes, and… now we’re together.’
‘Oh.’
‘But Amy didn’t want to be with Josh anymore, Kat,’ she says, reaching for my hand. I let her take it, but I suddenly see things quite differently. ‘You heard what he said the other day, she was mean to him, didn’t want to know once she’d gone to uni.’
‘That’s not… I’m not sure that’s true Jodie,’ I say, but I don’t know. I’m feeling like the wronged woman on my daughter’s behalf. My feelings towards Jodie are – not surprisingly – mixed. I am reconfiguring the closeness I’ve noticed between Josh and Jodie over the last few days. I thought they’d just been working with each other to bring Amy home, but perhaps they weren’t so selfless after all and just wanted to spend time together. Eventually I come up with a question for her, but I can’t smile.
‘I don’t want any details, but why would Amy run away because of you and Josh? Wouldn’t she just tell me or one of her other friends, cry a bit, then realise he’s a shit boyfriend, she’s lost a best friend and move on?’ I say bitterly.
‘She told me she was going to leave,’ she says through tears. ‘She said she’d just jump on a train or thumb a lift and get away, she said she hated me, and Josh and she never wanted to see us again and would never come back to Worcester.’
‘I don’t blame her,’ I say, feeling anger towards Jodie. Despite my mother’s fury I have to remind myself they are teenagers, and that this is all a storm in a teacup in the great scheme of things. But then to Amy it was probably so much more. I hate the thought of her feeling betrayed by her best friend and boyfriend, how horrible it must have been for her.
‘When you and Josh spoke to the police, did you tell them all this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, hopefully they’re pursuing that line of enquiry,’ I say snappily, which seems to upset her even more. Jodie’s always needed approval and usually she gets it from me, if not her mother. I know my disapproval has hurt her deeply and I have to be careful, because however much her being with Josh has hurt Amy, Jodie is extremely fragile.
‘Kat, I’m so, so sorry, I wouldn’t have started seeing Josh if I thought Amy was still into him, but she told me she fancied someone at uni.’
‘Who, the lecturer?’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know… probably.’ Now she’s in floods, rocking backwards and forwards and I realise it’s time to be the grown-up. I imagine Amy was very hurt about Josh finishing with her, and pissed off with Jodie – but there were other things going on. As much as I’d like to think she ran away, because that means no one’s harmed her physically, I don’t buy it. Other people are more likely to blame for Amy going missing, because that is the only explanation for her lack of contact.
‘Jodie,’ I start, in an attempt to calm her down. ‘If it makes you feel any less guilty, I don’t think Amy just walked away from her life.’
But what has happened? And why? Seven days missing and still there are more questions than answers – I don’t know how much more I can take.
Jodie asks me if I’d like her to leave, and I really don’t want to hurt her, she’s just a child. So I suggest she goes home for a while, just to give me time to adjust and take in what she’s told me.
‘I will be okay with this – eventually,’ I say. ‘It’s just that Amy isn’t here to tell me her side, and obviously I’m on her side. You understand, don’t you?’
She nods and, shoulders slumped, leaves the room; a few seconds later I hear her going downstairs and closing the front door. Then it’s my turn to burst into tears.
Eventually I stop crying, and tell myself Amy may be crying for me somewhere and I’m achieving nothing. So I check my phone, nothing new – my email box is full and, on automatic pilot, I open one telling me how many shopping days I have before Christmas. Another informs me about the latest ways with turkey and a third offers me twenty per cent off Christmas decorations. Christmas. What’s Christmas without Amy? What’s anything without Amy? How can life go on? Why are people planning for Christmas when Amy is missing? It’s weird to think that outside this house other lives are continuing as they did before – whereas inside everything is on pause. These days that are so long, and yet so short, the November night stealing them just after four thirty and plunging us into darkness on every level.