Saturday 5th May 2007
Chloe stands at her bedroom door and listens. The door is open a fraction of an inch and her parents’ voices carry up the stairs from the living room. They’re arguing. She’s not sure what about but she can hear her dad calling her mum a useless pile of shit and her mum’s crying and telling him to go away and leave her alone. They talked about Mike for ages on the flight home. Chloe had her earphones on but the sound was turned down on her iPod so she could eavesdrop. Mike had gone missing. Joy, his receptionist, tried to ring him when he didn’t turn up for work and there was no reply. By the second day, when he still hadn’t shown, she rang round asking if anyone had seen him. By the third day she was worried enough to call the police. Her dad and mum speculated about what might have happened. Her mum thought Mike had met someone and gone on an impromptu dirty weekend (whatever that was). Her dad said there was no way Mike would have left Joy in the lurch without telling her where he was going. He thought maybe he’d had a heart attack at the wheel and was lying in a ditch somewhere. Chloe gasped so loudly both of her parents peered across the aisle to see what was wrong with her.
‘Audiobook,’ she said, touching her headphones. ‘Something scary happened.’
The moment they looked away again she got up and headed for the toilets. The door had barely closed behind her before she burst into tears. Mike hadn’t abandoned her. He still loved her. She hadn’t done anything wrong. But with the relief came fear. What if her dad was right? What if Mike was lying in a ditch somewhere, unconscious or badly injured? Or worse, dead? Her heart ached at the thought of a life without him. What had happened with Sam had taught her how precious her relationship was with Mike. Their love was unique. He was unique. How could she ever have doubted him when he said he’d never loved anyone the way he loved her?
‘Please,’ she said, staring out of the small round window at the clouds outside the airplane. ‘Please let him be alive.’
‘I’m going out!’ her dad shouts now. ‘You can rot in hell.’
Startled, Chloe pulls her bedroom door closed but not before she hears the front door slam. She presses her face against the cold gloss paint and closes her eyes. Mike has to be alive. Otherwise she may as well open her bedroom window and jump straight out.
She opens her door, steps out onto the landing and listens. She can hear the bleep-bleep-bleep of a computer game from Jamie’s room and the soft sound of her mother crying downstairs. She glances at the front door. If her dad doesn’t storm back in in thirty seconds, then she’s safe. She starts counting …
It doesn’t take Chloe long to find her confiscated phone. It’s shoved in her dad’s sock drawer – the same place he hides everything he takes away from his kids. Jamie’s Nintendo 3DS is in there too (swiped on the plane journey when he refused to turn it off for take-off). She snatches her phone up, creeps back out onto the landing and darts into her room. Her heart thuds in her chest as she stands at her bedroom door, listening out in case her dad comes back, then plugs her phone into her charger and turns it on. The Samsung logo swirls on the screen. A second later her apps appear. She holds her breath as she stares at the top left-hand corner of the screen, waiting for the phone to connect to the network and the notifications to appear.
Nothing happens.
She clicks on the text messages app. The last message from Mike was over a week ago. Her sent messages folder reveals the texts she sent him when she was desperately waiting for him to join her in the park but, if he ever received them, he didn’t reply. There are no missed calls either, just the one he answered when, in desperation, she rang his work phone. She checks the time. That was at 6.36 p.m. The first text she sent him was at 6.52 p.m. How could he go missing in sixteen minutes? Oh god. Was he in the van when he took her call? Her dad had joked about him ending up in a ditch but she’s seen the terrifying video of a woman who crashed her car when she was texting instead of keeping her eyes on the road. If her phone call resulted in Mike’s death, she’d never forgive herself. Never.
Chloe opens her bedroom door and peers down the stairs. She needs to tell her mum what she’s discovered. It might be a vital clue. But … she steps back into her room again … how would she explain what has happened? What possible reason could she give her mum to explain why she was arranging to meet Mike or why she had his number in the first place? Even if she could come up with a plausible explanation – something to do with the garden centre maybe – her mum would tell her they needed to contact the police and there was no way they would buy her story. She can still remember the way DS Hope’s eyes bored into her when she’d asked about ‘inappropriate touching’.
No, she can’t go to the police yet. For one thing Mike might not actually be in a ditch. And two, there’s no way he’d forgive her if she accidentally exposed their relationship. She needs to find him. If she sends him a text, he might tell her where he is. Even if he is injured he might still be able to use his phone. Her thumbs fly over the screen as she taps out two messages – one to Mike’s private phone and another to his work phone. She waits with bated breath, her heart thudding in her chest, but nothing happens.
‘Chlo!’ Her mum shouts from downstairs, making her jump. ‘I’m going out for a bit. Look after Jamie.’
Her mum never goes out, not without her dad.
‘Where are you going?’ she shouts as she yanks the phone from the charger, springs back across the landing and hastily shoves the phone back into her dad’s sock drawer.
‘Out. Look after your brother,’ her mum shouts back.
A couple of seconds later she hears the front door slam.
‘Chlo?’ Jamie pokes his head round his bedroom door, clutching a Minecraft manual. ‘What are you doing in Mum and Dad’s room? Has Mum gone out?’
‘Yeah. Dad too, which means I’m in charge.’ She glances at the book in her little brother’s hands as she steps back onto the landing. With everything that’s been going on she’d completely forgotten about the one thing she does have that might hold a clue to Mike’s disappearance.
‘I’m hungry,’ Jamie whines. ‘I want a sandwich.’
‘Get it yourself, I’m busy.’
‘But—’
‘I’m busy,’ she repeats, then steps into her bedroom and shuts the door.
Chloe sits cross-legged on her bed with her duvet wrapped around her shoulders. Resting in the hollow of her legs is the white plastic bag the weird skinny woman shoved at her when she was waiting outside school. Chloe plunges a hand into the bag and pulls out the book inside. It’s pale pink and decorated with multicoloured butterflies. The corners are grubby, the pages are rippled with damp and it smells musty, but she opens the cover. Someone’s written on the unlined inner page
This book is STRICTLY PRIVATE. And it belongs to … actually I’m not telling you who it belongs to, but if you’re reading it I WILL KNOW. SO DON’T.
Chloe smirks and turns the page. The first entry is dated 2 January 1989.
Dear Diary, it begins, today I saw M again. I tried to act cool when he smiled at me as I walked into the dojo but my heart was beating so fast I felt sick. I’ve never felt like this about anyone before. I thought I was in love with X but that was just kids’ stuff. Infatuation. This is the real deal. M isn’t like the boys in my class, he’s different. He’s an adult. And he treats me like I’m one. He listens. He understands me. And I understand him. There’s a connection between us, even when we’re not speaking. I know what you’re thinking, Diary, that this is a stupid crush but it’s not. IT’S REALLY NOT. I have never been so serious about anyone in my life. Anyway, like I said, I tried to act cool when M smiled, and I didn’t smile back. Instead I did a few stretching exercises. But I could feel him watching me. We didn’t speak the whole hour, other than him shouting commands at us, but when he touched my leg and corrected my stance I felt like my whole body was on fire. I couldn’t even look at him. I was so pissed off when Dad turned up on time to pick me up. I really wanted to talk to M. I probably wouldn’t have though. I’d have ignored him. Because that’s the kind of dickhead I am. Ha, ha. God, it’s a WHOLE WEEK until I see him again. How am I going to cope?
Chloe fingers the corner of the page. There’s a part of her that wants to stop reading, that senses that she should, but her curiosity is stronger than her self-preservation and she turns the page.