Katy always used to say that we should be grateful for what we do have, that we should always think that it could be worse. I never liked that mindset, but I never told her I didn’t, either. If you’re always thinking about how it could be worse, you start normalising things in your life that aren’t right. You start accepting an average world, a world that cannot be better, because you’re always thinking about how it could be worse.
Katy is my daughter; she always will be. I know this is something a mother should tell her daughter, but it was the other way around with me and Katy. She was wise and I was careless; she was smart, and I was naïve. She was my best friend.
Katy went missing ten years ago. Now I’m living in the worst case, and all those things in my and Katy’s life that we normalised and trivialised over her twenty years with me, well, maybe if we hadn’t, then she wouldn’t be gone.
I’m staring out the kitchen window at the rain dribbling from the gutters, thinking I really should clean them out, and that’s how I fill my day, little tasks like that. I’ll get up, make a list, and it’ll make me feel useful.
I never resorted to alcohol to cope with Katy’s disappearance – well, only once. It was a month after she went missing and I finally started to allow myself to wonder if she’d ever come back. That’s when I drank, and I got into a bit of trouble with Katy’s boyfriend. I threw an empty wine bottle at his mum’s window because I didn’t know where he lived. I accused him of killing her, and to hear those words leave my mouth was the only sobering thing I needed.
The police were called out, but they didn’t press charges. I was just escorted home, told to think about my actions, scolded like I was a child again, but softly, how Katy used to tell me off. The way she didn’t think I was taking care of myself. The men I dated. The trouble I always seemed to start.
I’m much more sensible now, and sober too, and when the nights draw in, instead of turning to drink, I fix things, all kinds of things. Unlike all those crime shows where parents preserve their child’s bedroom, I painted over Katy’s room and took out all her things, packing them neatly away in the loft.
I turned the room into a workshop and at night I lock myself away and listen to Katy’s old playlists and repair TVs, or PCs, anything electronic that people send me to fix, either through the post or by dropping them round. Sometimes I get the odd, rare piece like an old VHS or record player. I don’t charge much, just enough to survive on, but I’m good at it, and it keeps me busy.
I can turn the music up as loud as I like; the neighbours have never complained, maybe they’ve never wanted to, but I’m respectful, apart from when it comes to the music, because I need it to drown out my thoughts. Even ten years later, a thought can catch me off guard. I’ll be taking apart a remote control and I’ll think, ‘Katy would be thirty now, would she be married, would she have children, would she still be living here in Bristol or would she have travelled the world and settled down somewhere else?’
She was always ambitious, the perfect medium between wild and carefree, and level-headed and realistic. She was a creative person, a loved person, my daughter. I choke; my feet feel damp and when I look down water is pooling around my toes, overflowing from the kitchen sink. I reach forward swatting at the tap, and yank at the plug. Instead of rushing to get towels, I stand for a moment, listening to the water drip onto the kitchen floor, to the rain spit against the window.
I close my eyes and start to make a mental list of all the things I should do today.
- Pick up cheese, ham, and bread for Mrs West down the road
- Sort a courier for the TV I repaired last night
- Weed the front garden
I pause. Clear the gutter.
The list loosens my chest slightly; the spots behind my eyes subside and I’m finally able to open them. I reach over for some kitchen roll and start mopping up the water.
I slowly wander through the hallway, my pace quickening as my heart rate returns to normal. I swing open the door to Katy’s room and even though it’s been ten years, sometimes I expect it to have red walls, with fairy lights dangling across her black bedframe, and she’d be propped up in bed with her laptop on, study notes scattered around her, her glasses sliding down her nose, full cheeks pink with excitement as she taps away furiously.
‘What are you working on?’ I say.
But the room turns grey, the grey I painted it.
I catch my reflection in the TV, my dyed red hair frizzy and uncontrollable, my dungarees loose on my slim frame, my age visible on every stretch of skin, the last ten years borne into the deep creases in my forehead, the sallow skin under my eyes.
I sigh, pulling my phone from my front pocket to arrange a courier. I fixed the TV last night, I say to myself, I fixed something. I glide a hand over the wide frame, thinking about the home it will go back to, the family who will sit around it and watch crappy TV on a Saturday night with fish and chips and warm blankets.
My little bungalow is cold. The TV rarely goes on. The only noise is Katy’s playlist. Reserved for when it’s too dark outside, for when the walls close in. For when my thoughts take me back to the night she disappeared.
* * *
I’m working on my next project, repairing an old PlayStation 2. Katy used to play video games when she was young, but she was always on the PC in the lounge; she said she wanted her gaming to be social, and I had to listen to her running commentary on whatever game she was into at the time. It was mainly The Sims; she’d point at the screen, and there would be a character named after me, with the same dyed hair and bad dress sense.
I’d have my own house, our little bungalow that Katy built from scratch with its kitsch patterned wallpaper, bright yellow kitchen with brown cupboards, and deep red carpet in the lounge.
We moved in when she was little; it was our first garden as we came from a flat in central Bristol. I raised Katy by myself and I didn’t have much money, I got pregnant young and didn’t have the luxury of college or university, and I got by working in shops, with help from my parents when they could, mainly looking after Katy while I did my best to support both of us.
My dad always said it was a crying shame to waste my talent, and it always left me feeling sour. I didn’t see Katy as a waste, I saw her as my life, my whole life. I eventually made him see that too, and he taught me how to fix things, so I could build a future for my daughter.
My dad passed away fifteen years ago from a heart attack. He had a repair shop in town and taught me electronics and to my delight, and his relief, I learned quickly. I never showed much interest in it growing up and he didn’t push it, but now I needed him, and he knew that.
I worked there for years, and planned to take it over when he retired, but business wasn’t good. The rent skyrocketed and it all became, as he said, too much.
He closed the shop, and I went back to working in a local supermarket and he started doing odd jobs, until one day Mum got the call.
Katy cried, loud tears that I could hear all the way down the corridor of the hospital when we visited him and were told he wasn’t going to make it. She was always close to my parents, especially her grandad. She grieved for a long time after that.
Mum decided to move into a care home after a few years and sell their little cottage in the Cotswolds. It went for a good price, and she set aside money to pay for Katy’s degree. ‘It’s what your dad would have wanted,’ she’d said, knowing how much Katy was looking forward to studying creative writing at university, and how worried I was about affording it.
Katy decided to go to Bristol University and live at home whilst she studied. I asked her so many times if that’s what she really wanted and she insisted it was. And she wanted me to invest the money saved on her university room fees in myself. ‘You should set up your own business,’ she’d said.
I glance at the clock on the wall. My mum calls every day from her care home in North Bristol at exactly 5pm, and I used to enjoy the routine of it, but I don’t feel like talking much today. Would it be terrible to ignore the call, to pretend I was in the shower or fetching milk from the shop? But she would worry, and I don’t want her to worry, I know what that’s like.
It’s 4.30 when I hear my phone vibrating on the kitchen counter. She’s calling a little earlier than usual and it isn’t like her, but sometimes she likes her dinner early so she can watch a film before bed.
I pick up the phone but it isn’t Mum, it’s an unknown number. I don’t answer the calls anymore, they were every day at first when Katy went missing. News outlets, distant family, Katy’s university friends. I was happy to talk, because my hope was still palpable, I spoke like Katy was coming home that night, that she was going to swing open the front door at any moment.
But the calls slowed down and my hope dwindled. It’s never been snuffed out completely, but it simmers quietly. When the police didn’t find Katy, and days became weeks, then months, then years, everyone lost interest.
‘Hello?’ I answer.
‘Grace? Grace Harper?’ a woman says in an excited, upbeat voice. There’s some surprise in her tone, but she clears her throat like she’s composing herself.
‘Speaking.’
‘I’m Maggie, I’m an executive producer at Hush Media. I wanted to speak to you about a new project we’re working on, it’s very early days, and of course we wanted to come to you first.’
‘Is this about Katy?’
‘It is. I know you must have been approached by so many studios over the years, but I really feel we can do her story justice.’
I don’t respond.
‘Grace?’
‘I’m here.’
‘Well, let me tell you a bit more about it. It would be a documentary, we already have a few networks who are interested, and we’re looking to collaborate with the Finding Katy podcast team. Have you listened to the podcast?’
I haven’t. I’m aware of it; one of Katy’s friends texted me telling me it was okay, that it didn’t exploit her case, that it might be a good thing, if anything, to shine a light on her cold case again.
‘A documentary?’
‘That’s right.’
‘About Katy?’
‘Yes, about her life, who she was, framing some of the lines of enquiries the police pursued.’
I take a deep breath. I have been approached, over the years, by studios and podcast companies, all wanting to interview me or get my consent for films or documentaries. I always said no before, because it felt like an ending, Katy’s epitaph, and that admission was too much.
But the podcast has got people talking again. I’ve scanned social media and seen the hashtag #findingkaty trending, and Katy has been pushed to the forefront of people’s minds. I hoped that the podcast would uncover new evidence that might encourage the police to reopen the investigation, but it didn’t, but that’s not to say no one else could. That hope starts stirring again and I try to suppress it.
‘Would you come in to meet us? We’re based in central Bristol, just off King’s Street. We’d love to take you for lunch.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I say quietly.
‘We’ll have a really good team on this, Grace, some of the best researchers there are.’
‘I understand.’
‘Okay, well, I’ll give you my details and you can reach out at any time, but we really want you to be at the centre of this story.’
I am at the centre of this story, I think.
‘Do you think …?’ I say, but stop.
‘Yes? Ask me whatever you want, please.’
‘Well, have you done other documentaries like this?’
‘We have, I can send a list of our portfolio if you like? But you can also find all the information on our website, Hush Media dot co dot uk.’
‘I’ll check it out.’
‘Please do. Is there anything else?’
I shake my head, but I stop. ‘Have cases ever been reopened because of shows like this?’
She doesn’t reply instantly, and when she does, she speaks slowly, then with certainty. ‘We have found out new information from our own internal investigations and research, and we share everything with the police.’
‘Okay.’
‘We can’t promise that’s what will happen here, but we think Katy’s story is very compelling, and there were so many loose threads, so many people that they think were involved in her disappearance. I don’t think it’s over yet.’
Then the hope pushes its way up my throat and I gasp. ‘Really?’
‘Come in and meet us and we can talk all about it. We do have some questions for you, things we need to go over, but we want you to be involved the entire way.’
‘Okay, I’ll meet you.’
‘Ah, that’s wonderful,’ she sounds happy, but she doesn’t run away with it, instead she evens her tone and says, ‘I’m sorry about what happened to your daughter.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, before we say our goodbyes and arrange to meet the following week. When I hang up the phone, my phone immediately rings again. Mum. 5pm, right on the dot. I don’t pick up though, Mum will have to worry just for tonight, because I’m too excited to speak to her, she’ll sense it and then I’ll have to explain something I don’t fully understand yet.
But maybe this time the police will listen, maybe Finding Katy was just the beginning, it just scratched the surface of what happened the night she went missing. Like the woman said, there were so many lines of enquiry, so many people who could have been involved. Someone must know something.