The second episode is on in a few hours. I think about calling Joanna and taking her up on the offer to watch it together, but now I wonder if I’ll watch it at all. It’s accomplishing what I want it to, it’s getting attention. Joanna messaged me saying it was getting a lot of buzz online, whatever that means. Good buzz? I messaged back and she said it was.
Maybe people see through Graham, and how tacky the show is for making Katy out to be someone she isn’t.
But there’s a need to know. Katy’s English professor will be on tonight and this is an accusation he can’t ignore, so what will he say? I dread seeing myself again, remembering all the things I said and how out of context they could be made out, how they could be strategically edited to be anything the studio wants it to be.
I didn’t go to Joanna’s, I couldn’t bear to face her today, but I didn’t want to let her down either. Half four came and went and I eventually got a message from her asking if everything was okay, if I was just running late? I pretended I’d forgotten, that I got so caught up in my own thoughts that I fell asleep on the sofa because I was so shattered. She replied with a smiley face and, just like her, said it was fine, that it didn’t matter, that she’d see me whenever I was feeling up to it.
I stare down at her message, the concern and love she has for me. It’s hard not to see Katy in her words sometimes, not to resent her because she isn’t Katy and never will be.
I look up, at the chair Katy used to sit in when we’d have movie or TV nights, a small green bowl of salted caramel popcorn propped up on her lap, a colourful crochet blanket draped around her shoulders.
‘What we watching tonight then, Mum?’
‘Your show is on.’
‘We shouldn’t watch it, I’m sure there’s something better on, there has to be. What about a Disney film? We never watch those anymore.’
I laugh. ‘I thought you’d outgrown them.’
‘You can’t outgrow Disney films.’
‘Maybe not.’
She looks at me, seriously now. ‘Please don’t watch it, Mum, what good will it do?’
‘It might bring you back to me,’ I say.
She shakes her head. ‘You know that isn’t true.’
I blink, pressing my eyes together, shaking my head, but when I open my eyes Katy isn’t there. I’m alone.
I open my laptop and stare at my empty inbox. I didn’t reply to Maggie’s email. I’ll speak to her tomorrow. Maybe I’ll create my own buzz online; I could contact the papers and say how the show wasn’t what I got involved in. If Katy’s documentary is a story now, then journalists must want to speak to me, mustn’t they?
I have Facebook, but I haven’t checked it for years. I don’t have any updates, or anyone I want to keep in touch with. Why would I? All anyone wanted to talk to me about was Katy. I saw the pity dance across their faces, or I could read between the lines in their words. It always came back to her.
My mum’s right. I lost myself the day Katy went missing. I used to have a small group of friends, I was a regular at the pub, I used to update Facebook with the things I’d fixed and it grew into a way to get new business. That mainly happens through recommendations now and people finding me through Google.
I wanted to find romance again at some point. I’d been out on a few dates when Katy was around sixteen, but nothing ever lasted. The police questioned me about men I’d been seeing at the time and in the years leading up to Katy’s disappearance, but there was no one. I was surprised the papers didn’t pick me apart, a single mother, down the local pub regularly, my dyed hair tied up in a messy bun, my hands and fingernails covered in dirt and oil, the only smart clothes a plain grey dress from Dad’s funeral.
Maybe it’s what I think of myself. When Katy disappeared I became exposed, an open wound that never really closed.
I open the door to my workshop, Katy’s old bedroom. I get flashbacks sometimes, especially since seeing her face last night on TV, the video footage of when she was little playing in the front garden, and photos of her and Joanna. She was happy, wasn’t she? Living here with me. With her bedroom. With her life.
That’s one thought, one theory, I won’t entertain. That she could ever take her own life. But Joanna, after a night of drinking heavily, said you never really know how someone is, what they’re going through. I shake my head. No, not Katy, she was excited about her future.
‘I didn’t ask her if she was okay enough,’ Joanna had said.
‘She was okay. She is okay,’ I had replied.
That was late into the second year, when we still thought she might come home to us, but we started to wonder.
I push aside an old TV to make room and pull open Katy’s old wardrobe. Dust flies out and floats in the late afternoon haze, and a streak of orange light shines through a crack in the blinds where Juniper, our cat, jumped up to attack a bird outside.
In the bottom of the wardrobe are boxes, musty and soft and worn. They are filled with all the evidence I collated in the years after Katy went missing. The timelines, the possible routes, the houses that have a view of her exit from work. The documents I took to the studio the first time only scratch the surface of my years of work putting together my own investigation.
The police checked CCTVs in the area and she wasn’t seen in any of them, but I refused to believe that was a dead end. I spoke to everyone I could think of, I knocked on doors where I knew the police had already been, and everyone was sympathetic until they weren’t. I got a call from Detective Lane and he told me I had to stop, that the police were doing all they could.
I stroke the boxes and pull one out onto the floor, unfolding the lid. On top is a wodge of papers. I know I’ll see it in the documentary, because I showed the studios some of what I had found, though I knew none of it would help. The police already had all the information, but said there was nothing they could do with it. At the top of the pile is a note I found in Katy’s desk. It’s tattered and creased, her handwriting smudged from age and tears, but the words are clear.
I traipse to the lounge and lower myself onto the sofa. It’s almost time, but whilst I’m waiting I check the forum. I haven’t looked since the first episode of Katy’s show aired. I wonder what they have to say. When I sign on, the forum has exploded; the intermittent conversations and the occasional back and forth have turned into a rampant discourse flashing before my eyes. New people have joined, names I don’t recognise, and in between them all the usual names, speaking calmly and rationally, but it doesn’t stop, the dialogue speeds across my screen hungry and fervent. They’re discussing Katy. What Graham said about her. The affair. It all descends into chaos, accusations slung at my daughter. There’s so much noise, it drowns any reason, any solace I could have found with people who stuck around, who cared. It’s attracted the worst kind of people. They slowly fell away like dead skin in the years after Katy went missing, but they’re back.
FORGET_IT
Can you believe that cheating bitch
FIZZYCOLA
Slag
CRIMEPIE
She brought it on herself
MORTISH
Getting involved with her teacher, typical
AMA
These comments aren’t welcome here
MORTISH
She got herself killed, by being a slut
I slam my laptop shut, unable to bear it. My heart feels like it’ll explode in my chest, but there’s only forward. There’s only ever been one sure route.
I turn on the TV and take a deep breath.