a one-night stand. You don’t want to see me again. Don’t even want my number.”
“No, wait…”
“It’s fine. Really, it is. I don’t want to give you my number anyway. I’m not after a boyfriend, or even a fuck buddy. I don’t need anybody permanent in my life.”
“Listen, that’s not what I meant.”
She stopped talking, started pushing the eggs around her plate with a fork.
“I meant the opposite, actually. I… I would like to see you again. I do want your number.”
She raised her eyes and stared directly into his face, as if examining him for facial scars. Her eyes narrowed, her nostrils flared.
“My daughter wasn’t the first one to go missing. She was the fourth. The final one.”
Marc said nothing. He didn’t want to break the spell. That’s exactly how it felt; as if some kind of magic was being weaved, some form of urban witchcraft.
“The Press called them the Gone Away Girls. It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Like poetry, or a song lyric. They loved that fucking name, the reporters. They used it all the time…I think they were gutted when my Tessa was the last and they didn’t get to use it again, except whenever they resurrected the case to sell some extra copies.” She was rubbing her hands, as if soaping them at the sink, trying to scrub off the dirt.
Marc put down his knife and fork. “You don’t have to tell me any of this. It’s okay. I understand. It’s personal.”
She stood, carried her plate to the sink, and left it there. Then she sat back down at the table. “Tess’s father is still around. He lived in the area. Not in the Grove, not anymore, but nearby. He comes round here sometimes. I don’t know what he’s looking for, but he always wants to have sex. He cries when he comes. He weeps like a baby into my shoulder.”
Marc sat and stared as she spoke, unable to focus his thoughts. Was this a brush-off, or something else? The woman was maddening. She always made him feel as if he’d not quite understood what she’d said, or had missed the crucial point of the conversation.
“I think he wants to save me,” said Abby, looking down at the table, still wringing her hands. “But that’s the last thing I need. They always, always want to save me, and not once do they stop to even think that I might not want to be fucking saved.” Her eyes were shining. She blinked several times before continuing. “Just promise me one thing, Marc. Promise me that you won’t try to save me.”
He could not fight her. The will was too strong.
“I… I promise,” he said, not entirely sure what kind of promise he was making. It felt so much wider, deeper, than what she’d asked.
She nodded her head. “That’s the only thing I’ll ever ask of you, and if you break that promise I’ll ask you to leave and never come back again.” She stood and went to a cupboard, opened the door and took out a cardboard box file. “Every man I’ve ever met seems to think I want to be saved, when all I want is a nice fuck and a warm body next to me at night.”
She dropped the box file onto the table and stepped back, folding her arms across her tiny chest. “There they are. The Gone Away Girls.”
Marc reached out and opened the file. Inside was a sheaf of newspaper clippings, each one reporting the disappearance of a young girl. By the second one — Alice Jacobs — they were already using the collective title Gone Away Girls. Abby was right; they’d been in love with their own invention.
He flipped through the clippings, not reading them but skimming, noting the similar details of each case: a young girl, taken from a place that was considered safe, never seen again. He wondered why he’d never heard of this, especially since he was a journalist. But he’d been working freelance at the time of these abductions, and living in Birmingham for much of the time. Five years ago… where exactly had he been then? It was difficult to pinpoint because he’d moved around so much, chasing stories, looking for the big score that never came. Maybe he’d even been in London, on one of his regular trips to the city? He could never quite settle there, but he always stayed at least a month, sleeping in friends’ spare rooms or on their floors. But he always returned to the north; he always failed to find the big story, the one that would set him up for life…
He wished he’d been the one to coin the term Gone Away Girls. It was a classic, the kind of epithet that lasted, sank deep into the consciousness of everyone interested in the case. He didn’t even feel bad about his envy. He was used to having thoughts like these, and so familiar with the mercenary thought processes of journalism that he’d moved far beyond any vestigial sense of shame years ago.
He put away the clippings and closed the file. Abby was still staring at him. Her eyes were flat; her mouth was a tight little line. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Abby unfolded her arms. She reached down and took the file, clutching it tightly against her chest. “Just remember my little girl’s face, and appreciate that I don’t need saving.” She turned back to the cupboard and put away the file, pushing it right to the back. When she straightened up again, she turned around and leaned the small of her back against the work bench.
They stared at each other in silence.
Somebody began to knock on the front door, quietly at first but with increasing vigour.
Abby glanced over towards the open kitchen door, and the hallway beyond. The knocking continued. Marc looked along the hallway. At the front door, he could see the fuzzy outline of a head beyond the frosted glass.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?”
She shrugged. Her fingers were fidgeting with the buttons on her dressing gown. She crossed her legs at the ankle, one over the other.
Marc finished his coffee.
The knocking grew louder. Then a man’s voice said, “Open the door. I know you’re in there.”
Marc pushed his chair a few inches away from the table, wincing as the legs screeched across the cheap laminated floor covering. He stood and turned towards the back door. “Maybe I should go.”
“No,” said Abby. “No, it’s okay. I’ll deal with this. You just sit down and have another cup of coffee.” She reached for the kettle and flicked the switch to set the water to boil again. “I won’t be a minute.” She moved quickly across the room, closing the door on her way out. The edge of the door bounced when it hit the frame, opening again, but just a couple of inches. He moved across the front of the table, positioning himself so that he could see through the gap. He watched Abby’s white-gowned figure as she approached the door. She smoothed the gown across her hips, flicked her head to shift the hair from out of her eyes, and opened the front door.
Marc couldn’t quite see the man clearly. The doorstep was set down lower than the hallway floor, and Abby’s thin body further obscured his view. They spoke quietly. The man must not be annoyed after all. Perhaps he was merely concerned. Abby glanced over her shoulder a couple of times, as if she were talking about him. The man attempted to manoeuvre his way past her and through the doorway, but she angled her body to block him.
“Come back later,” he heard her say. “I’m busy.”
“Who’s in there?” The man’s head, with his close-cropped hair, bobbed up and down, back and forth, trying to see past her and into the house. He had a thick neck. He wasn’t tall, but he was broad through the shoulders.
Marc jumped in shock when the kettle clicked off. He turned and watched the steam as it rose in a smooth line from the spout. He walked over and made himself another cup of instant. His hands were shaking. Behind him, the door slammed shut. Footsteps padded along the hallway, towards the kitchen door.
When he turned to face the door, she entered the room and sat down at the table. Her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying, or fighting tears. Her face was white but there were pink streaks on her cheeks.
“Are you… are you okay?”
“Yeah.” She looked up, trying to smile, but it didn’t quite work. “I’m fine.”
“Who was that?” He wished he hadn’t asked, but the reporter’s instinct never let him down: he always, always asked the questions that came into his head, as if he did not possess a mental cut-off switch.
“Just an ex-boyfriend… He pesters me sometimes, wants me to have him back.”
“Oh.” He blew on his coffee. Suddenly he didn’t want the drink.
“Listen, I’m sorry but that bastard’s upset me. Can you go?”
