Julia snatched the poster from the lamp post. It had only been up a week and already someone had defaced the picture of her little girl. ‘Bastards,’ she yelled as she pulled a fresh poster from her satchel and taped it around the post. She almost lost her balance as the breeze dropped, making the afternoon heat overpowering. The rain mac she’d chosen to wear was her biggest regret, making her sweat profusely, but then again, had it poured down like the weather forecasters had promised, she’d have been happy to have it. She dropped the satchel to the floor and peeled the plastic from her sticky arms before folding the mac and placing it in her bag. She continued to the next post.

Roy’s words ran through her mind. ‘She’ll be back. It’s just a teenage protest thing but you were right to not let her walk all over you. She’ll come home when she’s finished sulking.’ She didn’t believe him though. Her daughter hadn’t even made contact once and three months went way beyond a sulk. She dropped the pile of posters from her trembling hands. A light breeze began to whip through her hair. As she gathered them up, a few of them landed in the river before being carried away downstream, alongside a couple of swans and several cygnets.

‘No.’ She kicked the bench before almost stumbling on it. All it would take was a phone call. Why hadn’t Christina called? Maybe she was in trouble or was she administering the cruellest punishment ever? Wiping the sweat from her forehead she checked her phone. Another day would pass without so much of a word from her daughter.

It was obvious Christina had left voluntarily and they had been arguing a lot. Her suitcase was gone. Her toiletries had been taken. All that was left were gaps in her drawers where all her favourite jeans and tops had been. Her saver account at the post office had been emptied, evident by the paying in book showing the withdrawal in the bedside table drawer. She’d tried to call her daughter but the calls had been rejected. With only three hundred pounds to her name, her daughter can’t have got far. She trembled. How far could she have got? She could get the train to anywhere in the UK with that much money. But then what if she’d run out of money and hitchhiked? Some drug-dealing pimp could have got his filthy hands on her. Every possible scenario seemed to run through Julia’s mind.

The posters wouldn’t distribute themselves. She began walking back towards the city centre. The cathedral stood tall to her right as she continued checking that all the posters she’d put up were still there and easy to see. They were. Taking a right, she spotted Roy sitting on a wall reading a newspaper while drinking a takeaway coffee. ‘Have you put all those posters up, already?’ She still had loads to do. She planned to hang posters by the river, he was meant to be doing the streets through the city centre.

‘I was taking a break.’

She grabbed his bag and pulled out the posters. ‘You haven’t done any, have you?’

‘Look, I just wanted a coffee. When I finish, I’ll go and do the posters.’

‘You don’t care if she comes back, do you?’

He placed his coffee on the paper to weigh it down and stood. ‘Of course I do, darling.’ He put his sunglasses on and went to kiss her.

‘Don’t you darling me. If you cared, you’d be sticking posters to boards, walls and lamp posts. Instead, you sit here, reading crap and drinking coffee.’ She glanced down. He’d been reading the sports pages, some news about the World Cup over the past few weeks. ‘You never did care when she left.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Isn’t it?’ She watched as his thin reddish hair blew in the warm breeze. She couldn’t see his reaction with his sunglasses covering his eyes. As she waited for him to answer, only the tangled hair covering her face reflected back at her in his mirror-finished glasses.

Her once chestnut-brown glossy hair that she’d always tied up was left free around her face. She hadn’t washed it for days. She’d tried to act normally but it hadn’t been easy when all she could think about was Christina.

‘We need to move on because doing this, every weekend, is driving you mad. She’ll come back when she’s ready. She was pissed off when she left, you saw her the day before. Give her time.’

‘Give her time! You’ve never been a parent. If you had, you wouldn’t be standing there like a prick telling me to give her time. My daughter has been missing for months and I will not, just, give it time. I’m looking for her and I’ll find her.’ A woman with three young children crossed the road to get away from her raised voice. ‘Hey.’ The woman glanced back at Julia. ‘If one of your three little girls ran away from home, would you sit back, do nothing and give it time? That’s what this idiot here is telling me to do. You’d do everything you could. You’d be out there day and night, looking for her, wouldn’t you?’ The youngest girl, who can’t have been more than seven, began to cry.

‘It’s okay, sweetie. The lady’s just upset.’ The woman gave the little girl a hug. Julia almost wanted to cry as the youngest girl stared at her. She looked so much like Christina when she’d been that age. She even had a similar lemon-coloured dress and chubby knees.

‘You’d be out there every day…’ Julia felt a tear slip down her cheek.

‘I’m sorry. You’re upsetting my children,’ the woman called back as she grabbed the child’s hand and hurried away.

‘Now look what you’ve done. That poor woman was trying to cross the road in peace. This obsession has to stop. Christina chose to leave. She will come back when she’s ready.’

‘She wouldn’t punish me like this.’

‘Wouldn’t she? You saw the way she changed, the way she was with both of us.’

He was wrong. The more she looked at him, the more she could see he had his own agenda. He never liked Christina and he was probably glad she’d gone. ‘Christina was angry but she wouldn’t go anywhere for this long. None of her friends have heard from her. The police are doing sod all. Appeals have come up with nothing. All she has is me. I don’t care if you want to sit here, wasting time drinking coffee and reading your shit. I will never stop looking for my daughter. That’s what being a mother means.’ She snatched the rest of the posters and continued into the town.

‘Julia? Bloody hell.’ As she turned she noticed him, paper in hand, striding towards the car park. She’d get the bus home at her leisure, when she’d finished putting posters up.

A car horn buzzed as she stepped out. ‘Get out the road,’ a man shouted. Her heart pounded. If she’d been walking a little bit quicker, she’d have been knocked over. Holding her hand up, she continued crossing and headed towards the library.

The new building stood out like a honey themed beacon. The Hive was built with golden coloured tiles, making it look like a large beehive. That’s where she’d start. With the city centre posters in her firm grip, she jogged towards the main entrance. She would find Christina. As she swallowed, she almost choked. The possibility that Christina would never come home hadn’t crossed her mind. For a second it did, sending her legs into a wobble and almost collapsing beneath her. Tears began to flood her face. Never seeing her daughter again was too much to handle. She fell to the floor, gripping the posters as people passed with their shopping bags, not one of them stopping to ask if she was all right. Now she knew what true loneliness felt like.