I made that missing-person call over two months ago now. The missing-persons team wanted everything. His friends’ phone numbers, addresses, family, work contacts. I gave them his computer, his bank information, told them all the places he frequented. I told them about the bank letting him go. The arguments we’d had about it and how I believed we’d come through it. I told them about his new business plans. I told them about Hector. What Hector said to me on the phone that day. I told them everything they wanted to know. They even took his old toothbrush, for DNA.
Three days after that, DCI Foster turned up on my doorstep too. My connection with another investigation had been flagged by his office. Mark’s disappearance wasn’t being investigated by SO15, of course, but it had piqued their interest. Andy wasn’t there on official business, he told me, but he did have a few questions for me. I answered them, remembering the calls from him I hadn’t returned, guilt flushing my cheeks. I suppose it is hard to believe that one person can be connected to two missing persons and not be involved in both disappearances. But then, if I’ve learned anything recently, it’s that life sometimes is weirdly random.
Convincing Andy that there was nothing to see was difficult. But in the end, I’m a lot of things but I’m not part of a terrorist organization. I never had anything to do with Holli and her flight to Syria. And Mark was a lot of things too, but he certainly didn’t flee to Syria like Holli. It took me a while to convince Andy of that fact, though, and if the police weren’t bugging me before that day, they definitely started bugging me after.
I keep my eyes peeled in the news for anything about a missing plane but nothing has surfaced in the past two months. The plane people seem to have vanished without a trace. I often think about those people deep underwater; I wonder if they’re still down there in the darkness, still safely strapped in their seats. I try not to, but I do.
I can’t help but wonder what was on that USB, why it meant so much to the man in the woods and, I’m assuming, to whoever he worked for? I’ve thought about it a lot. Those endless files full of encrypted text: were they accounts, details of companies, individuals’ names, addresses? I remember those emails I found in the Russian account back in Bora Bora. Shell companies. Arms. Hacked data. I don’t know. Maybe. But I’m glad I didn’t get a chance to decrypt it; I’m thankful for Eddie’s advice—I’m pretty sure they would have come looking for me if we’d actually read or copied whatever was on that USB. And what would I have done with that information anyway?
I steered clear of calling Eddie after the police came. Luckily, my follow-up interview with him was booked for the beginning of this month. Phil and I went to his house. Eddie Bishop’s actual house. Simon was there too. Lottie was there. I guess Eddie and his daughter made up, God knows how. Simon had been right—Lottie’s crying must have been a good start. I suppose Eddie is a pretty persuasive guy, and Lottie seemed happy enough.
After filming, Phil left us alone for a couple of minutes while he nipped to the loo. Lottie was with her kids watching cartoons in the TV room. Eddie thanked me again for the favor, for talking to his daughter. He pulled me into a hug.
And as he pulled me close he whispered in my ear. “All sorted now, sweetheart?”
“All sorted, Eddie, all sorted,” I whispered back.
“Glad to hear it. Listen, I’m going to need you to do me another favor, sweetheart. At some point. Nothing too big. Nothing you can’t handle,” he said, and released me from the hug with a sly smile.
Simon grinned at us. “You better watch yourself, Erin. He’s a wrong’un, you know.”
So am I, I thought. It was nice there. I felt welcome. I felt accepted. I suppose I’m part of the group now. Another favor. I should have seen that one coming. He’s got my back, though. I know that. And I owe him, don’t I?
I’m staying at Alexa’s house at the moment. For this week anyway. A fugitive from my own life, I suppose. I just don’t want to be alone in our house on Christmas morning. Not for all the money in the world.
Alexa and her father invited me. I can hear them pottering around in the kitchen downstairs. We’re having ham tonight. Apparently it’s a Christmas Eve tradition. New traditions. New beginnings. They’ve both been really supportive since it’s all happened. Since Mark disappeared.
I know what you’re thinking. I’m starting to believe my own lies. And, yeah, you’re right. But I’d rather believe my lies than the truth in Mark’s eyes in that clearing.
Sometimes I think I can hear him at night rustling around in the darkness of our bedroom. I sleep with the hall light on now. I keep something heavy by the bed.
I’m having Mark’s child. Our child. I’m twenty-one weeks pregnant. Second trimester. I have a bump. According to my app, the baby is the size of a grapefruit now. Her little heart is fully formed and it’s beating at three times the speed of mine. She’s more alive right now than I’ll ever be again. I don’t know how, but I know she’s a girl. I just know.
Alexa’s IUI worked. Two weeks after the police came to my house, Phil, Duncan, and I crowded back into Dr. Prahani’s consultancy room to film Alexa receiving the news. It was a good day. Her pregnancy is not too far behind mine. It’s funny how things work out. It’s going to be nice to have someone to go through it all with and I haven’t heard from Caro once since everything happened. Well, a few phone calls, a coffee, but nothing really. Not that I mind—Caro reminds me of who I used to be, and I’m not sure I understand that person anymore.
I don’t think I’ll ever tell Alexa everything about what happened, even though she’s become a good friend now. She told me not to let it all get to me; of course, she thinks Mark has just run off—my missing husband. But her advice still worked for me: she told me not to let it make me angry, not to let it break my heart, but to remember that we all lose the things we love the most and how we have to remember that we were lucky to have them at all in the first place. Sometimes you’re the lamppost; sometimes you’re the dog. I could definitely take a leaf out of Alexa’s book. She makes me laugh, which is something I realize I haven’t done for quite a while. Sometimes the right people come into your life at just the right time. But then I think of Mark, and, of course, the wrong people do too—don’t they? Sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart. Maybe I will share all of what happened with Alexa one day. We’ll see. After all, she did tell me her story.
I’m going to leave the money alone until after the baby’s born. I can handle the mortgage until then. I’ll be able to sell the house as soon as I am granted guardianship over Mark’s financial affairs in a couple of months. Although it will be a full seven years until they can officially declare him dead.
But I can wait that long. I’m patient. I’ll keep working, keep filming. I’ll do one more favor for Eddie. I’ll use the Swiss money to help once she’s born, and when my daughter is seven, and I’m legally free, maybe we’ll leave this country. Maybe we’ll take the money and disappear. I don’t know yet. We’ll see. But I’m excited for the future. Our future.
It’s 7:39 that evening when Alexa calls out my name from the kitchen; I’m upstairs napping in the guest room, my room. She calls my name just once. Clearly. Loudly. And I get a feeling in my chest I haven’t had for two months. Fear. Tight and sharp and sudden. I know from her tone. Something is happening. The sounds of Christmas Eve cooking have ceased now. The house is eerily still. I follow the sound of the television downstairs and into their cozy kitchen. The scent of our Christmas maple-roasted ham wafts from the closed Aga. Alexa and her father stand frozen, their backs to me, staring wordlessly at the wall-mounted television. They do not turn when I enter. I slow to a halt as I join them and the sense of what I’m seeing hits me. On screen, BBC News 24, a live feed to a shop-lined street—a deserted London street, maybe Oxford Street. But it’s abandoned. So it can’t be Oxford Street, can it? Oxford Street wouldn’t be abandoned on Christmas Eve. Then I see the police cordon. Police tape across the entire road. An ongoing event. A breaking news event.
We watch in horror as a crouching figure makes a sudden break from the safety of a shopfront bright with Christmas lights. Stumbling blindly out from cover and into the wide empty expanse of the road. The shadow sprints low and fast, terrified, toward the cordon. Away from something we can’t see, away from something terrible.
The crawl scrolls across the bottom of the screen. ONGOING INCIDENT…FATALITIES. TWO ATTACKERS. ARMED POLICE PRESENCE.
If there’s a reporter speaking, I don’t hear them. Everything around me muffles to silence as two photos flash up in the corner of the TV screen. The identities of the attackers. I recognize one of the faces instantly.
Alexa turns her head now to look back at me. To make sure I see what she sees. The photo is of Holli. My Holli. I look back at the screen. At Holli’s pale young face. It’s not a mugshot they’ve used for her picture; that’s the first thing that occurs to me—I don’t know why that’s the first thing that occurs to me, but it is. The photo they’ve used is a holiday snap. From before prison. Before the burning bus. Before any of this. And then it hits me so hard my breath catches in my throat. Something awful has happened. She’s done something terrible this time. Something truly, truly terrible.
Her words come back to me. That day in prison when I asked her what she planned to do next. “You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you? But expect…great things, Erin. Great things.”
She told me. She told me she would do this, didn’t she? I knew. In a way I always knew—not something like this, obviously—but I knew.
But what could I have done? What can you do? You can’t save everyone. Sometimes you just have to save yourself.