I’m nearly home again, about to turn into my drive, when a flash of red ahead catches my eye: Lily’s front door, swinging open. I feel a pulse of alarm and continue past the fork that leads to my house and up to hers, parking on the pebbled drive in front of her cottage.
‘Lily?’ I call, running in. ‘Lily, are you OK?’
I find her in the living room, standing in the corner. She’s wringing her hands, her eyes unfocused. ‘Lily,’ I say softly, ‘what’s wrong?’
‘He’s gone,’ she says. ‘The little boy. He’s gone again …’
Uh oh. I settle her in a chair, head to the kitchen and make her a cup of tea. Normally she settles down after a minute or two when she’s confused. When I come back she’s still in her chair but staring out of the window, her blue eyes filled with tears.
‘Oh, Lily, what’s wrong?’
‘My boy. I can’t find him.’
‘Which little boy is this, Lily?’
‘My little boy,’ she says impatiently. ‘I’ve been looking all over. I can’t find him.’
‘Do you want me to help you look?’ I say slowly. I seem to remember you’re not supposed to contradict them when they’re muddled.
‘I’ve looked all over. I’ve been all round the house, I called in the garden. But I couldn’t remember his name!’ She’s clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. ‘He’s gone, he’s gone.’
She’s so upset that I try to bring her back to the present. I kneel down by her side.
‘I don’t think there is a little boy. Do you remember, Lily? It’s OK, no one’s here now.’
She seems to calm down, after that. But I make a mental note to find out what help there is for her. Because this is not working.
I don’t bother making dinner myself. I assemble crackers on a plate, a smear of hummus, cut up an apple, and eat it standing up, trying to work out the source of my unease. Lily will be OK, surely. I can sort it. But my conversation with Holly has got under my skin. I feel fidgety, off-kilter.
Even I can see that Sophie’s friends need to get on with their lives, that they can’t stay stuck in the past, like me. But our conversation has shifted my view of their friendship, something that had seemed as clear to me as the sky was blue: Sophie was the quieter, responsible one, Holly the adventurer, pushing the boundaries. Was that not quite the case?
I wonder what else I might be wrong about.
I sit on the sofa and flick on the TV with the remote, scrolling through the channels, unseeing. I flick it off again, then pick up one of my old magazines from the coffee table. The silence I welcomed when I moved here presses down on me, a thick blanket I can almost feel. My beautiful, empty home. Suddenly I’m shockingly, furiously angry. How could she do this to us? To me?
I can feel the tears pressing in my throat, the grief about to come. I’d rather stay angry. I throw the magazine in my hand, the pages arcing through the air to the carpet. I don’t feel better. So I go, quite deliberately, to the mantelpiece and knock the vase of flowers onto the floor, water and petals spilling everywhere.
It’s satisfying. So I make a clean sweep of my tasteful ornaments. The heavy jade elephant, there it goes. And there goes the carriage clock, a present from Mark’s parents. I never liked it much anyway! The cards behind it flutter to the floor in its wake.
I stop short, remembering that I keep them propped up there. I didn’t know what else to do with them. I didn’t want to hide them away: the reason we think she’s OK.
I crouch, carefully plucking them out of the debris on the carpet. I’m sorry, Sophie. I’m not angry. Fat tears drop down. I make sure they don’t mark the cards, as I lay them on my glass coffee table, pictures up, in a row. They’re fine. Then I turn them over. No smudges. No bends. They’re fine. The card on top is showing signs of age, the biro ink darker. I’d recognise that handwriting anywhere, though.
The first one arrived a fortnight after she’d gone. I came downstairs that morning and saw it on the mat, under a gas bill and a circular for a new Chinese takeaway. The photo was of a beach, curving yellow sand under a bright blue sky, the red script in the top left-hand corner shouting: SPAIN! I turned it over. The address started ‘Kate and Mark Harlow’. The message itself was brief.
I know you’ll be worrying. Please don’t. I’m safe and I’m well. I love you.
Sophie xxx
The card trembled in my hand. Sophie had always written like she was in a tearing hurry, her words looping across the page. And there was her doodle in the corner next to her name, like she always did, a happy little flower.
Everyone had been positive. This was what we’d been waiting for: a solid development. Not only that, but Sophie had deliberately got in touch, reached out to us. We’d handed it into the police. They’d been circumspect as ever, but I could see it in Kirstie’s face: this was Good News.
What it meant was less clear. It was postmarked London. ‘Could she could have got someone to post it for her, maybe? A friend passing through?’ Mark wondered aloud.
He took it upon himself to make the calls, spread the news through the web of friends and family, his parents, my dad, my sister, all the rest.
‘Well yes. It’s very encouraging really … we can all breathe a little easier.’ There’d even been some rueful laughter. I could imagine what they were saying at the other end of the line. That Sophie. Well, really. But we knew she’d come back home eventually, they always do.
Afterwards, he’d opened a bottle of champagne, poured it out into our best flutes and handed me one. As I stayed silent, he’d gripped me by the arms. I’d been shocked. There were tears in his eyes, I registered, as he told me: ‘It’s going to be OK, I promise. Maybe you can relax, just a little?’
I think I nodded. But I couldn’t. It was like hoping that turning off a tap might halt a flood.
Soon, the police came back to us: the expert agreed that this was her handwriting. But as to how it got to us, they didn’t know much more. My visions of them tracking the card back to the postbox where it was sent, pulling CCTV to show a small figure slipping it into the slot, soon faded. The postmark showed it was processed in north London, that was all.
We learned that what goes through the postal system gets covered in strange traces of all sorts, chemicals and blood and things you would rather not know about. Still, they managed to collect some prints off the card, ran them through the database just in case: nothing alarming came up, no matches with sinister prison escapees, anything like that.
And the news that she’d sent us a postcard sparked more media interest, the articles taking on a lighter tone that I didn’t expect: Sophie appearing as a cheeky rebel on a jaunt, sending a postcard home to the parents. One columnist asked if she should be commended for her spirit of adventure, another if her departure would have drawn the same concern if she were a boy. There was a warning note, however, about the drain on police time, a reminder that serious cases needed attention.
And then … nothing happened. Not for a while.
Eventually I did stop going out searching, which made Mark calmer for a bit, reassured that I wasn’t wandering through some abandoned warehouse in the city. Wherever she was, I’d realised, it wasn’t within my reach – not physically.
Going out had got trickier, anyway, close to home.
‘So. You only had the one child,’ the woman said to me, rearranging her handbag on her arm. ‘And then you went back to work?’
‘Yes,’ I said, taken aback. I tried to place her name. A mother from the school? She’d come up to me outside the newsagent’s, patting me on the arm: ‘How are things? Any news?’
‘So why was that?’ she said, then, not hiding her curiosity. No, I didn’t know her at all.
‘Why w— I’m sorry, my parking’s about to run out. I’d better go.’
So I went online, where I started trawling message boards, special ones for runaways, expat communities that a traveller might pass through, forums for postal workers who might keep an eye out on their rounds. I’d leave a photo with a note: ‘Have you seen Sophie Harlow?’ Keeping my messages loving, worried, but encouraging. Never desperate, never angry. Keep it together.
There was no end to the task I’d set myself, really. There didn’t seem to be so much reason to leave the house then, after that, or to step away from the laptop in our study. I drank, a little, to help me relax. And I had the pills, of course, to soften things round the edge, to help me sleep. I kept busy.
Mark tried to talk, a few times. He even suggested, sheepishly, that he ‘explain about that weekend’. I knew he meant the night he missed Sophie’s note. There hadn’t been many slip-ups over the years. But now I didn’t care. ‘I just don’t want to talk about it,’ I told him. He looked relieved. He’d started going back into the office, just ‘keeping on top of things’.
The journalists didn’t bother to call me any more. Though that was all the police seemed to be interested in, now: a phone call. Could Sophie please ring them so they could establish her safety? In my mind, I filled in what was unsaid: so we can close your case.
The second postcard came in December, dropping onto the mat like before.
You’ll want more than a postcard. But I’m fine, really, and I’m happy. I don’t want you to worry.
Sophie xxx
With her usual flower signature. ‘France’, read the script across the front, on top of a dated-looking photograph of the Eiffel Tower. Again, the postmark was London.
This time there was no champagne.
The next night, Mark’d come home punchy after his work Christmas drinks – I hadn’t gone, of course. ‘Don’t you think it’s time to stop this? What’s it all for, really?’
I turned to see him at the door of the study, where I was on the computer, as usual. There was a slurry edge to his voice. ‘You’re drunk, Mark.’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But you’re one to talk. Holed up in here all the time.’
I stayed quiet.
‘With your pills,’ he continued, ‘hiding away.’
In the argument that followed, I finally said it, what I’d held back from telling him for so long. ‘If you’d seen that note, if you hadn’t been where you were, things might have been different.’
He stiffened. But he didn’t back down like I expected.
‘And some people might say this all happened because of you. Overprotective, because of your mum. And now you’re trying to make up for it.’
‘Oh, really,’ I said coolly, hearing the echo of someone else’s judgement in his words. ‘And who exactly told you that bit of cod psychology?’
He coloured at that. Bingo. So she was still around.
‘The thing about you, Mark,’ I told him, ‘is that you are essentially … lightweight.’
I turned my head away from his hurt expression. He’d never known how to fight dirty.
After that, I just – withdrew. We were polite enough after that, moving around each other in our big house with care. It was just a matter of time. He eventually left after that dreadful first Christmas, with both of us wedged round Charlotte’s table trying to act normally for her boys. He told me we could sort out our stuff later, when things were more ‘settled’.
The police investigation never ended, not officially. It’s not currently active, is how they’d put it. I only realised what the last meeting meant, on that grey February day, when I read about it in the local paper. But I should have known: they said I could have the postcards back and her runaway note, they had all the information they needed from them.
When the third one arrived last summer – Austria this time, fresh mountains and gambolling lambs, the postmark London again – Kirstie took the details from me over the phone.
I’m fine, I’m happy. I don’t want to come home, not yet. I hope you understand.
Sophie xxx
The same with the last one, roughly six months later, in January, this year.
I’m OK, I’m looking after myself and I’m safe and well. Please give me space and time.
Sophie xxx
That was Venice, beaming gondoliers, with another London postmark. I’d thought a lot about her request for space and time. Did that mean she knew of my attempts to contact her, somehow?
I imagined some quiet church somewhere, Sophie tanned – an inch taller, too, maybe – pausing, for a moment, and deciding to head in. Telling her companions – who? I pictured young men with scruffy beards, girls with long hair, in those global traveller clothes: baggy printed trousers, drooping cloth bags.
She’d go in to light a candle – she used to like doing that – her steps slowing as she sees the poster, with her last school photo, that I’d stuffed into envelopes and sent out with notes asking churches to mention her in their services and to pin her picture to their walls. ‘Sophie,’ it reads. ‘Come home.’
Finally, my message has found its target. She walks closer, reaches out a hand to the paper …
The cat mews, butting against my legs. He must be hungry again.
Now, I stare at the messages in front of me, as familiar to me as nursery rhymes. She was always so sparky, but these are dutiful missives home – not to connect with those she’s left behind so much as to let us know that she’s safe, no need for any more panicked efforts to find her. Please leave me alone.
I feel spacey, tired from the heat and what’s happened. I just sit, with the postcards and the note scattered in front of me, but not really seeing them. I must remember to take the washing in, when I can be bothered. The letters go out of focus, so they jump and swim before my eyes …
It’s barely formed as a thought, but – I read downwards, the first letter of each line, as they’re arranged on the first postcard, trying to let a pattern appear.
I know you’ll be worrying.
Please don’t. I’m safe
and I’m well. I love you.
Sophie xxx
I, P, A …
No. You’d have thought I would have learned by now. I’ve spent days in front of these cards, scrambling the letters, looking for anagrams and codes. There’s no hidden message here. I lean down to rub the cat’s ears. ‘Come on,’ I say, feeling his skull hard under the silkiness. ‘Let’s get you fed.’