I’m so sick of staring at my computer screen. I’ve spent the morning falling deep into an internet hole, bogged down in the rules around teenagers and privacy. Dr Heath’s right, of course. If a teenager gets pregnant, medical workers don’t have to keep her parents informed if … I don’t want to think about it. But Sophie could have done anything, and I wouldn’t know. They respect her privacy. And she can just go into any of the centres in town for help, there’s no need for her to involve the family doctor at all.
Or maybe I’ve got this all wrong, am jumping to conclusions. This feels so pointless and familiar, immersed in web pages, digging and digging, getting nowhere.
I stare out of the study window. It’s been so hot the trees are already yellowing. Or could it be autumn starting early? It’s so hard to keep track. I feel stupid and drowsy. I could take a nap …
And isn’t there something else I’m supposed to do, something I should check? It’s dancing on the edge of my consciousness, like when you can’t remember something just as you fall asleep … I fell asleep quickly last night, tired out after my run. But I’m sure I still woke up again, took a pill or two …
And then I catch my thought again: who’s Nancy? That Lily mentioned. I’m always intrigued by Lily’s life, she can be really quite guarded.
I don’t really expect to find anything, but I type it in anyway. Just to check.
Nancy – I pause, type more – Vale Dean. That’s all I know.
Oh. I see. I lean forward.
New appeal over missing Vale Dean girl
Sister of schoolgirl missing for 20 years says she’s never given up hope.
Twenty years after she vanished, Nancy Corrigan is still missing
Missing
Missing
Missing
So there was another girl, who went missing too.
Nancy.
It doesn’t take me long to read what’s online. The articles are sparse, archive stuff that local papers have put on their websites. The twentieth anniversary they’re marking was back in 2012, before we moved here. But I quickly glean the basics.
Nancy Corrigan was a local girl, who went missing in April 1992. Sixteen years old.
She’s not one of those that I’ve heard of, that I try not to think about any more.
The housewife who stepped out and left a note ‘back in two minutes’. The baby left in the rear seat of a car, just for a moment, and never found. The children known by their first names only – or over-familiar nicknames that their families never used. And all the pages devoted to them online, articles and discussion forums. What happened? Where did they go? Without a trace.
My family told me to stop torturing myself. Eventually, I listened.
And it’s so very different to our situation, I tell myself. Thank God we heard from Sophie, that she didn’t just disappear. But they fill me with cold horror, all the same.
I make myself continue, but I can’t find much from the time it happened, just the few marking the twentieth anniversary and repeating the appeal for information. There’s a sister who’s quoted.
‘This is a difficult time of year,’ said Olivia Corrigan, 29. ‘I have never lost hope that we will hear from her again. I think about my big sister a lot.’
There’s not much else, but I keep scrolling.
Oh, I see. That’s why I haven’t heard of her. Not such a mystery, after all. She ran away. So that’s why Lily got mixed up.
Nancy left a note, too.
I wonder, vaguely, if I’m going to be sick. Suddenly I’ve got to know. What happened next? So she never came back? Did they ever hear from her again? I feel caught out, like I should have known about this. But why would I? It’s so long ago.
Think. It’s a Saturday, so Lily will be out – she gets picked up by people from the church for a coffee afternoon, I know that. It’s fine, I can just ask her later. If she remembers any details. My heart sinks a little. It’s hard to get information out of her at the best of times. She hates to admit she’s forgotten anything. Sometimes she pretends not to hear me. ‘You what, dear?’
Olivia Corrigan, 29. So she’d be 35 now. Younger than me. It brings Nancy’s story closer, out of the past.
But it doesn’t mean anything for you, I tell myself, it’s not a sign. It’s not. Don’t think like this. There are so many families like mine, after all. That’s what working on the helpline’s taught me. So many parents whose children don’t – won’t – come home, I tell myself, even as I go into the hall and rummage for my car key in the drawer. The library’s not far, it’s just off the high street in the village. And then I can just settle my mind.
The phone rings as I’m going through the front door and I wait until it clicks to answerphone, the voice carrying loud from the kitchen. It’s Charlotte again.
‘Kate,’ she sounds harassed, noise in the background: the boys. ‘Kate, are you ignoring my calls now? It’s really not on.’
No, she sounds upset. Nothing drives Charlotte crazier than someone ignoring her. I should know, it was my last resort to wind her up when we were little. I’d compose my face, and block her out.
It’s harder now. ‘I really need to talk to you, I mean it, Katherine.’ Like Mum used to call me. She’s definitely mad. ‘You are not doing to me what you’ve done to everyone else. I’m not letting you. Call me back, or I’m coming round. Soon.’
Shit. I almost stop, pick up the phone to call her back, then tell myself I’ll wait – I’ll go now, before the library closes, then I’ll call her. Maybe.
I have to speak to the librarian to get access to the archives and sign something promising I won’t make off with any of their microfilm, but after explaining the machine to me, a sort of light-up magnifying box with a screen, he leaves me alone in a small dark cubby off the main room.
It’s story time this afternoon, and snatches of the book being read to the half a dozen or so children drift through the door left ajar. ‘Once upon a time, there was a princess, who lived in a castle …’
They’ve only kept records of the very local papers here, the weeklies, they don’t even have copies of the daily evening paper. But as I’m here, I might as well look. I’ve a pile of little paper boxes to go through, each containing weeks, months, of Amberton Telegraphs copied in miniature onto small rolls of film. The librarian’s showed me how to do it; loading the right one into the machine for me to start me off.
I start scrolling, turning the knob on the machine, and watch the pages of old newsprint blurring on the screen in front of me till I near the date Nancy went missing, Friday 10 April, 1992.
I start to track forward more slowly. It’s easy to find once I’ve got the hang of it: an appeal for a runaway Vale Dean schoolgirl. It’s dated 15 April, the Wednesday after she went, so the first mention in the local paper. She’s made the front page, alongside suspected arson at Amberton football ground.
The piece about her is surprisingly short, just a headline and a couple of hundred words, relating that police are appealing for information after Nancy Corrigan, 16, from Vale Dean, went missing. She left a note signalling her intention to run away, it says.
There are a few more details, but not much. I suppose it would all have been covered in the bigger papers already. She went to Amberton Grammar, like all the kids round here still do, if they can get in. It’s still a good school. Her family are concerned for her welfare.
The next week’s edition’s missing – the film just reels right on to the following paper without a gap. But this time the article has a bit more detail: a sixteen-year-old boy questioned by police has been released without charge. The rest of it just repeats what I know already. It doesn’t seem like anyone was panicking.
So what happened to the boy?
But I can’t find another mention of him and I get sidetracked as I scroll through the pages on the reader, my attention wandering into details of decades-old mayoral visits and planning disputes. A Cabinet member visited Amberton and was egged outside the town hall, the photographer catching him furious in his grey pinstripe. The church is appealing for a new roof. It still is today, I think. The more things change …
I’m getting stiff, my lower back seizing up. Wanting to move, I wander out of the side room and over to the water fountain by the main desk. I feel grumpy and tired. I should be worrying about Sophie, I think now, not this. But what exactly can I do? I should be honest with myself: I’m just looking for distractions.
‘How are you getting on?’ says the librarian. He’s tall, thin, with a friendly air. I’ve told him I’m researching local history.
‘Not that well. It’s missing some of the dates I’m looking for, the film I’m looking at. There’s no paper for 22 April that year?’
‘Ah, well,’ he says, frowning slightly. ‘It’s all going digital so we’re not exactly on top of it all, I must admit. What are you looking for, anyway?’
‘I’m looking into a local girl, who went missing. Nancy Corrigan.’
‘They’ll have more papers at the Central Library, in the city centre. I think you’ll have to make an appointment. You might need to be a student. Are you a student?’
‘No.’ I can see he’s waiting for an explanation ‘I mean, it’s a personal project. I’m looking into the social impact of – of missing persons on small communities.’
‘Ah well, it should be fine then,’ he says. ‘Fascinating story, too.’
This gets my attention. ‘Nancy? The missing girl? You know about her?’
‘Oh, it was all very sad,’ he says cheerily. ‘And of course, it was what, twenty years ago?’
‘Nearer thirty. So did you know her? Are you local?’
‘I am yes, grew up round here. But she was a bit older than me.’ He must be younger than he looks. ‘But we used to go and look at the house after the family left, dare ourselves to get into the grounds. You know how kids are.’
‘What house?’
‘I forget the name. You know the big grey one. Park Road, the one on its own at the end.’
‘She lived at Parklands?’
‘That’s it. Parklands.’ He misreads my look of surprise. ‘It would have been different in those days, a lovely house. Grand, even. They had big parties on the lawns …’
So Nancy lived at Parklands. No wonder Lily got mixed up. Another runaway girl. And then they all left. How could they? What if she came home one day and they’d gone? The door closed, a new family in the house, like Peter Pan. I push down the rush of concern. It’s not my story. But now I’m curious.
‘It said in the papers that a boy was questioned?’ I ask.
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ He starts to tidy, moving books about, then he stops. ‘But my cousin went to school with her. Nancy. She might remember things. I could ask her if she’d speak to you, for your project.’
‘Uh, OK. Would you?’ I’m always surprised at the friendliness here. I was in London too long. I pull out a piece of paper from my bag and grab the pen in front of me, before he changes his mind.
‘I’m Kate,’ I say. I don’t write down my surname, just in case. I’ve had enough of the questions.
‘David.’ He gives me a little awkward wave from behind the counter.
‘So here’s my number, if she—’ as my phone starts ringing in my bag. ‘I’m so sorry.’ I fumble for it as he gives me a look and tilts his head meaningfully at story time. ‘I’d better take it outside,’ I whisper. On the other side of the sliding doors I wrestle it out.
It’s a withheld number. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Mrs Harlow? DI Nicholls here.’
‘Yes, it’s me. Hello?’
‘Can you come into the station today? Something’s come up.’
‘Uh, OK. Now?’ I glance at my watch. It’s just after four.
‘Yes please, if you could.’
‘What’s this about?’
‘Something’s come up,’ he repeats.
Fear clutches at me. ‘Is it bad news? Have you—’
His voice is firm. ‘It really would be best if you came in to discuss it.’
‘Yes, of course. I can be there in ten.’
I lick my dry lips as I end the call. Something digs into my palm. I look down, realise I’m still holding the librarian’s pen, my knuckles white around it, and head back in.
‘Oh, I thought you’d gone.’ The librarian, David, sticks his head out of the cubby. ‘Have a look at this.’
I follow him in. ‘Sorry, I’ve left all my stuff everywhere, haven’t I, I’ll just get my jacket’ – I want to get out now, my mind on what’s ahead – ‘and here’s your pen back.’ I start to shuffle my jacket off the back of the chair he’s commandeered.
‘I really should sort these archives out,’ he’s saying, ‘but you know, with the amount they expect us to do now, we’ve two of us doing the work of three, and they’re already muttering about a mobile library, which poor Lynn finds very alarming, she can’t even drive …’
The photo on the screen is in black and white, a poor reproduction.
‘You’re right, the film jumps right past that edition,’ he says. ‘I found it on a separate roll of film, a few of the issues that were missing. They were so thorough then, they must have added them later.’ He gives a rueful laugh. ‘If only we had the resources, these days. Um, are you all right?’
I can’t reply. I’m fixed where I stand.
So they’d put her on the front page again, that second week – but with a photo, this time. Nancy’s school photo, a headshot against that mottled grey background school photographers always seem to use. Nancy Corrigan. Blonde hair, round face, that sweet smile. Laughing eyes.
Nancy, not Sophie. Just breathe. It’s OK.
‘Thanks,’ I hear myself say. ‘That’s really helpful, really it is. And you’ve got my details.’
It shocked me, catching me off guard for a second, that’s all.
She’s the spit of my daughter.