‘Come on,’ he said, his voice businesslike – brusque, even. ‘Sit down.’
I followed him into the middle of the room, put one hand on his waist, the other against his chest. He held me by my wrists and moved away from me.
‘Don’t, Megan. You can’t … we can’t …’ He turned away.
‘Kamal,’ I said, my voice catching. I hated the sound of it. ‘Please.’
‘This … here. It’s not appropriate. It’s normal, believe me, but …’
I told him then that I wanted to be with him.
‘It’s transference, Megan,’ he said. ‘It happens from time to time. It happens to me, too. I really should have introduced this topic last time. I’m sorry.’
I wanted to scream then. He made it sound so banal, so bloodless, so common.
‘Are you telling me you feel nothing?’ I asked him. ‘You’re saying I’m imagining all this?’
He shook his head. ‘You have to understand, Megan, I shouldn’t have let things get this far.’
I moved closer to him, put my hands on his hips and turned him around. He took hold of my arms again, his long fingers locked around my wrists. ‘I could lose my job,’ he said, and then I really lost my temper.
I pulled away, angry, violently. He tried to hold me, but he couldn’t. I was yelling at him, telling him I didn’t give a shit about his job. He was trying to quieten me – worried, I assume, about what the receptionist thought, what the other patients thought. He grabbed hold of my shoulders, his thumbs digging into the flesh at the top of my arms, and told me to calm down, to stop behaving like a child. He shook me, hard; I thought for a moment he was going to slap my face.
I kissed him on the mouth, I bit his lower lip as hard as I could; I could taste his blood in my mouth. He pushed me away.
I plotted revenge on my way home. I was thinking of all the things I could do to him. I could get him fired, or worse. I won’t though, because I like him too much. I don’t want to hurt him. I’m not even that upset about the rejection any more. What bothers me most is that I haven’t got to the end of my story, and I can’t start over with someone else, it’s too hard.
I don’t want to go home now, because I don’t know how I’m going to be able to explain the bruises on my arms.
RACHEL
Monday, 22 July 2013
Evening
AND NOW I WAIT. It’s agonizing, the not knowing, the slowness with which everything is bound to move. But there’s nothing more to do.
I was right, this morning, when I felt that dread. I just didn’t know what I had to be afraid of.
Not Scott. When he pulled me inside he must have seen the terror in my eyes, because almost immediately he let go of me. Wild-eyed and dishevelled, he seemed to shrink back from the light, and closed the door behind us. ‘What are you doing here? There are photographers, journalists everywhere. I can’t have people coming to the door. Hanging around. They’ll say things … They’ll try – they’ll try anything, to get pictures, to get …’
‘There’s no one out there,’ I said, though to be honest I hadn’t really looked. There might have been people sitting in cars, waiting for something to happen.
‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded again.
‘I heard … it was on the news. I just wanted … is it him? Have they arrested him?
He nodded. ‘Yes, early this morning. The family liaison person was here. She came to tell me. But she couldn’t … they won’t tell me why. They must have found something, but they won’t tell me what. It’s not her, though. I know that they haven’t found her.’ He sits down on the stairs and wraps his arms around himself.
His whole body is trembling.
‘I can’t stand it. I can’t stand waiting for the phone to ring. When the phone rings, what will it be? Will it be the worst news? Will it be …’ He tails off, then looks up as though he’s seeing me for the first time. ‘Why did you come?’
‘I wanted … I thought you wouldn’t want to be alone.’
He looked at me as though I was insane. ‘I’m not alone,’ he said. He got up and pushed past me into the living room. For a moment, I just stood there. I didn’t know whether to follow him or to leave, but then he called out, ‘Do you want a coffee?’
There was a woman outside on the lawn, smoking. Tall, with salt and pepper hair, she was smartly dressed in black trousers and white blouse done up to the throat. She was pacing up and down the patio, but as soon as she caught sight of me, she stopped, flicked her cigarette on to the paving stones and crushed it beneath her toe.
‘Police?’ she asked me doubtfully, as she entered the kitchen.
‘No, I’m—’
‘This is Rachel Watson, Mum,’ Scott said. ‘The woman who contacted me about Abdic.’
She nodded slowly, as though Scott’s explanation didn’t really help her; she took me in, her gaze sweeping rapidly over me from head to toe and back again. ‘Oh.’
‘I just, er …’ I didn’t have a justifiable reason for being there. I couldn’t say, could I, I just wanted to know. I wanted to see.
‘Well, Scott is very grateful to you for coming forward. We’re obviously waiting now to find out what exactly is going on.’ She stepped towards me, took me by the elbow and turned me gently towards the front door. I glanced at Scott, but he wasn’t looking at me; his gaze was fixed somewhere out of the window, across the tracks.
‘Thank you for stopping by, Mrs Watson. We really are very grateful to you.’
I found myself on the doorstep, the front door closed firmly behind me, and when I looked up I saw them: Tom, pushing a buggy, and Anna at his side. They stopped dead when they saw me. Anna raised her hand to her mouth and swooped down to grab her child. The lioness protecting her cub. I wanted to laugh at her, to tell her, I’m not here for you, I couldn’t be less interested in your daughter.
I’m cast out. Scott’s mother made that clear. I’m cast out and I’m disappointed, but it shouldn’t matter, because they have Kamal Abdic. They’ve got him, and I helped. I did something right. They’ve got him, and it can’t be long now before they find Megan and bring her home.
ANNA
Monday, 22 July 2013
Morning
TOM WOKE ME UP early with a kiss and a cheeky grin. He has a late meeting this morning, so he suggested we take Evie around the corner for breakfast. It’s a place where we used to meet when we first started seeing each other. We’d sit in the window – she was at work in London so there was no danger of her walking past and noticing us. But there was that thrill, even so – perhaps she’d come home early for some reason: perhaps she’d be feeling ill, or have forgotten some vital papers. I dreamed of it. I willed her to come along one day, to see him with me, to know in an instant that he was no longer hers. It’s hard to believe now that there was once a time when I wanted her to appear.