I Came to Find a Girl (13 page)

Jan took the bag without looking inside. “The lab will do their best,” she said. “How do you feel about making a statement?”

The night before came crashing back on me: Flood in the mirrors at Ruby’s, Flood by the subway, my scattered scarlet chips and how I ran home in a panic as if Flood were chasing me, when in reality it was Tamzin and Spencer who were shouting at me to ‘wait up’.
 

Jan-the-policewoman looked at me expectantly, and again a wave of nausea came over me. “Where’s the nearest toilet? I think I’m going to be sick.”

Seventeen

Interior, Flood’s studio: the artist sits in his calico-covered chair, smoking. “I’ve had a little visit,” he announces to camera. “Police hammered on my door in the early hours. I thought it was my dealer until someone shouted, ‘Police, open up.’ You can’t wake the awake. ‘Do you know **beep** **beep**?’ they asked, and they wanted to know where I was on the night of Friday 27
th
May 2005. ‘Do you like to drug women, Mr Flood? Do you like to have sex when they are semi-conscious or even half-comatose? Does rape inspire your art?’

“They were female – fat and middle-aged, Cagney and Lacey gone to seed. They did a lot of staring, but who the hell is **beep** **beep** anyway? I racked my brain and then it came to me – the waitress.” He drags on his cigarette. “I have total recall – does she?

“It was her idea to go for a drink. I wasn’t bothered. It was late and the bar was about to close – she suggested we take a bottle to the room. ‘Why don’t you freshen up a little,’ she said – does she remember that? Because I know the barman will. He was delivering the champagne as she said it. It is always worth making friends with the barman – those guys remember everything.” Flood shifts in his seat. “Everything we did was consensual, although it was nothing special and so, no, I didn’t call. Perhaps she felt bad about that – she let herself down. And now she’s made a complaint, all these weeks later. Silly girl – she won’t feel any better about herself.”

Eighteen

The last day of term should have been a mere formality: turn up, sign in, have coffee, then disappear until September. Only I’d been called in for an extra crit, as had Kelly, Spencer, Charlotte and Judy.

We hung our work on the walls or laid it on the floor. Spencer had a large stormy canvas, while Charlotte was using dolls (something to do with an alleged abortion). Judy had garish close-ups of rotting exotic fruit and I had the series of self-portraits I’d continued after the last project. There was an obvious progression; they were becoming more abstract, hazy almost, or at least I thought so. Spencer said it looked like I was disappearing, which made me think of Jenny, and brought a lump to my throat. “Don’t say that,” I said, as I stared vacantly at the vast seascape he’d leant against the wall.

“How long are they going to keep us waiting?” Kelly sat on one of the desks. Quarter of an hour late, the office door swung open and a pair of cowboy boots clicked onto the steps as first Mike Manners, then Mike Cherry appeared.

“Right, let’s get started,” Mike Cherry’s bright blue eyes over-blinked as if something were irritating him. “Whose is this?” He looked around, his lips pursed.

“It’s mine,” I said, only daring to raise my hand a little.

“Mia, long time no see.” Mike Manners stroked his greying stubble.

Mike Cherry glared. “You’ve been avoiding us?”

“No, not at all.” I was taken aback.

“We’ve barely seen you. Missing in action?” Mike Manners said. “Is there anything we should know?”

How could I tell them that my life had divided into Before Flood and After Flood, and that while his show was still on at my college I was finding it hard to walk through the door?

“Cat got your tongue?” Mike Cherry asked.

“I find it easier to work at home, that’s all.”

“Well, that’s no good to us,” Mike Cherry said.

“I’ve been working. It’s just I like to be alone.”

“We need you here in person, otherwise we can’t help and by the looks of it, you need all the help you can get,” Mike Cherry said.

They fell silent as everyone contemplated my latest triptych of self-portraits.

“This is carrying on from the last project, I take it?” Mike Manners said.

“Yes, I wanted to take it further.”

“Do you think you managed that?”

I shuffled from foot to foot. “I dunno, maybe.”

“We’re not saying they’re not interesting,” Mike Manners said.

Mike Cherry interrupted, “But it’s not enough. They’re shoddy. I’d be ashamed to show them.”

Kelly gave me a sympathetic look, while I bit the inside of my cheek.
Keep it together
.

“There’s nothing wrong with carrying on a project if you think you can really take it somewhere,” Mike Manners said, “but I’d like you to think long and hard about where you’re going with this. Your third and final year starts in September – that’s only a few months away; you need to knuckle down. There’s no second chance. You have to make it happen. You have to make it matter.”

“And if you’re not here, we can’t help,” Mike Cherry said. “Can we have a girl guide’s promise that we’ll see you in the studio on a daily basis next term?”

I nodded, biting the inside of my cheek. It was so unfair. I had been working hard only I’d done it alone in my room back at my house.

“We heard about your friend,” Mike Manners said. “Has there been any news?”

I blinked hard, determined not to cry. “No, nothing.”

“You can talk to us, you know,” Mike Manners said, “we’re always here – even if you’re not.”

They moved on to Kelly, and then Spencer, Charlotte and Judy. Everyone got the same treatment. Afterwards, we all gathered up our unworthy artwork and made our way out of the studio, my stomach knotted in dread as we went down the corridor towards the foyer.
Flood’s bloody show
– I tried not to look but I couldn’t help it.
What is going on?
There were three burly men in black T-shirts, arms folded, contemplating a particularly large piece. They were considering how best to move it.
It’s being dismantled. It’s over
. It was about to be packed away and shipped off somewhere, anywhere, who cares – it would be the dump if I had my way.
 

At last I could reclaim the space as my own. And surely now it would be less likely Flood would return to Nottingham.
Next term will be easier. I won’t fail.

“Anyone fancy a coffee?” I said; for once keen to hang around.

Nineteen

My housemates left for the summer, while I stayed on to work at Saviour’s as there were few seasonal jobs in Stowe-on-Sea.

My parents came to visit. We met in the foyer of the Victoria Hotel, and Mum soon asked about “that poor girl that’s gone missing”.

A month had passed since Jenny had disappeared.
She’s dead, I’m sure of it
. But that didn’t stop me looking or dreaming. Jenny was very much alive in my head and everyone at Saviour’s talked about her, attempting to remember everything she’d ever said, while I filled in the gaps, turning her into some sort of half-creation of my own, convincing myself I knew her better than I did.

I told Mum how the police call them ‘mispers’. “Sounds like whisper doesn’t it?”

Jenny would whisper to me in my dreams. She’d appear, always flighty and I could never quite catch up, never quite pull her back into the real world. Sometimes, the joy of seeing her would quickly diminish, as the figure of Flood would enter the frame. “Don’t take a drink,” I would warn her – like that would help.

I drew little girls lost in short skirts and ankle socks, sucked into dark alleys or cowering behind metal dustbins. Some were obviously young; others ambiguously older while their attire made it clear they were stranded in girlhood, forever about to go missing.
Eve Goes Missing
I, II and III.

Eve began to look more like Alice in Wonderland as I drew a champagne bottle labelled ‘Drink me’. Her clothes were girlish, her hair in pigtails, but now she sat at the end of a bed without her skirt.
Eyes Wide Shut
, I called that one. Then another, similar but with legs parted, while another had blank eyes, a bottle labelled Rohypnol Fizz and a camcorder –
I Can Put You in the Movies
.

I stood in my room momentarily exhilarated by my productivity.
It’s happening, really happening.
Then doubt set in, like it always did.
Are they pornographic – a paedophile’s dream?
I tidied them away in my art folder to look at afresh the next day, hoping the break would provide perspective.

My parents took me out for meals all weekend and filled my fridge with luxurious food from M&S. I’d eat well for a week.

It was hard to concentrate on any artwork while they were there, and just as hard after they’d gone, as the house appeared ugly and emptier without them.

Early afternoon, my day off, and I knew I should eat something but it was too hot, stifling even. There was no movement in the air. I went to my window, forced open the rotten frame of the sash. Girls were out on the wall, itty-bitty skirts, smoking, chewing false nails. Girl-with-braids was one of them. She took out a small mirror from her tiny rucksack and checked her lovely face.

I grabbed my sketchpad and, careful I couldn’t be seen, made a few fast, fluid marks on the page. She could be Cleopatra if it weren’t for the backdrop of unloved terraced houses, crumbling wall with working girls and general urban decay.

I should go out, take my camera, walk around, and see what I can find.
Only I felt lethargic.
It’s too hot to do anything
. I withdrew from the window, switched on my portable TV, and flicked through the limited channels. News was on Three: a reporter, broadcasting by a river, and behind him, frogmen in a black dinghy. The place looked familiar but I didn’t register where it was, not immediately, and then a red box appeared at the bottom of the screen: ‘BREAKING NEWS: woman’s body found in River Trent, Nottingham’.

Twenty

Saviour’s was my first thought as I tried to take in the enormity of what I’d seen. I left immediately and arrived as the lunchtime rush drew to a close.

The bar was dark compared to the sunshine outside and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. There were office workers sitting at tables, and men at the bar. Vivienne was serving. Her eyes locked with mine. “You’re not due in today.”

“You saw the news?” I asked.

She handed the man his change, and came round the side of the bar. “Nothing has been confirmed,” she said. “You rushing in won’t help. Jason is beside himself as it is. You’ll only make it worse. It’s best you go, leave things as they are until we hear one way or the other.”

But it was too late. Donna had seen me. She smiled and then her expression faltered. “They’ve found a body.” She welled up. “It’s Jen – I know it. I’ve got this sickly feeling of dread.”

Vivienne frowned. “We don’t know anything yet. It could be anyone.”

“How’s Jason?” I asked.

Vivienne looked heavenwards and said, “Go and see him.”

Donna opened the swing door to the quietest kitchen ever.

“Table two gone yet?” Warren said.

“Just about, chef,” a young lad said.

“Who’s that?” I whispered.

“He’s from the agency – covering for Jen,” Donna said.

“Should have been out five minutes ago,” Jason said. He noticed me then in the doorway. “Mia?”

“Can’t keep away,” Warren said.

“It’s Jenny,” Jason said. “You know something?”

“No – it’s just...”

“It’s her, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

After service, it was negotiated that the new temporary commis, and Clint the kitchen porter would clean up and wash down so Warren, Jason, Donna and me could take a couple of hours out to drive over to the Meadows area to see if we could locate where the body had been found and glean some information from the police.

“What about flowers?” Donna said, as we squeezed into Jason’s car. We stopped en route at a petrol station and bought the best on offer – a yellow cellophane-wrapped bouquet of carnations.

Onwards past the Sixties-built shopping parade towards the rows of back-to-back terraces on Wilford Grove. “I used to live round here,” I told the others. I knew the river was up ahead, beyond the playing fields. I braced myself as I watched sunbathers, kids playing and dog-walkers. “Stop here, Jase,” I said, as he turned right along the embankment.

The water was calm, the River Trent lapping gently at the concrete steps. There was something municipal about this stretch of the river. It had been tamed and contained, lined in concrete on either side. Easy to spot a body, I would have thought. But then I guessed it could have been thrown in anywhere upstream and just floated down, bloated with water, to a busier stretch.

“Over there, look.” Jason pointed towards a white police tent.

Donna linked arms with him.

Why didn’t I think of that?

“You can hold my hand,” Warren said.

“I’m all right.” I gave him a look and turned away.

Jason broke into a run, and Donna struggled to keep up, as we hurried in a diagonal across the playing fields, past the men playing football, some of them bare-chested. It was hot, the hottest day of the year so far. A couple of teenage girls were sunbathing in pink bikinis and a small queue had formed at an ice-cream van.
How can people carry on as normal?

Blue and white police incident tape marked off a small stretch of the embankment. A young policeman stood guard. In the water, some way off, there was a dinghy and men in wetsuits.

Kids on bikes had stopped to watch, along with a couple of old ladies. The oldest one, who was wearing a long knitted dress in the heat, shook her head. “Every week it’s more bad news. Makes you scared to go out, doesn’t it, Brenda?”

“Them frogmen – what they looking for?” a boy on a bike asked.

“Any evidence we can find,” the policeman said.

And that’s when Jason said, “It’s Jenny Fordham, isn’t it?”

Everyone turned to see who had asked such a specific question.

The policeman cleared his throat. “The body’s yet to be identified.”