I Came to Find a Girl (8 page)

Back round the corner, girl-on-the-wall had gone.
I hope she’s safe. Please let her be safe
.

Mix the condensed mushroom soup with the pasta, tuna and sweetcorn, place in an ovenproof dish and top with buttered bread and grated cheese.
Oh yes, though I’d never eat this at home, I can’t wait
. It needed to bake for twenty minutes so I sat in my room with my sketchbook open and thought again of the Frenchman tenderly pushing the hair back and away from my face.

The warm fishy smells drifting up to my room grew stronger so I knew it was time. Downstairs, the kitchen window was fogged as the bubbly, boiling tuna and soup belched like volcanic mud. I spooned a large dollop of the steaming gunk onto one of our mismatched plates and made my way downstairs to join the others.

“Shove up, will ya?”

Reluctantly, Slug and Spencer made some space on the collapsed green sofa.

“Antiques Roadshow – will that programme ever end?” I said.

“This bird’s painting’s gonna be worth a packet.” Slug nodded towards the old woman who was telling the valuer how she was downsizing due to bereavement.

“Yeah, all right love, we’re all very sorry, but stop going on.”

“It is a most ravishing painting,” the TV expert said.

“What you eating?” Spencer asked.

“Tuna Special.”

“Looks like elephant dung,” Tamzin said.

“Don’t diss my cooking.”

“You could stick it on one of your paintings like Chris Ofili,” Kelly said.

“You what?” Slug said.

“He sticks elephant dung on his paintings.”

“Did you hear that – one hundred fucking grand for that picture,” Slug said. “I’m on the wrong course.”

Kelly curled her lip. “Colours looked muddy to me.”

“I don’t like it,” I said.

“That was the door. I’ll go.” Tamzin went to answer, and quickly returned looking concerned. “It’s for you, Mia. It’s the police.”

Oh my God. “What?”
I got up, taking my plate with me.

Two dark uniformed figures filled the doorway.

“Mia Jackson?” The younger one asked. He was cute with chocolate button eyes. Is this who they send when it’s bad news? I nodded and thought of Flood.
Do they know something?

The police officers introduced themselves. The cute one was called DC Stanmore or Standard or something? I couldn’t take it in.

“Is there somewhere we can talk, Miss Jackson?” The older one had a thick Scottish accent and a miserable, craggy face. “Can we come in? You have somewhere we can talk?” He had to repeat himself. I wasn’t reacting but where could I take them? Everyone was in the living room. It would have to be upstairs. I led them up to the first-floor kitchen.

Just say it. Tell me what it is. Get it over with. Don’t let it be Mum and Dad.

My plate wobbled as I placed it on the side. And I gathered up two further dirty plates and there were mugs with browning dregs and fag ash. I started tipping slops into the sink.

“Please, don’t fuss,” the older officer said. “We need you to sit down.”

Our chairs were rickety and the police officers looked too big for them.

I gripped the sides of my old wooden seat.

“You’re a friend of Jenny Fordham?” the young officer asked.

Jenny?
I racked my brain
. I only know one Jenny. What’s her surname?

“She’s a chef. You work with her at Saviour’s Bar and Restaurant.”

“Oh Jenny, yes, of course. She’s okay, yeah?”

Their hesitation was my answer.

“She’s missing,” the older, craggy-faced officer said.

And I laughed. It seemed absurd. “No, she can’t be.” They looked at me as if I might know something. All I knew was that people I know don’t go missing.

The older officer leant forward. “This is strictly routine, but we have to ask: where were you on Friday night, 11.40pm?”

I gripped the edge of the old wooden chair and glanced at the dirty plates and empty cereal packets.
What to say? I should have been there
. “I phoned in sick. I’ve never done that before, it’s just I couldn’t face it. I told Vivienne, that’s my boss, that I had a migraine but really I went out with my housemates.” I gripped the chair tighter. “Are you going to tell her that?”

They didn’t reply. They just carried on looking, waiting for me to say something significant. “If you can think of anything and I mean anything – please give us a call.” The older officer passed me contact details. “We’ll show ourselves out.”

The younger one nodded towards the dirty plates piled on the worktop and in the sink. “Reminds me of my student days.”

I poked at my tuna bake. I no longer wanted to eat, and it had congealed anyway, so I scraped it into the swing bin where it landed with a thud.

Ten

Jenny
– I saw her everywhere. I looked for her in every face I passed, on every pavement, in every crowd but always it turned out to be just her chin walking around on someone else, or the way she’d shyly look away, or the back of her long, straight hair worn by a less attractive woman. Sometimes, I thought I’d caught sight of her back disappearing down a side street or in a crowd and I’d have to change direction and follow, walking for ages out of my way. It was exhausting, the constant looking, and the willing, wanting her to be alive and back again.

People go missing every day, often because they want to get away.

I took my camera and snapped away at the overflowing bins and relatively empty Sunday streets. Perhaps I’d capture something, a clue, and not even realise till later when I looked over the images on my computer.

Six hundred people disappear every day. It’s not unusual.

My housemates wanted to help. They asked what Jenny was like and I zipped through the images on my mobile, determined to find a photo. Eventually there she was in the kitchen at work, smiling and slight in her chef whites, her long mousy hair tied back, and her arm round a grinning Donna.

“She often wears her hair tied up but she should wear it down. If I had hair like that I’d wear it down,” I said.

“She looks nice,” Slug said.

“She is – way too good for you.”

Saviour’s felt like a morgue long before we knew anything. It amazed me that anyone would want to eat there while there was a question mark over Jenny’s whereabouts, but people did.

The police did a reconstruction with a young female officer in a long, straight wig and the same sweatshirt, combats and trainers Jenny had worn the night she disappeared. And they released a police statement, saying: “Trainee chef Jenny Fordham is a popular young woman who was born and brought up in the Nottingham area. She is a keen runner, as well as an active member of a young Christian group. It is out of character for her to go missing or fail to keep in touch.”

Jenny, being considered ‘nice’ and ‘middle-class’, had become newsworthy.

It is rare for anyone who goes missing over the age of sixteen to gain news coverage.
Girls go missing all the time, girls with piercings, bleached or dyed hair, girls who wear tight, revealing clothes; the media rarely bothers with them unless they’re particularly young or vanish in unusual circumstances. Only the wholesome are considered worth looking for – the rest had it coming. But Jenny was good, she was different – her parents live in the Park area of Nottingham, a desirable enclave of period homes near the castle. The national press picked up on the story and Crimewatch ran a reconstruction. And there was the front of Saviour’s on TV, the curved Art Deco windows looked decorative and smart as the Jenny impersonator walked out, Nike kitbag over her shoulder. And that was it, reconstruction over, because that’s all they had – one night, Jenny left work and vanished.

“Right now, I could almost believe in alien abduction,” Donna said. We had both sat down in the bar for coffee in the brief lull between preparation and the arrival of customers. “It doesn’t add up,” she said, “and you know what really gets me is that normally we leave the same time as Jenny but she didn’t stop for a drink that night. She was running the next day and wanted to get back.”

“I should have been there,” I said. “Maybe she’d be okay if I’d left work the same time as we usually do.”

“It’s not your fault.” We both fell silent as we finished our coffee.

Over 210,000 people go missing every year
. I had checked the statistics online.

“The police call them mispers,” I said.

“You what?”

“Missing persons – they call them mispers, sounds like whispers, doesn’t it? Like they’re already ghosts the rest of us can no longer hear.”

“Don’t say that, you’re creeping me out.”

They only search for the vulnerable or where there’s been a crime.

The police had already come out and said they thought Jenny had been abducted and yet no CCTV footage of her had been traced from any of the cameras in the city centre. She must have got in a car whether willingly or otherwise. And no significant sightings had been made though the police remained convinced someone must have seen something. But if there was a witness, he or she was not keen to come forward whether due to fear of reprisals or the simple fact he or she was not meant to be on that street at that time.

From my bedroom window I looked out at the lamp-lit crossroads.
Can anyone tell me where to find my friend?

The street was empty. The girls must have been taking heed or were they in danger in a stranger’s car at that very moment?

Windows glowed in the period conversions opposite: other students, the unemployed, the old, low-paid, and immigrants. A car crawled past. Bang! One of its wheels burst a crisp packet. The driver sped away
– Loser
.

I withdrew from the window, closing the heavy curtains; I had work to do.
How can I concentrate? What if it’s Flood?
I had introduced Jenny to Flood the night I went for a drink at his hotel.
Did he go back for her?
I couldn’t get the idea out of my head
. I should go to the police.
I felt sick. Reporting what may or may not have happened would make it real.

Hold on, no, it can’t be Flood. He’s back in London
. I’d seen him pictured in a newspaper at the opening of the latest Royal Academy show in London.

I’d know if he was here. I would sense it.

I looked back at my self-portrait from a few nights before. The painted figure looked bemused and wary and that was before I’d even heard about Jenny. I had to have something to show. I had a crit the next day. What else could I do but take the watercolour sketch and develop it – thicker paint, texture – put it on canvas? So what if it showed vulnerability, bemusement and even fear – that’s life isn’t it?

A police siren whirred.
Have they found Jenny or is it someone else?
 

Please, let Jenny be safe.

Eleven

Flood’s DVD. Interior, loft apartment: large multi-paned windows, exposed brickwork and in the middle of the room a calico-covered chair. The date in the bottom right-hand corner states: Thursday 2 June 2005, the Wire Works, Spitalfields, London.

“Who lives in a house like this?” It’s Flood’s voice. “Let’s take a look at the clues.” The camera points upwards. “Lovely high beams, perfect to hang yourself from as and when your genius goes unrecognised.” He moves into the kitchen area. It’s small with the usual fitted appliances and units.

“Cooking may not be a priority for this person,” he says. “Although, there is a large fridge freezer...” The camera shifts to a stainless steel American-style side-by-side fridge freezer, and sweeps back towards the living area. “Note a distinct absence of any statement pieces – no mid-century design-classic furniture, no oversized flat-screen TV. We can only surmise this is no flash city slicker’s crash pad. But what to make of the generous expanse of empty space?” He points to the corner. “And the large canvases lined up against one wall and the pile of sketches?”

The camera switches to a fixed position and Flood comes into view. He walks over and begins to leaf through the drawings, holding a couple to camera. “Here’s a woman’s face in ecstasy, this one has a wanton lolling tongue, while she’s asleep with legs akimbo – racy stuff. And paint on the floor, turps by the sink – who lives in a house like this?

“In fact, it’s not a house; it’s a loft, a lateral conversion of an old wire factory – my studio, a live/work space. Eleven years I’ve been here, watching Spitalfields change from button-makers, hat shops and general decay to a hipster theme park, but at least there’s decent coffee to be had.

“I’ve been working away – just got back, and Dora Maar isn’t talking to me, are you, my sweet?” He lifts a dark brown cat from the calico-covered chair. “She’s named after one of Picasso’s mistresses – the one he only ever portrayed in tears. She adopted me.” He holds the cat out in front of him, face-to-face. “She couldn’t resist my indifference – it’s a girl thing. Look at her, what a beauty, the colour of bitter chocolate.” Dora Maar wriggles out of his arms. “Very well, have it your way.”

He selects a sketchbook and sits down to flip through the pages. “There she is, that’s Angela.” His finger traces her jawline and he holds the page up to camera. The drawing is fine, the expression sad, lonely and vulnerable. He snaps the sketchbook shut and tosses it to the floor. Moving up close, he rubs his eyes and looks into the lens. “I have to sleep. It’s been a week.”
He does look rough
.

He shuts his eyes and holds his head as if in pain. And he goes to a laptop open on a desk and keys something in. “Lab rats deprived of sleep die after a matter of only weeks instead of their usual two years or so. That’s what it says. Ten days is the record without sleep, or 260 hours – but that’s without drugs or torture.”

He walks down the corridor towards what must be his bedroom.

Interior, Flood’s studio: the light pours in from skylights in the roof and the large warehouse windows. Two police officers are seated on paint-splattered wooden chairs. One is young and slim, the other old, fat and nearly bald, like a handsome son next to the disappointing older man he’ll become.