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To the insultingly practical:
Don’t worry about returning Jack’s coat with what’s happening we understand completely. Thinking of you. Love Juliet xx
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I said. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
Nicky read it. ‘It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter. They’re trying to be nice.’
‘As if I care about a stupid coat.’
‘They don’t expect you to. Don’t think the worst. It’s supposed to be a nice message.’
There were emails too, but I tired of reading them. The messages made me feel either sad or angry
or resentful and I was feeling all of those things enough already. Needling at me, too, were the
messages that weren’t there, from friends who I would have expected to support us. ‘Have there been
voicemails?’ I asked Nicky. ‘Don’t you think people should leave a proper message?’
‘There’ve been one or two,’ she said. ‘I wrote them down. People probably don’t want to tie up the
phone line.’
I looked over the messages she’d carefully recorded. There were still at least two friends
conspicuous by their absence from these lists. Were they being kind by not contacting me? Was that a
thoughtful response? Or had they backed off now that I was tainted by misfortune, now that I was the
person to whom the worst had happened, the one at the sharp end of the statistical wedge, where
nobody else wants to be.
I sat there, the card in my hands, while Nicky trawled the web again, searching deeper and deeper
for advice and information, for anything that might help us, as if it were a sort of addiction.
I had an impulse to phone John. I wanted to tell him I was sorry about the press conference, and
that I was sorry I let Ben run ahead in the woods. I increasingly felt a desperate need for him to
absolve me of the things I’d done wrong. It felt like the only way I could lessen my pain. But he didn’t
answer his mobile, and Katrina answered their landline.
‘He’s not here,’ she said. ‘He’s out driving the streets, looking for Ben. He hasn’t been home since
the press conference.’
‘You’ve seen it?’
‘Yes.’
I didn’t want her to say anything about it. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said quickly.
Laura went home. She had cats to feed. I marvelled at how the mundane activities that life
demanded still needed to be done, even while the worst was happening.
I even felt resentful towards my body, towards its demands for sleep, for food, for drink, for bodily
functions. I thought that life should stop until Ben was found. Clocks should no longer tick, oxygen
should no longer be exchanged for carbon dioxide in our lungs, and our hearts should not pump. Only
when he was back should normal service resume.
Anything else was an insult to him, to what he might be suffering.
Nicky continued to work, propelled by some kind of manic internal engine, as if an internet search
might yield a vital clue, or trigger a revelation. Once she’d finished looking online, she began to
design a flyer, and to come up with plans for distributing it.
I tired of being in her orbit, and I went upstairs, my fingers running along the dado rail. Just above
it, visible against the white paint, were Ben’s finger marks. He always ran, never walked, whether he
was going up or down the stairs. Ignoring my shouts to slow down, he would have one hand on the
banister and one hand on the wall to steady himself, and I would hear rapid footfall. Usually I only