The Missing Person's Guide to Love (8 page)

‘Yes, it is. It’s very romantic, as it happens, but we don’t get much free time to spend with each other and Elif.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Nearly two.’

‘You don’t seem like a mother.’

A white duck pushed its bill through the reeds and waddled alongside us for a while. I walked between John and the duck as we progressed around the reservoir. No, I thought. I don’t seem like a mother. This morning I did, but now I do not. I wiped my foot on the grass to remove a lump of mud. ‘I’m going to the church,’ I told him.

A smile lurked around his face somewhere, almost in his eyes, almost his mouth, not quite in either. He thought that in making me indignant he had somehow wielded power.

‘You’re much too early. We’ve got plenty of time yet. Shame we can’t go for a quick row. The water’s so tempting. I don’t know why I’m saying that because I can’t even swim. It still looks like a big, glistening invitation, though. Don’t you think?’

The boats were lined up with a pair of oars inside each one, but there was no one around to take the money. I had an idea. I didn’t particularly want to spend hours in a pub with John,
but a quick trip out on the water right now might prove useful. ‘You’re right, John. We have time.’

‘Fantastic. You’ll love it when we get out there.’

‘We can untie one and leave a note on the jetty with some money.’

‘You’re so moral. I love it. I’m a good rower, you know. I used to row often when I was younger. Won’t it be a nice thing to do? A little peace enjoyed together before we say goodbye to Owen. Just look at it.’

John sighed and gazed out across the reservoir. The wind had died down and the water barely rippled.

‘But quickly. I really don’t want to be late for the funeral.’

‘There’s still time.’

The reservoir was whitish blue, cold. It didn’t look like the reservoir I remembered, which had been dark green and viscous. Goose Island (it
was
Goose Island) was smaller than I’d thought it, nearer, and with fewer trees. I didn’t want to go out there again but it was the perfect way to remember Owen and, perhaps, learn something new.

Owen and I took a rowing-boat out on the day we committed our crime. It was a vivid, yellow day. The reservoir stretched out under the sun, stripes and shapes of silver covering most of the surface. The middle of the water was the only place where we could talk in secret and I had big news to tell. I ran down the street from the police station and told Owen to meet me at the end of the jetty. I called Kath, too, and
told her to come, but she was studying hard for her A levels and stayed at home. I didn’t mind. A crocodile of primary-school children slunk along the pavement towards the reservoir, armed with nature books and jam-jars. I ran past their bobbing heads to the jetty and waited for Owen. One of us paid thirty or fifty pence, whatever it was, to the old man who always sat there in the afternoon with his ham roll and copy of the
Sun
.

We took it in turns with the oars and rowed out near Goose Island. In the shade of the trees the day darkened and cooled. There were mallards on the island. We argued about which kind were male and which female. Owen would not concede that the brown ones were female and decided that they must be a different breed of duck. ‘They must be moorhens,’ he said, ‘those dull brown ones, because mallards are colourful with bottle-green heads.’ I had been visiting the reservoir with my parents since I was tiny and I knew which were mallards, coots, moorhens. We argued, I remember, for a long time and then we both grew irritated, so I began to tell him why we were there. Owen was eighteen and I was seventeen then. He was unemployed and I was on a training scheme at McCreadie’s supermarket, taking dance classes in the evenings and at weekends. It was a couple of years since Julia’s disappearance and the rest of us were living on a strange edge that left us dizzy because we could not stop ourselves looking down. I was still inventing stories in my head, almost daily, that kept Julia alive, kept her life twisting forwards. I told Owen what Mr McCreadie had
said to me that afternoon about Julia, and how we were the ones to do something about it.

When I’d finished speaking, we switched places so that I could take the oars. ‘The ducks don’t know what kind of ducks they are so it doesn’t matter anyway,’ Owen said – just because he was wrong and I was right – and trailed his hand in the water. I pulled the oars hard. I was not as strong as Owen but I could row almost as well. I liked to see how fast I could make the boat go. I liked to feel as if I were in a race against some imaginary boat just off to our side, rowed by Olympian heroes. I would make us speed along, then lift the oars to see how far we would glide before coming to a rocking rest. I liked the patterns in the water, the whorls and pleats I could make with the oars. Even that day I couldn’t help but look. Then Owen stared at me with his black eyebrows furrowed. When I saw his face like this I knew he was still missing Julia. He never said how he felt but he used to go, with me and Kath, to the spot where she had vanished. We would stand there and look for clues – something that the police had missed – but we didn’t find anything. Perhaps we were seeking something clear, like a bump in the soil, a scrap of school uniform, a gap in the bushes, but I think we knew that if there was anything, it would be less tangible. It would be an understanding. By staring at the place, feeling it underfoot, knowing the changes in light and weather, we would lead ourselves to the point of knowing what had happened there. Of course, the place never changed enough and we were frustrated. Now Owen simply stared but his
expression was not empty; it was full, brimming with something I didn’t quite recognize. What I know is that the fullness made me feel small. Somehow – I don’t remember how words led us to it – we concocted our plan.

I often wonder how murderers who kill together find each other. How and when do they know that it is safe to tell the other one what is too terrible to share? There must be some conversation, some gentle play of words and gestures that builds up to a look or movement that says,
I am like you. Tell me what you want to do and I ’ll understand.
How does a lover confess and know that the other will not call the police? I still do not have the answer but, then, Owen and I were not murderers, or lovers. Our plan was to set fire to the supermarket, at night, when it would be empty. I remember one of us saying – it would have been me – that even if we were wrong about what Mr McCreadie had done to Julia it made no difference. He could have done it, might as well have done it, and what he had done in my head made him as good as a murderer.

So now I was on the jetty with Owen’s friend from prison.

‘I hope I don’t push you off,’ he said.

‘I hope so too. Is it likely?’

‘It’s just something about being on a jetty, with water on three sides of you. The urge to push other people off is so strong. I can almost see my arms reaching forward and shoving you as soon as you turn your back. I’d never do it, but I can
feel it, tingling in my fingertips.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m not remotely dangerous.’

We were walking along the wooden slats, heading for the far end. I wondered why he had been in prison. I did not plan to ask. It was up to him to tell me, if he wanted to.

‘Good. Right, then,’ I said to John. ‘Let’s go if we’re going. No time to waste.’

He jumped ahead of me, selected a boat. Its name was
Penelope.

‘Then help me get
Penelope
out.’

We untied the rope. It slipped from my hands and fell into the lake. I reached in and pulled it out slowly, enjoying the water against my hands. I clambered into the boat and John followed me. I perched on the bench and took the oars. I liked the feeling – it had never gone away – the heaviness of the wood, the sense of movement about to begin.

‘Will we take it in turns? Can I row on the way back?’

‘Yes, of course you can.’ But already I had taken ownership of the oars and wouldn’t want to give them up easily. ‘What was Owen like when you first met him? I mean, was he depressed? Was he very friendly?’

‘I always felt sorry for the guy. Smoke? Oh, you haven’t got any hands. Have one on the way back.’

‘Thanks.’

John took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He slid one out and lit it. I got a tiny breath of smoke before he moved the cigarette away and held it over the water’s edge.

‘This is cool. I like this. Nice ashtray, too. I haven’t had much fun in the last year. I moved to Leeds to be with my girlfriend, and a month after I got there she left me for someone else.’

‘That must have been hard. Had you found a new job?’

‘I work in a pub at the moment. We were going to set up a business together, interior design and selling design products. She was good at all that stuff, you see. She had a degree in fine art. I’m good at driving and accounts so we could have made it work. But, listen, I’m single now. There are a lot of advantages to that.’ He smiled at me, showing even white teeth.

I said nothing but looked behind to make sure we were not going to hit anything.

‘If that girl – Julia – was murdered,’ John said, waving a match around, ‘what do you think the motive was?’

I began to row. I got us clear of the other boats and the jetty before I answered. ‘Can you be so naive as to ask that?’ We were moving out into a clear space. There was less than half a mile of water ahead, with only Goose Island between our boat and the other side. ‘Read the newspapers and find out what happened to this week’s missing schoolgirl. Don’t ask questions, John, but tell me some things instead.’

A picture was developing in my mind of Owen and John talking quietly to each other in prison and Owen was confessing to Julia’s murder. I could almost hear him. I didn’t know whether or not to take it seriously but I couldn’t help imagining it. As the scene took shape, detail appeared in black, white and grey. Owen was on the edge of a bed and John was on the
floor, leaning against the wall. Owen was holding himself, cuddling his chest with his long arms. He cast a faint shadow over John.

‘I’ll be as helpful as I can. What would you like to know?’

‘Did Owen talk much about Julia? I mean, what do you know about her?’

‘I believe she was Owen’s girlfriend for a while, at secondary school, but they were both very young. Puppy love. I think it was all very sweet. By that I mean that I don’t think he ever got his leg over.’

I cut the water with the oars and pulled extra hard. ‘And why do you say that?’ I was certain he was right. I realized that there was an inconsistency in my thought, though. I had always imagined Julia to have slept with Owen, but not Owen with Julia. Of course, that made no sense.

‘He told me the name of the first girl he had sex with and it wasn’t Julia and it wasn’t when he was fifteen or sixteen but, you know, I think he was lying even then. I think he was a virgin when he came to prison. The story didn’t ring true, you see. It was a fantasy about a woman on the beach somewhere like Benidorm but not Benidorm. I can’t remember where it was now. Anyway, she was wearing a skimpy bikini and he was swimming quite near her. He was there on holiday with some mates, though he didn’t say who they were. It was another thing that made me suspicious. So the woman kept smiling at him and then she beckoned him to follow her behind some rocks. And this is the funny part. The second they were out of sight, she got down in the water and started sucking him off
Yeah, without even speaking to him. He came in her mouth and then, before he knew it, they were shagging on the side of the rocks and she was squealing. Her name was Jodie.
Jodie
, I ask you.’ John shook his head with a smile. ‘I reckoned he was making it up even as he told me. He probably thought something along those lines had happened to every other guy his age. I think he thought it should have happened to him. I can tell you, it didn’t happen to me. Then another time he told me he’d never been abroad, so how could I believe him?’

My memory of Owen was a fragile thing and John was putting it in danger. I didn’t know exactly how Owen’s memory was going to exist for me in future. I wanted to know the truth about Julia, of course, but until then I had to be fair. Owen might have been innocent, after all. And even if he was guilty, was it still all right to laugh at something silly he had once said about sex?

‘Well, it might have been true. We can’t know every holiday he ever went on. Look, never mind Owen himself. Specifically about Julia. What do you know?’

‘Nothing much. I know she was sixteen when she went off. Or was taken. Whichever.’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Fifteen, then. I don’t know what she looked like. I know she was a gobby little thing. Owen once described her as a rum lass. Not being from the north I didn’t really know what he meant. I asked Owen and he couldn’t explain it to me. He just repeated it. “Julia was a rum lass.”’

He said ‘rum lass’ in a parody of a northern accent.

‘You don’t need to do such a comedy voice as if we’re both from Surrey and have never met anyone from Yorkshire. You live in Leeds now yourself.’

‘Aye. And I sort of know what a rum lass is now. At least, I know one when I meet one.’

I avoided looking at him. Something about the way he talked, the way he watched me was forcing me into a sensible, bossy role with which I was not comfortable, but I felt that if I did not keep control he would somehow get the better of me.

‘How did Owen sound when he talked about Julia?’

‘Sad. Wistful. Is that any use? Would you like some more? Lonely. Thoughtful. Confused. Lustful, no, romantic, no, starry.’

‘Starry? I don’t know what you mean. I need to see and hear it for myself. Can you do an impression of his face? Imagine you’re Owen talking about Julia. I want you to do his face and voice.’

‘All right.’ John shut his eyes and put his fingers to his temples. This was probably a stupid idea – I could hardly imagine the police using such a method – but I had no other way of getting to Owen. John narrowed his eyes and stared into the water. ‘She was a right rum lass, that Julia.’ His accent was still ridiculous but in a strange way his facial expression did make me think of Owen. ‘Ran rings around us all.’