Gone

80

The men pulling Emily and Martha out of the hole were smiling. They were laughing and shouting at each other, raising their hands in victorious salutes. Both girls had sheets of the purest white tucked around them. Martha was pale, but Emily was pink and happy and completely unmarked, and was sitting up on the stretcher, leaning forward and trying to see Janice among the crowd, craning her neck eagerly. The clearing was full of golden light. Light and laughter and people turning to smile at her, and in Janice’s dream no one wore coats or frowns or had to stand with their backs to her to hide their expressions from her. In Janice’s dream everyone floated in a summery haze and there were clumps of bluebells under her feet as she crossed to take Emily’s hand.

In front of her eyes the mean reality was that the clearing was nearly empty. The helicopters had long gone, the teams had all packed up, harnesses had been removed, equipment returned to vans. The officer in charge had taken the names and contact details of every officer involved and had let them go. In the middle of the clearing, Prody’s body was being loaded on a stretcher into the coroner’s van. A doctor walked next to it, the sheet lifted so he could scrutinize Prody’s face.

Janice was freezing. She had cramps in her legs from crouching and her muscles were weak from the adrenalin constantly flooding through them. Thorns had come through her torn tights and were drawing lines of blood from her knees and feet. The girls weren’t in the tunnel, Prody was dead and, judging from the way Caffery and Nick were standing – about twenty feet away among the trees, backs turned, talking in low urgent voices – he hadn’t given the police any information at all. But somehow Janice was calm. From somewhere she’d found the strength not to buckle but to stand without moving and simply wait to hear.

Rose, on the other hand, was fragmenting. She was about a yard away, pacing to and fro in a little clearing surrounded by young ash trees that seemed to bend in around her as if they were studying her, or protecting her. Her trousers were muddy, flecked with leaves and the black smudges of the withered blackberries they’d been crouching among; she was shaking her head and muttering into the pink scarf, which she held pressed against her mouth with one hand. Strangely, the madder she seemed, the closer to the edge she got, the calmer and more icily controlled Janice became. When Nick began to cross the clearing towards them, head ominously lowered, Janice was able to stand her ground and wait, while Rose immediately began speaking, clutching at Nick’s sleeves. ‘What did he say? What’s happening?’

‘We’re doing everything we can. We’ve got several leads. Prody’s wife has given us several—’

‘He must have said something.’ Rose immediately began to weep bitterly. Her hands down at her sides, mouth open in a stiff O, her face naked like a helpless little girl in a playground. ‘He must have said where they are. Anything, please, anything.’

‘His wife has given us several leads and there are some keys in his pockets, which look like they’re from a garage. We’re going to search it. And—’

‘No!’ Out of nowhere Rose began to scream, high-pitched, stuttering shrieks that made everyone left in the clearing turn to look. She groped wretchedly at Nick’s jacket, trying to shake some different news out of her. ‘Search the tunnel again. Search the tunnel.’

‘Rose! Sssh, now. They’ve searched the tunnel. It’s empty.’

But Rose had spun herself round and was yelling at the few officers left in the clearing, her arms jerking up and down. ‘Search it again! Search it again!’

‘Rose, listen. Rose!’ Nick tried to catch the flailing arms. Tried to pin them to Rose’s sides. She had to keep her face back, her eyes half closed, to avoid being socked by one of the crazily wheeling hands. ‘They can’t go back in – it’s too dangerous. Rose! Listen! They can’t go in again – Rose!’

Rose threw herself away, still screaming, her hands moving faster, like a wounded bird trying to get some lift. She took a few tottery steps forward, found she’d come to a tree, half turned as if to head off in another direction, turned again, seemed to stagger a little, then, as if she’d been shot in the knees, dropped to the ground. Her whole body folded till her forehead was touching the earth. Her hands came up and she grabbed the back of her neck as if she was trying to force her face into the ground. She rocked back and forth, bellowing into the frozen earth, a long trail of spittle drooping from her mouth and wetting the soil.

Janice came and knelt in the brambles. Her own heart was racing, but the controlled thing inside her was growing. Growing and getting harder. ‘Rose.’ She put a hand on the older woman’s back. ‘Listen.’

At her voice Rose stopped rocking and quietened.

‘Listen. We’ve got to move on. We’re in the wrong place, but there’s somewhere else. His wife’s helping us now. We’re going to find them.’

Slowly Rose raised her head. Above the little scarf her face was a jumbled knot of red flesh and mucus.

‘Really, Rose, I promise. We’ll find them. His wife’s a good person. She is and she’s going to help us.’

Rose rubbed her nose. ‘Do you think so?’ she whispered, her voice tiny. ‘Do you really think so?’

Janice took a breath and looked back at the clearing. The coroner’s van was pulling away, the officer in charge was making his way back towards the car park and the last of the teams slammed the door on their van. Something wanted to bubble up through the calm – hard and bitter and desperate – wanted to wrench itself out from the hole that would never be filled. But she swallowed it and nodded. ‘I do. Now get up. That’s it. Get up and let’s move on.’