The Girl in the Ice

3

Erika found the women’s locker room and worked fast, changing into a forgotten but familiar ensemble of black trousers, white blouse, dark sweater and long leather jacket.

She was stuffing her civilian clothes into a locker when she noticed a crumpled copy of the Daily Mail at the end of one of the long wooden benches. She pulled it towards her and smoothed it out. Under the headline, DAUGHTER OF TOP LABOUR PEER VANISHES, was a large picture of Andrea Douglas-Brown. She was beautiful and polished, with long brown hair, full lips and sparkling brown eyes. Her skin was tanned and she wore a skimpy bikini top, shoulders back to accentuate her full breasts. She stared into the camera with an intense, confident gaze. The photo had been taken on a yacht, and behind her the sky was a hot blue, and the sun sparkled on the sea. Andrea was being embraced from either side by wide, powerful male shoulders, one taller and one shorter – the rest of whoever they were had been cropped out.

The Daily Mail described Andrea as a “minor socialite”, which Erika was sure Andrea wouldn’t enjoy if she could read it, but it refrained from calling her “Andie” as the other tabloids had done. The paper had spoken to her parents, Lord and Lady Douglas-Brown, and to her fiancé, who had all pleaded for Andrea to get in contact with them.

Erika scrabbled in her leather jacket and found her notebook, still there after all these months. She noted down the name of the fiancé, a Giles Osborne, and wrote: Did Andrea run away? She looked at it for a moment, them scrubbed it out ferociously, tearing the paper. She tucked the notebook in the back of her trousers and went to put her ID in the other free pocket, but paused, feeling it in her hand for a moment: its familiar weight, the leather case cover worn into a curve after years resting against her buttock in the back pocket of her trousers.

Erika went to a mirror above a row of sinks, flipped open the leather case and held it out in front of her. The ID photo showed a confident woman, blonde hair swept back, staring into the camera defiantly. The woman looking back at her, holding the ID, was scrawny and pallid. Her short blonde hair stuck up in tufts, and grey was showing at the roots. Erika watched her shaking arm for a moment, then flipped the ID closed.

She would put in a request for a new photo.