The Other People Read online

  Gabe didn’t really sleep. Not properly. That was one of the reasons he drove. When he needed a break, more because he felt he should than because he felt tired, he pulled into one of the service stations he had come to know so well.

  He could list them all, up and down the M1: the facilities, the ratings and the distances between them. They were, he supposed, the closest things he had to any sort of home. Ironic, really, considering how much he used to dislike them. When he wanted more than just a refuel of black coffee, he parked his camper van in one of the HGV bays and lay down in the back for a couple of hours. He often resented the time he was wasting, not doing anything, not searching. But, while his mind never rested, his eyes, wrists and legs needed the respite. Sometimes, when he climbed from the driver’s seat, it felt as though he were a stooped Neanderthal attempting to stand vertical for the very first time. So he forced himself to close his eyes, stretch out his six-foot-three frame as much as he could in the camper van for a maximum of 120 minutes every twenty-four hours. And then he got back on the road.

  He had everything he needed with him. Toiletries, a few changes of clothes. Sometimes a trip to the launderette necessitated a small detour off the motorway and into a town. He didn’t like these trips. They reminded him too much of the normality of most people’s everyday lives. Shopping, work, meeting for a coffee, taking the kids to school. All things he no longer did. All the things he had lost, or let go.

  On the motorway, in the service stations, normal life was suspended. Everyone was on their way somewhere, at a point in between. In neither one place nor another. A little like Purgatory.

  He kept his phone and laptop close, along with two spare chargers and several battery packs (he would never make that mistake again). When he wasn’t driving, he spent his time drinking coffee, scanning the news—just in case there was any news—and checking the missing-persons websites.

  Most of these were little more than noticeboards. They ran appeals for the missing, posted updates on progress, held events to raise awareness. All in the desperate hope that someone out there might see something and get in touch.

  He used to trawl them religiously. But after a while it got to him: the hope, the desperation. The same photographs again and again. The faces of people who had been missing for years, decades. Preserved in a camera flash. Their hairstyles becoming more dated, their smiles more frozen with each missed birthday and Christmas.

  Then there were the new faces that appeared almost daily. Still with an echo of life. He imagined that a dent remained in their pillows, a toothbrush hardened in a holder, and the clothes in their wardrobe still smelled of fresh laundry and not yet of mold and mothballs.

  But it would happen. Just like the others. Time would roll on without them. The rest of the world would continue to its destination. Only their loved ones would remain on the platform. Unable to leave, unable to abandon their vigil.

  Missing is different to being dead. In a way, it’s worse. Death offers finality. Death gives you permission to grieve. To hold memorials, to light candles and lay flowers. To let go.

  Missing is limbo. You’re stranded; in a strange, bleak place where hope glimmers faintly at the horizon and misery and despair circle like vultures.

  * * *

  —

  HIS PHONE BUZZED from the holder on the dashboard. He glanced at the screen. The name on it made the hairs stir on his neck.

  The other thing you found, if you spent your time traveling the tributaries of the country in the dead of night long enough, was other night people. Other vampires. Lorry and van drivers on long-haul deliveries. Police, paramedics, service staff. Like the blonde-haired waitress. She had been on again tonight. She seemed nice, but she always looked worn out. He imagined she had had a husband once, but he left. Now she worked nights, so she had time for her kids in the day.

  He often did that with people. Invented back stories for them, as if they were characters in a book. Some you could read right away. Others took a little more time. Some you could never fathom, not in a million lifetimes.

  Like the Samaritan.

  “Where r u?” his text read.

  Normally, Gabe couldn’t stand people using abbreviations, even in texts—a throwback to his former profession as a copywriter—but he forgave the Samaritan, for a number of reasons.

  He tapped the microphone icon on the phone’s screen and said: “Between Newton Green and Watford Gap.” The words flashed up as a message. Gabe tapped send.

  The text came back: “Meet me @ Barton Marsh, off J14. Sndng direcs.”

  Barton Marsh. A small village not far from Northampton. Not very pretty. A good fifty minutes away.

  “Why?”

  The reply was just three words. Words he had been waiting to hear for almost three years. Words he had dreaded hearing.

  “I found it.”

  TIBSHELF SERVICES, M1 JUNCTIONS 28–9

  Fran sipped her coffee. Well, she presumed it was coffee. The menu said it was coffee. It looked like coffee. It smelled vaguely like coffee. But it tasted like crap. She shook out another sachet of sugar. The fourth. Across the sticky plastic table, Alice picked halfheartedly at an anemic-looking bit of toast that was doing only a slightly better job than the coffee at fitting its purpose under the Trades Description Act.

  “You going to eat that?” Fran asked.

  “No,” Alice replied absently.

  “Don’t blame you,” Fran said, smiling sympathetically, even though the effort caused her cheeks to hurt…which at least matched her eyes and head.

  Her head was throbbing harder than ever in the bright fluorescent light. She hadn’t eaten anything since the previous morning. Her belly was past food, but her head was pounding from the lack of nutrition and sleep. That was part of the reason she had decided they should stop for coffee and sustenance. Ha bloody ha. Probably served her right that they weren’t getting either. She pushed the coffee away.

  “D’you need the bathroom before we go?”

  Alice started to shake her head then reconsidered. “How far do we have to go?”

  Good question. How far? How far would be enough? She had no idea, but she didn’t want to say that to Alice. She was supposed to be the one in control, the one with a plan. She couldn’t tell Alice that she was just driving, as fast as she dared, trying to put as many miles between them and their last address as possible.

  “Well, it’s a long way, but there are plenty of other service stations on the way.”

  Until they got off the motorway, of course, and then the only option would be a lay-by at the side of the road.

  Alice pulled a face. “I suppose I could go now.”

  Said with the same amount of enthusiasm as if she had asked her to step into a cage with man-eating lions.

  “You want me to come with you?”

  Another hesitation. Alice had, among other things, a phobia about public bathrooms. However, at almost eight, she also had a bigger phobia about acting like a baby.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Sure?”

  Alice nodded and then, with a grim-faced determination that made her look oh-so-much older than her years, she rose from her seat. After another momentary hesitation, she reached across the table for her bag: a small pink rucksack decorated with purple flowers. Alice never went anywhere without it, not even to the toilet. As she slung it over her slight shoulder, it rattled and clicked.

  Fran tried not to frown, tried not to let the fear show on her face. She lifted her coffee cup and made a pretense of drinking from it as Alice walked away; long, brown hair caught up in a high ponytail, jeans tucked into fake Uggs, a large duffel coat swamping her skinny frame.

  A surge of primeval love overpowered her. It got you like that sometimes. Terrifying, the love you have for a child. From the minute you cradled that soft, sticky head in your arm
s, everything changed. You lived in a state of perpetual wonder and terror: wonder that you could have produced something so incredible, terror that at any moment they might be taken from you. Life had never seemed so fragile or so full of menace before.

  The only time you shouldn’t worry about them, she thought, was when they slept. That’s when they should be safe, tucked up tightly in their beds. The problem was, Alice didn’t sleep in her bed. Not always. Alice could fall asleep anywhere, at any moment. On the way to school, in the park, in the ladies’ toilets. One minute awake. The next gone. It was scary.

  But not as scary as when she woke up.

  Fran thought about the rucksack. That restless rattling. Panic fluttered like a dark moth in her chest.

  * * *

  —

  ALICE STARED AT the sign for the Ladies. A woman in a triangle skirt. When she was little, she used to think it meant if she was wearing trousers she couldn’t go in. She didn’t want to go in now. Fear gripped her belly hard, which of course just made the urge to wee even greater.

  It wasn’t the toilets she was afraid of. Or even the noisy hand-dryers (although they used to scare her a bit). It was something else. Something it was hard to avoid in any bathroom, but especially in public toilets, with their row upon row of sinks and unexpected corners.

  Mirrors. Alice didn’t like mirrors. She had been scared of them ever since she was little. One of her earliest memories was of playing dress-up and sneaking upstairs to look at herself in her mum’s big mirror in the bedroom. She had stood in front of it, resplendent in her Elsa dress…and she had started to scream.

  Not all mirrors were a problem. Some were safe. She didn’t know why. She couldn’t explain it any more than she could explain why some were dangerous. Unfamiliar mirrors were riskier. Mirrors she didn’t know. Those were the ones where she saw things; those were the ones that could make her fall.

  It will be all right, she told herself. Just look down. Keep looking down.

  She took a deep breath and pushed open the door. The cloying smell of air freshener and harsh disinfectant caught in her throat and made her feel a little sick. No one else was in the toilets, which was unusual, but then, it was still early, and the services were quiet.

  She hurried to the closest toilet, keeping her eyes to the floor, and shut the door. She lowered herself onto the toilet, had a wee then quickly dried, flushed and slipped out again, still trying to keep her eyes down. Now was the hard part. Now she had to get to the sink and wash her hands.

  She almost made it. But the soap wouldn’t work. She pushed and pushed and then she glanced up. She couldn’t help it. Or maybe there was just something about that forbidden gleam that called to her, like a door left slightly ajar. You couldn’t help pushing it wider to see what lay on the other side.

  She caught sight of her reflection. Except, it wasn’t her. It wasn’t really a reflection at all. It was a girl, similar looking, although a few years older. But whereas Alice was dark-haired with blue eyes, this girl was pale, almost albino, with white hair and eyes like milky-grey marbles.

  “Alisssss.”

  Even her voice was pale and insubstantial, like it was being carried away on a breeze.

  “Not now. Go away.”

  “Sssssh. Sssssh now.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I neeeed you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I need you to sleeeeep.”

  “No. I’m not…”

  But before the word “tired” could leave her mouth Alice’s eyelids snapped shut and she slumped to the floor.

  I found it.

  Was it really possible, after all this time? And, of course, Gabe was very aware of what the Samaritan had not said. He’d said, “I found it.” Not “I found her.” Unless he was sparing Gabe. But, then, why call him out here? There was something more contained within those words. He felt it. A lie by omission. I found it. And?

  He squinted at the unfamiliar road signs and guided the camper van along roads that felt too narrow and twisty. Gabe always felt a momentary dislocation when he pulled off the motorway. Like he had cut a safety line. Severed the umbilical cord. Jumped into the abyss without a chute.

  Panic scratched with feverish claws at the back of his mind. Panic that he could be missing her. Panic that he was letting her slip away. All over again. Irrational, insane. But he couldn’t help it. The motorway. That was his only link. The place he had last seen her. The place he had lost her.

  You’re supposed to do anything for your child. Anything. And he had just watched his daughter disappear. Just let those tail lights pull away. Gone. Vanished. He had replayed it over and over in his mind. If only he had done things differently. If only he hadn’t turned off. If only he had followed that damn shitty old car. If only, if only.

  Glorious hindsight. But hindsight isn’t glorious. Hindsight is a shabby conman. A gameshow host in a gold lamé suit and bad hairpiece who mockingly shows you what you could have won:

  If you had been faster, braver, more committed. If you weren’t such a coward. But, ladies and gentlemen, give him a round of applause. He’s been a great contestant. Still a loser, though. Still a fucking loser.

  He gripped the steering wheel tighter and glanced at the clock: 2:47 a.m. The sky was still a deep swathe of velvety black pierced through with a few tiny pinpoints of light. It would be a while before dawn dragged it aside. In mid-February that wouldn’t happen for another three hours, at least.

  He was glad. He preferred the darkness. Preferred this time of year. When the days first began to shorten, during October, he both welcomed and hated it. The long hours of summer were bad. Sunny days brought more people to the motorway: cars packed with families heading off on holiday. Smiling, eager, happy faces. Sweaty, screaming, exhausted ones. He saw Izzy in all of them.

  Once or twice, at the beginning, he had almost run after a couple of little girls, convinced they were her. Both times he had realized, just before he made a fool of himself (or earned a punch in the face from an angry father), that he was wrong. He had been saved from humiliation. He hadn’t been saved from the gut-wrenching disappointment.

  By October, the hordes of families had dissipated: back to school and work, the mundane commute. But in their place came other events. Other celebrations. Halloween, Bonfire Night. Throughout the year, it seemed, there were events designed to remind the lonely that they were indeed alone. No children, eyes illuminated by the flare and sparkle of fireworks. No other half to wrap an arm around and draw close against the autumn chill.

  Christmas was the worst because it was the most invasive. On the roads, the motorway, in the service stations, you could escape the other occasions, for the most part. But Christmas—bloody Christmas—pervaded everywhere, creeping in earlier and earlier each year.

  Even the service stations would make meager attempts at decorations and erect lopsided Christmas trees, badly wrapped empty boxes beneath them. The shops would be full of Christmas “goodies” for those who had forgotten a present for Auntie Edna and were on the way to a family gathering. And the songs. That was what really drove him past the edge of insanity. The same dozen Christmas songs played again and again, and not even the originals but irritatingly bad copies. After the first year, he had bought himself a very expensive pair of noise-cancelling headphones so he could shut them out and listen to his own, more maudlin, less full-of-good-cheer song selection.

  Gabe hated Christmas. Anyone who has ever lost someone hates Christmas. Christmas takes your pain and turns it up to eleven. It taunts your loss with every glistening treetop and “First Noel.” It reminds you that there is no respite, no let-up. Your grief is unrelenting and even if you manage to put it away, like a box of decorations, it will always come back. Reappearing every year, as familiar as Jacob Marley’s rotting ghost.

  The further away from Christmas
it was, the more settled he felt. Not happy. Gabe never felt happy. He wasn’t sure that that particular emotional avenue was open to him any more. But he had found a kind of acceptance. Not acceptance that Izzy was gone. An acceptance that this was now his life. Relentless, joyless, tiring, hard. But that was okay. It was what he deserved. Until he found her. One way or another.

  A green sign ahead: BARTON MARSH, 2 MILES. Next right. A traffic light. He signaled and pulled over. Laurie Anderson sang about Hansel and Gretel, all grown up and sick of each other. No such thing as a happy ever after, he thought.

  The turn took him on to an even narrower, twistier country lane. No streetlights. Just sporadic cat’s eyes, winking at him from the center of the road. His phone pinged with a text:

  “How close?”

  “2 miles.”

  “Passed a farm?”

  “No.”

  “After the farm, look out for a lay-by. Pull in. Footpath into woods.”

  “Okay.”

  Footpath into woods.

  His scalp prickled. Momentarily, he wondered what had brought the Samaritan here, to such a secluded spot. Then he decided he really didn’t want to know.

  He dragged his concentration back to the road. To his left, a sign sprang out of the gloom: OLD MEADOWS FARM. Sure enough, just a few yards down, on his right, he spotted a lay-by, the “P” sign almost totally obscured by overgrown trees.

  He pulled in behind the only other car parked there. A black BMW. A few years old, the number plate partially obscured by dirt. Not enough to attract the attention of the police but just enough to make it difficult to make out, at a glance. The back and rear windows were tinted, although Gabe doubted that was for the comfort of the passengers.