Seven Days. Alex Lake

      Next to him, Sandra rolled on to her side. Her breathing quickened and she sighed.

      ‘Are you awake?’ he said.

      ‘Yes. I barely slept.’

      ‘Me neither.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘It’s four thirty-seven.’

      Their bedroom door opened slowly. James stood in the frame. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘I was waiting for you to wake up.’

      ‘You should have come in,’ Martin said. He felt a surge of love for his son. ‘Anytime you need me, I’m here.’

      ‘It’s early.’

      ‘It doesn’t matter.’

      ‘Dad,’ James said. ‘Can we go and look for her?’

      Martin replaced the nozzle in the petrol pump and walked across the garage forecourt to pay. The car had been full the day before, but he had driven every street and park and country road for miles around. Martin had marked the ones they had driven on a map with a fluorescent marker and there were very few left. He had driven slowly, James looking out of one side, him looking out of the other. At every open pub or newsagent or café or clothes shop or place that looked like it might have attracted a fifteen-year-old they had stopped and shown photos of Maggie.

      No one had seen her.

      He scanned the shop as he entered, in case Maggie was inside buying chewing gum or a magazine or a packet of cigarettes. He hoped she was. He hoped he found his fifteen-year-old daughter buying cigarettes, because then he would know she was safe.

      Because then he would have her back, and he could sleep and eat and breathe and live again.

      He handed his card to the shop assistant.

      ‘Number six,’ he said. As she rang it up, he put the photos of Maggie – one a close-up of her face taken a couple of weeks ago, the other her school portrait – on the counter.

      ‘You haven’t seen this girl, have you?’ he asked.

      The woman – about his age and with a pinched, smoker’s face – gave him a suspicious look.

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘She missing?’

      ‘Yes. She’s my daughter.’

      The looked softened into one of sympathy.

      ‘Oh. How long’s she been gone?’

      ‘Two nights.’

      Just saying it made him feel sick with worry. It had a similar effect on the woman.

      ‘Two nights is two nights too long,’ she said. ‘Hold on. I’ll be right back.’

      She picked up the photos and walked through a door into an office. A few minutes later she came back holding a sheaf of paper.

      ‘Photocopies,’ she said. ‘I can hand them out, see if anyone recognizes her. Give me your number and I’ll make sure we let you know.’

      Martin wrote down his phone number, in part glad of the help, and in part terrified.

      Because it suddenly felt all the more real.

       3

      They got home at nine. There was a car parked in the driveway next to Sandra’s red Ford Focus. A dark blue Honda Civic with a large dent in the boot. Martin stiffened.

      ‘Who the hell’s that?’ he said. He pulled up at the side of the road and opened the car door. ‘Let’s go and see.’

      James followed him into the house. He had large dark circles under his eyes and a drawn look. Martin put his arm around him and kissed his forehead. It was oily; his son was giving off a pungent, hormonal smell.

      ‘It’ll be OK,’ Martin said. ‘Really, it will.’

      He was trying his best, but he wasn’t sure he was able to sound like he really believed his own words.

      In the living room, Sandra was perched on the edge of the sofa. She had a mug of tea in her hands. A woman with short, dark hair was sitting in the armchair opposite her.

      ‘Hi,’ she said. She didn’t need to ask if he had found Maggie. She gestured at the woman.

      ‘This is Detective Inspector …’ her voice tailed off.

      ‘Wynne,’ the woman said. ‘DI Jane Wynne.’ She looked at Martin, her face still and expressionless. There was a questioning, intelligent look in her eyes. ‘I’m here about Margaret.’

      ‘Maggie,’ Martin said, reflexively. ‘We call her Maggie.’

      Wynne nodded. ‘Maggie,’ she said. ‘You reported her missing two nights ago, around midnight.’ She paused, her expression carefully neutral. ‘Even though most of these cases resolve quite quickly, we do feel that this case requires more attention.’

      Martin steadied himself against the back of the sofa. Although he wanted all the help they could get with finding Maggie, these were not words he wanted to hear.

      ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why does it require more attention?’

      ‘It’s a combination of things,’ Wynne said. ‘Maggie has no history of this kind of behaviour. You reported that none of her friends have seen her. She’s fifteen. And then there’s the amount of time that has passed. Although many teenagers go missing, it’s been two nights. And that is a concern.’

      ‘You think something bad has happened?’ Sandra said, in a low voice.

      Wynne glanced at James. ‘I think it’s a possibility,’ she said. ‘If she was away for one night, that would be pretty normal for a teenager. Drink too much, fall asleep somewhere, come home the next day, fearing punishment. All pretty standard. But two nights is different.’

      ‘So what happens next?’ Martin said.

      ‘We contact the press,’ Wynne said. ‘Get her photo out there. You take me through the last few days, I interview her friends, look at phone records, see what might be of interest, whether there are any leads. We assemble some officers to follow those leads.’ She rubbed her eye. ‘And then we do whatever we can to find your daughter.’

       4

      Martin stood in his daughter’s room. It was a curious mixture of childlike and grown-up; on her desk were some earrings and a CD by an artist he had never heard of and a book of short stories by Kate Chopin, yet by her pillow there was the blue bear – Rudi – he had bought her when she was six and he and Sandra were trying to stop her climbing into their bed every night.