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  ‘Aaargh! Oh no!’

  A shriek had come from elsewhere and Becca, glad of the distraction, went to investigate, just as Scarlet hurtled into the room in a scraggly cerise dressing gown, panicking that she’d forgotten about her early-morning Friday violin lesson at eight-thirty and oh God, they were going to be sooo late and her teacher Mrs Brookes was like so, totally strict, she would just go bloody mental!

  ‘Scarlet,’ Becca said, but her niece was in seemingly unstoppable mid-flow.

  ‘And I’m meant to be doing my Grade 2 soon and she said if I missed any more lessons—’

  ‘Scarlet!’

  ‘– she would be, like, really cross, and—’

  ‘Scarlet, listen!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s only twenty past seven. And it’s Thursday, anyway. Your lesson must be tomorrow. We’ve got twenty-five whole hours before you have to be there.’

  Scarlet opened her mouth and then shut it again. ‘Oh! Thursday,’ she said in surprise. Her face relaxed. ‘Okay, cool,’ she went on, sounding more cheerful. ‘Can I have some breakfast?’

  Looking after children was exhausting, Becca thought ten minutes later. Luke had had a meltdown, insisting that he didn’t have any school uniform, and then Mabel went off on one too, ranting that there was no butter and she had the worst period pain ever, like her uterus was totally ripping itself apart – and aargh, why had nobody reminded her about the geography exam that was like, this morning, could Becca ring the school and explain that she was really traumatized about Mum and hadn’t been able to revise?

  It was mayhem. Carnage. Becca felt breathless with her attempts to firefight one drama after another, none of them with much success. She felt particularly thrown by Mabel’s abrupt mood changes from sweetness the night before to relative civility first thing before plunging into absolute foulness now. Was that normal? ‘And I’m going to Tyler’s after school, all right?’ she yelled as she slammed out of the house at eight o’clock.

  ‘Bye,’ Becca called, wincing as the door crashed in the frame. ‘Who’s Tyler?’ she asked Scarlet, not entirely sure she wanted to know.

  Scarlet looked gleeful. ‘Her boyfriend. Who Mum doesn’t like because she caught them kissing.’

  Oh, great. Wonderful. ‘So I take it her going to Tyler’s house . . .’

  ‘Is totally not allowed. Like, no way. Because his parents don’t get back till late, Mabel says, so there are no “responsible adults” around. Last time Mum said, I’m laying the law down here, young lady, it’s not happening, so you just get that into your head right this minute.’

  The imitation was spot-on and Becca floundered for a moment, not least because she had the horrible feeling Rachel might not class her as a particularly ‘responsible adult’. Now what was she supposed to do? ‘Well,’ she said, thinking fast, ‘I’m sure your mum will be back by then anyway, so I’ll leave that for her to sort out.’ It was a cop-out and she wasn’t sure of any such thing, frankly, but it was the best she could manage.

  Scarlet smirked. ‘She’ll go bloody nutzoid,’ she said with relish.

  ‘Where is Mum, anyway?’ Luke asked, sliding down the banister in a Darth Vader costume.

  ‘She’s gone to fight the evil Sith,’ Scarlet said, grabbing his lightsabre and clonking him over the head with it.

  ‘Ow. Has she? Really?’

  ‘No, you moron, of course she hasn’t. Because Star Wars isn’t real. Derrrr!’

  Deep breaths, Becca thought as she broke up the resulting scuffle, sent Luke to get changed and cobbled together some packed lunches. ‘We’re definitely allowed crisps, aren’t we, Luke?’ Scarlet had said, eyes wide with innocence. ‘Only on Fr—’ he had begun replying, before a surreptitious kick made him change this to an unconvincing ‘Oh. Yes. We are.’ ‘Because you see, potatoes are vegetables,’ Scarlet had added cunningly, like that was going to persuade anyone. Becca decided to cut them some slack, though. They were just a little on edge, that was all, and it was completely justified given the circumstances. Besides, it sounded like her step-sister was something of a stickler on the health and nutrition front. A bag of crisps and some jammy pancakes weren’t about to kill anyone, were they?

  As she ran around searching for hair bobbles in order to plait Scarlet’s tangled brown hair – a brush would help, too – she couldn’t help ruefully harking back to her usual morning routine: savouring a quiet coffee in bed with the radio on before calmly getting ready for the day, without anyone screaming down the stairs about exams and the state of their ovaries, let alone playing migraine-inducing violin tunes about beloved dogs and terrible parents so loud and frenziedly that Becca feared for the safety of every window and wine glass in the house. Violinageddon, Mabel had called it. She wasn’t far wrong.

  An old song, beloved of her mum, slipped into her head as she loaded up the dishwasher with cereal bowls and mugs. Sometimes it’s hard . . . to be a woman . . .

  Yeah. Especially when you had three children to get out of the house first thing in the morning. I hear you, sister.

  Despite Becca’s best attempts, it ended up being ten past nine before she, Scarlet and Luke actually managed to make it to their school. She had to press a buzzer and explain herself to an intercom before they were permitted to enter and do the walk of shame up to the office, where she had to enter their names in the ‘Late’ book. ‘Whoa. We’ve never ever been late before,’ Scarlet said, looking vaguely panicked at the prospect, and Becca just about managed to bite back a retort that if she’d brushed her teeth a bit faster and stopped teasing her brother, they might have been on time.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said bracingly. ‘It’s not the end of the world, is it?’ A sniff came from the po-faced secretary, who clearly disagreed, and Becca gave her a frosty glare in response – well, as frosty a glare as she could manage when the slightly-too-tight yoga pants were going right up her bum crack. ‘Have a brilliant day, both of you,’ she said to the children. ‘Be good! And don’t worry. I’m sure everything will be completely back to normal again by hometime, all right?’

  ‘And Mum will be back again?’ Luke said anxiously.

  ‘Probably. Almost certainly,’ Becca replied, doing her best to sound reassuring. I really hope so, anyway, kid.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Scarlet said just then, slapping a hand to her forehead. ‘Football kit. You forgot our football kit, Aunty Bee. We have a club after school on Thursdays.’

  Becca counted to ten under her breath to prevent herself from arguing that she was not the one who had forgotten, seeing as she knew nothing about this football club. Instead she apologized for the random kit she was supposed to have known telepathically about, hugged both children tightly and sent them on their way, hoping they would be okay.

  ‘Is everything . . . all right at home?’ the secretary ventured as Becca stood there a moment longer, watching them troop into the building.

  ‘Um . . .’ Becca hesitated, unsure how to reply. Rachel had always been so proud; she would probably hate anyone knowing there was a problem at home. ‘Not really,’ she replied truthfully in the end. ‘But I’m on the case.’

  A disappearing mum was not good for anyone, she thought as she walked back through the school gate a few moments later. Her nieces and nephew might all be handling the situation in their own ways – rage, denial, fear, quite a lot of inappropriate swearing – but sooner or later there would have to come some form of resolution, some answers, otherwise the not-knowing would start to become unbearable. Today, she would begin the search and see what she could find out.

  Chapter Eight

  Rachel dozed in and out of consciousness. Rachel Jackson, Birmingham, she kept reminding herself. Rachel Jackson, Birmingham, as if she’d forget all over again if the facts were allowed to slip through her grasp. It didn’t feel quite right, though. What was she missing? A cathedral kept coming into her mind – a handsome cathedral by the river, bells ringing. That wasn’t Birmingham, was it? But the streets and bu
ildings just slid about in her mind whenever she tried to pin them down. Oh, why couldn’t she think straight? What was wrong with her brain? What if she never remembered, and was stuck like this for ever?

  A nurse appeared after a while, the blonde one again. Good cheekbones, Rachel found herself thinking. People used to say that about her, she recalled in the next moment. Amazing bone structure! Someone had actually once said those words to her, admiringly; a boy who was in love with her when she was at university, she thought. Andy, was it? She could picture his donkey jacket and skinny-jeaned legs, sandy-coloured hair, a Northern accent. Andy. At university. Yes: two more facts for the jigsaw. She raised a hand to her face while the nurse took her temperature, gingerly touching the sore, swollen skin with the tips of her fingers. How did her bone structure look now? she wondered. Smashed up beyond recognition, was how it felt. Would anyone ever compliment her on her face again?

  The nurse gently took her hand down and fastened the blood pressure cuff to her arm. ‘So we’re keeping you nil by mouth this morning because you’re going into theatre later on – hopefully by ten o’clock, depending on how many other patients are ahead of you on the list, okay?’ she said, pumping up the cuff so that it tightened.

  Rachel gave a careful nod, her pulse thumping against the rubber.

  ‘Ah, good, your blood pressure’s fifty-eight over ninety, that’s looking better,’ the nurse said, jotting down the reading. ‘Gosh, you must be very fit.’

  Fifty-eight. Ninety. And in the next moment, something came floating up through her blurred consciousness at those numbers, an inkling that they meant something, were relevant. Fifty-eight. Ninety. She could hear herself saying them aloud, a distant memory that seemed far away, as if she was peering at it through a reverse telescope. If she could just put her finger on what they meant.

  Twenty-five. Fifty-eight. Ninety. That was the sequence, she was certain. Six numbers, in that order, she could see them in purple digits all of a sudden, printed on white card. Her heart pounded. Contact details on her business card – yes! ‘Twenty-five. Fifty-eight,’ she said haltingly, her jaw still agony to move, her lips feeling as if they were made of rubber. She didn’t care, though; she had remembered. At last! ‘Ninety.’

  ‘What’s that, love?’ the nurse said, looking up from her clipboard.

  Wait – there was more. The area code. Zero-one-four-three-two. That was it, just like that in her head. A camera flash of sudden, sharp memory. That was it! Rachel gestured for the pen and then, with some difficulty, used her left hand to write the numbers at the bottom of the nurse’s observation form. As fast as she could, before they slipped away again. ‘Phone,’ she said, pointing at the shaky figures, triumph bursting through her like a sunrise. She smiled despite the pain. It had finally come back to her, her brain releasing this vital code that would reconnect her with home. ‘Phone.’

  Exhausted by the breakthrough, she leaned against her pillows and drifted back into a shallow sleep, waking again when two new figures appeared by her bedside: the anaesthetist and consultant in charge of her operation that morning. They ran through a number of pre-op questions – did she have any fillings, piercings, was there any chance that she could be pregnant, had she had any problems while under anaesthetic in the past, that sort of thing. Rachel couldn’t help thinking back to when Scarlet had had her tonsils out, three years ago, and how terrifying it had been seeing her child slip under anaesthetic, eyes rolling backwards, how Rachel had been hustled out of the operating theatre (‘Come on, Mum, let’s leave them to get on with it’) away from that small prone body, when every maternal instinct told her to stay there and stand guard, keep a tight hold of her daughter’s hand throughout. Lawrence had been waiting outside, of course, they’d still been a united front back then, and they’d sat it out together in the grim little parents’ area, taking it in turns to get disgusting coffees from the machine while they tried not to think about surgeons angling knives in their younger daughter’s cherry-red mouth.

  This time it would be her in the operating theatre, numbed by the drug, eyes tilting back into her head, alone and vulnerable on a bed while the doctors got to work. Nobody outside in the waiting area. Nobody leaning over her while she came round, to tell her she would be all right, that they would look after her.

  She answered the doctors’ questions in a strangled-sounding voice, signed the consent forms shakily, not quite daring to say aloud what was uppermost in her mind: please be careful with me. I’ve got three children, you know. I’ve got to get out of here as soon as I can, all right?

  ‘I think that’s everything,’ the consultant said with a smile.

  ‘So we’ll see you in theatre later on, okay? Try not to worry.’

  Rachel stared up at the ceiling after they’d gone, attempting to dredge up some courage. Scarlet had barely complained about her operation, she remembered, even afterwards when she was groggy and confused in the recovery room, throwing up into a cardboard bowl, her forehead clammy. Rachel would just have to channel some of her daughter’s determination and see this through, however unpleasant, however painful.

  The consultant had moved on to the next patient, the woman in the neighbouring bed to Rachel, separated only by a faded blue curtain. Unlike Rachel, this woman had with her a man (a husband?) and a little girl, and it was impossible not to eavesdrop on their voices, confident and almost cheerful, as the three adults discussed the treatment she needed. The little girl was playing with some kind of musical toy, oblivious to her mother’s predicament, because the tinny strains of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ filtered through to Rachel.

  Mabel had loved that song, she thought nostalgically, except she’d had her own version of the words. ‘Tinkle Little Tinkle Sar,’ she’d sung, high-pitched and sweet as a toddler. ‘Sing “Tinkle Little”, Daddy,’ she would order, and Rachel remembered how Lawrence had gamely obeyed his miniature daughter, remembered catching his eye across the room and feeling a rush of fierce love for him as he sang along with her, his booming bass quite at odds with her small-girl cheep. Oh, she’d loved him then. They’d been happy, hadn’t they, once upon a time?

  Tears dripped onto the white hospital pillow, creating little wet circles. How I wonder what you are. Yes, she thought miserably, and how she wondered how it had all gone wrong.

  Chapter Nine

  Having completed the school run, albeit not particularly brilliantly, Becca let herself back into Rachel’s silent house. Okay. Now what? Well, the kitchen looked as if a bomb had gone off in there, for starters. As little as she knew about her stepsister, she was pretty sure that Rachel would not want to walk back into her home to find a scene of carnage. Becca quickly put away the breakfast cereals, swept up the spilled Rice Krispies and put on a load of laundry. That was the easy bit. Now for the more important business: beginning the hunt to find her sister.

  First of all, she called every hospital within the county. None of them had any record of Rachel or of a woman matching her description coming into their Accident and Emergency departments yesterday – so that was a positive start.

  Next came a call to the local police station to report her missing. A helpful man took down all the details and a full description of Rachel, then went on to ask a whole host of other questions about places Rachel frequented, her health and medical condition, details of where she worked, as well as whether there had been any specific events that might have led directly to her disappearance. Becca felt stupid for not being able to answer everything fully. ‘We’re not exactly close,’ she mumbled after yet another ‘Don’t know’ reply. ‘I’ll ring you back,’ she added pathetically when she couldn’t even give her sister’s car registration number or a work number. Hopeless.

  The police officer informed her that it was a low-risk situation and that in ninety per cent of cases, the people in question returned of their own volition. ‘Try not to worry,’ he said. ‘Chances are, she’ll be home later today and there’ll be a perfectly good explanatio
n.’

  ‘But she has kids,’ Becca pointed out. ‘And I am worried. This is really out of character.’ From what I know of her, anyway, she thought desperately. Which isn’t an awful lot, these days.

  ‘I’ll add the information you’ve given me to our database,’ the officer promised, ‘and I’ll be in touch as soon as we hear anything.’

  So that was that. Onto the database she went, along with all those other missing people. Becca hated to think of that list of names and the ripples of families around each one, all fearing the worst, all jumping every time the phone rang or there was a knock at the door.

  What next? She had remembered to ask Mabel for the laptop password that morning, in between ovary updates and pre-exam meltdown, so that was another avenue to try at least. ‘Masklooha,’ Mabel had told her, shoving a triangle of toast into her mouth.

  ‘Mask-loo . . . What?’

  Mabel had grabbed a pen and paper and written it down. ‘MaScLuHa,’ she repeated. ‘The first two letters of our names, and the dog’s.’

  MaScLuHa. Nope, she’d have been a long time trying to guess that one, Becca thought now, typing the letters in carefully. Bingo! The screen changed and she was in. Okay – browser history, that was a good place to start. A few clicks of the trackpad told her that the websites Rachel had recently visited were: Waitrose (quelle surprise), a Google search for ‘Didsbury Library telephone’ (say what?), Facebook, and National Rail Enquiries. Ahh. That last one definitely sounded like a clue. Had she taken the train somewhere yesterday? She clicked on the link, hoping to see where Rachel might have gone, but a generic screen appeared telling her that her session had timed out. Talk about frustrating.

  She clicked on the Didsbury Library search page, wondering if that might be relevant. Where the hell was Didsbury anyway? Right, somewhere in Manchester, apparently. She wrinkled her nose. Strange. Why phone up a library miles away rather than use your local one? Unless it was something to do with homework for the kids, she wondered, frowning.