Part Two, Chapter Nine

We're sitting against the wall in the main bedroom, using one of the spare dust sheets as a blanket. I'm telling her all about Darren. Not that I meant to tell her everything, but after a point the words just started spilling out. I end up telling her the whole thing right from the beginning: how Darren used to be around me. How he wanted to be a mechanic, how he was always messing around with that stupid bike of his--the one that now sits rusting in the back garden. How he and his friends were into everything in this town. How he was cool and popular and brilliant . . . and how much of a hole it left when one day, one ordinary Monday he never came back home from his hockey match.

And the police investigation that turned up nothing. The vigils and the Missing Person posters. The TV campaign. The website his friends set up. All the efforts that everyone made that in the end came to nothing, as if he simply disappeared off the face of the earth. How, nowadays, my dad is always drunk and my mum is always asleep. How it feels as if when Darren went whatever held my family together went with him.

And then, when those words run out, when I've told everything there is to tell I find myself just talking about Darren. Just these little things I remembered. The way he had of laughing when something amused him. How he always used to smoke out the window of his bedroom, thinking nobody noticed but him. The stupid tattoos he had; a rose on one shoulder and a skull on the other. How he used to call me Lilli.

I stop talking, take a deep breath. Talking about this is choking me up, and all at once I can't go on. I look Lynch directly in the eyes for the first time since I started my story. Whatever I was expecting her expression to be, this isn't it. She looks scared and sad and resigned all at once. For a moment I think she is crying, but then she turns away and wipes furiously at her eyes.

"Sorry," I say. "I didn't meant to dump all this on you. You've got your own . . ."

She shakes her head. "It's not that."

"Are you okay?" She doesn't look okay at all. She looks terrified. Perhaps looking more scared now than she has since we first met.

She licks her lips. "Listen," she says, with difficulty, as though the words are costing her deeply. "There's something I think I have to tell you."

Part Two, Chapter Eight

I scream and try to move back, but whoever it is has got their arms tight around me. They throw themselves forward and we topple over onto the floor with a painful thud. Hands seize my collar and I'm struggling, kicking and screaming and trying to throw them off. It's not good. They're stronger than I am, and I'm pinned to the floor.

"Laura?" It's a girl's voice, Lynch's voice. I open my eyes and now I can make her out in the dark, her face caught between expressions of fear and guilt, as if she's been caught doing something wrong. She releases me, stands up off me, offers out a hand to help. I ignore it and stand. "I'm . . . I'm so sorry," she says haltingly. "I thought . . . I heard someone moving around and I thought . . ."

My back hurts where I hit the floor. My heart is running a mile a minute from the fright of it. But it's only Lynch, and she didn't mean any harm.

"Are you angry?" says Lynch.

I glare at her for a moment, and then relax. "No. It's okay. Really. You just got scared."

"I'm sorry," she says again, and she really does sound it.

"Don't worry, I'm fine."

For a while there's silence. We're both standing apart from each other, gathering ourselves, adjusting our clothes. Eventually, Lynch asks, "What are you doing here so late?"

I shrug. "Felt like a walk. Felt like talking to someone."

"Okay," says Lynch. And then there's the silence again, but this time the ordinary, awkward kind of silence that crops up in any conversation with someone you don't know too well.

"Who did you think I was?" I ask, to end the quiet.

"Just . . . someone. A man. Someone I think might be looking for me."

"So you're on the run then?" I say, meaning it to be a joke. But then Lynch doesn't say anything in reply and I realise that I've hit closer to home than I thought. "You are, aren't you?"

"I'm not a criminal," says Lynch, sharply. "Nothing like that."

"It's okay," I say. "If you don't want to say you don't have to."

Silence again for a little bit. Then Lynch says, "Thank you. For the food and stuff."

"You found it then?"

"Yeah."

"I'll bring some more tomorrow night."

"Thanks." There's a pause, but a more comfortable one this time. We're adjusting to each other's presence. "So," says Lynch. "Who is it I remind you of?"

I take a deep breath, and wonder if I even want to tell her about Darren. But then, why else did I come here if not to talk? Looking straight at Lynch in the darkness of that empty house, I say, "You remind me of my brother."

Part Two, Chapter Seven

 In the end I help dad stagger his way to the sofa, where he collapses and rolls onto his side. I unlace his shoes and pull them off, then fetch a bottle of water from the kitchen and set it in arm's reach. I turn off the light on my way out, and he's already snoring. I go up and check briefly on my mother. She's unconscious still, a damp cloth now draped over her eyes. I stand at the door and watch her slow, regular breathing. For a moment I want very much to cry, but I don't. Instead I shut the door and go downstairs to make myself some food.

It's been like this ever since Darren went missing. It's as if when he went he took a little part of mum and dad with him, and now all they ever want to do is sleep. For that matter, I feel sometimes like he took a little part of me too. I try not to let it hurt me, but it's there, that missing piece, that emptiness. Sometimes I can feel it so keenly that I'm afraid if I look down at my stomach I'll see a hole.

I microwave myself a meal from the freezer and sit in the kitchen, eating without really being hungry. Something about tonight is setting me on edge. Darren and Lynch and everything all swirling around in my head. Normally when I feel like this I go for a run, but right at this moment I just don't have the energy. I feel dizzy, confused.

For a while I stare at my reflection in the kitchen window. And then I have an idea; I'll go to the house, go check on Lynch. Maybe take her some more food. Yes. I nod at my reflection. A walk is just what I need.

Twenty minutes later I'm standing outside the unlit house, and feeling unaccountably nervous. It looks so dark and dead it makes me think of a haunted castle. For a brief moment I reconsider, then shake myself, walk quickly up the path and open the door.

The hall is empty, as if the kitchen. I walk quietly through the rooms, feeling my way along the walls with one hand. Nobody here. "Lynch?" I call, but for some reason my voice comes out as barely more than a whisper.

In the lounge there's a stack of paint tins and a few pieces of cheap wooden furniture covered over by a dustsheet. In the front room there's a ladder leaned against the wall. Bare wiring protrudes from the walls like tufts of metallic hair.

I head cautiously upstairs. The boards creak beneath my feet.

"Lynch?" I call again. Then I push open the door to the main bedroom and from the darkness beyond someone lunges towards me.

Part Two, Chapter Six

I leave the library an hour later and head off through the midday streets. It's a cool, crisp kind of day, but there's still some sun in the air. At the waterfront there are a few dozen sunbathers and some guys kite surfing out in the bay. I watch for a while, reluctant to head home, but feeling separate from it all, closed off. Eventually, feeling heavy, I turn and head up the steps towards my home.

The first thing I do when I get in is check in on Mum. She's asleep, still. There's a fair chance that she hasn't even gotten up this morning. I take a moment to tidy up her bedside table, bring her a fresh glass of water and slip the crumpled foil of sleeping tablets back in the box. I pull the blanket up to her chin and close a gap in the curtains before I leave.

Dad must still be out at work, and so I might as well be alone in the house. I make myself a meal from the freezer, eat in front of the TV and then, suddenly and inexplicably exhausted, head upstairs and collapse onto my bed. Ten minutes of staring at the ceiling thinking of Lynch, and then I'm asleep.

I don't wake up until later, when there's a noise from downstairs. It's evening, now, and so I get up and turn on the light, blinking in the sudden brightness. Downstairs, dad is leaning against the wall. He looks up at me as I approach, eyes unfocussed.

"Whu . . ." he starts to speak, then closes his mouth and swallows audibly. He's drunk, again. Third time this week he's come home after work barely sober enough to stand on his own. With Mum still asleep in bed it looks like I'm the only one who's really here. Again.

"Hey, dad," I say quietly. And all I can think of is Darren, and the girl, Lynch, and those empty spaces people leave when they go.

I have to do something.

I just have to.

Part Two, Chapter Five

When I turn up at the house early next morning she isn't there. I check through all the rooms, but there's no sign of anyone, just tins of paint and battered old bookcases covered in tarp. Maybe I made a mistake in giving her the keys? But I couldn't have just left her out there on the street . . .

I leave the food anyway: half a loaf of bread, some chocolate and two tins of soup bundled up in a plastic bag. I put it on the kitchen counter where she'll find it for sure if she comes back. On my way back home I head to the waterfront and wander past the stretch of beach where I first met her. Just checking, I tell myself. But she isn't there either. Now, in the rational light of day, she's starting to feel like a ghost or a dream; something not quite real that's faded away with the daylight.

Because I don't want to go home just yet I head to the library, pick up a couple of books from the shelves and sit reading at one of the study desks. I'm struggling to concentrate though; what I really want is to talk to Mari, to tell her about the girl and ask her advice. Mari always knows the right thing to do. Today, however, she's busy showing a group of students how to use the microfilm. She gives me a smile and a wave when she sees me, but that's all.

After staring at the same page for half an hour, lost in thought, I'm struck by a sudden idea. I get up and head for one of the computers. I barely ever use these things, and I have to get out my library card and check my account number before I can log in. The machine whirrs and chimes, and the desktop flashes up. I double-click the internet browser.

By now I know the web address for the Missing Person's register off by heart. I've been on it enough times to check Darren's entry. I wait until the page has loaded and then click the search bar. Now what was it the girl told me her name was when I left her last night? Lynch. That was it. I type it in and search, but the result's page comes up empty.

I sit back, disappointed, feeling like I've hit a dead end. Of course, Lynch probably isn't her real name. I imagine she'd have come up with it when she ran away from home.

For a few minutes I try to think of some other plan, but nothing comes. And then, absent-mindedly, I find myself checking Darren's entry on the Missing Person's register. There's his school photo, taken a few months before he disappeared. He's grinning, the same as ever. And listed there are the few bleak facts that are known about his disappearance. Went missing in July last year. Seventeen years old. Last seen leaving the school grounds after a hockey match . . .

Since he went, I feel like I've spent days staring at that picture, at those few words. I reach out and touch the screen, and for a moment feel terribly, immensely sad.

Part Two, Chapter Four

When she's done with the bread, she cracks open a tin of mushroom soup and starts drinking it cold. She glances sidelong at me. "Thanks," she says grudgingly.

"Don't worry about it," I say. I give her a minute to finish the soup and then as she's opening another tin I say, "So are you sleeping on the streets at the moment?"

All at once she stiffens up, on her guard again. "Maybe."

"I'm not going to report you, you know."

"I know."

"So where are you sleeping?"

"I've got a place," she murmurs, clearly reluctant. I wonder again why I'm bothering. Why does it matter to me what happens to some street girl? But then I think of Darren, and I don't even have to ask myself why.

"It's just . . ." I pause and pull the set of keys I picked up along with the food out of my pocket. "Well, if you need somewhere to stay . . . my father's a landlord. He has properties all over the city, and there are a couple of empty houses that he's doing up. This is the key to one. It's not wired up or anything. No furniture; you'd have to sleep on the floor . . . and you'd have to make yourself scarce during the day, in case Dad decides to go do some work there. Just a place to spend the night--if you want to, that is?"

The girl's looking at me with mistrustful eyes. I hold the key out to her. "It's not a huge deal," I say. "There's nothing there to steal . . . and besides you don't look the type to go thieving. Surely it's better than staying out on the street?"

For a moment I think I've pushed things too far, that I might have scared her off. But then the girl nods slowly, and reaches out to take the key. All the while she's looking at me warily, as if frightened that I might lunge forward and bite her. Her fingers close around mine. She's so cold she might as well be dead.

"Good," I say. "I'll take you there now, once you've finished eating. Okay? You can spend the night there and I'll bring some more food around in the morning."

"Thank you," she says again in that same cautious voice. Then, "Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?" She sounds genuinely puzzled as well as scared.

I take a moment to think about it. I want to be honest with her. "Because," I say, "you remind me of someone very important to me."

"Who?"

"I'll tell you when I see you tomorrow. Come on."

Part Two, Chapter Three

I jog back down the waterfront until I reach the narrow set of concrete stairs that lead uphill to my street. I'm out of breath by the time I reach the top, and I pause to glance back towards the beach and see if I can still catch sight of the girl, but it's too far off. I carry on down to my house, fish my keys from my pocket and let myself in as quietly as possible.

I know the layout of the rooms well enough to move by feel alone. First, I hang my school bag on the post at the bottom of the stairs, then I edge open the door to the living room and peer inside. The pale light of the TV washes over the room, over the sleeping form of my father on the sofa. There's a faint but distinct smell of alcohol in the room.

I shut the door. If my father's sleeping downstairs that must mean my mother's up in the bedroom. They hardly ever share a bed anymore. Not that they argue much, exactly. It's just that, ever since Darren went, Mum's headaches have been getting worse. She spends half her life sleeping now, and Dad just doesn't want to disturb her. That's how he ends up in front of the TV every night, sinking can after can of corner-shop beer until he finally manages to sleep.

I do my best not to think about it. I have other things to worry about at the moment.

In the kitchen I open the fridge for light and grab a plastic bag off the counter. I fill it with whatever I can find: half a loaf of bread, some packets of crisps and a couple from the small selection of tins we still have in the cupboard. On the way out, as an afterthought, I pull open the little cabinet drawer where Dad keeps all his work keys and fish out a set, and grab one of my old coats from under the stairs.

It's with a sense of relief that I leave the house again and set off back down the stairs towards the beach. I keep pace down the steps and out onto the waterfront. At the first opportunity I head down onto the beach and start walking up towards where I last saw the girl.

For a minute or two I can't see anyone; in the dark of the night the beach looks deserted, and I'm certain that the girl must have taken off while I was gone. Disappointment floods me, slow and heavy. But then, when I'm almost on top of her, I catch sight of her huddled up against the concrete sea wall.

"Here you go," I say, holding out the coat and the plastic bag. She comes forward and takes them from me warily, like a wild animal accepting food, then retreats again, opens up the plastic bag and starts tearing hungrily into the bread.

"How long has it been since you last ate?" I ask.

She pauses, swallows, avoids my gaze. "A while," she says, then goes back to her food. I watch her eat. Closer to I can see that she's clearly been beaten up. The grey overalls she wears are torn and stained with mud and blood, and her hands are cut and grazed in a dozen places, her wrists bloody and bruised.