style="font-size:15px;"> I halt that thought mid-way. Of course he’s coming back. That’s just mad thinking. His car’s broken down and his phone’s out of battery. That’s all. I’ll feel ridiculous in about one minute when he arrives in a taxi. I pull the curtain back for the thousandth time, more slowly now, not really able to convince myself any longer that this time he will be there. Sure enough, yet again there’s no taxi. No AA recovery lorry either. Not even a police car. No one at all.
‘Right, so what’s going on?’ Ginge demands as soon as she’s in through the front door. She’s business-like and determined but when she looks at my face she falters. ‘Good God, Gee, what’s happened?’
‘It’s Adam …’ I begin, but immediately she starts nodding meaningfully. I stop and frown. ‘Why are you nodding like that?’
‘What do you mean? How else am I supposed to nod? It’s a fairly standard gesture. Internationally recognised.’
‘No. Ginge. Why are you nodding at all?’
She shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I’m listening to you. What’s your point? Tell me what he’s done, for Pete’s sake.’
I narrow my eyes. ‘Why would you assume he’s done something?’
She looks momentarily discomfited and moves her head back slightly. ‘Well, hasn’t he?’
I think for a second. Has he? Ginger moves her head forward again and raises her eyebrows, waiting. Suddenly, I feel like I don’t want her there. She’s irritating the crap out of me and, as I look at her freckly face peering at me, a very large part of me wants to slap it. I can actually feel my arm start to move backwards so I stop it and clench my fists.
‘He went out to get a pasanda about—’ I glance at my watch – ‘nearly four hours ago.’
‘And?’
I shrug. ‘There is no “And”.’
She frowns. ‘I don’t get it. Where is he now?’
‘That’s the point. I don’t know. He hasn’t come back.’
She stares at me for a second, her eyes widening. ‘Oh, fucking hell.’
Within minutes she’s made tea for us both and installed me on the sofa while she phones round all the hospitals in the area. There’s only one in our town but she phones the two neighbouring towns too, just in case. I know he’s got ID on him so someone would contact me if he’s been admitted, but at least it feels like we’re doing something.
‘Dead,’ Ginge says, clicking her phone off and palming it.
‘Wha-at?’
‘A and E. They’re all dead. Nothing’s happening anywhere apparently.’
‘Oh. Right.’ I’m not sure whether that’s a relief or not. No, it is. I mean, yes, of course it is. A huge relief. Except I still don’t know a single thing. At least I would have known … something if he’d been admitted somewhere. I look up at Ginge. ‘So, what now?’
She fiddles with her phone for a second, then comes over to sit next to me. ‘I think it’s time to call the police.’ She puts the phone into my hand and we both stare down at it.
‘You suggesting we call Matt?’
Matt is Ginger’s little brother. He’s a local PC, or DC, or PCSO or something now. Last time I spoke to him he was a silent, skeletal seventeen-year-old with dyed black hair and a nose ring. According to their mum, Mrs Blake, he ‘got in with the wrong crowd’ back then and barely came home for a few years, then apparently turned things round and joined the force. The thought of speaking to a policeman is made a bit less terrifying if it’s a geeky, awkward, slightly familiar stranger with pimples rather than an intimidating, black-coated stranger with a notebook.
Ginger shakes her head. ‘No, I mean the real police.’
‘What’s he then? Toy Town?’
‘No, silly. I just mean you need to report it. Officially. Not just get Matt round here for a cuppa.’ She pauses. ‘Much as I’m sure he’d be up for it.’
I think furiously for a few seconds. Ginger and I have known each other since school, back when we had to pad our bras and smoke to look older. Now we work together in a costume shop called DisGuys and DisGirls in the main pedestrianised part of the town. I’ve been there four years; she’s been there six. She’s kind of the assistant manager or something. Unofficially of course. She doesn’t get paid a higher responsibility allowance or anything. She just has control of the keys and the cashbox when Penny is away. It’s only a set of keys and a cashbox, but it gives her the edge over me when it comes to taking charge of a situation.
I push the phone towards her. ‘You do it.’
‘No, Grace, I can’t, can I? It’s your husband, you’re going to have to do it yourself.’
‘You could pretend to be me.’
She widens her eyes, as if in … revulsion. Or do I imagine that? ‘No, I absolutely could not do that, come on now.’
I stare at the phone in my hand; its smooth, shiny surface and pleasing heaviness have never looked more menacing. I so don’t want to do this. I’ll feel silly, like I’m wasting their time. It’s only been a few hours. I look up at Ginger. ‘We can’t report him yet though, can we? Doesn’t he have to be missing for twenty-four hours first, or something?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘It’s one of those things that everyone knows, isn’t it? You have to give them time to get over their sulk, or affair, or secret surgery, or whatever, and come home of their own accord. We’ll just be wasting their time.’
She shakes her head and looks at me the way a traffic warden looks at a car on double yellows. ‘I think you’ve been watching too many crime dramas, love. It’s not like that in real life.’
‘How do you know? Have you reported someone missing before?’
She puts her hand on my arm. ‘Hey, come on. You can do it. Just dial the number, say what’s happened, and that’s that.’
Turns out it’s actually quite difficult finding the right number to ring. I’m thinking 999, but Ginger says that’s emergencies only and I say well what the fuck is this if it’s not an emergency and she says it only means it’s for an urgent kind of emergency like a crime actually happening at that moment and I say well maybe it is how the hell can we possibly know that we have literally no clue what’s happening or happened to him that’s why we need to ring and she says actually I think we’ve both got a bit of an inkling to be honest haven’t we and I say what the hell is that supposed to mean and she says nothing sorry didn’t mean anything and then she goes into the other room to see if she can find a Yellow Pages in the kitchen drawer.
‘I’ve rung them,’ she announces softly, coming back into the room a few minutes later. I’m standing at the window again, peering out. A cat is brazenly washing itself at the end of our driveway, apparently very confident that it’s not going to get flattened by a returning Corsa any time soon. I turn
