rot!’ Mum snaps the laptop lid shut. ‘Everyone will have forgotten all about it by next week and then, when the dust has settled, we’ll ask the Bristol News to run a story about Billy and Jake as kids. If the Standard are going to shaft us we’ll get them onside instead. We’ll dig out some photos of the boys in their primary-school uniforms. The readers will see them when they were young and sweet and they’ll forget about Jake’s little outburst. It’s all about the cute factor. You’ll see.’
‘Cute factor?’
‘It’s a PR trick to gain public sympathy. I read about it in a book I got out of the library, the one by the PR guru who was arrested for sex offences. Dirty bastard but he knew his stuff.’
I can’t help but marvel at the woman sitting in front of me. Six months ago she didn’t really know what PR meant never mind the tricks ‘gurus’ use to gain public sympathy for a client. Whilst I could barely speak for grief she went part-time at the garden centre and asked a friend’s son to create the findbillywilkinson.com website so she could post a few photos of him and include the police contact details. Now there’s a Facebook page and a crowdfunding site. She’s read every book that’s been written by the parents of other missing children and she spends hours on the Internet looking for the contact details of journalists who might be interested in covering Billy’s story.
‘So can you dig some out?’ Mum asks. ‘Some photos?’
I nod my head. ‘Of course.’
‘Are you all right, love?’ Dad says. ‘You look a bit peaky.’
I can’t tell them what happened yesterday. I don’t want to worry them, not until I know what I’m dealing with.
Waiting. My life has become one long wait. I’ve never felt more impotent in my life. Mark and Jake wouldn’t let me help with the search after Billy went missing. They said I needed to stay at home. ‘Someone needs to man the hub,’ Mark said. I don’t think that was the real reason he told me to stay behind. I think he was worried I’d break down if we found anything awful. He would have been right but I can’t continue to sit and wait. I need to find Billy.
‘I’m fine, Dad.’ I force a smile. ‘But I could do with some fresh air. Are those fliers up to date?’ I point at the teetering pile of paper under the windowsill.
‘Yes.’ Mum nods.
‘Could we go somewhere and hand them out? Maybe … the train station?’
Last week I went through Billy’s things. I’ve been through them a hundred times since the police searched his room – the familiarity is comforting – and I found an exercise book at the bottom of a pile on his bookshelf. He’d only written in it twice. On the first page he’d half-heartedly attempted some maths homework and then crossed it out and written underneath, Maths is shit and Mr Banks is a wanker.
That made me smile. It was something I could imagine him saying to Mark when he’d ask how Billy was getting on with his coursework. Billy knew it would push his dad’s buttons but he’d say it anyway because he liked winding him up. I’d tell Billy off for swearing but it was always an effort not to laugh. Poor Mark.
After I’d read what he’d written I found a pen and wrote underneath it, No swearing, Billy. The tightness in my chest eased off, just the tiniest bit. So I kept on writing. I wrote and I wrote until I had cramp in my hand. It was so cathartic, so freeing to be able to cry, alone, without worrying that my grief might upset Jake and Mark.
I almost missed the other thing he’d written in the book. I only spotted it when the back cover lifted as I put it down. He’d graffitied the inside and scrawled Tag targets in thick black marker pen:
– Bristol T M (train?)
– The Arches
– Avonmouth
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t spotted it before, not when I’d been through Billy’s things so many times, and I immediately rang DS Forbes. He wasn’t as excited as I was. He told me they’d looked at the CCTV at the train station when Billy was first reported missing and they’d checked out Avonmouth and the Arches as they knew he hung out with his friends there. But what if they’d missed something? Something only a mother could spot?
‘Great idea.’ Mum snatches the laptop from my knees and slips it behind one of the sofa cushions.
‘Hiding it from burglars,’ she says when I give her a questioning look.
‘We’ll have to be quick,’ Mum says as she parks the car. ‘We’ve only got twenty minutes before a traffic warden slaps a ticket on the windscreen.’
I clutch the fliers to my chest as we cross the road, passing a line of blue hackney cabs and a lone smoker pressed up against the exterior wall of the station.
Inside Bristol Temple Meads there’s a crowd of people gazing up at the arrivals and departures boards and a stream of traffic in and out of WHSmith’s. It’s not as busy as it would have been if we’d got here at seven or eight o’clock but hopefully we’re less likely to be brushed off by harassed commuters.
‘We’ll get a cheap-day return to Bedminster so we can get through the barriers,’ Mum says as she heads towards the ticket machines, ‘then we’ll split up. You do platforms eight to fifteen and I’ll do one to seven. Try and get the shops in the underpass to stick a poster in their window if you have time.’
‘You okay?’ she says, looking back at me as the machine spits out two tickets. ‘You’ve gone very white.’
It’s as though the earth has just tilted on its axis. That’s the only way to explain how I feel. I was here yesterday. I bought a ticket to Weston. I crossed through the barriers. I got on a train. One of the staff, a man with fair hair and glasses, catches my eye as I glance across at the ticket counter and I look away sharply. Did he recognize me? Is that why he’s staring? Has he been told to keep an eye out for me because of something I said or did?
‘Claire?’ Mum touches my arm. ‘Do you want to go back to the car? I can do the leaflet drop if you’re not feeling well. Or we can do it another day.’
‘No.’ I press a hand over hers. There’s no reason to think I did anything strange during my blackout. Even when I’m drunk the worst I’ll do is massacre a song during karaoke or embarrass Mark by firing off the most childish jokes I know. ‘I’m fine. Honestly, Mum. Let’s get this done.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’ I let go of her hand and pass a leaflet to the man waiting patiently for us to vacate the ticket machine. ‘My son Billy is missing. Have you seen him? Do you recognize his face?’
We’ve barely passed through the ticket barriers when Mum’s phone rings.
‘Oh, bugger,’ she says under her breath as she fishes it out of her handbag. ‘It’s Ben, the journalist from the Bristol News that I was telling you about. I’m going to have to take this, Claire. You okay to go by yourself?’
‘Of course.’
Mum turns left towards the coffee shop while I continue down the stairs to the subway that gives access to the platforms.
