Gilly MacMillan - What She Knew

Four mounted officers congregated at the entrance to the path. Their horses were huge and beautiful, with glossy coats and nostrils that snorted visible puffs into the damp, chilly air. Ben would have loved them. One of them startled as the thud-thud of the search helicopter grew louder overhead. It swooped low over the treetops, before disappearing again.

Katrina arrived soon afterwards. John emerged from his car to greet her and folded his arms around her in a public display of affection the likes of which had never occurred once in our entire relationship. He buried his face into her hair. I lowered my gaze.

She knocked on my car window, startling me. I wound it down.

‘No news yet?’ she said.

I shook my head.

‘I’ve brought these for you, in case you need something.’ She handed me a thermos and a paper bag.

‘It’s just tea, and some pastries. I didn’t know what you like, so I picked for you…⁠’ Her voice trailed away. She was neatly dressed, and she stood there like a prefect at school, well turned out and eager to please. No make-up. That was the first time I’d seen her without it. I didn’t know what to say.

‘Thanks,’ I managed.

‘If there’s anything I can do.’

‘OK. Thanks.’

‘John’s asked me to go back home, in case he turns up there.’

‘OK. Good idea.’

It was awkward and strange. There’s no protocol for meeting your ex-husband’s new wife at the site where your son’s gone missing.

‘Well, I’d best get back there,’ she said, and she turned away, returned to John.

After she’d gone, I looked in the bag of pastries. Two croissants. I tried to nibble one, but it tasted like dust. I managed some sips of tea. It wasn’t sugared, the way I like it, but the heat was welcome.

It was just after Katrina left that Inspector Miller’s radio sprang into life.

They’d found something. It was hard to hear the detail. The radio crackled and spat, words emerging occasionally from the interference. ‘What is it?’ I mouthed at the inspector as he held up a finger to shush me. He beckoned to WPC Banks to join him and they turned away, conferred. John noticed the action and appeared beside me. I felt electrified by hope and dread. Once again the drone of the helicopter travelled over us, making it even more difficult to hear. The Inspector turned to us:

‘Can you confirm once again what Ben is wearing, please?’

‘Red anorak, white T-shirt with a picture of a guitar on it, blue jeans, ripped at the knee, blue trainers that flash.’

He repeated it all into his radio. The voice crackled back at him, asking what size and brand of trainer.

‘Geox,’ I said. ‘Size thirty.’

The inspector turned away again. It took all my self-control not to grab him, to shake out of him what was going on. John was rigid beside me, arms folded tightly across his chest.

It was the awkward twitch of Inspector Miller’s mouth that gave it away when he turned back to us. Whatever they’d found, it wasn’t making him happy.

‘Right.’ He took a deep breath, drawing strength from some internal reserve. ‘The boys have found something that they believe might be significant. It’s not Ben -’ he’d seen the question on my lips – ‘but it might be an item or items of his clothing.’

‘Where?’ said John.

‘By the pond at Paradise Bottom.’

I knew it. It was nearby. I ran. I heard them shout after me, I was aware of the heavy rhythm of someone running behind me, but I didn’t pause, I sprinted into the woods as fast as I could.

Before I even reached the pond I saw them: a group of three men, huddled together, standing in the middle of the path. They watched me as I approached. One man held a bundle in his hands, a clear plastic bag with something in it.

‘I’ve come to see,’ I said, and the man with the bundle said, ‘It would be good if you could confirm whether any of these items belong to Ben or not, but please don’t take them out of the bag.’

He held it out towards me, an offering.

John arrived beside me, his breathing loud and ragged.

I took the bag. It had a weight to it. Droplets of water smeared the plastic outside and in. The contents were wet. I saw a flash of red, some denim, bundled up white cotton fabric. I turned it upside down, and beneath the fabric items were two shoes: blue Geox trainers. They were scuffed, and on one of them the sole was slightly separated from the shoe at the toe, as I knew it would be. I gave the bag a little shake. Triggered by the movement, blue lights flashed along the sole of the shoes.

‘The shoes are named,’ I said. ‘With his initials, under the tongue.’

Through the plastic I managed to pull up the tongue of the shoe. Underneath it were the letters ‘BF’. The ink had bled into the fabric around it.

‘Thank you,’ said the man. He had white hair and a darker grey moustache and eyebrows, and red, pockmarked skin. He took the bag from me, though I didn’t want to give it back to him.

‘Where’s Ben?’ I said.

‘We’re doing our very best to find him,’ the man replied, and the compassion in his voice robbed me of any shreds of composure that I might have had left.

An ugly fear was growing in me like a tumour; it was an idea that I hadn’t wanted to contemplate. John hugged me, tightly. He knew what I was thinking because he was thinking it too.

‘No!’ I shouted and it was the sound of a wild animal, an ululation, an uttering that a mother might make if she saw her offspring being dragged away by a predator.

The morning after Benedict Finch went missing I woke up early, like I always do. I’ve got a reliable body clock. I never need to set an alarm, although I do, just in case. You don’t want to oversleep. I started the day the way I always do: a cup of good black coffee, made properly in my Bialetti. I drank it standing in my kitchen.

My flat is on the top floor of a tall Georgian building in Clifton. It’s the best area in Bristol, and the flat’s got amazing views because it’s on the side of a steep hill. The front overlooks a big garden, which is nice, but out the back it’s better because I can see a proper slice of the city. I’ve got Brandon Hill opposite, dotted with trees, Cabot Tower on its summit, a couple of Georgian and Victorian terraces below. Just out of sight are modern office buildings and shops, but you can see a bit of Jacob’s Wells Road below, leading steeply downhill to the harbour, where you can go for a night out or a weekend walk. I can’t see the water from my flat, but I can sense it, and gulls often circle and cry out, diving past my windows.

Until I started going out with Emma I didn’t know that this city was built on sea trade that docked there for hundreds of years: sugar, tobacco, paper, slaves. She told me how a lot of human suffering made the wealth that built Bristol, and a lot of men gambled lives and fortunes on that. Emma was an army brat, and the reason she was so well informed was that her dad made her learn a history of every new place they moved her to, and they moved a lot, so she was in the habit of it.

Once she told me about the slavery, I couldn’t get it out of my mind and then I realised how much of the city’s noisy, nervy history is in your face, especially where I live. You’ve got the Wills Memorial Building, pride of the university, towering over the top of Park Street: built on tobacco profits. The Georgian House, perfectly preserved, and a very nice bit of real estate: sugar and slaves. Both of them are less than a quarter of a mile from my flat, and I could name more.

I think about it sometimes because I don’t think cities change their character too much; even after hundreds of years it’s still there as an undercurrent. Now, when I look out of the window each morning, and watch Bristol wake up beneath me, its messy, complicated past is right there as a little bit of a jittery feeling in my bones.