Elisabeth Carpenter - 99 Red Balloons

It had brought tears to my eyes for two reasons: because David was doing something that Ron wanted to do himself, but couldn’t; and because he’d never said that to our own son.

I’m waiting for the kettle to boil and there’s an aeroplane outside. It’s one of those ones with a tail with a message on. Sarah used to love those. ‘Is it someone proposing, Mum?’ or ‘Is it someone looking for their lost love?’ She was always sentimental. She used to read the lonely hearts columns in newspapers too, trying to guess what the person in the advert looked like. ‘I like reading them, Mum,’ she said, before she met David. ‘But if I ever get desperate and consider putting one in the paper, shoot me.’

She could have been a romantic, had she had the chance at love again. But her life was snatched away when Zoe was. How was she meant to have a normal life after that? How were we all?

I put on my glasses, but I still can’t read the message in the sky. I have this desperate urge to find out what it says. Ron’s binoculars are in the pantry. I grab them and rush outside, and hold them up to my eyes.

MARRY ME KIM – I ♥ YOU

It takes my breath away a little. I don’t know why.

Sarah’s grave is only ten minutes’ walk away. I go at least once a week, but I haven’t been since the news about Grace Harper. I shouldn’t get caught up in things all the time. Is it time to let go? I stop at the card shop. I always buy Sarah something.

Before I get to Sarah, I stop at Ron’s. I take a tissue from my pocket and dust the flakes of mud off the base of his headstone. I kiss my fingers and place them over his name.

‘I’m having a strange old time of it, love,’ I say.

I glance across the cemetery. There’s no one else around. The sky is darkening as it’s close to teatime; I imagine families sitting around their kitchen tables, or having dinner on their laps in front of the telly, all safe and warm.

I feel a spot of rain on my cheek.

‘It’s nearly fifty-six years since we got married here, Ron,’ I say, glancing at the church to the left of me. ‘Can you believe that? When I was a girl, I didn’t think I’d even get to fifty-six years of age.’

I pick out a couple of honeysuckle stems from the ground next to me. They’re not the nicest looking plants – you don’t get many flowering at this time of year – but they smell good. I place them into Ron’s vase.

‘I’m so tired, love.’

I pat the top of his headstone and start the short walk to Sarah’s.

I can see before I get there that there’s a small bunch of flowers that I don’t recognise next to her gravestone. For years, I’ve been the only one to place something here. Could they be from David? I only saw him in the distance at Sarah’s funeral. I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t come over afterwards to speak to me. I understood that it was over thirteen years since he and Sarah had been together, but they’d been married, had a child. I’d considered him part of our family. The least he could’ve done was come over to me after I’d just buried my daughter.

The day before that, I’d heard about David’s move to Hull and that he’d stopped looking for Zoe. My world had crumbled beneath my feet.

It was also at Sarah’s funeral that I last saw Detective Jackson, the lead on Zoe’s abduction. He was in his fifties when the case was closed, but looked as though he’d aged twenty years by the time of the funeral. He’d come to the house after the service, and sat looking uncomfortably hot, pulling at his shirt collar.

‘Thanks for coming, Detective.’ I handed him a cup of tea on a china saucer.

‘It’s just Robert now.’ He managed a smile. He took a sip of the tea and sighed a weary sigh. ‘The day Zoe went missing, I always thought we’d find her, you know?’

I perched on the settee opposite him.

‘I know. I thought the same.’

‘And now, this has happened. I am so very sorry, Maggie. About Zoe, Sarah, Ron. What you’ve been through. Only half of it would break a person.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘Perhaps it is – there might have been things we missed. I think about it every day. If we’d found her, then everyone’s lives would have been so different.’

‘I suppose we’ll never know if that’s true.’

I thought of his luxury – that he only thought about it every day; I had a job to stop myself thinking about it every minute.

‘How’s Mrs Jackson?’

He looked up, surprised. ‘Oh, yes, she’s fine. Had a list of all the things she wanted us to do when I retired – think we’ve managed one of them.’ He drank the last of his tea and placed the cup on the coffee table. ‘I heard David was in Cyprus. Is he still looking for Zoe?’

I put my cup on the table next to his. ‘No. He’s living with a girlfriend in Hull now – think she’s got kids too, apparently. It appears men move on more quickly than women.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’

‘About what?’

‘All of it.’

The wind blows across my face and into my hair as I tie the balloon I’ve bought next to Sarah’s headstone. I wonder if Detective Jackson’s still alive – he must be in his seventies now, probably looking like a centenarian.

I look down to the vase on the ground. There’s no card with the flowers, but they’re daisies. Sarah loved daisies. She painted them on her black boots when she was at college. I stroke the softness of the petals, and pick one of the flower heads off, putting it into my pocket. I wish I still had the boots that she painted.

The past is always part of my present.

I’m waiting outside Emma and Matt’s, sitting in my car in silence, not wanting to go in. I can’t pretend I’m going to the shop every time I want to be alone. I’ll tell them that I’m going home just for tonight to give them, and me, some space. Mum does it all the time.

It’s nearly dark now – the time when I worry more for Grace. I don’t know why; she’s been missing for days. It’s at bedtime when she should be tucked up safe and warm.

It’s payback time , the note said. Emma is convinced it’s her stalker – the stalker she had never mentioned before. She’d not even hinted at it or appeared frightened. All I’ve witnessed is the constant phone calls in the car, and she replied to whoever it was calmly, too easily.

I linger at the gate. Their shouts are coming through the window.

‘Stephanie!’

His voice makes me jump.

I turn around.

‘Karl? What are you doing here? How did you know—?’

‘I just asked at the shop. I think everyone knows where your sister lives at the moment.’

He glances at the tea lights, soft toys and the ribbons at the garden fence.

His hands are in his jeans pockets. I’ve never seen him in jeans before. On our two dates, he’s worn smart casual, or his mum’s definition of that. He looks much better in jeans, younger.

‘I thought you might need a friendly face – maybe go for a drink or something. Unless you have Jamie?’

I cringe at the friendly face cliché, but then paranoid thoughts jump into my head. Has he been following me? How does he know Jamie isn’t with me? If I didn’t work with him, if he were a stranger I’d met online, I would have run into the house.

‘Actually, that sounds like a good idea,’ I say despite myself. Anything would be better than going back into that house. ‘It’ll have to be just one though.’

He smiles and looks less like a nervous teenager. ‘Great.’

The noise in the pub quietened for the briefest of moments when we walked in. When I looked round, eyes went to the floor or to the drinks in front of them. I felt bad, briefly, for being in the pub. What had these strangers thought? That I should be with Emma waiting for news?