Elisabeth Carpenter - 99 Red Balloons

I bury my face in my hands. It never gets any easier. It’s not the natural order. I’ve said that to myself a thousand times. I wish God would just take me to be with them. It’s too hard to be the only one left. Well, almost the only one.

Jim’s taps on the kitchen window halt the flow of my tears. I grab one of the cushions off the settee and soak up the wet from my face. This is why I hardly ever look at these pictures.

‘Where are you, Maggie?’

‘Where do you think I am? I’ve only two rooms.’

I place the cushion back next to me, but reversed.

Jim appears at the threshold and shakes off his coat.

‘You could’ve been in the lav,’ he says.

‘Well, you can’t ask where a lady is if you think she’s in the lav.’

‘It was just something to say,’ he says, ‘so you’d know I was here.’

He sighs and the settee sinks a little as he sits next to me. We don’t often sit like this together. I rub my right arm with my left hand to get rid of the tingling.

‘So this is what you’ve kept all these years,’ he says, looking at the pictures on the table.

He takes a folded newspaper from the inside pocket of his coat. The things he can carry in there. Last week he took out a tin of pease pudding because I’d never eaten it before. He should’ve kept it in there.

‘It’s today’s,’ he says. ‘She made the nationals.’

My intake of breath gives away my surprise.

‘Don’t look so shocked,’ he says. ‘I knew you’d want to read it.’

I take it from him.

‘I know. But don’t you think you’re indulging me? An old fool getting caught up in a story that’s nothing to do with her?’

He shakes his head. ‘You’re not the only one. They were all talking about it at the shop. And anyway, it’s not a story – it’s real life. You more than most know all about that. Stop being so ashamed about it.’

I feel myself flush. Am I ashamed? Ashamed we couldn’t find her? Guilty that she was taken in the first place? Or ashamed that I still think about her, that she might come back to me after everyone else has gone?

Jim picks up one of Zoe’s articles. ‘A sweet shop? Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Like where this girl, Grace Harper, was last seen.’

Zoe should’ve been in the paper straight away. Perhaps she’d have been on the news all day too – they have news channels playing twenty-four hours a day now.

‘Have you been watching Sky News?’ asks Jim.

He read my mind.

‘I don’t have Sky News. Why would I want Sky? All I watch is Countdown .’

That’s a lie. I watch so much rubbish I couldn’t say. Channel Five do a true-life film every day that I usually end up crying to. I’d never tell Jim about that.

He winces as he stands up. ‘You’re the only person I know who keeps their remote control next to the television. What’s the bloody point of that?’

‘Mind your language,’ I say.

I wonder if Grace’s mother is waiting at the window, like Sarah used to.

‘You’ll have Freeview,’ he says. ‘Everyone does now. News 24 – it’ll be on there.’

I leave him to play with the remote control. I place all of Zoe’s articles back in the folder, except for one. It was the one that broke us: Search called off for missing Zoe Pearson .

We heard it from the police first. Newspapers weren’t as quick off the mark as they are now.

‘Every lead has been exhausted, Sarah,’ Detective Jackson said. ‘If we receive any new information, we’ll carry on the investigation. It’s not closed, it’s still open.’

I feel a drip on my hand and realise it’s from my face.

Jim turns and glances at me.

‘There you go,’ he says, handing me the remote. ‘It should be repeated any minute, it’s nearly on the hour.’

He pretends not to notice, Lord love him. That’s what we’ve always done, people our age: ignore things. Sarah used to tell me off for it. ‘For fuck’s sake, Mother, this isn’t the 1950s. People talk about things now – important things.’

Thinking about it thumps me in the chest. I beat myself up about it every day: my hypocrisy. It was so hard to talk about Zoe then. But if Sarah were here now I’d be different. I’d talk about Zoe all the time.

‘She used to sit by the window, did our Sarah,’ I say. ‘Waiting and waiting, never leaving the house. I have to be here when she gets back , she said. Every day. For years.’

‘Aye,’ says Jim.

I’ve told him many times and he always listens as though it’s the first. He reaches over and pats my hand. I look into the little girl’s eyes in the newspaper he brought me. Grace Harper’s eyes.

‘This one’ll be different.’ I say to her, ‘They’ll find you, love. Just you see. It’s different nowadays. People have their cameras everywhere.’

Jim carefully picks up Zoe’s article from the coffee table. ‘Is it okay if I…?’

‘Of course.’

He takes his glasses, which are on a chain around his neck, and perches them on the end of his nose. He tuts several times, shaking his head. He removes his glasses and rests them on his chest.

‘These sightings of your Zoe,’ he says. ‘Where were they?’

‘Cyprus, France, Spain.’ I reel off the list.

‘Really? How could they have done that?’

‘Who knows – they might have hidden her.’

Jim smiles at me kindly, like most people used to when I dared to believe Zoe was still alive. He looks up at the television.

‘It’s the appeal.’

A policeman in a suit is reading from a piece of paper. Next to him are, I presume, Grace’s parents. The mother has her head in her hands; the father comforts her, his arm around her shoulders.

My heart beats too fast, I wrap my arms around myself – I’m so cold, I’m always cold.

‘They look young,’ says Jim.

‘People do these days. Must be in their early thirties, I imagine. Though I can’t see her face properly. My mother looked fifty when she was thirty.’ My mouth is talking without my mind thinking. ‘Those poor people.’

It cuts to a photograph of a school uniform laid out on a table.

‘These are the clothes Grace was wearing, although if someone has taken her, she might not be wearing the same ones .’

Jim tuts. ‘Course she wouldn’t be wearing the same clothes. But you know, Maggie, I know I shouldn’t say this, but what if someone’s taken her, and just killed the poor little mite?’

I sigh loudly in the hope it’ll shut him up. Even though I’ve thought the same thing myself.

The appeal must have been taped earlier as the news article cuts to a shot outside: a village hall or a community centre. I see the mother’s face for the first time – her friend, or perhaps her sister, holding her by the elbow.

I get up slowly and walk to the television. ‘She’s a bonny one, isn’t she?’

He doesn’t answer.

‘Would you pause it, Jim?’

He presses the button several times.

‘Come on!’

‘I’m bloody pressing it.’

He did it. The picture’s frozen. I get closer to the screen, bending down to look at her face. My knees go weak. I drop to the carpet.

I can’t breathe properly.

Jim’s at my side.

‘Have you had a turn? Shall I fetch the doctor?’

I take several breaths before I can speak and shake my head.

‘I’m fine. Pass me that picture.’ I point to the mantelpiece, but he picks up the one facing the wall – the one I rarely look at. ‘Not that one, the one on the right.’

He grabs it and hands it to me. I hold it next to the pretty face on the television.

‘Look.’

He squints.

‘Put the glasses on your face, man.’