Mike Shevdon - The Road to Bedlam

Walking up the hill I debated how to approach the subject of the missing young women with Greg. Maybe I needed a new approach. So far he'd helped me find Karen, if only to persuade me from getting further involved. He'd said we would talk again this morning after I'd slept on it. Well, I had slept, but it hadn't made things easier. For a moment I thought about Debbie. If my dream wasn't a dream, did that mean that she'd woken to find her sheets covered in blood, her body marked with punctures and arms covered in scratches? What would she make of that? Would finding that her dreams had leaked into her life change her? Would it make her less willing, less wilful? Whatever choices she'd made, she was still someone's daughter. There were parents who missed her terribly or there wouldn't be the posters and the appeals for information, would there? How would news of their daughter's new lifestyle be received?

The church of St Andrew stood against the wind, and not even a window rattled. The rain ran down the roof and into the gutters, but it did no more than stain the stone a darker shade of brown. I hurried under the porch out of the rain. No one had been to open the church yet, but now that I knew what I was doing it was a simple matter to get inside. I closed the door behind me but didn't relock it. I wanted Greg to know there was someone waiting.

The board pinned with photos looked more colourful in daylight. Anything from hair ribbons to teddy bear keyrings had been pinned to it, filling in the gaps left by lack of news. I picked out an early photo of Debbie astride a new blue bike. Her hair was longer and she was leaner than she was now, but I thought I could see a girl who would pedal to see what was around the next bend, over the next hill, or maybe that was just my knowledge of her colouring my perceptions. In the photos, though, her evolution was revealed. In later ones her hair was blonde, not brown, and shorter. As she got older, she wore more make-up and her choice of clothes drifted into darker fashions. The girl with the bike had become a girl with few limits and a determination to wring every last drop from life. I pinned it back.

Yesterday these girls had been blank faces. Now they were people. Helen's uncomfortable smile revealed a shyness and a hesitancy. Other photos revealed a plain simplicity to her. She looked straightforward and honest, with none of the artifice that Debbie had adopted. I wondered how that had translated into becoming a mother. Had she planned it or had things simply got out of hand? It was hard to imagine her getting carried away with some boy and ending up pregnant. Maybe the baby wasn't hers? Maybe she was looking after it for someone else? With that thought came the memory of that quiet reassurance and rhythmic suckling. "Mummy's coming…" No, the baby was hers. The photo, though, revealed nothing of that.

There were pictures of Karen there, though they tended to be at the back, covered by newer postings. As a girl, Karen had looked a lot like her sister, Shelley, reminding me to find a way to pass on Karen's message to her sister. I would do it discreetly, away from her parents. Karen smiled out of the picture at me, reminding me of the way she had looked across at Ahmed. I couldn't help wishing that one day she would find a way to be close to her family once again.

In every picture, Trudy Bilbardie was with someone else. I had looked for a good picture of her by torchlight the previous night and settled for the one with her standing between friends because it was a clear image of her. It wouldn't have mattered, though. Trudy was always the centre of attention, hugging those about her close, a big smile for the camera. She looked bright, sparkly and full of life.

For the first time I wondered whether there were other photos of these women. How much had the choice of pictures been governed by the people searching for them? Were there pictures in a drawer somewhere of Trudy on her own looking nervous? Were there photos of Helen in glamorous dresses and Debbie in jeans and no make-up? If there were, the people searching for them had not chosen to show them.

That left me with Gillian, her hair framing her face like a halo as she leant forward. It must have been a recent picture, or perhaps she was older than the others, since there were drinks on the table behind her and the photo had been taken with flash so that the shot faded out into a vignette of darkness – a nightclub, perhaps?

What had she been leaning forward to do? Was someone offering her something, or repeating something not quite heard? Of all the pictures, this one was the least posed. It captured an unconscious moment. There were a couple of other photos, but they looked like mobile phone pictures or shots taken of someone else that Gillian had happened to be with. I could imagine her holding up a hand when the camera was raised, or stepping aside, but for this one shot she'd just been Gillian.

Replacing the photo, I stepped back. Greg had been right. It wasn't just about finding the girls. It was about knowing what became of them, where they went and why they'd made whatever choice they'd made. And for two of them it was about closure. I would never know if Gillian and Trudy were like their photographs. It was too late for that question. I knew that now.

Greg said that you had to find out what people needed before you tried to help them. I knew what it was like to lose a daughter. I knew the emptiness and the nagging thought that there was something more I could have done. The parents of these girls needed to know, good news or bad. This wasn't news I could carry, though. I needed Greg.

When he arrived I was sitting in a pew at the back of the church, listening to the rain and the wind and thinking about the girls, about what to say, and how to say it.

"Was the door open when you got here?" he asked me.

"No."

"You borrowed a key?"

"Not that either. I let myself in. I hope you don't mind. I'm not here to steal the silver or make off with the collection."

He closed the heavy door behind him, shutting out the weather, and walked into the centre of the church and genuflected towards the altar. He was silent for a moment.

"You saw Karen?"

"Yes."

"How is she?" He came and sat beside me in the pew, looking down the church towards the big east window.

"She's well. Ahmed is very protective of her. He looks after her."

"A good man."

"A protective man. He took exception to me asking around for her."

"There was a fight?"

I shook my head. "It didn't come to that. Karen intervened. We had mint tea together."

"Quite refreshing, isn't it? Not with sugar, though. That spoils it."

"She asked about her family. She misses them."

"It's difficult. Tony, Karen's father, isn't a racist. He just can't deal with the fact that his daughter loves a man whose culture, upbringing, religion and way of life are so very different from his own. He doesn't know how to speak to Ahmed; doesn't know what to say. It comes out as aggression. He doesn't mean it."

"Karen thinks he does."

"And that's why they live apart. It's better. At least for now."

"But why the photos? They know where she is. They could ring her up if they wanted to. Why make a show of it?"

"When Karen first vanished, they thought Ahmed had kidnapped her. They made a huge fuss. The police were involved, everything. Then they found out where she was and what she was doing. They'd already joined the group, posted photos, made a public statement. I think they thought she'd realise what a mistake she'd made and come back. They could say she'd run away and then decided to come home."

I shook my head. "She's not coming home."

"I know. So do they. The fiction remains, though."

"I spoke to Debbie, too."

"Debbie? You found her?"