Ali Harper - The Disappeared

Jo frowned. ‘So we’re going to drive around Alderley Edge looking for Jack’s dad?’

‘He’s got a car dealership. He wants people to find him.’

‘You don’t know his business is in Alderley Edge.’

‘Any better ideas?’

Jo pulled a face. ‘We should tidy this lot away again.’

‘Let’s just get there.’

‘Wild fecking goose chase.’

‘Worth a shot,’ I said.

While Jo scooped the crap back into the bin liners, I paced the office, stopping only to scribble a few more questions on my notepad. Even if we didn’t find Jack’s dad, I wanted to see a bit of where Jack was from, get some of the background – and not just through the eyes of his stepmother. What does a stepmother know? Even assuming Susan Wilkins was who she said she was.

One fact remained. Jack had done a runner and I suppose the thought was in my mind that he might have gone home. We reach for the past in times of trouble, it’s instinctive. The same way I still think about my mother anytime there’s a success or a failure. No matter she’s been dead four years. No matter that even when she was alive, she’d be too wrapped up in her own misery to take any notice of me, or my life. It’s in all our bones. We want someone to share the highs and lows with.

We were on the road less than twenty minutes later. Jo stashed the rounders bat on the back seat and then climbed behind the steering wheel. I can drive, but I’m not a natural. I’m more your wing pilot – roll cigarettes, read maps, watch out for signs, that kind of thing.

The clock on the dashboard said twenty to eleven as we arrived in Alderley Edge. It was the first day of the year that felt like it had any warmth to it, and I felt like I was coming out of hibernation – like I was waking up. It was obvious, we needed to come to the beginning to work out what had happened at the end.

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