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two years and eighteen days missing
chapter 51
alex
I sleep better than I have in weeks. I’ve made my decision and even though I know there’ll be no going back, it’s oddly liberating to realise you’ve got nothing to lose.
At 6.30 a.m, I wake just as dawn is breaking. Flinging back the covers with new energy, I strip off yesterday’s crumpled clothes and step into the shower, turning the setting all the way to cold. The freezing water takes my breath away, but I need to be sharp and focused.
I’m not waiting for the wheels of justice to grind slowly, if they grind at all. The police have had two years to find my daughter. I’m not going to risk letting them fuck this up, charging in in their size elevens. It’s up to me now.
Pulling on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, I sit down on the bed to lace my trainers and braid my wet hair into a French plait to get it out of my face. I send a quick text to cancel the Zoom call I had scheduled with my client, and another to my colleague, James, asking him to take over the case for me.
When I go downstairs, I’m taken aback to find Quinn Wilde sitting on the floor of my living room, her back against the wall, legs outstretched.
‘What the hell?’ I exclaim. ‘Have you been here all night?’
She doesn’t look up. ‘Obviously.’
She’s staring with unnerving intensity at the untouched tumbler of whisky I poured for her last night, which she’s placed on the floor between her feet. I have no idea what she’s doing and I care even less.
‘Why are you still here?’
‘Because if I’d left, I’d have gone straight to the off-licence and bought myself a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and I’d be at the bottom of it right now.’ She finally looks up. ‘Trust me, once I know what happened to your daughter, I’ll fall into that bottle and not climb out for a month. But I’ve been sober two hundred and three days and until I get this story, I’m off the sauce.’
She’s not my responsibility. She’s an adult, capable of making her own choices, and I didn’t ask her to turn up at my house in the middle of the night. I didn’t tell her to quit drinking or obsess over this story.
‘Go home,’ I say.
‘Help me up.’
Awkwardly, I extend a hand and she stumbles to her feet. ‘You need to take me to a meeting,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘An AA meeting,’ she says, impatiently. ‘There’s one in thirty minutes at the primary school down the road. I looked it up.’
‘I’m not taking—’
‘You owe me,’ Quinn says.
‘The fuck I do!’
‘Then I’m sure you won’t feel bad when I end up dead in a ditch.’
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘If it’ll get rid of you. Get in the car.’
‘I could use a coffee first—’
‘Don’t fucking push it.’
She follows me out to my car. I don’t offer to help whenshe struggles with the seatbelt and I don’t try to make conversation. I don’t want anything I say now to be used against me later, when everything comes out.
‘Where are you going?’ Quinn asks as we turn onto Tooting Bec Road.
‘I’m taking you to your bloody meeting.’
‘And after?’
