Lauren’s grave. I found the tiny headstone that marked where she lay to be too solid, too real. In the past, when I still lived down south, I’d preferred spending her birthday somewhere she had loved. For the first year without her I’d gone to the swimming baths and had floated around in the shallow end, remembering her fear and delight when she managed to swim without armbands. The following year, I’d whiled away the afternoon walking the circuit from her infant school to her friends’ houses again and again, in a loop, until my feet blistered.
Her past few birthdays though, I found I functioned best if I kept busy. Last year I’d volunteered to attend a sales conference in Swindon and tomorrow I’d deliberately scheduled an entire day’s worth of back-to-back client meetings.
I checked my watch. It was just after 10.15 p.m. Wherever Jason was, he’d probably be home soon. If I was going to go through his stuff I’d need to be quick. No longer sure if he used one or all of the drawers in the cabinet, I decided to start at the bottom and work my way up.
There had been a time when I’d have known exactly where to find what I was looking for. In the early days, when we’d first got together, the circumstances surrounding Barney and Lauren’s disappearances were our favourite topic of conversation. We’d spent many an evening studying his files together, combing them for clues that might help the investigation. They’d been like those long chats that all couples have when they start seeing each other that go on for hours and hours. But, instead of stories about our school days or our dreams for the future, Jason and I had talked and talked about our lost children. We’d go out for dinner and get so engrossed that our food would go cold. The restaurant would empty around us and the lights would be turned on to try and make us leave. Then, unable and unwilling to stop, we’d go out into the night, blinking and jittery and walk home instead of getting a taxi so that we could keep talking for as long as possible.
As time had gone on though, those sessions with the files had happened less and less, until finally, they stopped completely. It might have been because Jason felt the sessions were no longer necessary (I was now so familiar with the details of Barney’s case) or maybe it was something else. Either way, a kind of a Chinese wall had grown up between me and the files. It wasn’t explicit. Jason hadn’t forbidden me from reading them. However, at the same time, there was definitely the sense that to do so would be akin to looking at his private journal.
Getting down on my knees, I opened the first two drawers, only to discover they contained replacement printer cartridges and A4 paper blocks. Worried Jason might have moved the files without telling me, I gave the third drawer a tug. But it was stiff on its castors or had got stuck and, no matter how hard I yanked, it refused to budge. I needed more leverage. I got to my feet and this time I used both hands. That didn’t work either. The drawer wasn’t stuck; it was locked. Checking to see if the top one was the same I hooked my index finger around the metal handle and pulled. It slid open to reveal a row of five large lever-arch files. Relieved that Jason hadn’t moved them somewhere else after all, I considered the locked drawer. Presumably it contained important papers: maybe the mortgage or insurance documents or Barney’s birth certificate? Still, it was odd he hadn’t thought to mention it. He must have forgotten. No matter, I could get at the Barney paperwork and that was all I was here for.
Coloured grey with a white spine, each of the files was filled to bursting. I lifted them out one by one, and once they were stacked on the desk I took a seat. Of course, the police had their own mountain of official material to which only they had access, but that hadn’t stopped Jason from amassing his own records: one file for every year that Barney had been missing.
I looked at the cover of the folder sitting before me marked 2010 – the year Barney disappeared. The first thing in the file was an Ordnance Survey map folded into quarters. Jason had secured its