the room and spotted a year-old copy of Vogue on the coffee table. He loosely flicked through it and set it down again. The leather sofa squeaked as he sat down and picked up another magazine. He could hear Liza opening and shutting drawers and the wardrobe doors in the other room, but he felt uncomfortable about searching around, too.
After a while, Liza reentered the sitting room and flopped down on the sofa beside him. “There’s nothing,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. “There never is. How could she just leave all this behind? She had everything going for her.”
“Her place is beautiful,” he agreed. “She must have a good job to live here.”
Liza nodded. “There was only one year at high school, when all three of us overlapped. Yvette in the last year, Naomi in the first, and me in the middle. The older lads loved Yvette, with her high cheekbones and pencil skirts. She bought sweets and chocolates to sell at school, always business minded. When she was sixteen, she could already afford to buy designer perfume and dated this divorced businessman in his thirties. He had two kids and Mum was not happy. Yvette never wanted kids, though, and dumped him pretty quickly. She loves her single life.
“Naomi had these gorgeous puppy dog eyes and men always wanted to protect her. All she ever wanted was to have her own family.”
“You must have had a lot of attention, too,” he said.
“Well, thank you, kind sir,” she said, then shook her head. “No, not really. I was the one in the middle, cursed by the greasy hair fairy and generally invisible. Boys only spoke to me to ask about Naomi or Yvette. I could play the guitar, though, joined a rock band when I was fourteen, to Mum’s dismay. Not one of those band members ever hit on me. Saw me as one of them. I had snogs at parties, but no one ever asked me to dance with them. That’s all I ever wanted, to feel good enough for some guy to ask me... What about you? Did you have girls lining up for you?”
“Ha, not at all. I suppose I was a late developer. I had a few girlfriends before Anita but, well, she was the one.”
Liza lifted her chin. “I’ve never been anyone’s numero uno,” she said defiantly. “I don’t mind, really.”
But she sounded as if she did.
He cleared his throat, wanting to ask the question that had been on his mind for a while. “What about Henry?” he said, these new surroundings making him feel braver.
“Ah, Henry’s my friend.” Liza’s eyes misted. “I met him at a support group for relatives and friends of missing people. He hasn’t seen his brother for five years, since he didn’t return from a night out. It’s just so awful. You try to function as normal, then feel guilty when you have good times. You’re always wondering if they’re safe, why they left and what you could be doing to help them. At least Yvette has kept in touch, albeit only sporadically.”
Unless the letters aren’t from her at all, Mitchell thought, but he kept this to himself.
He knew these feelings well, of having to try to function normally while your world was falling apart. The fact that Henry wasn’t Liza’s boyfriend sparked the smallest flame inside him, even if he felt sorry for his situation.
Liza leaned over and picked Yvette’s mail up off the coffee table. She leafed through the letters and flyers, shaking her head as she went. Except when she came to the final one. “Handwritten,” she said, holding it up to show Mitchell. “Letters are quite rare these days. Everyone emails or texts instead.” She slipped a finger under the flap and took out a small piece of lined paper.
Mitchell watched the color drain from her cheeks as she read it. Her eyes filled with worried tears.
“What is it?” he asked and gently eased it from her fingers. When he read the words, his own throat tightened.
Hello Darling,
Miss me? Sounds like we’ve both been gone a while. Heard what you did behind my back, then I find out about you and Connor, too.
Don’t worry, I’ll find you. Won’t be long. I have eyes and ears everywhere.
V x
“V for Victor,” Mitchell said solemnly.
Liza held a hand to her chest. “It sounds like it. How could Yvette be mixed up with someone like that? He sounds so angry. You don’t think he’d do anything to harm her,