Sometimes, he imagined he was cruising along a deep, dark river. Others, he was drifting through space, into eternal blackness. Strange, the thoughts that sleepwalk through your mind in the small hours, when you should be putting your brain safely to bed. But although he let his mind wander, he always kept his eyes firmly on the road, alert, on the lookout.
Gabe didn’t really sleep. Not properly. That was one of the reasons he drove. When he needed a break, more because he felt he should than because he felt tired, he pulled into one of the service stations he had come to know so well.
He could list them all, up and down the M1: the facilities, the ratings and the distances between them. They were, he supposed, the closest things he had to any sort of home. Ironic, really, considering how much he used to dislike them. When he wanted more than just a refuel of black coffee, he parked his camper van in one of the HGV bays and lay down in the back for a couple of hours. He often resented the time he was wasting, not doing anything, not searching. But, while his mind never rested, his eyes, wrists and legs needed the respite. Sometimes, when he climbed from the driver’s seat, it felt as though he were a stooped Neanderthal attempting to stand vertical for the very first time. So he forced himself to close his eyes, stretch out his six-foot-three frame as much as he could in the camper van for a maximum of 120 minutes every twenty-four hours. And then he got back on the road.
He had everything he needed with him. Toiletries, a few changes of clothes. Sometimes a trip to the launderette necessitated a small detour off the motorway and into a town. He didn’t like these trips. They reminded him too much of the normality of most people’s everyday lives. Shopping, work, meeting for a coffee, taking the kids to school. All things he no longer did. All the things he had lost, or let go.
On the motorway, in the service stations, normal life was suspended. Everyone was on their way somewhere, at a point in between. In neither one place nor another. A little like Purgatory.
He kept his phone and laptop close, along with two spare chargers and several battery packs (he would never make that mistake again). When he wasn’t driving, he spent his time drinking coffee, scanning the news—just in case there was any news—and checking the missing-persons websites.
Most of these were little more than noticeboards. They ran appeals for the missing, posted updates on progress, held events to raise awareness. All in the desperate hope that someone out there might see something and get in touch.
He used to trawl them religiously. But after a while it got to him: the hope, the desperation. The same photographs again and again. The faces of people who had been missing for years, decades. Preserved in a camera flash. Their hairstyles becoming more dated, their smiles more frozen with each missed birthday and Christmas.
Then there were the new faces that appeared almost daily. Still with an echo of life. He imagined that a dent remained in their pillows, a toothbrush hardened in a holder, and the clothes in their wardrobe still smelled of fresh laundry and not yet of mold and mothballs.
But it would happen. Just like the others. Time would roll on without them. The rest of the world would continue to its destination. Only their loved ones would remain on the platform. Unable to leave, unable to abandon their vigil.
Missing is different to being dead. In a way, it’s worse. Death offers finality. Death gives you permission to grieve. To hold memorials, to light candles and lay flowers. To let go.
Missing is limbo. You’re stranded; in a strange, bleak place where hope glimmers faintly at the horizon and misery and despair circle like vultures.
* * *
—
HIS PHONE BUZZED from the holder on the dashboard. He glanced at the screen. The name on it made the hairs stir on his neck.
The other thing you found, if you spent your time traveling the tributaries of the country in the dead of night long enough, was other night people. Other vampires. Lorry and van drivers on long-haul deliveries. Police, paramedics, service staff. Like the blonde-haired waitress. She had been on again tonight. She seemed nice, but she always looked worn out. He imagined she had had a husband once, but he left. Now she worked nights, so she had time for her kids in the day.
He often did that with people. Invented back stories for them, as if they were characters in a book. Some you could read right away. Others took a little more time. Some you could never fathom, not in a million lifetimes.
Like the Samaritan.
“Where r u?” his text read.
Normally, Gabe couldn’t stand people using abbreviations, even in texts—a throwback to his former profession as a copywriter—but he forgave the Samaritan, for a number of reasons.
He tapped the microphone icon on the phone’s screen and said: “Between Newton Green and Watford Gap.” The words flashed up as a message. Gabe tapped send.
The text came back: “Meet me @ Barton Marsh, off J14. Sndng direcs.”
Barton Marsh. A small village not far from Northampton. Not very pretty. A good fifty minutes away.
“Why?”
The reply was just three words. Words he had been waiting to hear for almost three years. Words he had dreaded hearing.
“I found it.”
TIBSHELF SERVICES, M1 JUNCTIONS 28–9
Fran sipped her coffee. Well, she presumed it was coffee. The menu said it was coffee. It looked like coffee. It smelled vaguely like coffee. But it tasted like crap. She shook out another sachet of sugar. The fourth. Across the sticky plastic table, Alice picked halfheartedly at an anemic-looking bit of toast that was doing only a slightly better job than the coffee at fitting its purpose under the Trades Description Act.
“You going to eat that?” Fran asked.
“No,” Alice replied absently.
“Don’t blame you,” Fran said, smiling sympathetically, even though the effort caused her cheeks to hurt…which at least matched her eyes and head.
Her head was throbbing harder than ever in the bright fluorescent light. She hadn’t eaten anything since the previous morning. Her belly was past food, but her head was pounding from the lack of nutrition and sleep. That was part of the reason she had decided they should stop for coffee and sustenance. Ha bloody ha. Probably served her right that they weren’t getting either. She pushed the coffee away.
“D’you need the bathroom before we go?”
Alice started to shake her head then reconsidered. “How far do we have to go?”
Good question. How far? How far would be enough? She had no idea, but she didn’t want to say that to Alice. She was supposed to be the one in control, the one with a plan. She couldn’t tell Alice that she was just driving, as fast as she dared, trying to put as many miles between them and their last address as possible.