Someone is Lying, page 7
‘I’m Jess, Issie’s mum,’ I introduce myself.
She nods again as she drops her hand to the table. ‘Paige said as much,’ she replies, though she doesn’t smile as she regards me curiously; I assume Paige has also told her why I am here.
‘Have you heard from Dylan?’ I ask her outright, a tight knot of breath catching in my throat, making it feel like a struggle to breathe.
‘I heard from him …’ she pauses, thinking about it, ‘maybe a week ago?’ She continues to stare at me, weighing me up as she no doubt thinks I am doing to her. Her eyes bore into mine, uncannily like Dylan’s do. They are the exact same shape and colour as his and, for a moment, it feels like I am looking at him. They are a stark reminder that I am sitting opposite the mother of the man I do not trust with my daughter.
‘And that’s it, nothing after that?’
‘No,’ she says coldly. ‘We don’t talk every day. He’s nineteen, he’s on holiday.’
I shouldn’t be surprised we have got off on the wrong foot. I wonder how much he has told her about me and whether she knows I don’t like him. What stories he has made up. Perhaps he has told her I drove Scott away, like he suggested to Issie I did, and they laughed about how awful I must be. But, then again, she’s had two men in her life who have given her a child and not stuck around. Maybe we aren’t so different if we overlook the obvious dissimilarities.
Did he tell her the kind of house we live in and what car I drive? Has she already made a judgement about the kind of person I am?
I’ve always cared too much what people think of me. I play down my house and my car and the money Scott used to make when we were together. I don’t tell anyone the amount that, up until now, has appeared in my account on a monthly basis.
I need Kay to realise I am just a mother who is scared for her daughter, and so I soften my voice as I say, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that. But I haven’t heard from Issie in four days – which might not sound much,’ I add, ‘but it’s not like her not to contact me. I’ve tried calling her, but her phone is switched off even though it was her eighteenth birthday the day before yesterday.’ I pause at this. ‘I think something is wrong.’
Kay frowns as she takes in what I am telling her.
‘I’m sorry we haven’t met before now,’ I go on. ‘I’m sorry this is our first conversation, but I’d really appreciate your help. If you know anything about where they are, or if you could try calling Dylan for me?’
She pauses, looks at me uncertainly and then reaches into a front pocket in her sweatshirt and pulls out a mobile. ‘I don’t know where they are,’ she says. ‘But yes, of course I can call him.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, with a hint of relief. ‘I have tried but he hasn’t answered. I’ve left a message for him to call me back but—’ I break off as she makes the call and looks up at me again as she waits for it to connect.
I can hear the ringtone kick in. Kay gazes out of the window as she waits for him to answer. He doesn’t. His phone keeps on ringing and then switches to voicemail and Kay leaves a message for him. ‘Dylan?’ she asks as she catches my eye. ‘It’s me, Mum. Can you call me as soon as you can, please? It’s nothing to—’ She stops abruptly. ‘Well, anyway, can you call me?’ she adds before she pulls the phone away from her ear and ends the call. She places it on the table in front of her and I see the image on her screen of a young boy at the beach, his head rocking back in laughter. It could be a younger Dylan, but I think it is probably his brother. ‘He’ll think something is up,’ she says.
‘Something is up,’ I tell her.
‘I’m sure everything’s okay,’ she replies, but I’m not certain she believes it, and I realise that, whatever I think about Dylan, she is his mother, and I’ve told her his girlfriend is missing. Surely she must see a connection, a way this might be going. Is that why I see a hint of panic in her eyes?
‘I’m flying out there today,’ I tell her.
‘Oh?’ She is taken aback.
‘I spoke to the police yesterday and they said I should.’
She parts her mouth to say something, concern flashing across her face. ‘You’ve spoken to the police?’
‘Yes. This isn’t like Issie at all and, like I say, it was her eighteenth birthday two days ago. I should have heard from her by now …’
‘I’m sure everything is fine,’ she tells me again, as though she is trying to convince herself it is.
‘So everyone keeps saying.’
‘They’re together, Dylan wouldn’t let anything happen to her.’
I inhale a tight breath that Kay must notice as she scrutinises my expression. I wait for her to realise my thoughts on Dylan looking after her, but if she does she doesn’t let on. She cocks her head to one side instead. Would it be the last thing she’d consider that my worst fear is her son, or is there a side to him she’s already aware of?
But she has dropped her head and turned her attention back to her phone, which she has picked up and is now turning over and over in her hands as if expecting, or hoping, it will ring any minute and put us both out of our misery.
I check my own and see it’s eleven fifteen. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I say, but make no move to get up. There is so much more I want to ask her, only I don’t think I would get answers. I want to know if she truly thinks Dylan would look after my daughter at all costs. And if her son is likely to call her back any time soon. I want to know all the things I doubt any mother would tell a stranger who she must suspect is worried about what her child is capable of.
‘Can we swap numbers? Can you call me when you hear from him?’ I say finally.
‘Yes. Sure.’ She seems to shake herself out of whatever trance she’s fallen into as she opens her phone again and I reel off my number. I get Kay to text me so that hers flashes on my screen and I immediately save it into my contacts.
‘I am sorry we didn’t get to meet sooner,’ I tell her again.
Kay nods. ‘I hope you hear from Issie. I really do think everything will be fine,’ she says, though she must know her reassurances mean nothing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
7 July
I disembark the plane at Lisbon airport, the late afternoon heat hitting me as soon as I descend the steps onto the tarmac. I strip off my jumper and make my way through the arrivals hall, hailing a taxi as soon as I am outside the terminal, and give the driver the name of the hotel I booked while I was waiting at Heathrow.
The taxi eases its way through slow traffic, up and down countless narrow streets. I open the window a crack to let the air in, pressing my hand on the beading of the seat in front of me as we take a corner too quickly.
Everything about this city feels alien. I have never visited Lisbon before so I know nothing about it, and it takes longer than I imagined to work our way towards its centre. The further we go, the more oppressive the heat of the taxi feels. I wind the window down further.
When we come to a standstill, I stare out and wonder how the hell to start looking for my daughter. The thought churns inside of me. It was never going to be easy, yet, now I am here, it feels impossible.
We pull away again and I search for a flash of her as if she might suddenly appear from nowhere. I see Issie in the backs of girls walking into shop doorways, blond hair in the distance, in the crop tops and denim shorts they wear like she would. But it’s never her.
The driver drops me on a cobbled road and points to a double-door entrance I might otherwise have walked straight past, the name of the hotel written in cream lettering on the deep green canopy above it. The hotel marketed itself as small and personal, but is beautiful and ornate. A waft of jasmine strikes me as I push open the double doors and step inside the foyer.
It is an imposing entrance with a small floor space but above me an emptiness reaches to the tip of the winding staircase at least three floors tall.
A woman is waiting at the reception desk for me, intent on welcoming me by name. She has nine rooms, she advises, and supposedly I am staying in her favourite. Despite my reticence to get into conversation I smile politely as she insists on walking me up the staircase to the second floor and showing me into the room. She is in no rush to leave as I throw my suitcase on the bed and wander over to the window to look out on the street below. There are cafés dotted along the cobbled lane outside, and a low hum of laughter rises. It feels astounding that normal life can continue while mine is cracking into pieces.
I barely hear the woman’s instructions on how to use the air conditioner but say thank you as she eventually leaves, closing the door behind her. When she is gone, I open my case but don’t unpack. It feels wrong being in a foreign country on my own and I realise it’s something I have never done before.
Back downstairs I ask the woman for a map on my way out. I am a Luddite when it comes to Google Maps. For whatever reason I still find maps easier to follow on paper.
‘Of course.’ She whisks one out of a drawer. ‘Where would you like to go?’
‘Where are the main bars?’ I ask. ‘The main areas to go out in the evening?’ I want to see the places my daughter might be, or may have gone. Is this to be my starting point? I blindly figure it’s as good a place as any.
‘Let me show you,’ she says, circling clusters of streets with a pen, telling me about the various places I could visit. By the end of her speech, there are markings all over the map.
‘And where’s the Belém Tower?’ I ask, thinking back to the last place I know Issie was. ‘Can I walk there?’
‘Oh no, you cannot walk there, but you can take a train from here,’ she says, putting an asterisk on the map. ‘Or a tram from here,’ she continues before unfolding it again and indicating the tower, much further down the coast. ‘Some people hire an e-scooter and travel this way, if you like this kind of thing?’
I shake my head. I would not like that kind of thing at all and yet it is exactly what Issie would be encouraging us to do if she were here with me. Come on, Mum, it’ll be an adventure. Never mind the likelihood of me falling off; it would be something to make us both laugh.
But the city is so much bigger than I realised. It makes the idea of finding her even more impossible.
‘And can you tell me where the nearest Polícia Judiciária station is located?’ I ask the woman now, my pronunciation likely wrong.
‘Oh?’ She looks at me questioningly but I don’t oblige, and so she points again on the map. ‘It is here,’ she says.
‘And I can walk there?’
‘Oh yes, ten minutes. No more than that.’
I thank her again, and take the map, folding it into my crossover bag as I walk out of the hotel. Outside, the cobbled street curves around corners, disappearing in both directions as it snakes out of view. It is not even 6 p.m. and yet the street cafés are bustling. I swerve out of the way of a tuk-tuk that veers around the corner, four women laughing in the back of it.
I head towards the police station first. The journey takes me up and down more winding roads with tiny pavements, tram lines running alongside me. Each time I take another corner I am met with another hill, another set of steps. A labyrinth I could so easily get lost in, like I am playing a game of cat and mouse. I could go down one street while Issie is coming up another. I will never find my daughter by scouring the streets, that much is obvious.
The heat is still harsh. I am sweating as I climb steps and walk inclines, my T-shirt clinging to my body. There is a buzz of life around me, couples chattering, snatches of conversations as I walk past them. I glance into doorways of bars and restaurants, but by the time I reach the police station, my mission already feels hopeless.
The station is a grand stone building with a beautiful arched door and windows, so perfectly in keeping with the rest of the city. Inside a man with slick black hair sits behind the desk, leaning back in his chair, talking on a phone in Portuguese. When he finishes he looks up and speaks to me in words I don’t understand.
‘I’m English,’ I tell him.
He nods. ‘How can I help you?’
‘I spoke to someone yesterday. My daughter was here in Lisbon but she is missing.’ I give him Issie’s name and mine, and he takes down the details and brings up the log of the call I made.
‘Is there any news?’ I ask him.
‘No, nothing I am afraid at the moment.’
‘I haven’t spoken to her in four days,’ I say. ‘As far as I know no one has spoken to her since then. Has anyone looked for her boyfriend?’ I persist. ‘Dylan Whiting. I gave your colleague his name and number. I don’t know where they are staying.’
‘I am sure someone has spoken to him, yes,’ the man tells me dismissively, like he isn’t sure in the slightest.
‘And? What did he say?’
‘I cannot tell you. I am afraid I do not have the details of this.’
‘So they might not have?’ I ask. ‘No one might have spoken to him and asked him where my daughter is?’
‘I think maybe you could come back in the morning? I will see what I can find out for you.’
I feel the flapping of wings inside me; they haven’t left me since Issie’s birthday morning, but right now, right here, standing in the middle of a Portuguese police station, they feel more urgent.
I will the tears not to well up as they are threatening to do, but the rush of desperation is overwhelming. Is no one interested that Issie has disappeared? Do they need to find her body before they care she is in danger?
‘If she were seventeen, you’d be looking for her,’ I say to him, trying to push thoughts of the Madeleine McCann case out of my head, and of how we were led to believe so little was done even then.
My breaths are short and sharp as I walk back out of the station onto the street and I try to slow them down. Lois had asked me if I wanted her to come with me to Portugal, but we both knew how difficult it would be for her. I think she was relieved when I told her I would be fine. Scott would be here if I gave him the nod, but it hasn’t come to the point where I need support so much to call on the very last person I want by my side. Yet.
I let out the deep breath I have been holding, and with it a cry of anguish. If no one believes my daughter is missing, I have no choice but to find her myself. Someone in this city must have seen her, someone must know something. But where do I start? There are bars, restaurants and outdoor cafés down every little street where she could have been.
I pull out the map again, studying the areas that have been flagged. I am not far from the Praça do Comércio where the woman in the hotel told me there were plenty of restaurants set around a square. All I need do is follow the main street towards it, and so I do this, passing shops that are still open in the early hours of the evening, restaurant tables that run along the centre of a pedestrianised walkway.
You cannot miss the square, its entrance an imposing white-columned archway but beyond it there’s a huge expanse of nothingness in its centre. It is only along either side that restaurants line its edges.
But here – these are exactly the places I can imagine Issie people-watching, whiling away the hours in the way we always would on city breaks. I can see her here now in one of the restaurants, poring over a tapas menu, making plans for the rest of the evening as she carefully selects the dishes she wants to share with me, with him.
Where shall we go for dinner, Mum? she’d have asked as we waited for our lunch to arrive. She always wanted to know what we were doing next, to make a plan and stick to it.
Issie! Let’s do one meal at a time.
I’m excited, she’d laugh. I like to know what the day has in store for me. She never wanted to miss anything, life for Issie was more fun if she planned it out. She has never thrived on spontaneity which is another aspect of their trip that jars with me. That they didn’t know where they were going from one place to the next. This is one more decision that strikes me as Dylan’s influence – and I cannot fathom how easily Issie could have gone along with it.
Now, I take out my phone and bring up a picture of her onto my screen, and head into the first restaurant on the left side of the square, an Italian serving oversized wood-fired pizza.
I hover until a waitress comes over and when she asks if I would like a table, menu in hand, I tell her, ‘Actually, I wonder if you can help. I am looking for my daughter.’ I show her the photo on my phone and wait for her to look.
‘Sorry, no.’
‘You don’t recognise her?’ I persist.
She shakes her head.
‘Would you mind asking anyone else who works here?’ I say, offering my phone out to her. ‘It’s important. She’s missing.’
The waitress frowns, still clutching the menu to her chest until she eventually takes the phone off me. ‘Okay. Wait here,’ she says.
I do as I am told, a small gathering beginning to congregate behind me, including an English family with two small children who are complaining they are hungry and whose youngest son keeps bumping into the back of me. I step forward, out of his way, and eventually the waitress returns and hands me back my phone. ‘I am sorry, no one has seen her.’
I nod and thank her anyway. I didn’t expect to be so lucky on my first try, but I am determined to be meticulous, and visit every restaurant. Only I get the same answers everywhere, and no one recognises Issie or the photo of Dylan I show them.
When I have exhausted one side of the square I cross over to the other, using the same patter, reiterating how urgent it is that I find her.
By the last, I have not only come to a dead end, but a sense of despair engulfs me that sucks every last bit of energy I have. I feel light-headed as heat swells through my body.
‘Madam?’ a waiter asks as his hand clutches onto my elbow and steers me to a nearby seat. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine.’ I hold up a hand and try to wave him away, though I don’t particularly feel fine. I feel nauseous and wonder when it was I last ate properly, picking my way through a packet of crisps on the plane aside.
