Desire Line (34 page)

Why hurry?
Enjoy
. Sara's waited a lifetime.

But I can't wait for—

—
the first time I saw Sara, a sunny afternoon, the last week in September.

Every sense is on the cusp of alert. My mood soars like it hasn't done for weeks, with or without 
 
 
as Cruise Control, promises the total footage in which my grandmother features. No great achievement because against the packed background of the first frame, she's unmistakable. My screen's a second-hand Panasony SelfCleaning, and doing the best with what it's got. But even I could identify this character in mid-tone trousers and a pale top, a bag slung over one shoulder. A flash of brickwork and Sara's in motion across it, very upright with a stride that whisks her through the camera's sector. Out again. I've never seen her walk. Lacking none of the grace I allocated her, she still takes me by surprise. Doesn't matter. Stop, refind her, zoom in on a grainy Sara instantly retouched. Hand gestures are the real giveaway in speech. To that passerby she's just accosted, her fingers must seem like they're making a grab. But whether scared by a gull too close for comfort or suggesting ‘Avonside?' as though she's asking too much, I can tell the hands are really begging. It's pathetic. Remember I only knew Sara at a desk or in a chair, made up for the camera with her expensive silk shirt, one button undone, and the questions, pre-submitted I'll bet. Here she's somebody else, a stranger. Lost in Rhyl. Following on less positive sightings are on offer from a long list. A few seconds' action— a figure appears on the Church Street camera and hurries in the direction of the library.
Probability of nominated subject 86%.
You have to admire CC's understatement because it's definitely her. I order up everything, fifty-nine clips that spread across September, October and November in various conditions. The last
isn't
dated 17.11.08. The Disappearance. But of course. You got this from Glenn, didn't you? Typical— no plot and an incomplete timeline.

So I speed on. Is this how
she
felt, on the trail? All the time thinking, Yes!

OK, everyone may have poked round in this mess but I'm me and this is now and it's going to end well. Hadn't it for Thomasina and her?

There are some scenes almost professionally lit from the east, Sara setting out over Blue Bridge, never very early and only the jacket on or off to mark this start from another. At first she looks determined. Though fine weather always goes with the positive on film, it's what we're used to, still you wouldn't say this is somebody abnormal, not in these early scenes. Anxiety's not wafting after her to the extent people are left staring. She's just busy and not from round here, as Tess says. What
I'm
not prepared for is she's also Eurwen. If I didn't know better, I'd think I was tracking my mother. The profile's Eurwen's, more so than full face which is why photographs haven't caught it, and the way the head sits on the neck. However many single frames you examine, they don't tell you this— she and Eurwen are moving sisters to the eye. A single actress could take on both roles like ‘Madeleine' and ‘Judy' in
Vertigo
. A change of hairstyle and footwear— you'd never get Eurwen in those cute little heels— and they'd roam the town as each other.

(But Eurwen had to grow into the part and watching that must've driven Josh slowly mad.)

Monochrome Rhyl's more nineteenth century than twenty-first. Back at Sara's Day One, I can confirm nothing's left of Ocean Park Funfair but a giant billboard. The impulse to linger and get a look at the promised development was strong— then comes a shot from a static lens pointed at the main show, the first real Rhyl vista CCs come up with. A hint of harbour, further along the seawall's spattered with tourists while more of them spill out of the camera's remit, dodging each other and the traffic under a white sky.

24.9.08 top right. 12.33 pm comes up bottom left. Sara arrives.

33 becomes 34. No refuge for Sara from virtual pursuit, two or three shots are enough to convince the programme. The woman's possessed in microscopic detail. Even through windscreen glass, her brow ridge and cheekbones are measured, then chin to nose tip, and shoulder width, as her left forearm comes up to fend off the collision about to happen. She's fixed, dissected and reassembled so her grandson can witness at leisure what most people present missed – oh, and I know this next bit! – how she's within millimetres of clipping crazy Kim that crosses busy West Parade like it's public green space. Sara's shaken. Checks the rearview for the pedestrian's fate. (You're not meant to be enjoying yourself, Yori
and
you forgot to do a thorough search for that jaywalker as you promised you would.)

Since you can't see the mother and not think of the daughter, what about her? (My mind slinks off again.) And Tomiko, champion of ignorance. On the subject of family etc, etc, don't ask and never give— so, Father, where exactly are
you
right now? No need to do a search because you'll have kept a low profile. And anyway,
 
 
does it better for me, joins all the pieces together, lets me ‘see' Eurwen and Tomiko flit in and out of Butterton Road like stowaways, clear of any surveillance Josh had access to. They wouldn't be caught for the simple reason they
hadn't been
— don't lose sight of the story, it's
Eurwen
that's missing just now and they didn't find her. Easy to picture the bossy teenager on Rosemont's path,
her
tone, ‘Not that way! It's broad daylight. We'll have to go round by River Street or— d'you know what? Let's not bother. Neil can take us in the van. Later.' And Tomiko retreats, back into hiding. Only in Rhyl would it've worked because, yes, it's a small place with a population the same as Penzance but that's where the similarity ends
**
. Its residents always came and went— from Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham,
Japan
and the sort of people they were means Tomiko can be living ten minutes from Avonside, ten minutes to Josh's doorstep— to saying, ‘Dr Sara Meredith—
san
, My name is Sato Tomiko from the city of Kochi. I am sorry. Forgive me. Forgive us. Your daughter is well. I am sorry. Come now to be with— ' And your best bad English wouldn't have been laughed at because
she wasn't like that.

But you didn't. Pleased with yourself, are you
otosan
?

So there's an end to the 2008 season, gone in one night— the crowds thin out and fewer children are in the mix. Heavy rain and winds start regular work. Hours shoot by and then a whole autumn day when it must've turned shockingly winter-like to judge by the miserable looks, all the dashing from cover to cover. Coming up are the last few sightings— so I'm informed at 1.06 a.m. Top right 15.11.08. More importantly, it's two whole days before Sara vanished. But we're into the run-up.
Probability 25%—

I'm not hoping for much.

Look at the arcades! They're still open but the flicker and dazzle's wasted on just emptiness behind the plate glass as definitely Sara slips inside anyway and I wait politely for her to reappear. What else is there to do? It's the early hours in Sara's nether-world and mine. My flat's heating clicks down into coldness. On the corner of Conwy and East, the one I used for sketching, she stands out in the November weather, her hair ruffled by it, catching the glow, close enough to touch. A real Hitchcock heroine tonight.

She's dazed apparently and, though I'm no expert, drunk. Some grim thing is going to happen to her— that's how it works, or why else would we be lingering if not to let the tension build?

She came on stage as a skeleton thrown up by the sea but run her backwards and the horror reverts to my grandmother. I find her really lovely from certain angles which photographs didn't show and she lives, she breathes. For one last time. And she's going to fall. My arms want make a scoop, hold her safe as though I'm the father or the husband.

A freak of a feeling.

Final scene.

EXT. STREET. NIGHT.

MAN appears out of shadow and walks toward car parked half up on the kerb, its driver's door wide open and headlights blazing. He carries the body of a WOMAN in his arms. She is either unconscious or a corpse. MAN stops level with car. He seems to be considering how and where inside the vehicle he is going to place her. Then he gets the passenger side door open. She's small but he has trouble. He lowers her in.

Here's what I was shown. Just this— a man carrying the inert body of a woman up a slope to the big saloon, obviously left by him in a hurry. Nothing's on the road and nobody's to mind he's abandoned the vehicle with its wheels up, its door wide enough open to get ripped off by traffic.

That's basically all it is. But everything is referenced. You can never witness this sort of movie trope even in eerie silence without the hundred other variations you know, Hitchcock's and all the wannabes since, feeding extra info in re: his purpose. The odds are
, bad
. And the result for her? Ditto. I recognise the exact spot it's being played out on and, though his full features aren't caught whether by accident or cunning, who they both are. And with every re-run the component parts read as extra menacing. Her arm drops, solider somehow than it should be. The angle of her head as it sags on his shoulder— and for a split second is perfectly illuminated— is even more wrong. He settles her into the vehicle's front seat and leans in to guarantee the torso's fixed upright and going to stay put. Now he's strapping her down. What's already happened by the lake isn't recorded. So you'd need to be pre-told through flashback, maybe, that she's wringing wet— and so make sense of the dead weight of her and explain the problem he's having.

Notes

*
see Appendix B

**
'Rhyl and Penzance— A study in failure and success'— Yori Sato, UWE, 2031

Chapter 23

Either somebody's shining a torch in my face or it's dawn out there. Libby's house is end terrace so Thorp (if it really was him made us) had given her dining room/ my living room a pair of extra sash windows denied the rest of the row. The wooden chair I'd dozed on was directly in their line of fire. Physically? Only a bit shabby thanks to doubling up on 
 
and because with 
 
 
it'll always be the dehydration that gets you, and I'd kept the tea going all night. The last half-empty cup was next to my elbow gone cold while the car I was convinced contained Sara was driven off for the
n
th time. CC sticking to its remit of No Sara, No Interest had chosen that point to freeze.