Mirrorland Carole Johnstone (find a book to read .TXT) 📖

all those voicemail messages began filling up my inbox. I reach for my wine again, relieved when the camera cuts away from the harbour to archive footage of lifeboats and helicopters.

‘The alarm was raised when Ms MacAuley failed to return to the Royal Forth Yacht Club, and it was further determined that she had not reached her intended destination in Anstruther earlier in the day. The Coastguard and RNLI have been involved in the search, but continuing bad weather has significantly hampered their efforts.’

A man: jowly, mostly bald, solemn like the reporter, but with a glint in his eye like he’s faking it, stares into the camera, arms folded. Underneath his too-large belly: JAMES PATON, HM COASTGUARD SAR MISSION CO-ORDINATOR, ABERDEEN. ‘We know that Ms MacAuley was a competent sailor—’

Do we? I think.

‘—but, looking at the prevailing windspeed through the firth on the morning of the third, we estimate that she had already been missing for approximately six hours by the time the alarm was raised.’ He pauses, and even though he’s only being filmed from the waist up, I can tell he’s widening his stance, like a gunslinger. He only just manages not to shrug. ‘Over the past seventy-two hours, the temperature of the firth has been no more than seven degrees Celsius. In those conditions, a person could be expected to survive no more than three hours in the water.’

Arsehole, I think. In El’s voice.

The camera cuts back to the reporter, still pretending not to be bothered by her ruined hair. ‘Now, at the end of day two of the search, and in worsening conditions,’ she says, ‘hope is fading fast for the safe return of Ellice MacAuley.’

A picture of El and Ross on holiday somewhere fills the screen – all tan and white teeth; his arm flung around her shoulders as she leans in, tips up her chin to laugh. I can see why the coverage is so eager and extensive. They’re beautiful. They look at each other like they’re both starving and satisfied. The intimacy of it makes me feel uncomfortable; it sours the wine in my stomach.

I pick up my phone, check the weather app. Edinburgh is still the second location after Venice Beach; I’ve never dwelled too long upon why. Six degrees and heavy rain. I look out the window at the dark, the long white lines of runway lights.

It’s barely six a.m. in the UK, but there’s already a new video: DAY THREE, 5 APRIL. I don’t watch it. I already know that nothing’s changed. I know she still hasn’t been found. I know that now, even more than yesterday, they don’t expect her to be. There’s another image below it, time-stamped less than two hours ago. DOCTOR HUSBAND OF MISSING LEITH WOMAN LOSES HOPE. The picture catches my breath. It hurts to look at him. It would hurt anyone to look at him. Ross is hunkered down next to a low wall, knees high and close to his chin, his hands clasped around the back of his neck, pressing his elbows tight together in front of himself like a shield. A man in a long anorak is standing next to him, looking down and obviously speaking, but Ross isn’t paying attention. Instead, he’s looking out at the firth, his mouth open and teeth bared in a wail of despair and horrified grief that I can almost hear.

I close the laptop with a too-loud slam. Drain my wine as people turn to look. My hand is shaking, eyes stinging. The hours between New York and Edinburgh loom and at the same time aren’t enough. I don’t want to go back. I’d give anything – anything – to never, ever, go back.

I get up to move on to another bar; I can’t bear to face the ma’am waiter again. I grab my laptop, my bag, toss a twenty on the table. I’m more than a little unsteady as I weave between tables. I should probably have eaten that burger. But it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. People are still looking at me, and I wonder if I’ve said it aloud, until I realise I’m shaking my head instead. Because I have to believe it. I have to believe that nothing has changed. That all this fear and quickening dread doesn’t mean anything at all. I think of Edinburgh, of Leith, of that grey flat-stoned house with Georgian-bar windows in Westeryk Road. I think of Grandpa’s gap-toothed grin, and it soothes the worst of my panic. Nane ae it amounts tae a pun ae mince, hen.

I wasn’t in Edinburgh when my sister died. I wasn’t in LAX or JFK. I wasn’t even on the wrought-iron balcony of my California condo, looking out at the Pacific and drinking zinfandel and pretending I was exactly where I’ve always wanted to be.

I wasn’t anywhere when my sister died.

Because she isn’t dead.

CHAPTER 2

I stand on the pavement until the bus has lumbered out of sight. Either the weather app on my phone has broken or the weather finally has: it’s cold and sunny in a cloudless sky. The wind from the city – smoke and double-deckers and breweries and coal fires – is thin and biting. I can smell the sea. Everything and nothing is the same. The houses are the same houses, the road is the same road, there’s still a ground-floor mini-market just where it always was: Colquhoun’s of Westeryk. A sudden, colder breeze lifts the hair from my neck, bringing with it another salt-sour taste of the sea. It must be cold too. I try not to think about that smug gunslinger. A lot colder than this.

I look at 36 Westeryk Road in increments. The metal gate is the same. The squared-off high hedges with patches of yellow and the path bisecting the flat lawn. I don’t need to look up to know that the solemn symmetry of grey ashlar bricks and tall, narrow-paned windows is the same. The two flanking stone walls