Lost

LOST

Carol Ann Martin

(Sensitive content: Missing person)

My Dearest Lost Love,

It’s been six weeks and they’ve stopped looking. I don’t want to stop, but I don’t know how to go on. Where are you, Jack? Why can’t I find you?

Always, always I have known where you are. If not beside me, you were five minutes away, a phone call, a text, an email away. But I can’t reach you now, you don’t answer me and I don’t know where you’ve gone.

That’s why I’m writing this letter. I can’t remember ever writing one to you before, but at least I know it will last. Paper and ink do last, long after the writer is dead. That’s what I want. No matter how this all ends, I want my letter to be waiting for you if you ever come back, even if it’s after I’m dead.

I know what people are thinking and some are even saying – that you must be dead by now. But surely I would know if you were. Day and night, at any time, you and I would lie together until our breathing and heartbeats merged. In the whole of creation there was only our one breath, our one heartbeat. Do they think I wouldn’t know if your breath, your heartbeat had stopped? This house would know. Our first home. We have loved it and it has loved us back. The house is missing you, too, Jack. The ghosts and the memories that always lingered have drawn back into corners. Maybe they know something that I do not.

Mrs Corrie has said she will keep my letter at her shop. She has promised I can leave it there for as long as I want to. That will be until you walk back along the path and claim it, or until you and I, Mrs Corrie and her shop are all lost in time and forgotten. I don’t want to forget you, Jack, I don’t want to be forgotten. Please come back.

I’m grateful to Mrs Corrie and she’s been good to me. We both know that it should have been me, not her. Why was a fifty-something widow from Yorkshire the last one to see you that day? Perhaps to see you ever? The last one to hear your voice? Why should she and not I have been the last person to know anything of you? You parked Old Grunter and went into her shop to buy a packet of mints. She remembers you because you were so happy. “That happy” she said. “He were that happy.” I saw her being interviewed on the TV news, out in front of her shop, the wind crackling in the microphone and whipping her hair across her face. She said you were laughing and joking that morning and it was she who finally said, “Well, you have a lovely day and enjoy your walk, won’t you?” She was the one who heard you say, “That’s the plan.”

We haven’t been able to trace anyone else who spoke to you, or even saw you, after you left the shop and walked off down the path. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see you. I didn’t say goodbye.

Why wasn’t I with you? Why did whatever happened, happen when I wasn’t there? It’s rending me apart to think that you were alone.

I stayed in bed that morning. I told you I was going to work on my book, then I rolled back into the warm space you’d left beside me. You kissed my forehead and I heard you close the door. I didn’t know that I’d never hear you open it again.

I didn’t do any writing. I slept, I went on Facebook, I cut my hair and laughed at the thought of your face when you saw how much I’d lopped off. I rang you and heard your silly message, Hi, it’s Jack. I’ll call you back. I started to cut up vegetables for dinner.

At what time that day did everything change? What was I doing at the exact moment it was decided that you wouldn’t be coming home?

It was such an easy walk and we’d done it so often together. Damp, green, ferny. Gold and brown leaf mould carpeting the mud. Moss everywhere, emerald moss and misty lichen. Tall trees soaring to the sky, or toppled giants sprawling all over each other to form grottoes and bridges and slippery caves. Crystal air, crystal birdsong and burbling water flow. It was a wild place, a sacred place, but a beautiful and safe place. The spirit of it loved us, we always felt that. But is that what happened? Did the spirit love you too much and has it stolen you away? Family walks, picnic tables, a barbecue and a compost loo. It was never a threatening, dangerous place, so what did it do to you?

You have a goofy ring-tone that only you could choose; an old wartime song, Maizy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey.  Where was it playing that day as I tried to reach you? In your jacket top pocket? At the bottom of a gully? In a riverbed? Where were you, Jack? Were you alive, or dead? Where were you all those times that I called? Where were you at eight o’clock, at eleven o’clock that night? Where were you when I wept and screamed and begged? I still call you now. I still sometimes imagine that I’ll hear your voice. I can reach a point of stillness and belief when none of what has seemed to be is actually true. You have not gone away. I will call and you will answer, “Hey, sweetheart, I’m on my way.”

It has been speculated, on Facebook and Twitter – and in the gutter press, that it’s all a trick, a plan you contrived to get away from me. They are hinting that you walked out of the forest and into a new life, where you have no intention of being found. I know that cannot be true. Your photograph is posted everywhere and no one has seen you. Old Grunter is still in the carpark. But did someone come and pick you up? Was there a plan? No. Did someone do some terrible thing to you and then hide you, bury you, take you away? Would I know if they had? Surely I would. Wouldn’t your fear be my fear, your pain be my pain? Wouldn’t your death be my death, too?

Sergeant Graves has been good. Missing Persons have done their best. They will let me know the minute there’s anything.

Mum’s been good. She stays with me even when there’s nothing she can do but hold me. I want you to hold me, Jack.

Do you remember I told you about Big Rabbit? I was about three and that rabbit was so tame he used to hop free around the back garden and go into his hutch at night. Then one day he disappeared, just wasn’t there any more. Mum and I, we searched and searched for days, and all the time I was crying for him and Mum was saying, “He’ll come back.”

And he did, didn’t he? One morning I looked out the window and there was Big Rabbit on the lawn. Just like Mum said.

Now I still keep asking her, “Mum, why won’t Jack come back?”

Is it always going to be like this? Am I never, ever to know? Will I forever have nights when I dream you are with me and wake to find you are not? Can love just vanish? Can it end with no reason why? Not our love. Not as long as I am alive. And certainly not after I am dead.

Someday, someone will read this letter. I pray that it will be you. But until that day, I will still breathe and my heart will still beat and the part of you that loves me will always be alive.

The nights are getting cold and I’ve lit the fire. Last winter’s logs are still in the basket. Your book is still on the arm of your chair, face down at page 247. Did you know you forgot your reading glasses?

Goodnight, my dearest one, wherever you are.

My phone, where did I put it? Why is it ringing at this hour? Sergeant? Mum? Who is it? Oh my God,  no, no, I can’t, daren’t ….