The Lost Read Online Free

And something had. Big enough to draw her back, send her to Gatwick for a budget flight, on the way home to the town she’d promised never to set foot in again. The excuse was she’d be looking after her father – if, in fact, anyone could look after the hulking ex-policeman, who was ‘PJ’ because in the old Royal Ulster Constabulary it hadn’t been wise to advertise your Catholic name of Patrick Joseph.
    Pat was stillfishing. ‘How long are you back for, pet?’
    ‘Not long,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s a consultancy gig, is all. I’m just over for this one case.’
    Pat grew sombre. ‘Those poor wee girls. Please God you can help find them.’
    Paula said nothing. She hoped so too.
    ‘I’ll be on my way, so.’ Pat was fussing round for her sensible navy coat.
    ‘Ah, stay,’ said Paula and her father, almost in unison.
    ‘I’ll leave you to catch up, and I’ve to make Aidan’s tea. He’s coming round to programme the Sky yoke for me.’
    ‘Oh. How is Aidan?’ Paula felt she had to ask, though really she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know.
    ‘Ah, he’s grand. You know he got the Editor’s job last year? Well, he knocked the drinking on the head after that.’ Did Paula imagine it, or had her father made a ‘humph’ noise? ‘I’ll tell him you were asking for him, pet. Bye now.’
    Great. Now Aidan O’Hara would think she gave a damn what he was up to. Paula had known Pat O’Hara all her life, since the day she was born, in fact, and wouldn’t hurt her for the world. Pat and John O’Hara had been her parents’ friends, their only friends really, and when they came round for dinner they sometimes brought their annoying son, Aidan, who pulled the heads off Paula’s My Little Ponies. But that was a long time ago, before what happened to John O’Hara and – all the rest. Now it was just Pat and PJ left, living in the same town, popping in on each other, and Aidan had grown up even more annoying than he’d been at seven, in a variety of new, adult ways.
    When Pat left, the houseseemed to sag, silent and damp. PJ stared at the TV.
    Paula cleared her throat. ‘Will I pour the tea, Daddy?’
    ‘Aye, good girl. I’ll take a wee bun too, if Pat left some.’
    Tea. Would Ireland have ground to a halt without it?
    As Paula went to bed that night at the shocking time of 9.30 p.m. – she’d completely run out of things to say – she saw the leg-breaking boxes lined up along the narrow landing, old and mildewed. She knew what was in them. They hadn’t been opened in nearly eighteen years.
    ‘You’re all right up there?’ Her father, who’d refused all help to get up the stairs, called to her. ‘You want a hot-water bottle?’
    It was freezing – PJ didn’t believe in central heating until at least November – but she said, ‘I’ll get it myself, if I’m cold. You rest yourself.’ Back in her single bed. Back with her chipboard desk, her Anglepoise lamp. The walls still marked in Blu-Tack from where she’d had her posters – Take That, first time around. Early Boyzone. Then later Nirvana, Pearl Jam.
    Paula rooted in the lower drawer of the desk – set squares, dried-out pens – and it was still there. The framed picture showed a teenage Paula, sulky in Adidas sports clothes, with the same red-haired woman from the photo in her London kitchen. It was the last picture ever taken of her. At least, as far as they knew.
    Every time Paula came home she felt it again. It was stupid. Of course she wouldn’t be here – hadn’t been here in years. But somehow it was always a loss just the same.

Chapter Three
    ‘. . . co-ordinate ourstrategy with other cross-border units, and work together to improve outcomes on missing persons . . .’
    Voices were already coming from the conference room as Paula rounded the corner, feet tripping on the thin grey carpet. Bollocks, they’d started without her. First day and late already.
    ‘God! Sorry!’ She burst into the room in the small building