A Wayward Game Read Online Free

are some altogether more outlandish theories. According
to some, Diane was abducted by aliens, or stumbled into another
dimension, or was kidnapped by a Satanic cult for use as a human
sacrifice. None of these hypotheses, needless to say, are supported
by a shred of evidence, but they have all helped to stoke the
speculation surrounding the case.
    In the days and
weeks that followed, Diane’s disappearance became a media
sensation. It had all the right ingredients, after all: a pretty
young woman, an attractive man, suggestions of money and privilege,
and a seemingly inscrutable mystery. Journalists and camera crews
descended on Bucklock Wood. Appeals were made for witnesses to come
forward, and a tearful Sallow appeared at a hastily-organised press
conference, where he pleaded with Diane to come home and begged the
public to contact the police with any helpful information.
    It was
inevitable, of course, that the finger of suspicion should
eventually begin to point at Sallow himself. There were whispers
that his relationship with Diane had been volatile, and reports
from neighbours about frequent and bitter arguments. Yet when
police questioned him, he seemed to have an impregnable alibi.
Mobile phone records and the testimony of colleagues both indicated
that he had been in the City at ten o’clock that morning, at around
the time that the dog walker in Bucklock reported seeing Diane
there.
    Sometimes there
is no resolution, no neat ending. To date, Diane’s disappearance is
unsolved. There are no official suspects, and little evidence other
than the simple, stark fact that Diane is gone. Every lead has come
to a dead end, and the case is now cold. The Metropolitan Police
occasionally review the files, in the hope that some new evidence
or investigative technique will have come to light since their last
assessment, but so far there have been no new developments. And so
Diane has been reduced to another number, another dusty file in the
archives – and another blot on the Met’s copybook, though not one
that is large enough to cause them any lasting damage. This is how
things are, sometimes. Files are closed, people are forgotten, and
the world can shrug its shoulders and go back to whatever it was
doing.
    For Diane’s
friends and family, of course, there can be no such resignation.
The thought that she may be dead is agony, the thought that she
might be alive, but lost and alone, barely less so. Every day
brings questions, and every night brings horror. They imagine
different scenarios, weighing them as carefully as a jeweller
weighs tiny pieces of gold, trying to calibrate their value. They
walk through the woods where Diane disappeared, and try to imagine
her last movements. They seek any small hint as to what might have
happened to her, and find nothing but the sighing of the wind in
the trees, the distant bark of a dog, and a place that refuses to
give up its secrets.
    This is what
loss can be like. It is not the presence of something, but the
absence of something else. They say that men who have had a limb
amputated sometimes continue to feel pain or sensation in that
limb. It is the same with grief. That which you’ve lost continues
to itch and throb, and yet when you reach for it your fingers close
upon thin air, and you know that you’ll be incomplete for the rest
of your life. This is what grief can feel like.
     
~
     
    After eight
years, the case has slipped down the news agenda, but Diane is not
entirely forgotten. The internet is, after all, populated by
ghosts. The living raise spectres of themselves, in the form of the
doppelgangers who haunt dating sites and chat rooms. The dead, when
invoked by the web, are granted a strange, shadowy afterlife. And
Diane’s disappearance continues to fascinate; documentaries about
her may be viewed on YouTube, along with amateur videos by armchair
detectives. There are websites and forums where people discuss the
case and put forward their own theories. One such site