at the harbour, greeting tourists off the Kirkwall ferries. I was meant for this place. But not Olivia. She was different. She was special. I was ordinary.
I look up and see her again by the tree. She’s facing me now and is smiling at me, gesturing with her hand for me to follow her.
She wasn’t wearing that outfit on Hogmanay yet I recognize it. I remember a chilly but sunny afternoon we went walking down by the loch. We talked for two hours, our arms locked, as we always did.
We talked about Mum and Dad, school, Andy, her friends, London. She made jokes and I laughed, devouring each word, every syllable. Then later I would call Siobhan and repeat the jokes, except telling her that I made them up.
When I glance back at the tree, she’s still there waiting for me. My group is a little further ahead, so I turn and start walking towards her.
‘Alex?’ Birkens is standing beside me, holding my arm gently. ‘Alex, do you see something?’
I turn back to show him, to tell him she’s right there, there’s nothing to be scared of, she’s safe. But she’s not there any more. She never was.
That evening I stagger upstairs, tired, defeated. I don’t know when – if – we’ll ever find her. We’ve looked everywhere, been everywhere.
I read about a lost colony in the sixteenth century, Roanoke, in social studies last year. An entire village of men, women and children migrated to the New World to make a new life for themselves. But three years later, when a new group arrived to join them, they found no trace of the former thriving village and its inhabitants. One man lost his whole family. He searched everywhere for them, called for them, prayed for their return. But they never returned. He never saw them again.
Over four hundred years later, people still wonder where they went, if they died of disease, were killed by tribes, drowned trying to return to England. New studies suggest they just left, packed up their belongings and went to live somewhere else.
Is that what Olivia did? Did she find a new life, a new family? Or like the lost colony, will she never return, leaving us to always wonder what happened?
I don’t see an answer right now. I don’t know what will happen. The search seems fruitless, a long journey where the signs to the destination begin merging into one, always telling us it’s just another ten miles ahead. But no matter how far we drive, it’s almost still ten miles ahead. That’s how I feel, how my dad must feel. I want to stay in bed. Curl up, turn the lights off, and let the cold bitter darkness take me.
But I don’t.
I get up the next morning and we look again.
I’ve been having the same dream for three days now. It’s not so much of a dream. That indicates something pleasant is happening during your REM cycle – a long-harboured ambition being realized, a new love, the meeting of two friends who haven’t seen each other for a long time.
No, this isn’t a dream. It’s a nightmare.
I can see her, hear her. But I can’t touch her. In all of my nightmares, she is always just out of reach. My mind is taunting me, playing with me. It knows I will stretch my arm out a little further to reach her. It knows I never can.
In these dreams, she is sitting on her bed, in her lavender-coloured bedroom that has photos of her and her friends on the wall in the shape of a giant letter O. In the middle of the O is a butterfly ornament, like in her real bedroom.
In the dream, I’m right there with her. I’m sitting on the rug near her, watching her dangle her legs over the side of the bed. Her toenails are painted a pale taupe and she’s swinging her feet gently side to side, like windscreen wipers on a car.
Swish.
Swish.
Swish.
Then we’re outside suddenly, and she’s on our old swings. Again her legs hang over the edge, but here her feet can touch the ground. She’s too big for the swings now. She’s not a child any more.
I can feel the grass on my fingers, the tips slightly damp from the morning dew. I can smell the soil in the air from the vegetable patch where my mum had just planted strawberries the morning before. I can hear the birds overhead, squawking and communicating with each other. They’re black as night. They soar overhead like my sister on the swing, gliding effortlessly through the air.
A knocking from behind makes me turn around, away from my sister. My mum’s hand hammers the kitchen window. Her finger points to the sky. Her terrified screams call out to me. When I turn back, the birds aren’t gliding and soaring. They’re swooping. There’s something different about them now. Now, they’re swooping towards us.
Their eyes gleam like black coal and their beaks snap frantically at our clothes and hair. But I can’t move. The grass grips me, its blades now sharp and suffocating. I squirm and struggle, but it won’t release me. I can hear my sister screaming. I can hear her calling out to me. She’s dying.
And I can’t help her.
I can’t reach her.
And soon, I won’t be able to save her.
I beat at the ground, the blades of grass stabbing at my palm. Nails curl into the soil, heaving my body up and out from their grip. I’m dragging my body now, hurling myself towards her, trying desperately to touch her –
‘Alexandra?’
I stir slightly, hearing the voice filter into my nightmare but it won’t let me go.
‘Alexandra?’
My eyes flicker open, and I sit upright feeling the back of the chair slam against my spine. It’s over. The nightmare is over.
A deep sigh escapes my lungs and I cover my face with my hands. Why can’t I shake this nightmare? Why does it follow me like this, day after day?
I look up and see DI Birkens standing over me.
‘How long has she been here?’ he calls out to the woman behind the glass screen in the reception room.
She shrugs her shoulders and gets back to her magazine, twirling her curly red hair with a pencil.
‘How long have you been here?’ he asks me.
I look at my wrist and realize I forgot to put my watch on today. I glance out of the window beside the big wooden doors that I came in. It’s already beginning to get dark.
‘A few hours, I think.’
He looks around. A man texts on his phone opposite us, barely glancing up. To my left, an older man sits and waits, his sheepdog curled up beside his feet. When I had come in, this place was empty. Now people wait to be noticed, wait to speak out, be heard, wait for answers to their questions. Like me.
‘Is the interview room open?’ he calls back towards the woman at the desk.
‘No, Boyd is in there until six,’ she says, not looking up.
He looks back at me and releases a long, drawn out sigh. ‘Oh OK. Well, come on through.’ Birkens gestures towards another set of heavy wooden doors. This one has a security keypad beside it. He punches in a four-digit code and the doors click open. He pushes them and waits for me to follow. I haven’t been here since the day after my sister was officially reported missing. I had wanted to leave that day. I had thought she was just staying at a friend’s house nursing a hangover. I had been so sure we’d find her. He had been so sure we’d find her – or had he lied to me?
I get up and hear the sheepdog barking behind me. The doors seal tight after I walk through.