I wonder about the woman I heard before. Is she travelling with him? Or has he been to visit her over there? If Lori were here I might know more.
Seeing people out for their weekend walks, pushing buggies, following kids on scooters and rollerblades, others sitting outside the Italian restaurant in their summery clothes as we drive by, feels unreal. A pretty façade plastered over an ugly reality.
The waiting area is small, tidy, half a dozen plastic seats on a rack bolted to the floor, and posters on the wall. There is a receptionist at the front desk. She wears a white shirt, dark skirt and small rectangular glasses perched halfway down her nose. ‘Can I help?’
‘We want to report a missing person,’ I say. My throat is dry and I sound whispery. I speak louder: ‘My daughter. She’s in China, missing in China.’
‘Right.’ She nods, as though people pop in every day with this sort of information. Though I suppose her training leads her not to react with shock or surprise to the things she hears. ‘Can I take your names?’ she says. She looks at me first.
‘Joanna Maddox.’
‘Date of birth?’
‘Eighth of September 1970.’
‘And your address?’
I reel it off.
‘And you are her mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you, sir?’
‘I’m her stepfather,’ Nick says, ‘Nicolas Myers, twenty-third of August 1968, same address.’
‘You’re married?’ she says to us.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I didn’t change my name this time.’
‘And your daughter’s details?’ She peers at me over the top of her glasses.
‘Lorelei Maddox – shall I spell it?’
‘Please.’
I do that and give her the date of birth.
‘So she’s twenty-three?’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘And how long is it since you had any contact with your daughter?’
‘Eleven days,’ I say. ‘The second of April she posted a blog. And she Skyped with her dad the day before.’ Not even two weeks. Not very long at all, really. Am I being neurotic? Should I have waited? I expect her to send us away, tell us to come back when it’s been a month, but she says, ‘If you’d like to take a seat, I’ll see if there’s anyone upstairs can come and talk to you.’ She goes out of the door behind the desk.
We sit, not speaking. My toes are curled rigid in my shoes. Outside, wind plays through the trees and the shrubs and flowers along the side of the path; yellow forsythia, purple and white tulips, golden spurge shiver in its wake.
I start at a thump on the window. A bee the size of my thumb careers about and bangs the glass again, then zigzags away.
