The proprietor of the hotpot restaurant we try next waves us away. When Bradley keeps talking, the man all but turns his back. Tom takes one of the leaflets and puts it on the table beside the chits for the diners, the man’s ashtray and playing cards.
‘He’ll probably chuck it,’ Tom says, as we leave.
‘Why did he say no?’ I ask Bradley.
‘Bad for business,’ Bradley says. ‘He’s a fucking asshole.’
Shona nudges him. ‘What?’ Bradley says.
‘We don’t mind,’ I say, thinking she’s worried about the language. ‘He is a fucking asshole.’
‘A fucking arsehole, even,’ says Tom, and we laugh.
‘We should come later, next weekend,’ Bradley says, ‘on the Saturday, grab the clubbers.’
Something drops inside me at the thought of still looking in another week’s time. Surely we’ll have found her by then.
Before I sleep I ring Lori’s phone and get the ‘It has not been possible to connect you, please try again later’ announcement. I will, I always do. I can’t even leave her a message. But I keep hoping. Hope is all there is.
The following morning, we start at eight, to catch the rush-hour commuters. Tom and I get the bus and Anthony is waiting for us when we arrive. For once there is a breeze. It snatches at the dust and sends leaves skittering along the pavement.
The crowds of people heading for work stride past us, dressed in either generic office clothes or this season’s casual fashions: sheer fabrics, Breton stripes, cobalt blue, lacy knits and retro prints.
I see two people with surgical face masks on – they must get uncomfortably hot, like when Nick and I sanded the living-room floor before we had the laminate done. Fine sawdust sticking to everything, sweaty and itchy inside the paper mask.
Oliver is on the rota. He still hasn’t replied to us and I wonder if we’ll see him again. Is he being thoughtless or is he avoiding us? Why come to the bar in the first place, then? There’s a knot in my stomach, hard as stone. When he appears, as promised, the lump in my gut burns.
‘Hello – sit down a minute.’ I point to one of the seats we’ve brought from Lori’s. Anthony is there already and Tom comes to join us. ‘We sent you some messages,’ I say.
‘Oh, yes.’ No apology follows. He glances at me through his thick glasses, then down at the table.
‘The photography project, hidden hobbies, you were one of the people Lori wanted to photograph?’ Does he follow me? I add, ‘She wanted to photograph you and your pigeons.’ I look at Anthony and he gives us the word, ‘
