Missing Believed Dead Read Free Page B

monitor, just the processing unit, and I’m used to humping them around.’
    Bill looked at her. Jenny was small and thin with a cap of short brown hair and oversized glasses that gave her an owlish look. She looked more like a schoolgirl than a police officer.
    ‘And what kind of a man would I be if I let you carry it?’
    Bill hoisted the tower into his arms. ‘Lead on Cartwright. The sooner we get this back to headquarters the sooner we’ll have some idea what has happened to Megan.’

 
    Chapter Four
     
    Monday, 12 March
    Diane Carnegie closed her eyes. She wanted to go back to sleep and return to the dream world where Jade was still part of the family. Without a return to sleep, Jade would slip back into the abyss, with only fragments of the dream left to torture her. But no matter how hard she pressed her eyelids shut, sleep wouldn’t come.
    Diane couldn’t remember a time when she’d slept a whole night. Always she woke in the early hours of the morning. And always she felt compelled to get up and do something. That was the only way to get relief from the pain that never left her. The pain that had been with her since Jade walked out the door and never returned.
    She opened her eyes again, letting them grow accustomed to the darkness of her bedroom. When the vague outline of shapes appeared, she slipped out of bed and moved her feet over the carpet until she located her shoes. Her skirt and sweater were draped over the back of a chair and she pulled them on in the dark, on top of her nightgown.
    The house was silent, and she was careful to make no noise when she opened the door and slipped out into the corridor at the top of the stairs. Emma and Ryan would be sound asleep, but she crept silently past their bedroom doors, just in case. She paused for a moment outside Emma’s door, her remaining daughter, and mourned for the missing one, Jade.
    Sighing, and with wet cheeks, she crept down the stairs and into the kitchen where she filled a bucket with scalding water and headed to the front door. She would give the doorstep a good scrub before Emma and Ryan awoke.
    Water slopped from the bucket when Diane set it down to pick up the green envelope from the hall carpet. She turned it over and saw it bore no stamp. It was probably a birthday card. Who could have gone out of their way to hand deliver it? Shrugging, she tore it open, wincing when the paper caught the edge of a hack on her reddened fingers.
    She pulled the card from the envelope and stared at the picture of red roses on the front. Happy Birthday to a Special Mother, it said. But she already had cards from Ryan and Emma. Her breath caught in the back of her throat. It couldn’t be. Not after all this time. She was afraid to open it and read the signature. But she had to. She had to know.
    Diane opened the card with shaking fingers, and read the inscription. A low moan gathered in her throat. The signature she wanted to see was there. She stopped breathing, her chest tightened and a wave of dizziness engulfed her.
    She hugged the card to her chest, gasping until her breath returned. Maybe she was imagining it. Maybe she was hallucinating. But they had changed her pills when she started seeing things. So it couldn’t be that.
    She opened the card again, to read the words written inside through eyes blurred with tears. She dashed them away with the back of her hand and looked at the name again to make sure she was not imagining it. But there it was in a clear upright script – Jade.
    She took a deep breath that was half sob. She had always known Jade would come back, that she was not gone forever. When everyone else said she shouldn’t hope, she knew what they were thinking. They were thinking Jade was dead. But Diane had never believed that, and now she had proof. Jade was alive, and she had sent her mum a birthday card.
    It had been over five years since her daughter disappeared. Diane remembered it as if it were yesterday.
    On that nightmarish day