Me and You. Claudia Carroll

with me and I get an immediate vision of her bandaged from head to foot with just tiny slit holes for her eyes, so no one can even see who she is, never mind what she looks like. Bit far-fetched, maybe, but as I said to Jeff, quoting Basil Rathbone in the old Sherlock Holmes movies, once you’ve eliminated the impossible, then whatever you’re left with, however improbable, must be the truth.

      Makes sense. Doesn’t it?

      When the pair of us arrive at Kitty’s, Simon answers the door. Soon as I catch the state he’s in, the sudden urge I get to cradle him tight and tell him everything will be OK, even though it clearly isn’t, is almost overpowering. He actually looks like a lost little boy. The dark circles under his eyes have now gone even darker; poor guy looks like he never even got to bed last night, never mind slept and, unusually for him, he’s still streeling around in yesterday’s clothes. He gives me a hug and I instantly feel the roughness of his face against mine. Unheard of for a man like this, I think distractedly. Simon’s normally all smooth and lotion-y with a lovely, lemony smell of expensive aftershave off him. Well turned out, as Mother Blennerhasset would be wont to remark. Heartbreaking to see.

      Even Jeff gets bit of a shock at just how badly Simon’s taking it.

      Soon as we head inside, Jeff skites off to Kitty’s study to whip a few decent photos off the wall and Simon automatically goes to stick on the kettle, offering us both coffee.

      ‘I feel daft even asking you this,’ I say gently to him, ‘but how are you feeling right now?’

      He gives a weak, watery smile back at me. ‘You know what I’ve spent the last hour doing?’ he says hoarsely. ‘I’ve been on the phone to the hotel in Austria where Kitty and I were due to be checking in around now.’

      ‘Cancelling the booking?’

      ‘Cancelling everything. The reservation, the candlelit dinner for two I’d booked for tonight, the …’ He breaks off here a bit. ‘Well … let’s just say, I had a surprise arranged for her, a very special surprise, but now I guess that’s all gone by the wayside too.’

      ‘Oh, Simon, I don’t know what to say,’ I tell him gently. ‘I hope at least that the hotel were OK about it?’

      ‘Oh, yeah, very sympathetic. The reservations manager spoke fluent English and she was incredibly understanding. She wanted to know …’ but he trails off again, like the end of that sentence is too painful to even articulate. I instinctively move a step closer to him, but he focuses on putting Nescafé into mugs and composes himself in time.

      ‘She said she was sorry if my girlfriend and I had broken up. And I just couldn’t find it in me to get the right words out, so instead I hung up the phone.’

      Then Jeff sticks his head around the door, with a stack of photos for us all to check. V. hard to find one of Kitty without a drink in her hand, or where you can actually see her nose full-on (she was expert at turning her head in photos, as she’d say, to minimise general Barbra Streisand-ness of it), but eventually we settle on about a half a dozen that’ll have do.

      Right then. Jeff sets off on his mission and Simon and I get back to manning the phones, picking up exactly where we left off yesterday.

      12.45 p.m.

      Getting on bit better today. Spoke to one junior chef who distinctly remembered seeing Kitty on that last shift and having a long chat with her. Apparently about how much she was looking forward to her skiing trip.

      V. strange look from Simon at hearing that. Would nearly break a heart of stone.

      2.20 p.m.

      Our buddy Sarah arrives, fresh from doing an early shift at her family’s sandwich bar where she practically runs the place single-handedly; doing everything from PR to sales and marketing to working on the tills, if she has to. Bless her, she strides in laden down with basket of fresh sambos, croissants, muffins, etc.

      Carb hit, just what we need. Sarah’s completely amazing, like a ray of light round here, positive energy beaming all round her. Great ‘can-do’ attitude, v. Dunkirk spirit. If you were casting Sarah in a biopic of her life, you’d go for an efficient Women’s Institute/ICA type, as played by a young Penelope Keith.

      Kitty and I know her all way back to her post-grad college days, when Sarah used to trawl round the place in Doc Martens and denim overalls, famous for never shaving under her arms. Then, the minute she graduated and went to work in her family’s catering company, overnight she suddenly morphed into a female Alan Sugar, crossed with a Karren Brady-businesswoman-type, dressed in stilettos and scarily smart black pantsuits, and living off a combination of fags and nerves. It’s in the blood and genes will always out, as Kitty used to shrug.

      Really delighted to see her now, though. Like a burst of vitally needed energy.

      3.45 p.m.

      It was exhausting, it nearly bloody killed us, but somehow between us, Simon, Sarah and I, we’ve now managed to work our weary way through to the v. last name and get to speak to everyone we could on that everlastingly long contact list. Don’t know how we did it, but between Sarah’s Prussian efficiency and my insane, misguided optimism in the face of overwhelming odds, somehow we get there.

      Absolutely nowhere, that is. No one has seen or heard from Kitty since her last shift in work, no one knew of any late-night parties she might have pitched up at, not a bleeding sausage. Just dead ends everywhere we turn.

      Poor Simon’s really worrying me now. Like a shadow of the same guy I knew from only a few days ago. He’s jumpy, tense, even a bit irritable, so unlike his usual über-gentlemanly self. Has already asked me about five times to come with him to police station later on this evening.

      ‘I really need you there with me, Angie,’ is all he says, with a pleading look, like a lost little puppy.

      He’s actually starting to treat me like I’m his lifeline. Even Sarah noticed.

      5.10 p.m.

      Fast approaching the 6.00 p.m. deadline to get back to the cop shop, and Simon and I are about as organised as we’ll ever be to finally file a report. We’ve covered absolutely everything; we even rang up Foxborough House care home again, in vain hopes Kitty may somehow have surfaced there. But nothing.

      Weird just how quickly you become inured to disappointment.

      Between the whole lot of us though, I think we’re fully prepped for all eventualities. Sarah, being Sarah (bit ghoulishly I thought), even went and unearthed a whole missing persons website and saw that the first thing police apparently look for are mobile phone details, as well as bank account and credit card statements. So after a fair bit of rummaging through Kitty’s desk, the pair of us stumbled on a few old bank statements as well as a mobile phone bill (Kitty’s never a great one for clearing out her desk, it seems). Felt a bit like tempting fate even taking all this stuff with me, but as Sarah kept reminding me, far better to arrive fully prepared.

      All in all, getting organised for this was relatively easy.

      So now for the hard part.

      Harcourt Street Police Station, 6.00 p.m. on the nail

      Utterly mental in the cop shop tonight. Like a riot just broke out before we arrived and Simon and I had the bad luck to walk right into the aftermath. Place is packed with underage-looking yobbos with buzz cuts and v. scary-looking ‘body art’, all out of their heads on meths or God knows what. I’m not kidding, every single one of them looks fully ready to start fisticuffs with his own shadow. Bloody terrifying.

      I shuffle over to stand v. close to Simon, who instinctively grips my hand. Grip it back, tight. Grateful.

      We wait meekly at the back of a tiny reception area, either till the yob-heads all get arrested or else someone notices us, but by a stroke of pure luck, the very same adolescent copper who was on duty last night chances to walk right by us with a tray of coffee. He sees us and immediately stops.

      ‘You two must be back about your missing friend then, yeah?’