Free Perfect Victim by Megan Norris, Elizabeth Southall

The body language of Rachel that day was not that of a teenager contemplating running away. I should know. I work with kids all the time.’
    ‘What … then?’ asked Mike.
    ‘I feel she’s been taken,’ answered Dulcie.
    ‘Then why don’t the police …’
    ‘Because it’s only our gut feeling,’ said Mike, interrupting me. ‘There’s no evidence of foul play.’
    ‘He’s right, Elizabeth,’ said Dulcie. ‘The police don’t know Rachel.’
    True, I thought. To them she’s just another fifteen-year-old girl.
    I asked Dulcie what she thought about Mike’s need to hang a poster at Rachel’s previous dance school. She felt it an excellent idea because she knew their studios were leased to other dance groups.
    Then Mike told Dulcie about a problem I had had with a male friend of ours. Mike was becoming concerned that this man might have been involved in Rachel’s disappearance, although I thought it highly unlikely.
    Dulcie was amazed we hadn’t reported him already. To an outsider it seemed a very reasonable possibility.
    ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.
    ‘Elizabeth! You’ll only think about it?’ Dulcie cried.
    We went home late in the afternoon.
    School friends of Rachel’s were calling in to collect posters. Other friends had begun to drop in casseroles, coffee and cake.
    My cousin Ian had phoned. A work colleague’s husband was an inspector in the police force. He suggested I write in an exercise book the events of Rachel’s disappearance and he would hand it on.
    James, my 44-year-old cousin, came to help where he could. He grabbed a large cardboard box of odd socks to match, discovering only one pair. It was the sock box from Rachel’s play-group days: odd socks were brilliant for hand puppets.
    News was spreading fast. Letters of support were arriving. The phone rang constantly. My mother was tiring from the responsibility of answering the phone. My Aunt Babe, ravaged by emphysema, gave my mother respite, and answered the phone with authority.
    Ashleigh-Rose was calmer, having spent the day at Montrose Library with my stepmother Susan. She had shelved and covered books. Susan recalled Ashleigh-Rose saying, ‘I had to get out of the house. Mum and Dad are crying all the time, and Nanny Joy cries, too. Then I cry because I can’t stand to see Mum and Dad crying.’ Ashleigh-Rose told her about going in to see her father and being frightened by his hard grasp. ‘Daddy said, “I don’t want to lose you, too. I’ve already lost Rachel. I’ve let Rachel down …” ’
    Robbie had reported that Heather was having a lovely time. Robbie’s friend Dianne took Heather fishing and Heather caught her first fish. When Heather heard that Rachel had not been found she’d said, ‘Good, that means I can stay with Auntie Robbie and go fishing again.’ But then added, ‘You know I don’t mean that.’
    My brother Drew rang to say he would be down on Sunday to take over the phone. He’d always been a very distant brother. But tragedy is a catalyst. It was the catalyst that brought sister and brother closer. It was the catalyst that brought a separated family together. My mother, father and stepmother put differences aside. I felt completely at ease in the company of all three: I’d been working on that for twenty-five years. We all had one focus: to bring Rachel home. At the end of this first week it was beginning to feel as though it was becoming ‘bring Rachel home, dead or alive’.
    We were so exhausted but sleep was still not a possibility. The ‘ifs, why dids, what fors’ consumed us. We were Rachel’s parents. We were responsible for Rachel. We had let her down. We were guilty. Tragedy had swept fifteen years of loving, fifteen years of energy, fifteen years of Rachel into a cavity, unseen, unfound.
    Mike said he knew she was dead. He was looking for a body. The doctor, who considered Mike to be suffering from shock, had said, ‘Mike has begun the grieving process already because