Free The Missing Person's Guide to Love by Susanna Jones Page A

can’t even swim. It still looks like a big, glistening invitation, though. Don’t you think?’
    The boats were lined up with a pair of oars inside each one, but there was no one around to take the money. I had an idea. I didn’t particularly want to spend hours in a pub with John,but a quick trip out on the water right now might prove useful. ‘You’re right, John. We have time.’
    ‘Fantastic. You’ll love it when we get out there.’
    ‘We can untie one and leave a note on the jetty with some money.’
    ‘You’re so moral. I love it. I’m a good rower, you know. I used to row often when I was younger. Won’t it be a nice thing to do? A little peace enjoyed together before we say goodbye to Owen. Just look at it.’
    John sighed and gazed out across the reservoir. The wind had died down and the water barely rippled.
    ‘But quickly. I really don’t want to be late for the funeral.’
    ‘There’s still time.’
    The reservoir was whitish blue, cold. It didn’t look like the reservoir I remembered, which had been dark green and viscous. Goose Island (it was Goose Island) was smaller than I’d thought it, nearer, and with fewer trees. I didn’t want to go out there again but it was the perfect way to remember Owen and, perhaps, learn something new.

    Owen and I took a rowing-boat out on the day we committed our crime. It was a vivid, yellow day. The reservoir stretched out under the sun, stripes and shapes of silver covering most of the surface. The middle of the water was the only place where we could talk in secret and I had big news to tell. I ran down the street from the police station and told Owen to meet me at the end of the jetty. I called Kath, too, andtold her to come, but she was studying hard for her A levels and stayed at home. I didn’t mind. A crocodile of primary-school children slunk along the pavement towards the reservoir, armed with nature books and jam-jars. I ran past their bobbing heads to the jetty and waited for Owen. One of us paid thirty or fifty pence, whatever it was, to the old man who always sat there in the afternoon with his ham roll and copy of the Sun .
    We took it in turns with the oars and rowed out near Goose Island. In the shade of the trees the day darkened and cooled. There were mallards on the island. We argued about which kind were male and which female. Owen would not concede that the brown ones were female and decided that they must be a different breed of duck. ‘They must be moorhens,’ he said, ‘those dull brown ones, because mallards are colourful with bottle-green heads.’ I had been visiting the reservoir with my parents since I was tiny and I knew which were mallards, coots, moorhens. We argued, I remember, for a long time and then we both grew irritated, so I began to tell him why we were there. Owen was eighteen and I was seventeen then. He was unemployed and I was on a training scheme at McCreadie’s supermarket, taking dance classes in the evenings and at weekends. It was a couple of years since Julia’s disappearance and the rest of us were living on a strange edge that left us dizzy because we could not stop ourselves looking down. I was still inventing stories in my head, almost daily, that kept Julia alive, kept her life twisting forwards. I told Owen what Mr McCreadie hadsaid to me that afternoon about Julia, and how we were the ones to do something about it.
    When I’d finished speaking, we switched places so that I could take the oars. ‘The ducks don’t know what kind of ducks they are so it doesn’t matter anyway,’ Owen said – just because he was wrong and I was right – and trailed his hand in the water. I pulled the oars hard. I was not as strong as Owen but I could row almost as well. I liked to see how fast I could make the boat go. I liked to feel as if I were in a race against some imaginary boat just off to our side, rowed by Olympian heroes. I would make us speed along, then lift the oars to see how far we would glide