Read Online Lost Girls by Graham Wilson - Free Book Online Page A

she has gone out for
breakfast or something like that. I will ask around downstairs and
see if anyone has seen her.”
    Vic said thanks
and clicked off.
    He thought.
“This is crazy, me sitting here in hospital while she has gone
missing. I must get out and go and look for her. He rang the nurses
call bell.
    In a minute the
nurse came in. He told her he was checking out as soon as could be
arranged, he just needed her help to get him a set of crutches so
he could walk without putting weight on his leg.
    She protested
and called the doctor who answered. In a minute the doctor and
senior nurse were both there and telling him to calm down, that he
risked damaging his leg and undoing the benefit of the operation if
he did not stay in bed for at least two more days.
    Vic would have
none of it. Finally he got them to bring him a set of crutches and
he signed his discharge papers. Then he was in a taxi heading back
to Alan’s flat.
    When Vic
arrived Alan and Sandy were both there, looking around, perplexed,
as he hobbled in on his crutches.
    “What are you
doing here? We have barely begun to look for her, we don’t even
know she is missing, you should still be in hospital.”
    Vic could feel
panic coursing through him. It was his sixth sense, not something
tangible. He agreed there were lots of explanations but deep down
he knew it was not that simple, it was something to do with the
level of commitment they had towards each other. It told him she
would not just go off somewhere without letting him know.
    Alan was a
master of practicality, he held up the phone which Susan had been
using with the missed calls from Vic. It had been next to the bed.
“OK, first we need to contact her parents and Anne, just in case
she has gone visiting either of them early in the morning. Sandy
can do that.
    “Then we need
to contact the other people she knows, Buck, the doctors in the
hospital she regularly sees, just in case the babies have come
early. I will do that.
    “What I need
you to do, Vic, is walk carefully around the flat and see if you
can spot anything of hers which should be here and is missing, or
anything that is out of place since you were last here. While you
are at it have a close look at the bed, see if you can tell whether
she has slept in it since you were last here together, same for the
bathroom and kitchen, see if there are signs of her being here
since you were here yesterday morning.
    “At this stage
we don’t really know if she even came home last night, except for
the paper, assuming that was not from yesterday morning. The phone
could have been left here since yesterday. Do you know if she
brought it to the hospital?”
    Vic was sure
there had been no newspaper in the morning. She could have hardly
opened it without seeing the story and if she had seen it he would
have surely known. In fact at that point he would have cancelled
the surgery until he knew how it affected her. As for the phone, he
could not remember seeing it at the hospital, he had thought she
brought it but was not sure. So he checked the call register. There
were no outgoing or received calls since the day before yesterday,
just Vic’s missed calls this morning. So that did not really
help.
    He looked at
the bed, felt the pillows and looked at the shapes of the body
outlines left in the bedclothes. He could almost swear that Susan
had slept here last night; the pillow he normally used had traces
of lipstick and her smell, as if she had cuddled it to herself. It
was not conclusive but, when he added that to the paper, he felt
almost sure that she had come back here last night after leaving
him in the hospital.
    Then he saw a
bottle of Bundy and a glass next to the lounge. The bottle had not
been there when he had left yesterday. He did not much like Bundy,
and he and Susan had not drunk from it together. He saw fingermarks
on the glass and it had a small amount of what smelt and looked
like neat rum in the bottom.
    He called out
to Alan, “When