Chapter 9

Neates House. 3PM

Jim started to panic. A moment earlier there was calmness and serenity in his groggy mind. Now, he rapidly felt pressure in his lungs increasing. Breathing was impossible. The grip around his neck was unbreakable and the lethargy of moments ago was evolving into an adrenaline rush. Darkness receded in slowly from his peripheral vision, and he tried with all his might to break free. His lizard brain took over. Fight or flight. He kicked his leg out at the gardener's stepladder less than a metre away, trying to gain some sort of leverage. The oxygen to his brain was completely cut off now, due to the force placed on his carotid artery. Darkness came faster, taking over completely.

Police Station. 3PM

As Claire pulled up to the kerb outside the quaint old police station she could see part way down the alley leading to the police vehicle car park. She caught sight of two PCSOs smoking cigarettes under a plastic shelter. She could not quite explain why, but this image irritated her, as though they were somehow not supposed to smoke or take breaks. She assumed she was just feeling irritable in general now, and everything was starting to annoy her. The rain was incessant and Claire really did not want to get wet again so she looked for a more covered parking spot. The entrance to the police station had steps on one side and ramp on the other. The side with the ramp was also covered by a sort of makeshift plastic ceiling, presumably because people in wheelchairs were not allowed to get wet.

Claire tried to put such antagonistic thoughts out of her head as she pulled the car next to a tree. She was about five steps away from the start of the rain-shielded ramp, which was as close as she could possibly get. Nervous at the prospect of talking to the police, Claire began rehearsing the conversation in her head. Who was missing and for how long? Would they think she was being ridiculous? Would they give her a ticket for wasting police time? Is it possible to waste the time of people stood outside under a rain shelter, smoking and laughing with each other?

The last thought made Claire roll her eyes in exasperation at her continued negativity. She opened the door and ran to the slope. A satisfying blip came from the car as she remotely locked the doors.

Claire could smell damp as she entered the foyer of this undoubtedly old police station. Everything looked dated. There were old posters hanging on the wall encouraging you to either go into rehab or be an informant. There were wooden benches lining the wall, clearly designed to be as uncomfortable as possible in the hope that people got numb arses and walked away before they got their turn at the front desk. The 'officer' manning this particular front desk was similar in appearance to a Scotch egg: Round and orange.

The officer was rotund, to say the least. She was wearing a white shirt, although it was hard to imagine shirts in her size were ever considered suitable for a police officer. She had short, frizzy, orange hair, offset by blue plastic earrings and unflattering, round glasses. Claire had visions of this office jumping on a hardened criminal, screaming at them to give her the chocolate back. It was her chocolate, God damn it, and she'd fight anyone for it. Claire used her inappropriate humour to force a smile onto her face.

"Hello," she said, trying to get the egg's attention.

"Yes, how can I help?" It replied.

"I need to report a missing person." Jim said, and noticed the creature's name badge. It read, 'Police Staff E Johnson'. E for Egg, maybe, Claire pondered.

"Let me take some details. What's your name and date of birth?" Asked Johnson.

Strange first question, thought Claire. This isn't about me. Nevertheless, she gave her details, along with her phone number and address when the officer requested them.

"Right. So, who's missing?" Asked the officer, finally getting to the important part.

"My boyfriend." Claire replied.

"When did he go missing?"

"Today. A couple of hours ago." Claire said, realising as soon as the words came out of her mouth that she was sounding a bit mad. Police Staff Johnson put down her pen and looked at Claire.

"That's not a long time. Is there anything that makes you think he's gone missing? Where would he normally be at this time?"

"Well, normally, he's at work." Claire said, realising that this sentence had not helped her cause. "But," she continued, "He hasn't been responding to any calls and I found his car abandoned on the road nowhere near where he works."

"Oh, right," Johnson said, slightly more interested, "I'll need to put a report on, and a police officer will need to speak to you. Bear with me."

The officer walked away from the window and sat at a desk. She picked up a telephone and dialed. A few seconds later, she started talking, using phrases like 'delta', 'misper', 'guardian reference' and 'domestic relationship'. After only a minute of this, she put down the phone and returned to the window where Claire was patiently stood.

Johnson began speaking, "OK, love, this is what needs to happen. They're putting a log on the system and a police officer will come here to take details from you. There's no one in this station right now, but they've called someone to come over. Are you ok to wait?"

Claire did not think she had much choice, so nodded in the affirmative, which set the officer off speaking again.

"Just take a seat and someone will come and get you. OK?"

Claire nodded again and walked to the uninviting pew. She sat on the hard wooden surface and instinctively started looking at her phone. No messages. She opened the Facebook app and scrolled through a series of everyone else's fake-happy photos and inspirational quotes. Nothing seemed real. No one was really as happy as they looked on social media, and as for those inspirational quotes on a background of trees and sun: nobody talks like that. If any of Claire's friends actually started talking in the way their Facebook and Instagram posts read, she would probably call them a retard. She remembered life before Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and thought that things were better back then. Nobody tried so hard to impress everybody else. The selfies, captions and one-upmanship that was ubiquitous today simply did not exist ten years ago. Claire was sure that trying so hard to look happy actually made people more depressed. She wondered how many family feuds, divorces and legal battles had been caused by the virus of social media.

In spite of these thoughts, Claire was an addict like everyone else. She had two Instagram accounts and a Facebook. One Instagram for her personal life, which was really an edited, filtered, photoshopped version of her life. The other for her artwork, with each post accompanied by about fifty hashtags trying to garner attention. It actually made her feel temporarily happy when she got lots of 'likes' and new followers. It was also a source of disappointment when an illustration she had worked really hard over did not get any comments. For what? Claire thought. I will never meet most of those people and I'm not selling anything. I'm literally wasting my time. Everybody is literally wasting their time tapping a glass screen instead of looking at the people that really matter. How well did she know ninety-nine percent of the people she was 'friends' with on the internet and why did she bother to look at their version of a life they didn't really have? Jim was obsessed with reading the latest news on Twitter, which was almost always about poverty, violence, corruption and despair. It made him angry, which made her angry, because she wondered why he cared so much. Why care about people ten thousand miles away when you can't do anything about it? In fact, she could not really understand why anyone cared about things we have no influence over. People are strange.