The clock tick, tick, ticked away in the background as it had done for the last 4 hours and I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling in a trance-like state. I hadn’t slept a wink in the last few nights since Michelle’s disappearance and strangely enough, my brain wasn’t asking me to replenish it with sleep. It was far too focused on what had happened that night when Michelle had disappeared into thin air, just moments after we had embraced at the bandstand in Magdalen Green. I tried so hard to remember what had happened but came up a little short.

Getting up and putting on my dressing gown; I made my way to the kitchen in the cold and dark house; put on the kettle and made myself a cup of strong black tea. Bringing up the internet on my computer, I opened my emails half expecting to see some kind of ransom or threatening email about Michelle but no such emails materialised. I went to the glass panel and started to write out a timeline to establish where we had been and what we were doing up to the point of Michelle’s vanishing.

Time Location

21:00 Town Centre having drinks

23:30 Andy and Martin fight at bar

00:00 Sit with Michelle at bandstand

0000-00:15 Michelle disappears

There was that half an hour window that I couldn’t account for and that’s what got to me more than anything. I pride myself on being able to remember even the most seemingly irrelevant detail and yet I couldn’t remember what had happened in that 15 minute window. The more immature side of me suggested I could blame it on aliens; say I had been abducted and that’s why I couldn’t remember what had happened. The more sensible side however suggested I could very well have had my drink spiked and was so out of it that anything might have gone on around me and I would have never known even if it was in my direct line of vision.

Had the person or persons that stole Michelle away from me followed her from her past in Annan? Maybe the reason she came back here wasn’t for school but for her own safety? I mean, she’d been really quiet since she came back and if memory serves, she was always the life and soul of the party, but lately she’s been the mother-like figure.

My head thumped and I really needed to just crash out for a while, let my brain recuperate and let my thoughts stop working triple overtime but it just wasn’t going to happen. Until I could figure out what had happened, I’d be awake and full of coffee, worries and fear.