MISSING

“No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.”

Terry Pratchett

I was eight when my mum went missing. The police couldn’t find any trace of her, but they suspected foul play. There had been a string of murders in the city around that time, and it felt like an easy explanation for the authorities, although the killer never was found, and all the cases went cold.

My dad never got over it. Until the day he died, he was sure that she was alive and well, maybe having enough of the life she was living and deciding to start again. He always said that he would forgive her if she happened to turn up one day, but it was clear that this would never happen. Denial is sometimes hard to watch.

I’m now forty-two and have a family of my own; two daughters aged six and nine, and a beautiful wife. My life is pretty good, and three years ago, I started my own business as a landscaper. The work is hard and long and can be dependent on the seasons. In the summer, we’re busy, but during the winter months, work will always drop off, but it’s my business, and I’m proud of what I’ve built.

My story starts last year in 2016 when I had a call from a lady wanting a quote for a full garden re-design.

I drove up to the house, it was a good-sized property with maybe five or six bedrooms. The front garden wasn’t huge, but the back of the house gave way to a massive stretch of land which I can only guess of being six or seven acres.

She explained that it wasn’t her house, her father still owned the property, but he was in a care home as he suffered with advanced Alzheimer’s. Her plan was to give the house and the garden a well-needed modernization. It all looked good to me, the property was well maintained, even if a little dated, but I would be happy with it if it was mine.

Two weeks had passed since giving the quote when she called me and agreed to the price. The job was going to be a fairly big one, so I would require the assistance of my two labourers, Kenny and Frank. The two of them had been in the trade for several years, and I trusted them to complete a job to the standard that I, and my customers expected.

Once all the equipment was onsite, we got to work. The first job was to cut back all the trees and bushes. They had been become over-grown, and made the garden look untidy.

The lady of the house was always there while we were working, she would regularly bring us out mugs of teas and would make us bacon butties from time to time, which we would always appreciate.

It was on the fifth day when the job came to a sudden stop.

Kenny was using the excavator to dig a trench. He called me over to say he had found what looked to be some animal burials, and if we should tell the lady. He was concerned that we could have been digging up some beloved pets.

I knocked on the door and explained to the lady what we had found. She looked confused. She told me that while the family had lived there, which was well over sixty years, all their pets had been cremated and sat on fireplaces in various rooms around the house.

She asked to go and look at what we’d found, as she was an osteologist. She had to explain to me that this meant she studied bones. The lady was curious to see what animals would be buried out there.

Less than an hour later, the police were crawling all over the garden. She had identified the bones to be human, although she had no idea why they were there.

Kenny, Frank, and I were asked to leave the site until the police had conducted their investigations. I wasn’t happy about it as this could set the job back by days, or even weeks, but I had no other choice.

I heard nothing for four days until my phone rang. It was the police calling me back to tell me that I could go back to work, but if I found any other suspicious items in the garden, I should call them straight away.

I called Kenny and Frank and told them that we would resume the work the following day.

As I’d finished on the phone, there was a knock at the door. Two officers asked me if they could come in and talk about what we had found in the garden.

This was the conversation that would shatter my life for the second time since I was eight years old.

They explained that they had carried out DNA testing on the bones and they had a mix of three women that were buried in the garden. Two out of three of the women had hit a positive DNA match.

One of them was my mum.

I was back to being a child again as I wept. All these years had passed, and we never truly knew what had happened to her. When I was younger, I followed in my dad’s belief that she had simply left for a new life, but as I grew older, I began to think that she was no longer alive.

The police say they uncovered some items of jewellery and clothing from various women who disappeared all those years ago.

The old man who once lived in the house was never arrested due to his worsening disease.

I don’t know how to feel about him, as he is not the same person that killed my mum all those years ago, but part of me thinks that he is serving his sentence by being locked inside his own mind.

Kenny and Frank picked up the tools the following day and we never finished the job. I don’t want to go back to that house as long as I live.