Reservoir 13

The world didn’t always sound right when it was first explained.

People just wanted to open their mouths and talk, and they didn't much mind what came out.

It's a question of priorities, he said. You get your plants in at the right time, get the mulch down, do the weeding, do the watering,that's work enough. You do all that, you'll enjoy being here, A plot full of healthy plants, crops coming off, flowers out, that's the best little place in the world. You'll not be worrrying about benches or lawns or tidy paths.

There was a volume to what was not being said.

Her name was Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex. She'd been wearing a white hooded top with a navy-blue body-warmer. She would be twenty-three years old by now. She had been seen in the beech wood, climbing a tree. She had been seen at the railway station. She had been seen by the side of the road. She had been looked for, everywhere. She could have arranged to meet somebody, and been driven safely away.She could have fallen down a hole. She could have been hurt by her parents in some terrible mistake. She could have gone away because she'd chosen to, or because she had no choice. People still wanted to know.

William Pearson said that really what they were talking about at the end of the day was Martin Fowler constantly parking like a cunt.

Ask that we not allow ourselves to be overcome by a grief which is not ours to indulge but instead be uplifted by faith and enabled to help that suffering family in whatever way we are called to do

In the first week they were seen setting off from the visitor centre with their father leading the way, returning an hour later in the sort of glowering silence that follows a difference of views.

The nettles and cow parsley came up in swathes, the bindweed trumpeting through the hedges,

a persistent unsettledness of wings.

The only sounds were footsteps and dogs barking along the road and faintly a helicopter from the reservoirs.

She could have ... People still wanted to know.

The missing girl's name was Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex. In the photo her face was half turned away from the camera as though she didn't want to be seen, as though she wanted to be somewhere else. She would be twenty years old by now but she was always spoken of as a girl. It had been seven years, and there was talk that now she would legally have to be declared dead. This turned out to have no basis in law, according to a statement released by the police. Any such declaration would always depend on the circumstances. The girl's parents had never stopped looking and the police statement confirmed that the case remained open. In the village people looked up to the hills and felt that they'd long known. She could have walked high over the moor and stumbled into a flooded clough and sunk cold and deep in the wet peat before the dogs and thermal cameras came anywhere near, her skin tanned leather-brown and soft and her hair coiled neatly around her. She could have fallen anywhere and be lying there still.