Sometimes, all you could do was give in. Sometimes, you just had to let the night win. Lose the battle, win the war, she thought to herself, and the heavy, towel- wrapped bundle in her backpack felt a lighter, suddenly.

11.

Three days after Laura’s fourteenth birthday and her first letter, one year and four days after Bobby Eveleigh disappeared, Mr. and Mrs. Eveleigh gave into public pressure, and held a memorial service for him. Technically, Bobby was still listed as missing on the police files, his case marked unsolved. There was no public acknowledgement that anyone thought Bobby was dead, and no explicit mention of foul play. But the Eveleighs held a service, anyway. It would become an annual tradition, something concrete for them to do as they waited in vain for their golden boy to return.

Despite there being no body, no burial, and no specific mention of the word ‘death’, the service still had all the uncomfortable, itchy trappings of a funeral. It was held on a Sunday in the local church, and there were candles, poems, large framed photographs of Bobby wreathed with flowers and football memorabilia. His smile echoed around the congregation, all of whom wore black. Laura stood alone at the back of the church, her own parents absent because of work commitments, and she felt hatred for the first time in her short life, hatred for Bobby’s mother and father and little brother, pure, white hot rage, rage that burned through every filament of her being, because this service was an admission of only one thing: that everyone else was giving up on Bobby.

She vowed then, as she looked about the church and saw other pupils from her school holding hands and crying, boys and girls who had never spoken to Bobby in their lives, who never knew him at all, she vowed, as she took in the smirk of a small boy from four houses along who was pulling a funny face at his sister, bored, she vowed, as she let her eyes settle for a moment on the careful, neutral expression of the church vicar as he delivered the Lord’s Prayer, she vowed, as she clutched a printed hymn sheet with white-knuckled hands and screamed internally, that she would go along with the letters. She would do whatever the mystery man wanted, if it meant that she could find answers to it all. She was not too young to understand what closure meant. She was not too young to feel the agony of not-knowing.

She crept away before the service ended, wanting to avoid all the other attendees. As she left, she glanced backwards into the church, and met the eyes of Tara Eveleigh, who was watching her leave. Her gaze was dark and dangerous, and her tears bright on her cheeks.

Laura felt the burden of that stare all the way home, where she found another dirty envelope, waiting for her on the doormat.

She opened it, and read the following words: