I keep my head down as I watch people gather at the stop, waiting for the next bus, all ignoring each other even though they probably get the same bus together day in, day out. The discomfort of proximity in a small town. I wonder what the people I used to know in school would look like now – would I even remember them? I hope they don’t remember me. I wasn’t what you would call popular and if the people I used to know are anything like me they will barely remember their friendship group, let alone anyone outside of it.

There are no cameras here at The Triangle and so it’s unlikely that there is any lead on who took the girl, what kind of vehicle, or exactly what time. Her name was Mandy Green and she was fifteen years old, the same age as my Daisy. Did she get in a car with someone she knew, or was it just an opportunistic drive-by kidnapping? I remembered reading on the local news website that one bus driver saw her there waiting for a bus, but when the next bus arrived she was gone. There are a few bunches of flowers tied to the railings, which I find odd. The girl wasn’t dead, or at least they hadn’t found a body. Who put the flowers on the railings? I am too scared to go and look at the flowers in case there is a note. There is one name I am scared of seeing. How much do the police actually know? The thought that he might be here again is too much to bear. Did he come back for me? No – it must be someone else, but why? And why is it so similar? Maybe I’m over-reacting; maybe the girl has just run away. Where the hell was Mandy? The voice in the back of my head tells me I did the right thing by coming here. I remember standing in this same spot all those years ago and wondering what had happened to the girl who disappeared, the girl who could have been me, could have been any of us. I have so many questions that I never dared ask, questions I never thought I would get answers for. I’m still too afraid to even think of what the answers might be.

I get up and walk towards the church and then proceed down the uneven pavement on Church Hill into the market square. I see the butcher’s is still there and the baker’s, a chocolate shop I don’t remember and also a shop filled with luxury Christmas decorations. Only in a town like this would a business like that be viable in July. There was a lot of money among some of the older residents and Christmas was an inevitability that they looked forward to, often because it might be their last.