The worst part about Meredith’s case is that when they found her, she was only a mile from a different trail. This is especially gruesome for obvious reasons. Succumbing to the elements is one thing, miserable, but to lose your dual against nature when you’re a twenty-minute walk away from the rest of your life … well, at least she didn’t know. That’s better, in a way.

Celeste must have known.

I think about that a lot. I think about her, furiously trying to find her way back, dread clenching every part of her, the realization that she’s wandering in circles, that she was just on the trail, that there’s no escape, that she might as well lie down there and die – or maybe there’s something greater and cosmic flickering through the expanse of woods, something that just won’t let her die, and she’s still out there, toeing unbroken undergrowth for the rest of time. Maybe she’s changed now. Made different. Maybe from all that searching and wanting and dread she’s transformed into something else. How could she not be?

Yes. I think about that a lot.

A fat bumblebee smacks against the balcony door with a crack and I jump. The buzz peaks then moves away. Birdsong drifts in, pitchy and fevered. It’s a pretty day – distant, bright blue sky melts smooth as foam into the horizon.

I hang my few clothes in the shared wardrobe, fold the shorts and underwear beneath them. There’s a deep drawer in my desk that I use to store all the podcast equipment, and after I’ve tessellated everything into place, I collapse on to my bed.

Roxy’s case is special because the most interesting thing about her isn’t that she went missing, which one can’t always say of missing people. I’d read the blogs, the forums, all her lyrics time and again, every lick of information available on Sandown, on Roxy, on the investigation – more so, the lack of investigation. It seemed the bulk of available effort was put towards satiating the media vultures as opposed to anyone at all trying to figure out where Roxy had gone. Then, suddenly, calm. It didn’t make any sense. My gut had always suggested there was something everyone wasn’t seeing.

Celeste loved Roxy’s music. It was all she listened to, the year leading up to her disappearance. And Celeste is gone. I’ve come to terms with it, maybe. No leads. No clues. Vanished. But that’s not true of Roxy. There’s so much left behind. So many unexplored leads.

And no, finding Roxy isn’t the same as finding Celeste. But it is, at last, something apart from replaying that same terrible image of the empty trail one more damn time, hoping to find a silhouette rustling through the undergrowth.