Chapter Three

      Stephen’s Day, 7.01 a.m.

      Another sleepless night alternately spent tossing, turning or else staring at the ceiling, hoping against hope that my phone would just ring and it’d be Kitty. Then I switch the light on, check the mobile on my bedside table, thinking maybe, maybe, maybe the Miracle of Christmas has actually happened … Keep telling myself that you just never know with her … But nothing. So I lie back down again, try to sleep, can’t, then repeat the whole palaver all over again at regular thirty-minute intervals.

      At first light, I check the phone for about the thousandth time, but it’s a total waste of time, the screen’s completely blank. Automatically I hit the re-dial button and call Kitty’s number, almost through force of habit at this stage. I know it’s like eating a whole tube of Pringles and that it’s ultimately v. bad for me and will end up driving me mental, but I just can’t stop myself. And, of course, her phone clicks straight to voicemail.

      ‘Hi there, it’s Kitty! Sorry I can’t take your call, but leave a message and I’ll ring you back. Providing of course that you’re a) good-looking, and b) that I don’t owe you any money!’

      Completely weird hearing her disconnected voice like this. It’s almost a shock how bright and bouncy and full of energy she sounds, while we’re here, agonised out of our minds about her. I check the number of times I’ve called her since the whole Christmas Eve/aborted birthday fiasco. Fifty-two. And not one single message returned. Even find myself turning to prayer, something I only ever indulge in when I’m really sick with worry.

      Listen God, I know you don’t exactly hear from me all that often, and I appreciate you’ve probably got miles more important things to get on with, such as sorting out famine in Africa, etc., etc. But if you could just see your way to keeping Kitty safe wherever she is and maybe if you could get her to turn up anytime now, we’d all be so, so grateful. Come on, God, you can do it! It is, after all, officially the Season of Goodwill, isn’t it? Any chance this could be my miracle of Christmas?

      P.S., hope Baby Jesus had a really lovely birthday yesterday.

      The only straw of hope we’ve got is this: at end of day, it is Kitty we’re dealing with here. I have to constantly repeat it over and over, like a mantra. Therefore, the rules that bind ordinary mortals like you and me just don’t apply.

      True, she’s my best friend, but still … I remind myself of the sheer number of times in the past when she’s flaked off like this before. Honest to God, you’d marvel at how entirely possible it is to love another human being dearly, and yet want to strangle them with your bare hands at same time. No question about it: Kitty’s the type who could have taken off anywhere, or who absolutely anything could have happened to. Easily.

      Might possibly even have ended up drunkenly crawling on a flight to Rio, with a gang of people she accidentally got swept up with, and now can’t get in touch with us …

      Highly unlikely, but you’d never know … I keep saying it over and over, like it’s playing on a loop in my mind.

      With Kitty, you just never know.

      7.02 a.m.

      Snap out of it immediately. Course she’s not on a flight to Rio. As if! I’m suddenly aware my excuses for her now becoming increasingly more far-fetched. Jeez, I’ll be imagining alien abductions next. I tell myself Simon is right: there has to be some perfectly simple explanation. Perfectly simple. We’ll look back and laugh when she turns up. After I physically reef the curly mop off her head first, for putting us through all this crap.

      And if it does actually turn out that she flitted off to South America to do conga lines in the sun, then I’ll personally wring her neck with the knicker string off her own bikini.

      Not an idle threat, by the way.

      9.14 a.m.

      A text from Simon. I nearly drop the phone, my hands are shaking so much as I try to read it.

      HAVE JUST LEFT NURSING HOME. STILL NO NEWS. KITTY HASN’T BEEN HERE SINCE LAST WEEK. I SAW MRS K., WHO’S UNAWARE OF WHAT’S GOING ON, BUT IN GOOD SPIRITS. ON WAY BACK TO DUBLIN NOW, NO SIGNAL HERE, WILL CALL YOU SOON AS I GET THERE.

      9.30 a.m.

      My brain’s completely scrambled. I’m finding it so hard to function normally, to colour in between the lines. Between panic attacks, I keep thinking, oh, OK, now I get it, I’m in hell. And once I accept that, surprise myself by getting through whole minutes at a time.

      9.35 a.m.

      OK, two choices here. Either I can continue staring worriedly out the window like a stray character from Chekhov, or I can actually make myself useful and get back to doing a ring-around of just about every mutual friend Kitty and I have. Which, given that it’s Stephen’s Day and normal people are all out visiting relatives or else hitting the January sales, is a lot easier said than done.

      Call my buddy Jeff, but it’s only his voicemail. Probably up climbing a mountain today or something equally shamingly healthy. (Jeff’s one of those outdoorsy, Patagonia-clad fitness nutters.) Then Sarah, who at least answers, but then she’s been queuing up to get into the Harvey Nichols sale probably since sometime before midnight last night. Sarah’s the type who’d v. happily drive through a warzone if she thought there was even an outside chance of a discount store, where she’d save a fiver off leggings.

      She tells me she hasn’t seen Kitty in well over a week, but promises to call back as soon as she bags a Marc Jacobs trench coat she’s had her eye on for months and been saving up for, as a Christmas self-gift.

      ‘Reduced by SEVENTY-FIVE PER CENT, can you believe it?’

      ‘Yeah, but the fact is that Kitty’s still missing and I’m starting to get seriously worried now …’

      ‘Oh,