Read Nowhere Girl for Free Online

locked in.
    Panicked, Ellie explored all the hidden places of the caravan but found nothing, just empty cupboards and a bone-dry sink. Her head began to pound and her thinking slowed, sluggish, so she grasped onto this one thing:
I must find my trainers
, as though that was the most pressing problem. Apart from the water and a bottle of bleach under the sink, there was nothing else. She sat back on the pull-out bed, woozy and thinking she was going to be sick, bile was already stinging her throat. She breathed slowly to master the feeling, but it wouldn’t go away. She was soon spitting into her hand, phlegm-like strands of moisture, then running to the sink and heaving.
    Her meal from last night, the potato cakes her mum had bought her, came up in a liquid burst. Both hands on the side of the sink, Ellie panted and gasped, unused to vomiting. When was the last time? That holiday in Morocco, after she’d had Coke with ice from the beach vendor. Later the staff at the hotel told her mum that the ice cubes would have been the problem. Ellie had lain in the hotel room, the curtains half-drawn and watched the ceiling fan whirl, gasping in the cool air like it was liquid because she was so parched and couldn’t even hold down water. And all the time her mum had sat by her side, stroking her forehead, reading to her. Holding her when the retching took over. Ellie had never questioned that her mum would always be there when she was ill.
    But not now.
    “Mum,” she called weakly, to the empty caravan.
    Then she lifted her head and looked herself square in the mirror. Barely recognising the pale face that stared back at her.
Bridget
    Across the city, Bridget was sitting on the sofa in her front lounge, holding a wristwatch in her hands and watching the second hand turn. For seven hours and forty minutes she had done this, ever since Achim had made the call to the police.
    Whoever he’d spoken to had told him that a missing person would not become a police matter until twelve hours had passed. There were still four hours until he could officially report their daughter missing. Achim had argued with the police operator, and put Bridget on the phone, demanding that she explain exactly what had happened.
    Bridget had made it worse then. She’d only told the truth, that Ellie had wanted to be with her boyfriend, that she had stayed out overnight with him before without permission. Even to her ears it sounded like a teenage strop, a bit of normal rebellion, and the woman on the other end of the line said as much. Trying to reassure her but coming across as patronising.
    Achim had been furious, with the police, but with her too. After he’d put the phone down, giving up on any police help just yet, he’d proceeded to call every one of Ellie’s friends. Most didn’t pick up, so he’d resorted to texting:
    Is Ellie with you? This is her father. I just need to know she’s okay
.
    The answers had been swift, sympathetic, but none of them knew where she was. He’d called Joe first, waiting until he picked up, but Joe said he had no idea where she might be, that he had finished with Ellie anyway. The night Ellie and Joe had spent together had not meant so very much, it seemed. He didn’t even sound surprised that she had failed to come home.
    After making the futile calls, Achim had gone upstairs. Bridget had wandered up just after midnight and again at two and both times he had been in their bedroom, laying on their bed, fully clothed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t say anything, but she could feel the waves of anger rolling off him with increasing intensity. He’d always babied Ellie, which was part of the problem. She’d been so spoiled, overly protected.
    “I think Ellie will be okay,” she’d ventured, stepping closer to the bed. “She’ll be home tomorrow, sorry she’s caused us all this worry.”
    He didn’t respond, but she saw his jaw clench. He didn’t agree with