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“Do you know how long you have been with us?”

The question was unexpected and almost unnecessary. Angie knew that I was very much aware of the fact that I had spent the past six and a half years locked up in their damp basement, that I had spent six and a half years eating the stodgy vegetable soup they prepared, that I had to learn about the outside world through select newspaper cuttings that I was very rarely presented with.

“Six and a half years,” I said back to her, trying to keep tears from springing up in my eyes.

I only knew this because of the titles on the front page of the newspapers that I managed to steal occasionally from the living room. Angie always cut out the dates when she gave me the newspaper clippings; she wanted to at least try to keep me ignorant. But seeing her try constantly reminded me that my life had ended the day I had been dragged off the streets and there was nothing of the old me left. At first the sadness used to eat away at me like a disease. I fought it off, imagining my sister, Oliver, my parents and my friends. I used to pretend I could talk to them and they would hear me, I would pretend that I was in my own room, and when I shut my eyes and woke up the next day sometimes I expected to wake up in my own bed. But slowly the loneliness worked its way into the pit of my stomach, it manifested itself there and I could feel it with every breath that I took, as the disease spread up into my lungs, making every breath feel like a lighting bolt of pain. Eventually the loneliness reached my heart and everything around me felt cold, from my bones to my dead eyes.

I no longer looked like the girl whose photo was in the newspaper every six months. I no longer had lightly tanned skin and healthy shining blonde hair. I could see my ribs sticking out through my opaque skin, with the blue veins so close to the surface. I wondered if I still looked like Cheryl. Of course when we were little we were very much identical twins because we wore the same clothes, but by now she must have fully embraced being a teenager, even an early adult. Maybe she had dyed her hair a different colour? Or maybe she had gotten tattoos or even a piercing. I doubted it, Cheryl despite being the impulsive one, was slightly more prim and proper than she let on. I wondered what my parents were doing, how they looked now, if mum still used the same Chanel perfume or if Dad still wore a singing tie at Christmas.

I almost forgot what kind people were like.

Angie and Mark were anything but kind to me, and yet at the same time they were not cruel either. Only sometimes. A memory would grip them, or I would say something that reminded them too much of the person they kidnapped me for. I once tried to talk to them about it, asked them over and over gain why they took me, why they ruined my life like this. It made Angie so angry. She had a pair of scissors in her hand because she was cutting the shop labels of a cheap jumper she had bought me. Her face was screwed up as my ceaseless torrent of questions rained down on her; she was trying to keep her breathing calm but I could see her hands shaking as she carried on snipping away.

“Whom do I look like?” I screamed at her.

It happened very quickly. Angie spun around and I could see the tears in her eyes and the big textile scissors flashing in her hands. She lunged at me, screaming a scream that I had never heard before in my life. It was as if all the anguish she had been carrying with her, suddenly released itself from her body with that scream. I thought, and hoped, that she was going to kill me with the scissors. I prayed that she would so it would all be over.

But she slashed my cheek and then without any warning she attacked my hair, blonde strands being chopped of wherever she could get her hands on them. My once beautiful hair rained down off my shoulders and fell down to the floor in sad whispers. She would have cut if all off if Mark hadn’t heard the screaming and ran in to drag the hysterical Angie off me.

I wasn’t allowed a mirror in my little cell. I ran my hands through what was left of my hair and felt that it barely even reached past my ears when it once had been so beautiful and long. The wisps were lying under my feet, another part of my old life that was taken from me and carelessly thrown away. Soon there would be nothing left of whom I was, and then there was no point in living.

It was that day that I knew I had to get away.

Oli was lonely. It was drawing to the end of the sixth year that Eva was missing.

For a lot of the six years Oli felt guilty. Guilty because after the police had found Eva’s coat he started believing that maybe she really wasn’t coming back. The police had gathered next to nothing from the coat and had essentially let that trail drop cold. The years had dragged on and old painful memories were constantly being pulled to the surface at the annual memorial service for Eva. In the end Oliver had to tell himself that after six years of investigating, countless newspaper appeals and even more questioning, that they could ever find Eva alive. It had been so long, it seemed like there was hardly any hope left. And clinging to the last remains of it only destroyed him more.

The person who existed six years ago disappeared a long time ago. Oliver never used to be angry or sad person. In fact everything that people said he was now, he used to be. He used to be the party animal with occasional drink problems and drug mishaps. The girls had always flocked around him, whether they liked his tattoos or the jokes he made. The girls still flocked around him now but it wasn’t because of the twinkle in his eyes anymore or the easy and affectionately crude jokes he made. He didn’t joke anymore.

The girls filled a gap, a gap that had been growing with each and every month and every passing year. They entertained his thoughts for a few hours but soon enough the reality of the situation would come crashing down on him and the world felt black and bottomless again.

The only release for all the pent up emotions came through music. The only thing that kept him reasonably sane was that every Friday evening and Wednesday afternoon he would have band practice. For two hours each night the world was locked out of a small garage in suburban Sheffield and nothing outside mattered. The drums would smash, the bass jitter and Oli screamed everything out of his system. The words didn’t matter because even he couldn’t say how he really felt the majority of the time. But screaming was the safest and kindest way on all of them, for him to let it all out. At times his closest friends, who were all with him in the band, could do nothing but watch Oliver drop into the hole he had dug himself.

“I’m exhausted Lee,” he said to his best friend at the end of December, just a few days shy of the New Year. The seventh year.

“I know you are, I can tell. You’re not the same as you used to be.”

“Everything has changed and it’s never going to get better, even if Eva does come back she isn’t going to be the same person anymore. Who knows what’s happened to her, what people have done to her…”

Lee put a comforting hand on Oliver’s arm.

“I know it’s hard, but try not to think about it. Our Eva is a fighter, you know that, and you know that what you feel is right. She is still out there and she will come back.”

All Oli could do was nod, words could no longer convey his hopes and fears.

He helped him friends pack away all the musical equipment and walked outside, pulling a squashed packet of cigarettes out of his jeans pocket. This was the only bad habit that had stuck. Drink and drugs were fleeting and frowned upon, at least he could smoke without anyone scowling at him. As he took a drag he thought of calling the label manager and ask for him to see if there were any tours the band could go on. He couldn’t stay here for much longer. The thought even crossed his mind to settle down in America after the tour was over. There was so little here to stay for. Every good memory he ever had, had been replaced with a bad one. Picnics with friends when they were young had been replaced with police interviews and public statements, having to ID a body that turned out not to be Eva and many more.

He threw his cigarette to the floor and put it out with the heel of his shoes. He was waiting for Cheryl and she hated him smoking around her because of how her clothes would smell afterwards. Oliver smiled at this thought. He had become a lot closer to Cheryl over the past two years. At first she had kept her distance from him. It was hard enough for her to understand her own pain, let alone somebody else’s. But in the end they both needed each other. Together they could talk about Eva without feeling bad for reliving the same old memories and bringing them back to the surface. Oliver knew that other people must be sick of hearing them when it looked like Eva would never be found.

“Do you think it’ll ever get easier?” Cheryl asked Oliver once they met up in the local park. Neither of them had wanted to go home.

“No,” Oliver said without any doubt. “It won’t ever get easier.”

“Do you think she’s…” Cheryl couldn’t say the word. If she said it then maybe it would become a reality.

“I don’t know Cheryl,” Oliver said with a deep sigh. “I can’t think about it.”

They lapsed into silence, an uncomfortable truth lying silently between them. After so many years it was almost impossible to hold onto the hope of Eva ever coming back. And even if through some miracle she did, she would never be the same person again. She would be damage and distraught for life. Sometimes it felt that maybe death would be kinder than a hallow existence, but neither Oliver nor Cheryl could say that and mean it. They needed Eva back, and even if it meant living in denial.