Maryam Ali found her son missing on a Monday morning in early February, his bed empty, the duvet folded at the edge, two pairs of trainers tidy against the wall. Some of his clothes, a red Nike T-shirt, a grey tracksuit hoodie and track bottoms, and his brown leather satchel hung from the door hooks. She breathed in sharply, to smell his smell, his breath, the lingering remnants of his deodorant, somehow reaching for and feeling his presence. She knew he had been in the room just hours ago. Outside, it was an overcast day, the persistent drizzle making the daylight dim and unfriendly. The air still bore the piercing sting of winter.
Closing her eyes as she stood in Dil’s doorway, Maryam went back over the weekend, searching for anything unusual or untoward. Had she missed anything out of the ordinary? It had been a normal, uneventful weekend, like most they had. He had spent much of the day in his room on the computer, working or playing, she presumed, while she’d gone grocery shopping, cooked two dishes, watched some TV and done the laundry. As usual, she had waited for him to emerge in the evening so they could eat together—her only wish and demand of him. She had long given up asking him to get out more, spend fewer hours in front of the machine—a part of her secretly relieved he was home much of the time. She didn’t have to wait for him to get home safe at night from trips out in the city with the boys. It had been soporific, predictable, like most weekends.
Love, solidarity, bottled-up anxiety hung in the air. It was another cloudy day, the air cold and the light muted and pale. February had made London quieter, sadder, but also clearer somehow; one saw more of its bare form, its vast skeleton of endless terraces, housing estates, tower blocks, train stations, motorways, and its old streets and town centres. By this time, many a New Year resolution had crumbled and unravelled, as unavoidable cares of the world—jobs and credit card debts, mortgages and rents, long overdue GP appointments and electricity bills, or, in the case of the three sisters, puzzling, nervewracking thoughts about a disappeared boy—had started to weigh heavy on the city’s people and weaken their resolve. Saffina was one such Londoner; she had just this week, the night of her older sister’s frantic, worrying call, gone back to her late-night G&T habit, helping her sleep for some hours. Maryam looked at her sisters one by one, as if to seek confirmation they were going to stand with her, by her side. ‘I am doing this for you, mind you. Once I go in, you know there’s no going back? His name will be in the records.’