What You Wish For by Mark Edwards Page A

journalistic mind might have been useful there was no way I could let him see the pictures of Marie. I wondered whether I could involve him without showing him the photos, but it seemed too difficult. Instead, I took advantage of his offer of help by phoning him and asking if he could do some research for me. I wanted details about Andrew – biographical details, age, place of birth, schools, jobs, friends. As much as Simon could find.
    ‘Why do you want to know all this?’ Simon asked.
    ‘I’m convinced that if I can find out more about Andrew it might help me find Marie. She was so close to him, but she hardly told me anything about him. It was because I was jealous – I didn’t want to talk about him. Except for when he was right there in front of me, I tried to pretend he didn’t exist.’
    ‘But they weren’t shagging, were they?’
    ‘So she said. But what if she was just saying that to stop me getting even more jealous?’ There had definitely been something between them. And if I had to take a wild guess to identify who had taken the pictures, I would say it was Andrew.
    I had an idea that her disappearance had something to do with Andrew’s death. Either because his death had affected her more deeply than I’d realised and had prompted her to run away or – though I hated to think about it – harm herself. Or because something that I was unaware of had happened as a consequence of his death. Had she met someone at the funeral who was involved in all this? Had Andrew and Marie been working on a secret project that she now felt compelled to continue on her own? Did she suspect that foul play had been involved in his death and was out there, searching for the truth? This last one made my head spin. Was I searching for someone who was out there looking for answers herself?
    Apart from Simon, I had nobody to help me. Marie’s friends were supposedly keeping their eyes peeled. Her mum was no use. And as for my friends . . . well, I had hardly been in touch with any of them since I’d started seeing Marie. I had been so besotted with her, so absorbed, that I had broken contact with the handful of friends that I had. Marie and my work had taken up all of my time and attention. Now I was paying the price.
    I was walking into a world I didn’t know, and I was doing it alone.

    I paid my entrance fee and walked through the double doors of the former concert venue in Camden Town into the main body of the convention. In my right hand I held a slim briefcase that contained the photographs of Marie. The briefcase was locked. I had a horror of the photographs falling into somebody else’s hands. But I knew I might have to show them to someone. They were the best lead I had.
    I looked around at the tables piled high with merchandise: books, videos, T-shirts, badges, models . . . every piece of alien paraphernalia you could imagine. I walked up the first row of stalls, glancing at books and videos with titles like Encounters , The Truth About Roswell , An International Conspiracy , Without Invitation . I flicked through a couple of the books, which were packed with testimonies of people who believed they had been aboard alien spacecraft. I wandered around the hall, my head spinning.
    In many ways, it was what I had expected. Get a group of like-minded people together and they will try to sell each other stuff. But I quickly realised that this was just the surface of the convention. This was where the money was. But in order to make any progress I was going to have to locate the hardcore alien obsessives. People like Marie and Andrew. And, I guessed, Buzz, who hadn’t replied to the email I’d sent. The Watcher hadn’t replied to my message on the forum either. In fact, the original message had been deleted.
    I felt like I was dancing with phantoms.
    I looked around the hall. Marie and Andrew would not have wasted their time perusing the stalls at these conventions. I knew that. But where would they have been?