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Rocío (cont'd)

I drive Connor to school and we see the volunteers gather on the hill to search the surrounding countryside. Her sister continues searching after the volunteers stop for the day stopping only to sleep and then search again. The Sierra Nevada mountains that loom on the horizon no longer seem majestic, beautiful. They seem treacherous, unrelenting, capable of hiding a young girl from us for months, even years.

How do you avoid killing someone with words?

I want to believe her to be alive, out there somewhere. I catch myself using the past tense without even realising it.

She is going to college next year. She enjoys swimming. She sometimes runs around the square playing hide and seek with Connor and his friends on her nights off. She is teaching him Spanish slowly, patiently. Her mother worries about leaving her in the house alone. She doesn't wear make-up. Her best friend comes over to visit her here when she's looking after Connor. If she's looking after him in the evening, her boyfriend comes. She always calls me to make sure it's okay before letting them in.

I go to her mother's house. She is crying. "Cuatro noches" is all she can say, four nights. Every night without word...

A police helicopter flies overhead. The police seem to have little hope that she is alive but still they search. They have nothing else to go on. Tyre tracks on the road, her shoes, blood. The family appears in front of the press to beg for information; someone must know something.

She wasn't late. She wasn't drunk. They say her shoes were found too far off the road for it to be likely that it was a traffic accident, a drunk driver who panicked.

She is proud of knowing phrases like "You're taking the piss" in English. She uses them on drunken tourists who hassle her when she's working at the restaurant at night. She doesn't know that all Spanish nouns starting with "a" take the masculine article. She lists examples until I work out the rule and why what I've said is wrong.

Someone must know something. Ten million pesetas has been offered as a reward for Rocío's safe return. Ten million pesetas for the conviction of the person who did this ... who took her ... who probably killed her.

At night, if I let myself, I imagine I hear her screaming on the hillside. I pray to gods that I have never believed in that this isn't the case.

She wants me to buy new trousers for Connor. She likes his shoes. She thinks I spend too much time in front of the computer. She quit smoking in September and hasn't had a cigarette since. Her boyfriend gave her a stuffed gorilla at the fair last week and she bought him a silver ring.

She is. I keep repeating this to myself over and over again. Someone must know something but until they come forward that is all I can do. She is not a statistic; she is not a news story. She is out there somewhere.