Just Another Missing Person

“The text to the housemates is what troubles Julia the most. Please come x. That text is a specifically female call to arms, sent with only one intention, Julia thinks: to be rescued. There are things you don’t just know because you’re police: you know them because you’re a woman.”

In another example of bringing her personal life to bear in her professional obligations, Julia understands this clue from Olivia’s phone through her identity as a woman, not a police officer. She recognizes the urgency of the message in a way that a male officer might not. Even though she is a police officer, Julia experiences several instances when, as a woman, she feels threatened.

“She has no choice. It’s Genevieve or this. And nothing tops Genevieve. That is what motherhood is.”

When faced with blackmail, there is no choice at all for Julia. She will protect her daughter. Yet by establishing Julia’s love and absolute commitment to her job in earlier page, Gillian McAllister underscores the difficulty of this decision. Genevieve is the only thing that could lead Julia to corruption, and the difficult decision highlights The Sacrifices of Parenthood.

“She drives home too quickly, full of adrenaline, trying to outrun herself. And all she can think as she speeds along is that that’s two lives ruined. Hers and Matthew’s. Three, if you count Olivia’s.”

After planting evidence in Olivia’s room to incriminate Matthew, Julia reflects on the damage she is causing. By speeding, “trying to outrun herself,” she shows how upset her actions make her. She considers the effects beyond her life or even Matthew’s. By planting evidence, she ensured that Olivia’s real kidnapper will go free. Her recognition of this, even when she is so troubled, shows that Julia retains her conscience despite her breach of ethics.

“After a couple of minutes, she straightens up, as though nothing has happened at all, and gathers the things she needs. The things she needs to find the man in the balaclava. To work out how he knows what he knows, to disarm him of that evidence.”

At home, the reality of what she did overcomes Julia, and she panics. However, her training as a police officer reasserts itself, and she turns to solving the problem. Julia quickly moves from being a victim on the defensive to going on the offensive and developing a plan to go after the masked man.

“I don’t expect you to tell me any more than this, to be honest. You have been the same your entire life. Even as a baby: soulful, somehow private, emotionally contained. You are the sort of person who remembers an insult levied two years ago, but pretends not to.”

Emma reflects on her son Matthew and shows a deep understanding of his character. Ironically, this understanding will cause her to misinterpret his behavior, and she begins an investigation of her own. The Sacrifices of Parenthood involve sacrificing Matthew’s trust in her and her idea of herself as a good mother.

“There’s absolutely nothing else except a female police officer wearing a suit, and using one sleeve to mop up a tea stain. She meets my eyes and nods. This must be DCI Day, the lead on your case. Slight, blond, intelligent eyes. I hope it is. She looks kind and very stressed, an excellent combination for a detective. ‘DCI Julia Day,’ she says, rising slightly out of her chair and reaching over to shake my head. ‘Call me Julia.’”

Lewis’s point of view offers the reader an outside perspective on Julia. In some ways, she appears to be a typical detective, “kind and very stressed,” which is the same impression that McAllister gives of Julia from her own point of view. However, her distraction is also highlighted, which the novel will reveal is due to covering up Genevieve’s crime.

“Julia had forgotten, in Alfie’s benign semiretirement, just how formidable he used to be, and she finds herself wishing, suddenly, that all of her friends weren’t fucking police. She could tell a girlfriend this, a sister, but she doesn’t have anybody. Work has taken that social life from her. All she has left is trained interviewers.”

Julia’s preoccupation with her job leaves no outside social network to depend on besides Art, from whom she is separated. All of her friends are police officers, making charging Matthew with murder even more difficult. She has no one to talk to. Even as she considers telling her boss, Alfie, the truth, she knows she cannot, as it would result in Genevieve’s imprisonment.

“This is what people don’t tell you about having a child: so quickly, so fast you almost miss it, they become a full, sentient, adult being. And this is when they need the most help, need the sacrifices.”

Emma struggles with guilt over what she perceives as her failure as a parent. She recognizes that Matthew needs more as an adult than he needed as a child. The Sacrifices of Parenthood are ongoing. Julia, Lewis, and Emma sacrifice for their adult children throughout the story.

“And so now the natural order is this: Matthew is in the station, locked up, and she is here: free. That’s the trade she’s made. Julia’s only child has been saved, and Matthew sacrificed. She shivers with it. She’s done a deal with the devil. And someday soon, she will pay.”

Although Julia’s allegiance is with Genevieve, she is under no illusions about what she did. She traded Matthew’s freedom for Genevieve’s and will have to live with it. Part of The Sacrifices of Parenthood, for Julia, is living with this knowledge.

“Julia blushes with shame. She hadn’t followed it up. Another missing person. Another ball dropped. Both times, she had good reasons, but does that make it okay? She’s been too busy trying to save her own skin, and her daughter’s. Too busy, too, focusing on what really matters on this case. Trying to find Olivia with the hottest leads she’s got, and trying to convict Matthew. Those are the things she has to do.”

Jonathan asked if Julia followed up on getting information about Olivia’s roommates from her father. For the second time, the first was with Sadie, Julia finds herself doing substandard work because she is distracted by personal problems. As someone who loves being a police officer, Julia suffers by knowing this even as she doesn’t believe she could do differently.

“But criminals have access to things that the police don’t. And Julia’s run out of options. Here is her only remaining one: joining the world she’s battled for two decades, at least temporarily.”

Julia realizes that she needs to break the law to erase the footage of Olivia’s bedroom. She goes to Price, the first time in their relationship that she asks him for a favor. However, her assertion that she is only just now joining the criminal world ignores that she has engaged in criminal behavior since she first covered up for Genevieve.

“And that’s when my mind presents the suggestion that he is both victim and criminal, like a lot of people.”

Lewis just met Zac Harper, the man whose throat Genevieve cut. Zac tells Lewis about Julia’s coverup, and Lewis sees the key to pressuring her. He also recognizes what Julia will eventually see—that justice is not black and white and that people can be “victim and criminal” at the same time. With this recognition, Lewis gives himself permission to break the law.

“Maybe it’ll all be worth it, this mixing of my life and Zac’s: a victim’s and a criminal’s, all bound up like two paint colors that eventually merge and become the same.”

Lewis recognizes the ambiguity of these roles, criminal and victim, in a way he didn’t before. He shows that he is also aware of the ambiguity of his actions. However, he also excuses himself by thinking of himself as a victim rather than a criminal.

“She had a voice. Like a fictional character. Like a creation. She made mistakes—too long a menstrual cycle, the wrong information about dogs on Sugar Loaf Beach, believing you’d wear a moisturizing eye mask out to the shops, using the phrase drug store like women do—but women who are online, in America. Shoddy research, Julia thinks, smiling grimly. She can’t help but feel a fizz and crackle of satisfaction: she’s solved it.”

Julia has the sense that something isn’t right with Olivia’s social media posts. Her reference to Olivia’s “voice” presents her as a literary character rather than a real person. The anomalous details of her posts finally unlock the case, and Julia experiences the “fizz” that keeps her fascinated with police work.

“Lewis was a despairing dad, and then a threatening blackmailer, and now, he’s returned to that first persona once more. This man, without his daughter, has nothing left to lose. He knew he was about to be found out. This issue is that he doesn’t care at all, has gone past the point of it in the way humans experiencing tragedies sometimes do. A parent without a child: there isn’t even a name for it.”

Julia cracks the case and confronts Lewis, who confesses. Her perception of him shifts more than once during their conversation, and she finds a connection with him as a parent. Julia faced questions concerning The Distinction Between Cops and Criminals and understands that people are not easily categorizable.

“A mother and a cop: always the two, never just one. Her two great loves have been competing with each other for almost twenty years. It’s only this year when it’s become something more than emblematic.”

Julia experienced The Difficulty of Separating the Personal and Professional, but they never came into direct conflict until Genevieve committed a crime. She struggled to balance the two, but that balance shifted toward work when she had to choose. However, in this instance, Julia chooses her daughter.

“To her surprise, Art shrugs, like it doesn’t matter at all. That’s right, she thinks. He isn’t always judgmental. The law has never meant very much to him, actually. And perhaps it doesn’t to Julia, a sickening but comforting thought to have after all this time.”

After Art slept with a colleague, Julia withdrew from him completely. When she finally confides in him about being blackmailed, she remembers why she used to trust him and how he balances her. While the law is part of her work, she forgot he is ambivalent about it. She is also forced to admit, given her actions over the past year, that she isn’t as committed to the law as she thought.

“Julia feels a wave of sympathy for her, stoic, must-be-bewildered Yolanda, whose daughter’s case is being reinvestigated for no reason that she knows of. She is not unlike Art, whose stoicism and resentment of her career bubbled over into infidelity. Julia wants to tell them to guard it, their marriage. Visit it often: protect it from harm.”

Lewis and Julia are driven by their need to protect their children. One theme of the novel is the difficulty of balance—between career and family, and even between partners. Yolanda balances Lewis, and Julia, reflecting on her experience, wants to warn them of the damage to their marriage if that balance is lost.

“Yolanda turns her mouth down, and I can see it then. She has always been able to distinguish between what is true, and what she wants to believe, and is an ardent atheist for this reason. ‘Heaven would be great,’ she once said, ‘if it was real.’”

Yolanda doesn’t believe Sadie is alive. She balances Lewis, who clings to hope. But he sees that she is more objective. While he believes what he wants or needs to believe, and ignores the facts, she isn’t afraid to face them.

“This is who Julia is: no matter the danger to herself, the personal sacrifices, the marital breakdowns, the costs she pays. She isn’t sick of it. She isn’t tired of it. She might be in more danger than ever, but Julia pays these costs happily, like a tax, because, in return, she gets this: this feeling. This feeling she is addicted to, that all police are addicted to.”

Julia and Lewis work Sadie’s case together. Julia is clear that detective work isn’t a job, it’s a vocation. She proves it by her willingness to continue in the face of threats. However, she also indicates that she loves it not because it brings justice but because of the rush she gets from solving a case.

“‘But if we hadn’t covered it up, we’d have something else now.’ Julia didn’t answer for several minutes. ‘What?’ she said eventually, thinking she didn’t want to be having this discussion, not now, not now she was so far down a line. ‘Freedom,’ Genevieve said.”

Genevieve opens up to Julia about her conflicted feelings concerning the way her mother handled Zac’s death. While Julia focused on keeping her daughter out of prison, Genevieve suffered from not being held accountable. When she talks about freedom, she doesn’t mean the literal freedom Julia gained for her through the cover-up but the freedom from guilt that comes through confession and atonement.

“Funny how two people can view the same events so differently; she thinks he cheated on her, he thinks she neglected him, their marriage, everything. Both versions are true.”

Julia’s view of Art’s infidelity changes. At the beginning, she is angry and sees their separation as his fault. However, many things that Julia sees in black and white become ambiguous, including their separation. She now sees that she is accountable as well. She understands how her love of her job love could manifest as neglect of her other love, Art.

“The figure has noticed that she’s seen him, emerges and advances toward her. No balaclava, unlike the first time. Gloves. Black clothes. And a face she knows well. He snatches her phone, pockets it, and passes a hand across her mouth, silencing her entirely. He’s dragged her out and into his car less than five minutes later.”

Julia faces another threatening man, this time in her home. This time she recognizes him, although he isn’t yet identified to the reader. This is the third time she is approached like this, a sequence that follows the rule of three, a literary device in which a similar event happens three times, with the second and third gaining deeper meaning by their relationship to the previous.