Goddesses of New Eden
Copyright© 2026 by Northman
The Summer of '84
In the second week of September, things were very tense at Acorn Close, Stowcaster, the Mallorys’ suburban semi-detached residence. After all, it was not every day that an unremarkable middle class English family find themselves questioned over the disappearance of five children. More specifically, it was the son, aged 16, who was being questioned. ‘Just routine’ – as it so happened he knew them all, and indeed had been one of those who had spent most of the summer holidays in the nearby Oaklands Park with said children.
“So, Philip,” said Detective Constable Peters. “Mark is your friend, we believe.”
“Yes,” said the well-spoken but shy 16-year-old.
“How good a friend?”
“Um, well, he’s my best friend.” Philip spoke the simple tones of truth, reckoning the choice of word being quite enough and not at all a lie. Police or not, they damned fucking well did not need to know about his sexual feelings for Mark. “For about the last year.”
“Best friend, for about a year,” echoed the DC.
Sat around the table was a stony-faced Dad and a concerned-faced Mum, and a kind but efficient-faced woman liaison officer, Paula.
“Yea.” Philip nodded.
“Philip,” spoke Paula, but half for the parents’ benefit. “We just want to establish if you have any ideas where Mark might have gone.”
“He had never given you any indication of plans to run away?” asked the DC.
“None at all.” Philip shrugged.
“When was the last you heard from him?”
“Mmm, eight days ago. Last Sunday. We went to the snooker club, and afterward we both went home.”
“They play snooker a lot,” said Mum.
“Uh huh, yes,” said DC Peters. “And you had that snooker game, and everything seemed normal?”
“Yes. Completely.”
“Mark went off with his father for the weekend the next day,” said Mum. “Didn’t he, Philip?”
“Yes. They do fell-walking.”
“Yes, that’s right,” said DC Peters, with solemnity. “And that’s where the lad disappeared.”
“It’s bloody distressing, this,” said Dad Mallory, shaking his head.
“Now those other four too,” said Philip’s Mum, in palpable anxiety. “All vanished?”
“Quite, Mrs Mallory,” said the DC. “We’ll talk about those now.” He turned to Philip.
“Tell me about Helen Thorpe.”
This would be highly damn uncomfortable, Philip knew that, but maybe not as uncomfortable as Suzie Carter – or Maggie or Sally for that matter – when they got to them. So, Philip told all about Helen Thorpe, with high honesty, save for finer details that could be left out.
He told how Mark had informed him one day that he, Philip, ‘was about to meet a girl’. That had been huge news. It was not something he’d even done, not properly anyway. This was a date, as good as. The girl, Helen, had seen the excellent-legged and fair-haired Philip playing football in the park with the gang and liked what she’d seen. So it had been arranged for them to turn up at the park at the allotted time. Well, she was pretty enough, a 15-year-old brunette with spots on her forehead, so a year below he and Mark, which did not seem to matter much and indeed should have given an edge of confidence.
But didn’t. Because he, Philip, was a dork and didn’t have a clue how to approach her, and she was just as bad. The almost total non-communication – eyeing each other from a safe distance, the odd strained-out or relayed word – continued dismally all summer, and continued to continue even when Helen returned from two weeks away with the family to try again. Woeful, and Philip now found himself having to explain to a damn policeman and his assistant the developmental disadvantages of a single sex Grammar School.
He refained from explaining that he was not gay at all – that his feelings for Mark were merely borne of friendship and sexual starvation – and that he truly and primarily did just want Helen, the Holy Grail of a girlfriend. His heterosexuality could surely be taken as read. True. Indeed, Mum and Dad quite nicely backed this up for him in contributing the fact that he struggled for words and had been trying to meet a girl for some time now, although they had not known much about the Helen saga, as they now listened to it all with a gradually thickening look of seriousness on their faces.
Now it was all over, the summer and first girlfriend hopes that is, but perhaps in a horrid bigger way too. For just three days after Mark had done his disappearing act, it transpired that it seems Helen had never got off a bus which she had been witnessed getting on. So. Weird.
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