Thursday, August 23, 2007

What we did on our holidays.

Or, 3 go mad in San Sebastian.

UPDATE: See post above

It’s 3 o’clock in the morning. I am on the phone to the hospitals, the police station and the British Consulate and German Consulate trying to track down Barbara, whilst trying to communicate in my terrible rusty Spanish. We haven’t seen or heard from her in 16 hours, she’s not answering voice messages or texts and some very dark thoughts have started to cross our minds.

It all started very promisingly. It was a beautiful evening when I arrived, they had been on the beach all day. We sat and watched fireworks in the harbour (they were having a worldwide fireworks competition every night, we liked China’s efforts the best) and had the world’s finest pinxtos and drank rose.

But the next day it rained. And rained. And rained. And didn’t stop for 3 days. Even the surfers looked miserable. We ventured out in the rain to see the turtles, rays, jellyfish and sharks in the aquarium, and made a hit & run, lightning visit to the fabulous Guggenheim in Bilbao, but by day 3 we were getting stir crazy. Barbara said she’d go to the spa for a massage. Rachael & I went shopping. We planned to meet at the apartment at 8.00 to go to dinner.

8.00 pm: Barbara not back. We text her and go to dinner.

11.00 pm: Arrive back to apartment. She’s not there. Not answering phone or texts. Phone going to voicemail. All her clothes, passport, money, bag etc are still in her room.

12.00 am: ‘Maybe she’s met someone at the spa and gone to a party or something…and her phone’s gone dead… or she’s run out of credit… It’s not like her not to be in touch though. She’s really good like that.’

1.00am: Lay in bed awake thinking about two possibilities: a) Barbara having fantastic time, pissed in club with glamorous Spanish people, not thinking about what time it is or her phone messages. B) Barbara blown into the sea, knocking head on rock and drowning, or knocked down by speeding driver, or bundled into a car and kidnapped, or or or…

2.00 am: Where the fuck is she? Have a tiny, brief insight into the hell on earth that the McCanns must be living through at the moment. Go round and round in circles – she’s fine/she’s not fine/she’s fine… I wish she’d just walk in, I wouldn’t be pissed off with her, just relieved to see her. Waking with a start every time we hear the door go in the apartment building.

3.00 am. Annie tries to spell a German name (Barbara is German) over the phone to the Spanish emergency services, and explain the situation, very tricky at this hour, after 5 years of speaking no Spanish and having had a bottle of very heavy Rioja at dinner. I seem to have located a total imbecile at the police station. ‘B for Bilbao? A for Andorra?’ he goes, on and on throughout her name… If I wasn’t so worried it would be funny. He asks how old she is. When I tell him 43, his voice changes. Clearly he thought it was some teenager who hadn’t bothered coming home. He tells us to come in and report her missing.

9.00 am British Consulate rings to check if she’s back. She’s not. There is definitely something up.

10.00 am Get in cab to police station. She seems to have disappeared. We’re trying not to think about Lucie Blackman, about Joanne Lees. We both feel sick. Rach cries. It makes me cry. We pull ourselves together to talk to the police.

11.00 am File a missing person’s report with a very nice policewoman, who is patient with my shocking Spanish. It feels very surreal to be describing her eyes, her hair, her clothes… She types it up and tells us to fax it to the British and German Consulates. In the meantime, she’ll photocopy her ID photo and post it up in the streets. That’s all for now.

12.00 pm We sit in the café next door to the police station, trying to be calm. She has vanished off the face of the earth and we’re the ones who have to deal with it. We can’t go home – the police don’t seem that bothered. No one else knows where she is. We’ll have to cancel our flights. See if we can stay longer in the apartment. Try and get in touch with her parents in Germany through the consulate. We both feel sick. Can’t believe it’s happening. It doesn’t feel real.

12.30 pm – Rachael’s phone rings.

Tell you the rest tomorrow.

19 comments:

Billy said...

*speechless*

Hope everything turned out all right.

patroclus said...

Aaagh! Tell now! I'm assuming everything turned out all right?

Rita said...

That's just mean! I'm actually worried, and I have no idea who any of you are!

Anonymous said...

Wow talk about a cliff hanger.

I'm assuming it was all ok.

Anonymous said...

Fucking hell. It's midnight now, so tomorrow. Tell us, tell us. (Is Rach the Rach I met, so I can even better envisage the scene?)

Istvanski said...

My money's on everything was OK.
Otherwise you could not have brought yourself to blog about it.
So far it's a cracking story though.

Anonymous said...

Good one, I was hoping for a happy ending with her finally turning up revealing she had had a night of unalloyed passion with a God of a man (Chaucer is enough to make one particular Belle Dame I know switch off her phone and refuse her husband's pasisonate messages about how he'd like to have hot sex with her) that made her forget everything else and switch her phone off.

Tell us a happy ending -

Tim F said...

Yes, I'm assuming it was OK, otherwise you wouldn't have been so evil as to stretch out the tension for artistic effect.

And you've set up comment moderation, which means you don't want anyone to blow the punchline...

I'm reckoning she's been shagging a Spanish waiter all this time, and only comes back to ask if you've got any johnnies.

Taiga the Fox said...

That's really terrible... hopefully everything's ok?

Anonymous said...

You better call me back - I have been calling you.. I want to know what happened NOW - you better call me or I will won't talk to you at the wedding this weekend.
xx

Annie said...

All is well now, folks, thanks for your good wishes.

BiB, you met Rae - Rachael was going to come to Berlin but couldn't because of work.

Hi Rita - sorry, I didn't mean to be mean.

Tim, you're right - wouldn't have blogged about it if anything bad had happened.

I wasn't trying to torture people, but thought if I didn't tell you what happened immediately, it helps to show how we felt when we didn't know what was going on... update later.

GreatSheElephant said...

nooo - update now!

Anonymous said...

Sounds awful. Well done though for dealing with officialdom so well - that sort of thing's never easy, even in your mother tongue. Glad to hear everything is OK now.

Arabella said...

Oh blimey. And I was worried about YOU.

Matt said...

Wow, I had put off reading this post until today, and now I want to know what happens next, and you still haven't updated yet?

Have you gone missing too?!

Annie said...

GSE, Matt, I was giving everyone a chance to catch up...

cheers Marsha. And thank you Arabella, that's very sweet!

Timbo said...

*it's okay, it's okay.."

It's okay, isn't it?

Pants said...

Cruel Slammo, very cruel.


xxx

Pants

Annie said...

Timbo, it is okay.

Pants - see above.