Missing Meriel
By Vaughan Stanger
Artwork © Lyndon Polan
The clink of wood against glass prompted Jakob to turn away from his laptop. He hadn’t quite completed his data modelling work for the day, but Lisa would expect him to comment on her latest watercolour, which was drying on the kitchen table next to the jar containing her brushes.
“What do you think?”
The painting depicted a woman in her mid-thirties with long, straight, dark-brown hair, a narrow, pale face, and prominent eyebrows. A three-quarter view, competently executed but unremarkable – like its subject. Neither plain nor pretty, she occupied the valley of ordinariness in between.
“It’s … good.”
“Oh. I see.”
The faintness of his praise had damned her efforts.
He’d always struggled to pitch his responses so that they matched her need for validation. The truth hurt, as he’d learned to his cost, though his father had taught that lies hurt worse. Lisa, though, expected a third way from him, which he’d never
found.
Lisa’s frown marred a face that was the antithesis of her portrait’s: heart-shaped and
sun-kissed, topped by strawberry blonde waves cascading onto freckled shoulders.
“Don’t you recognise her?”
“No, should I?”
Lisa huffed.
“For god’s sake, Jakob! It’s Meriel! You know, Meriel Llewellyn. She was always at
Siobhan’s parties!”
Same as him. Clearly he ought to remember her. Equally clearly, he didn’t.
“I’m really sorry. You know what I’m like with names and faces.”
Which was true but didn’t help.
Lisa arched her eyebrows. “You must remember her!”
Now she sounded exasperated rather than merely irritated. There’d been a lot of that lately, from him too. Hoping to end a conversation in which he felt increasingly adrift, he shook his head and said,
“Sorry.”
“Well, Meriel remembered you! Siobhan reckoned you should have asked her out,
because she was definitely interested.”
His gambit having failed, he chose to make a joke out of Lisa’s revelation.
“Well, aren’t you glad I didn’t?”
Her eyes flared.
“Of all the stupid, shit-for-brains things to say!”
“I’m really sorry, hon. That came out all wrong.”
“Oh, just whatever!”
Lisa turned her back and stomped into the bedroom. He knew better than to follow.
Instead, he picked up his iPad from the coffee table. Her painting hadn’t triggered any
specific memories, but something itched in the back of his mind.
Meriel remembered you.
Past tense.
His web-search unearthed several Meriel Llewellyns, but he soon identified the right
one. A little over three years ago, thirty-five lives had been cut short when a tourist coach crashed into a petrol tanker on a mountain road in India. Meriel was on the Foreign Office’s list of the deceased UK nationals. He found a memorial website that displayed photographs consistent with Lisa’s painting, together with a brief biography and reminiscences of friends and family. The fact that Meriel had been a talented portraitist caught his attention. Had Lisa taken up painting to keep her memory alive?
Or was there more to it than that?
Jakob shook his head. All these details about a woman who Lisa was certain he’d met
should have triggered a memory. But no, inexcusably, he had completely forgotten
Meriel Llewellyn.
***
Jakob felt a tap on his right shoulder while he queued at the bar of The Cross Keys.
Having added two drinks to his order, Siobhan headed off in search of Lisa. None of them wished to see the support band playing upstairs. When he delivered the drinks to the table Lisa had found, the two friends were already deep in conversation. He glanced at Pete, Siobhan’s gym-toned and impressively tattooed boyfriend, who said, “Thanks!” for the pint of IPA but didn’t look up from his phone. Meanwhile, Siobhan was making the most of this chance for a catch-up with Lisa. Jakob didn’t interrupt them, but Lisa piqued his interest when she extracted a portfolio from her tote bag. Siobhan’s eyes flared as she stared at the portrait of Meriel.
“You’ve captured her perfectly!”
Lisa’s smile reminded Jakob of their early days together.
“You two really do miss her, don’t you?”
It seemed the safest thing to say in the circumstances.
Siobhan’s neatly plucked eyebrows beetled, causing the frown lines around the bridge of her nose to squeeze together in a way he found endearing. She turned to Lisa.
“You tell him.”
Lisa’s eyes glistened as she spoke.
“Siobhan saw Meriel yesterday. In Balham High Street.”
Frowning, he turned to Siobhan. “Are you sure?”
“She waved at me from the other side of the road and yelled something that the traffic drowned out. ‘Must dash!’ probably.” She turned to Lisa. The two women exchanged glances, then Siobhan continued. “I was trembling, I can tell you, cos you
know …. But when I got home, I downed a glass of Pinot Grigio for courage and phoned her.”
Jakob leaned back in his seat and frowned. None of this made sense. According to everything he’d found online, Meriel was dead, definitively so. Siobhan had probably spotted a look-alike. But in any case, Meriel’s phone number would surely have been reallocated by now. Even so, he wasn’t quite ready to challenge Siobhan’s account.
“And then what happened?”
“We had a long chat. And I invited her to my party, obviously. You’re both coming,
aren’t you? A week on Friday.”
“We’ll be there,” Lisa said.
That was the first Jakob had heard of it. Lisa gave his left knee a squeeze, delivered covertly but firmly enough to ensure he didn’t contradict her. But in any case, he didn’t wish to provoke another argument.
“Support band’s finished,” said Pete. “I’ll get a round in.”
At least his first contribution to the conversation was a useful one. Jakob hadn’t noticed that the bassy rumble coming from upstairs had ceased.
Equipped with fresh drinks, they secured a favourable position from where to watch the headliners. The band’s name escaped Jakob, but he knew they were friends of Siobhan’s. For the next hour, he dutifully watched them, but afterwards he could recall nothing about their set, because his head was full of Meriel.
The woman he’d met but didn’t remember.
The woman who had died in a coach crash in India.
The dead woman Siobhan had invited to her next party.
Or was it just the wine speaking? With Siobhan, he never knew for certain. Still,
having seen Lisa’s painting, he felt confident he’d recognise Meriel, assuming she – or whoever this person really was – turned up.
***
The following morning, despite suffering from a fuzzy head, Jakob felt obliged to ask
Lisa the question that had been bugging him since the gig.
“So, how come a dead woman will be attending Siobhan’s party?”
Lisa stood at the living room’s window, gazing at the sun rising over the O2 Arena.
“Because Meriel isn’t dead, obviously.”
Jakob groaned. “The Foreign Office says otherwise, Lisa. She died in that coach crash
in India.”
Lisa turned to face him, arms crossed in defiance. “She wasn’t on the coach.”
He shook his head slowly. “Yes, she was. Her dental records matched one of the corpses. And I know it was your Meriel Llewellyn because of the photos on her memorial website. Here, look.” He tapped his phone, but the page he’d bookmarked
delivered a “Page not found” error.
Frowning, he said, “Now that is strange.”
Lisa looked to the ceiling and shook her head, but a ping announcing the arrival of a message on her phone pre-empted the anticipated rebuke. Indeed, it prompted a smile Jakob no longer knew how to kindle.
“Good news?”
She ignored his question while tapping a reply, but he guessed what was coming next. While their empathy for each other had drained away, their relationship telepathy seemed destined to linger until the bitter end.
After five minutes Lisa placed her phone on the dining table and said, “Just catching
up with Meriel.”
Wasn’t everyone? Except him, of course: the man who didn’t remember meeting her,
but who, unlike her friends, remembered what had happened to her.
“Lisa, love, she died three years ago.”
“This from someone who doesn’t even remember her!”
“That’s irrelevant. Dead is dead.”
“Meriel isn’t dead. She’s back with us!”
He heaved a shuddering sigh. “Look, I get it. You and Siobhan wish she was alive, so
you behave as though she is. Or maybe you’re being conned by someone. I don’t
know.”
Lisa shrugged. “But we do know!”
“I’m sorry, Lisa. But this whole thing feels like wish-fulfilment to me. Understandable,
in a way, but…”
He knew he’d already said too much. Lisa responded with a beseeching look.
“Please don’t ruin this for us,” she said and then stepped into the bedroom.
That night, as he lay in bed, he realized that there was more than one way to interpret her remark.
In the morning, he checked the official list of the coach victims again.
Meriel’s name was missing.
***
While Siobhan’s parties delivered sparkly fun in the moment, Jakob had always found
them forgettable afterwards, like fireworks. He suspected that he wouldn’t forget this
one.
He was leaning against the fridge-freezer in the kitchen while exchanging gig stories
with Pete, when he heard shrieking from the hallway, followed by laughter. He could
make out Siobhan’s and Lisa’s voices, plus another, unfamiliar to him.
Siobhan yelled: “Oi! Jakob, come out here! Someone wants to meet you!”
Pete said, “Good luck, mate.”
A chill engulfed Jakob, as if someone had tipped a bucket of ice over him.
“Don’t be shy!” Lisa’s voice sounded slurred.
He trudged into the hallway like a condemned man. The three women stood facing him, their faces bright with happiness. Lisa and Siobhan, plus a third he’d only seen in photos on a website and in the watercolour painted by Lisa. She had captured Meriel’s likeness perfectly.
Siobhan made a gesture of inclusion. “Jakob, you remember Meriel, don’t you?”
Aware that he was blushing, he held out a hand. Meriel took it and laughed, sweetly.
“It’s good to see you again, Jakob.”
He remembered nothing more of that evening.
***
Back at the apartment, Jakob crawled out of bed at midday, his head pounding like a drummer had taken up residence there. Apparently, Lisa had stayed over at Siobhan’s; Meriel too, probably. Perhaps they were laughing at him right now. If so, he didn’t care. He’d already endured more than enough of this farrago of lies, or collective delusion, or third-party deception. Something had changed when Lisa painted Meriel. If she was alive again – somehow – then his understanding of the
world was incompatible with theirs. As neither could convince the other, it was up to him to mark the end of his involvement with The Cult of Meriel.
When Lisa returned, she glanced at the pile of ashes and shrugged. “I can paint another.”
And thus the cult would sustain itself.
“I realise that.”
Lisa turned away from him. “I never want to see you again.”
The feeling was mutual, but he refrained from saying so. He did, however, text an
apology while en route to a friend who’d offered him a sofa to sleep on.
Lisa didn’t reply.
***
Long, straight, dark-brown hair. Narrow, pale face. Prominent eyebrows.
The woman waving at Jakob from across Streatham High Street looked exactly like Meriel. The bucket-of-ice feeling returned, but only momentarily.
She smiled at him, then faded away like mist in the sun.
He nodded and walked on, certain that he would see her again.
© 2026 Vaughan Stanger
Afterimage
For those we miss. For those we have missed. For those who remain missing.
We remember you.
Vaughan Stanger
is a British author based in Brentwood. His short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Nature Futures, Interzone, and Best of British Science Fiction. His work has been translated into multiple languages and adapted for audio. He is the author of the collection Those We Leave Behind and Other Stories.