You have been missing for almost two days. I feel sick at the thought of what might have happened to you, but such emotion is an undesirable distraction: I need to think, I need to think damn clearly, if I have any chance of finding you here, in this lost place.

It must be around 5 am, as dawn has broken, although it’s sometimes hard to tell now as no bird song greets the arrival of the new day. Even the birds stifle their voices in this place. Like the rest of us, they’ve learned the necessity of silence, the value of keeping your head down. The last bird I saw was threaded on a skewer, roasting slowly over the fire which burns perpetually outside the shaman’s container. Pigeon, I reckon, although you would have known for sure. The smell of its meagre flesh cooking made my mouth water; I could almost taste its charred oily skin. It silenced the entire yard; all eyes turned on the shaman’s fire, all ears listened to the sounds of fat spitting in the flames. The shaman didn’t even have the decency to eat his prize inside his container. Instead he sat on an upturned bucket by the fire, in view of everyone, and picked clean the bones of the bird. No one else would have dared to act that way, anyone else would have been torn to pieces for such a display, but his position in the yard is now almost unrivalled. I’ve even contemplated asking for his help to find you, but I cannot abase myself, or us, like that, not yet.

This is the only time of day that I can bear, when everyone is locked away inside their containers, dreaming that the next shift will take them away from this place. Of course no one knows how it works; people have their theories, but it hasn’t been figured it out. I know it’s possible that you could have been bundled into a container and mugged for the change in your pocket or shoes on your feet and then your small part of the world shifted, taking you away, but I don’t feel that you’re far from me. You’re here, in the yard, I just know it. I cannot believe that you’re anything other than missing. You wouldn’t have left me here, alone.

I only half remember the last time I saw you striding with purpose away from our camp. We’d run out of water and it was your turn to take the 5 mile round trip to the nearest tap. In our previous life you would have been back in a couple of hours, laden with filled bottles, but everything takes longer now. There’s one tap per sector and as thousands of people call each sector home, the queues are long and hostile: everyone resents waiting in line for water, but it’s a fact of life now.

I was anxious when you didn’t show up after three hours. By the time five hours had passed, I knew something had happened, so I set out for the tap. I thought maybe there had been a food drop or a fight had broken out in the queue. Maybe the tap hadn’t been working so you’d continued to the next sector, hoping to have better luck there. When I neared the tap and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, I panicked. I searched the area, trying not to draw attention, before asking a woman whether the tap had been working all day. She eyed me with natural suspicion and then nodded: no problems today.

Assault, theft, rape, murder: all part of daily life now. But we’re so careful to avoid any trouble and I know that you wouldn’t have taken any stupid risks, no short cut back to our container was worth it, and there was really nowhere else that you could be. I asked what few friends we have whether they’d seen you and, apart from Old E who saw you on your way to the tap, no one could help me. I walked the few miles to the tap in the next sector, although it felt useless, but I didn’t know what else to do. Everywhere is the same now, but walking through the adjoining sector felt like entering a different world. The same thin, filthy faces, the same ragged clothes, everyone in the same position, all living each day in fear, but I was scared, more scared than I’ve been in months. I spoke with a couple of men there, broaching the safe topics of food and water, but all they could talk about were the rumours of plague which were spreading from the other sectors. The children told stories of a shift bringing into our world a giant rat which left death in its wake. They didn’t speak of monsters, but the adults were also preparing to face a nameless foe and the shifts were being spoken about for the first time as bringing pain and suffering, rather than ultimately alleviating it.

I returned to our container, hoping, without any real conviction, that you’d be there waiting for me, with a smile and ready with a joke about wandering off. You weren’t there. I couldn’t face being in the container alone, so I made up the fire and sat watching the flames until it was time to lock myself in for the night. There was a shift last night. It came just after 1 am. Two of the containers in the row in front of our own shifted and their new inhabitants fell noisily onto the ground. Spanish, I think; a family with three children (two boys and a girl) and a group of men in their twenties and early thirties. I couldn’t sleep, so I listened to them talking. They’ll learn not to speak at night before long, but everyone receives one night’s grace. Eventually they quietened and the night’s silence restored.

I’ll find you. I promise. Just keep strong. I know you will. I’ll search every inch of the yard and the yard beyond. I must. I cannot go on without you.