After the Eclipse

by Fran Dorricott

  I was about to turn for home when something further down the bank caught my eye. I angled back, spying a group of people gathered beside a crop of small trees. They were rapt, staring across the lake. Two women with pushchairs, a man with a dog, a young couple. All of them focused on the same thing, which I saw for myself as I drew closer.

  A boat in the water. And, judging by the official-looking people inside it, I’d bet my last cigarette that they weren’t there for sport. I headed for the woman closest to me, my curiosity like an addiction. I never could shake it; it’s what had led me into journalism in the first place – that, and the victims.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  She half turned to me but kept her eyes fixed on the boat as it moved at glacial speed. I could hear its humming now, the wind pulling the sound towards us.

  “That girl – the one that went missing on Friday. Nothing good ever happens on Friday the thirteenth, does it? God, I think they’re looking in the water. Her poor family.”

  I felt my heartbeat stutter. I knew I’d been wrapped up with Gran, but how had I not noticed a child disappearing? The woman’s superstition wasn’t lost on me but I shrugged it off as the same kind of silliness the whole of Bishop’s Green thrived on. I noticed that there were more people on the other side of the lake now. A few policemen. Dogs.

  “She’s only, like, eleven.” The woman made a noise in the back of her throat. “This shouldn’t happen here. Nothing like this has ever happened here.”

  I stopped listening, the blood roaring in my ears. A missing girl. Here, in Bishop’s Green. The sun was suddenly blinding, a hot white circle in my eyes. When I blinked, black spots eclipsed my vision just like in my dreams. An eleven-year-old girl – missing.

  I didn’t correct her. Couldn’t bring myself to speak. Instead I ran away, back towards town and home. The home that I’d hoped would be a fresh start.

  The woman on the bank was wrong. Something like this had happened here before. Sixteen years ago it happened to my sister.

  * * *

  At home I made myself busy. Coffee on, laundry in the machine, and breakfast on the table in record time. I did the jobs I’d been avoiding, too. I made Gran’s check-up appointment with her GP and even willingly spent ten minutes on hold to the adult day centre to rearrange a taster session. Adult jobs completed, I’d just settled down at the dining-room table with my mobile when the landline rang.

  “Cassie, darling. How’s it going?” My frayed nerves were soothed by Henry’s familiar voice, gravelly from years of cigarettes and still betraying his Cornish roots despite three decades in London. It was good to hear from him. “How’s northern living?”

  “Still only in the Midlands,” I replied. The same answer I’d given every time he’d called since I moved here two months ago. To Henry, anything north of the Watford Gap was northern enough. He still couldn’t believe I’d gone through with it.

  I could tell he half expected me to give up and head back to the anonymity of the city. And if I didn’t come home of my own accord, he was determined to convince me. As if going back there, with no home and no job, would still be better than this.

  “You sound shattered,” he said. “Are you sleeping?”

  “I wish.” I rubbed my hand over my face and sighed. “I was out all night looking for Gran again. I don’t know how she keeps doing it. I hid the key last night and she still managed to get out. I found her wandering about in a bloody field at just gone five this morning. She was frozen.”

  “Christ.” Henry paused, a tapping sound on the receiver warning me that he was about to say something he thought I wouldn’t like to hear. “I know you’re not close to your dad, but can’t he help you? It seems like a lot for one person to deal with, even with carers popping in during the day. This always seems to happen at night. I know you said they’ve assessed her and she’s okay to be at home but—”

  “Dad wants to put her in a home, Heno. He’s no help. She’s not his mother so I don’t expect him to be. I just don’t want that for her – not yet. She was always such a rock, you know? Especially after my mum died. I can’t lock her up in one of those places without exploring our options first.” I didn’t say that living here with me as her jailer was hardly much different, but Henry seemed to sense it.

  “Is she all right now, anyway? After last night.”

  “She’s fine. Asleep again. Like I should be.”

  “Go to sleep then, darling. I’ll call you later.”

  I didn’t want Henry to go. After this morning, seeing the police on the water like that, I was rattled and I needed to hear his voice for a while longer. He had been an excellent mentor when I’d moved to London a decade earlier to begin my career in journalism, but over the years since he’d made an even better friend. He’d retired last year and still read all of my articles before I submitted them.

  “Can’t sleep now. Too much caffeine in me,” I said. “Too little booze. Don’t know why I thought moving here would be a good way to learn to be an adult.”

  I started to laugh but stopped myself.

  “Spoken like a true millennial,” Henry said.

  There was a tense silence. Something unspoken in the air between us that sounded like, “At least you’re not using the sleeping pills any more.” Henry knew I had a tendency to self-medicate when I got stressed, but I hadn’t told even him how bad it had become when I’d first moved back to Bishop’s Green. It turned out that sleeping pills, which had always been my go-to way of switching off from the world, were a terrible choice when pitted against Gran’s Houdini act. They made me groggy when I needed to be able to keep up with her disappearances. Now I didn’t like to have them in the house.

  But considering how little I’d been sleeping before my grandad died two months ago, and how the loss of my job might have had something to do with the three double brandies I’d consumed before decking the sexist bastard I was meant to be interviewing, it was probably better not to joke about the fact that I’d switched back to the booze. Honestly, it was lucky I’d only lost my job. If the guy had pressed charges I’d have been much worse off and a drink here and there would have been the least of my worries.

  “You’ve got to get out of that house more, Cass,” Henry admonished me finally, his voice deliberately light. “You sound like you’re going stir-crazy. I knew you would. You’re not meant to live in a cage.”

  “I’ve been out all morning.”

  “You know what I mean. You’re a hack. No good hiding from it. You live for the story. Keeping yourself all cooped up in that house won’t make you feel any better about the situation with your gran. Get yourself a job and things will seem brighter.”

  “No. You’re right.” I watched through the dining-room window as a flock of birds flew overhead. The sun seemed too big in the sky. Too bright. I thought again of the upcoming eclipse and then shook my head.

  “Did you hear about the missing girl up your neck of the woods?” Henry asked, obviously realising he’d upset me. This was his peace offering. “Seems like your sort of story. You’d have dived at it if it were down here. I know you haven’t been writing since you left London but this might be good for you. I’ll read over anything you send me.”

  I’d had the news story open on my mobile even before Henry mentioned it. Like a scab I couldn’t stop picking at, it had been calling to me all morning. And the more I tried not to think about it, the worse it was. But I wasn’t sure I was ready to start writing again yet, ready to put myself back into that world.

  “Not interested,” I said. But I kept the article up, and I couldn’t banish the curiosity from my voice. This girl – her name was Grace – was the same age Olive had been. The coincidence made me nervous.

  “Liar,” Henry said. “Doesn’t look like the family have been interviewed yet. You should get in there. Try to get an exclusive with the mother—”

  “Not. Interested.”

  “You’re so bloody stubborn.”


  “No I’m not,” I said. But I couldn’t help smiling. Henry was right. It was the sort of story I’d have leapt at before now. When my own sister was taken I’d hated the reporters who swarmed my family, but as I got older I’d become determined to be a voice for the victims, not a sensationalist. It was an attitude that had made me as many friends in the business as it had enemies. Most hacks didn’t like that I referred to them – to us – as vultures. And meant it.

  The missing girl, according to the article on my phone, had left school at half past three on Friday and hadn’t made it home. No note, no indication that she was going anywhere. None of her friends knew anything. I scrolled down the article with the tip of my finger, itching for more information, when Henry’s gravelly chuckle brought me back to my senses.

  “All right, you’re not stubborn,” Henry said. “But I do think it would do you good. Give you a bit of focus. And anyway, it’s an excuse to go and see—”

  “Don’t say it,” I grumbled. “I haven’t seen her since her dad’s funeral, Henry. That was two years ago. Why would she want to see me now? It would be too…”

  “Awkward? Come on, darling. I’ve heard the way you two talk on the phone. She can’t get you to shut up. She’s your Juliet.”

  “Oh God. Don’t start that again. Just because you’re super into gay marriage doesn’t mean I have to be. Besides, it didn’t exactly work out for the best for Romeo did it? I’d rather stick with Rosaline.”

  Henry let out a barking laugh but didn’t press me any further. We chatted for another few minutes and I could almost pretend that I had everything under control.

  Then Henry said, “Helen asked about you, you know. I told her you were okay. She seemed glad.”

  The pit in the bottom of my stomach opened right up and I thought my heart might fall in. I swallowed. Truthfully, it didn’t hurt that she’d dumped me as much as it hurt that she didn’t think we could stay friends. That, and the flat I’d lost when she said it. Moving to Bishop’s Green had seemed like a good way to start over, to move forward, to stop wallowing and do something different, but I’d forgotten how isolating it could be here. How lonely. I hadn’t even told Henry that my only friend in town was the guy who sold me coffee, and he was a good twenty years older than me.

  “Thanks,” I said softly. “Yeah, I’m okay. Talk later.”

  I hung up, pushing down the frustration. My gaze fell on my phone again, and I caught sight of the photograph in the article. Grace Butler’s face was round and pink and scrubbed clean for a school picture. Blonde hair, blue eyes. She was positively angelic.

  MISSING.

  Pictured: eleven-year-old Grace Butler, who disappeared

  on her way home from school on Friday, 13 March.

  A growing sense of unease filled me as I read the article for the third time. Her stepdad, Roger Upton, was pictured as well, looking dishevelled and distraught.

  She’d been missing two days and they were already dragging the lake. Christ. I shook my head and pushed back the awful memory of that other time, sixteen years ago. Men on the lake, boats, a crowd gathered at the edge of the water.

  I’d watched it unfold on Gran’s television set, shaking and unable to believe that it was real. That it was happening. That Olive wasn’t going to walk into the bedroom any moment and complain that I’d hidden her library book, and our summer holiday with Gran and Grandad wasn’t going to go right back to being boringboringboring.

  The memory gripped me tight. I saw the relentlessly blue sky – not even the decency of rain. The wind barely stirring the trees around the lake. The woman on the screen tolled a number that was growing and growing. A hundred and forty-six hours since the eclipse. A hundred and forty-six hours since she’d vanished. A hundred and forty-six hours since I’d made the worst mistake of my life.

  And now it was happening again.

  2

  THE ROOM THAT WAS now my bedroom had once been my grandad’s art studio. The walls were still decorated with the little four-leaf clovers he had believed to be so lucky. I still sometimes caught a whiff of acrylic paint, or turpentine and dusty brushes, although I’d cleared most of his stuff into the attic when I moved in after the funeral two months earlier. It was a comforting smell, one that reminded me of him and his warmth.

  The spare bedroom was bigger than this one. Twice as big, actually, with a better view of the garden. But I hadn’t touched it. It had been the room Olive and I used to share – and although it had been redecorated at some point I still saw the bunk beds and lava lamp. And a small part of me still feared the ghosts of Olive and myself that might haunt it.

  I settled down at the desk in my poky little room with a fresh cup of tea. I couldn’t stop thinking about the missing girl, Grace. And about Olive. What were the chances of two little girls the same age vanishing sixteen years apart in the same town? Probably quite high. Bishop’s Green was bigger than it looked on first glance. It was a warren of residential streets around a central hive, a town that still believed it was a village, the fact remained that it could easily be a coincidence.

  But we were due another solar eclipse and that set my teeth on edge, my journalist brain making all sorts of phantom connections. The timing was too much of a coincidence – more of a coincidence than anything else.

  They’re not connected, I told myself. They can’t be. Olive was taken during a public event. A chance abduction during the minutes of murky twilight, everybody too busy counting omens or waiting for the do-over the eclipse had promised them. I tried to think clinically. This Grace kid, she just hadn’t come home from school. She might even be a runaway, although eleven was a bit on the young side. Perhaps she had fallen out with her friends, her parents; perhaps she had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  I bit my lip. The box in front of me on Grandad’s old desk was battered, the Dr. Martens logo on the side badly faded. Its corners were crushed from years of being shoved about inside my wardrobe and the lid was caked with a layer of dust.

  I always took it with me when I moved. It had followed me from Bishop’s Green to Derby, and then to Sheffield and York and then London. And now back again, full circle. I rarely opened it, and when I did it was usually to shove some other painful Olive-related memory inside.

  Now I wanted to look. Needed to, even. Maybe it was like Henry said – I needed a distraction. Or validation. I wasn’t sure.

  I took a shaky breath and lifted the lid. Inside, it was exactly as I remembered, filled with photos and stickers, writing on napkins and even a couple of newspaper articles, folded into yellowing squares. There was a birthday card Olive had made me. One I’d told her I’d ditched.

  I sifted through pictures of Mum, me and Olive. Dad, always behind the lens, had captured us on the beach, at Christmas, at the park. The photos were familiar, worn by my teenage fingers. The ones of Mum were the most faded, all of them taken in the years before Olive was abducted. Back when Mum was still her strong, occasionally smiling self.

  I picked up one of Olive on a roundabout, and beneath it was one I’d found on Grandad’s noticeboard of me and my sister in the garden right here in Bishop’s Green. It must have been taken the summer she was abducted. We were on the verge of hysterical laughter as Olive accidentally swore at the camera as she tried to make Ginger Spice’s peace sign. I looked away, the image of Olive frozen in the nineties with her Buzz Lightyear T-shirt, friendship necklaces and platform trainers making my eyes begin to itch.

  This was stupid. I was only going to upset myself. I started to put the things away, organising them carefully, until my fingers brushed the journal at the bottom of the box. I felt a shudder of something. Anticipation? Fear? I didn’t even know why I’d started looking but now I couldn’t stop.

  This was my “Olive Diary”.

  The psychiatrist I saw after Olive disappeared suggested I keep a journal. She didn’t know that I already had one. I was sure if she’d known the sorts of things I’d filled it with she�
�d have changed her mind about it being good for me. It was filled with my loopy fourteen-year-old scrawl, stuck throughout with newspaper clippings and other bits of paper. It had been an obsession.

  I flicked through and my fingers came to rest on a page almost of their own accord.

  I read in the library that most child abductions happen because of family. The police aren’t looking for a stranger for Olive. Why?? Mum was at work. Gran was getting her hair done. Grandad was at the vet’s with Molly. That leaves me and Dad.

  And then there was a question. Biro scrawl, shaky and smudged out of shape.

  DAD. Where was he?

  I sat back, my heartbeat in my throat and my hands starting to sweat. I remembered the damp hotness that preceded the writing of this note. Too many people crammed into my grandparents’ house – too much crying. I was sitting on the floor outside the kitchen, knees to my chest. Mum and Dad were out of sight but I could still hear them.

  “You have to tell me where you were. You owe me that much at least.”

  “I don’t owe you anything, Kathy.” My dad’s voice was taut, tired, the secret eating him up. “How can you think I had anything to do with this? How can you think I’d hurt her?”

  “How can I not? You won’t tell me anything.” A pause. “Did you hurt her?”

  “No.” Not an exclamation. A weary statement of fact. The same answer to the same question.

  “Tell the police, then. They know you’re lying. Cassie knows. I know. At least tell somebody.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “So you are lying, then.”

  “Fucking hell, Kath. This isn’t my fault. Cassie was meant to be watching her.”

  I hadn’t been able to stop myself. The kitchen was hot and the windows fogged with the endless heat Mum kept blasting because she was cold all the time. I marched into the room, whole body shaking.

  Before I could stop myself I was howling.