by Natasha Bell
Marc opened the door, kissed each of the girls on the cheek. “Have a good day at school.”
“Bye, Daddy!” they said as I sought their palms. Lizzie shook mine off and walked a couple of steps ahead while Charlotte told me what classes she’d have that day.
“Hey, Liz, wait for us,” I said as she neared the traffic lights.
She looked back and waited for us to catch up before pressing the button. We stood looking at the red man.
“You know you guys always have each other, right?” I felt both pairs of eyes turn to me. “That’s what makes sisters special. Promise me you’ll always look after each other. Whatever happens.”
“What’s going to happen?” Charlotte said.
“Nothing,” Lizzie said. The lights changed and we started to cross. “Mum’s just telling us not to fight.”
“I don’t want to fight,” Charlotte said. “You always start it.”
I hugged each of them outside the school gate, pressing them to me as they fought to escape my grip. “I love you,” I called after them. Charlotte turned around to wave. Lizzie sank her shoulders into her coat.
Back at home I found Marc sitting at his desk, still murmuring. “Take a look at these crows’ feet…just sitting on the prettiest eyes…”
“We need to take in that form about camp next week,” I said.
“Mmmhmm,” he said, eyes on the essay in front of him.
“Looks like it might rain, so I think I’ll cycle in now, try to beat it.” I stepped over to rub his shoulders.
He looked up. “You’re welcome to a lift, you know?”
We both smiled.
“Okay.” He sighed as my fingers probed his neck. “Have a good day.”
I reached around his shoulder. We kissed, awkwardly but passionately.
“What was that for?” he said, eyes squinted in arousal.
“For being you,” I said. I pressed my lips to his once more. “Bye, I love you.”
“Love you too.”
He turned back to his desk and I disappeared down the stairs. He’d have heard the back door close, the latch of the side gate click back into place as I let myself out.
One Year Gone
Marc didn’t tell the girls why or where, he just packed their suitcases and bundled them and Otter into the car. He’d secured a good last-minute rate. The man on the end of the phone was most helpful, waiving the booking fee and suggesting the best pet-friendly accommodation still available during half-term.
They played I spy, sang along to the High School Musical soundtrack and listened to an audiobook as they crawled down the M5. They stopped twice for loo breaks and once for food, stretching the journey to an exhausting seven and a half hours.
“I can see the sea!” Charlotte finally cried, which set Otter barking from the backseat. Marc tapped the brake as they wound down the steep road from Uplyme to Lyme Regis, turned as per his printed directions and pulled into one of three reception bays to pick up the keys. They wove through the town and back up another sharp hill to find the car park overlooking the sea. The girls raced through the cottage, marveling at the black beams and wonky windows of their temporary home.
“It’s like something out of a story, Daddy,” shouted Charlotte from one of the bedrooms.
“Do you like it?” he said, climbing the steep stairs to find them.
He read the rental instructions in a folder by the kettle and cranked the heating up to full. Once they’d settled, they clipped on Otter’s lead and walked the few hundred feet to the beach. They looked at the black sea beneath the moon.
“It looks like it could gobble you up and never let you go,” said Charlotte.
“Scaredy-cat,” responded Lizzie without enthusiasm.
They bought fish and chips and took them back to the cottage, curled up together on the sofa to watch a film.
“What are we going to do here, Dad?” asked Lizzie, frowning.
“Whatever we want, we’re on holiday.”
“But it’s winter,” she said. “It’s cold.”
* * *
Perhaps, Marc conceded, a seaside holiday in February was odd. It was definitely cold. They paddled one day and had to hurry back to sit by radiators and drink hot chocolates. They tried pitch and putt, but the wind combined with Otter’s insistence on chasing and fetching the balls drove them back inside. They did, however, bundle up and walk along the picturesque Cobb to see the fishermen haul their catches on to the rocks. Marc tried to tell the girls how famous the place was, about its literary heritage and filmic representations, but they were more interested in browsing the jewelry and fossil shops. Lizzie bought a rose quartz pendant and Charlotte spent her pocket money in one of the bookshops he made them visit repeatedly. Marc liked browsing the little art galleries too, hidden down windy lanes and displaying their wares on easels. Lizzie liked a pinkish seascape in the window of the gallery opposite their cottage, while Charlotte preferred the portraits in the space by the bakery up the road. They found a café serving cream teas out of season and ate one every day. Marc had hoped they could walk along the beach to Charmouth as he remembered doing once as a child, but big notices told them coastal erosion made it unsafe. The girls seemed relieved and suggested they return to the cottage to finish the puzzle they’d started.
On their third day, he insisted they walk up the far hill. The girls protested about the cold and their aching legs, but he told them Otter needed a proper walk and promised them sweets on the way back. They settled into contented plodding. He was searching for St. Georges Hill, off Haye Lane if he’d read the map correctly. With little hassle they found the grand cul-de-sac with views over the bay. The girls looked at him, puzzled. He shrugged and said he wanted to see what it looked like from up there, but his eyes darted away from the view and over the house numbers, finally locating a curly bronze 5. He surveyed the modern building, unexceptional but expensive-looking. He thought about knocking, but knew no one would answer. Unless I could be legally declared dead, it couldn’t be sold. It had belonged to me since my mother’s death. He didn’t know what he thought he’d find that the police hadn’t, but he longed to look inside. He imagined me peering out of the top window, looking at the sea on one of my pretend trips. He turned back to the girls’ questioning faces, unable or unwilling to pursue the thought.
“Sweetie time?” he said.
“Finally,” Lizzie said, her eyes lingering on Marc’s face.
I shouldn’t have brought them here, he thought.
* * *
He put the girls to bed that night and sat outside the door listening for their breathing. As soon as he was sure they were asleep, he crept down to gather his coat and shoes. Otter wagged his tail, hoping for a walk. Marc hesitated at the door, but stepped out into the night, locking our children and the puppy in the strange cottage.
He climbed through the sleeping town, back to the cul-de-sac, and crept around the side path to the rear of the house, looking for the broken window the police had mentioned. He found it boarded loosely, the nails already tampered with. He tugged at the wood, straining silently. Eventually it gave. Feeling ridiculous, he swung one leg, then the other through the small window.
Inside, he realized he hadn’t thought further than this. What was he looking for? He fumbled for a light switch and a bulb flickered to reveal a dusty kitchen. He wandered through to the front, then up the stairs, turning on lights and hoping the neighbors really were as unobservant as the police had suggested. Downstairs looked much like he’d imagined his mother-in-law’s house: florally upholstered furniture and dusty trinkets on the mantelpiece. Upstairs, he found her bedroom: a neatly made, quilted bed and a wardrobe of undisturbed dresses. The next room was less ordered: an untidy bed and drawers hastily left open. The guest room, he assumed. Or mine. Feeling queasy, he stepped toward one of the drawers and pulled out a wo
man’s shirt. It could have been my size but he didn’t recognize it. He rifled some more, discovering underwear and jumpers all mixed in together.
Trying to breathe evenly and keep his thoughts from jumping ahead, he moved to the front bedroom, the one with the view. There was no bed, but a vast floor space littered with blank paper and scattered pens. An easel stood proudly at the curtainless window, nothing on the canvas. It was odd to see such a cluttered and obviously used workspace without even a scrap of work in progress. It looked like someone had taken an eraser to the room, removing all trace of whoever had been there. He stepped over to the built-in wardrobe, wondering if he’d find something more personal. Part of him wanted to discover irrefutable evidence of Amelia, just to know he wasn’t losing his mind, but another still clung to the idea that he’d find an old lady’s house jacket and a stack of my mother’s calm and conventional watercolors.
My husband slammed the wardrobe door. He yanked it to slam it again and again, punching it beyond its hinge, finally letting the splintered wood hang concave in the empty cavity. It was bare. What had he expected? He’d just broken into a dead woman’s home hoping to find proof of his wife’s sapphic affair. Had he imagined dildos and love letters littered around the place? What was wrong with him? He headed downstairs, turning the lights off as he went, failing to notice the photograph of a pigeon looking into a puddle on the landing, failing to read the title on the cardboard mount: By the way. Instead, with a final glance around the kitchen, my husband climbed through the window and hurried back down the hill in the growing dawn, praying our daughters had survived their night alone.
* * *
They went for a long, sulky walk the next morning. Marc paced silently ahead with Otter as Charlotte and Lizzie dragged behind, unusually unified by their parent’s petulance. “Look, we’re almost there,” Lizzie said, encouraging the flagging Char. They caught up with him, stopped at the tip of the Cobb. Otter sniffed the edge of the concrete. Marc looked at the boulders leading to the black sea. Lizzie pulled the drawstring of her hood tight, hiding from the wind-whipped spray.
“Can we go home?” Char said.
Marc turned and saw her flinch at his expression. Something stabbed deep inside him.
“Of course,” he said, trying to soften his features. Biting back tears, he threw his arm around the shivering Char and turned to the tortoise shelled Lizzie. “I’m sorry, girls. Let’s go and pack up.”
Lizzie nodded, eyeing him through the hole in her hood. They walked back along the inside edge of the Cobb, sheltering from the wind, Charlotte waving to the fishermen.
They turned into Coombe Street and Marc handed Lizzie Otter’s lead so he could fumble in his pocket for the complicated bunch of keys the rental company had given him. Char wandered to the other side of the narrow street to gaze at the pictures in the gallery window. Marc got the door open and turned to call our youngest, but his eye stopped on an image just beyond the display.
“Hold on a sec,” he said and stepped forward. Peering through the glass, he saw a black-and-white photograph, blown up and distorted by its lack of definition. The result was more impressionistic than representational. He made out a plump guy with an apron tied around his waist bending to inspect a pile of flat boxes. Something buzzed in my husband’s brain, some eerie sense of familiarity. Silently he led the girls inside the gallery, nodding only briefly to the man perched on a stool in the corner before approaching the photograph. Charlotte drifted away to marvel at the canvases on the opposite wall, while Lizzie crouched just inside the door, soothing Otter. Marc left them in the shop as his vision tunneled and he fell into the photograph. He studied the distended print, its distortion adding to the sense of voyeurism. The man’s paunch hung heavily as he bent to the pavement, his chins blurring with his neck, his features unflatteringly mottled. The only items in focus were the boxes he was reaching for. In contrast to the soft moodiness of the rest of the image, here the crisp type boldly announced: “Papa John’s Pizza.” A single line of text had been stuck on the cardboard mount. It read Neighborhood Watch: What the cock?
An elastic cord snapped Marc back to the shop in Lyme, to his children, his surroundings and his life…this great shot of a bakery owner coming out and throwing all the pizzas in the trash…
“Wh-where’s this from?” Marc asked the man in the corner.
Charlotte and Lizzie turned to watch.
“That one?” the man said, slipping from his stool. “A lady brought it in years ago. I had it out for ages and it didn’t sell. Found it in the back last week and thought I’d give it another go. Kind of a weird one, isn’t it? Makes you stop.”
“Do you know who she was?” Marc tried to sound calm, but wondered if the man could hear his hammering heartbeat.
The gallery owner looked at him with more interest than before and pulled lightly at his beard. “The lady? It was a long time ago. Some woman with curly hair, I think. She said it was her friend’s and it’d mean a lot to her if I’d try to sell it. I wouldn’t normally have said yes, but I guess I was in a good mood.”
“I’ll take it,” Marc said. “I mean, how much is it? I’d like to buy it.”
The man’s mouth curled into a smile. “Well, great. How does three hundred pounds sound?”
Marc reached for his wallet, aware of the girls gawping at him and that the owner’s expression probably meant he was being ripped off. He didn’t care.
“Do you have the artist’s details?”
“Huh?” said the man, poking numbers into the card machine.
“An address or phone number or something?”
“Uh.” The man looked at him. “I mean, sure, I’ve got it written down where to send the sale, but it’s not something I’m supposed to give out.”
“I’m interested in buying more,” Marc said, making a quick decision and hoping it was the right one. “I’m a collector and a huge fan of Amelia Heldt. I’m amazed you’ve had this piece for so long, it’s really special. You see, my problem is her website is down and I don’t know if you heard about how she fell out with her agent, but she’s very hard to contact. I want to buy more of her work, maybe commission her. So I really don’t think she’d mind if you gave me her details. It’s going to make her money, after all.”
Marc watched the man process this information. Had he bought it? Some instinct had told Marc this guy wouldn’t be taken in by his missing wife sob story, but would he really believe Marc was some rich art collector?
“All right, how much is it worth to you?”
Marc felt blood rush to his fists. He wanted to grab this bearded idiot by the shoulders. He took a breath through his teeth and narrowed his eyes. He’d walked into this. “Fifty.”
“A hundred,” the man countered. “Cash.”
“Look,” Marc said, pulling out his wallet once more. “I’ve got sixty-five, that’s it.”
The gallery owner held out his hand with a smile and Marc reluctantly shook it. The man took the cash and disappeared into the back for a few minutes, returning with a yellow Post-it. Marc quickly read the scrawled address before slipping it into his wallet.
“Can we buy the pink sea picture too?” Lizzie said when they got outside.
“No,” Marc said, leading them into the cottage. He brushed past her to climb the stairs to his bedroom.
Charlotte followed him up. “Daddy,” she said quietly, “is the artist the princess? Is she real?”
Marc stopped in the doorway and turned to Charlotte. “You’re too old to believe in fairy tales,” he said and shut the door on her confused face, sacrificing parental responsibility to indulge in a violent Garbo-esque desire. Leaning wearily on the frame, he removed the tissue paper and stared at the latest evidence of my betrayal.
* * *
I will never admit it to him, of course, but I am scared now. I don’t know when it happened, but
I’ve grown used to this place. Its familiarity has been a comfort. From here, I have managed to leave, to fly away to the family I remember, to my home. What if I lose that tomorrow? What if I lose everything?
April
404 Days Gone
I’ve imagined the rest in detail. I know it’s the months of limbo, of not knowing, of ordinary abnormality that must have been torture for my family. For my husband. But it’s the last few days I keep thinking about. I wonder what would have happened if Marc had been able to let go.
That sounds like my meditations are entirely selfish. They’re not. I don’t think about myself in this. I think about Marc. About my kind, gentle husband who never deserved any of this, but who loved me too much to give up; who couldn’t help but be changed by all this. I dream about him. I see him, walk beside him. His flight touches down and he feels exhilarated to be in the city, perhaps a few dozen blocks from Amelia. This is New York, the city that never sleeps: all those clichés, songs, films and Beat poems, all the crime figures and homelessness statistics. All the tales I gushed about manic metropolises and a cosmopolitan chic more sophisticated than a Brit could possibly imagine.
He stumbles from the plane through passport and visa control, through customs and imports. The familiar strangers he’s followed from his flight disappear toward friends and relatives, taxis, trains and buses. He follows arrows to a shuttle to the subway, passes through the stile and takes the elevator to the platform. He watches through the scratched window as they stop and start, picking up passengers. Van Siclen, Liberty, Broadway, Rockaway, Lafayette and into a tunnel that takes them under the East River. Finally, 59th Street: Columbus Circle. He swims with the crowd to another platform, slumps into another seat. Three stops and he straightens his stiff legs, lifts his bag and steps onto Manhattan concrete.
