Rita put down the vase with visible relief. ‘Good decision. I’ll let you know exactly when the things are due. Your mother would be pleased. She was very proud of you, Anna. She said you had a gift, an eye for beautiful things.’
‘Well . . .’ I stopped, unsure how to respond, but inclined not to believe it, and to wonder why my mother had never told me so herself.
Rita left, declaring she was off to an art class. I watched her from the window, revving the engine and waving as the car pulled away. Despite my warm feelings towards her, I questioned why I’d given in. Rita was like that. Decisive. Persuasive. In control. With a hint of emotional blackmail.
On the way home, I stopped off at the Co-op and bought a ready meal – chicken jalfrezi – and a bottle of red wine. It was only when I was at the checkout that I remembered Mum’s old microwave had packed up years ago.
The house was chilly despite the heating. I dumped my bags in the kitchen, turned the thermostat up a notch and headed to Mum’s room. I might as well make a start on her things. Trying to avoid thinking about the scrapbook in the drawer, I sat at the dressing table and opened a jewellery box. I picked out things I recognised: amber earrings shaped like teardrops, a gold bracelet, a string of beads. A sapphire brooch.
There was a velvet pouch with an emerald pendant inside. Taking the necklace out and holding it to the light, I tried to think back. Had I ever seen Mum wearing it? I used to love watching her get ready to go out to special places, but I couldn’t remember this. I sighed, wondering how many other things I’d forgotten.
Outside the light had darkened and even though it was only five o’clock, I went downstairs, heated the curry in a saucepan and poured a glass of wine. Eating rapidly, standing at the sink, I considered the house clearance. Lemon Tree Cottage. I tried to picture the house as it had been, but the memory, so long abandoned, was hazy. I closed my eyes and forced myself to remember, and slowly, slowly an outline and a background came. The ragged garden with its scuttling creatures; the broken pots; the stone cottage with its dark, shuttered windows and the sudden splash of orange. And then me, twelve years old, fleeing from the place. Feet pounding on the lane.
Later, I cleared the kitchen cupboards, taking out tins and packets and placing them on the side. There was a jar of home-made apple jelly right at the back. I stared at my mother’s handwriting on the label until my eyesight blurred and the kitchen filled with the sound of bubbling and the earthy scent of fruit.
A rap at the door disturbed me. Peering through the spyhole, I saw Rita. Her face was serious and sad with her mouth turned down; she held her arms across her body, touching her elbows, holding herself in. And I understood. She was a woman who had lost a good friend, a woman who was grieving.
I opened the door and her sadness transformed into a smile. She unfolded her arms in a gesture of welcome as if it was me on the doorstep visiting her. ‘I thought I should tell you the clearers have called. The first lot of Edward Lily’s things will be at the shop in the morning.’
‘Already?’
‘I know. I’m sorry it’s short notice.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘I’ll be there.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Of course.’ There was no going back on it now.
We stayed awkwardly for a moment more. Should I invite her in? A friendly face. A person who knew my past. Even as the possibility beckoned, I folded up my feelings and tucked them away. Besides, I was conscious of the three-quarters-gone bottle of wine, the fact that my head was blurring and one more glass could finish things off. So when she asked if I wanted company, I thanked her, but shook my head and watched as she trailed back down the path.
The night was sharp and cold, the velvet sky threaded with gold and silver. The heavens’ embroidered cloths. I smiled wryly as I remembered. I’d been keen on Yeats when I was young. I’d struggled to understand his poems, and then suddenly they’d made sense. If only everything worked like that.
There was movement beyond the path, a shiver amongst the leaves. I squinted, looking for a shape in the shadows. Was that a sigh or a rustling of branches? I called out. ‘Hello?’ No one answered. ‘Rita?’ The night was still. A bark. A fox. Foxes had been rampant in the past, skulking, looking for food. Mrs Henderson next door had had chickens until one night they’d got their throats ripped out. She’d come to our house screaming blue murder. Gabriella had whispered that Mrs Henderson had done it herself. She was a witch, wasn’t she? Everyone knew that. I’d suggested it was Brian – her creepy-looking son.
I returned to the cupboards, keeping my mind closed as I worked, willing myself not to think of the enormity of the task. Small steps, Dad used to say when he had a house clearance. Take a room. Divide it into sections. Take a section. Divide it into moments of a life.
I dribbled the last of the wine into my glass and when that had gone, I searched until I found a half-empty bottle of Cinzano in the sideboard. I drank a glass, grimacing at the taste, but it worked. The edge of my discord softened.
Turning my energy to the cupboard under the stairs, I rummaged through, pulling out board games and videos, cassettes and reels of cine film. The projector was right at the back, along with the tripod and the screen covered in plastic. On impulse, I hauled them out and set up in the living room, hooking up a reel at random and letting the silent films play. The shots were out of sequence: one moment Gabriella was kicking her legs in a silver pram, and then we were older, at the village fête; we were in Trafalgar Square feeding pigeons and then back at the green watching wrestling in a makeshift ring. The camera jerked from my mother tucking a strand of hair behind her ear to the rest of the crowd with their soundless cheers.
I recognised faces whose names had long gone from my memory. And there were Gabriella and me with our arms wrapped round each other. Gabriella was grinning and pouting, making a movement like a curtsy while I stared awkwardly through my National Health specs. Gabriella’s hair was sleek and she wore no make-up so it must have been before she fell in love with Siouxsie. A year, or maybe two, before she disappeared.
The camera zoomed in, blocking me out of the frame. Gabriella looked away and back again, her smile shy and uncertain. And then Dad must have walked away because the camera was wobbling and panning the green. He carried on past the cedar tree, down the steps, around the lake. A swan took off, slow beats. I watched the silent flight, amidst the whir of the reel, until the film abruptly ended.
I wandered through my childhood years playing and replaying each scene, freezing the moment Dad focused in on Gabriella. Was she looking at him, or beyond at someone else? I leaned forward and scanned the people in the crowd. I froze the film again and sat back in my chair. The stillness of the house unnerved me. There was only the sound of the wind picking at the window latch, and the pipes gently sighing.
The curtains were open. I glanced across at the great slab of darkness outside. Anyone might come to the glass and see me sitting here curled up in my chair. The idea made me shiver. I should close the curtains. And yet I couldn’t move. A heavy coldness was spreading through my body, weighing me down, keeping me in my seat. I looked back at the screen. What if someone in that crowd knew what had happened to my sister? What if, even then, they’d been planning to take her away?
The wind rapped on the glass, making me jump and stare. And a new thought gripped me. Here I was back in the village for the longest time in years. I had no choice about that. What if I stopped resisting? What if I allowed myself to start again, trying to find out what had happened? What if this was the moment when I was supposed to uncover the truth?
Over and over I asked myself the same questions. Over and over I rejected them, counterbalancing with the arguments I’d been giving myself for years. It was too long ago, all routes had been tried, there was no point in going back. Over and over the questions and answers came until I was exhausted by the contradictions. Until eventually, I stopped thinking. And, turnin
g back to the projector, I watched the films once more.
6
1982
On Sunday we went to church. The only time we missed a service was when we were so ill we had to stay in bed. Gabriella faked it sometimes (with the thermometer in the Ovaltine trick) but she could never get past our mum. Dad was exempt on the grounds that his Catholic father from Chile had died when Dad was in the womb and Uncle Thomas was two; their Jewish mother, whose parents had escaped Russian pogroms, had allowed her sons to make their own choices.
Gabriella liked to bring this up. In an equal world she should be able to follow the way of her freethinking father. She posed a few of her favourite questions to demonstrate her feelings: what’s the point of praying when God doesn’t reply? How do you know God exists when you can’t see him? How do we know we have a soul if it doesn’t show up on an X-ray? Mum replied in much the same way as she did with anything that she wanted and we didn’t. When Gabriella was an adult she’d be free to be ungodly. Now, she went to church. (And you too, Anna.)
As it happened, I didn’t mind. Church was all right. I liked the scents: candle wax mixed with flowers and incense. I liked gazing at the stained glass windows and imagining the characters coming alive as the sun shone through. I pictured them clambering out of their tableaus and joining the congregation, telling their stories in languages we miraculously understood.
It was the usual scene before we left. Gabriella came down in a dress that fell off her shoulder, with black and gold make-up around her eyes. Mum told her she looked ridiculous and Gabriella replied that it was fashion. Then came the inevitable row. (‘Why can’t I dye my hair black?’ ‘When you’re an adult you’re free to ruin your looks. Now you do what I say.’) And when that had ended, Gabriella appealed to Dad who suggested a compromise. This meant she stalked back upstairs and reappeared ten minutes later with a ripped sweatshirt pulled over her dress.
Finally, we were at church and three-quarters of the way through the service. The organist was playing and the vicar was conducting communion. Neither of us had been confirmed, Gabriella having threatened to go on a hunger strike if she was forced, but I trailed along to the altar, with everybody else, to be blessed, and amused myself afterwards by looking around at the congregation. I recognised people from school including Lucy Carlisle, who’d left in the fifth year and now wore a smock top.
On the way back from communion, Mum bent down and whispered to Lucy’s red-faced mother whose cheeks burned brighter as people turned to see. Beside me Gabriella sat with her eyes closed, winding her hair round her fingers. I knew what she was doing, blanking out the service, filling in the space with music notes, tapping her feet to the rhythm. I nudged her. She opened her eyes. ‘Lucy Carlisle,’ I mouthed.
She shrugged and mouthed back. ‘Who cares about Lucy Carlisle?’
Mum cared about Lucy Carlisle. It was written all over her face and I reckoned I knew what she’d said to her mother. She’d invited Lucy to the drop-in centre at church. The one for drug addicts, unmarried mothers and wives whose husbands beat them up.
When we got back from church, the house smelled of roast pork and boiled cabbage. Every week Dad was assigned to make Sunday dinner, and woe betide him if he didn’t. Mum and her skivvies – Gabriella and me – prepared the food before we left in the morning. Once, Dad, too busy with his feet up, engrossed in a book he’d found in the shop, forgot to turn the oven on. We came home to raw beef and potatoes and Dad misquoting noble things from Dickens. (‘It’s a far, far better thing to read a book than do the cooking,’ he’d said.)
Mum restricted saying grace to Sundays, and after she’d dished up and Dad had carved, she talked about being thankful for our food and all we had besides. I opened one eye to see what Gabriella was doing; she was looking straight at me with bug eyes and puffed-out cheeks. I stifled my laugh and focused on Mum who’d moved on to talking about the importance of forgiving transgressions.
Afterwards I asked what a transgression was. ‘Ask Lucy Carlisle,’ said Gabriella before Mum could reply.
Later, Dad said he was going for a stroll. I volunteered to go with him announcing the event as a Dad-and-youngest-daughter trip around the village. Gabriella rolled her eyes and I ignored her. I was determined to make the excursion last as long as possible.
Often when we were alone, Dad told me stories from his past and the special bond he’d had with Uncle Thomas. They’d been unstoppable – fighting back to back against the bullies who didn’t like their foreign name. ‘There’s nothing so special as sibling love,’ he’d say. And I’d nod vigorously, thinking of Gabriella and making up scenes in which I saved her from the bad boys in the village.
Dad stopped off at the House of Flores to fetch a vase he’d promised to an old lady who lived in one of the almshouses. And when we knocked, I waited in the doorway while he took it in and placed it according to her direction. I spent the time looking at my reflection in the downstairs window, admiring the latest lucky cast-off from Gabriella – a black bow that looked like a giant moth resting in my hair.
Eventually, Dad came out, having thankfully refused the offer of a cup of tea. Linking arms and walking slowly, I dragged him back to my pace. We passed The Eagle, where Dad drank on Friday nights and came home smelling of beer and tobacco, bearing gifts of Babycham for Mum, and chips for us all from the late night chippy.
‘We haven’t had chips for ages,’ I said.
‘You’re right, Annie. We haven’t done much of anything, have we?’
‘Can we have them soon?’
There was no time to answer. Shouting spilled from the pub. In an instant, Dad had told me to stay put, and disappeared inside. The shouting continued. I counted to three, and slowly pushed open the door and squinted through the smoke. A man was jabbing his finger in the face of the barman who held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said. ‘No can do.’ I recognised the drunk – Mr Ellis, a short, stocky man in a brown leather jacket, with a square face and dark hair parted in the middle. I’d seen him before lurching in the street, yelling at his wife. Mum said he was a bully. And even though his wife had little to recommend her she didn’t deserve a man like that. As for poor old Martha . . . Mum couldn’t contemplate what life was like for her with all that rowing going on.
Now Dad walked straight towards him and I thought any moment Mr Ellis would swing around and punch him in the face, or pick up a bottle and crack it over his skull like in one of the police programmes I watched on the telly. I needn’t have worried. In five minutes, Dad had quietened Mr Ellis, who then staggered out the pub. I watched as he zigzagged down the street.
The barman offered us drinks, on the house, but Dad was shaking his head and saying we needed to get home. I was disappointed. I would have liked to have spent another half hour there, drinking lemonade and eating peanuts, while Dad did tricks with the beer mats and told me stories – an extension of our outing.
‘Some men don’t know they’re born,’ he muttered on the way home. ‘That one should spend more time looking out for his wife and daughter and less time doing that.’ He gestured at the pub.
I hung on to his arm, proud that, apart from on Fridays, my dad spent all of his time looking out for his wife and daughters, and no time doing that.
The following Saturday, Mum announced we were delivering. I groaned while Gabriella protested, saying she had too much homework. We knew what delivering meant. It meant going to people’s houses and shoving leaflets through their doors about church services, bazaars and jumble sales. Sometimes it included going inside and sitting quietly, while people – usually old people – droned on about their illnesses and holidays and hairdressers and the state of young people.
Mum pinned her hair neatly in a bun. She wore a beige dress and a beige cardigan, and a string of white beads. Beige was a good colour for church business, she said. It was neutral like our Lord. I wasn’t sure what she meant by that since I thought the Lord wasn’t neutral in t
he slightest. He had very clear preferences. Didn’t He love sinners, and those who repented, best of all?
After the usual shouting match over Gabriella’s clothes and Egyptian-style make-up (I went unnoticed in my jeans and yellow T-shirt with a picture of a Caribbean island on the front) we left the house.
We began as usual at the edge of the village and worked backwards, sweeping past the church, the school and the connecting streets to the High Street. Thankfully, we didn’t go inside any houses, although by the time we reached Acer Street it was plain that Mum was twitching to entice an unsuspecting person to a jumble sale, a church tea or, if she was lucky, a Sunday morning service. It was the way she walked that gave it away, striding purposefully and so fast I had to trot to keep up.
Mum needed an excuse, which she found at number twenty-five. Poised to put the leaflet through the letter box, the door opened and Mrs Ellis appeared, holding an empty milk bottle. ‘Ah,’ said Mum, her face lighting with the opportunity. ‘I’m doing church visits today. Would you like a chat?’
Mrs Ellis blinked back at her. ‘I don’t think—’
‘It would be lovely to talk through all our summer plans,’ said Mum, smiling. She took the bottle from Mrs Ellis’s hand and placed it on the doorstep.
Mrs Ellis opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her hands fluttered to the scarf wrapped round her throat. The scarf was grey, the colour of her baggy cardigan, and she wore a grubby white apron tied at the waist, which reached down to the hem of a thick brown skirt. Reluctantly, she stepped back and we followed her in.
It was dark in the narrow hall. There were coats on a stand, shoes scattered below, and a pile of cardboard boxes stacked against the wall. The house smelled of damp clothes and something else, sweet and sickly. It reminded me of church.
The Missing Girl Page 4
