Last Seen

by Lucy Clarke

  I felt the blissful relief of painlessness as the anaesthetic flooded through me. It was seconds – that was all it took to cut me open. The midwife stayed at my side as she promised, keeping up a steady stream of conversation. Although I was numb from the chest down, I felt the exact moment when the baby was lifted out of me; it was astounding, I felt it, a strange lightness as the weight was removed. I waited, eyes tracked to the corner of the small room, listening. And then I heard it: a tiny mewing cry.

  Someone said the word: boy.

  He was brought to me, naked and red-skinned, his dark hair matted to his head. He was placed on my chest, a tiny squished creature with a swollen puckered mouth, and the love that rocked through me was fierce and primeval. I kissed his face, and through my tears and kisses words slid from my mouth – promises of love that I meant wholly. My newborn son – Marley – opened his eyes and looked right at me. In that moment it was perfect. He was perfect.

  ‘Go carefully,’ Nick said, holding open the car door.

  I inched my way in, the wound from my Caesarean burning with each adjustment.

  ‘Here, don’t twist.’ Nick leant across me to put my seat belt on. He closed my door, then rounded the car and got into the driver’s seat, pulling the door shut, sealing the three of us inside. ‘You ready?’

  I glanced in the rear-view mirror. Marley, swamped in a fleece all-in-one, was fast asleep in his car seat. I smiled. My son. ‘Ready.’

  I’d spent four days on the antenatal ward watching the stream of fathers and grandparents flood in during visiting hours. Sometimes I pictured my mother padding in, a hessian bag filled with goodies swinging from her shoulder, the waft of a health food store lingering in her clothes. I wanted, so much, for her to tell me how well I’d done. That I’d be a good mother. She’d have scooped Marley out of his plastic cot, clutched him to her, and whispered, You’re the most wonderful creature I’ve ever set eyes on.

  Nick started the engine and we pulled out into a busy lane of traffic. As Nick drove, I looked at him properly for the first time; he hadn’t shaved in days and there were deep bags beneath his eyes – yet he somehow looked happier than ever.

  ‘How’s Jacob?’ I asked. He had been born three weeks before – a little dark-haired sprite who’d slipped into the world in a birthing pool, a week late.

  Nick grinned. ‘Beautiful. Exhausting. Mind-blowing.’

  We both have boys, I thought, feeling a burst of emotion for the future I saw ahead for them.

  ‘Thank you for collecting me,’ I said to Nick. ‘But don’t think about going into the taxi business – we’re going the wrong way.’

  Nick smiled. ‘You and Marley are coming to our house.’

  ‘Absolutely not. You’ve got Jacob to—’

  ‘No point protesting: the spare room is already made up. Sarah and I have talked about it; you’ve just had major surgery, Isla. You can’t drive for six weeks. You can’t lift. What are you going to do on your own in the flat? You shouldn’t even be carrying him up and down the stairs yet. We want you and Marley to stay.’

  I was renting a studio flat above a florist’s on the high street. Yes, the stairs would be tricky, but the flat itself was comfortable enough, and the sweet scent of cut flowers drifted up into the landing. ‘I won’t put you out like that. I—’

  ‘You don’t have a choice. You made the mistake of giving Sarah your spare key – she sent me in. Marley’s Moses basket and clothes are already at ours, waiting for you both.’

  I went to say something more, but Nick gently shushed me. ‘The truth is, you’d be doing us the favour. I went back to work on Monday, and Sarah’s all on her own with the baby. She needs you, Isla. Plus, the two little bruisers can keep an eye on you girls for me.’

  My throat thickened with tears. ‘Thank you.’

  I sat propped against a throne of pillows on Sarah’s spare bed, my toes curling as I tried to latch Marley on to my breast.

  ‘Most natural thing in the world, they’ll tell you,’ Sarah said, who was feeding Jacob beside me. ‘I’d say it feels about as natural as wearing bull-dog clips on your nipples.’

  I laughed, then winced as my let-down came.

  ‘Wine, paracetamol, and nipple cream: my breastfeeding survival kit.’

  ‘Just like they recommended in antenatal class.’

  I’d been at Sarah and Nick’s for five days now, and we’d settled into a routine with the boys. If Sarah saw my light on at night, she’d slip into my room with Jacob and we’d do the night feeds together. In the mornings, if Nick had already left for work, we’d take turns in making a strong pot of coffee and we’d sit together, finding endless variations on discussions about cracked nipples and baby poo. When the babies napped, we’d put them in the same Moses basket, and coo at the way they curled into one another like kittens.

  ‘Sounds like Nick’s back,’ Sarah said as the front door opened. ‘Hope he’s in a takeaway mood. Again.’

  We heard him put down his keys and briefcase, then listened to the tread of his feet up the stairs.

  ‘In here,’ Sarah called out.

  Nick walked into the spare room, then paused, leaning against the door jamb, arms folded across his chest. He looked between both of us and shook his head. ‘There was a time when finding my wife and another woman in bed – with their breasts out – would’ve ranked pretty high on my list of fantasies.’

  ‘Hold on to that fantasy tightly, honey,’ Sarah said, ‘because that’s all you’re going to have for the next few months.’ She unlatched Jacob, then passed him to Nick to wind.

  I watched Nick’s eyes brighten as he looked at his son. ‘How’s my boy? I missed you today. Are you hot in all those layers?’ He carefully removed Jacob’s tiny woollen hat, then pressed his nose to Jacob’s head, inhaling the sweet, milky scent, his eyes momentarily closing. ‘God,’ he sighed, ‘don’t you wish we could bottle that?’

  Sarah smiled warmly.

  Watching them I felt a stab of jealousy, which caught me by surprise. It wasn’t that I wanted Nick, or that I needed someone to help me wind Marley or change his nappies; it was that I wanted someone to share the special moments with – to help keep them alive and fresh by remembering them together, over and over throughout a lifetime.

  I wanted someone else in the world to love my little boy as fiercely as I did.

  Four weeks later, I padded along the beach with Marley strapped to my chest. It was the end of October – one of those beautifully crisp sunny days that lured me into thinking that summer hadn’t quite left us. It was Marley’s first visit to the sandbank, and it felt like an auspicious occasion. I’d stayed at Sarah and Nick’s for a fortnight, and although I wouldn’t admit it to them, I was struggling in my rented studio flat. Negotiating the steep and narrow staircase was tricky with a baby, but far worse with a buggy, and I felt my scar tissue pulling tight with each ascent.

  ‘Marley Berry,’ I said, as I climbed the steps on to the deck. ‘This is our beach hut.’

  He’d looked up at me, his navy-blue eyes wise and alert.

  I unlocked the door and we moved inside. The hut smelt exactly as I knew it would: of salt and books and damp wood. I threw the doors open to the afternoon sun. Autumn’s golden light cast deep shadows down to the shore, the sand glowing beneath its touch.

  I fed Marley sitting cross-legged on the sofa bed, looking out to sea. I told him the story of how I’d fallen in love with this stretch of beach for its rickety wooden huts, the sense of isolation, its big skies and wild seas. I whispered that I was looking forward to watching him fall in love with the place, too.

  When the light faded to dusk, the temperature plummeted and I pulled the beach hut doors to, sealing off a draught that snaked beneath them with an old beach towel. I lit the hob – breathing a sigh of relief that I’d connected the gas bottle correctly – and heated a fish pie that I’d brought with me. I burnt my mouth eating the bubbling creamy sauce – too hungry and impatient to wait for it to
cool; I’d learnt to eat fast, never quite knowing when Marley would wake next.

  Before bed, I dressed Marley warmly, then laid him beside me beneath a huddle of blankets, watching the moonlight dance over the sea. I bent my mouth to Marley’s ear and told him about all the adventures he and Jacob had to come – a lifetime of summers to run wild on the sandbank together. That night we fell asleep with the waves at our door.

  Looking back, part of me wants to shake that young, naïve version of myself who assumed that life was going to hand out nothing but sunshine and love. Yet another part of me wants to hug her, to tell her, You were absolutely right. That should’ve been your life!

  I thought the beach hut was going to be a sanctuary. A place tucked into the folds of sand, surrounded by horizon and water, next door to my best friend’s hut. Of course, I’d had no idea back then what was to come. If I had, I’d have walked away from the sandbank – left our beach hut open to the elements to be hammered by the winds and driving rain until it was nothing.

  12. SARAH

  DAY TWO, 4.30 P.M.

  Nick curses as he struggles to unbuckle a grey suitcase. It’s one of a set we were given as a wedding present by his eldest brother.

  ‘There’s a lock on the side,’ I tell him.

  Nick heaves the case over, his jaw tight. ‘It needs a code!’

  ‘One, two, three.’

  ‘Inspired.’ He turns the digits and then the case springs open, the metal buckle snapping against his knuckle. ‘Shit! Why do you even lock these bloody cases?’ he fires. ‘Bedding. You’re locking away bedding? Jesus Christ!’

  I ignore the remark. We’re both exhausted and quick to anger.

  We’re searching through the boxes in our garage, like the police suggested this morning, to determine whether anything is missing. We’ve already spoken to the tenants renting our house, and they’ve not seen Jacob. It is possible that he’s been in the garage unnoticed as we keep the spare key hooked beneath the bird feeder in our front garden, so it would have been easy enough for him to get in.

  These past few summers, when we’ve rented out our house, I’ve cleared it of our personal belongings – and also put away the good things, too, like the special tablecloth my mother gave me, and the bed linen that I don’t like to put in the tumble dryer – and stored everything here in the garage. Despite the effort involved, I find the process therapeutic, as it forces us to thin out our possessions. Minimalize. There’s less stuff in our lives.

  I step over a box of files that have tipped over. I gather them up from the concrete floor and place them back in the box. Beside it there’s a bundle of post for us. We have an agreement with the renters that they gather our post and place it in the garage each week for us to collect. In amongst the bills are two birthday cards addressed to Jacob. I open them both. The first has a US stamp and is from Nick’s brother. He’s enclosed a generous music voucher and instructed Jacob to, ‘Kill this on some new hip-hop tracks. Love Snoop-Teddy and the fam.’ I smile to myself as I think of Nick’s well-to-do doctor brother, who plays hip-hop with a thudding bass in his family sedan.

  I pass the card to Nick, then open the second envelope, recognizing my mother’s writing. A cheque flutters to the ground. The message reads, ‘To my darling Jacob on your seventeenth birthday. Pop this in your savings and spend it on something important to you when the time comes.’ I bend down to retrieve the cheque, my eyes widening.

  ‘Five hundred pounds!’ I turn the cheque to face Nick. ‘My mother has given Jacob five hundred pounds!’

  ‘Bit extravagant.’

  I raise an eyebrow. That’s exactly like my mother.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Nick asks as he sees me taking my phone from my pocket.

  ‘Calling her.’

  Nick lifts his hands. ‘Listen, Sarah—’

  She answers on the third ring.

  ‘Sarah. Any news?’

  ‘You sent Jacob five hundred pounds for his birthday?’

  ‘His birthday. Yes. There’s a card. I—’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a little over the top?’

  ‘Well, I … I just thought it’d be nice for him to add to his savings. You know, he could put it towards university, or something, perhaps.’

  ‘He doesn’t have savings. He’s seventeen.’

  There’s a pause.

  Then I realize: ‘This isn’t the first big cheque you’ve given him, is it?’

  ‘Well, no. I gave him the same amount for Christmas.’

  ‘Mum!’ I say, exasperated. ‘You could have told me!’

  ‘I assumed Jacob would have.’

  The comment feels like a barb – a reminder that my son and I don’t communicate. I’m seething, an anger that only my mother can ignite. ‘Giving him a chunk of money won’t buy his affection.’

  ‘Sarah!’ Nick is shaking his head at me. He extracts the phone from my grip, and says calmly into the receiver, ‘Barbara, Nick here. Listen, Sarah and I are both just extremely tired and anxious right now—’

  My mother will be speaking, as Nick is quiet. ‘Yes. Yes, you’re right. I know. I will, I will. Of course, of course. I know you were. Okay, yes, I’ll do that,’ he says with warmth in his voice. Sometimes I wonder if my mother likes everyone else in my family more than me.

  When Nick ends the call, he says, ‘At least we know where the cash in Jacob’s drawer likely came from.’

  ‘Yes, my bloody mother!’

  ‘She’s just trying to help. Give her a chance.’

  I purse my lips, but say nothing further as I continue checking through our belongings. A few minutes later I come across a large red shoebox that has Tights scrawled across it in marker pen. I glance over my shoulder and see Nick is busy looking through a black sports bag of Jacob’s, so I carefully open the lid. Inside there are a medley of items, but my fingers reach out to a small model of a horse, no longer than my little finger, cast from iron.

  It’s the first thing I ever stole.

  I remember the way my fingers closed around it, like I was trapping a bird. My sister and I were both obsessed with Black Beauty, especially the scene where the horse gallops along the beach, wild and muscular, and is eventually tamed by a young boy. We imagined ourselves as that boy, and we’d practise our taming techniques on garden birds and squirrels – with limited success.

  I’m not even sure who gave Maggie that tiny iron horse, but I do remember she wouldn’t be separated from it. The horse came to school in the pocket of her uniform, and it watched over her as she slept. It took on a mystical presence in our young lives. Even when Maggie grew out of make-believe, she still kept it in the centre of her windowsill. I wasn’t allowed to play with it, touch it, or even breathe too close to it. Those were the rules that older sisters enforced, and younger sisters obeyed.

  When Maggie died, her room became a museum overnight: her toys were untouched, her clothes remained hanging neatly in the wardrobe, the bed was always made. My mother would spend hours in Maggie’s bedroom with the door closed, while I sat on the landing, listening to her cry. I remember the taste of varnished wood when I’d touched my lips to Maggie’s door, whispering, ‘I’m right here, Mummy! I’m still alive!’

  One day, when my mother was downstairs, I went into Maggie’s room and plucked the iron horse from her windowsill. I took it back to my room and climbed into bed, playing with it beneath the covers. My mother – who didn’t notice when I went to school with unbrushed hair, or with a packed lunch empty of sandwiches – immediately noticed it was missing. She asked me point-blank whether I’d taken it, and I said, ‘No, Mummy. I haven’t.’ The lie bubbled in my throat a little, but it was easier than I thought. You just need to keep eye contact, not look away.

  There were lots of small thefts after that – nothing of my sister’s, just minor things like a rubber from the girl I sat next to at registration, and a plastic necklace from the school costume wardrobe. My desire to take things fizzled out in my late teens, an
d I think a few years went by when I stole nothing at all. Then, one afternoon, I was visiting Nick’s mother, Stella. She’d been a GP throughout her working life and, even now she was retired, she showed no signs of slowing down, her weeks filled with volunteer work, walking trips and various adult learning courses. She and Nick’s father lived in a town house filled with the relics of a large family – rooms still made up for when their sons’ families visited, photos on walls, a huge sagging sofa with a pile of books at its foot. Stella had told me more than once that she wasn’t a homemaker, as if even the idea of it was distasteful to her. There was often washing up cluttered in the sink, piles of old newspapers and mail hunkered on the sideboard – but I found I liked the lived-in feel of their home. It was only my house that needed to be spotless.

  When Stella was making tea, I wandered around her lounge and noticed a small placard perched on the windowsill. It read, A clean house is the sign of a wasted life.

  It was just a placard, it didn’t really mean anything at all, yet the words stung. Is that what she thought about me, my choices?

  I reached out and plucked it from its position, looking more closely. As I did so, I heard the clinking of china mugs as Nick’s mother returned carrying a tray of tea. I slipped the placard behind my back, pushing it out of sight into my jeans pocket.

  As I drank my tea, making small talk about Jacob’s schooling, my plans for redecorating our bathroom, I could feel the firm pressure of the placard against my skin. I had the opportunity to return it to the windowsill, yet there was something about the thrill of knowing it was right there in my pocket that stopped me. When I left Nick’s parents’ house that day, the wooden placard came with me. I felt oddly disappointed looking at it in my own home, so I shoved it at the back of a drawer in my Tights box, and didn’t look at it again.

  But, gradually, that box started to fill. Just small things. Nothing people would miss: a fountain pen from the snotty school receptionist’s desk. A tube of scented hand cream from the bathroom of one of Nick’s colleagues’ homes. An ornamental spoon from a display in the dining room of the home of someone I’ve long forgotten.