by Louise Beech
I headed across the landing to her room, collecting the dreaded diabetes box from the shelf by her door. In only five days it had become second nature to pick it up but I imagined it would be many months more until I didn’t feel utterly sick with it in my hands.
‘Listen, Jake, can I do her finger prick while she’s talking to you? It might distract her.’
‘Of course.’ He seemed pleased to have a role in her care.
I opened her door but she wasn’t there. The bed was empty; its covers were piled up like snow. Her pillow had fallen in what looked like haste, revealing the place where books used to be. I’d tried every night to tuck one back under her head and she’d say, ‘Dickhead.’ How could I punish her for such language – didn’t I use it every day now?
‘She’s not here,’ I said to Jake, confused.
‘She’ll be watching TV.’
‘Maybe.’ I pulled the covers back, looked underneath. I checked the wardrobe, then went onto the landing again, called, ‘Rose! Come on – don’t play about! Where are you hiding?’
‘Don’t panic, she’ll be downstairs,’ said Jake.
Before diabetes I’d not have panicked – I’d have known she’d be quietly reading in the book nook or lying on the floor in front of the TV. But the house was too quiet, my skin too prickled with goose bumps.
‘Are you still there?’ asked Jake.
‘Yes.’ I headed downstairs, looked in the dining room and then the front room where the big TV is. Both empty. In the kitchen our pumpkin still mocked me, its sceptical eyes a reminder of Rose’s yesterday. I’d bin it today. I had no idea why I’d left it so long. The candle; I’d keep the candle. My thoughts scattered. Unreasonable.
‘Is she there?’ asked Jake.
‘No, she’s not.’ I opened the back door and looked at our long garden covered in gilt-edged leaves, conkers and dead twigs, surrounded by browning bushes and a fence that needed painting. ‘Where the hell is she?’
‘Calm down and think about it. She’ll be somewhere. She’s only nine – how far can she have gone?’
‘But I don’t know when she went missing,’ I said. ‘Could’ve been hours before I woke.’ I paused. ‘I’m supposed to be looking for a book, not our daughter.’
‘What do you mean?’
I shook my head. ‘No, nothing. I mislaid a book, that’s all.’
Find the book. After that dream I’d half-heartedly browsed the shelf in the book nook, just in case, imagining something might jump out at me and give sensible meaning to the phrase that now haunted me. But nothing had and now real things were lost – Rose.
‘I’m going to be sick,’ I said.
‘Look in the cupboards, places she might hide for a joke.’
I searched around the house while Jake continued to reassure me. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘She’s never done anything like this before.’
‘But you don’t know her,’ I said.
‘Of course I do.’ He was hurt.
‘No, I mean you don’t know her now. She isn’t the same girl anymore.’
‘For God’s sake, she can’t have changed completely in just a week. She’s just a little girl and you talk like you hate her!’
‘How can you say that?’
Jake didn’t speak.
‘You’re not here,’ I said. ‘You don’t know.’
‘I can’t help that,’ he whispered.
‘Yes, you can,’ I said. ‘You chose something that takes you away from us. No one made you go.’ Jake’s wordlessness, his apparent indifference, fired me further. ‘It’s not my fucking fault – it’s yours!’ And again I ended our call abruptly and threw my phone onto the table.
There was no time to feel bad about it – Rose was missing.
Where would she go? What did she like? I’d no clue anymore.
I ran outside, not caring that I was still wearing a sheer nighty. Rows of green wheelie bins on the path. Was it green bin day? I should put ours out. Not now, not now. Find Rose. Find the book. I ran up and down the path, up and down the street, up and down our path again.
‘Rose!’ I cried. ‘Please, come out if you’re there!’
April emerged from the overgrown bush that separates our gardens, a huge patchwork shopping bag over one arm and comfy shoes on her feet. She looked up and down at my see-through attire.
‘Did you see Rose?’ I begged her.
‘Out here?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know!’ I wanted to sit on the cold path and put my head in my hands. ‘Did she pass your window?’
‘No, not that I noticed.’
‘She’s gone,’ I cried.
‘Oh dear. Shall I help look? Should I knock on Winnie’s door?’
‘Yes, yes, do that,’ I begged. Rose often went to Winnie’s house because she gave sweets out to the kids in the street. Now she’d have to miss out.
‘I’ll go look in the house again,’ I said. ‘Ring around her friends, the school.’ My voice reached a crescendo. ‘Should I call the police?’
‘No, not yet, lovey.’ April touched my arm. ‘They won’t bother unless it’s been a few hours. Little ’uns tend to be just hiding somewhere or playing mischief. They always turn up, and Rose will. Let me knock on a few doors and then bring us some lemon biscuits.’
Rose wasn’t a toddler, she was nine. She knew where we lived and how to cross a road and to avoid strangers. She knew our number so could call home. I decided I was going to buy her a basic mobile phone. I’d resisted until then, the old-fashioned part of me sure a nine-year-old didn’t need one. But it was different now; she was ill – that was the only way to describe it. Her body was weaker than usual, her mind a mess, and her emotions in turmoil.
What if she was unconscious somewhere? What if she’d collapsed?
I was rooted to the spot.
April said, ‘Look inside and let me check the street.’ I’d explained to her a few days earlier about the diabetes. She’d looked upset and I was touched. She had grown-up daughters who didn’t visit very often, grandchildren I knew she hardly saw, and a husband who’d died years earlier.
‘The green bins,’ I said, my mind a waterfall of worried thoughts.
I ran and opened every one, wincing at the rotten rubbish odour.
‘Natalie!’ cried April. ‘Stop, lovey! She won’t have gone in there!’
I kicked one over and went back inside, stood in the middle of the kitchen. At the cluttered table, I saw Rose yesterday, eating Coco Pops amidst my unwashed supper pots and piles of unread newspapers. I’d said as kindly as I could that she shouldn’t be having those now, they were too sugary – Bran Flakes would be better. So she’d eaten them faster, faster, faster, until brown milk had dripped down her chin and chocolatey chips stuck to her cheek like fat beauty spots, and I’d pulled away the bowl. When she tried to escape before I’d got the injection, I grabbed her arm, too roughly, and she turned on me, said she’d ring ‘socialist services’.
Who could blame her?
‘Rose!’ I screamed now.
I searched the house again, looking in the airing cupboard and my wardrobe. Then I called Hannah’s mum, and Jade’s. Both women said their daughters had gone off to school as usual, no sign of Rose, but that they’d ring me immediately if she turned up there. Hannah’s mum paused and added, ‘I’m so sorry to hear about Rose. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you.’
I called Rose’s school, in case she’d woken and decided to head there without telling me, but the headmistress, Mrs White, assured me she’d not been registered that morning, and promised to call should she turn up.
‘Rose!’ I screamed again.
Find the book.
The words appeared in my head, like soldiers on the horizon, just as in the hospital when I’d gripped the bed end while hearing, You’re going to be picked up. I didn’t think these phrases: they marched into my head.
A knock on the front door and I rushed to it, heart expectant and arms ready for Rose. Apri
l stood on the step with a biscuit tin. She’d made an effort to apply blue mascara but most of it had clogged in the corner of her eye.
‘Well?’ I willed her to have good news.
‘I couldn’t find her.’ She came into the hall, utilising my dilemma and gaining access to a house she’d previously tried to enter with promises of gossip and homemade wares.
‘Shit.’ I didn’t think I could bear another minute of worry.
April followed me into the kitchen, sniffed at what I knew was the stench of old food and pursed her lips at the overflowing sink, as though my slovenliness was the cause of Rose’s disappearance. I’d fallen into lazy habits, leaving pots in the sink for days and forgetting to turn taps off, so water flowed down kitchen cupboards. I had found Rose one afternoon watching my forgotten froth and whispering softly. I don’t even think she could see the water and she’d barely responded when I moved her upstairs.
‘Let’s think where she might be,’ said April, putting her tin on the table.
‘She needs her insulin,’ I said. ‘She’ll get ill without it.’
‘When did she last have some?’
‘After supper last night. She has four shots a day, with breakfast, lunch, tea and supper.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be okay for a few hours more.’ April opened her tin. ‘Now why don’t you put the kettle on and I’ll wash your pots and we can have a nice biscuit and think where else she’ll be.’
‘I can’t sit around eating biscuits!’ I cried. ‘I’ve got to find her.’
‘You should stay here in case she comes home,’ said April. ‘My Jenny went missing when she was about ten. I bit off most of my nails with worry. Then she walked in bold as you like, said she’d been “picking daisies with Mary in the next street.” Rose will turn up.’
‘It’s not the same,’ I snapped. ‘Your daughter wasn’t diabetic. What if she’s hurt somewhere? What if she fell over and she’s injured under a bush or something and it gets colder. She’s not just any child.’
‘I know,’ said April. ‘She’s your child.’
‘No, I mean she’s vulnerable.’
April found a clean plate in my cupboard and put five biscuits on it. ‘Let’s wait ten minutes. She’ll come home when she’s hungry and she can have one of these. I put real lemon in them, you know.’
‘She can’t eat fucking biscuits!’ I grabbed the plate, spilling the biscuits all over my gravy-stained work surface.
She barely blinked at my outburst. Suddenly I felt warmth towards her, bad for ruining her lemony bakes.
‘Have you definitely checked everywhere?’ she asked, practical, unmovable, solid: just what I needed.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Cupboards? Wardrobes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Garden? Shed?’
‘Yes.’ I stopped. ‘Well, not the shed.’
‘Why not, lovey?’
‘We never use it. It’s just full of junk and spiders. Rose hates spiders. She’d never go in there and besides she can’t reach the bolt.’
‘Can’t hurt to check,’ said April.
She was right. So I walked the length of our skinny garden, gold leaves sticking to my slippers and breath smoky in the chill air. Our wooden shed hid behind a holly tree, as though embarrassed. Every winter Jake patched it up, hoping to get another year out of it. Wood overlapped wood, nails stuck out like bookmarks, and the roof sank at the back where wet leaves from April’s oak tree had weighed it down over the years. I looked towards the house; April stood on the step.
One week over, still no ship.
‘What?’ I called.
‘Didn’t say anything, lovey,’ she said.
I reached for the shed’s bolt and realised it had been pulled back already; the door swung open easily with a little shove. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. Fustiness and the smell of doors-closed-too-long hit my nostrils first. Then I saw her – at the back, on a pile of old carpet. Rose. Curled up, shivering, dressed only in a yellow onesie. Relief rendered me briefly speechless.
I knelt down beside her. ‘What on earth are you doing? You must be absolutely frozen, you silly girl.’
She elbowed me away. The whites of her eyes shone like a warning in the darkness. ‘I’m all right!’ she hissed. ‘I’m just waiting.’
April called from the house, asked if all was well, and I shouted back that Rose was there, we’d just be a moment.
‘What do you mean you’re waiting?’ I tried to help her up. ‘It’s past breakfast time. You must be starving.’
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘I’m waiting for him! He told me to come here!’
‘Who did?’ I demanded.
I asked who, but didn’t I already know?
‘He comes to see me in the dark,’ she whispered. ‘He smells kind of … you know, like the fish and chips at Hornsea? He said last night that he’d meet me in here, near the boxes.’ She had pushed four cardboard boxes together as if to form a barricade on each side. But she’d let me in. I loved that she was talking to me again, so freely, so excitedly. I didn’t care how cold it was. It was just us two, sharing stories once more, like in the book nook. ‘You know him anyways so stop being silly. It’s the man in the brown suit. He said he saw you at the hospital.’
I sat back on my heels. If I had imagined the familiar stranger – his whiskers against my cheek – then how was he inside Rose’s head too?
‘He might not come if you’re here,’ Rose said, and the moment was over. She looked away, crossed her arms, difficult again.
I looked back at the shed door swinging back and forth on rusty hinges and realised something. ‘How did you reach the bolt?’
‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘He said he’d undo it for me.’
I shivered. Beyond the open door soft light fell hard; November’s morning haze gave the grass a contrasting sharpness, its overgrown blades uneven, angry. I’d meant to cut it one last time in October; but winter had crept up on me like old age.
‘Rose.’ I grabbed her small hands. ‘Your fingers are blue and you haven’t eaten since yesterday. I’m sure the man in the brown suit would want you to come inside.’
‘You think I’m stupid.’
I shook my head. ‘Not at all.’ I realised she had something hidden inside her onesie. It was book-shaped. I smiled. Was she going to start reading again?
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
She crossed her arms over it, ignored me.
‘Did you take that book I said you couldn’t read?’ I asked.
‘You get all the best books,’ she snapped.
‘Give it to me.’
‘No.’
‘Now,’ I demanded.
‘He said you’d want it.’
‘Who?’
I heard my phone ringing on the table and called to April to get it for me.
‘Give me the book,’ I said, sweeping away cobwebs that dangled by her hair, ‘and I’ll make you anything you want for breakfast.’
‘Anything at all?’
‘The book,’ I said. My knees were damp from the rotten floor.
She pulled it out and handed it over with a scowl.
April shouted from the back doorstep. ‘It’s Jake on the phone!’
‘Dad!’ cried Rose, leaping to her feet.
This man was more important to her than the nameless one who appeared in the dark; she pushed me aside and raced back to the house. I called up the garden for April to let Rose tell her father she was okay.
Then I looked at the book.
It wasn’t the one full of bad words.
Bound in leather as dark as rosewood, cracked like it’d been sitting too long in the sun, it was smooth but in my hands it felt as heavy as if it had contained every story written. Where had she found it?
One of the boxes was open. Dust and damp patches and stains covered the cardboard, like the land and seas on a map. I looked inside. On top were birthday cards bound with a rubber band.
I opened one; my handwriting filled a page, each different-coloured letter bigger than the one before. I remembered how I’d felt I must fill in every bit of space when I was little. I rummaged further; found familiar photos of Christmas and school days, and strange items like an envelope of old stamps, a weatherworn wallet, and a lock of hair tied with parcel string.
I realised it was the box I’d been given when my grandma died seven years earlier. Too sad to look inside, I’d asked Jake to hide it somewhere, anywhere, I hadn’t cared where.
I looked again at the book.
Two thick ribbons tied in multiple knots meant the pages were impossible to open. I fiddled a little, then gave up and turned it over carefully, like I’d just found a prize. The only thing differentiating the back from the front was in the bottom right corner – two inky initials: C.A.
Colin Armitage.
I smiled.
Find the book.
I knew I had.
5
LOST-AT-SEA DAUGHTER
One more week. Nothing seen.
K.C.
After Rose handed over the book I put it in my bedside table drawer, next to a photo of Jake in his uniform and some rosary beads my grandmother left me. During the night, after exhausting finger-prick tests, I would open the drawer and put one hand on the soft leather. In the dark, as though instinct would guide me, I began trying to tackle the knots.
There was no time during the day because after the morning in the shed, I lost Rose again.
She didn’t leave the house this time, just me. She wouldn’t acknowledge me for the dreaded finger-prick test but her hands spoke clearly; I will not submit, they said. She sat on them, refusing to let me pierce her finger ends. Again I cajoled. I whispered promises of pet rabbits and trips to theme parks. I pleaded, got angry, calmed down, said sorry, and then began all over again. My life was a series of circles, spinning faster, faster.
‘Do you think I want to do this?’ I said to Rose. ‘I hate it too, but I have to do it. If we just do it quickly, then it’s done.’
Somehow I managed. I pulled her hands from under her bottom as firmly as I dared without causing more bruises, and did what I had to. Prick, pain, blood. Harvest the crimson flow onto the strip. Read black numerical digits on the machine; usually still high enough to cause concern but dropping slowly, like a plane losing altitude. Then a meal or snack and an injection, the dose of insulin depending on how her blood sugar readings were doing.
