by Fiona Barton
There’d been a hint of things to come with the terrible twos—a brief, hellish period of daily tantrums while they were still living with her parents—followed by the continuous questions of the frighteningly bright five-year-old Emma and the pleasure of helping her discover the world of books.
Jude thought she knew her daughter, but the mercurial change in her when she hit her teens was a revelation. Emma blossomed and grew thorns in what felt like a matter of weeks. All at the worst time, with Jude’s affair with Will in its infancy.
He’d been great about it when there was that awful business with Darrell Moore. That had knocked Jude sideways. Em was still thirteen, just a child.
She’d wanted to tell the police about Darrell. “He’s practically a pedophile,” she’d told Will, but he had counseled against it, claiming it would be too much for Emma. Always thinking of Emma.
And she knew there would be too many questions. And once questions started . . .
Anyway, she’d found out about it before Emma could ruin her life with that sleazebag.
Will was a godsend that summer of 1984, Jude thought. Those were the good times. Brief, but good. Emma really came out of her shell.
She remembered the care Will had taken of her and Emma, always there for them, making them laugh, making things right. Jude had allowed herself to believe once more that Will was the one, their future, but it had all gone wrong, somehow. Not somehow. Because of Emma.
The switch back to glowering insolence had come practically overnight with her daughter’s moods swinging like a wrecking ball in the house.
Emma had retreated to her room, posting “Keep Out” on the door and barely speaking unless forced to. She lost interest in everything—except food. She took all her meals in her room, piling her plate high and stuffing herself, Jude remembered. She put on so much weight. Puppy fat, Jude had called it. But it was like it was deliberate. Sabotaging herself.
Her withdrawal had become almost total. It was a bit like Barbara. She’d gone all quiet and wouldn’t say what was wrong. Will had said it was creepy and had encouraged Jude to push Barbara to find another place.
But they couldn’t do that to a fourteen-year-old. They’d had to wait nearly two years, until she was sixteen. And in that time, Jude had moved from being scared at the change in her daughter to being angry, seeing her behavior as selfish and cynical. “I don’t deserve to be treated like this,” she told Will. “I have every right to be happy.”
And Will agreed, telling her there was no need to take it too seriously.
“It’s just part of growing up, Jude,” he’d said. “She’s testing you. It’s what adolescents do. Emma will grow out of it. We need to give her space.”
So they spent less and less time in the house, going out to the theater and dinner and leaving the problem at home. The months passed and Jude remembered to feel guilty occasionally—when she heard Emma crying at night—but her prickly child would not allow herself to be comforted or loved. She’d stopped the binge eating, at least, but she continued to shove Jude away with her blank indifference, gradually blunting her affection.
And Will was always there as a shoulder to cry on. “She’s just being a cow today. Probably got her period. Ignore it, Jude,” he’d say and pull her into bed. Jude had been happy to pour all her energies into the good part of her life: Will.
Anyone would have done the same, wouldn’t they?
But things had got much worse after they decided to get married. Well, she’d decided and Will had agreed in a moment of grand passion. “Time I settled down,” he’d said as they shared a postcoital cigarette. Hardly the romantic declaration she’d hoped for, but it would do.
She’d been very nervous about telling Emma. She remembered the silence in the room when she broke the news. “He makes me very happy,” she’d said. Not like you, said the hum in her head.
The news had ignited something in her daughter and the ugly silences had been replaced by slamming doors and histrionic explosions. The insolence had become vocal and challenging. Emma had started being openly rude to Will, accusing him of treating women like objects, of being a male chauvinist pig, making obscene grunting noises when he walked into the room.
Will had laughed off the insults and accusations at first, but Jude could see this new Emma made him very uneasy. As if he was dealing with an unexploded bomb.
Everything was souring. She and Will were at each other’s throats, hissing arguments in the living room so Emma couldn’t hear them, and Will had started going absent for days at a time and then turning up as though nothing had happened. When he presented her with the choice “Me or Emma,” she’d been appalled, but he explained everything so well. “It would be best for Emma. Removing her from the situation she finds so challenging will give her a chance to mature,” he said. And it made sense when he said it. Of course it had been Jude who’d had to deliver the message to her daughter.
“We think you ought to go and live with Granny and Grandpa for a bit, Emma,” she’d said. “We all need a break from this situation. You do see, don’t you? We can’t go on like this.”
“But this is my home,” Emma had said. “Why are you throwing me out? Is this his idea?”
“No. Well, I agree with him,” Jude had said. And when her daughter smiled that knowing smile, she’d lost her temper. “You’ve forced us to do this,” Jude had shouted. “You’re driving Will away. He won’t stay if he has to deal with you anymore.
“I can’t let you ruin my life. You were a terrible mistake from the start.”
She could still see Emma’s face. White with shock.
FIFTY-TWO
Emma
SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 2012
Harry said to meet at the usual place. She knew straightaway that something was up when I rang but didn’t ask any questions. She’s good like that. Instead, she said: “Come on, Em, we’ll go and sit in the park and you can tell me your news.”
I should see her more, but we are both busy. Well, that’s what I tell myself, but I know I keep away because she is part of the past and I have to work to keep that separate from my present. She’s met Paul a couple of times, but I made sure they were never on their own. Because she knows things and I don’t want her talking out of turn.
Poor Harry, it’s not her fault and I think she feels hurt when I don’t respond to her texts sometimes. Maybe it would be kinder to just cut her off completely. But I can’t. On days like today, she is the only one I want to see. Paul wanted me to talk to Jude. But I can’t. Not after what she said. I can feel her closing the door on me again.
• • •
I get off the tube and walk to the little café Harry likes in Hyde Park, near the lake. She can walk there from home and it’s a treat for me to sit outside and feel the sun on my face.
Paul thinks I am at the doctor’s. He’s going to ring my mobile in about thirty minutes and I’ll have to lie about what Dr. Gorgeous thinks. It’s okay. I know what I’m going to say. I’ve practiced on the tube.
I’m early so I read Kate Waters’s story in the paper again. The story is long now; it’s growing details and there are more people involved, talking and guessing about what happened. But at the center is little Alice Irving. There’s only one picture ever used of her, and it is so blurry and old it is hard to make out. But there is a photo of Angela Irving, the mother, standing in our garden in Howard Street.
I feel the truth fluttering so close. They must see it. Surely.
I’m about to ring Kate Waters again to see what she suspects, but I see Harry coming through the park. I’ll do it later.
She hugs me tightly, then pushes me back so she can have a good look at me.
“God, Harry,” I say. “I’m fine.”
But we both know she knows I’m not. Harry crashes down into a seat, swinging a vast handbag onto the chair next to her. “Yeah
, yeah,” she says. “You look lovely, by the way.”
“I look like hell. I’m supposed to be at the doctor’s,” I say, and she raises her eyebrows.
“Why aren’t you?” she says.
“Don’t feel like it,” I say and pick up the laminated menu. “Anyway, if Paul rings, I’ll have to lie. Okay? Oh, don’t look like that. You’ve done worse.”
She laughs and pulls the menu out of my hand. “Actually, I was supposed to go last week and ducked out, so I won’t grass you up.”
“What was yours for?” I ask.
Harry pulls a face. “Lump in my breast. Well, not even a lump really.”
“You idiot,” I say. “Go. Make another appointment.”
“Yes, yes. Okay. I’ll do it tomorrow. What do you want to drink?”
I watch her disappear into the café and thank God for her.
• • •
It was Harry who finally made me take stock of my shambles of a life. It was the summer of 1994 and she breezed into the pub where I was working. Pulling pints, defrosting shepherd’s pies, and treading water.
“Emma!” she called when she spotted me bringing a tray of food to the next table. It was so weird seeing her again. It had been years and all the context had gone so she was familiar but a stranger—like someone famous you spot in the street and can’t quite place for a moment.
And Harry didn’t look like the best friend I’d last seen.
This Harry was glamorous in her tailored trousers and jacket, manicured nails, straightened hair, and eyes hidden by outsize sunglasses.
And I suppose I didn’t look like her best friend anymore. I’d grown taller, my hair was bleached blond and cropped short, and I was stick thin. In photographs of myself from that period, I looked like a heroin addict.
“Hello, Emma,” she said.
I had sort of expected her to turn up one day. Secretly hoped, I suppose. I missed her when I let myself think about my previous life. Little things would set me off: a song on the radio we used to sing together, a phrase she used to use, and I’d be stopped in my tracks. I’d be a teenager again. Just for a moment. Then I’d get back on with scraping greasy plates or pulling pints.
It was hard seeing her and remembering how close we’d been once. I held myself back from her, as if she was some sort of threat.
“Hello, Harry,” I said. “Can’t stop, sorry. Got a kitchen full of orders.”
She pushed her sunglasses onto her head and looked at me hard.
“No problem. I’ll wait,” she said.
Later, when I sat with her in the park, in this park, cans of cider and bags of chips in our hands, like the old days, I started thinking she was my wake-up call.
She knew I’d gone to live with my grandparents, but I’d left without saying good-bye to her and she was still furious about being deserted when we finally met again. It was only when I told her I’d been thrown out by Will and Jude that she calmed down. That day in the park, I told her I’d left school as soon as I could because I didn’t want to be tied down.
“I chose freedom instead of a degree and a mortgage,” I boasted. “I wanted to do what I liked and go where I wanted.”
Harry had given me another one of her looks and said: “Then why aren’t you out there, conquering the world, Emma?”
The cider and nostalgia had lowered my defenses and I started to cry. Fat tears splashed on my chips.
In that moment, I longed, physically longed, to be me again. The girl I used to be.
Harry put her arms round me and held me without speaking.
“Because I am nothing,” I managed to say.
“Not to me,” she said. And waited.
And I started to tell her how I really felt.
“Jude used to tell me I could be anyone,” I said. “When I was little. But the reality is, I’m no one.”
The years of pub work and waitressing in the winter, changing beds and cleaning loos in the summer, dirty sheets, dirty strangers, drifting from job to job, had worn me down.
“I can’t get started, Harry, that’s the problem. I feel like I’m in a thick fog most of the time. I can’t make out what’s ahead. I’m too scared to move forwards. It might be worse than this. I keep telling myself: Stay where you are. This is the safest place to be.”
“What happened to you?” she said.
“There was a baby,” I said.
“Oh, Em,” she said.
“I couldn’t tell you—or anyone. I did a terrible thing.”
She was silent again.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m sure it was the right thing to do at the time.”
I remember being startled at the remark. How could it be the right thing to do? But then I realized she thought I was talking about having an abortion, and for a moment I almost corrected her mistake. But the relief that I didn’t have to explain further stopped me.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” she said when I quieted. I rested my head on her shoulder and dreamed a future.
“I’m thinking about going to university, Harry,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “You’ll need A Levels, but with your huge brain . . .”
“I’m not sure what’s left of it,” I said and she squeezed my hand.
“Loads,” she said. “So . . . ?”
“I once thought I’d apply to do evening classes.”
“Sounds like a plan, Emma.”
“Yes, I’ll be a schoolgirl again,” and I laughed and there was something light in my head I hadn’t felt for a long time.
• • •
But there is nothing light in my head now. The coffee is going cold as I struggle to tell Harry everything and nothing.
I know she’ll bring up Alice Irving—the Howard Street connection is irresistible.
“What about this baby Alice story?” she says. “We used to sit in your garden, didn’t we? That last summer before you went to your grandma’s. You had deck chairs, didn’t you? Do you remember? We used to argue over who got the yellow one.”
“I think the baby in Howard Street is mine,” I say. “I’m having dreams about it.” And she looks at me hard while she’s thinking what to say.
“It isn’t, Emma,” she says slowly, as if to a child. “It is Alice Irving. The police tests show that. You mustn’t talk like this. I can see that this story has really upset you, but don’t you think it’s because of your abortion? It’s dragged up all those feelings you had at the time. It’s completely normal. It was a terrible thing to cope with. Have you told Paul?”
I shake my head.
“Well, maybe you should. He loves you, Emma. He’ll understand.”
I nod.
“But you have got to stop saying this is your baby. People are not going to believe you if you say these things. Okay?”
I nod again. She’s right. I’ll keep quiet until people find out for themselves.
FIFTY-THREE
Angela
SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 2012
Asda was heaving with people throwing bags of Monster Munch into trolleys and screaming at their offspring.
“Kylie, put that down,” the woman in a Southampton football shirt shouted behind her in the queue for the till and Angela ducked her head against the noise.
“Sorry, love,” the woman said. “But the little bleeders need telling, don’t they?”
Angela mimed that she had forgotten something, pretending to search through her trolley, and walked away from the queue. She carried on out of the supermarket and sat in the car with her eyes closed and her hands over her ears. Her sensitivity to noise had become unbearable since Alice had been found. She found everything unbearable, really. She’d thought it would be easier, knowing where her baby was after all those years, but it wasn’t. It was a piece in a long-aband
oned jigsaw but there was still no picture, still no answers.
She sat on until it began to rain, then started the car and set off for home. When she drew up in the drive feeling cold to her bones, she didn’t remember whole sections of the journey. Nick came out to get the bags of shopping from the boot. And she remembered her discarded trolley in the supermarket.
“I’m sorry,” she said when he opened the car door. “I didn’t get anything. I couldn’t bear it in there. Everyone was shouting . . .”
He put his arm round her and shepherded her to safety.
“I’ll go later,” he said. “Give me your list.”
Angela watched the television without seeing anything. Nick had been watching sports, but the images of Howard Street, the mud, and the flapping tape played over and over in her head.
“It’s not getting any better,” she said when he sat down beside her.
“Louise will be here in a minute. I’ve given her a call.”
“You shouldn’t have rung her. She’s got her own life. She can’t keep running round here.”
“She wants to come. She’s worried about you. We all are.”
• • •
Louise came round the living room door cautiously, as if afraid to wake her, and Angela went straight into “Mum mode,” jumping out of her chair to greet her daughter and offer tea. “Or a sandwich? Have you eaten, love? You need to eat properly.”
Her daughter gave her a big hug, not wanting to let go.
“I’m fine, Mum. I’m a big girl now. I don’t need you to feed me anymore,” she said. “The question is, are you eating properly? Dad says you are leaving your food.”
“I haven’t got much of an appetite,” Angela admitted.
“Mind you, if Dad was cooking for me, I’d lose mine,” Louise said, and both smiled. “Sausage and mash every night, I expect. I’ve brought humanitarian supplies—a lamb casserole,” she said. “Dad’s put it in the kitchen.”
