Missing, Presumed

by Susie Steiner

  ‘It has for Phillip Schofield,’ says Rollo.

  ‘I also need to set the record straight about Helena, who was our dear friend and who never did anything – never would have done anything – to hurt anyone. The lies about her have been astounding, with devastating consequences.’

  ‘What a heartthrob,’ says Rollo.

  ‘The start of his TV career,’ says Miriam. They are standing in front of the television in the pretence they are not stopping, but they both are mesmerised, like babies in front of their first cartoon.

  ‘Actually, I could see him presenting The One Show, or one of those nature programmes like Countryfile, that sort of thing,’ says Rollo.

  ‘Yes, but he’s so boring,’ says Miriam. ‘Look, even Holly’s suppressing a yawn – did you see that? Her mouth went all tight.’

  Rollo is looking at his mother. ‘I thought it was The Tedium That Dare Not Speak Its Name.’

  ‘I can admit it now.’

  ‘Well, I admire him for going out to bat for Edith and Helena.’

  ‘Darling Rollo,’ says Miriam, hugging him, then looking at her watch over his broad shoulder. ‘Oh gosh, I’m late for Julie.’

  ‘Need your fix,’ says Rollo, and she can hear the disapproval in his voice as she leaves the room in search of her handbag.

  Manon

  She strides the white expanse of King’s Cross, dancing a weave through the frowning throng with their bags and newspapers, paper cups of coffee too hot to sip, and every face, almost without exception, fixed downwards on a tiny screen in hand.

  Manon takes out her own phone and finds Harriet’s number. She will never avoid a person who has been bereaved; never put her own embarrassment before their loss, because she’s been on the receiving end; has seen people cross the street to sidestep the conversation when her mother died. And yet she fears Harriet’s state of mind.

  She strides over the newly laid honey pavements, inset with solar lights, to St Pancras to board the Thameslink to Cricklewood, the phone pressed to her ear.

  ‘Turns out I’m rich,’ Harriet says. ‘Elsie had twenty grand’s worth of granny bonds and she’s left it all to me.’

  ‘That’s something,’ says Manon. ‘How are you holding up?’

  ‘Oh, you know.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Where are you?’ asks Harriet.

  ‘London. I’ve come to check on Fly.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘When are you coming back?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno. There’s a lot of clearing out to do, y’know – her stuff, things to organise. Monday, probably.’

  In body, perhaps, but not in spirit. Manon knows what lies beneath; how people can seem normal and yet grief swirls about like an unseen tide working against the currents of life, the mourner wrong-footed by its undertow. The bereaved should wear signs, she thinks, saying: Grief in Progress – for at least a couple of years.

  The wind roughs her up on the walk down Cricklewood Lane to the Broadway, making the tops of the trees sway, noisy as high surf. She is meeting Fly at the Brazilian café where she’ll settle her bill with the owner, Neuza Lima.

  She steps in, relieved to be out of the tumble of the weather, her hair falling at last.

  ‘Hello, Neuza,’ she says.

  ‘Sergeant,’ she says, kissing Manon on each cheek.

  ‘How’s it been with Fly?’

  ‘He is lovely, lovely boy. Gentle boy.’

  Fly has pushed the door open, sniffing in that way he has, and Manon smiles broadly at him, though he is reserved – a wan hello and then he embraces Neuza, and Manon is surprised to feel put out.

  ‘Ola,’ he says to Neuza.

  ‘Olá, meu querido,’ says Neuza, hugging him to her broad bosom. ‘Bem-vindo, both of you! Take a seat – nice one in the window. I bring you, what? Coffee? Eggs?’

  The window is full of the buses rumbling up and down Cricklewood Broadway and sharp shadows in confusion with the gleam of the glass.

  ‘How’s things?’ asks Manon.

  He looks well. Neuza’s food has filled out his cheeks and made his eyes shine, yet they are full of sadness still.

  ‘Mum’s real sick,’ he says. ‘Can’t get out of bed, can’t keep anything down. Doctors say it won’t be long.’

  ‘Oh, Fly.’

  ‘She been offered a place in a hospice in Hampstead – Marie Curie place – when the pain gets too much, when I can’t …’

  ‘Do you know what you’ll do when that happens?’

  ‘I’ll need to stay with someone. Social worker says it has to be someone good, a good person, a grown-up – otherwise they put me in care.’

  He looks into Manon’s face, waiting. The room is filled with the sound of sputtering milk and Portuguese TV and Manon turns to look for Neuza, wondering where her coffee has got to.

  ‘Have you got a friend you could stay with – someone from school, maybe?’

  ‘Thought you was my friend,’ he says. She is grateful for the approach of her latte and his juice.

  ‘I live in Huntingdon, Fly. It’s really important you stay at your school, isn’t it?’

  ‘Obrigado,’ he says to Neuza.

  ‘O prazer é meu,’ she says, stroking his close-cropped hair.

  Manon takes Neuza to one side and asks if she might look in on Maureen Dent, send someone in to clean the flat.

  ‘My niece, she do it. Eight pound for hour.’

  ‘Fine,’ says Manon, frowning, wondering how long she can bankroll the Dent family. ‘Add it to my bill. Could he stay with you when … y’know, at the end?’

  Neuza makes a mournful grimace as if she’s smelt something unappetising. ‘Is no possible. Is lovely boy but my hasband, he no take in Fly. He not such a good man.’

  ‘OK, right, well, I’ll think of something. For now, we’ll keep going with the food tab and the cleaning and looking in on them, OK?’

  ‘Sem problemas,’ she says, and from her warm pat on her shoulder and her competent expression, Manon understands this to mean, ‘No problem’.

  At home again in the evening, in bed, she listens to the shouts of revellers across the river. A lorry rumbles down some arterial route and its vibrations make the light bulb rattle in its metal shade beside her head like the buzz of an insect. The phone lies on her stomach. She is worrying about Fly. She dials Alan’s number.

  ‘Hello,’ he says.

  ‘Are you in bed?’ she asks.

  ‘I sure am. How was your day?’

  ‘I went to visit Fly Dent in London. He … he’s only ten. His mum’s not got long.’

  ‘Poor boy,’ says Alan.

  ‘He wants to stay with me, once she goes into a hospice. He’s frightened of being taken into care and I don’t blame him. Don’t think care would do him any good, to be honest.’

  ‘Doesn’t he need to stay near to his school? Thought you said he was doing well.’

  ‘Well, yes, but he needs to be safe.’

  In the silence, she realises she wants Alan to persuade her – to do the right thing, to cast practicalities aside and take Fly in, out of goodness, unalloyed. It matters where his compass lies, to which side of hers.

  ‘It’s not like I don’t have the resources to look after him,’ she is saying, without conviction. ‘I’ve got a job, a flat. I’ve got money.’

  ‘It’d be a lot of disruption, for both of you,’ says Alan. ‘It’s not as if he’s your responsibility – not really. This is what the state is for.’

  ‘I s’pose,’ she says. ‘But don’t you have to take people on sometimes? Don’t you have to step up?’

  ‘In theory,’ he says.

  Perhaps, she thinks, grasping for hope, he is protecting their own trajectory – a chance, not to be scuppered by a ten-year-old lodger. Talk about passion killer. He doesn’t want to share her (maybe).

  ‘I went out with someone with a son once,’ he says. ‘Didn’t last long.’

  ‘That probably wasn’t the son’s
fault,’ she says, before she’s had time to think. She wants to divert the conversation away from this dark turn. ‘See, that’s the good thing about Internet dating – you can specify “no kids”.’

  ‘You’ve done Internet dating?’

  ‘Hasn’t everyone?’

  ‘Seems a bit desperate,’ he says.

  I am desperate, she thinks. Or I was. Why lie?

  ‘Didn’t you want to meet someone?’ she asks him.

  ‘Just rather do it naturally,’ he says.

  ‘What’s natural? Getting smashed and falling on someone in a bar?’

  ‘No, what’s natural is being questioned by the gorgeous Officer Dibble about a dead body,’ he says, sounding conciliatory.

  She smiles into the warmer silence.

  Then he says, ‘Did you tell the truth about your age then?’

  She sits up. ‘What’s wrong with my age?’

  ‘Well, thirty-nine – danger zone.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I didn’t mean … sorry,’ he says. ‘That was a stupid thing to say.’

  ‘What about your sperm, hobbling about on Zimmer frames?’

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘Woah! Calm down?’ she says. ‘I want to know. What do you mean by danger zone? Where are we heading? I mean, do we actually want the same things?’

  He sighs, as if he’s completely exhausted with her. ‘I can’t do this any more, Manon. I’m sorry.’

  She lies there. Stunned. Is that it then? All finished before it even began? What has she done, with her hot head so quick to take offence?

  She reaches out to turn on the police radio, hoping Control can take her back to a place of safety. Its low murmurings burble out towards her and she closes her eyes. She turns in the bed, curls into a foetal position, her hands clasped between her knees.

  She thinks there will always be a gap. A sad loss of a thing that cannot be had; a will-o’-the-wisp, yearned for but never grasped. A woman who cannot be delayed for long enough. Sudden Death Syndrome, the coroner recorded at her mother’s inquest, as if the word ‘syndrome’ made it comprehensible.

  One minute you are loved, and then you are not.

  Friday

  Manon

  She managed a dignified silence for the first twenty-four hours, told herself it was a blip that could come right if she just gave him some space; he would regret what he said, realising what a special thing they were letting go of.

  But nothing.

  No calls, no texts, and in his silence she has read equanimity. After a bad night, her emotions are as ragged as the Alps. Fitful sleep, wishful dreams, ended by waking to a vision of Helena Reed’s body hanging from the back of her bedroom door.

  Now, Manon is exhausted, slumped over her desk in MIT, glancing again and again at her phone, her collapsing face resting on the heel of one hand. So far she’s sent seven texts, smoked five cigarettes, and pranged the car. And it’s not yet 11 a.m.

  I’m sorry for what I said the other night. Let’s not leave it like this. M

  Listen, I know I can be difficult, I do know that. I just want to set things straight. M

  Hey Big Al, thinkin’ about ya.

  (She particularly regrets this one)

  Listen, even if you’re sure, let’s just talk it over, as I believe a song once said.

  No wonder you’ve never had a relationship last more than six months.

  It’s a fucking relief, to be honest. Cocksucker.

  Please don’t leave me.

  There is Kim at the front of the room, writing on a whiteboard in marker pen, while Manon examines Kim’s bottom. It clenches to a point at its base and then joins to two very ample, ocean-going thighs, not even the hint of a gap between them. My bottom’s probably as big as that, she thinks. A single person’s bottom. I’m about to be forty, I will never have a baby, and I have a bottom the size of— Don’t cry. Just don’t cry, not in the middle of MIT.

  ‘Dawn’s doing baby-led weaning, which is great because they just learn to feed themselves, and they don’t grow up with any food issues,’ Nigel is saying, as Davy hands Manon a coffee.

  ‘Kill me now,’ she mouths at Davy.

  She hears the trill of a text message alert and her heart flips over itself just as Kim says, ‘Ready, everyone?’ and turns to reveal her work on the whiteboard.

  Davy

  Now we’re getting somewhere, he thinks, reading Kim’s looping handwriting. Five weeks missing and we’ve finally got some detail on Edith Hind’s movements in the days running up to her disappearance.

  He casts a look at Manon, who is so slumped she’s practically laid her head on the table.

  ‘The new information is from Scope – the charity shop on the high street. They’ve come forward with CCTV footage showing Edith buying a whole heap of stuff on Friday sixteenth of December, the day before she disappeared.’

  ‘Such as?’ asks Davy.

  ‘Can’t say exactly. Footage is grainy and from the wrong angle to see what’s on the counter. We interviewed the old dear on the till but, to use official police parlance, she’s quite a few sandwiches short of a picnic.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that indicate she’s trying to disguise herself?’ Davy asks.

  ‘Not really,’ says Kim. ‘Will Carter says she was fond of buying clothes at charity shops – fitted with her environmental, y’know, what-not.’

  Davy glances at the board.

  Saturday 10 Dec: Visits Helena Reed’s flat in the early hours. Intercourse with HR.

  Sunday 11: Drives out to Deeping in G-Wiz, 3.20 p.m. ANPR return into Hunts at 10.45 p.m.

  Monday 12: Pays rent to landlord next door, who says she seemed ‘distracted’.

  Call to Tony Wright’s phone.

  Wednesday 14: Visits Helena Reed’s flat again. Intercourse with HR.

  Friday 16: Second call to Tony Wright’s phone. Shops at Scope on high st. Intercourse with Will Carter. He states she was ‘highly emotional’.

  Saturday 17: Christmas do at The Crown, Cambs. Sexual contact with Jason Farrer. Guided bus back to Huntingdon with HR.

  ‘Well, you know the rest from here,’ Kim is saying.

  ‘Fuck,’ Manon blurts, so the department, Davy included, turns to look at her. Her eyes brim with tears.

  ‘Good to know I had everyone’s attention,’ says Kim.

  Manon

  Her screen reads Alan P – so rare to see his name on her mobile phone – and might this be the volte-face she’s been waiting for? Might it be that as she lands, he flies down also, coming to a graceful stop beside her? Might this be the moment he tells her he misses her, that he wants them to be properly together, on week nights and everything?

  I’m sorry, Manon. I have enjoyed our time together, but I’m looking for something exceptional.

  In her haste to leave the room, all eyes staring at her, she trips over a wastepaper basket and slams into the sharp corner of a desk, wounding her thigh.

  ‘Argh,’ she yelps, rubbing her leg and stumbling to gather her phones, her bag, her coat from the back of her swivel chair, knowing only that she must make for the double doors.

  Down the stairs, not knowing where she’s going or why, she tells herself she definitely won’t be responding to that one. There’s an end to it. That message, she thinks, lighting a cigarette on the station steps, so characteristically pinched and formal. Her only response must be an arctic silence, laced with disappointment.

  Soon, when the cigarette has been sucked down to its orange stump, she’s digging into her bag, a frenzy of fingers and thumbs, through furious tears which fall freely all over the little screen.

  You’ll have a long fucking wait then, dick wipe cock sucking shit for brains.

  The buzzer goes and she lifts herself from the bed. The room – the whole flat – is in darkness and she switches on the lights as she makes her way to the handset beside the front door.

  ‘Halloooo!’ says Bryony’s voice. ‘We’re here to take you
out.’

  Manon doesn’t reply, but presses the button to let them in. She leaves the door open and sits on the sofa, pulling a blanket around her shoulders as Bryony and Davy clatter in, on a wave of cold air from outside.

  ‘Listen, he’s a prick,’ says Bryony, ‘top totty like you.’

  ‘He might still change his mind,’ says Davy, who seems back to his old self.

  ‘Davy,’ says Bryony. ‘Let’s not give the patient false hope.’

  ‘Why do none of my relationships work out?’ says Manon.

  ‘None of mine have either,’ says Bryony. ‘I just happen to have married the latest one.’

  ‘That tosser’s left a space for someone better, that’s what I think,’ says Davy.

  ‘I love you, Davy,’ says Manon.

  ‘Come on,’ says Bryony. ‘You need a drink. To Cromwell’s!’

  ‘Urgh, please. Can’t we just stay here and watch Failure to Launch?’

  ‘Nope, and we are not taking you wrapped in a blanket,’ says Bryony, pushing Manon on the shoulder, which fells her to the sofa like a chopped tree. ‘Go and get your glad rags on.’

  ‘I’ll have a quick tidy-up,’ says Davy. ‘Where are your Marigolds?’

  Bryony puts the Scissor Sisters on the stereo and leads Manon into the bedroom.

  ‘Smells like something died in here,’ she says. ‘Have you been lying on the bed crying and farting?’

  Manon nods.

  Bryony makes the bed and opens a window, and they select an outfit – a black tunic dress, tights, and knee-high boots – after which Bryony sits Manon down on a chair to do her makeup. Davy is clattering about in the kitchen, putting away dishes from the sounds of it. Manon has her eyes closed and feels the soft push and tickle of an eyeshadow brush, the sweet scent of Bryony’s breath, and her hand on her forehead.