Grace Is Gone

by Emily Elgar

  “What’s happened, Mum? What is it?”

  She sits gently on the edge of my bed, runs her bottom lip through her teeth, before she tells me that a navy dress has been found by the police, washed up on the rocks at the Point. I used to have a navy dress with little silver stars on it when I was a teenager. I hadn’t known Mum had kept it and given it to Grace until I saw her wearing it one day. It had become Grace’s favorite. Could she have been wearing it when she was taken?

  Grace was terrified of the sea. Her whole body would shake if we got too close to the water. She didn’t need to say it, but I know she was terrified of the water closing in on her, filling her lungs with salt, terrified of what happened to Danny.

  Mum’s too upset to drive, so she lets me take her car. She won’t go to the Point, says she couldn’t bear it. She’s going to the salon to be with Zara.

  “Don’t go there, Car, why don’t you come with me instead?” she pleads. But I’m already out of bed, pulling on my clothes. She knows I won’t go with her, so she just goes back to running her lip through her teeth and she doesn’t say anything when I grab her car keys.

  Before I leave, I kiss her and promise to come and see her in the salon later.

  On the drive to the Point, Upton calls my cell phone. I answer this time. She’ll only call Mum if I don’t pick up.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t speak yesterday, Cara. What was it you wanted to say to me?” she asks. Wind echoes down the phone; it sounds like she’s already at the Point.

  “Is it Grace’s dress they’ve found? Does it have stars on it?”

  “I can’t talk about that, Cara. I’m sorry. What did you want to tell me yesterday?”

  She won’t tell me whether they’ve found Grace’s dress or not, but she wants me to share everything I know with her? I remember what Jon said about that poor Adam kid, how he was murdered because the police screwed up the investigation. I won’t let the same thing happen to Grace.

  “I was calling for an update, that was all.”

  “You’re sure? Because remember, any detail, no matter how small, could be really helpful.”

  “I’m sure.”

  She exhales like she’s already having a bad day and I’ve just made it a bit worse. But I don’t care. I’ve had enough of everyone, apart from Jon, treating me like a traumatized child. I hang up, and as I turn onto the road to the Point, I realize I don’t care about anything anymore, my exam results, getting into uni, being single—none of that troubles me. Now I only care about Grace.

  The waves beat against the rock at Grey’s Point like the sea is angry with the land, trying to teach it a lesson. Granddad told me once that people have been jumping from here since the Middle Ages; still today there are at least a handful of deaths reported every year. I can see why they choose this spot. The Point looks sure to do the job. It must be two hundred feet high. Pointed rocks jut into the foamy water like angry fists, but the soft colors where the horizon meets the sea makes it feel like heaven is just one step away. There’s a Samaritans advertisement in the parking lot, which is already busy, even at eight in the morning. I notice an ambulance and two police cars amongst the family SUVs. I try not to look at them. I’ve seen Grace wheeled into an ambulance too many times. I don’t want to see it again, one last time. Just before I get out of the car, my phone makes a sound I haven’t heard before. I glance at it. I downloaded the Wishmakers app last night and GoodSam has come on to the forum. There’s a tick next to the message I sent, telling me he’s read it, but he hasn’t replied yet. Just an hour ago he seemed so important. Now I can’t think about him.

  There’s a clutch of dogs walkers, talking quietly to one another, and a few photographers are here already too. A single policeman in fluorescent yellow is stopping them from walking out onto the Point. Jon texted me on the drive so I know he’s already here, and I spot him standing a few feet away from the others on a patch of grass covered in daisies. A man with dark hair, holding a camera with a huge lens, is talking animatedly to him, but Jon isn’t listening, I can tell: he’s too still. Underneath his cap his eyes are fixed on the sea. The man with the camera has to nudge him before he sees me. Jon nods, but doesn’t smile as he starts walking towards me. The man tries to walk with him but Jon shakes his head, nods towards the police officer at the Point, and he dutifully turns around, walks back in the direction Jon suggested. Jon gestures for me to keep walking further up the path, away from the Point. He’s right—it would complicate things if anyone saw us together. I wrap my cardigan around me and pull the hood over my head. We’re the only people walking away from the Point. As I walk, I realize I’m heading towards another moment where everything will change, and I’ll think back to now, to this moment, when the world was still whole, and wish I could go back. It’s strange to feel sorry for my future self, to mourn what has not yet happened but what I’m sure is inevitable.

  The path narrows into a one-person track. Pretty yellow gorse flowers hide the spikes that seem to strain towards us on either side. Jon holds the kissing gate open for me.

  “You OK?” he asks as I walk through. His eyes are bloodshot. Has he been crying? And suddenly I know I’m not OK, nothing’s OK. I want him to see I’m falling apart without having to say anything. I don’t want to know a world without Grace in it. I want a second chance, a chance to be her friend again, for things to be like they used to. He puts his hand on my shoulder, pats a couple of times. I widen my eyes to try to stop myself from crying.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” My voice is a whisper. Jon gently moves me off the path, walks me behind a gorse bush. He puts his arm around my shoulders, bends his head so he’s close, facing me. I wonder if this is how he comforts Jakey.

  “I’m not going to lie to you, Cara. I was just talking to Ben, a photographer friend of mine, and he told me the police believe the navy dress Grace was last seen wearing has washed up. It’s ripped, but they don’t know whether it was ripped by someone or whether it was ripped by the rocks. I’m so sorry.”

  “Did it have little stars on it?” Tears are rolling freely down my cheeks now.

  “Stars? I don’t know, he didn’t say.”

  This gives me a tiny sliver of hope. If it didn’t have stars on it, if it’s not the same dress, there’s still a chance, isn’t there?

  Jon’s arm drops from around my shoulders. He glances out to sea before he says, “Ben has a contact in the police, they said there’s no DNA evidence connecting Simon or anyone else on record to the murder scene. Simon must have been lucid enough to do his homework, to keep himself well covered. They also said the post-mortem tests on Megan’s body came back negative—apart from signs of struggle there were no drugs in her system, no signs of sexual assault . . .” Jon trails off. I’m glad, I don’t want to hear any more about forensics and autopsies, not now, not here. But I notice how restless he is, how his eyes dart about, and I know there’s more he needs to say.

  “What is it? You’re not telling me everything. Have they found something else?”

  “No, no, nothing like that.”

  “Simon, then?”

  “No sign of him either.”

  “Then what is it?”

  I wipe my eyes with my sleeve. “Jon! Tell me!” I almost shout.

  “OK. But first I need to know if Grace was ever known by any other name.”

  “Meg called her ‘Mouse’ but she was always Grace to everyone else. Why?” He tells me about Meg, about how she didn’t complete Grace’s passport application, about an issue she had with Grace’s birth certificate. I’m confused, starting to lose patience when he asks, “Do you know Grace’s birthday?”

  “Tenth of September, I think.”

  Every birthday Meg made her a pink cake she couldn’t eat. Grace liked to blow out the candles.

  “What year?”

  I think about it—I know I missed Grace’s last few birthdays. “Two thousand one, I guess?”

  Jon shakes his head, shows me the screensho
t. It takes me a moment to process. It’s the birthdate for someone called Zoe Grace Megan Nichols. Zoe? I’ve heard that name recently. It takes me a moment, but then I remember the thick air of the nursing home, how Charlie’s wrinkled mouth whistled around a word when I showed him the photo of Meg and Grace—he could have been saying “Zoe.”

  But it’s not Grace, it can’t be, the year is wrong.

  “It must be someone else with a similar name. That’s all.”

  Jon shakes his head. “With exactly the same middle names? Born on the same day, in the same city? I’ve searched the records—there was no Grace Megan Nichols born in Plymouth on the tenth of September 2001. This is too big a coincidence to ignore.”

  My mouth feels ashy. I swallow and tell Jon about Charlie, what I think I might have heard. He’s right, it’s too big a coincidence. Jon doesn’t blink as I talk, just stares at me and says, a crackle of excitement in his voice, “This must be her, then. Grace isn’t Grace, she’s Zoe. She’s twenty and she’s called Zoe.”

  My legs feel watery suddenly, like I can’t trust them to hold my weight. I hear Jon saying my name, but he sounds far away. I slump to the ground. I want to lie facedown on the grass, to touch something real, to feel the earth’s solidity beneath me. I wish I could burrow into it, hide at least for a while until things make sense again. But I can’t because Jon’s sitting next to me and he’s passing me a bottle of water, telling me to drink. I drink. It helps a bit.

  “Grace is twenty?” I ask. I used to call her my little sister. She was so small. Jon nods.

  “She’s almost my age.” I try to picture Grace older, as a woman smiling in her wheelchair, not a girl, but I can’t focus on the image. I realize I never imagined her growing up, becoming an adult. My voice is small as I ask, “Why? Why would she want to be younger?”

  “I’ve thought about it and the only answer that makes sense is that pediatric care tends to be much better than what’s on offer to adults, especially in Plymouth. Maybe it was something that started out as a white lie—a fib on a form—and then Meg found she had to maintain it. Maybe admitting to the lie felt worse than just going along with it. And the name, well, maybe they both just preferred Grace? Maybe she just felt like Zoe never suited her and it didn’t seem relevant to tell anyone? People change their names sometimes, don’t they?”

  Yes, yes. This is good. This makes some sense.

  “Meg did anything she could to get the best care for Grace,” I say. Mum always said Meg knew more about Grace’s conditions than the experts themselves. She had been known to drive up to London and back in a day just for Grace to have a single test. Grace’s health was the most important thing in both their lives and I have no doubt that Meg would stop at nothing to get Grace the care she needed, even if it meant lying for years about her daughter’s age. I don’t judge her for it.

  “I thought maybe Dr. Rossi knew she’d been lying and that’s why she was so defensive yesterday—she didn’t want to be involved,” Jon says. He’s right. She must have thought we had proof that she knew Grace—I can’t imagine ever calling her Zoe—was older, there could be professional implications for her. She must have been relieved when she found out it was just a thank-you card.

  “What should we do?” I ask.

  But Jon doesn’t answer because he’s staring at his phone, which is vibrating in his hand, his thumb hovering over the answer button like he doesn’t know what to do. He answers. I can just make out a woman’s voice. She sounds stressed, her voice taut, like she’s about to snap.

  “Of course I haven’t forgotten we moved the time, Ruth. I’m on my way right now.” He looks at his watch, springs to his feet, and rubs his eyes under his glasses.

  “I’m fifteen, maybe twenty minutes away.” Jon grimaces, looks at his watch again.

  There’s an angry shout from Jon’s phone and then nothing as the woman hangs up. Jon shouts “Fuck!” into the wind before he bends down towards me.

  “Look, Cara, I’m so sorry but I’ve got to run. I’m really late for an appointment with my wife.” He grips my upper arm, too hard for it to be reassuring. It’s almost like he’s the one who needs to hold on to something stable now.

  I twist slightly under his grasp. His grip loosens.

  “Sorry. Just promise me you won’t do anything, like go to the police, without talking to me first.” His eyes bulge, his mouth looks ugly behind his beard.

  “I won’t, I promise,” I say.

  “Good. That’s good. We’ll speak later,” he says before standing up and jogging away down the path.

  I lift my hand to my face; my cheeks are wet. I lie back. It feels so easy to let myself dissolve. I shake with soundless sobs, Grace’s smiling face so clear in my mind I feel like I could touch her. I cry. I cry because I never knew her, not really. I cry until my throat is sore and my face swells. I cry until I feel completely empty. When I finally stand, I walk away from the path, towards the cliff edge. My body is so heavy it feels like the earth is pulling me, dragging me down. I hear the seagulls circling overhead, hear Grace giggling when she said it sounded like they were screaming my name. I look down at the white sea below and think how easy it would be, how easy just to let myself go. I stand at the edge, close my eyes, and see Grace in front of me again, laughing, holding her arms out to me.

  “Woah, you’re making me nervous. Maybe step back a bit?”

  I open my eyes. The photographer Jon was talking to earlier is just behind me, beckoning me to come back. I’m aware suddenly how I must look, standing at the edge of the cliff, my face swollen, eyes red and raw with sorrow. I wipe my face and step back, next to him.

  “That’s better,” he says, smiling at me. He offers me his hand—it’s warm. “I’m Ben.”

  “Cara.”

  He nods like he knew my name already.

  “Do you think Grace is dead?” I ask.

  He looks down at his sneakers, gray with age, kicks one foot against the other and says, “Shit, I don’t know. Probably. That’s what the police are saying. They’ve got boats and a dive team out now, apparently. I don’t know why they’re bothering really, the bodies will come in on the tide most likely.”

  “Bodies?”

  He looks away from me, as though he’s said something he shouldn’t.

  “Yeah. The police reckon Simon probably jumped with her. He had a history of mental illness, apparently he always got worse over the summer, around the anniversary of his son’s death so . . .” Ben keeps talking, but I’ve stopped listening. Simon’s mental health deteriorated over the summer because that’s when his life started to fall apart.

  “What’s the date today?” I ask, interrupting Ben.

  “Sorry?”

  “The date, what is it?”

  “The seventh, I think.”

  “The same day.” I say it out loud, forgetting Ben is standing next to me.

  “What was that?” he asks, cupping his ear towards me, away from the wind.

  I don’t want to tell him what I think I’m starting to understand. Simon timed it. He leapt off the Point with Grace the same day Danny died.

  “Nothing,” I say, turning away from him. “Nice to meet you, Ben.”

  I’m about to walk back to the car—I want to be on my own to think—when I hear the distant whine of a speedboat engine. Ben hears it too and we both turn back towards the sea, Ben gripping his camera. The seagulls swarm and scream above as if in warning, as if they already know what’s happened. The noise is coming from a bright orange police motorboat traveling at full speed, its hull rearing up against the waves. A shout comes up as paramedics clutching medical cases run through the crowd towards the path that leads to the beach far below, a team of police following them. The police immediately start trying to draw the crowd and the press away from the path, pulling the overly curious back from the edge, shouting, “Get back! Keep away!” They link arms to create a barrier between the crowd and the path. Ben runs towards the action, to jostle for a s
pace at the front, but my feet have suddenly become rooted in the earth. The boat has almost reached the beach and I watch as two people in black wetsuits jump into the shallow surf and heave it up onto the sand. There’s another person in the back of the boat; they’re bending over something, or someone. The first paramedic arrives on the beach just as the boat is pulled up onto the sand and the third person carefully stands, keeping their head bowed over the white body in their arms. Even from here I recognize the limpness of her arm as it dangles in the air and it’s clear that, where there should be movement, a pulse beating through her small body, there’s nothing. Where there should be life, there’s only death.

  12th December 2018

  Jon Katrin came last week, with this photographer, Ben. I was wearing my new gray beanie but I didn’t feel much like having my picture taken. I used to have thick, blond hair before I got meningitis. Now when it grows it’s like the downy feathers on the baby birds Mum likes to watch on nature programs, scrawny and thin. But at least it’s something. My hair started falling out again last month, I don’t know why. I tried to hide it from Mum but she came in while I was in the bath the other night with the razor and her face all creased with worry.

  “I’m so sorry this is happening again, Mouse.”

  “It’s not that bad, Mum, it still covers my head.”

  “Please don’t make this harder, love. Please don’t make me go and get the photos.”

  I tried not to let her see my tears when the blade touched my scalp. I know it’s for the best. I don’t like to look in mirrors but Mum took photos of me once when my hair was falling out so I could see how bad it had got and I understood then why she needs to shave my head. What little hair I had left hung scraggy and limp against my flaky scalp. I didn’t look like a girl—I didn’t even look human. I looked like something that had been buried and dug up again. Mum’s right. Even being bald is better than that.

  Mum bought me the hat afterwards, as a present for being brave. I hope she didn’t see how sad I was. She’d been fussing over the interview all week, buying flowers and hoovering all the furniture. Cookie and I just stayed in my room, out of her way. I chatted on the Wishmakers forum to a younger kid who has muscular dystrophy. Most of the people on the MD forums are boys. Zara teases me that they’re all my boyfriends, but they’re not. They’re just glad someone else knows what it’s like to be left in a chair at the bottom of the stairs in public. Like Mum says, it’s good to feel like I’m helping others.