‘Not yet, but—’
‘Well that’s something, I suppose. You can’t tell them, Beth. You just can’t. You have no proof. Of anything.’
What clarity I had is suddenly fogged by doubt. I sink into the chair.
Jill’s right. The police might not believe me, and if it leaks to the press, I’ll have reporters on my doorstep once more. Amy’s case will be replayed all over again. The public’s hate for me will be given extra momentum. Missing girl’s mother loses the plot is the kindest of the headlines I can see.
Jill picks up her pad from the floor.
‘Look,’ she says. ‘Not instructions or notes. Just a list of addresses I’ve got to pick up jumble from for the next church bazaar. That we’ve got to pick up.’ She gives a little laugh. ‘If you can trust me enough to get into my car and not be whisked away somewhere.’
I feel foolish, weak.
‘I think I’d better get you home,’ Jill says, her voice kind and concerned once more.
When I get out of the car, I leave my bags on the back seat.
‘What about these?’ Jill says.
‘Keep it for the jumble sale.’
‘But it’s all brand new!’ She starts to rummage through the bags, pulls out a skimpy top and looks up at me quizzically.
‘For Amy,’ I say. ‘All of it.’
‘Oh Beth.’
She’s just as concerned when she sees Amy’s bedroom, stripped bare, dappled with blocks of sample paint colours.
‘Maybe I should call Brian,’ she says. She’s thinking out loud rather than asking my opinion. ‘He should know what’s been going on.’
‘No. Please, Jill. I couldn’t face his sarcastic sniggering.’
‘You may be divorced, Beth, but I’m sure he still cares about you.’
‘I doubt it. Promise me you won’t tell him.’
‘If that’s what you want.’ She looks around the room once more. ‘I’ll give you a hand to get it back into shape, okay? I’m not the world’s best decorator, but we’ll manage between us.’
Perhaps she just wants to keep an eye on me.
She offers to stay for a bit, but I tell her no. I check to see she’s following me as I go down the stairs.
‘Where’s this essay?’ she says.
In the front room, Jill takes the paper from me, pushes her glasses up her nose and starts to read. She frowns as her eyes move quickly across the page. The muscles in her cheeks twitch.
‘Right,’ she says, ripping the pages into tiny bits, ‘that’s taken care of that load of drivel.’
‘I wish it was as easy to get it all out of my head. I know it by heart I’ve read it that many times.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘I didn’t write it, Jill. I swear.’
‘Well, it’s gone now,’ she says decisively. ‘And if you’ve got any sense, you’ll send those two jokers packing too. Do yourself a favour. Don’t see them. Don’t talk to them.’
‘I don’t have much choice,’ I say. ‘They’ve gone to ground and I’ve no way of finding them.’
‘Just as well, all things considered.’ She puts her arms around me. She smells of talcum powder and mints.
‘Make an appointment with the doctor, Beth. For all our sakes.’
I say I will. But I won’t. No doctor can cure me. Only the truth can do that – and I’m no closer to finding that than I am to finding Amy’s body.
8
The postcard is lost beneath a drift of leaflets for pizza deliveries and mail shots for credit cards and stationery supplies. The blue envelope from Tesco tells me that ‘Every Little Helps’.
The postcard might. It’s a picture of a large silver wheel, like the London Eye, only set against a backdrop of unfamiliar office buildings. The Wheel of Manchester, it says on the front. I turn it over quickly. My heart is racing, kicking hope skywards.
Dear Mum
I don’t like what you did when we were at the London Eye. It wasn’t fair. But Mum keeping me away from you isn’t fair either. She won’t let me ring you or see you. Sometimes I hate her. Sometimes I hate you. I love you both too. More than you know.
Email me. Mum won’t find out. She doesn’t do computers. It will be our secret. I’m good at keeping secrets. We both are.
[email protected]
Relief that Esme has got in touch vies with consternation. I’m scared of what might follow if I email her, the dark and dangerous road it could take me down, where madness could ambush me at any moment. But the road could lead me back to Amy, put me on the path to redemption.
I read the postcard once more. Her invitation is tantalising and beguiling, but I sense a threat too. What secrets has she been keeping? And what secrets does she think I have? Perhaps she means that she’s known all along where Amy’s body is and has just been keeping it back. Maybe she’s playing with me the way a trickster does a stooge, tempting me further into her web until the sucker punch.
My fingers hover over my computer keyboard, a blank email staring back at me. I start to type, slowly at first, then faster and faster. I don’t have to send it, I keep telling myself as I write. The delete key is my escape hatch as much as the send button is a trapdoor into the unknown.
Dear Esme
I can’t tell you how much your postcard meant to me. The last few weeks without you have been agony. I didn’t know how to find you or whether I would ever see you again. I expected you would never want anything to do with me, seeing as I was so stupid last time we met.
But you have to understand that the Peter and the Wolf programme was a genuine mistake. Not a trap. I promise. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt or scare you. I hope you believe me. Your postcard gives me hope that you do.
The second chance you’ve given me is so precious. I’ll do anything to make sure Libby never finds out we’re in touch with one another.
Are you sure she won’t see this? Libby needs time to trust me again. You must try not to hate her. She only wants what’s best for you. Just like I do. Just like I always have.
Beth
I delete my name.
Love, Mum.
I scroll up; the cursor flutters around Esme’s name as I dither whether to change that too.
I do. Just to see how it looks. How it feels.
Dear Amy.
The letters flow so easily, without hesitation, just like Esme’s stories. Seven letters. Eight keystrokes. It was done in a fraction of a moment, but the thrill of writing her name again, seeing it there, that . . . that could last for ever. The cursor pulses next to it. Now you see it. Now you don’t.
If I’m signing off as Mum on the email, then I have to call her Amy. But I promised Libby that I wouldn’t, and this might still be a test; Libby might be reading over Esme’s shoulder. I change it back to Esme but leave my sign-off as Mum; a compromise, halfway to the truth.
The force that makes my finger hit the send button is the same one that’s driven me since New Year’s Eve: the need to know.
The email sits in my outgoing mail folder for an age. The little wheel spins on the screen as the computer thinks about whether to do what it’s been told. The bar at the bottom of the screen tracks the email’s progress; it’s like straining clay through a sieve.
Once it’s gone, I sit and wait, willing a message to come in. But it doesn’t. I tap the side of the computer and fiddle with the cables, sliding them home firmly in the various slots and making sure everything is switched on.
I read my email again. Maybe I should have waited a day or two before I replied. Perhaps it’s better not to look too keen. I wonder if Libby and Esme are sitting somewhere in Manchester reading my message and giggling, planning what Esme should say next.
For a moment I wish it was possible to retract emails. I don’t want to be laughed at any more or get more entangled up in their games. If it is a game.
I check my watch to see how long I’ve been waiting. It’s nearly half past ten. That explains the delay. Esme will be at sch
ool. I don’t know if she’s got her own mobile phone. I can’t recall seeing her with one. Surely she’s too young for any kind of phone, let alone one with access to email? If she has, then she’s umpteen steps ahead of me. Out of reach.
It’s unlikely I’ll get a reply before four o’clock. And when it does arrive, my computer will inevitably choke. I get up, put on my coat and head for the West End.
A new computer will help me track down the truth. It needs to be shiny and contoured, streamlined. The laptop I buy from the Apple store more than fits the bill.
MacBook Air. Its name alone makes me feel energised; light and free. It’s primed with software and wi-fi. When I get home I’ll be plugged in, switched on. Armed.
My next stop is for a mobile phone. Ring the Changes, says a poster in the Orange shop window. I smile and do as I’m told. But I’m as bewildered by the range of phones as I was by the choice of computers. The information on the tickets is just as baffling too. The assistant behind the counter looks up and jerks his chin at me.
‘I want to replace this.’
I reach into my handbag and take out a battered black Nokia with a screen no bigger than an inch square. That alone is reason to change it; even with my glasses on I can barely read it.
He raises his eyebrows.
‘I’m not surprised you want to change it. Does it still work?’ He steps out from behind the counter, walks towards me and takes the phone. ‘No camera. No colour. No apps.’
His tone is half sneering, half astonished.
‘I have had it a while,’ I say sheepishly.
‘You’re not kidding.’
‘I don’t really use it that much.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t either.’ He drops the phone into my hand as if it’s radioactive. ‘Pay As You Go?’
‘That’s right, yes.’
‘Thought as much.’
He walks past a rack of sleek and glossy phones with big screens.
‘What about these?’ I say.
‘They’re not all available on Pay As You Go,’ he says. ‘And the ones that are can be expensive without a contract. But you can change plans if you want.’
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I’ll change plans too.’
I pick up each of the phones as I answer his questions.
Yes, it’s for personal use. Yes, I’ll be using it a lot. For calls, texts, photos, emails and internet. For bringing my long-lost daughter home. Or for hunting down liars and cheats.
When I get home, the computer gleams like a shield. The phone is soon charged and ready, loaded with apps. It’s as good as a gun.
There’s an email in my inbox. An invitation to be Amy’s friend on Facebook. Amy’s friend. The audacity of it cripples me. The promise of it lifts. I’m so confused. I can’t breathe for the lump in my throat.
I’ve heard of the site on news stories but never looked at it. I’ve had no need to; the few people I know are pensioners and are no more likely to use it than I am. If I want to know what they’re up to, I know where they are and how to find them.
I click on the link and pull my chair closer to the desk. The website loads in a flash, without the constant whir of the fan I’ve got used to. The cursor winks, encouraging me to enter my first name and open an account. I don’t want to but I have to; the site won’t let me go any further without one. I type in my name, leaving my profile and location blank. I don’t upload a photo, defaulting to an anonymous, ghostly silhouette.
Esme isn’t so shy. Just cruel. Or maybe just painfully honest.
The name at the top of her page is Amy Archer. And the picture is that photo of Amy, in her school uniform, the one that appeared in the papers and on TV.
She’s put up other photos too. There’s one of me and Brian at a press conference, and one of Brian on his own. I recognise it from his ad agency’s website. The school photo must have been taken from the internet too. The one below it is fuzzy with camera shake and breaking up with zoom; it’s me, talking to Libby at the foot of the London Eye.
My eyes drop down the page.
Family: Brian and Beth Archer
Friends: Dana Bishop
Education: East Street Primary
Philosophy: Angel lost in space now back on earth
Music: Spice Girls
Books: Return from Heaven; Children’s Past Lives
Movies: Spice World
Television: Top of the Pops, Live & Kicking, Gladiators
Games: Juggling, French skipping, being pop stars
Sports: Swimming, rounders, roller-blading
Activities: Tap-dancing, drama, Brownies
Interests: Reincarnation
Other sites I like: www.dailymail.co.uk/ Our-son-World-War-II-pilot-come-back-to-life
A blue box with Amy’s picture inside it pops up on the screen.
Hello! Email is soooooo boring and sooooooooooo slow. Instant messaging is quicker and fun. Mum won’t know we’re doing it. No one will as I’ve fixed the settings so they can’t. If you haven’t done it before, just write in the box and hit return.
I hesitate, anxious about stepping further into a trap – a high-tech trap, full of unknown protocols and the danger of public exposure.
Hello Esme.
Great! This is how I chat to all my friends.
I hope that means we’re friends too.
You’re not my friend! You’re my mum!!! I hope you’ve read the article about that little boy in America. He was just like me. Reincarnated, I mean. Ever since he was two he kept having nightmares about being in a plane shot down by the Japanese in the war. He knew all about it. He even called his Action Men by the names of three other pilots who died in the same battle. All of the pilots had different-coloured hair so he called each Action Man by the name of the pilot whose hair colour matched the doll. It’s a true story, like mine is. You do believe me, don’t you?
I pull back from the screen as if she’s sitting in front of me and demanding a final, unequivocal answer. She sounds so eager, so excited, like Amy giving me a run-down on a new dance routine or sharing an amazing fact she’s learnt in class.
It was hard at first. You can understand why, can’t you?
Sure. It must be really tough for you too. I never wanted to upset you but I knew I would. I’m really sorry, Mum. I bet I’ve made you cry a lot. I’ve cried loads too, in case you didn’t believe who I was. You never liked it when you thought I was lying. The little boy’s mum believed him from the start but his dad didn’t. Though he did in the end.
Tears spring to my eyes. I dab them away with the tips of my fingers and feel them damp on the keyboard as I type.
I expect your dad would find it hard to believe too.
He doesn’t believe in ghosts, does he?
No. But you’re not a ghost, are you?
No. I’m Amy. I feel sorry for Mum (Libby) though – she thinks she’s losing Esme. My memories with her aren’t the same as ours. I love her but I’m not really hers. You get me? She’s like the stepmothers in fairy stories – but not wicked and cruel. If she was, I wouldn’t have chosen her as my new mum.
The realisation that I’m second best knocks the wind from me. It’s illogical to feel betrayed, but I do.
Why didn’t you choose me?
I didn’t see you.
I was busy doing nothing, I think, not being around when she needed me, just like the press always said.
Would you have come back to me if you’d had the chance?
I’m back now. First chance I got. I’ve missed you.
I see my hand reaching out to the screen, touching it, as if I were stroking her face.
Why did it take you so long to realise who you were? You said the little boy remembered things from the age of two.
I think it’s ’cos he had longer to get used to it. The pilot was dead for sixty years before the boy was born. I came back straight away. I didn’t know what was what. I had all this stuff in my head and then there’d be big gaps. It didn’t
make sense. Bits are still missing.
I know I promised Libby; I know she might even be sitting by Esme’s side – but I can’t fight the impulse, my need to know.
You can’t remember anything about what happened to you?
No. I’ve got to go. I
I wait for what seems like an age. When nothing appears on the screen, my fingers scramble across the keys.
Hello? Esme? Are you there? Esme?
Maybe Libby was there after all and told Esme not to answer. I panic that I’ve blown my opportunity. Then I think that Esme could just have run away before I could press her for more details. Details she doesn’t have.
I read the article on the reincarnated fighter pilot several times. His parents’ confusion about his behaviour echoes Libby’s description of her experience with Esme. His father’s initial scepticism chimes with mine.
They too put it down to imagination, but were worn down by the boy’s unfailing accuracy about details he just couldn’t have known. He knew the plane was a Corsair, that it was hit in the engine and exactly whereabouts it went down. He knew that the aircraft carrier it took off from was called the Natoma, and that the battle was Iwo Jima. He described his parents’ fifth wedding anniversary in Hawaii five weeks before his mother got pregnant, citing it as the moment he chose them to be his parents. And the boy and the pilot were both called James.
The pilot’s sister believed the boy’s story and so did the pilot’s parents. The boy’s father researched the story just to prove it was all simply coincidence but instead found himself getting closer and closer to something more fantastical. Eventually he concluded that there are some things that can’t be explained. Things that are unknowable.
If I’d read the story when it first appeared in the press I would have dismissed it; uncanny and interesting, yes, but ultimately no more than a story based on coincidence. Now it seems familiar and credible.
The similarities could just be the common characteristics of a reincarnation experience, which would mean that Amy has returned. Or maybe Esme has just taken the boy’s story as the template for her own, like cribbing answers over somebody’s shoulder. But that wouldn’t explain the details she knows.
Esme signed off so suddenly, I didn’t get the chance to ask if she’d written the essay and put it through my letter box. It could still be the work of my grief-steeped imagination running wild with wishful thinking.
The Second Life of Amy Archer Page 12
