The photo on the display wasn’t Floss.
Cassie stood still and gazed at the phone as it went silent and the picture that stared at her from the screen, her mother, disappeared. Disappointment started at the nape of her neck and trickled slowly down her spine, seeping into her through her skin. She breathed deeply for a moment, blinking hard, and called her mother back.
‘Well, well?’ her mother asked on answering. ‘Did she arrive OK? Are you bringing her here? I thought you were bringing her here. I thought you’d be here a couple of hours ago.’
‘Um, she’s not here yet,’ said Cassie, chewing her lip.
‘What? Why not?’
‘I don’t know. I guess something went wrong. She was delayed, maybe.’
‘The flight was delayed?’
‘No, the flight arrived. She wasn’t on it.’
‘Where are you?’
‘At the airport still. I’m waiting.’
‘For what? Planes from Argentina don’t arrive every five minutes, Cass. You’d best come home and find out what’s happened.’
‘Brazil.’
‘What? Yes. What? Come home, love, I’ve a roast in the oven.’
‘I’m going to wait a while, Mum. See if I can find out anything here.’
Cassie’s mum was still talking, but a large German tour group was walking past, their voices raised in excitement, and Cassie couldn’t hear her anymore. She hung up and slipped her phone back into her pocket.
The crowd surged around her, pushing at her, catching her hair in the zips of their bags, but she did not move.
She didn’t realise it, but she had not moved in five hours.
Delia.
DELIA’S SHOULDER WAS ACHING FROM carrying her bag. Why had she even brought it? It felt like she’d packed for a weekend away, instead of a light stroll and a read. She’d been walking for over an hour and she had no idea where she was. She couldn’t figure out how she could have got lost. She never did pay much attention to where she was going, but then she’d never really needed to. She always found her way.
She pulled out her phone, feeling stupid for needing it, and brought up her little blue dot. There she was, standing on a street. She could see the street she wanted; it was much further away than she’d realised. She’d bypassed her neighbourhood completely and veered off wildly to the north. She checked which direction she needed to walk in and set off purposefully down the road.
It was five minutes before she realised she’d gone in the wrong direction. She checked the map, and tried again.
She could see clearly where she needed to go, but every time she looked up and started moving, she lost sight of it. She tried holding her phone in front of her face, but even then it didn’t seem to relate. No matter what she tried she ended up walking further away.
Delia decided to find the nearest bus stop and get home from there. After giving up on her phone, she walked, even more purposefully, for another ten minutes. The street she was on was tiny and winding. She stopped for a moment, wondering if it was best to go back the way she’d come or continue on in the same direction. She couldn’t remember seeing a bus stop recently so there had to be one coming up.
She kept walking. The area was small and residential and void of transport links. Each winding road, flanked by brick houses, led to another, more winding road, flanked by more brick houses.
The sun had returned in full force and Delia’s back was itchy with sweat.
After a further twenty-five minutes, Delia heard what she was certain was a lorry. It didn’t sound far away; it was somewhere ahead of her. She picked up the pace, her eyes set forwards, weary and desperate, and the street soon broke out into a small row of shops with, oh joy, a bus stop.
After a few minutes, a bus pulled up and a weary Delia hopped onto it. A whimper rose up within her, but she remembered she was in public for long enough to quell it. She flung herself into a seat and closed her eyes. She had no idea how she’d managed to go so far astray. She leant forward with her head in her hands as the bus trundled her towards home.
Robert.
ROBERT FOUGHT HIS WAY THROUGH the crowd of commuters to exit the tube station. He climbed the escalators with more of a wince than usual, regretting the morning’s ill-advised run. He should do that more often, he thought. Or never again. As always, he got out a stop early to get a bit of air before being confined at his desk all day. As he walked, his mind was still at home with Mara and Bonny. He knew the day would be long, he knew he’d be tired and moody by the end of it, he wished he could have just called in sick. He hadn’t faked a sick day since he was fifteen though; he’d almost forgotten how to do it. He sighed as he turned onto his street, thinking about what he and Mara could be doing if he didn’t have a responsible job.
He’d gone two blocks too far before he noticed he’d passed his building. He turned back, still smirking, and walked three blocks too far in the other direction. He stopped and tried to concentrate. He walked directly and purposely to the position of his office. He didn’t get there. He paused and looked around. This time he’d made it to roughly the right position on the road, but for some reason he wasn’t at his building. In fact, he couldn’t see his building at all.
Suddenly he chuckled. He was clearly on the wrong street. He retraced his steps back a couple of blocks. He was sure he was on the right track now. He turned down the street he’d turned down every weekday morning and quite a few Saturdays for the last six and a half years. How had he got this wrong? He strode on.
He stopped. He’d gone too far again. No, he hadn’t, he’d not gone far enough.
No. No, that wasn’t it at all.
He was in the right place, he was in the exact spot, but there was no work. His work wasn’t there.
The entire building was gone, vanished as if it had never been there at all.
Robert turned around slowly, twice. There was the travel agent he’d booked his and Mara’s last holiday in. There was the French restaurant that used to be really great but had then changed hands and gone sharply downhill. There was the hotel that seemed a bit rugged but that Robert had once seen a quite famous actor he could never remember the name of leaving. There was the new building that housed three identical nondescript businesses with shiny receptions and ambiguous names. Robert’s building should have been next to the hotel, but it wasn’t.
Robert stood staring at the lack of his work for ten minutes, with no idea what to do. His body was frozen while his mind tried and failed to comprehend the vanishing of the building that should have been right in front of him.
Marcus.
HE SPENT TWO HOURS STARING at his piano before he could think clearly enough to do anything. He would have to call her. He didn’t want to worry her, but he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t deal with it alone. He went to the phone in the kitchen.
The phone rang five times and her voice came on: ‘Hi hi, Katy here, I’m obviously busy. Leave a message if you want.’
He hung up and immediately dialled again. On his fourth attempt it was answered by a gruff-sounding male.
‘’Lo?’
‘Hello. May I speak with Katharine?’
‘Um, yeah, all right. Who’s it?’
‘It’s her father.’
‘Oh, right! Hiya Marcus, it’s Jasper.’
He’d forgotten there was a new boy. ‘Oh. Hello Jasper.’ There was a brief pause.
‘I’ll get Kate, then, yeah?
‘Thank you.’
He waited, listening to his daughter and her lover exchange the phone.
‘Dad? What’s up?’
‘They’re gone. My keys. Gone.’
‘You can’t find your keys? Do you need to go out somewhere? I’m sure it’ll be OK; you’ve a quiet neighbourhood. Ask your neighbour, that lovely woman with all the hair, to keep an eye out.’
‘No, no. Not the house keys. The other keys. My keys. My piano keys.’
There was a pause.
‘Dad
? Dad, are you all right?’
‘Of course I’m not all right. I need to play. I need to play my piano and my piano keys are gone.’
There was a long pause on the phone. He stood still and waited for her to talk.
‘Dad,’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t, I mean, they can’t be.’
‘How am I supposed to play?’
‘How can they just be missing?’
‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘Just are.’
‘OK.’ She paused for a moment. ‘It’ll be fine, Dad. I’m coming over. We’ll sort this out.’
‘Right.’ He hung up and walked back towards the music room. He stood in the door. Couldn’t bear to go further. Two or three more steps and he’d be able to see it. He didn’t want to see it. He couldn’t see it. Not again. Not alone. He would wait.
Delia.
‘MUM!’ DELIA CALLED AS SHE staggered in through the front door after a twenty-five-minute bus ride. ‘I’m sorry! Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine, of course, Dee, darling, but where have you been?’ Delia’s mum wheeled herself through from the living room, appearing to be more curious than worried or distressed.
‘Sorry. I suppose I got lost. Are you hungry?’
‘Oh yes. I’ve had a banana, but it’s not quite, you know … It’s not like you to get lost, Dee. I don’t think you ever have before.’
Delia followed her mother into the kitchen and began making them both breakfast.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what happened. It’s a lovely day out there now, though. Maybe we should go for a walk later. We could have a picnic.’
‘Oh. Perhaps. It’s just, well, I’ve gotten to a rather exciting point in the Willow Tree Sampler and I want to keep going.’
‘We could bring that with us, though, Mum.’ Delia tried not to sound as if she was pleading. ‘You could work on it in the park.’
‘Oh no. No, the wind could pick up and wreak havoc with the cotton. It’s far too risky. Let’s have a nice day indoors. You can read or play on your computer and I’ll work on the sampler and we can have cups of tea whenever we want.’
Jake.
JAKE STOOD ALONE IN THE corridor, frowning at the wall. He had been lying all day. He’d lied to his class. His teacher had asked him if it was a special day for him, using that extra-chirpy voice she had sometimes, as if she was winking with her entire head, and he’d lied and said no. He’d said there must be a mistake on the register.
He didn’t know why he’d lied. It was a special day for him. He wanted it to be special. He wanted to be sung to, but he’d lied and said no, and no one had sung.
There was a clip clopping of shoes behind him and Jake turned around.
‘Mr Baxter, school finished fifteen minutes ago. I’m sure someone’s waiting outside to collect you.’
She wasn’t Jake’s teacher so he didn’t know her name. He thought she maybe taught in the room next to his or the one next to that. She was looking at him the way adults always did: as though unsure of how to talk to him, as though they didn’t know if he could hear their words, and they wanted to make extra sure he understood what they were saying. They looked in his eyes a lot, all the adults.
She was wrong, there would be no one to collect him. Of course there wouldn’t; Jake had been walking to school by himself for ages. Ever since they’d moved here and school had been close enough to walk to. If someone had been collecting him, it would have to be his dad, and if his dad was collecting him, he’d be late or he’d forget. Jake didn’t know if his dad would have been late if he’d had to pick him up in the old days, but he knew he’d be late now.
Jake said nothing and walked slowly towards the doors.
It was usually only a ten-minute walk to Jake’s house, but Jake stretched it out to almost twenty.
He could tell his dad was in his office, but he didn’t go in. Instead he went to the kitchen. He opened the cupboards and looked inside. Then he looked in the fridge. There were no special foods. There was no cake. There was no fizzy drink. There were no lollies.
It was Jake’s birthday and no one knew.
Jake wondered if it would be better if he didn’t know himself. Part of him wanted to never have another birthday at all.
Jake’s last birthday had been the worst day ever. The second-worst day ever. No one had known how to celebrate it. No one had really wanted to celebrate it anyway. Jake hadn’t. Last year he’d felt as if he’d never wanted to celebrate anything ever again. His mum had always made amazing food. Jake hadn’t wanted anyone trying to make food as good as his mum’s food.
This year, though, he wanted something to happen. He didn’t really mind what it was. He didn’t mind if someone tried to make amazing food and it actually turned out to be quite bad food. He just wanted them to try. He just wanted it to still be important to someone that he was having a birthday.
Mrs Featherby.
THE BUILDER, WHO’D INTRODUCED HIMSELF simply as Bruno, sucked air through his teeth and looked at Mrs Featherby’s absence of wall speculatively.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Featherby. ‘How soon can you have a wall for me?’
‘Christ,’ he said, as if that was a sufficient answer. He walked across Mrs Featherby’s yard with callous disregard for her roses, and he gazed in at her exposed rooms. Mrs Featherby was glad to see her roses put up a bit of a fight, in the form of a thorn snagging on the corner of the man’s t-shirt as he passed, pulling a thread loose.
‘I mean, holy shit, you know,’ he continued. Mrs Featherby did not deign to reply. She waited, arms crossed low on her hips, one brogued foot resisting the urge to tap impatiently. She reminded herself that she ought to be grateful for the builder’s quick arrival, grateful she’d not had to wait until tomorrow.
‘It’s not going to be easy,’ he said. ‘It’s not going to be quick. I mean, I’ve never even seen this happen. How did this happen?’
‘I have put the police in charge of ascertaining that.’
Bruno scoffed lightly.
Mrs Featherby suddenly found him a much more sympathetic character; she felt an unexpected urge to give an answering smirk. ‘How long?’ she asked. ‘How long will it take? When will you have a wall for me?’
‘Well, it’s not like I can just order in one wall, please, and slot it into place. I have to match the materials; I have to integrate what I do with the existing house, which, by the way, is over 150 years old. And the other walls are plaster over brick, which I can do, or I can put up a dry wall and then just put bricks over the outside.’
‘But that wouldn’t be the same as the rest of the house. It wouldn’t be the same as it was.’
‘No. But it would be easier for you. There would be something up to protect you.’
‘Please rebuild it as it was. Keep it the same.’
‘Well, it’s up to you,’ said the builder.
‘How long will it be?’
‘Hard to say. I’ll have to find the exact brick, or as close as I can, so I’ll need to call a few people before I can say. I don’t like to give an estimate, you know, and then have it take longer.’
‘I appreciate that, young man, but I have to live here. This is my home. You may think you have a problem of an old house that’s missing a wall; I have a problem that my home is broken.’
‘You might want to think about where else you can stay. You got family or friends that’d put you up? That’s what you’re going to need to do.’
‘That’s not possible,’ said Mrs Featherby cooly. ‘Nor am I willing to stay in a hotel. This is my home and I do not wish to leave it.’
‘Well. I guess, if you’re sure. The most I can do for now is rig up some kind of temporary protection for you. Something to keep the weather outside. Bloody lucky it’s still warm. No telling how long that’ll last, mind.’
‘Indeed.’
Mrs Featherby tried to get on with her day while the builder attached a thick sheet of plastic to the gaping side of the house. She bake
d a chocolate cake and darned a batch of old socks. She laundered the guest linens she kept, in spite of the fact that she never had any guests.
Finally, after the builder was done, he gave Mrs Featherby a sympathetic nod as he went to leave.
‘Not sure what this’ll end up costing. If you put me in touch with your insurance company I can deal with it all directly with them. Save you some stress, right?’
‘Thank you. I shall call them directly and let them have your number.’
Mrs Featherby gave Bruno the builder a slice of cake and sent him on his way.
Cassie.
CASSIE HAD ALMOST STOPPED SEEING her surroundings. Her eyelids drooped and flickered, and although her gaze was still fixed on the arrivals gate, she was having trouble differentiating between the people who walked through it.
She was just becoming aware of an ache in her neck when a woman walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder.
‘Cass?’
Cassie gave a start and blinked a couple of times.
‘Oh, Mum. You didn’t have to come all the way out here.’
‘You stopped answering your phone. I was worried.’
‘No, I’m fine. I’m just waiting. I’ll wait here.’
‘Cass, I think you should come home.’
Cassie was so tired. Too tired to argue really, but she didn’t want to give in. She bit her lip and stared stubbornly at the gate.
‘It’s going to get late, love. You’ve been here for hours. Come home and we’ll figure out what’s happened. Maybe she’s going to come tomorrow. You can come back tomorrow. I’ll come with you.’
Cassie swallowed.
‘You must be hungry, Cass. There’s dinner at home. I did a crumble.’
Cassie breathed in deeply and closed her eyes.
‘Come on. We’ll sort it out in the morning.’
Cassie sighed and took her mother’s arm. ‘I can’t move,’ she said. ‘I can’t move my feet.’
Of Things Gone Astray Page 3
