by Unknown
‘Mum!’ Katharine reached Margaret in one stride and held her arms roughly. ‘Listen to me!’ She stopped herself. Don’t murder your mother, for God’s sake. At least, not like this. She pulled up a chair and sat opposite her.
‘Is Bea here?’
‘Who?’
‘My sister? Your daughter? Frank’s wife?’
Oh, she’d had enough of this. ‘I haven’t seen anyone.’ Margaret pushed her chair back and got to her feet. Katharine held on to her sleeve and looked up at her, imploring.
‘Mum, please. Bea has vanished. We think she’s run away. We hope she has.’
Margaret looked at Katharine’s hand on her sleeve.
‘Don’t,’ she said, her voice like stone.
KATHARINE CLOSED the door quietly behind her and stood in the abandoned bedroom of their childhood. Their twin beds were narrow and flat, the candlewick bedspreads a faded mauve memory of girlhood, sisterhood, the past. This one, the one she sat down on now, was her own and slightly better than Bea’s because it had a headboard of padded velour. Here – she pressed her hand on to the thin mattress – was where she had slept six thousand nights, sat cross-legged with her homework beneath the frosted ceiling light and planned her escape. She looked at Bea’s bed and battled briefly with despair. What would bring Bea back to this? Was this what it was like for Bea left behind when Katharine left for university at eighteen?
A row of empty wire hangers hung in the wall cupboard. Katharine was shocked at the emptiness. Their mother must have had a clear-out. It smelled of school and cheap perfume in there. On the floor of the cupboard was a cardboard box. She knelt on the cord carpet and opened it. Inside were school exercise books, reports, a fountain pen and bottle of Quink. Her own exercise books were neatly filled with turquoise ink, titles underlined, dates given, every page affirmed by a tick in red – the codes and signs of the clever student. She stroked their cool surfaces and bent her face, hungry suddenly to smell again the secret language of success, the logarithms, declensions and past perfect of it all. That was second nature to her, but to Bea . . . Bea had not applied herself at school and no one was surprised when she left with nothing but O levels in art and cookery. Katharine sorted through the remaining books, searching for one of Bea’s. At the bottom of the box she found a green geography book with Beatrice Kemp written on the cover, smudged, careless and covered in doodles. She flicked through the pages, noting that the book felt thin and that many pages had been torn out. Bea’s handwriting sloped first one way, then another; at times her e’s were looped; at others they were like backward 3’s. A similar experimentation occurred with a’s and m’s. Katharine shook her head. The pages were a mess and the teacher’s impatience was plain to see. ‘Always underline the title’, ‘See me’, ‘Where is your homework?’ then tailing off eventually into no response at all, just a series of unfinished, scrappy work. She pulled out another book from the bottom of the box. It was a school copy of As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, with Bea’s name written inside and the date, 1972. On the inside cover was a map of Spain that showed Laurie Lee’s route from west to south. She put the book into her bag. The children might enjoy reading it. In another box she found their singles record collection – ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ by Dusty Springfield (Bea’s), ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’ by the Kinks (shared) and ‘Hey Hey We’re The Monkees’ (hers) – and loose at the bottom a tube of Miner’s frosted lipstick (Bea’s) and a Biba cream blusher (also Bea’s) that still smelt of sugar and promise. Next to these, in two pieces, was a green pottery dinosaur (Bea’s) and a glazed brown thumb pot (hers).
Katharine’s foot had gone numb. This couldn’t be all. What had become of those years? She looked about her, trying to remember what it was. Was it before or after? She could barely remember the before. His long legs in tan trousers. His shoes. A strong warm hand round hers. It wasn’t him, though. It was Bea. Before and after. Bea drawing, drawing, filling pads, scrap paper and cheap floppy-backed books.
She eased herself up off the floor and looked at her watch. How it had got to ten past three she had no idea. She sat on Bea’s bed and rubbed the life back into her foot with one hand while she dialled Laura’s school with the other. The school secretary confirmed that Laura had been absent the previous Friday. She rang Richard and told him the news.
‘I can’t believe we’ve let things get like this,’ she said. ‘I mean, our own daughter.’
‘Laura’s fine, darling. She’s a teenager.’
Katharine allowed a pause. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, I’m sure that when you were fifteen—’
‘I went to school every day and I always did my homework. It was damn hard, as a matter of fact, living here. All I thought of was how to escape.’
‘Well there you go. There was a rebellious streak in you.’
‘It wasn’t a matter of rebellion, Richard, it was a matter of survival. We didn’t all grow up like you.’
‘Katharine, you know I have nothing but admiration for the way that—’
‘But it hasn’t worked,’ she cried. ‘Don’t you see? Nothing is certain any more. My mother can’t live here alone, Bea’s gone, and now Laura . . .’
‘Darling, would you like me to come down on the train and then I’ll drive you home?’
‘No! Don’t be ridiculous.’ She blew her nose so that Richard had to hold the phone away from his ear. She sniffed and sighed and gathered in all the pieces of herself, wiped them with the tissue then tucked it up her sleeve. There had been a time at school when the place to tuck your hankie had been up one leg of your knickers. My God, she thought, she might as well have come from another planet for all the connection her life had to Laura’s. Richard was saying something about the apple trees, about leaves, about the cat, for God’s sake. ‘I need to stay a bit longer.’ Katharine told him. ‘Bea could still turn up. She may be wandering around the town without her memory or up on the cliffs . . .’
‘Right-o.’
Katharine didn’t speak. Sometimes, just sometimes, she felt like taking off herself. Typical of Bea to up sticks and scarper. She’d scarpered one time before, when Katharine was doing O levels. Turned out she had hitched to Brighton and was gone three whole days. Apparently she had some idea in her head about applying for art school there. Katharine straightened the bedspread and noticed something beneath the pillow.
‘Did Laura get off to school today?’ she asked, lifting the pillow. She pulled out a tightly folded note.
‘Yes, she did. No need to worry. And I rang the school and checked she had arrived.’
‘Did you tell them we’re not moving for a while?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Was she on time? You know what she’s like. Sometimes I think that girl needs nothing more than a damn good slap.’ She got the note open and saw Laura’s handwriting. ‘Oh, Laura,’ she said, so quietly that Richard missed it.
‘Well there’s no more news at this end. Perhaps now you’re down there, darling, you should stay the night.’
There was silence from the other end.
‘Katharine?’
Temp
IT WAS nice, just the three of them in the kitchen after school. No one did any homework or practised the violin and they ate beans out of a tin. Laura showed Richard and Adrian how to dance with just your bottom, and when it grew dark, no one turned on the lights. When Adrian suggested an indoor firework display, Richard said he didn’t think that was allowed but agreed to hold a sparkler anyway. Laura told him she had been good at school that day, not bad like she usually was, and when he asked whether she had enjoyed being good she said it had been so boring she couldn’t remember anything about it. Richard told them that at boarding school, if they were good, they got turned into prefects, which wasn’t good at all: it meant you had to spend your breaks standing in the cold trying to catch people smoking. Laura shuffled up closer to him and thought she would rather live with one parent instead of two. It was
more equal like this. She felt promoted. She told him they had gone to Bea’s office after school because Precious said they could drop by any time they liked. On Mondays Bea did yoga at work with Precious. They thought she might have sneaked back in.
‘Sneaked back in?’ said Richard.
‘To her life,’ said Adrian.
‘To her work,’ said Laura. ‘To the bit of work that didn’t have work in it – Precious and yoga and drinks in the pub round the corner.’
‘Ah,’ said Richard. He could certainly see the logic of that. After all, one lived more than one kind of life. There was the office, there was home, there was the conference, the work dinners, the squash court . . . He tried to think of the constituent parts of Bea’s life, but he was finding it difficult to keep Bea in his head, even now, when they were supposed to be looking for her. It was as though she’d been gone for years.
‘Someone was sitting in Bea’s chair,’ said Laura.
‘Really?’ Richard thought uneasily of his own office chair with Claudia in it.
‘Someone was using her computer and drinking tea from her cup.’
Richard stretched his feet out and lay down on his back. The room looked rather peaceful from this position. The cat came and sniffed his face. He sighed and felt unaccountably content. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a conversation with the children that wasn’t about PE kits or lunchboxes. Come to think of it, he didn’t have even those conversations with them; he listened while Katharine had them.
‘Who was sitting in her chair?’
‘A temp,’ said Adrian.
‘A temporary Bea,’ said Laura.
‘To tackle the backlog,’ said Adrian.
‘She had a fat head,’ said Laura.
The doorbell rang and the cat scuttled out of the cat flap. Nobody moved.
Laura closed her eyes and prayed it was Bea. She promised that she would be good for ever and ever and to give back all those trespasses that she had trespassed against. Adrian lit a small green cone called Vesuvius that spewed a long coil of curly ash. Richard thought it would probably be children collecting for Guy Fawkes, and as he only had twenties on him there was little point in going to the door. He was reluctant to break the spell.
The bell rang again and a woman’s voice called through the letter box. ‘Hello, anyone home?’
Richard recognised that voice from somewhere. He got to his feet and switched on the lights. On the doorstep he found Jane and Paul. Jane was halfway through the door before Richard had said hello. Paul stood on the gravel near the shadows. He looked smaller than he had done before the weekend.
‘Katharine rang from Hastings,’ said Jane, handing Richard a bottle of wine. ‘We thought you could do with some adult company.’
‘Oh,’ said Richard. ‘Well, come in and say hello to Laura and Adrian. They’re just through here.’
But the kitchen was empty. Richard looked around. Jane tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Looking for these?’ and handed him three wine glasses.
‘Well, the children were here.’
‘I expect they’re watching Friends,’ said Jane. ‘Ours are.’ She gestured to Paul to find the bottle opener. Richard smelt wine on her breath.
‘Yes, ours watch it nonstop,’ said Paul. ‘They’re addicted.’
‘It’s because it’s about friends and there’s no sex or violence in it,’ Jane said, watching Paul open the wine. ‘It’s a safe world of friendship and laughter.’ She laughed and turned her back on Paul. ‘An utter fantasy, of course.’
Jane looked at Richard, who was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. She rarely saw him in casual clothes. Usually he wore a tie and rather ‘old man’ trousers pulled high up his waist. There was something so proper and public-schoolboyish about him that she didn’t really notice him in a sexual way. And anyway, she only ever saw him with Katharine, and Katharine, after all, was the one who commanded the attention. But now . . . she noticed that he really was deliciously tall and boyish. He had sleepy-looking hazel eyes and large hands and lots of dark hair on his head. He was really most unusual for a man pushing fifty. She looked around for somewhere to sit, then put her hand on his arm and took him with her to the sofa by the French windows. No doubt about it, she thought, battling an unsisterly impulse, Katharine had certainly fallen on her feet where Richard was concerned. And Katharine had never been what you could call beautiful. She sat down and patted the cushion next to her. Husbands, she thought, noticing her own lowering himself with difficulty on to an old pouffe on the floor; it was so difficult to know what it was exactly that you were getting.
Richard raised his glass encouragingly to Paul and hoped he wasn’t going to wander off anywhere or be completely silent. Jane could be so intense.
‘I just can’t stop thinking about Bea,’ said Jane. ‘Did you see the piece in the paper about her? My heart goes out to Katharine, having to read something like that about her sister. “Fears Grow For Missing Wife”.’
Richard said, ‘Oh, Katharine thinks it’s important to keep the public interest alive.’
Paul was having difficulty with his drink. Each time he raised his face to his glass, he slipped further on to his back. Jane watched and extended one leg towards him so that Richard could get the full benefit of its length. She had a strange body, Richard saw now. Truncated above the hips and elongated below, as if she were somehow the wrong way up. There was something odd about them both tonight. He wished Katharine were here.
‘I was surprised to hear about the affair,’ Jane said suddenly.
Paul coughed and struggled over on to his side. Richard hesitated. Hadn’t Katharine said that Paul was a little prone to the extramaritals? Surely they hadn’t come round to discuss that with him?
‘That long affair she had with a married man,’ said Jane. ‘Katharine always worried that Bea was sacrificing her thirties and her chance of a child to a man who would never leave his wife.’
Richard wasn’t sure it was right to be discussing Bea’s love life in this way. He wondered whether he should get up and close the door. He didn’t want the children hearing anything they shouldn’t.
‘Yes, well that is more or less what happened, I suppose,’ he said, remembering Katharine, incandescent every time she heard that her sister was still seeing ‘that man’.
‘You see, I always feel sorry for the other woman,’ continued Jane. ‘Imagine living your life as someone else’s understudy. Soul-destroying.’
Paul was on all fours now and trying to climb off the pouffe. This was what he called sailing a little close to the wind, something Jane had a penchant for when she’d had too much Sauvignon. Jane’s reaction to her discovery of his most recent indiscretion, with the woman who ran the juice bar in the gym, was to not react at all. No row, no screaming, no threats or ultimatums. It was baffling. She just appeared to carry on as normal, except that things were not normal. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was walking the plank, and that if he put a foot wrong he’d be done for. He sat back on his heels and tried to get comfortable on the floor. His belt cut into his paunch, a paunch that was proving impossible to shift no matter how often his trainer took him round the park.
‘What women don’t realise,’ said Jane to Richard, ‘is that marriage is a fortress. There may be the odd incursion or skirmish at the ramparts every now and then, but essentially it is impenetrable. No man would willingly leave the comfort and security of a marriage; he’d have to be thrown out. They know they wouldn’t survive a moment out there on their own.’
Richard wished Paul would steer the conversation to some more neutral ground. Infidelity was not something he felt much of an expert on.
He said, ‘Bea was always very discreet, I believe,’ and tried to summon an image of Bea when she was younger. He could remember her dancing round this very room with Adrian in her arms, and he could see her out on their lawn being a pony with Laura on her back. But he could not imagine her as a mistress. ‘She would never h
ave asked this man to leave his wife and children for her. I’m sure she would have thought that was . . . wrong.’
‘So you don’t think she’s gone to be with him then?’
Richard shook his head. ‘Why would she? She’s got Frank.’
‘Oh, Frank. Do you know, I had forgotten all about him,’ said Jane.
‘I gather the police haven’t,’ said Paul. ‘I’d be bloody worried if I was Frank.’
There was a silence. True, Katharine had told him they had searched the house twice, and dug up the garden. And Frank had given a statement, or was it two? But all the same, Richard thought, murdering your wife. That was just too Inspector Morse. He was Frank, for God’s sake, not—
‘. . . biggest cause of death in women aged sixteen to forty-four.’
The two men looked at Jane.
‘What?’
‘Domestic violence.’
‘What, bigger than . . .’ Richard tried to rally some statistics for all the kinds of cancer that women died of – breast, cervix, womb . . .
Paul chuckled. ‘You’ve got to be joking.’
‘Why would I joke about that?’
‘I am quite sure it’s nothing melodramatic,’ said Richard. ‘My feeling is that she had a tiff with Frank and she’s taken herself off to calm down a bit. It’s a temporary blip.’
‘Either that or she’s topped herself,’ boomed Paul, getting to his feet. Now the conversation had turned to murder, he seemed to be feeling more his old self.
The cat meowed and the three of them looked over to the door, where Laura and Adrian stood silhouetted in the light of the hallway.
Over
BY THE time the sun set in Hastings, Katharine had put posters up all round the town. To her surprise, it had been good to be back in the old place. She couldn’t understand how so many years had passed since her last visit. The shopkeepers and restaurant owners, the publicans and waitresses, the fishermen and the man who ran Swan Pedalos, everyone had been interested, sympathetic and attentive. In the eel shop they gave her free eel and chips, and in the Dolphin pub they told her about the missing nurse from Berkhamsted found sleeping rough in the net sheds. It gave her hope and had all taken much longer than she thought, so by the time she climbed the steps of East Hill to begin the cliff walk, the sun was going down and a sharp wind had sprung up from the east.
