by Helen Walsh
Greg discharges him with a nod. They hear the door of his room shut and Greg leans into her and says: ‘He’s lying about something.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Greg. Let’s not jump to any conclusions, hey?’
‘Something’s not right. You said it yourself, yesterday – you don’t trust him.’
She sidles towards the bathroom; hesitates, until she’s certain she’s dismissed. Greg is still hunched, his hands clasped between his legs.
‘That fucking kid knows something, I’m sure of it. What else could possibly explain his indifference?’
His expression wanes from a livid self-righteousness to resigned, humble melancholy. Jenn wants to go to him, to hold her husband, but she can smell herself: the sex-sweat, the residue of skunk on her fingertips. And thinking back to him, to them, only hours ago, another fire is lit. Her daughter is missing; she fears for her, now. Yet she has to know who raised the alarm. Did Nathan go to her room to make up with her? Did he go there for sex, and find her bed empty? She knows they are fucking – she knows it. But why does he still go to Emma? What does she give him that she does not?
She lets the door frame take her weight and strains for a casual timbre.
‘Was it you or Nathan who noticed she wasn’t in her room?’
He shrugs as though the question is as trivial as it is self-evident. ‘Greg?’
‘The big door downstairs … It was banging. It woke me up, so I went to have a look. It was wide open. I thought we might have been robbed at first, but everything seemed fine. On my way back up to bed I noticed Emma’s lamp was on.’ Jenn blanches. He does know! Why ask her if she’d noticed whether Emma’s light was on. Greg drones on; his voice flat. ‘I stuck my head around the door expecting to find her reading …’ He forces a rueful smile. ‘I was going to tell her to get her beauty sleep, you know, but she wasn’t there and I assumed … I thought the worst. I went straight to his room expecting to find –’
She nods, giddy with relief.
He lowers his mouth to her ear. ‘I found this on her bed.’ He gets up, goes to his bedside drawer, takes out a book. The Social Contract. Jenn doesn’t get it, she nods for him to elucidate. ‘Look at the inscription.’ She opens it up. To my Nate, here be the meaning of life! With love, Em. Jenn shakes her head, still not getting it.
‘Look at the date.’
‘St Valentine’s Day.’
‘She gave this to him when they first met. Her broadside at the beach café the other day. They were her opinions, not his. Look underneath.’
She has to strain her eyes. It’s written in a spidery hand, in pencil.
Sorry. Don’t get it. Or you.
He’d signed it. Yesterday’s date. Jenn feels faint.
‘Can you give me five minutes, Greg? I’ll get ready. We need to start searching for her – properly.’
They stare at each other until he nods, his face crumpling as he turns to the balcony, its window-panes rattling in the wind. Beyond, the soar of the sea.
She showers. The water is so cold that she lets out a long, hard stream of piss the moment it hits her skin. She gags at the stench that rises with the steam – must and iron and sex. She soaps herself quickly, recoiling at the stubble springing from her pubic mound. Her arse is hot and swollen to the touch. She rubs her eyes, tries to rub away the pall that fogs her thoughts. It’s all there – she can sense it; yet she cannot process. Emma has gone. Emma, the young radical who has gifted her gormless beau Rousseau for Valentine’s – and they’d thought he was pulling her strings. Would she harm herself, for Nathan? It depends what she knows. Would she do it to punish Jenn for the daughter outburst? No. Surely not. Jenn tilts her head right back and lets the jet spray her face, her scalp, her mind. No, Emma will be out there, within earshot, witnessing the drama unfold; revelling in the pandemonium that, even now, she is capable of instigating. Any minute now she is going to walk back through those doors and let Greg and Nathan know what a wicked stepmother she has.
As she steps out of the shower she spies a bright red bruise on her breast. A shudder of disgust shivers through her as she pictures him, only hours ago, sucking and biting, wild like a dog. She winces as she tugs her jeans up over her damp thighs, and the seam cuts into the puffy folds of her cunt. He’d done her again after the smoke, down by the swimming pool, and then in the kitchen, bent over the table; again and again. She’d let him.
Starving, they raided the fridge and devoured the Serrano ham Greg had been keeping for their last day. They peeled it from the waxy paper, strip after strip, and dangled it into each other’s mouths. He’d dropped to his knees again and opened her up with his mouth. She clamps a hand to her face as the feel of his tongue, mechanical but efficient, shoots through her. She remembers buckling at the knees; the deckchair being blown across the terrace, the swimming-pool lights flickering off, then on, then off for good. She remembers the big front door slamming. Is it possible that Emma came in? Did she see their carnival?
She finds Greg downstairs. He is on the phone, trying to convince the local police to send out a search party for his little girl, but it’s futile, she can sense them mocking him.
‘Only five hours? Isn’t that enough? Have you seen the storm out there? I don’t care if this is normal for Deià – it is not normal for us! My daughter has a fractured ankle and she is out in that hurricane right now.’
She wonders whether the officer on the other end of the line will make the connection between the missing girl and the emotional waif they taxied home last night. It is only a matter of time, now, until events of the last few hours catch up with Jenn. She should come clean before he finds her out. And thinking it out, imagining her confession playing out in front of her, makes her mind up for her. She’ll tell him. Now. As soon as he gets off the phone.
He sees her hovering in the doorway, gestures for her to sit down. He gives her an odd look before swivelling his body away from her. He sighs down the phone.
‘Yes, I know that, I know we’ve been through all of that, but what’s changed is that I have reason to believe my daughter poses a risk … to herself.’ She feels almost embarrassed for him, she can hear exactly how he must sound to them. Desperate, ridiculous – and every bit the blinkered, indulgent, tourist-father. ‘No! She is not being treated for’ – he juts out his jaw, frustrated – ‘the melancholy. But there have been some rather big changes in her life these last few weeks.’ He turns round to eye Jenn again – as though this is just as much for her as for the police. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you – and I would like you to alert the coast guard. Yes! Guardia Costal!’ She can hear the officer talking down the phone in English. He sounds perfectly bored. After the call has finished, Greg turns to her and says:
‘So. You heard it.’
‘What? What did I hear?’
He looks like he might cry. ‘It’s me, Jenn. I’ve made her … I should never have confided in her.’
She can’t go to him. She wants to hold him, but she can’t move. ‘What, Greg? What are you telling me?’
‘Well …’ He tries to regain control. He manages a smile and shakes his head. ‘I’ve lost my job, for one thing.’
Jenn finds herself laughing, out of relief. She stems it.
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry. I should have –’ He takes her hand between both of his and squeezes too hard. ‘The new Dean … Romantics aren’t for him, it seems. Aren’t for now, full stop. They’ve dropped my modules – not just mine, they’re making cuts right across the board …’ Jenn just stares at him. There’s shock. There’s anger. There’s an unpleasant stab of hatred. Greg is talking to the floor. ‘… pouring their funding into New Media.’
Jenn releases her hand.
‘Hang on, Greg, back up – you’re telling me they sacked you?’
He shakes his head. He looks more embarrassed than angry.
‘They demoted me and then they asked me to reapply for my newly demoted post.’
/> ‘When? When did all this happen?’
He runs a finger down along the bridge of his nose.
‘I didn’t want it to spoil the holiday … spoil this.’
He is pointing at the fridge. A shiver of guilt – his precious mountain ham – instantly smothered by anger.
‘But … you said … I thought they were giving you more? More work, more PhD students to supervise?’ Her eyeballs burn into him. He drops his head. ‘Isn’t that what all those calls were about?’
He shakes his head, slowly. ‘No. Those calls were from Chris – telling me I’m a fool to myself. Begging me to reconsider.’
She nods; drives her teeth down onto her lower lip. She waits for Greg to look up.
‘And you told Emma? You told our fifteen-year-old daughter and not me?’
‘It wasn’t like that. Emma worked it out for herself. As we’re beginning to appreciate, she’s not quite the ingénue—’
‘She is, Greg! She’s a fucking child!’
She’s weeping, now. Greg crouches in front of her; gently pulls her hands away from her face.
‘Darling, listen. Emma put two and two together and, I don’t know … I told her. I’m sorry. I had to tell someone. Em made me promise not to tell you. She said you needed a proper holiday more than anyone.’
‘And this is why you think she’s out there, now? Because her father lost his job?’
‘Yes. I don’t know. I think it’s part of it, yes. I think there’s been a lot of things, building up. I think she quarrelled with Nathan last night and that was her tipping point – but, yes. Anyway. Now you know.’ He gets to his feet. He stands there, his eyes low, expecting some sort of rebuke, pathetically grateful when it doesn’t come. He kisses her on the forehead. Scoops up the car keys. ‘I know my daughter, and I have to go and find her.’ She nods, gets up. He places a hand on her arm, firmly but gently. ‘Please, can you wait here? I want one of us to be here. For when –’ He drops his head again. He opens the door and the wind roars in, knocking a glass over and sending it spinning along the table. It slows to a stop, right on the edge. Jenn watches her husband, old, defeated, as he heads out into the dark.
24
She finds him lying on his bed, reading a magazine. He’s plugged into his iPod through one earphone, the other dangling loose against his bare chest. There is something staged about the way he’s composed himself, half-clad, one leg trailing to the floor; yet he starts when she appears in the doorway. He gives her a panicked look and drops his magazine to the floor, casually kicking it under the bed.
She perches on the edge of the mattress with her back to him. For a while she says nothing. She tilts her face to the ceiling fan, closes her eyes and her mind cools for a minute, filled with nothing but the shallow hum of the blades. He shuffles up behind her, loops an arm around her waist and pulls her down onto his chest. His thumb digs under the hem of her bra and finds her nipple. His touch rips through her, urgent and extreme, but now she fights it. She clamps his hand, pulls it off her. She hauls herself back up and spies the corner of the magazine. He darts a look at her; drops an eye to the floor. On impulse, she sticks the magazine with her big toe and slides it out from under the bed. It’s not even porn, it’s a lad’s mag – some barely legal airbrushed wench winking from the cover. Like a schoolteacher examining bad homework, she runs her eye over it, letting him register her contempt. Yet her revulsion is not reserved for the magazine. She’s appalled at the recognition. She can’t help but feel betrayed by him: she’s given him everything she has to give and here he is, carefree, reading the revelations of a soap star’s former boyfriend. She’s shocked and deflated and, not for the first time today, a worm of doubt eats into her. Who are you? she thinks. What are you, to me? And in a flash her betrayal turns to anger.
‘How can you just sit here!’ She snatches the earphone out. He cowers away from her. She jabs a finger at him. ‘Why aren’t you out there with Greg, looking for her?’
He composes himself, holds her with those huge, earnest eyes. ‘Come on, Jenn. You don’t believe she’s in danger any more than I do. She’ll be buzzing now the old man’s gone out there trying to rally a search party.’ Jenn checks the impulse to lash out at him but she lets him know with her eyes: it is not okay; you do not speak about my husband that way. ‘You said so yourself, Jenn – she’s a bad drama queen.’
‘Possibly. But I’m a bad mother, Nathan.’ He goes to protest, she holds up a hand. She doesn’t want his reassurance; what she wants is the truth. ‘What happened last night? Tell me.’
He flinches away, caught out for a second, but when he turns back he’s fully poised again. He’s shaking his head, wounded that she could doubt him. He slips his earphones back in – both of them. She gently removes them.
‘What happened in the village?’
She gets up, walks to the window. Down below she can see Greg stumbling around the garden with a torch, calling out Emma’s name. She steps away.
‘I told you.’
He’s standing level with her now and she can feel her resolve weakening, her conviction of only mere moments ago, fraying like the end of a rope. Perhaps he is telling the truth. She softens her voice.
‘What was the argument about my credit card?’
He looks relieved; he shuffles towards her, a dimple crease on his cheek.
‘Come off it! You know I wouldn’t have bought champagne on it, right? I was only winding her up!’
‘Winding her up …’ Jenn can hear the sadness in her own voice. Flat, perfunctory – she can’t convey any anger or any kind of feeling at all. She’s found herself out. ‘Winding her up her how, Nathan?’
His eyes are darting around her face. He’s no longer so sure of himself. He winks at her.
‘The champagne! Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t really have ordered it if she’d gone along with it.’
‘It was your idea?’
‘Well, yeah. No. It’s not like it was stealing or anything. Your old man gave us your card.’
It spurts through her, hot and painful. She places the flats of her hands on his chest and shoves him as hard as she can. He stumbles backwards onto the bed and sits there, looking up at her, laughing; but he’s scared, now.
‘Emma didn’t want to go for the meal, did she?’
He stands and ducks his face towards her.
‘She felt bad about taking the card, didn’t she, Nathan? Taking from me.’ She moves her head away, eyes never leaving his. He whips a hand behind her, pulls her close and kisses her on the mouth. He strides past her, pleased with himself.
‘You’re fucking sexy when you’re mad.’
He lingers in the doorway, with his back to her, one elbow propped up against the jamb for a minute, letting her take her fill of his broad, tanned back; the clumps of muscle around his shoulder blades. ‘I feel like a shower,’ he says.
He saunters away, rolling his hips. He seems sure of it – she will take her anger to the shower. She will push him down and ride her fury out. Below, she hears the slam of a car door. The engine starts and the car is crunching, very slowly, along the dirt track. Even in the midst of a crisis, her husband is negotiating each rickety bump and pothole as carefully as he can, in anticipation of the handover back to Eurocar. She listens to him go. She could cry for the love of him.
She refuses eye contact as she passes Nathan and, when he twigs that she’s not playing, he follows her down the landing and hooks her from behind with his forearm.
‘Get on your knees,’ he says, grinding his pelvis into her back. His dick is already rigid. He’s breathing hard. She just stands there, limp. His hands are all over her tits, pulling, squeezing; his mouth up and down the nape of her neck, sucking, biting.
She closes her eyes and allows it to douse her one last time, then pushes him away with force. She runs down the stairs.
Nathan screams after her.
‘You fucking prick tease!’ She hears his fist slam into the wall. She cat
ches her breath, waits. His voice comes again, closer. ‘Where you going?’ He’s on the bottom stair now. She turns and, in that moment, is certain.
‘I’m going to do the right thing.’
He looks young and scared as he rubs an ear lobe with two fingers and turns down the corners of his mouth ever so slightly. She starts to backpedal out of the room and, before she can change her mind, she turns and runs out through the patio doors.
25
The storm blows great balls of tumbleweed across the terrace, held up for a moment by the picket fence before their stalled momentum propels them up and over it, skimming the surface of the swimming pool before coming to rest in the suck of the overflow. Jenn bends into the wind and picks her way across the grove. The ground is littered with small branches and rotting fruit, and with each step she can feel the dogged panic in her chest. She leans against the balustrade, catches her breath. The sea is roaring with a fury she has never heard before, the waves slamming in to the beach at speed, throwing great spumes of white up into the blackness. She can still see Greg’s rear lights as he crawls round the bend, but even at that speed she knows she can’t make up the distance; not in this wind, not with her chest.
She forks hard right across the patch of scrub where Benni lights his bonfires – if she’s quick, she can intersect him on the next bend. She knows what she must do. Once she tells the police what she’s done, what she did to her daughter, they’ll take it seriously. They’ll alert the coastguard. They’ll find Emma and bring her back to her daddy. And then she’ll tell him. Everything.
She pushes on, clenches her teeth and wills herself to go faster. If she can cut him off, then there is hope. There is still a way forward. Arms outstretched in the pre-dawn gloaming, she skirts the copse of myrtle and olive trees that separate the scrub from the road. She narrows her eyes, tries to squint for a space through which to penetrate the switchback. Just ahead is the silhouette of the little wooden ramblers’ hut, but Jenn cannot see further than a few feet past it. But then, eureka! The winking indicator as Greg’s car pulls out from the lane is now behind her – if she’s quick she can wave him down. There’s an opening of sorts in the brittle bush, a bar of space where the blackness lifts a little. It’s not the makeshift stile leading onto the road, but there’s a gap, just about big enough to squeeze through. She covers her face with her forearms and throws her weight forward, her jumper snagging on the thorns, dragging her back. She yelps, closes her eyes and goes again, pushing on through the spiky thistle. She shields her face, but the thorns catch her neck, her hair. One tiny talon digs into her neck, holding her fast. She tries to relax, shrinking her head down into her shoulders in an effort to free herself, and, as she goes to shift her weight onto her other foot, she slips, skidding down the scree and into the road. She winces as the bramble rips the hair from her scalp, but she can’t slow herself. She stumbles right out into the road as Greg speeds past. Hunched over the steering wheel, peering right and left, he seems to look right at her before accelerating into the abyss. She runs after him, waving her arms, hopeless. The brake lights blink bright scarlet before the hairpin bend, then the car slips from view.
