“What about school?” I say. “Or your work?”
“Do you want to go back to school just yet?” Mum asks.
God, the thought of it. “No. I couldn’t face it.”
“Well,” Dad says, “I can’t face going back to work. Neither of us can.”
“You’ve been off all this time?”
“Obviously.”
Of course, obviously. “Dad, I’m really—”
“Don’t waste your sympathy on him,” Mum says. “I was so worried about you I cut my training schedule down to fifty kilometers a day.”
It’s a nanosecond before we realize she’s joking. I almost swallow my tonsils and Dad snorts beer out his nose. Then, just as we’re recovering, he asks Mum how she plans to get her bike on the plane to New York and that sets us all off again.
When we’re done laughing, another silence settles. A better kind of silence, though.
We finish the food—at least, I do; they leave half of theirs. Mum refills her wineglass.
“Think about it,” she says, meaning New York. “You don’t have to decide right now.”
I watch her tidy up the remains of the meal, the plates and everything, loading it all onto the tray. Neat, efficient hands; a notch of concentration between her eyebrows. As if the placing of the items on the tray is a puzzle with only one solution and she’s determined to crack it.
“When you’re out on your bike,” I say, “do you ever think about just…keeping going?”
She pauses in what she’s doing. “What d’you mean?”
“I guess, just—riding off and not coming back.”
“No.” Mum sounds shocked at the suggestion. She shoots a glance at Dad, then back at me. “No, I’ve never thought of doing that.”
“I don’t mean for real—literally riding off. But as a fantasy. Like, I wonder what would happen if I just kept riding in a straight line instead of turning for home?”
She finishes loading the tray. Sits and stares at it for a moment. Still gazing at the tray rather than me, she asks (gently, cautiously), “What’s this about, Lor?”
Dad cuts in before I can reply. “Is that how it was for you? With th—with Uman.”
That boy, he nearly said. The boy he believes abducted, or duped, me; who must have seduced or, worst of all, raped me. How hard was it for Dad to speak his name?
“Kind of.” Neither of them seems to know how to respond. So, in the awkwardness that follows, I push another question out there. “What happened to you guys in America?”
“What happened to us?” Dad asks.
“You both just took off, living the dream—where did those two people go? The Liz and Kev you’d been when you left England. What happened to them? Why did they come back?”
“I was twenty-seven years old. Your mum was twenty-three.” He pauses. “You’re fifteen.”
I look at him. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“We’d had our adventure, Lor.” This is Mum. “Our fling, or whatever you want to call it. We’d met each other and fallen in love and we were ready to do the settling-down thing.”
“Happily ever after.”
Dad says, “There are different kinds of happiness. Different…intensities.”
“Are you happy, being an accountant?” I ask. Then, to Mum, “Being a receptionist?”
“Don’t criticize our choices.” Mum’s tone is even but her lips are drawn thin. “Please, don’t tell us how we should have lived our lives.”
“Then don’t tell me how I should live mine.”
“Christ, you’re still a ch—”
“Liz,” Dad says. He reaches for her hand and she lets him hold it. There are tears in her eyes. She blinks them away. Turning his attention to me, he says, “No, I don’t wake up every morning with joy in my heart at the thought of another day’s accountancy. Yes, I’d much rather be doing something more exciting.”
“Like music.”
“Like music, yes.”
“So why didn’t you? Why don’t you?”
“Because I’m not good enough. I never was.” His matter-of-factness is like the thud of a slammed door. “When you’re young, you imagine anything is possible. You’re happy to take your chances with life and see how things work out. You take risks, do wild and crazy things. You live the dream.” He shrugs. “Then you grow up.”
I shake my head. “When you say ‘grow up,’ d’you really mean ‘give up’?”
“She’s discovered Jack Kerouac,” Mum says to Dad.
Dad frowns. “Is he the lad in year ten with the ginger hair?”
“No,” I say, “he’s—”
“Lor, I know who Jack Kerouac is,” he says, laughing. “I read On the Road years before you were even born. Read it in California, as it happens.”
“Tell Dad the quote,” Mum says.
I don’t tell him the quote.
“Something about people who are crazy to live, who never yawn or—”
“Stop making fun of me, Mum.”
“Honey, I’m not making fun of you. Really, I’m not.”
“D’you know how Kerouac died?” Dad asks. When I don’t respond, he says, “Drank himself to death by the time he was my age. He wasn’t a romantic hero, he was an alcoholic.”
I sit there and scowl. Pathetic, but it’s what I feel like doing just now.
Dad finishes his beer. Mum stands up and takes the tray out into the corridor. I hear something topple as she sets it down. She comes back in, pulls the door shut, and locks it.
“Lor,” she says, picking up her wine, “when you’re old enough to leave home you can live however you choose. Hook up with whoever you like. Spend your entire life traveling from place to place, with your rucksack and tent. Paint your tent in pink-and-purple stripes.”
“Yeah, but first there’s school to finish,” I say, laying it on thick with the weary voice. “Then uni, then all that student debt to pay off and, oh, okay, I might as well just get a crap job and rent a skuzzy flat till I’ve got myself straight—and then, yay, I can go off and do something really exciting with my life. Assuming I’m not married with kids and a mortgage by then.”
“When you put it like that,” Mum says with a smile, “it does sound bloody boring.”
I’m still too cross to find that amusing.
Dad, looking confused, asks, “Why would anyone want a pink-and-purple tent?”
—
The voices wake me.
I feel as if I’ve been asleep for ages, but when I open my eyes, a couple of the lamps are still on and I see from the digital alarm clock on the bedside table that it’s 21:50. Which I think is nearly midnight, till I redo the math and realize it’s only ten to ten. I’ve been in bed for less than an hour. I sit up. The TV is still on—muted, with subtitles flicking across the screen—and the book Mum was reading is lying open, facedown, on the chair where she was sitting when I turned in for an early night. But neither of them is in the room.
Voices again. From outside in the corridor.
Still in the dressing gown, I slip out of bed and cross the room. The door is closed, but I hear people talking just the other side of it. Mum, then a man whose voice I vaguely recognize but don’t place. The sound is muffled enough that I can’t quite piece together what’s being said.
I open the door.
My appearance shuts them up. Mum and Dad are standing with a tall, fair-haired guy in a creased gray suit and a tie that looks like a stripe of fluorescent green paint down the front of his shirt. Journalist? No, I remember him—he’s a cop. He visited the house after I came home; he’d been more or less living with Mum and Dad while I was missing.
“Oh, hey, Gloria.” He musters up a smile that doesn’t hide the fact that he really wishes I hadn’t shown my face just then. “Paul Coker. Family liaison. We met yester—”
“Yeah, I know.”
Mum and Dad seem as uncomfortable as he does. “Paul just came by to see if everything was okay,” Mum says. She r
ubs my arm. “Sorry, sweetie, we didn’t want to wake you.”
I look at her, then at Dad, who is staring at the carpet. Then I look at the cop again. “It’s about Uman, isn’t it? Something’s happened—that’s why you’re here.”
The cop nods. “Yes.” He clears his throat, starts again. “Yes, I’m afraid it is.”
QUESTION 16: Are you sure you’re ready to continue, Gloria?
DI RYAN:
Interview resumes 9:07 a.m., fifteenth of June, Litchbury Police Station. Same persons present: myself, Detective Inspector Katharine Ryan; Miss Gloria Jade Ellis; Mrs. Elizabeth Mary Ellis.
Are you sure you’re ready to continue, Gloria?
GLORIA:
Yeah.
DI RYAN:
Okay. [rustling sound] I’m showing the interviewee an evidence bag containing a plain brown hoodie-style polyester-cotton top, size large. Label, River Island. The item is stained with blood and sand and is water-damaged. Gloria, do you recognize this hoodie?
GLORIA:
Can I take it out of the bag?
DI RYAN:
Put these on. I am handing the interviewee a pair of noncontaminant gloves.
[delay] The interviewee is examining the garment.
GLORIA:
[cries]
DI RYAN:
Do you recognize it?
GLORIA:
[nods]
DI RYAN:
For the recording, please.
GLORIA:
Yes. It’s Uman’s. The one he bought in the—[cries] Sorry. In the charity shop in Bristol.
DI RYAN:
You’re sure it’s his?
GLORIA:
Look. [indicates the garment] He did this on some barbed wire.
DI RYAN:
The interviewee is showing me a jagged rip, approximately three centimeters long, on the reverse of the left sleeve, just below the elbow.
GLORIA:
And there’s the blood.
DI RYAN:
That happened while you were with him?
GLORIA:
[nods] Yeah. [cries] It’s definitely Uman’s hoodie.
DI RYAN:
Okay. Thank you, Gloria. I am returning the item to the evidence bag.
MRS. ELLIS:
Do you want to stop a moment, Lor?
GLORIA:
[shakes head] Was there anything else of his on the beach?
DI RYAN:
No. [pauses] Just the boat.
We’re awaiting the owner’s confirmation to ID the vessel, as well as a full forensic examination. But, at this stage, I have to say that all the indications suggest—
GLORIA:
He could have made it ashore, though. Couldn’t he?
DI RYAN:
Our preliminary findings suggest the boat was badly damaged before it beached.
GLORIA:
But you don’t know for certain.
DI RYAN:
I realize this is tough to take, Gloria, but the very real probability is that Uman—
GLORIA:
Probability. That’s all it is. A probability. You haven’t found him, have you?
DI RYAN:
No. No, we haven’t.
GLORIA:
Well, then.
MRS. ELLIS:
Have there been any…sightings of Uman? On land.
DI RYAN:
[shakes head] None have been reported. Realistically, we’re not expecting any at this stage.
GLORIA:
So why are we here? I mean, how can you arrest him or charge him with anything if he’s—
DI RYAN:
Until we have confirmation…Gloria, I appreciate that talking about all of this is going to be even harder for you today—even more upsetting—after this latest development. But the—
GLORIA:
Development.
DI RYAN:
Fact is, whether Uman’s still alive or…not, and regardless of any offenses he may or may not have committed, we need to know what went on in those last days you were together. Where you were, what you did. How it ended. All that’s changed is that yesterday we were trying to trace a suspect, and today we’re looking for a missing boy who we presume to be dead.
GLORIA:
[cries]
MRS. ELLIS:
She barely slept last night, after hearing about this.
DI RYAN:
I’m sure. I’m sure. [pauses] Do you want to take ten minutes?
GLORIA:
[shakes head]
DI RYAN:
Believe me, Gloria, if I could avoid putting you through all this, I would. But you’re quite possibly the last person to see Uman alive. That makes you a really important witness. And we have a duty to establish, as best we can, what happened and what led up to it. How and why we have a wrecked boat and a boy’s hoodie washed up on a beach. And no boy.
MRS. ELLIS:
You put my daughter through a very long, very hard day yesterday. And she’s—
DI RYAN:
I know, Mrs. Ellis.
MRS. ELLIS:
She’s suffered a real shock with this news. You just have to look at her to see that.
DI RYAN:
I understand. Of course I do. You’re her mother, it’s only natural that you—
MRS. ELLIS:
You’ve been so good to us through all this, DI Ryan, and I don’t want to fall out with you now—but don’t you dare patronize me.
GLORIA:
Mum, it’s okay. Seriously.
MRS. ELLIS:
Lor, chicken—
GLORIA:
She’s just doing her job.
DI RYAN:
Look, the fact is, if we don’t do this now, today, we’ll only have to—
GLORIA:
Let’s do it now, then. Get it over with.
DI RYAN:
Liz?
MRS. ELLIS:
It’s Lor’s call. But the moment she wants to stop—
DI RYAN:
We stop. Absolutely. [to Gloria] Deal?
GLORIA:
[nods] Okay.
DI RYAN:
Good. Thank you. That’s good. Let’s make a start, then, shall we?
GLORIA:
[nods, shrugs] Yeah.
DI RYAN:
Okay. So when we wrapped up yesterday, the ATM had swallowed your cards, but you’d already bought your train tickets, so you decided to head down to Penzance anyway. Is that right?
GLORIA:
It wasn’t us who decided—we cut the pack.
DI RYAN:
Right. Of course. [pauses] Anyway, you’re on the train. What—
GLORIA:
We sat in different carriages. After the ATM, we didn’t know how soon you’d be on to us. Uman thought other people on the train would be less likely to notice us if we didn’t sit together.
DI RYAN:
Dodging and weaving.
GLORIA:
We were calling it “dweaving” by then.
DI RYAN:
Not “wodging”?
GLORIA:
That was my suggestion, actually. But Uman said [puts on posh voice], “ ‘Wodging’ carries a whiff of vulgarity.” [cries] Sorry. [pauses] Sorry. I’m okay.
DI RYAN:
Sure?
GLORIA:
[nods]
DI RYAN:
So, what time did you arrive in Penzance?
GLORIA:
You must know that already. Off the CCTV.
DI RYAN:
Nope. We never traced you beyond Bristol, as it happens. Not for definite.
GLORIA:
[shakes head, mutters inaudibly] We got there about two p.m., I think. Something like that.
DI RYAN:
And were you still intending to go to the Scilly Isles, despite having so little money left?
GLORIA:
We’d cut the pack again by then. The cards still said Bryher.
DI RYAN:
These cards had an uncanny knack of choosing the options you wanted to pick in the first place.
GLORIA:
Fate is a handshake between Free Will and Random Chance. I came up with that one, not Uman.
DI RYAN:
[pauses] So, go on. Bryher.
GLORIA:
Actually, we did fix that one. We were so determined to make it over to Bryher, we did best of three. Best of five, in the end.
DI RYAN:
All right, you’re in Penzance. Short of money. Something like sixty kilometers of sea between you and Bryher. The cards say yes—but how? What happens next, Gloria?
QUESTION 17: Could we swim there?
That was when it all started to turn to shit.
First thing to go wrong (second, including the ATM): there’s only one crossing a day to the Scilly Isles—and we’d missed it. Which meant spending the afternoon, the evening, the whole night in Penzance. No big deal, really, except that, having set our hearts on Bryher—my happy place—we were impatient to get there. Once we reached the island everything would be okay, just as it had been in the Stretton Hills. Bryher was a magical realm of golden beaches, clear blue skies, and all-day sunshine, I told Uman. I’d filled his head with tales of idyllic family holidays when I was a child, my brother and me roaming the island from dawn to dusk, barefoot and brown-limbed. Those “free spirits” Mum spoke of, drifting on the gentlest sea breeze. If it had ever rained in those summers, if there’d been family quarrels, I’d erased it from my memory.
It rained that day in Penzance. That was the next thing to go wrong. After mostly warm, dry days since we’d gone on the run, the weather turned against us.
“We are young,” Uman said. “We are weatherproof.”
“We are.”
We were huddled in a shelter on the seafront, watching the rain-pocked, slate-gray sea send wave after wave crashing in a beery froth onto the shore. Killing time. Conserving what was left of our money. Avoiding shops and cafés, and the busier parts of a Cornish town, where a dark-skinned guy in a Rasta hat and a fake-blond girl might draw attention. On a wet, blustery afternoon, we had the front to ourselves, apart from a dog-walker in head-to-toe Gore-Tex and a few gulls flapping about like windblown scraps of paper.
Twenty Questions for Gloria Page 15
