Secrets in the Shadows

by Hannah Emery

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Jack answered. He wasn’t one for formalities like saying hello.

  ‘It’s just that something’s come up. I can’t make the interview.’ Noel cradled the phone between his chin and shoulder while he fished in his pockets and wallet for more coins.

  ‘Something urgent?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a family thing. And I can’t really … I don’t really have a choice, so I’ve had to come home.’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘Not my flat in London. I mean home to my family. My mum.’

  ‘Has there been an accident?’

  ‘No, not exactly.’

  There was a long pause and Noel dropped another coin into the phone, imagining Jack sighing and rolling his eyes up towards his pristine white office ceiling.

  ‘I’m not going to ask you what it is,’ Jack said after a while. ‘But deal with it, and get on the next flight. You can still make it to the interview. I can ask them to see you last.’

  ‘Jack. I won’t be able to. I’ll have to leave it. I’m sorry, I know you put your neck on the line and I honestly appreciate it. But it’s just not good timing.’

  ‘Okay.’ Another sigh. ‘You’ve blown it, obviously. They won’t reschedule your interview. You miss the interview, you miss the job. I’ll see you Monday.’

  ‘Okay. I—’

  But Jack had gone. Noel stared at the receiver in his hand for a while, wondering if he should call Jack again and take it all back. His fingers slid over a twenty pence piece in his pocket, grasping it, then releasing it. He hung the receiver up and pushed open the door of the phone box.

  Grey pellets stung Noel’s face as he walked back to his car. The final stretch of his journey was silent and still. The roads towards the town centre were blank compared with the city ones he had left behind.

  Noel’s mother lived in the house he’d grown up in, a short drive from the town centre. The house was a copy of the one next to it, and the one next to that. Noel had spent so many years wondering what it would be like to live somewhere different to this bland semi. And now, as Noel pulled onto the kerb at the side of the house, he felt a tug of terror at what he had just turned down. The New York job had been his goal for years. He had spent the last week leafing through details of Manhattan apartments for rent that Jack had left on Noel’s desk. He had been confident of his presentation and interview technique. He had bought a new suit and tried it on to check that it looked smart.

  Noel gazed up at the house. His old bedroom was the biggest room in the house, at the front. When his dad had left, his mum had swapped rooms with Noel. She had wanted a new start. Noel had done as he was asked and quietly swapped his books for his mother’s elaborate coats and handbags filled with forgotten lipsticks and crumbling tissues. He had liked helping his mother swap their rooms around. He could see that she was angry, could see her mouth puckered with the effort of not saying all the things she wanted to about the divorce.

  As Noel stared up at his old bedroom, the light in there blinked on. Somebody was in there. His mother never went in that room. Although the curtains were closed and revealed nothing but a cool golden glow, Noel knew who had turned it on, who would be sitting on his bed, with Noel’s childish old shark-patterned lamp beside her.

  He stopped the engine, stopped thinking about what could have been, and let himself into the house. As soon as he opened the front door, Mags let out a whispered squeal and click-clacked in her slippers from the kitchen to the hall.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here!’ she said as she gave Noel a faux-kiss on the cheek. ‘Do you want some chips? I’m making the girls some,’ she nodded towards the chip pan sizzling away on the hob, ‘because they love chips. They’ve just gone upstairs though, so I doubt they’ll eat any now. I’ve got a pork chop too, if you want it?’

  ‘I’m okay with just some chips. How are Grace and Elsie?’

  ‘I’ll do you the chop as well.’ Noel’s mum busied herself with the fridge for a minute and then turned to him, her eyes welling up. It obviously wasn’t the first time she’d cried that evening. The blue eye make-up she had worn every day since Noel could remember was sprinkled over her flushed cheeks.

  ‘I still don’t think Louisa’s going to ever come back,’ she whispered, her eyes darting upstairs in case she might be overheard. ‘I don’t know what they’ll do. They’re sixteen years old. I can’t believe she’s done it. I knew she wasn’t at her best, but … ’ her voice trailed off and she began opening cupboards and pouring drinks of lemonade. ‘I didn’t think she’d ever actually disappear,’ she eventually finished.

  As Noel took his glass of lemonade, he gazed around the kitchen. Nothing was out of place. Mags’s house usually betrayed chaos and rushing, with letters and keys tossed on worktops and jackets and bags slung over chairs. But now, everything seemed to be immaculate. The worktops were desolate: a wide, wiped expanse of beige. The sink was bare, and the draining board emptied and dry. Noel imagined his mother tidying again and again, keeping busy. The thought pained him. He sat down at the table so suddenly that he banged his leg against the pine. He sat there for a moment, rubbing his leg, thinking of Louisa, of how much she had meant to him when he was young, and how wrong things had gone for her.

  ‘It was their birthday, you know. She left them on their sixteenth birthday,’ Mags said, peering into the oven, looking anywhere except at Noel.

  ‘I know.’ Noel had sent the twins a card each stuffed with a five pound note only the other day.

  ‘She’d gone out in her pyjamas, we think. She wasn’t well at all, in her mind. She had been getting worse for a while. I told her to go to the doctors a few months ago, but I don’t think she did.’

  ‘But you don’t know for sure?’ Noel suddenly felt a surge of miserable anger towards his mother. ‘Why didn’t you check?’

  Mags’s face collapsed and she began crying again, making Noel go cold with guilt. Of course it wasn’t his mother’s fault.

  ‘I should have done, I know that now. I should have made her go and talk to somebody. But she was so bloody stubborn. Once she had an idea, it was like she’d been brainwashed.’ Mags shook her head, then raised it towards the ceiling, waving her hands in front of her eyes to try and coax her tears back inside. She plonked a bottle of ketchup on the table and sniffed. ‘Do me a favour, will you? The girls are in bed, in your room. Will you go up and pop your head round the door and check they’re okay? The light is on. They won’t have it dark.’

  Noel nodded and made his way up the stairs, bracing himself for hearing muffled sobs. But when he looked around the open door into his old burgundy bedroom, all he heard was sleep. He stood there for a moment, feeling a little uncomfortable but unable to tear himself away. Nobody else would be able to tell which girl was which, but Noel could. Her hair was slightly darker, her skin slightly paler. She slept more intently, her limbs strewn, breaths deep and gasping.

  It was hours later when Noel finally lay back on the sofa under the unzipped red sleeping bag that had accompanied him on various childhood trips. He lay quietly, hearing his mum shuffle around upstairs, running the water, rattling coat hangers, drawing her curtains. Finally, there was silence, but he still didn’t close his eyes. Even in the dark, he could make out the room he knew so well. Woodchip wallpaper was punctuated by framed pictures Mags thought were artistic: women with umbrellas; children with dogs. The mantlepiece was home to the china mouse behind which letters were propped, the clock that was set six minutes fast so that Mags would always be on time (it didn’t work: she always set off at least fifteen minutes late) and some unframed, curling photographs of them all over time. Noel was in fewer photographs than the twins. But they were girls, happy to pose, happy to pout. Noel was often in the background of the photos, head stooped, reading, wishing he could take himself less seriously but not knowing how to.

  Impatient with his inability to settle and sleep, Noel threw the tangled sleeping bag off his legs and stood. He clicked on the st
andard lamp behind the sofa and the room was immediately drowned in a sickly peach glow. He wandered over to the mantlepiece and took a handful of the photographs before sitting back on the sofa. There were the pictures he remembered from various Christmastimes, one of his mum and her friends playing Monopoly while a baby Noel sat on Louisa’s knee, one of Louisa and Noel at Stanley Park one summer. Noel held that one at an angle so that he could see the paused faces in the tepid light. He was shocked to find that tears ached behind his eyes as he stared at Louisa’s pale face.

  Now, in the strange night, the thought of what Louisa might have done, where she might be now, made Noel’s stomach heavy. He remembered that day at Stanley Park, the day that the picture in his hand had been taken. Noel had liked Louisa a lot, and had felt an urge to please her. They had bought ice creams and Noel remembered wanting to buy Louisa’s but having no pocket money left after spending it on a book about rockets. Louisa spoke to Noel more than anyone, then. The twins were too young to have proper conversations with, and although Noel didn’t want to say much, when he did speak, Louisa seemed to be the only one who would listen to him. But this particular day at the park, Louisa seemed preoccupied. Even she didn’t listen to Noel properly. So in the end he played with the twins. Noel didn’t think they were particularly enchanting that day, or many other days after that. It wasn’t until years later that Grace suddenly made Noel feel something click inside him every time he looked at her.

  Once he’d returned the photograph to its place on the cluttered mantlepiece, Noel pulled the sleeping bag back over his body and closed his eyes. Sleep washed over him quickly this time, and he slept for much longer than he thought he might. It was light outside when he heard the kettle being flicked on in the kitchen next door to him. The clanking of mugs made him groan and lift up his head. Grace stood in the doorway, staring into the room, as though somebody had pressed pause on her.

  ‘Hi,’ Noel said.

  Grace said nothing. She was wearing a thin t-shirt, and Noel could see her black bra through it. He tried not to look at her shape, at her hair which hung in thick black waves either side of her pale face, at her long, lean legs which were barely covered. He tried hard to remember that she was only sixteen.

  ‘Grace. I’m so sorry. You’ve had a tough time, haven’t you?’

  Grace rolled her eyes. ‘You sound like a teacher. You’re saying what a teacher would say.’

  So Noel stood up, even though he was only wearing his boxers, and he hugged her, and he tried not to smell her strawberry smell and feel her skin against his.

  ‘She won’t come back,’ Grace said finally, her voice muffled into Noel’s shoulder.

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  Grace laughed, a sharp mean laugh. ‘I do know it. I know it better than anyone. Come on. Let’s have coffee. I’ve nicked one of your mum’s fags too. Want to share it?’

  ‘I don’t smoke. And neither should you.’

  More eye rolling. Suddenly it was very easy to remember that Grace was sixteen.

  ‘Course you don’t, sir,’ she smirked. She threw a jar of Nescafé at him. ‘Two sugars, please.’

  Noel knew that Grace wasn’t flirting, that she was just treating him like she might a weird older brother who she’d never actually considered as part of her world. He knew what flirting was now. Whatever it was that he had lacked at school, Noel seemed to have in the world of work. Women flirted with him in the lift and in bars and at office parties. One in particular flirted her way right into Noel’s evenings, and somehow he was now in some kind of relationship with her. Cara was the same age as Noel. She liked going out to nightclubs in short skirts on Saturday nights and renting videos on Sundays. Sometimes they went to the cinema after work, sometimes they just sprawled out on the sofa watching television and eating microwaved meals. Noel remembered now, looking at Grace, that he hadn’t even told Cara that he had left London and come to Blackpool.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Grace said, her hands cupped around her coffee. She was wearing neon nail varnish that was chipped, and Noel thought of Cara’s manicured hands that were begging for a big engagement ring to flaunt.

  ‘I need to phone someone and let her know I’m here.’

  Grace shrugged and put her coffee down on the worktop. Noel tried to read her expression, to see if there was any curiosity about the female he’d just alluded to. But there was nothing. She began to pick at her nail varnish, lost in her own world.

  Noel was drifting to sleep on Sunday night when he felt something weigh on the sleeping bag, near his feet. He opened his eyes and saw Grace’s silhouette at the end of the sofa. She was sitting with her knees drawn up against her chest.

  ‘Can’t sleep,’ she whispered when she saw that Noel had woken.

  ‘That’s okay. We can sit together for a bit. Shall I make you a drink?’

  He could tell then, from the way that Grace shook her head, that she couldn’t speak. She shook her head for much longer than she needed to. He shuffled up so that he was sitting next to her and put his arm around her.

  Minutes passed while they sat in silence.

  ‘People keep saying no news is good news. But that’s shit,’ Grace said eventually, her voice breaking. ‘No news means that she’s gone.’

  Noel held Grace’s shaking shoulders more tightly then, pulled her towards him and felt his chest become wet from her black tears. After a time, her sobs subsided and she disentangled herself from Noel and wiped her face on the sleeping bag.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Noel. It’s made it all easier. I can’t even speak to Elsie about her. I can tell she’s furious, and she’s got things she wants to say, but she won’t talk. She won’t say anything.’

  Noel thought of Elsie’s distant, frowning face. She had barely spoken to Noel since he’d arrived. ‘Everyone deals with things like this differently. She’ll come round.’

  Grace sniffed. ‘Maybe. But I’m still glad you’re here for now. Please say you’re staying for a bit.’

  Noel had planned to get up at 3 a.m. the next day and drive back to London in time for work. He thought of Jack’s broad, annoyed face, of the line that somebody in a tall New York office had scraped through Noel’s name in the interview list. And then he thought of how Grace had just crumpled into nothing, and how she had come to Noel to do it.

  This was terrible timing.

  ‘Course I’ll stay,’ he said to Grace. He saw her face change in the dark as she smiled. As she clambered off the sofa and left the room, he wondered what it might be like to kiss her, and if she’d kissed anybody properly yet, or done anything else. The thought made him ache, and he banished it from his mind.

  Noel decided to go back to London on Tuesday night. On Monday afternoon, while they were sitting watching the news together, he told Grace.

  ‘I do want to stay longer,’ he explained. ‘But my boss isn’t great with the sympathy stuff.’

  Noel had called the office that morning. Jack’s words were still echoing in his ears.

  ‘Noel, my sympathies are with whoever is suffering there with you. But we need you here, doing your job. We do have a policy on compassionate leave, but it doesn’t cover family friends, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s not how businesses are run,’ Grace said now, lifting up her feet and plonking them on Noel’s knees. She snuggled into the sofa. ‘Is it a good job you’ve got? It must be, if you’ve moved all the way to London for it.’

  ‘It is. I’ve worked my way up since I’ve been there. I started out having to photocopy and make drinks, but now I get to do interviews with different people in the finance industry and write them up. I always have a deadline to meet, so it’s quite fast paced. But I enjoy the writing, and I love living in London. I’ve never wanted to stay in Blackpool,’ he finished cautiously.

  ‘I don’t either,’ Grace said quickly.

  ‘
What do you want to do after sixth form?’

  Grace thought for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose I need to pass my exams first. But I want to move away. I want to go somewhere completely different. I sometimes imagine living somewhere like London. Or maybe New York, I’d like to live in New York,’ she finished with a grin.

  Noel hesitated for a minute, then spoke. ‘I had an interview for a job in New York recently.’

  Grace leaned forward and her deep violet eyes widened.

  ‘Really? That’s so exciting. Didn’t it go well?’

  ‘I didn’t go,’ Noel said, waving his hand dismissively.

  Grace sat back and tapped him lightly on the head with a plump red cushion. ‘You should have gone. You blew it. That’s the kind of thing I’d do. I’d have a good chance at something then end up getting distracted and blowing it for myself. But I wouldn’t expect you to do that. You should try again. As soon as there’s another chance.’

  ‘Chances like that don’t come up very often, to be honest.’

  ‘There must have been a good reason for not going. It must have been something important. Was it?’ Grace said, looking at the television. The newsreader had a sombre expression, and then the scene shot to a field of people searching for something. A body. Noel snatched the remote from beside him and zapped off the news. The lack of television threw the room into silence. He realised he still needed to answer Grace’s question about the New York interview.

  ‘It was very important.’

  They were both quiet for a minute, still staring at the blank television screen.

  ‘So,’ Noel said eventually. ‘If you move to New York, what will you do there?’

  Grace shrugged. ‘Dunno what job I’ll end up doing. I like English and I like drama. I might do a drama course and be an actress.’

  Noel smiled, thinking of how he had always hated speaking in front of people.

  ‘You’d make a great actress. I’ll come and watch you perform if you like.’