The Rift

by Nina Allan

  * * *

  From what Selena heard later, it appeared that someone in Stoke had sent a newspaper clipping to someone in Warrington, and the rumours had begun to circulate from there. Stephen, who had come north in the hope of making a new start, was not going to be allowed to forget his past. Even though the courts had acquitted him of any wrongdoing, even though all Stephen wanted to do was earn his living and read his books and tend his koi carp.

  One night in late September, some local youths shimmied over the back wall of Stephen’s garden and poured a bottle of disinfectant into the carp pond. All twelve fish died, of course. Selena didn’t find out about it until the evening of the day it happened, when she called in on Stephen as usual on her way home from school. Stephen came to the door distraught and weeping, barely able to speak. He put his arms around Selena and held her, his whole body trembling. The embrace went on for what seemed like ages and the longer it lasted the more uncomfortable and out of her depth Selena felt. Stephen had never touched her before. This sudden demonstration of affection was both unwelcome and completely unexpected.

  He smelled fiercely of sweat, as if he’d been running, or was going down with the flu. He kept repeating Selena’s name, as if he believed it could save him somehow. When he told her what had happened, Selena felt a deep-down horror, the kind that twists your guts and makes you feel sick. She had no idea what to say. She could offer him no words of comfort, because there were none. Selena wanted to leave the maisonette and never go back. She felt her refuge had been spoiled, violated by an action so unspeakable she didn’t want ever to have to think about it. She would have liked to pretend the carp pool had never existed.

  For the first time in a long time, what Selena wanted most was to be at home.

  “They poisoned a whole world, don’t they realise?” Stephen said, when at last he was able to let go of Selena and talk about it. He made tea for them both, his hands still shaking. “Just imagine if someone pumped the Earth’s atmosphere full of cyanide – imagine the terror, the agony. That’s what those boys did to my beautiful carp. And for no reason.” His voice trembled, and he began crying again, this time more quietly.

  Even when Selena finally managed to extricate herself and go home – she made an excuse about a non-existent friend of her father’s who was coming to dinner – she immediately began to worry about how she could possibly avoid having to see or speak to Stephen Dent in the future. That night she had a nightmare about the fish. She dreamed she came downstairs to pick up the post and found one of the koi carp on the doormat instead, flapping on the coarse brown bristle with its pink gills heaving, and no water to put it in. She woke with her heart racing, still wondering about how long she could put off visiting Stephen without it becoming obvious that she was avoiding him.

  As things turned out, that wasn’t a problem she had to deal with. When Selena arrived home from school that afternoon she found two police cars and an ambulance parked in the street outside. According to her mother, someone a few doors along had committed suicide.

  “He’d been in trouble at work, apparently,” Margery said. She didn’t elaborate, and Selena never found out if she knew who Stephen was or what his history had been. Selena felt shocked and empty and sad. She kept thinking of something Stephen had said to her the day before, about not wanting to live in a world where people could kill innocent creatures and get away with it. The idea that he had meant it literally had not crossed her mind. Did this mean that Stephen’s death was her fault, that if she’d believed him more she might have done something to persuade him out of it? The thoughts troubled her, but she didn’t dwell on them for long. Too much had happened that summer already. She wondered what would become of his books. Stephen hadn’t mentioned relatives, not even once.

  * * *

  There was police tape outside Stephen Dent’s house for a while, and then a For Sale sign. Selena never discovered who bought the place, and nor did she try to. By the Easter of the following year, the whole Stephen Dent episode had begun to take on the texture of unreality, a strange interlude that had spun itself out of the backwash of the other unpleasant things that had been happening at the time. Three months later Julie went missing, and Stephen became relegated to what Selena soon came to think of as the Before.

  She did not think of him again for many years.

  1

  Selena had been in The George with Laurie and Sandra all afternoon, celebrating Laurie’s promotion and bitching about some madam muck in Sandra’s cordon bleu class and inevitably going over the Johnny saga for the millionth time. She’d thought she might be able to get through a couple of hours without any of them broaching the J-word, but then Laurie asked if Selena had heard from him and so of course that was it: another round of beers, another hour gone. Laurie and Sandra meant well, she knew that, but Selena had reached the stage where talking about Johnny was becoming tedious instead of cathartic. Walking back from the pub, she kept kicking herself for letting the subject get dragged up again. She made a resolution: the next time anyone mentioned Johnny she would say he was out of her life for good and that the subject was closed. By the time she arrived outside her house she’d come to the conclusion that the situation was her own fault anyway. She should either tell her friends how she really felt or stop egging them on.

  Laurie and Sandra were as bored with the subject as she was, probably. As she fumbled her key into the lock, Selena found herself wondering if they ever talked about her behind her back. Stupid bitch, why can’t she get over it? He was a dick anyway. She smiled to herself because in a sense it was funny, and because for the moment she didn’t care much either way. What she wanted was coffee, and Marmite sandwiches, and whatever was the least worst option on TV.

  The phone started ringing more or less the second she stepped inside. Her first impulse was not to answer it, because she’d had enough talk for one evening, and no one ever called her on the landline except for telesales. She picked up mainly to stop the ringing, also because what if it was her mother calling, or Vanja, telephoning to ask if she’d open the shop for her the following morning? Vanja made this request so often Selena wondered why she didn’t just put Selena down for Monday earlies on a permanent basis. It wasn’t as if Selena ever gave her grief over it.

  If it wasn’t Vanja it would be a call centre. They could piss right off.

  “Hello,” Selena said. She pressed the receiver against her ear, listening for the familiar hiss that would confirm that the call was being processed through an automated switchboard. Laurie once told her she always slammed the phone down when she heard that sound, she didn’t even wait for anyone to speak, but Selena always found she couldn’t do that, she could never not feel sorry for the person at the other end. She wondered how often call centre employees got sworn at per day, on average. Laurie had once worked in a call centre. Selena would have thought that might make her more sympathetic, but apparently not.

  “Selena?”

  That voice. Selena’s heart knocked, as if she’d been caught eavesdropping.

  The caller wasn’t Vanja, Selena knew that at once, but she recognised her all the same, or at least she thought she did – she knew her voice. Someone from way back, she told herself. An echo, rising up through the mists of time like a memory you can’t quite grab hold of but that still churns around inside your head like a captive ghost. Her.

  The beer-fuzz dissipated almost instantly, lifting off in a rush like a flock of starlings, leaving the surface of her mind feeling vulnerable and exposed. Raw and pink, like the tender, newly formed skin you find under a scab.

  Who was it? Selena knew full well who it was, only she didn’t. The same feeling you got when you ran into someone familiar out of context, and couldn’t think for the life of you who they were.

  The caller knew her name, though, she’d spoken it aloud. Selena hesitated. She leaned her head against the wall next to the phone. She thought about saying “wrong number” and putting down the receiver. The ide
a was tempting but ultimately void – whoever this person was would just call back. “Hello,” she said again. She hoped the caller might say something else, give her a clue.

  “Selena, it’s Julie.”

  Selena’s first, split-second reaction was that she didn’t know anyone called Julie and so who the hell was this speaking? The second was that this couldn’t be happening, because this couldn’t be real. Julie was missing. Her absence defined her. The voice coming down the wire must belong to someone else.

  A prank call. There had certainly been enough of them, at the time. Selena listened to the faint shhh-shhh-shhh of the open phone line, the more distant background hum of the fridge. There was a pain inside her skull, an entity. She tried not to concentrate on it, not to give it houseroom. She was holding her breath and her lungs hurt. She stared at the perforations in the inverted plastic cup of the telephone receiver, knowing that if she breathed out there would be a rushing, a susurrus. The person at the other end would know she was there.

  “Please don’t put down the phone,” Julie said.

  “Julie?” said Selena. She found she was listening to her own voice, trying to memorise the sound of it, as if it were a recording she was hearing and not the real thing.

  The police had said that if there were prank calls they should be notified immediately.

  Whoever heard of a prank call after twenty years?

  “No,” Selena said. Like: no, this isn’t happening or no, I don’t know who the fuck you are but you’re not my sister or no, just no. Pick one.

  “I know how this must sound,” said Julie. Selena laughed, a bright, shallow, tinny sound, like balls of scrunched-up aluminium foil being rattled around in the bottom of a plastic cup. I sound like a laughter track, Selena thought. Someone making noises at something that isn’t funny, but trying to get a laugh out anyway because they know it’s expected.

  I know how this must sound. Like imagine that someone died, and you went to their funeral. You opened the cards and answered the letters, said thank you for the flowers. You saw time whipping past your windows like a thick blue fog.

  Twenty years later you picked up the phone and suddenly someone’s telling you it was all a joke.

  Ha ha, very funny. Now piss the fuck off.

  “Who is this?” Selena said. Then silence, a blank space so loud Selena could almost feel the hurt in it. She could hear her own teeth chattering, as if she’d just found out about something awful and was about to cry. Things she heard on the news affected her like that, sometimes. Missing children and railway accidents, house fires, the kind of bottomless everyday tragedies she couldn’t talk about because if she even opened her mouth to mention them she knew she’d burst into tears.

  You’re too soft, you are, Sandra had said to her once.

  So far as Laurie and Sandra knew, their friend Selena Rouane was an only child.

  “It is me,” Julie said. Her words sounded faint, like an afterthought, as if having her existence exposed to doubt had shaken her belief in it.

  “You don’t,” Selena said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Know what it sounds like. You don’t know me.”

  “I meant to call sooner, honestly. I know your number by heart.”

  “How did you get this number, anyway?” Selena made a point of keeping the landline ex-directory. Because of the call centres, mainly. Fat lot of good.

  “Mia Chen gave it to me. I told her I was a friend of yours, from college.”

  “So you’re spying on me now?”

  “Calling Mia’s not spying. She’s in the phone book.”

  “I haven’t seen her in months.” Selena remembered the way Mia had looked at Dad’s funeral: the gorgeous suit she’d been wearing, her own tongue-tied awkwardness. How do you tell someone you’re pleased for them without making it sound as if you resent the hell out of their success?

  Dad had always liked Mia. He’d be sad if he knew they’d fallen out of touch.

  Selena wondered if Julie knew their father was dead.

  “Julie.” Trying it out again just to hear the sound of it, the sound of Julie’s name in her mouth. Selena tried to remember the last time she’d called her sister by name, spoken it to her instead of about her, and found she couldn’t. You never called people by their names, not usually. Not unless you were annoyed with them, or trying to attract their attention on the street.

  Was she willing to believe this was Julie, even for a moment?

  What if she gave credence to this woman’s story, and it turned out to be bullshit?

  “Have you spoken to anyone else?”

  “No. Selena—”

  “What was the name of that glove puppet I had? You know, the racoon.”

  “You mean Mr Rustbucket?”

  Julie spoke the name without hesitation, without missing a beat, the kind of corny scene that crops up in the movies, when the missing spy or twin or whoever has to prove their identity by giving the answer to a question that no one else would know. And who would know about Mr Rustbucket, other than Julie? Selena felt a wave of nostalgia for the stuffed toy, a plush replica of the cartoon racoon in Deputy Dawg, hero of the ongoing epic she and Julie had invented called the Dustman Chronicles. Mr Rustbucket, who had been around forever and was suddenly gone. What had happened to him, exactly? Selena couldn’t recall.

  “You remembered,” Selena said.

  “Of course I remembered. Do you still have him?”

  “No. I must have left him behind somewhere.” Selena felt close to tears, a huge compacted weight of them, like a concrete block, crushing her chest. “Have you told Mum you’re back?”

  “No, and I’d rather we didn’t, not yet anyway. I’d like us to get to know one another again. Is that OK?”

  “What happened, Julie?” Selena saw the question as she heard herself speak it, a flashing road sign on an icy motorway: SLIPPERY SURFACE or DANGEROUS CORNER or DANGER AHEAD. If she could see the question flashing she knew that Julie could, too. They had always been close that way, even when they hadn’t been, those years when Julie had shut her out of her life almost completely.

  The question wrapped itself about her throat like an icy scarf. The closer the coils the colder she felt.

  “Soon,” Julie said. “I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”

  “Where are you?” asked Selena. “I mean, where are you now?”

  The question felt more possible than where have you been? It occurred to her there was a room somewhere with Julie in it, Julie holding a telephone and speaking into it. Were her shoes on or off? Was she seated or was she standing? When this conversation was over would she walk calmly into her kitchen and begin making supper?

  It was impossible to think of Julie existing anywhere, except in the newspapers.

  “I’m here, in Manchester. Have you got a pen?” She gave a street address on Palatine Road, also an email address and a mobile number. “I’m right by the Christie Hospital. I’m working there – in Outpatients. Do you know where it is?”

  “Of course. How long have you been back in Manchester?”

  “About eighteen months. Well, six months in this place. I was living in Altrincham before but this is better for work.”

  Why now, Julie? Selena thought but did not say. Her throat felt constricted, swollen around the unspoken words as if someone had punched her there. She’s been here all this time, she thought. All this time, without calling, or writing. I could have walked past her on the street and never noticed. Perhaps I already have.

  Why now, Julie?

  Did you hate us that much?

  “Can we meet?” she said at last. The words seemed to hang and twist in the open air. If you blew on them they’d tremble, she thought, like leaves caught in a spider’s web.

  “That would be great,” Julie said. Selena heard her exhale, her spent breath rushing down the line towards her like a gust of wind. She was afraid I’d refuse to see her, Selena realised. Serves her right. “I hat
e the telephone. The telephone’s awful.”

  “When?” Selena said.

  “Tomorrow evening?” Julie named a place in town, a brasserie near The Dancehouse. It stayed open late, Selena knew, because of the cinema. She and Johnny had eaten there a few times. It was nice. “About six o’clock?” Julie added.

  “It might have to be six-thirty. Depends what time I get off work.”

  “Whoever gets there first can grab a table.”

  “Fine,” Selena said. “Bye, then.” She felt like laughing aloud. How ridiculous it was to have to say something, when there were no words that fitted. She kept the phone pressed to her ear, listening for the click that would tell her Julie had disengaged. She didn’t want to be the first to hang up, she realised, in case this turned out to be it, the last she’d hear from her, that awful clichéd brrrrrr sound and then nothing. She stared at the piece of paper with Julie’s address on it, the back of an envelope, something she’d torn off for scrap paper because there was nothing else to hand. What had been in the envelope to start with she couldn’t remember. A credit card offer, probably, long since recycled.

  Belatedly Selena realised the phone had gone dead.

  She sat down on the floor with her back to the skirting board. She cradled her head in her arms, pressing her forehead hard against her knees. Closer to the ground, she felt better immediately. She briefly considered falling asleep, right there in the hallway. It was what her body seemed to want, although she knew she shouldn’t give in to it. She needed to eat, to pick herself up, to get through the evening.

  At least Vanja didn’t call, she thought. She got up off the floor and went through to the kitchen. She would make sandwiches, cheese and Marmite, the same sandwiches she’d been looking forward to when she came through the door. The world had moved on since then, just a bit, but that didn’t mean she had to be cheated out of her sandwiches.