The Rift

by Nina Allan

  An image came to her of Mrs Dennis, who had worked as a dinner lady at their school for more than twenty years: Mrs Dennis in cartoon form, passing a plate of sandwiches through a hatch marked ‘yesterday’ to a monitor in a dining hall labelled ‘tomorrow’. Selena found the image amusing, though she doubted Mrs Dennis, who’d been strictly no nonsense and eat your veg, would have found much to laugh at.

  Mrs Dennis had made Julie cry once, Selena remembered. Julie always called her the Menace after that.

  Antiques Roadshow was on the TV. A woman with a prominent mole on her right cheek and oversized Elton John spectacles with purple frames was being told the value of a gold broach that had originally been given to her grandmother as a confirmation present. The woman was wearing floral dungarees, and looked forcefully cheerful in a way that suggested her life hadn’t always been easy, that her grandmother’s broach was something of an exception to the rule. What a charming piece, said the resident expert. I estimate its value at five hundred pounds.

  Not in Manchester, thought Selena. You must be having a laugh. Vanja really would have laughed her head off, if she’d been watching, only she wouldn’t be. Vanja never watched anything on TV except soap operas and cop shows. Apart from her husband Vasili’s illegally imported Dutch porn, that is.

  I love the pornos, Vanja once told her, rolling the ‘r’ vigorously and with enthusiasm, like a small but difficult object being trundled downhill. I find them relaxing. Better than comedy. Mostly, Vanja said, porno is comedy. She laughed. Vanja had a way of laughing that made you feel you’d taken part in something illegal.

  The woman in the dungarees was smiling and saying thank you. She looks a bit like Mrs Dennis, Selena thought, the Menace with a wilder dress sense and a kinder smile. She watched the programme through to the end. After the closing credits, someone came on to do the weather. Selena muted the sound and closed her eyes. Her headache had diminished but was still vaguely present, a tangle of greyish wadding behind her eyes. The gas fire ticked. Selena got up from the sofa to close the curtains and then sat down again.

  She had been thinking that everything had changed, but was that really true? In the world beyond the curtains, Julie had been present already, a physical fact. The only difference between today and yesterday was that yesterday Selena hadn’t known that, and today she did.

  If the world beyond the curtains had contained Julie all along, the world inside Selena’s head had been a lie.

  Partly a lie, anyway.

  Contaminated by lie-stuff, like rust on metal.

  Mr Rustbucket, thought Selena. What happened to you?

  She would never have given the raccoon away intentionally. Perhaps Julie had taken him with her when she went. Selena drew her legs up on to the couch and curled on her side. She had no idea she’d been asleep until she woke three hours later, her right arm stiff with pins and needles from where she’d leant her head on it.

  The television was still on, still mute. There was a police procedural playing, the one that was set in Cornwall with the posh detective. Vanja preferred the American shows, with guns.

  Selena switched off the TV and headed for bed. It was quite early still, but turning her mind to anything else felt out of the question.

  2

  Julie disappeared on a Saturday.

  Selena had often thought about how if her sister hadn’t gone missing, that day would have been erased from her memory. Or not so much been erased as simply faded, merging into all the other, similar days that offered no particular reason to be remembered. As things were, she could recall it in every detail with a knife-edged clarity. Even that wasn’t right though, she realised. It was not the details she remembered so much as the details as she had remembered them later: for the police who first came to the house, for the woman officer who interviewed her later about Allison Gifford, for herself, as she went over each moment of the day in her own mind, searching for something she knew already would not be there. How could it be there, when it hadn’t been there the last time or the time before that?

  That elusive clue, that salient detail the detective sergeant kept referring to that would lead them to Julie.

  Salient meant protruding, sticking out. The problem was that the more Selena went over that Saturday the more smooth it seemed, the details flowing along in order like lines from a story she’d recited so often she knew it by heart. Nothing stuck out, nothing protruded, not even the details that had seemed important at the time.

  She thought about how it might be if she could return to that day and live it through again, if she would notice things differently, or notice different things. As it was, what she remembered mostly was feeling pissed off. She knew she couldn’t say that to the police though, because the pissed-offness had nothing to do with Julie and was therefore irrelevant. In fact she didn’t remember much at all about the Saturday morning, only that she had got up late because it was the summer holidays, that she’d sat around in her dressing gown for a couple of hours, eating Sugar Puffs and watching kids’ TV, until her mother had finally snapped and ordered her to get dressed.

  “Do you have to slum around like that, Selena? Go and put some clothes on. You’re wasting the day.”

  What Margery meant was that she was inside when she could be outside. But Selena felt her mother was missing the point. She remembered drinking milk straight from the bottle, the smooth warmth of the kitchen tiles beneath her bare feet, the back door hanging open because Dad had gone out to fetch the paper and left it like that. Dad liked the fresh air, even though he never said so, unlike Mum who kept the door closed in spite of always droning on at her to get more exercise.

  The morning sunlight: still, dappled and pooling on the living-room carpet. TV shows she was too old for but still adored. The sheer, untrammelled luxury of time in hand.

  Selena got dressed, tugging on the same jeans she’d worn the day before together with a T-shirt from the pile beside the bed, clothes that Margery had laundered and folded but that Selena hadn’t found the time or inclination to put away yet. She gave her hair a cursory comb-through then went back downstairs. She had no idea where Julie was at that point – in her room, probably. Julie tended to come downstairs before anyone was up, make herself some toast and coffee and then retreat back upstairs. Selena couldn’t remember the last time they’d eaten breakfast together as a family, even in term time. Julie seemed to exist in a world of her own these days. She was sometimes so difficult to be around that Selena felt almost afraid of her. She found it was generally safer to keep out of her way.

  Selena went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. She felt bored, but not disastrously bored. She was just thinking about calling Mia and seeing if she wanted to go to the park when Margery came in from the garden. She looked like she was in a mood, but then she usually was.

  “Stop poking about in there, Selena, it’s almost lunchtime. If you’re looking for something to do you can go to the Spar for me and pick up some Nescafé. We need the Radio Times as well if they’ve got any left.”

  Selena made a grunting noise, a sound pitched midway between assent and complaint. Actually she didn’t mind. A walk to the Spar was fine by her, telephoning Mia could easily wait until after lunch. She decided to go the long way – round the back of the allotments and across the recreation ground. By the time she was home again, Mum was setting out the knives and forks. She’d made a big bowl of pasta salad, and there were granary rolls from the bakery. Julie was already seated at the kitchen table. She was reading a book, and didn’t even glance up as Selena came in, just swung her legs back and forth inside the struts of her chair. Her hair had fallen forward, forming a kind of tent around her face. Selena watched as her sister speared individual pieces of pasta with the tines of her fork and fed them casually into her mouth, her eyes never leaving her book the whole time.

  Mum’s expression was like a truckload of concrete but she didn’t say a word, Selena guessed because she knew that if she did it would end in a
row. It was probably her annoyance at Julie that made Margery go off on one when Selena asked her about the school trip to Alton Towers. Selena hadn’t been looking for an argument – it was happening before she realised it, Selena complaining that everyone in her class was going, that she’d been looking forward to the outing all summer, Mum telling her to stop badgering her, she wasn’t sure yet if they could afford to pay for it. Selena would just have to wait and see.

  “You can take that look off your face, for a start,” Margery added. “You definitely won’t be going if you don’t stop whining, I can tell you that right now.”

  Selena felt the sting of tears, of resentment, of regret at setting off down a road she’d not intended to take. The day was spoiled now. Not just spoiled, but polluted. When she dared a glance at Julie, hoping for some small gesture of commiseration, she saw her sister staring blankly ahead of her, her face a treacherous mask of studied neutrality. Selena felt like striking her, pummelling her with her fists until she stopped being such a prig.

  Selena got up from the table, refusing to look at her mother, who was clearing plates. Later she would replay Julie’s non-look over and over, hoping to find a clue and not finding anything except her usual self-absorption, which was so habitual with Julie by now it had become her new normal. Selena slouched upstairs to her room, wishing she’d phoned Mia before lunch as she’d originally intended, because then she’d have a genuine reason for leaving the house.

  If she called Mia now it would look as if she was making a point. She didn’t want to give her mother the satisfaction.

  * * *

  Selena stayed in her room for about half an hour, trying and failing to work up the enthusiasm for purging the clutter under her bed. Finally she opened her door, listening to see if Julie had come upstairs or gone out but there was no sign of anyone. She waited a couple more minutes just to be safe then crept downstairs to the living room and switched on the TV. There was a film just starting, Ring of Bright Water. At the first advert break, she tiptoed through to the kitchen and grabbed a packet of Hula Hoops from the stash in the larder. She returned to the living room and closed the curtains, firstly to stop the sunlight reflecting off the television screen and secondly because she knew it drove Margery mad to see the curtains pulled shut during the daytime.

  She opened the Hula Hoops and sat down on the floor, her back resting against the sofa. She was beginning to feel better. When the film came back on, Selena gave herself over to it entirely, the tight feeling in her chest gradually dispersing as the story took hold.

  At some point she heard Julie come downstairs.

  “I’m going to meet Catey,” she called. The sound of her voice was unexpectedly loud, even with the TV on, and for a moment Selena thought Julie was talking to her. She was about to shout something back when she heard her mother’s voice, coming from the front office by the sound of it. Selena hadn’t known she was in there. She was too far away for Selena to make out what she was saying, and when Julie answered from further along the hallway the sound of the TV meant she couldn’t hear her properly, either.

  A moment later she heard the front door open and then slam shut again. Julie going out, she supposed. Selena forgot about the exchange almost as soon as it had happened. It was only in the small hours of the following morning that it occurred to her to wonder why Julie had bothered to inform their mother she was going out. Normally, and especially recently, she would simply have gone. As the minutes ticked by, and then the hours, this small detail of Julie’s behaviour began to seem more and more strange, more and more salient, although Selena knew this was probably only because it was night, and Julie still wasn’t home.

  This was what they were all still insisting at that point: Julie wasn’t missing, she just hadn’t come home yet. When the switch occurred Selena couldn’t have said precisely, although she guessed it was probably around the middle of the following day.

  Selena wanted to explain about the salient detail and then thought better of it. It didn’t seem so salient, when you put it into actual words. Also it sounded mean about Julie. She decided it was probably safer to keep quiet.

  * * *

  Ring of Bright Water was sad, much sadder than she’d expected. Selena hated films where animals died. Watership Down had upset her so much she’d had to pretend to have a stomach ache, just to stop Mum asking what was wrong. She pressed her eyes shut against the tears, feeling furious with herself and glad at least that she was alone. She turned off the television and was about to go back upstairs when her mother came out of the office and asked her if she knew where she’d put the form for the Alton Towers trip.

  “I’ve had a look at the bills and they’re not so bad this month,” Margery said. “We can send the money off this afternoon, if you like.”

  She didn’t hug Selena or anything but that was normal. Of the two of them, Dad was the hugger. But Selena could tell her mother was sorry they had argued – she knew from the way Margery had obviously been waiting for her to come out of the living room so she could talk to her. Selena said thanks and then went to find the form, which she knew was in a pile of exercise books and other garbage up in her bedroom.

  “We’re having coq au vin for supper,” Margery told her when she came back. Another peace offering. Selena put on a pair of flip-flops and wandered along to the recreation ground, half-thinking she might find Mia there, but mainly just wanting to be outside in the open air. There were some lads up on the field, kicking a ball about. She imagined swooping in amongst them, catching the ball in a violent header, swooping out again. There were boys and there were boys, she thought. The louts on the pitch with their half-grown bodies, their flaming cheeks and foul mouths, they seemed like kids to her. As members of the opposite sex they didn’t interest her at all, though she found she liked watching them. There was a freedom – a fury almost – in the way they ran and yelled and kicked that she secretly envied.

  The lad she fancied was called Ethan Crossley. He ran cross-country instead of playing football and he was in the chess club. Some of the back row boys in Selena’s form called him the Freak. He had knobbly knees and a bad blazer. Selena knew that so far as Ethan Crossley was concerned, she didn’t exist. Ethan was in love with Maisie Honeywell, who thought he was a div. What losers guys were.

  She kicked a stone out on to the path and then angled it back again. The day was still warm, though not as hot as it had been. The summer was passing. She made a pact with herself to start on her room-purge tomorrow morning at the latest.

  * * *

  Julie wasn’t home in time for supper. Margery spooned Julie’s portion of coq au vin into a bowl, then covered the bowl with foil and put it back in the oven to keep warm. She was annoyed but not dangerously so – she’d had enough of family arguments for one day, Selena could tell. Once the washing-up was over and Julie still hadn’t come in, Margery went out to the hall and phoned up the Rowntrees. Catey’s mum Ginny answered. She said Catey wasn’t there, she’d gone to a barbecue at someone called Linsey’s house. Catey’s dad was going to collect her later on.

  “She said they’ll drop Julie back when they fetch Catey,” Margery said. “She could have let me know.”

  “Are you sure she definitely said she’d be home for supper?” said Dad.

  “She said she’d be back by six, I told you.”

  “Well, maybe this barbecue thing didn’t crop up till later. You know what they’re like.”

  “That’s what I mean. She could have phoned.” Margery made a tutting noise, although it was easy to see she wasn’t bothered, not really, not now she knew where Julie was. She made coffee for herself and Dad, and an ice cream soda for Selena, and the three of them sat on the sofa and watched Stars in Their Eyes. Mum complained about the programme constantly, was always on about how ghastly and commercial it was, though she never missed it if she could help it and that night was the final. Dad was supporting the Whitney Houston lookalike but Margery and Selena much preferred Sandra
Cosgrove, who was covering Eddi Reader. The Marti Pellow man won in the end. Selena thought he seemed a bit of a jerk, or maybe it was just that Marti Pellow seemed a bit of a jerk, but it was a good evening anyway, just her and her parents together and nobody hassling her. No one mentioned Julie, though Selena could tell her mother was thinking about her from the small movement she made every time a car went past, craning her neck slightly to look at the curtains, as if the act of looking would make this car the one that would bring Julie home.

  None of them were, though. At twenty past ten the phone went. Mum went to answer it, not running exactly but moving quickly with her shoulders thrust forward, as if she was worried that if she didn’t hurry the phone might stop ringing before she got there. The caller was Catey Rowntree. She told Mum she was home, and that Julie had never been at the barbecue.

  “Do you mean she left early?” Mum nodded, listening to the muffled voice of Catey Rowntree at the other end and twisting the telephone cord between her fingers, something she consistently told Selena not to do because it weakened the wire.

  “Thanks, Catey,” she said in the end. “You will please call me immediately if you hear from her?” She nodded again, then said goodbye and put down the phone.

  “Catey says she hasn’t seen Julie all day,” Mum said. They were all standing in the hallway by then. Margery normally hated people listening in when she was on the phone, but she hadn’t seemed to notice, not this time. “She doesn’t remember them having an arrangement to meet, either. Ray, I’m worried.”

  “Who’s that girl she’s friendly with at college?” Dad asked.

  “Lucinda?”

  There was a flurry of back-and-forth about what Lucinda’s surname was, then Mum remembered she had Lucy’s number in her address book anyway, from when Julie went to stay the weekend with her just before Christmas.

  “It’s a bit late to phone,” Mum said. “But I suppose it can’t be helped.” It was getting on for eleven by then. Under normal circumstances, Margery would never have telephoned anyone after nine o’clock unless there was a prior agreement.