by Nina Allan
Selena showed the young man twenty rings at least, knowing almost from the start that she would guide him towards the deeply coloured square-cut emerald set in white gold. The ring was very plain, and would not have been to everyone’s taste, but the young man – Stefan Risos – enthusiastically affirmed that Justine would love it.
Selena completed the transaction and Stefan Risos left the store. Shortly afterwards Vanja emerged from the back office. She seemed more energised, more like herself. When she asked Selena if she wanted to take her lunch break, Selena said she’d sooner just pop out and pick up a sandwich.
“I was hoping it would be OK if I left early today,” she said. “I’ve arranged to meet someone.”
“Yeah, sure. Anyone special?” Vanja folded her arms across her chest expectantly and grinned. She enjoyed gossip almost as much as she enjoyed alcohol.
“Just a friend,” Selena said. “Someone I was at school with. I’ve not seen her in years.”
Vanja looked disappointed. She had liked Johnny, Selena remembered, fancied him a bit, even. Once when Vanja was drunk she’d told Selena she must have been mad to let Johnny go off like that.
“He was a nice guy,” she had said. “Kind. You don’t often get kind.”
Selena suspected the main reason Vanja had ended up with Vasili was because she found it difficult to be alone. She bought a panini from Café Cyprus and walked back through the arcade. Less than four hours to go now, she thought. An image came to her: herself and Julie as flashing green telltales on a radar screen, beeping closer and closer together until they collided. Boom. Like one of those movies from the nineteen-eighties about nuclear war.
Selena tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a world where everything was the same as it was in reality with one exception. There was no electricity, say, or no computers. How different things would be, in ways you wouldn’t think of at first, how even the small things would change.
Selena had been living in a world where she believed her sister Julie was dead. Finding out she was alive was like a miracle – like the lights coming back on after a twenty-year power cut.
It changed everything, surely?
You don’t know it’s her yet, she thought. You don’t know anything. She took the last bite of her sandwich, threw the paper wrapper into a waste bin. She thought of Julie the last time she’d seen her: elbows on the kitchen table, hair hanging down like curtains in front of her face.
Had she known she was about to disappear? It didn’t seem possible, but then neither did her return.
It was almost always young people who went missing. There was a space, for a time, where they had been, but then after a while the world slid closed and carried on without them.
Because it had to, Selena supposed. The windows of Almaz sparkled in front of her like a blizzard. She always felt comforted by how old diamonds were, how curious it was really that they should be here: in this storefront, in this city, in this world.
4
The last time she’d been to The Dancehouse she’d been with Johnny. They’d seen that Ryan Gosling film, Only God Forgives. Kristin Scott Thomas had died in it, violently, her hair spreading out behind her as she slid down a wall. Selena couldn’t remember if Ryan Gosling survived until the end of the film or not. They’d crossed the road to the brasserie still talking about the movie, reliving bits of it, as Johnny liked to do. He’d loved the shoot-up scene outside the restaurant, that crazy cop.
Didn’t the cop have an axe or something, or was she just making that up?
What Selena remembered most about the film now were its dominant colours – red and gold.
The brasserie was always busy, especially after work. There would be plenty of people around and Selena was glad. People and light and chatter, stuff going on. Exactly the kind of venue you might choose to meet an old school friend. I’ve not seen her in years, she’d said to Vanja, just to see how it sounded. She’d asked Vanja if she could leave early because she wanted to make sure she could get to the restaurant before Julie arrived. She wanted to try and pick Julie out from the crowd before she had to speak to her.
On her way there, Selena found herself thinking about all the articles she’d read in magazines and the programmes she’d seen on TV about people who’d been adopted going to meet their birth parents for the first time.
I knew it was my mum the moment I set eyes on her, one guy had said. I don’t know how – I just knew.
Perhaps that was true for some, but what about the rest, all those long-lost sons and daughters, standing on railway platforms or waiting in brasseries just like this one, thinking, Oh God I think that’s her, and then it’s just someone else’s aunt?
A portly, nondescript woman in a mid-length houndstooth coat and a burgundy beret, clothes the woman believed were smart and not too old-fashioned but that were really just the standard-issue outfit for mistaken aunts, or for mothers who always looked ten years older or younger than they really were.
How awful it would be, to make a mistake, to hug the wrong person. Goodness, how embarrassing, I’m so sorry. Selena remembered a story Laurie had told about going to visit her brother and his wife in Scarborough, about six months after the birth of their second child. I walked into the kitchen straight from the car, Laurie said, and there was this woman standing there, this fat woman with short hair. I was looking at her and thinking who the hell are you, am I supposed to know you or what? I was just about to ask her where Cindy was – my sister-in-law, I mean – when suddenly I realised it was Cindy. She was huge, Laurie kept saying. Huge. The last time I saw Cindy she was literally half the size. I honestly didn’t recognise her. I hugged her hello just in time, only I couldn’t stop thinking how ghastly it would have been if I’d said: where’s Cindy? Can you even imagine it? I could feel myself blushing redder and redder, like a bleeding traffic light, so I just kept on hugging her, hoping the blush would go down and she wouldn’t see.
Oh my God, Sandra said. She was laughing so hard there were tears in her eyes.
I’m not joking though, she was huge, Laurie said again.
Selena was laughing too, she couldn’t help it, though mostly it was Laurie who’d set her off, the way she told the story, not the thought of Cindy whom she’d never met and whose fatness wasn’t funny, especially since the woman had just had a baby.
Might Julie be huge? Selena couldn’t picture it. She could only imagine Julie the way she’d last seen her.
She sipped her cappuccino and gazed out at the street. She felt sick with nerves, though she didn’t care to admit it, not even to herself. She watched the people instead, counting sheep, she thought, looking for Julie while pretending not to, pretending simply to be there, like everyone else. Her eye was caught by a woman in a red zip-up coat passing by just outside the window. She was tallish and vaguely dishevelled, her medium-length dark hair shot through with grey. It was certainly possible that Julie’s hair would be grey now, although Julie would never wear red. She preferred neutral colours: grey or khaki, charcoal, black – or at least she used to. She had once owned a purple hoodie, there were photographs of her in it. Selena assumed her mother still had them. The woman in the red coat pressed the traffic light button, waited until the lights changed and then crossed the road. Selena kept her in view until she disappeared into the crowd. She glanced at her watch: six-ten. By six-fifteen she began to wonder if anyone was coming, if the whole thing had been a hoax, after all.
Who would do that though, what would be the point?
Perhaps Julie had chickened out.
More likely there was no Julie. Selena finished her coffee and looked down at her phone. Nothing. She could feel herself sweating, the clammy moisture coating her neck and underarms. The warmth of the café, so welcome when she first arrived, was becoming uncomfortable. She made up her mind that if Julie still hadn’t turned up by six-thirty she was leaving. She glanced towards the street door, which was made of glass with a brushed steel push-bar. There was s
omeone outside looking in, a woman in a dark coat. Selena saw her raise her hand to her hair, as if she was using the door glass as a mirror, which she probably was.
A second later she came inside.
Our eyes met, Selena thought, across a crowded room. The worst kind of cliché, she understood that, which unfortunately didn’t prevent it from being true.
She was thinner in the face than Selena remembered, but her hair was the same mid-brown colour – no grey. She was wearing a shapeless duster-style overcoat that looked almost identical to one she’d owned at the age of fifteen or thereabouts. She wore no spectacles, but the way she looked about herself – her head pushed forward slightly, tortoise-like – made Selena wonder if she was growing short-sighted. Leather satchel, no nail polish. Black biker boots with an elasticated top section. Typical Julie.
A group of art students came in behind her, all wearing dark Levi’s. Julie stepped to one side, glancing around her, then began moving in the direction of Selena’s table. She didn’t hesitate, or even pretend to, as Selena felt sure she would have done herself if their situations had been reversed. As she came closer she even speeded up a little.
“Sorry I’m late. My bus got caught in traffic. I was afraid you might leave.”
She pulled out the chair opposite Selena and sat down, slinging her bag on the seat beside her, unbuttoning her coat. Selena watched her in silence, thinking how dramatic it would be in a film, this scene, she could see it exactly: Thora Birch and Keira Knightley playing ordinary, or Pauline Quirke and Lesley Manville if you wanted to get real. Where the fuck have you been, you selfish bitch. All these years and not a dickie bird. Dad went mad because of you, did you know that? No, I don’t suppose you did.
[They sit in silence for some moments. JULIE stirs sugar into her coffee. SELENA breaks off the end of her flapjack but does not eat it.]
JULIE: You’re looking well.
SELENA: Are we going to talk about the weather now, as well?
JULIE: I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.
SELENA: You can’t honestly expect me to believe you?
JULIE: Believe me about what?
SELENA: I don’t know. That you were kidnapped, or held hostage, or whatever other excuse you’re about to give me for disappearing off the face of the flipping Earth.
JULIE: I wasn’t going to say any of that.
SELENA: What, then? Did you really hate us that much?
JULIE: Do we have to get into this now? Can’t we just talk? I’ve missed you, Selena.
SELENA: What do you expect me to say to you? I don’t even know if you’re really my sister.
JULIE: Who else would I be?
SELENA: Honestly? I have no idea.
“What’s wrong?” Julie said. “You look as if you’re laughing.”
“No,” Selena said. “This is all just so strange.”
“Weird,” Julie said, simultaneously. She smiled, a feeble kind of half-smile, falling away towards the end. It made her look different, older, Selena thought, although she felt certain that this was Julie, because how could it not be? The woman looked like Julie, of course, so far as Selena could tell, but it wasn’t just that. This went deeper than sight. It was – a feeling. Growing up alongside someone made you aware of them – their smell, their mannerisms, their whole way of being – in ways you couldn’t even name.
Sight alone told you nothing. The last time she’d seen Julie, she’d been seventeen. The woman in front of her was – what? Thirty-five? Forty? An untidy, rather nondescript woman in a grey wool coat. She could have been anyone. You could put her in a police line-up with ten other similar women and any one of them could have been Julie.
How embarrassing it would be, not recognising your own sister. It wasn’t even as if Julie had put on weight, not like fat Cindy.
Should I hug her? Selena wondered. It’s what you do, isn’t it? It’s what they do in the films, anyway.
It felt awkward though, with the table between them. She imagined her coffee cup going flying, smashing to the floor in a violent cacophony of broken china and cappuccino foam. No thanks.
“I’ll get us some drinks,” she said instead. She went up to the counter and ordered two more cappuccinos. At some point she realised her knees were shaking. “Can we get some food, too?” Selena said to the server. “There are no menus on our table.”
“Sorry about that,” said the guy. “I’ll fetch you a couple over when I bring your coffees.”
None of this feels real, Selena thought. As she turned to walk back to the table, she caught sight of herself in the CCTV over the counter, her eyes locked on her eyes, rabbit in the headlights.
She’s my sister. She remembered Mr Rustbucket. She has to be.
Already that other world – the world without Julie – seemed a million miles away.
* * *
“How long have you been working at the Christie?” Selena asked.
“About eighteen months,” said Julie. “It’s just an admin job. It’s fine for now, though. What about you?”
Are you working? Selena supposed she meant. Who are you, what have you made of your life?
“I work in a shop, in town,” Selena said. “We sell fine jewellery. It’s interesting. We get some interesting clients, I mean.”
“Oh,” Julie said. Her indifference was palpable, although knowing Julie, Selena reckoned her reaction would have been the same if she’d told her she was a top-flight lawyer who drove a Jaguar, like Mia Chen. Selena had forgotten the painful power of Julie’s self-absorption, the way it could reduce you to nothing in less than a second.
What had she expected? That Julie would be different now, patient and caring, with a Mother Teresa smile? A memory came back to her, so powerfully it was like being struck in the face with it: herself at thirteen, overflowing with excitement because an essay she’d written about Blake’s 7 was going to be printed in the school magazine. Julie’s indifference, so cold and so complete it made her wish she’d never told her about the essay in the first place.
She was just the boring younger sister: irrelevant.
Was that how Julie still saw her?
“You know Dad died?” Selena said. The words were out before she realised she meant to say them. A retaliation, she supposed, for Julie’s selfishness, the only thing she could think of on the spur of the moment that might get to her. Her own cruelty surprised her. She watched Julie’s face, studying it in detail for the first time since she’d walked into the café. The mention of their father had provoked a reaction, at least. Julie had aged, Selena saw that now, more than she’d realised at first, more than Selena.
Like pressing a button and sending time forward. The things we normally never notice, because they happen so slowly.
“Of course I didn’t know,” Julie was saying. “How could I?”
“I just thought,” Selena said. The awkwardness between them, like some ghastly blind date. The wishing you could wipe the tape and start again.
“I don’t know anything,” Julie said.
“This is all going wrong, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Julie suddenly reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “I thought I’d never find you, Selena. I don’t mean now, here in Manchester – that was easy – I mean before.”
Her fingers, stiff and cold, like winter twigs. The physical contact so unexpected it was almost shocking.
“Can you tell me where you’ve been? Please?” The words so plain and brown, like clothes moths, Selena thought. The kind you find fluttering in the back of the wardrobe, the kind that eat your life away if you don’t get rid of them.
“Not yet. Can you live with that, Selena? I’m not trying to hide anything, I just want us to be ourselves for a while, to get to know each other again. Do you think we could do that? It would make things – I don’t know, so much easier.”
She made her speech in a rush, as if she’d rehearsed it. She tried a laugh, a small one. It didn’t catch.
> “Can I ask you how you are, at least? Is there anything I should know about?”
Julie shook her head. “I’m fine in myself, honestly. Things are – complicated. I can’t believe I’m here, that this is really you.”
You and me both, Selena thought. She squeezed Julie’s fingers. Julie squeezed back.
“How did Dad die?” she said quietly.
“He had a heart attack, about eight years ago. But he’d been ill for a while.” If Julie could withhold information then so could she. Dad wasn’t the point at the moment, anyway. Dad could wait.
“And how’s Mum?”
“Mum’s fine. She’s living in Heald Green now.”
“Shall we order the food? I’m starving.”
So was Selena, she realised. They both went for the chicken with couscous, and Selena found herself thinking about the coq au vin, the meal their mother had made and that Julie never ate.
It’s her own fault if it’s ruined, Margery had said.
The scent of mushrooms, dense and woody. Mum must have thrown Julie’s portion away at some point, though Selena couldn’t remember when that had been.
The food came. Julie seemed immediately more relaxed. She chatted about her job at the hospital, people she’d met there, her rented flat on Palatine Road.
“I was lucky to get it,” she said. “The woman who owns it moved in with her boyfriend. She gave me first refusal. The rent’s not bad, either.”
“What made you come back to Manchester?” Selena said.
“The rain.” She forked another piece of chicken into her mouth. “What’s your excuse?”
Julie grinned, a real smile this time, and Selena realised something important: for the people she’d been talking about – her work colleagues at the hospital, the woman who owned the flat, the people who knew her in the life she was living now – Julie was ordinary. She had a birthday and hobbies and friends like everyone else. She was the woman who worked at the Christie, in the patients’ records office. None of them would have a clue she’d been a missing person, a family tragedy. Not unless she’d told them, which Selena doubted.
