The Rift

by Nina Allan

  There were seven hundred and ninety-eight letters in all. Most had been written during the six months immediately following Julie’s disappearance, but there were some, printouts of emails mostly, that dated from just a couple of weeks before Ray’s death. The Julie of these letters had run away because she was pregnant, because she’d found God, because she’d been raped by one of her teachers, because her father was a secret paedophile, because she wanted to start a new life with the Mennonites, the Tuaregs, a communist commune in Birmingham, because she’d learned the truth about the end of the world. She’d become a sex worker, a croupier, a car thief, a poet living in Mexico City, a lap dancer working in a hostess bar to pay the bills. She sent letters from Hackney and from Arbroath, from Sydney and Naples and Cambridge, Massachusetts. She had been sighted in Athens and Dublin and Malibu and Austin, Texas, on the platforms of metro stations in Tokyo and Barcelona. The Tokyo letter even included a photograph, a blurred Polaroid of a girl or young woman in a belted mackintosh and tatty-looking lace-up plimsolls. Her face was turned away from the camera, staring up at the lighted display screen. Dark hair bunched around her collar, a white plastic carrier bag dangled from her left hand.

  Who was she, Selena wondered, where had she been going? The words on the LED display screen, though they appeared in both English and Japanese characters, were too blurrily indistinct to make out, though the plimsolls were so exactly of the kind Julie might have worn that Selena almost found herself being persuaded that the figure was her sister.

  Here were the crank letters the police had warned them about: the hoaxers, the deluded well-wishers, the people claiming to be Julie or to know where she was. A small number of the letters contained such obscenities Selena felt sick reading them. Most though were simply wrong: fabrications and falsehoods, just stories really. They were troubling to read, but essentially harmless, when you came down to it, if you could ignore the disturbance of mind that had driven the sender to write them in the first place.

  Some seemed so heartfelt, so impassioned that Selena almost felt sorry for them, especially since it was obvious, usually from the first line, that these correspondents, whoever they were, had no personal knowledge of Julie whatsoever. Many had not even bothered to familiarise themselves with the most widely distributed details of her disappearance. They were desperate to be heard, that was all. So desperate to be noticed they would do anything to attract attention, even for a moment.

  DS Nesbitt had told them to ignore the hoax letters, to hand them straight to the police without reading them. We know they can be really upsetting for families, she said. At least this is one thing we can help you with.

  Margery would have obeyed DS Nesbitt’s instructions to the last word, Selena knew. She would have dismissed the crank letters, as the police had advised, as the ravings of social inadequates. Dad though – he had clearly read the lot. Not just because he was convinced the police were missing important clues in their search for Julie, but because he was curious. Curious about these alien minds, reaching out to his, no matter how distorted their perceptions.

  And there was always the chance that one of the letters might have contained something important. Ray Rouane would have read and reread them, searching for that vital link, that web-fine interface between imagination and reality. Further down in the box Selena came upon a world map, its folds brittle with age, which her father had used to record the postmark location of every single piece of the hoax correspondence. As an accompaniment to the map he had invented a key, a complicated colour-lexicon in which the sender’s address as well as any other locations mentioned in the letter were arranged in a distinct hierarchy.

  The intense care that had gone into the creation of the chart rivalled or even surpassed the obsessiveness on display in the letters themselves. The whole business was crazy, Selena knew that, yet she felt a rush of love for her absent father nonetheless, who unlike the police and the crowds of well-wishers, the TV reporters and the journalists, had retained his staunch belief that something could be done.

  There were other things in the box: bus timetables, photographs, more maps. There was also a folder of correspondence with the police – not DS Nesbitt this time but another officer, a DI Nelson who Selena couldn’t remember ever meeting. The letters on her father’s side – Ray had taken carbon copies of all of them – had become increasingly incoherent and rambling, whilst DI Nelson’s had become more and more terse until finally a letter came, signed not by DI Nelson but by someone in the Greater Manchester Police public liaison office, informing Ray that no further correspondence could be entered into at this time, and enclosing a form for filing an official complaint.

  This last letter had been sent more than five years after Julie’s disappearance. Selena replaced it in its envelope together with the complaints form and put it back in the folder. There was too much stuff here, too much to do anything but skim the surface. It was like stumbling upon a tomb, in a way – one of those ancient Egyptian burial chambers, only filled with letters and stories instead of golden goblets and ceremonial jewellery.

  She remembered when she was a child, seeing a documentary about the Tutankhamen exhibition at the British Museum, people queuing around the block to see it, which she remembered thinking was creepy even at the time. She couldn’t see what difference it made, that Tutankhamen had been dead for thousands of years – it was still his stuff, wasn’t it, his private possessions? The thought of people lining up to gawp at the artefacts made her feel weird.

  There were those who believed the archaeologists who opened the tomb had brought down a curse upon themselves, upon the world too, maybe. As a child, the idea of a curse had seemed exciting. Less so now.

  Perhaps the past really was better left buried. Selena wondered what she was doing, looking through this stuff, what she was, in fact, looking for.

  You’ll be getting like Dad, if you don’t watch yourself, she thought.

  Perhaps it was just that she missed her father more than she realised.

  THE DRAGGING OF HATCHMERE LAKE: AN INVENTORY OF ITEMS RETRIEVED

  Die-cast model fire truck, Tonka D4879 (1)

  Bicycle, Raleigh, girl’s model, blue (1)

  Batteries, AA, AAA, 5AMP (558)

  Baby doll, Mattel, ‘Tiny Tears’ (1)

  Boots, shoes, trainers, assorted (67)

  Diver’s flipper (1)

  Jam jars, sauce bottles, assorted glassware (133)

  Vauxhall Corsa, white (1)

  Domestic cat, skeletal remains (2)

  Domestic dog, Labrador retriever, skeletal remains (1)

  Domestic dog, Staffordshire bull terrier, skeletal remains (1)

  Sewing machine, Singer, treadle operated (1)

  Food processor, Kenwood (1)

  Portable stepladder, aluminium (1)

  Portable television (2)

  Computer monitor (3)

  Shin bone, part, human, male (1, pending further investigation)

  Television aerial (1)

  Buttons, buckles, zips, clothing embellishments, metallic (109)

  Diver’s chronometer, Solaris (1)

  Wristwatches, assorted (28)

  Earrings, post, clip, sleeper (53)

  Jewellery, metallic, assorted (38)

  Tupperware sandwich box, contents £350 in used notes (1)

  Hairbrushes, combs assorted, metal, plastic (25)

  Music centre, Sanyo (1)

  Sony Discman (1)

  Hedge cutter, Bosch (1)

  Marbles, glass, porcelain (63)

  Camera, Kodak Instamatic (2)

  Pyrex serving dish, lar oval (1)

  Dustbin, metal (1)

  Mattress, single, pocket sprung (1)

  Beer bottles, Beck’s, Grolsch, Peroni, assorted other (56)

  Drinks cans, food tins, aluminium (387)

  Soda siphon, large, glass (1)

  Guitar, electric, Fender (1)

  Lawnmower/strimmer, Flymo (1)

  Compact discs (67)


  Minidiscs (5)

  Cassette tapes (127)

  Child’s plastic telephone, Fisher Price (1)

  Mobile phones, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, assorted (34)

  Inflatable dinghy, vinyl (1)

  Inflatable lilo, vinyl (1)

  Cotton reels, wooden, plastic (24)

  Garden secateurs, wire cutters (5)

  Garden shears (1)

  Garden rake (1)

  Spade, steel (1)

  Wading boots, rubber (1)

  Coffee maker, De’Longhi (1)

  Spectacles, pairs of (4)

  Spectacles cases (3)

  Die-cast model cars, miniatures, Matchbox (33)

  ‘Slinky’ child’s spring toy (1)

  Thermos flask, plastic (2)

  Thermos flask, aluminium (1)

  Fish tank/aquarium, plastic (1)

  * * *

  Warrington Guardian, 26th August 1994

  Following the excavation of several tonnes of assorted artefacts and detritus from the waters of Hatchmere Lake, Delamere, in the continuing search for missing teenager Julie Rouane, it was unanimously agreed by members of Delamere Parish Council that the lake should become the focus of a major clean-up and renewal programme, to take place over the course of the following twelve months. ‘As a leisure and relaxation area for families, a base for numerous local sporting activities as well as a site of considerable scientific and ecological interest, the lake and its environs are vital to the people of Hatchmere, Delamere, Warrington and its surrounding villages,’ said Mrs Susannah Baylis, parish councillor. ‘We cannot allow environmental pressures, most specifically the illegal practice of fly-tipping and dumping, to degrade our precious natural resources in such a manner as has recently been highlighted.’ When asked specifically about the missing teenager, Mrs Baylis stated that this was a police matter and beyond her remit, though she commended Warrington and Greater Manchester Police, who jointly masterminded the Hatchmere excavation. ‘Whatever there is to be found, I feel confident of the abilities of our police in finding it,’ she stated. ‘As I understand it, investigations are still very much ongoing.’

  8

  “Do you remember that story Dad told us, about the giant catfish?” Selena asked.

  “The Destroyer of Worlds,” Julie said. “It wasn’t Dad who told the story though, it was that guy in Mia’s maths class, the one who was always on about toxic sludge. Luke, I think his name was.” She laughed. “He thought the lake was radioactive, that there was some kind of government cover-up, don’t you remember? He said he was going to gather all the information he could find and then go to the newspapers.”

  “I don’t mean that one. I mean the catfish in the Mekong Delta. Dad told us about them, that day we went to the lake and that bloke with all the piercings tried to show us his cock.”

  Julie frowned. “I don’t remember that. Not at all. When was it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It was ages ago.” It was strange, Selena thought, the way the subject of time had become touch-sensitive suddenly, like a bruise that wouldn’t heal. Selena knew she was testing Julie, trying to catch her out even. Talking about the catfish – about the guy with the piercings – had mostly been a way of talking about the lake. The list of items retrieved from the water had been written in longhand, in black biro, almost like a shopping list, on both sides of a sheet of paper torn from an A4 notepad. Selena hadn’t recognised the handwriting. It definitely wasn’t Dad’s, she knew that for certain, which made her wonder how it had ended up in the Brillo box with all the other stuff.

  The article from the Warrington Guardian had been attached to it with a paperclip, together with a brown envelope stuffed with photos of what Selena could only assume was Hatchmere Lake. Some had been clipped from newspapers, others were camera snapshots, plus a whole bunch of undeveloped negatives.

  Selena guessed that at least some of the blurry landscape shots, snapped from different vantage points around the lake, had been taken by Ray. But there were others, photos that looked as though they’d been taken from behind the section of yellow tape the police had put up. The objects in these pictures – a filthy-looking stub of bone, the rusted carcase of a drowned saloon car, the skeleton of an umbrella – were obviously part of the inventory that had been dragged from the lake. The images had a sharpness and clarity that made Selena feel pretty sure they were police property.

  Had Dad paid for the photos, or stolen them? She would once have found the idea of her father stealing anything preposterous, but not any more. Where Julie was concerned, Ray had clearly become capable of anything. The snapshots of the lake, together with the letters to DI Nelson and the handwritten list of excavated artefacts, were proof, if any were needed, of the way that the stretch of murky water had taken over his mind, nudging all other obsessions aside until in the end Hatchmere possessed his thoughts almost entirely.

  Both DS Nesbitt and DI Nelson had been at pains to stress that the Hatchmere Lake search was simply one line of enquiry among several. Assume too much, they warned, and you run the risk of blinding yourself to other possibilities.

  For Dad though, it was all about the lake – the lake and the acres of woodland that surrounded it. So far as Ray was concerned, Julie had been there and something had happened and that was that. He’d been determined to prove it. He had died trying.

  * * *

  Julie talked about the lake as if it was no big deal, no more and no less significant than any other subject.

  “Have you ever been back there?” Selena asked her.

  Julie looked surprised for a moment and then shook her head. “No,” she said. “Why would I?”

  * * *

  Selena decided that like her father she would read through every one of the seven hundred and ninety-eight letters in the Brillo box. She wasn’t sure what this might achieve, but she did it anyway. She gave each letter a number, marking each envelope with a round, easy-peel sticker, and entered the numbers into a notebook she had purchased for the purpose. Against each number she entered the date of the postmark, the date on the letter, if there was one, the name of the sender, if a name had been given, and their address. In the absence of an address, she entered the postmark location instead.

  As an activity it was oddly calming, even in spite of the content of some of the letters, and Selena wondered if it had been this, after all, the sense of bringing order to a chaos that could not otherwise be rationalised or accepted, that had made her father adhere so faithfully to his obsessions.

  For Ray, reading and cataloguing the letters had been a way of keeping Julie alive, of keeping her present, even while she was absent.

  Like talking to ghosts.

  * * *

  Selena knew the letter was from Julie the second she saw it, because she recognised the handwriting. Handwriting was peculiar in that way: when you read it, it was almost as if you could hear the person speaking. The envelope was greyish with ingrained dust, the paper slightly furry to the touch, which was what happened with paper if you over-handled it. There was a grease spot on one corner. It looked like a fingerprint. Selena wondered whether it was in fact Julie’s fingerprint, or just a random mark.

  The letter was postmarked COVENTRY. The date on the postmark was 23rd March 2003, eighteen months before Dad died, more or less. The ink was still quite dark. There was no return address on the back flap, though there was one on the letter inside: 18 Coundon Road, Coventry.

  It was letter #492.

  Dad –

  I’m writing to tell you I’m OK, and that I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through, you and Mum and Selena. I wish I could have been in touch earlier but it just wasn’t possible. I don’t expect you to understand, or to forgive me – after all this time I’d understand if you never wanted to see me again. But whatever you might think, and no matter what anyone else might tell you, I truly am sorry, and I do miss you, very much. I would love it if we could meet, just to see each other again. I hope you’l
l at least think about it. Anyway, now you know. You can write to me at this address. Could you do that? Even if it’s just to tell me you received this letter.

  I love you, Dad. I hope you’re well.

  Julie

  Even without the handwriting, the letter would have stood out. It was so different from all the others, those hundreds of outpourings, the confessions and revelations and accusations. Julie’s letter was different because there was no explanation and no story, just an apology. Very few of the other letters had included apologies.

  The only mystery was why Dad had ignored it.

  Perhaps he didn’t. Maybe he was in touch with Julie all along and never said.

  It barely seemed possible, though in keeping Julie’s existence a secret, wasn’t that exactly what Selena was doing herself?

  She made up her mind to confront Julie about the letter, to ask her straight out.

  * * *

  “I found this,” Selena said to her, two days later. “Did you send it?”

  She slid the envelope across the table. She tried to make the gesture seem unimportant, an afterthought.

  Julie glanced down at the letter. She made no move to touch it, to open it, although why would she, Selena reasoned, when she knew damn well what was inside?

  “Where did you get this?” Julie said. Her eyes seemed very bright, and for a moment Selena was convinced she was about to cry.

  “It was in with some things of Dad’s, stuff from his flat. I meant to sort through it all after he died but I never got round to it. I thought it was time.”