In Her Wake

by Amanda Jennings

  I take the new mobile phone out of my pocket and check the time. It’s not far off nine so I pull out a scrap of paper on which I’d written a number before leaving my home, then sit down and dial.

  ‘Well, I have to say I’m glad you’ve finally rung,’ says the solicitor in a clipped voice, after I’ve introduced myself and we’ve run through a few forced niceties and condolences. ‘To be honest, I thought I might hear from you a little earlier, but no matter, at least I have you now. As you’re aware, I’ve been dealing with Dr Campbell’s will. Most of the inheritance is tied up in the two properties—’

  ‘Two? That must be a mistake. There’s only one. The Old Vicarage?’

  ‘And another. In Bristol.’

  ‘Bristol? I don’t know about any property in Bristol.’

  ‘I see. Well, I need to do a bit of work on that anyway, as at first glance it appears there’s a lodger of some description, but it’s not that straightforward. There are no obvious contracts and the house isn’t rented out through an estate agency. I’ll get back to you on this. The other thing that’s a bit out of the ordinary is a clause in the will, referring to the estate being left to the person I brought up as my daughter, name of Bella Campbell. The wording is odd.’

  My stomach turns over. I look around me, irrationally expecting to see David coming to find me.

  ‘He … often did things … strangely,’ I say, weakly. ‘He was an unusual character. Quite peculiar. They both were, really.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, it affects nothing, and I have certainly seen stranger things written into wills.’ She laughs tightly, as if laughing isn’t something she is used to doing.

  When she tells me how much the girl brought up with the name Bella Campbell has been left, I only just manage to contain my shock. Both houses are worth an awful lot, even after fees, taxes and other associated costs. Plus there are reasonably large savings and three paintings – ones I’d hardly noticed – that are insured for upwards of fifteen thousand pounds.

  ‘There is also a trust fund, which appears dormant. Certainly no payments have gone in or out in years, but it’s in your name with Dr Campbell as administrator. It has a little under two thousand pounds in it. There’s a protective clause on it, which I need to look into. I’m sure it will be straightforward to release the clause and transfer the money into the bulk of the estate, but again, I’ll get back to you when I know a bit more. All of this is going to take some time to get through probate, it always does,’ she explains, ‘but Dr Campbell was seemingly insistent you have access to immediate funds and set up an instant-access trust fund that will pay out a monthly living sum.’ She paused. ‘He kept everything in immaculate order, which makes my job very much easier, and as it’s only you who is named as beneficiary; providing nobody appears to contest the will, we should be fine.’

  I know I should be grateful to Henry for his consideration and generosity, but at the moment I don’t feel like touching his money. The idea of it makes me feel grubby.

  ‘Do you need me to do anything?’ I say.

  ‘No, as long as I can get hold of you, I’m not concerned. If I can have a forwarding address so I can send you any paperwork that would be helpful.’

  I glance at Phil who gives me a cheery smile and turn myself away from him. I give her the address of the hostel. ‘And can you address any paperwork you send to Ms,’ I hesitate, ‘Tori Bradford. I’ve never used Mrs and Tori is the name I go by sometimes. A childhood thing, really.’ I make a face. Annoyed I’m talking too much. ‘And you won’t give details of my whereabouts to anyone, will you? Even Mr Bradford. I’m trying to have a bit of time to myself to get my head around my…’ I hesitate again. ‘Loss.’

  ‘Of course not. Client confidentiality,’ she says. ‘Though your husband is extremely worried; he’s called here numerous times.’

  ‘Can I ask what you said to him?’

  ‘I said that as your solicitor I’m unable to give him any information, not that I had any to give at that time, but that if you made contact, I’d pass on the message that you should call him. He’s trying to organise Dr Campbell’s funeral, but is unsure when to set the date.’ The judgement in her voice is plain, which grates. She has no idea what my reasons are, but I’m sure if she did she’d realise I have every right to disappear for a while.

  ‘Please tell him to hold the funeral without me.’

  ‘We are not a messaging service—’

  ‘Of course not. Sorry. Perhaps if he calls again you could tell him I’m fine?’

  ‘Perhaps you should tell him yourself?’

  Though she remains professional for the remainder of our conversation, I can tell she now thinks less of me than she did at the beginning of the call.

  I put the phone down and look out across the sea. Viscous memories of Bella’s life envelop me. Her world still exists, tripping along as it always has. David is there, teaching and lecturing and trying to get hold of her. Miss Young is feeding her mother’s cat. The library is there with students writing essays and borrowing books and flirting, and Jeffrey is continuing to be terribly fond of David. Her life exists and it makes me feel lightheaded to think about it.

  I pay Phil for the coffee and drop a pound into the tips tin on the counter.

  ‘Thanks, love. You have a great day.’

  When I get back to the hostel I speak to the girl with purple streaks about taking my room for another four weeks.

  ‘Can you pay fifty percent now? We tend to take that for longer bookings,’ she says.

  ‘Is cash OK?’

  ‘Of course. I’m Fi, by the way. We should probably know each other’s names if you’re going to be here for that long.’

  Blimey, says Tori from out of the blue. That’s two friends in the space of an hour? You won’t be needing me soon!

  And I smile.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Dawn opens the door only a fraction and her face peers through the gap. I expect her to step back and open it fully when she sees it’s me, but she doesn’t.

  ‘Hello.’ I pause. ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘Do you think you could come back later?’

  ‘Later? But … is there a problem?’

  She hesitates. ‘No, no problem. It’s not a good time, that’s all.’

  I look at my feet, deflated. ‘But … I…’

  She sighs heavily, muttering under her breath, then she throws open the door and stomps back into the gloom of the hallway.

  I don’t move.

  She comes back into sight at the end of the hall. ‘Come on then.’

  I step cautiously into the flat and walk towards the kitchen. I know she doesn’t want me there, but where else would I go?

  Dawn stands near the sink. The curtains are open, which is a great relief, but the television flickers silently like it did yesterday, the picture showing two women on a sofa chatting animatedly with no words, and it lends the room a peculiar atmosphere.

  I sit at the small round table and clasp my hands in front of me. Within moments the cat is on my lap, purring loudly, a welcome noise in the dismal quiet. I start to stroke her but Dawn scoops her up, then opens the back door and throws her out.

  ‘I want to help you look after Alice,’ I say. ‘I want to be a family. I want to share the workload with you.’

  She puts her hands on her hips. ‘The workload?’

  ‘I want to help.’

  ‘I don’t need help with my mother. I haven’t had help in twenty-five years. I don’t bloody need it now.’

  The cat scratches at the back door. She mews feebly and my bravado slips further away. I search Dawn’s face. There is so much behind her frozen façade, so many thoughts she isn’t sharing with me, tantalising shadows of which flicker across her sad green eyes like the noiseless pictures on the television.

  I stand and go to her, take her hand. ‘You know,’ I say. ‘I spent my whole life wishing I had a sister.’

  She doesn’t answer immediately. When sh
e does her voice is quiet. ‘And I spent mine wishing I’d never had one.’

  Her whisper rips though me like a forest fire.

  I drop her hand and concentrate on trying not to cry. I focus on the spider plant on the shelf behind her, its cloned babies hanging precariously from feeble umbilici. The flat needs a happier plant or, even better, a vase of sweet-smelling roses. They’d need replacing every five or six days, but they’d make such a difference.

  She shifts position, which draws my attention back to her, then rubs the tops of her arms as if trying to warm herself. ‘Look, I—’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  She moves towards me but I back away, spin around, and make for the kitchen door.

  ‘Last night I couldn’t sleep,’ she calls after me.

  I stop and turn back to face her. She is looking straight at me. Her hands hang loose at her sides.

  ‘I was picturing you. Trying to feel something. But I was empty. All these years I’ve wondered what happened to you, whether you were coming back or if they were right and you drowned. Up until yesterday you were a ghost, a memory. The idea of you was stronger than the actual you, if that makes sense. It’s like that still, like that now. I’m talking to you and I can see you, but you don’t feel real.’

  A clot of emotion heaves its way through me as I realise how similarly we feel, how well she has articulated it. Morveren, Dawn, the scar on my arm, the silent woman sitting in front of a wall of pictures and cuttings in the next door room, it’s all a hallucination, a dream, real enough that I can feel the pinch, but not real enough to be sure of.

  ‘I shouldn’t … have turned … up the way I did,’ I say, hating the way my voice falters. ‘Appearing out of the blue … it wasn’t fair. I didn’t think it through. I panicked.’

  ‘What else could you do?’

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘And I’m glad you didn’t tell the papers, though; I’m not ready for all that.’

  ‘Where’s my father, Dawn?’

  Her body tenses. ‘I promise I don’t know. He and Mum fell apart after you went. He started drinking more. Lost his job. Got more aggressive and then one night he left and never came back.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  She nods once.

  ‘Have you a photograph?’

  ‘I told you I don’t want to talk about him.’

  ‘I need to see what he looks like.’

  Dawn’s stony face seems to soften, then she turns on her heel and goes into her bedroom, a boxroom off the kitchen. She returns holding a photo that she pointedly avoids looking at as she casts it onto the kitchen table in front of me.

  There are four people in the photo. The man, my father, is familiar. But rather than comforting, the familiarity makes me uneasy. There’s something about him. Something bad, and the fingers on one of my hands move subconsciously to the scar on my opposite arm. Of course it could be suggestive, picked up subconsciously from Dawn and her apparent hatred for him. But something tells me it’s not, that this wariness is innate, that it’s been hanging about in the unreachable area of my memory since before I was taken. He is a large man, with a round face and curly, unkempt black hair. He sits in an armchair and looks out, unsmiling, at whoever held the camera. It’s as if he can see me and I feel scrutinised by his piercing stare. At his feet is a young woman with a toddler on her lap, and she’s looking down at her with a smile. In contrast to the brooding presence of my father, the love that pours out of this woman is tangible, it drips out of the photo like honey. The young child must be me because in the background is an older girl who is unmistakably Dawn. I am wearing a blue dress with frilly white pants over a big fat nappy, and my little pudgy fingers are entwined in my mother’s hair. I have a silver Christening bracelet and I move my finger from my scar to my wrist to feel for it. Alice’s beauty steals my breath. How is this the same person who wastes away in the next-door room? She has smooth, blemish-free skin and shiny brown hair that hangs loose to the middle of her back. And she wears a green-and-white striped dress.

  I chew at my lip ferociously but can’t keep from crying. It is me as part of a family I have no recollection of. The four of us locked in this moment. However hard I dredge my mind, I have no memory of it, not the sofa, not the bracelet, not even the feel of my mother’s soft hair.

  ‘It’s the only photograph I kept of him,’ says Dawn, her voice shattering my thoughts. ‘I burnt the rest. But I like you and Mum in it.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  Dawn laughs bitterly. ‘The man was a drunk. A violent drunk. I’m glad he left. Mum and I were better off without him.’

  I look back at the picture.

  ‘The night you went he hit me across the face.’

  ‘Why?’ I say, unable to contain my shock.

  ‘He said it was my fault you went missing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s your fault, you little bitch,’ she mimics. ‘Your. Fucking. Fault.’

  ‘How can it have been your fault?’

  Her eyes well with tears. ‘I was supposed to be looking after you.’ She visibly winces at whatever recollection she’s reliving. ‘I let you go.’

  ‘But you were only a child. Seven? I wasn’t your responsibility. They shouldn’t have left me with you.’

  She doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Listen to me, Dawn. It was nobody’s fault but the Campbells,’ I say firmly. ‘Do you understand? It was them. They took me. It was not your fault.’

  ‘But I watched you go.’ The way she says the words, quiet and distant, a thousand miles away, leaves an eerie resonance that hangs like an aftertaste. ‘I watched you walk away.’

  I watched you go.

  I reach out and touch her shoulder. She looks at me with wide and fearful eyes, reliving whatever it was that happened the night I was taken. I want to push for more, for whatever she remembers, but we’re interrupted by a knock on the front door, which makes me jump.

  Dawn swears under her breath and dries her eyes on her sleeve. My stomach floods with nerves and Elaine bustles into my head, muttering anxiously.

  Don’t move. Stay there and be quiet while I see who it is.

  ‘You have to go,’ Dawn says then. She pushes me towards the kitchen door.

  ‘Go?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There’s another knock.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Nobody, but you have to go.’

  ‘I haven’t seen Alice—’

  ‘Shit,’ she whispers. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

  A man’s voice calls through the letterbox. ‘Dawn? Are you there? You alright?’

  ‘Yes! There in a sec,’ she calls. Then she turns to me and with a lowered voice says, ‘Look, it’s a friend of mine. If you’re here—’ She stops herself and the look on her face shows a sudden vulnerability. ‘I’m not ready to tell anyone.’

  ‘Say I’m a friend.’

  ‘I don’t have any friends.’

  ‘You have him. You said he’s a friend. Well,’ I say. ‘I’m another.’

  ‘I don’t have any other friends and he knows that.’ Her hand shoots up to her mouth and she begins chewing her nail. ‘Maybe we should tell him?’

  ‘No.’ It’s my turn to panic. I think of David reading the newspapers, seeing my picture splashed all over the pages, his shock, his immediate call to the police.

  ‘What shall we say?’

  ‘Say I’m a journalist. I’ve already said that to a few people.’

  She nods, but looks sceptical.

  ‘Follow my lead. It’ll be fine.’ And then I give her what I hope is a reassuring smile.

  She takes a breath and smoothes her hair as she goes to open the door.

  ‘Sorry,’ I hear her say. ‘I was on the toilet.’

  She walks back into the kitchen. Her eyes don’t meet mine. The person at the door follows her, chattering all the way until he reaches the kitchen and sees me, then he stops talking abruptly. The surprise
on his face is bordering on comical.

  ‘Hello,’ I say, forcing my voice to sound confident.

  He looks at Dawn, who in turn looks at her feet.

  ‘Tori Bradford.’ I hold out my hand.

  He stares at my hand, a little confused, and then regains his composure. He’s holding carrier bags in both hands, and places one lot of bags on the floor and shakes my hand. ‘Craig.’

  He is a small man with longish hair, and he wears a battered biker’s jacket and tight jeans that hug his skinny legs. The skin on his face is marked by teenage acne scars and creases around his eyes that suggest he laughs a lot. He picks up the bags from the floor and puts them all on the table.

  ‘Your shopping,’ he says to Dawn, and looks at her quizzically, clearly after an explanation. When none comes he turns back to me.

  ‘I’m a writer,’ I say. ‘Well, a journalist, really. I’m doing a magazine article about missing children and I am here talking to Dawn about her sister.’

  Dawn takes a sharp inhalation of breath.

  The man nods slowly. ‘I’m surprised she even let you in; she usually tells anyone asking to sling their hook.’ He smiles kindly at Dawn.

  ‘I can be persuasive.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘And Tori Bradford was just this minute leaving.’ Dawn gives me a meaningful stare.

  ‘Yes. That’s right. I was. I was just leaving.’ I pick up my bag. ‘Thank you so much, Dawn. It was good talking to you.’ I smile at Craig again. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘And you. Maybe we’ll see you again?’

  ‘Maybe.’ I glance at Dawn but she won’t meet my eye. ‘I can let myself out, Dawn. Thanks again.’

  I walk down the hall and when I get there, I realise Craig has followed me. This annoys me a little as I had hoped to pop in on Alice quickly, but I can’t think of a suitable reason why Tori-Bradford-the-journalist would do that.

  ‘Don’t mind about Dawn,’ Craig says, as we reach the front door. ‘She doesn’t mean to be like that. She’s had it pretty tough. She’s a good girl.’

  ‘Yes, she seems lovely.’

  ‘She’d do anything for anyone, you know. Did you meet her mum?’