by Sibel Hodge
I smiled. ‘Miss you, too.’ Even though we’d been together twenty-six years, since we were seventeen, the love we shared was still strong. And the passion. I still fancied the pants off him. I knew we were lucky in that respect. I’d known lots of childhood sweethearts who had broken up after they grew up and grew apart. It hadn’t happened with us, and I was really grateful for that. It hadn’t happened with Lucas or Nadia yet, either, although who knew what would go on after Nadia’s revelation. Was he really having an affair? How do you throw away all those years of history?
We chatted some more about the building project and Anna and what food we were going to take on the family picnic that weekend, and by the time I hung up it was just after 9 p.m.
‘Bedtime!’ I called down to Anna from the landing.
‘Yeah, coming.’ She trudged up the stairs and gave me a hug. ‘Night, Mum.’
She was as tall as me now. When had that happened? I snuggled into her, sniffing in the scent of the strawberry body spray she liked. It was only recently that I’d had to stop moaning to get her to have a shower every day. Overnight, it was like she went from a smelly, dirty kid to a super clean freak. It would be makeup next, and bras, and boys. Oh, God.
‘Night, darling. Love you.’
‘Love you, too.’
I patted her back. ‘See you in the morning.’
I went downstairs into the lounge. Anna had left the TV on and the news was playing. I didn’t usually watch it; it was too depressing. Why didn’t they ever report anything good? Imagine the state of the world if every news channel broadcasted only happy news? The media manipulated everything, anyway, as far as I was concerned. Ethan didn’t agree. He liked to end his day watching the news. I couldn’t think of anything more nightmare-inducing. No wonder people had insomnia.
I flicked the TV off and something Ethan said sparked in my head.
Newspaper article.
Tom didn’t watch the news but he’d always loved reading it. Judging from the newspapers still regularly left in a messy heap in his room, he still did, or at least tried to. He must’ve remembered this Georgia from a story he’d seen.
Maybe it’s not a good trait, but I am pretty nosy. And that was what spurred on my curiosity about what could’ve been in the papers to do with this missing woman that would make Tom ‘remember’ it so well and become so agitated by it.
Anna had also left the laptop on. It was the family laptop, although really it belonged to me and her. Ethan had his own. I was still worried about her having complete freedom to trawl the web for anything. Still worried about paedophiles grooming innocent girls. Even though I’d had to cave in recently and let her have her own Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat accounts, at least sharing a laptop meant I could monitor her online usage and make sure she was safe.
I opened it up and sat on the sofa, knees tucked to the side, resting it on my thighs. I supposed Georgia wasn’t a very common name, but I didn’t have a surname to go on so I wasn’t expecting much, but I at least had to look.
I typed in Georgia and missing person. I got pages and pages of hits. Of course. Most of them had no relation to what I was looking for. There had to be millions of missing people in the world. I needed to narrow it down somehow.
Georgia, missing person, Dorset.
That still resulted in several pages and I started scrolling through. There was a missing persons page on Dorset Police’s website, asking if the public knew the whereabouts of certain people. I checked each name but there was no Georgia. There was a story on the Dorset Chronicle’s website dated ten years ago about the body of a murdered young woman called Georgia Preston found in some woodlands, and her boyfriend had been convicted of the crime. How awful. Was that what Tom remembered? Had there been something in the paper recently giving an update on the case? Yes, that was the most likely scenario.
I chewed on my bottom lip, searching for any more recent articles about the case but couldn’t find any. The rest of the pages didn’t relate to anything relevant so I called Nadia.
She answered on the second ring, as if she’d been waiting for the phone. ‘Lucas?’
‘Sorry to disappoint you. It’s just me.’
‘I was expecting him to call hours ago. I hope he’s not otherwise engaged!’ Her voice rose with a bitter edge.
‘Are you sure you can handle this without confronting him about it? I mean, you’re going to be a nervous wreck every time he’s late or misses a phone call or gets a text. If I was in the same situation, I’d want to know for certain.’
‘Well, I don’t want to know,’ she said, slightly offishly.
‘OK, I’m sorry. It’s your marriage, your decision.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not going to mention it again, but if you want to talk, you can call anytime. You know that, right?’
‘Thanks.’ She warmed up. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how worrying and hurtful this was for her to deal with. ‘Well, I’m waiting for him to call so . . .’
‘Oh, yes. Um . . . has Tom mentioned anything to you recently about someone called Georgia Preston?’
‘No. Never heard of her. Why?’
I paused for a moment. There was nothing to tell her, after all. I didn’t even know now why I’d called her. It was perfectly obvious that the story I’d read must’ve been what Tom was getting confused about.
‘I think there’s a Georgia in Charlotte’s class, though,’ she added.
My heart rate kicked up a notch. ‘Is there? Is she still up? Can I talk to her for a minute?’
‘Hang on a sec. She’ll never hear me over that racket!’ I could hear bouncy music in the background. ‘Why are you asking, anyway?’
‘Oh, no reason, really. Just being nosy – you know me.’
‘Don’t keep her long. I want her in bed soon. She’s been so busy cramming for her exams, and what with that virus thing she still can’t seem to shake, she’s wiped out.’
‘I thought she looked exhausted and pale.’
‘Her friend Trish has had it for weeks and can’t get rid of it.’
‘I know. It’s been doing the rounds at the surgery for months. Why don’t you pop in for a blood test, though? Just to be on the safe side?’
‘Yeah. I think I will when we get a minute.’ The music got louder the closer she got to Charlotte’s room. ‘Turn that off now,’ Nadia said to her. ‘Here she is, Liv. Don’t keep her on the phone long.’
‘OK. I won’t see you in the morning, though. I’m on an eight till one shift so we can’t walk the dogs together.’
‘OK. Night.’
‘Hi, Aunty Olivia,’ Charlotte came on the phone.
At sixteen, she was too old to call me Aunty, I thought. Or maybe I was too young to be called Aunty. Weren’t your forties supposed to be the new thirties these days? I’d told her just to call me Liv or Olivia, but she still insisted, saying she thought it sounded rude otherwise.
‘Hey, Charlotte. Who was that you were listening to?
‘Macklemore.’
‘Cool.’
She laughed. ‘It’s not cool to say cool, anymore.’
‘Whatever. Talk to the hand.’ Yes, I’d picked up a few things from those annoying kids’ shows Anna watched.
She laughed again.
‘I just wanted to ask you about the Georgia who’s in your class.’
‘There isn’t a Georgia in my class. She’s called Georgina. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. Just me being stupid. Thanks for your help. Night, sweetie. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Night.’
So that was that, then. There was no missing girl called Georgia that Tom knew. It was completely crazy to ever think there would be. He’d just come across the same story I had and it had become distorted in his mind.
Chapter Three
The P
ortesham Doctor’s Surgery was in a purpose built modern and bright building in the village. When I discovered I was pregnant for the seventh time with Anna I’d given up my nursing job at Dorchester County Hospital in the A&E department. I’d passed my twelve-week danger time and wasn’t going to jeopardise the pregnancy in any way, not after all the miscarriages. I took it easy, ate healthy food, got plenty of rest. But when Anna started primary school and a practice nurse job had come up in the village, it was the ideal solution. Half a day was perfect for me.
I sat in the nurses’ examination room with a cup of steaming coffee, scrolling through my appointments.
Rose Quinn, the mother of my old friend Katie, was due in at 11.30 a.m. She was an alcoholic, rarely venturing out of the house unless it was to buy booze at the little village shop. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw her. Katie’s dad Jack, also an alcoholic, had died a couple of years ago from liver failure. Their drinking had been going on for a long time, since Katie and I were both kids, but even though we were best friends, she never really talked about her home life to me. She said it was depressing and embarrassing having them as parents. Katie learned to cover up the fact that she looked after herself and the house single-handedly most of the time. A job no child should have to do. In fact, she was so good at hiding and covering things up I didn’t even realise what had been going on until much later.
The morning passed in a flurry of new patient health checks, assessing and treating minor injuries and giving advice for the diabetic clinic. When Rose entered the room I realised just how much weight she’d lost since the last time I’d seen her. Her eyes were dark hollow sockets, her cheekbones sharp and jutting. She wore leggings with holes in them, her legs skinnier than Anna’s, and a big baggy dark green jumper, even though we were actually being treated to a full-blown summer this year − lucky us − and it was about twenty-eight degrees Celsius outside.
I gave her a warm smile. ‘Hi, Rose. How are you?’
She hesitated in the doorway for a moment before walking slowly into the room and sitting down gingerly, as if it was painful for her to move. The reek of alcohol came off her in overpowering waves, and I tried to breathe through my mouth. During her infrequent appointments over the years, the doctors and I had all tried to get her into an AA programme and give support to help her quit the drink, but she wasn’t interested. Unfortunately, some people you just can’t help. As a nurse, it’s a lesson that took me a long time to learn. I could patch her up and give her advice until I was blue in the face, the same as I would for anyone else, but I couldn’t really help her.
‘I’m here for a dressing change. I cut myself.’ Her voice was now raspy and hoarse. I didn’t remember that from childhood and was pretty sure it was a side effect of the booze. Or cigarettes.
‘OK, just pop yourself up onto the examination couch and let me take a look.’ I read her notes on the screen while she lay down and lifted up her jumper. She’d told Elaine originally she’d cut herself falling onto a glass coffee table a few weeks ago, which broke as she landed on it. Elaine had removed some embedded fragments of glass from a wound that stretched under her ribs and along her abdomen. Considering she would’ve been drunk at the time, she was lucky it hadn’t turned out worse. It could’ve quite easily been a fatal injury if she’d caught an artery or vein. Because she hadn’t come in to get the glass removed quickly, the wound had become infected, and she’d been on a course of antibiotics for ten days, along with regular appointments for dressing changes, since it was considered unlikely she’d bother with it herself.
I pulled on some latex gloves and gently removed the old dressing. ‘It looks great, Rose. It’s healing up nicely now. You’ll need to come back tomorrow for another dressing change, and then the stitches will come out, OK?’
‘OK.’
‘We’re in for some scorching weather, apparently,’ I said as I put on another dressing.
She mumbled something in reply.
‘Knowing my luck, it will rain at the weekend when I’m off work.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Doesn’t the British weather always do that? Are you doing anything nice at the weekend?’
No response. I didn’t really expect one.
I pulled her jumper back down over her protruding ribs and mottled, pale skin. I wanted to ask her if she’d had any word from Katie but Rose always got angry when I tried to find anything out.
She swung her legs over the side of the couch and walked to the door. ‘Thank you,’ she said gruffly.
‘You’re welcome. Take care.’ I smiled at her retreating hunched shoulders and wondered what Katie was up to. What did she look like now? Was she happy? Had she made something of her life or was she an alcoholic like her parents?
The next patient entering shook me back to the present, and before I knew what had happened Elaine was there to take over and it was time for me to leave.
I grabbed a quick sandwich at home before heading off to see Tom. I was going to take him for a nice walk along the cliffs at Durdle Door. The nursing home encouraged family members taking residents for days out or on trips.
Mary wasn’t at the desk when I arrived. A younger nurse called Sue rushed out of a resident’s room, looking flushed and harassed, and almost bumped into me.
‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t see you there!’ Sue exclaimed. ‘You OK?’
‘Yes, I’m just going to take Tom out for a walk up at Durdle Door. I’ll bring him back in a few hours.’
‘Oh, great. He’ll love that.’ She grabbed a dressing from a drawer of medical supplies behind the desk and hurried back to the room she’d just come from.
When I entered Tom’s room he was wearing thick green cord trousers, a shirt buttoned up wrong and a pair of his walking boots that didn’t get much use anymore. He sat in the high-backed chair again, staring out of the window at the grounds. By now, he had trouble dressing himself most days and the nurses helped, although he often tried to redo what they’d already done, hence the odd buttons. Sometimes he forgot to go to the toilet, too, and had to be changed more than once in a day. If he could see himself now he’d be so degraded.
‘Hi, Tom.’ I kissed his cheek. ‘How are you today?’
‘Olivia.’ His eyes lit up. ‘Lovely to see you again. Are we going to Durdle Door? I’ve been waiting all morning.’
‘You remembered?’ I grinned. It seemed to be so random now, the things he remembered and the things he didn’t. ‘Yes. Let’s get going, shall we?’
He steadied himself on the edge of his chair with one hand while I took his other and helped him up.
After we walked down the corridor and out of the entrance, I settled him in my Mini. Once it would’ve been a tight squeeze for him to fit in. Not anymore.
‘How’s Anna?’ he asked, looking out the window.
‘She’s absolutely fine. She’s busy with schoolwork but they break up for summer holidays soon.’ I glanced over.
‘She’s a good girl.’ He smiled at me.
‘She is indeed. I’m very proud of her. I keep waiting for her to turn into a terrible teen.’
He laughed. ‘Like Ethan and Chris, you mean?’
‘They weren’t terrible.’
‘They had their moments.’ He sighed with contentment, as if remembering their childhood. ‘Nadia was always the good one.’
‘What about Chris? He was so into boxing, he didn’t have time for much else.’ Except Katie, I thought. At one time, he was completely in love with her. The only woman I’d seen him fall head over heels for until his wife Abby. Ex-wife, I should say.
‘Chris came to see me. He said his divorce came through.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Shame he couldn’t give her a child.’
Abby had always wanted kids. Longed for a big brood. After she and Chris got married, they tried madly, the same as me and Ethan, but although I eventually gave birth to Anna, it still didn’t happen fo
r them and the strain of IVF and fertility treatment took its toll eventually. I felt for her, I really did. She went a little crazy with the anxiety and stress of it all, and I knew what that was like.
‘Where’s Eve? She hasn’t been to see me.’
I stiffened, not wanting to bring it all back. Every time we had to explain Eve was dead, Tom got hit by a new wave of grief, as fresh as when it had first happened. We all thought it was best not to tell him anymore if he didn’t remember it himself.
‘That’s right. She went to Spain on holiday, didn’t she?’ he carried on, forehead crinkled up, thinking. ‘Oh, it’s nice in Spain.’ He shrugged and glanced back out of the window. ‘They have these strange bits and pieces of dinner. Taps.’
‘Tapas. Yes, they’re lovely.
‘Something was rubbery.’
‘Squid, probably.’
As we pulled up in the car park at the top of the cliffs half an hour later, a little boy and his dad were flying a kite in the shape of something robotic.
Tom sat for a while, watching them. ‘I remember Chris had a kite. Ethan hated them. Said they were for . . . for . . .’ He looked blank for a moment. ‘For turtles.’
‘Do you remember when you taught Anna how to fly a kite?’ I said, hoping he didn’t notice his slip-up. ‘You took her up on top of the hills behind the barn.’
‘Yes, she wanted one with a cartoon character on it, didn’t she?’ He smiled fondly.
‘SpongeBob SquarePants.’ I chuckled.
‘I looked everywhere for one, but nowhere had anything like it. I made it in the end, do you remember? I painted SpongeBob on. Copied him off a TV programme. It was almost as big as she was.’
‘If I remember rightly, it didn’t last long, did it?’
‘No. A sudden gust of wind took it away and it ended up smashing on the ground. It took me another two weeks to make a new SpongeBob one, and by that time she said she’d gone off him and wanted one that looked like a ladybird.’ He sighed wistfully. ‘Those were the days.’
I got out of the car and then went round to open his door and help him out. I linked my arm through his and we walked very slowly along a path over the top of the cliffs, well-worn with years’ worth of use. There were signs at regular intervals that read ‘Danger! Cliff Edge!’ and ‘Keep Away from the Edge!’
