Tell Me Where You Are

by Moira Forsyth

  ‘They’re all awkward at thirteen,’ Barbara had answered. ‘In my experience.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Grace protested. ‘Frances was no bother at all. No doubt Gillian will have her moments, but she’s an easy bairn. She and Frances both, easy bairns.’

  ‘Susan’s like her father,’ Barbara said. ‘Same quick temper.’

  Barbara was their father’s sister so could say what she liked about him, or thought she could.

  Here was Susan now, the front gate banging behind her as she came up the path, the last one home from school as always, tie undone, beret stuffed in her bag, skirt tucked up at the waist to make it shorter, with her long legs and the blonde swing of her hair as she turned back for a moment to wave to the friend going on up the street without her.

  ‘She has his looks too, even more than Frances,’ Barbara said, dropping the net curtain and moving back from the bay window as Susan neared the front door. Not that Susan was looking at the window, she was seeing something that was no longer there. Susan the dreamer. That was what her father said, banging his spoon on the table at tea-time, making her jump. Dreamer!

  ‘Where have you been all this time?’ her mother accused when Susan came an hour after the others.

  ‘Nowhere – just to the Pelican.’

  ‘For goodness sake, what’s that?’

  Barbara knew. Barbara liked showing how much she knew about what you did after school, reminding them she was a teacher so they couldn’t pull the wool over her eyes.

  ‘It’s a coffee bar,’ she informed Grace. ‘All the young ones go there after school to hang about.’ She added, as if this made it even more dubious, ‘They drink Coca Cola.’

  ‘Thank goodness she doesn’t teach at the High, that’s all I can say,’ Susan said as she trudged upstairs behind Frances.

  The three of them settled in the room Frances and Susan shared; Gillian still occupied the little nursery bedroom, full of toys and children’s books. The three of them: Gillian on the floor, Frances and Susan on the single beds, facing each other, swinging their legs back and forth, just touching toes. But what had they said to each other, upstairs away from their parents and Barbara, at five and nine and thirteen, or at nine and thirteen and seventeen, year after year in that house?

  It was impossible to go back and see it clearly, now that so much stood in the way. When Frances tried, the picture froze, and she could no longer hear the voices.

  ‘Mum!’

  Startled, heart jolting, Frances turned. Jack said, ‘That was Andy.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘On the phone. He wants somebody to pick him and Kate up from the station. They got off the bus there and he said they’d start walking up. You want me to go?’ He was dangling the car keys from one finger.

  ‘The bus. Yes, off you go. Sorry, I was miles away.’

  Miles and years. She put her cold hands back in the cold water, to scrub potatoes.

  A little later, Alec called.

  ‘I’m in the middle of cooking,’ she said, to let him know it was a bad time. ‘We’re just about to eat.’

  ‘She’s not here,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t come home.’

  ‘You didn’t expect her to, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Frances said. ‘I should have asked you.’

  ‘I just wanted to tell you in case Kate asked.’

  ‘You’d better speak to her yourself.’

  While Kate stood in the hall, hunched over the phone, Frances went back into the kitchen and shut the door. She was shaking. She had not asked about Susan. It was not the first thing she had said. Yet it was Susan she’d been dreaming about. She wanted to say to Alec, you cannot bring the dead to life. Because it was all dead between them, Frances and Susan. Susan and all of them. Or she had thought it was. Now, standing in her kitchen, Alec’s voice reaching into her house, her life, she wondered if she had been wrong about that. Not dead but waiting. She gripped the back of a chair with both hands.

  Susan.

  7

  Frances usually liked the week after New Year. It was quiet, and she was able to prepare for next term with no pressure. She caught up on the jobs in the house which had been waiting for her attention. She cooked substantial meals for the boys, and went walking for an hour every afternoon.

  This year there was an edge of discomfort to all of it that she resented, but which also made her feel guilty. She was conscious that Kate was bored, and though there was nothing she could do about this, she felt she ought to try. Kate slept late as the boys did, which was something of a relief. She pecked at her food, fussily disengaging the vegetables she did not like (a wide range) and leaving them on the side of her plate. Then she would be found eating crisps and chocolate in front of hours of television. Frances could see she did not know what to do with herself. Jack and Andrew lived their separate lives. Ross McGhee made more of an effort to be friendly than her sons did. The jigsaw, completed, lay on the table till after Hogmanay, when Frances broke it up and swept it back into its box, to join the others in the hall cupboard. Seeing the stack of them, given over many years by her father, she picked one out and took it into the living-room.

  ‘If you fancy doing another,’ she suggested to Kate and Andrew, ‘there’s plenty of choice.’

  Andrew groaned, but Jack coming in, said, ‘Oh yeah, we must have rakes of them.’ He took the box from her. ‘Not this – is there not one with boats in a harbour and a row of houses?’

  ‘They’re in the hall cupboard – go and have a look.’

  Jack found the one he wanted, and began building edges. Andrew made a few sporadic attempts but Kate ignored it.

  ‘What about work?’ Frances reminded Jack, coming in to help him with the row of houses that evening.

  ‘I’ve done hours. Hours and hours. When you were out.’

  So she helped him with the jigsaw and they were companionable together. She was driving Jack back to Aberdeen on Saturday and she might not see much of him again before Easter.

  There was no word from Alec until the Friday night.

  ‘Any news?’ she asked him.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Well, there is or there isn’t – which?’

  ‘I haven’t tracked her down but one of her friends thought she saw her at the station.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Christmas Eve. Judy – that’s the friend – was meeting her son off the train and she said she was sure it was Susan. Getting on a train.’

  ‘Where was the train going? Did she speak to her?’

  ‘Judy was kind of caught up with her son so she wasn’t paying much attention. Then when she heard from Karen at the Retreat she called me. I went down, and the platform she must have been on is where the trains go north, so she could have been heading for Aberdeen.’

  Frances was both angry and relieved. ‘She’s all right then. I must say, this is like the way Susan behaved years ago. I don’t feel I can care any more.’

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘How’s Kate?’ Alec said at last.

  ‘She’s bored but she’s fine. Do you want to speak to her?’

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course – she’s your daughter. Step-daughter.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I know it’s not the easiest situation.’

  ‘She seems to be getting on all right with the boys. In some ways, you’d think they’d been used to each other for years. She’s bored though. They’re so embedded here. I think she should be at home with her own friends.’

  ‘That’s not a good idea.’

  ‘But you are coming to take her home in time for school?’

  ‘Could we leave it a week or so longer? I’ll square it with the school.’

  ‘I’ll be back at work next week, Jack will have gone and Andrew will be in school. If she’s bored now – ’

  ‘Let me speak to her, eh, see what she thinks.’

  Frances opened the living-roo
m door. ‘Kate, it’s your – it’s Alec. He wants a word.’

  Kate uncoiled herself from the sofa. When she had lifted the receiver in the hall, Frances shut the door again.

  ‘You were going to say ‘it’s your father’, weren’t you?’

  ‘Well, he is. Her step-father.’

  ‘Weird. More her Dad than ours.’

  Andrew was lying on his back on the rug, making different shapes from an intricate web of copper wires and beads, a puzzle she had put in his Christmas stocking.

  ‘Do you mind?’ she asked.

  Jack looked up from the jigsaw. ‘Why would we?’

  ‘She’s welcome to him,’ Andrew said. ‘And it sounds as if her mother’s a total fruit cake.’ He glanced sideways at his mother, wondering how she would take this.

  ‘We got the best deal,’ Jack said, grinning at her.

  Frances had an overwhelming desire to tell them how it had been, explain herself and Alec, and all that had happened. She swallowed it back: they were all right as they were, and she was all right. Then, hearing the low murmur of Kate’s voice from the hall, she thought no, she was not all right. As if he had picked up her thoughts, Jack said, ‘When’s she going home?’

  ‘I don’t know. When Alec comes for her.’

  ‘Where is her mother?’ Andrew asked, sitting up.

  ‘Alec doesn’t know,’ Frances admitted. ‘Apparently she’s gone off before without telling anyone. She turns up eventually so he’s sure she’s all right.’

  ‘Don’t you do that,’ Andrew warned her. ‘Who would make my tea and give me a lift to the pub when Jack’s gone back to uni?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Frances told him. ‘There’s no fear of that.’ Leave her children and go off without a word – why would she do such a peculiar thing? How could any mother? Susan seemed more than ever alien and lost. Or ill, she thought with a spasm of guilt and anxiety.

  ‘Poor Kate, eh?’ Jack said as the door opened and the girl came in.

  ‘All right?’ Frances asked.

  Kate looked at them for a moment, as if taking in the whole family. ‘Yes,’ she said. Behind its mask of make-up her face looked pinched and afraid. She turned and went out leaving the door open and they could hear her going slowly upstairs.

  ‘Is she all right?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘I doubt it.’ Jack sounded sarcastic. ‘Disappearing mother, abandoned in the frozen north with relatives she hasn’t seen for years. … What do you reckon?’

  Frances went upstairs. The door of the spare bedroom, where Kate was now established, was shut. She tapped on it lightly: ‘Can I come in?’ – not waiting for an answer. ‘How are you?’

  Kate was lying on the bed, her face turned towards the window. ‘Go away,’ she muttered. ‘Just go away and leave me alone.’

  So Frances, being unequal to this, did.

  She called Alec again, annoyed to find herself trembling. He was a long time answering.

  ‘What did you say to Kate? She’s gone up to her room in a mood.’

  ‘Nothing – nothing you don’t know. Is she upset?’

  ‘She won’t speak to me, but maybe I don’t have the knack with girls. I’m used to boys and they’re very uncomplicated.’

  ‘I asked her if she wanted to stay, and she said yes, she seemed fine about it. It’s her mother, she’s worrying about her mother. I can’t seem to reassure her this time.’

  ‘Did you tell her someone had seen Susan at the station?’

  ‘Yes – d’you think I shouldn’t have done? Try speaking to her again, you’re so patient and calm, it’s bound to help.’

  He had made no personal remark to her for thirteen years and it stung that he came out with this, glibly. How dare he, he didn’t even know her now. She said more sharply than she meant, ‘There’s nothing I can say to reassure her – is there?’

  Silence. He cleared his throat.

  ‘All right, I’ll try.’

  ‘What’s up?’ Jack asked as Frances laid down the receiver.

  ‘Kate’s upset about her mother.’

  ‘Send McGhee in,’ Andrew suggested, joining them in the hall. ‘He gets on with women. They like him.’

  ‘He’s a nice lad.’

  Andrew snorted. ‘I’ll tell him you said that.’

  ‘So what’s happening?’ Jack asked.

  ‘She’s staying on for a while. Not indefinitely of course. She’s Alec’s responsibility, not ours.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘Let’s leave her in peace for now. I’ll talk to her tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re taking me to Aberdeen tomorrow.’

  ‘So I am – I completely forgot. I wonder if it’s wise to leave her with Andrew.’

  Andrew was indignant. ‘I’m perfectly capable. I’ll force her to listen to some heavy metal – teach her to appreciate good music. Buy her a beer. Pity County’s not playing at home tomorrow, I could take her to the game.’ He sauntered out, pleased with his own wit.

  Frances plunged into ironing, packing, getting Jack sorted out. Blithely, he let her do it, making a show, at last, of studying while she bustled round him.

  ‘I’ll be back on Sunday night,’ she told Andrew. ‘The freezer’s full of food and remember to feed the cats. Don’t go off and leave Kate on her own.’

  ‘I’m going to a party tomorrow night. Maryburgh – Mark’s house.’

  ‘Oh Andrew.’

  ‘I could take her with me. I don’t mind.’

  Frances hesitated. Surely she could go away for one night? Ridiculous even to worry. She went to check what was in the freezer.

  In the spare bedroom, Kate sat up and gazed out of the window. The garden was still snow-covered, though no more had fallen since New Year. The trees and the roof of the summerhouse were bare. A robin hopped from one apple tree to the other. Kate turned her head and saw herself in the dressing-table mirror, head and shoulders. I look terrible, she thought, tweaking at her hair. And there was another spot! She felt the angry little lump rising on her chin and worried at it till there was a red mark. ‘I hate everything,’ she told her reflection, and lay down again. She heard Andrew on the stairs and expected his feet to thud past her door, but they stopped and he banged on it twice.

  ‘C’n I come in?’

  She could hear his breathing. ‘All right.’ She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, still fingering the red spot as if that would wipe it away.

  ‘You fancy coming to a party?’ He seemed to fill the doorway in his baggy sweatshirt and the loose trousers that hung down over his feet in white socks.

  Kate shrugged. ‘I don’t mind. Where?’

  ‘Maryburgh. We’d get a lift from a guy I know. Taxi back.’

  ‘Is Jack going?’

  ‘It’s tomorrow. He’ll be back at uni. Mum’s driving him down in the morning.’

  ‘Might as well, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m doing you a favour here,’ he pointed out. ‘Wild entertainment, free booze. If you stay here you’ll have to watch reality TV and keep the cats company.’

  ‘I said all right.’

  Andrew hesitated in the doorway, feeling he should do more. ‘Is your Mum still away then?’

  Kate flushed. ‘Yes. Not that it’s any of your business.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s all right,’ he offered. ‘I mean, not hurt or anything.’

  ‘I know that.’

  He turned to go, giving her up.

  ‘When’s she coming back?’

  Momentarily confused, Andrew thought she meant her own mother, then realised she meant his.

  ‘Oh – Mum. Sunday night.’

  He did think of adding, it’s all right, she doesn’t go off, but decided this would sound more like mockery than reassurance. If that was what she wanted. On an impulse of pity, he said, ‘It’ll be a great party. Mark’s got this pure fantastic house. And his folks are away for the whole weekend.’

  She only grimaced at this, as if he had said something s
tupid. But what?

  When he had gone, Kate got out her mobile phone and read her latest text messages. Several a day came from her friends at home, throwing her a line to her real life. She keyed in her friend Sara’s number.

  ‘Going 2 a party,’ her fingers tapped rapidly, ‘w Andrew. Jack the neat 1 goes back to uni. Staying here a wk more. Help.’

  She lay back on her bed with the phone on her chest, holding on to it. Sara, Jackie, Hannah, they all kept in touch. But not her mother. She knew it was stupid to go on thinking that every time a message came in, it would be from her mother, every time it rang, it would be her mother speaking. Alec had told her Susan did not have her phone, he had found it lying on the bed. But Susan could get another phone, couldn’t she? She’d taken plenty money, Alex had said.

  ‘Get in touch,’ she said aloud, and repeated her number. ‘Come on Mum, you know it, you memorised it soon as I got the mobile, you said you would always remember it. Call me.’

  She lay back, waiting, holding the phone close, so that the beat of her heart was up against it, pulsing its own message.

  8

  Frances and Jack had a good day for travelling to Aberdeen. The temperature had risen a little, the sky clearing to pearly blue by half past nine. Frances was uneasy about leaving Kate, but promised herself she would make more effort when she came back.

  Kate was still in bed when they left.

  ‘We’re off now,’ Frances murmured. Kate turned and raised her head.

  ‘Ok,’ she said sleepily, then as Frances began to close the door, ‘Sorry I was rude yesterday.’

  ‘I never thought anything about it,’ Frances lied

  Kate flopped back on the bed. ‘I’m moody. I can’t help it.’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t feel you have to go to the party with Andrew if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I don’t mind going. It’s something to do.’

  ‘Take a taxi home. There’s money in the drawer in the hallstand.’

  ‘Alec gave me loads of money.’

  When she said goodbye to Andrew, still buried beneath bedclothes, he muttered, ‘Say hi to Granny and Grandpa,’ then called after her as she closed the door. ‘Oh hey, did you leave me any money?’