by Stef Penney
“My family didn’t do away with her, if that’s what you’re thinking. To think Tene or Ivo could have done something to her . . . you’re really barking up the wrong tree.”
She shakes her head and seems genuinely amused, biting at her lip so that she wears off some of the redness.
“I just wondered. I have to consider every eventuality.”
“ ‘Every eventuality.’ ”
She rolls the words around on her tongue and smiles, like I’m a complete idiot: a little boy playing detective.
“I’m sure there’s plenty about my family that would make her want to run away. Go and ask them. I don’t know where Rose is. If I knew, I’d tell you.”
As she’s getting up to go, Luella Janko pauses, shunting her sack onto one shoulder. It’s now got my business card in it, lost in the depths, just in case she remembers anything. I’m not holding my breath.
“Wait a minute . . .”
She turns around, impatient.
“Did you like Rose?”
She looks genuinely surprised, as though it’s never occurred to her before.
“Like her? I only met her once. Like I said, she was quiet, didn’t talk much, a bit of a mouse—didn’t make a big impression, you know?”
Luella Janko walks out, smacking the swing door aside with a vicious gesture. She’s wearing high-heeled shoes—the sort that make that lovely, crisp, ticking noise—which I see are as red and shiny as her lipstick.
Rose Wood didn’t seem to make a big impression on anyone, not even on her own father. I feel a wave of frustration with them all—at least those I’ve met so far; a sheltered nineteen-year-old girl disappears and nobody lifts a finger, not even to dial 999.
Suddenly I am absolutely determined to find her, because no one else really seems bothered.
When I get home, there’s a message from Hen. He’s been talking to a police contact in missing persons. There’s no sign of Rose there, meaning that no one has ever reported her missing. Put another way, no one ever wanted her back. I know that women—especially young women— have low status in Gypsy families, and daughters-in-law lowest of all, but still . . . Despite what Luella Janko said, Rose might be dead. Even if there was no crime, people still die.
The way it works with investigations—any sort of investigation—is that once you have some information, you form a working hypothesis. You gather more information, and see if it fits your hypothesis. If it doesn’t, you have to reform your hypothesis accordingly. But information on its own is not really much use to you. Information is hearsay, anecdote, opinion. It’s what people tell you, and people have any number of reasons to lie. You have to turn that information into facts—by checking and cross-checking, by using all the sources at your disposal. When you have one or two corroborating pieces of information and it all seems to add up, then you can start talking about facts. But even facts aren’t any good—not if you’re going to court. You have to turn the facts into evidence—by which I mean attested documents, photographs, film, forensics, confession, and—as a last resort—expert witnesses. That’s how I learned to operate as an investigator. There isn’t room for speculation or feeling. Tangible, rational, explicable: that’s how you have to think.
The danger is that you get stuck on one hypothesis. You have to be flexible. Admit that you can make mistakes. And sometimes you can be right and still get it wrong. Like with Georgia Millington.
The answerphone also contains, to my surprise, a message from Vanessa. Asking in a very casual, roundabout way if I would fancy going to see a film one night. I suppose Madeleine gave her my number. It makes me sigh, even though there was nothing wrong with her or with that night. In fact, maybe I do want to see a film sometime. Why not? I’m a single man, footloose and fancy-free. I can do whatever I want. I write down her number on a piece of paper, which I then hide in the general mess by the phone. Then I erase the message. No message: no evidence that she ever called.
If I pour myself a stiff vodka and tonic after this, and if I sit drinking it as the light drains out of the living room, allowing the darkness to steal up and wrap around me like a blanket, it’s not because I’m thinking about the woman who is still, technically, my wife. To be rational, I’m not thinking at all. To prove how very rational I am, I decide to ring Vanessa tomorrow. If I have decided that, it doesn’t matter what I do or think tonight, because tomorrow I’ll behave normally.
Alcohol’s great, isn’t it? Without it, I think I would have killed myself. Hen would agree with me about alcohol, even though he’s been on the wagon for years.
When we first met, Hen was a stockbroker. I hated him on sight. He was everything I wasn’t—privileged, well educated, confident (on the surface, at least), with that penetrating drawl that carries across ballrooms and heather-covered hillsides. And there was me—mongrel Gypsy boy, who had dragged himself to a polytechnic and a diploma in business studies. I was on a job—looking into some anomalies at a small City firm. I had a knack for figures, so Eddie generally passed that sort of thing on to me, even after I stopped working for him. My investigation swiftly narrowed to one point—Henry Hamilton-Price, and I realized what the problem was; he was covering up a drink problem and struggling to maintain his posh wife and two young daughters. He had “borrowed” some of the firm’s money, and inevitably, the thing started to unravel. There hadn’t been the need for much direct surveillance, so I was surprised when, on one of my undercover visits to the firm’s premises, Hen cornered me in the vice chair’s office.
“I know who you are,” he hissed. “You work for a firm of private detectives. And I know what you’re doing.”
“I am not at liberty to discuss my activities,” I intoned. I’ve always enjoyed saying that.
“Please . . .”
That’s when I realized he wasn’t threatening me. He was begging me.
I wasn’t accustomed to being implored by someone so obviously my social better. It was intoxicating. He said that he would shortly be able to pay the money back, that if he lost his job his wife would leave him and take the children. Then after a minute gazing intensely into my face—I don’t think I had said a word—he stopped and drew himself up, as if forcing his back to straighten.
“I’m sorry. You must, of course, do whatever you think is right.”
He turned abruptly on his heel and walked out, leaving me stunned. He was absolutely convincing. I didn’t doubt his anguish for a second. I shopped him anyway. Of course, he was fired, but the firm refrained from pressing charges, which was more than decent of them. And to everyone’s surprise, especially his, Madeleine stood by him. I have to give her that much credit.
I tracked him down a week later, because I couldn’t work out how he had rumbled me, and offered him a job. He was deeply touched that anyone would trust him again, knowing what he had done, and for my part I was touched that he was completely unsnobbish.
He has never made me feel that he was better than me; in fact, he has always given the impression that he admires me—my independence, my professional skill, and, in the old days, my marriage to Jen. He used to think—he said—that we were the perfect couple.
So did I.
They say booze kills you, but it doesn’t; otherwise, we’d all be dead. It’s sadness that kills you, if that sadness is so heavy and overpowering that you simply cannot bear to be sober, or even conscious.
I thought, when she left me, that my sadness could not be any greater, that the pain could not be any more acute, and that I couldn’t survive it. But I was wrong, because here I am: drinking, admittedly, but not an alcoholic. I know the difference. When things get bad, and even after two years, they still get bad, I can drink until it doesn’t hurt so much.
The first thing I ever knew about Jen was that she had a heart murmur. I was eight and walking down the street after school, and a girl I had seen around the neighborhood—I knew her parents kept a Chinese chippy nearby—came up to me. She had no trace of shyness.
“I’ve got a secret in my heart,” she announced.
“A what?”
“A secret.”
She put her hand over her solar plexus.
“That’s not where your heart is. Your heart’s here.”
I tapped my left collarbone.
“Mine’s here,” she insisted. “It’s got a secret.”
I pondered this for a minute.
“Why are you telling me?”
“The doctor said it might kill me.”
She didn’t seem upset. Rather, proud at being singled out. “Probably not, though.”
“Oh.”
I was flummoxed.
“Did he say it was a secret?”
“He said . . .”
She frowned with concentration.
“Maybe not,” she conceded. “But it’s very, very quiet. You can only hear it when he puts a snake over it.”
She had truly black eyes and shiny black hair cut in an astonishingly square geometric fringe. I was fascinated by it; I had never seen hair so straight and glossy, like doll hair.
“Well, bye.”
She ran off down a side street.
Her parents had arrived in this country from Shanghai, having fled the revolution. Jen was their youngest child. Of course, she hadn’t understood the word “murmur,” and when her mother explained it, she described it as the way of speaking when you tell a secret. After this chance meeting I saw her around from time to time, but we never spoke. We went to different schools and moved in different circles. It wasn’t until years later, after we had both left home and returned only for dutiful parental visits, that we ran into each other—almost on the same street corner as that previous meeting. She still had the wonderful hair, although now scraped up into a spiky knot with wisps sticking out in all directions, and vivid purple eye shadow winged out from her slanting eyes—very unusual in those hippie days. She looked fantastic. I couldn’t remember her name.
“It’s Jen!”
She semipouted, as if off ended. I really didn’t want to off end her.
“I remember your heart murmur, though. You called it a secret in your heart.”
Her eyes widened with amazement, and she burst out laughing.
“Well, you’re the Gypsy boy.”
I nodded. We were both smiling.
“My parents wouldn’t let me do games for years. I got really fat for a while.”
“But you’re all right now?”
“I wasn’t that bad!”
“I mean . . . your heart. Is your heart all right now?”
“I think so. The murmur went quiet. Actually, I’m pretty tough.”
She wasn’t lying about that.
That was the beginning, although we didn’t go out for another couple years. She had a boyfriend—someone who’d been at art school, too. Someone more exciting and bohemian than me. And I had a girlfriend, although I can’t remember which one of a series of medium-term rela-tionships I was in at the time. But we ended up together, because that’s what you do when you meet the one person who makes everything make sense, who knows what you’re thinking before you say it, whose sentences you can finish and they don’t even mind.
No, that’s all wrong. That sounds much too insipid. I fell in love with Jen because she was the missing piece of me, and I was the missing piece of her. There was nothing to weigh up—of course we would move in together; of course, one day, we would go out and get married, without telling anyone, imagining the eye rolling and the disapproval (more from her family than mine)—so we sneaked into a register office, giggling like schoolkids. There was never any doubt. We lived in a republic of two, speaking our own language and making up our own rules. What else is there to say? Talking about happiness is boring.
Perhaps it was too perfect. Perhaps we were too self-contained, too comfortable. I don’t know, I really don’t. God knows I’ve thought about it often enough—how can the person you trust more than you trust yourself betray you? And I had no idea. Ironic, I know: the private detective, who uncovers adulterers every week, had no idea that his own wife was cheating on him.
The dark is nearly complete in my sitting room. It’s the time of day the French, so I’m told, call entre le chien et le loup—between dog and wolf. First the sun sets, then, as dusk deepens, when the sky reaches a certain shade of dark blue that is not yet black, the dog retreats, and the wolf is waiting in the wings, or padding toward us around the corner. The shape in the shadows could be friend or foe. I wonder how long it lasts, the moment that belongs to neither. I stare out the window, in order to find out, at the tree that fills most of the view. It’s an ash tree, barely in leaf even now, that cuts the sky into badly fitting jigsaw pieces. The pieces slowly lose their color. Is it now that the wolf appears? When the distinction between twig and sky is starting to blur?
Is it . . . now?
Did I miss it?
When I saw her the other night, I had to put my head between my knees until the feeling that I was turning inside out had passed. I don’t even know why I went—back to the house we bought together and used to share.
I’m supposed to be moving on, as people keep saying. But I’m a creature of habit. I got into the habit of loving her. And anyway, when you move on, where are you supposed to go?
11.
JJ
I’m determined to go and live in France when I’m old enough. I wonder if I could persuade Mum to come and live here as well. Of course, I’ll have to learn proper French—it turns out, whenever I try to ask for something, that I can’t speak it nearly as well as I thought. I really wonder if our French teacher has ever been to France—when she speaks it, it sounds completely different from when the French speak it. Someone should tell her.
The day before we arrive back in boring old England, it’s Gran’s birthday. She’s fifty-eight. In some ways, that sounds ancient, but I suppose it isn’t, really, not compared to all those extremely old people staggering around Lourdes. I bought her a present when we were there. I couldn’t think what to get for her before we left, so I risked having to buy something out there, which could have gone horribly wrong. But there turned out to be loads of gift shops in Lourdes. Unsurprisingly, there are lots of places selling religious stuff: endless statues of Mary and the grotto and Saint Bernadette (Bernadette is always smaller and cheaper than Mary). In this one shop, Gran picked up a sponge bag with the grotto on the front. It said on it “Get ‘Holy’ Clean!” And inside there was a sponge and bubble bath and some soap and stuff, all with jokey titles like “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” and “You Filthy Sinner!” Gran laughed and laughed. It was like they were saying, “Even though we’re Christians, we still have a sense of humor!” So I went back and bought it for her later. I also got an enamel bracelet to give to Mum, and a bag of mints made with holy water (for when your breath smells like Satan?).
When Gran opens her present—I got them to wrap it in nice paper in the shop, after a lot of miming—she frowns first, and then smiles and hugs me. I don’t know whether she really likes it. She seemed to love it in the shop, but now I’m not sure. But no one else has got her a present at all, other than Christo, and that’s because I bought one for her from him, too—it’s a little mirror, the kind women keep in their handbags, with an enamel back covered with blue flowers. It’s really pretty. When she opens that, she smiles straightaway, and leans over to kiss Christo. He grins delightedly. Obviously, she knows Christo didn’t buy it. Maybe she thinks Ivo did, although she should know better. Great-uncle keeps saying, “Girl, you don’t look a day over twenty-one,” which makes her laugh (it’s not true), but she’s pleased. Even Ivo smiles and wishes her a happy birthday. Everyone is in a reasonably good mood, for once.
I have this feeling, though, that we’re all kind of holding our breath. We have to be on our best behavior, as we’re waiting for a miracle, and we’d better not do anything that might put it off. I keep glancing at Christo, to see if anything’s changed about him. I’m sure everyo
ne else is doing the same. I know it’s been only a few days since he was washed in holy water, but still, you can’t help wondering. Some miracles are supposed to happen straightaway: people getting up out of their wheelchairs and walking, blind people suddenly being able to see—that sort of thing. But so far I can’t see any change at all. We have to give it time, I suppose. Either that or it’s all a load of stupid crap, and I really don’t want to think that.
But the farther we drive away from Lourdes, the more ridiculous it all begins to seem. The plastic statues that are made in Taiwan (I checked); the crowds of old, slow, sick people; the helpers with their eager eyes and friendly smiles. The Coke bottles full of holy tap water. I don’t know. Of course we give Christo holy water to drink every day, and he seems to like it. I wonder if he realizes what’s behind it all—he hasn’t spoken recently. I don’t know what he thinks; maybe he believes it—because he is six and we tell him that the holy water is going to make him better, and we’re grown-ups, so we must be right. But we don’t say anything to one another about miracles and stuff. In a weird way, it seems like a play we’re putting on for a six-year-old’s benefit. A play with a cast of not-very-good but desperate actors.
Apart from Gran’s birthday, one other big thing happens on the way home. Ivo and Great-uncle make us drive to a village called Saint Jean-sur-Something. It’s a bit out of our way, and we have to turn onto some pretty small roads to get there. It’s about halfway up—somewhere in the middle of France but hillier than the way we came down. Wild country— bleak, not warm and leafy like farther south. Gran and me follow as they drive out of this little village and then stop. She’s fed up, because it’s taking longer this way and she’s had enough of being abroad. It’s not beautiful, like so many of the places we’ve come through, and I can’t see why anyone would stop here. She sighs and lights a fag.
“Could have been past Paris by now.”
I get out and go over to Great-uncle’s trailer. Ivo lifts Christo out of the front of the van.
