The Missing Years

by Lexie Elliott

  “It all seems a little unbelievable?” He doesn’t quite nod, but I can see that I’m right about what he was thinking. “Yes, believe me, I get that feeling too.” Though not when I’m alone in the Manse. Not when the darkness presses and I lock all the windows and doors and then worry that I’m locking something in rather than keeping something out. “What did you guys do with the fox?”

  “Ali’s taking it to the vet later, to see if it was poisoned.”

  “That’s good of him.”

  “Like I said, he’s a good guy, really.”

  I purse my lips equivocally—We’ll see—and he laughs, though I can’t shake the feeling that something more is bothering him. But I can’t follow up on it because his phone suddenly springs to life. I clear the plates with half an ear on Ben’s side of the conversation after I hear my own name. “No, I’m at Ailsa’s . . .” He deliberately rolls his eyes at me, half embarrassed as he says, “No! I slept in my own bed, thank you very much . . . When? Sorry, I’m on all day today . . . I take it Jamie and your dad can’t?”

  Fiona? I mouth at Ben. He nods and puts a hand over the mouth end of his phone. It’s a curiously old-fashioned gesture, as if he’s used to using the ancient barbell style of receiver. She needs someone to sit Callum, he murmurs back at me.

  I’ll do it, I find myself mouthing. You couldn’t interpret that as anything but a thoroughly civil offer, I think with grim humor. Friendly, even.

  “Hold on a moment, Fi,” Ben says, and drops the hand holding his phone to the table. “Are you sure? It’s just till lunchtime; Jamie or Glen can pick him up then. There’s a problem with one of the horses, and Fi needs to be there—”

  “It’s fine. He’s never any trouble.”

  He shoots me a smile full of grateful relief, then returns the phone to his ear to deliver the good news. I find I’m at once filled with warmth at his care for Callum and wracked with guilt at having considered that he might be behind the strange events. The empty Glenmorangie bottle from last night is on the counter, but the recycling box is already full. I carry it to the back door, intending to empty it into the large bin out back, and try to unlock that door one-handed, balancing the box against my hip and swearing under my breath at the stiffness of the new key.

  Ben is off the phone and hovering behind me. “Do you want—”

  The lock finally gives. I swing the back door open and am about to step out when my eyes alight on a black mass of feathers, right in the middle of the doorstep. I dump the recycling box abruptly on the kitchen floor. There’s a distinct chink of glass on glass, but it doesn’t sound like anything has smashed. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Really? Again?”

  “What—oh.” Ben is standing beside me now, peering down on the bird. It’s clearly the same one. If it’s more decomposed than before, I can’t tell. Even the maggots look to be squirming in the same way. But the wings have been forced to spread out, as if in full flight. “Christ. That’s . . . Christ. You know, I can’t believe an animal arranged it like that.”

  “Me neither.” I turn away abruptly and stomp across the kitchen to pull open a drawer. The anger inside me is threatening to come out through tears, and I won’t allow that.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for something—no, don’t touch it,” I say, forestalling him as he hunkers down as if to grab the mass of feathers. I finally find what I’m looking for: a large, robust safety pin. Ben looks at me curiously as I reach for the block of yellow Post-it notes and the Sharpie pen that sit on the windowsill of the kitchen. I scribble on the topmost note, then grab the Marigold washing-up gloves that are sitting by the kitchen sink and force them on. I’m powered by pure fury now.

  “What are you—” starts Ben, but he gives up as I push past him, kicking my slippers off at the door. I grasp the bird round its neck and march barefoot to the bench that sits on one side of the garden, where I dump it. It’s unexpectedly heavy. And awkwardly stiff, and it’s beginning to smell. I’m breathing through my mouth rather than my nose, and my feet are cold and wet. But I get to work.

  Ben has followed me out. “Jesus,” he says faintly, as I push the safety pin into the flesh on the breast of the bird, and I think that perhaps I can rule out Ben; he’s far too uncomfortable around the bird to have had anything to do with placing it here. The resistance is not what I expect, there’s more of it to begin with and then suddenly much less—the pin abruptly moves more freely. Even so, it’s unexpectedly difficult to angle it correctly so that it exits where it needs to in order to properly secure the note; the Marigolds are slightly big for me and make me clumsy, but after a couple of attempts, I finally manage it. I take a step back and survey my efforts. The bird is lying on the seat of the bench, one wing slightly outstretched, its ravaged abdomen with the sickly maggots on display but its breast mainly concealed by the note. The yellow paper is somewhat crumpled from the execution, but there’s no doubting what I have written in bold black capital letters:

  FUCK OFF. I’M NOT SCARED AND I’M NOT LEAVING.

  “Subtle,” comments Ben.

  I look up at the sky. “It better not be about to rain; the ink will run.” The sky is almost entirely covered by gray cloud, but it doesn’t have the leaden heaviness of an imminent downpour.

  “Not today or tomorrow, according to the forecast. I think your message will reach the target.”

  I head back into the kitchen and strip off the Marigolds, washing both them and my hands in the kitchen sink. Ben follows me in and locks the back door behind us.

  “I’m sorry,” he says after a moment.

  “For what?” I’m drying my hand on a none-too-clean tea towel, still too white-hot with rage to step outside of myself and look at him.

  “For earlier. For thinking that we had all overreacted.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. You trusted us, Ali and me, by telling us that. And I get the sense that you don’t trust easily.” My eyes leap unwillingly to his face, which is watchfully, openly earnest. “I didn’t mean to throw it back at you.”

  I look at him and wonder what it would be like to be him. To think like him, to believe in Trust and Loyalty and Honor and all sorts of other capitalized Values. “Well,” I say, when the pause has gone on an uncomfortably long time. “Thank you. Though I can understand the skepticism.” I add, “After all, journalists make careers out of that.”

  He laughs, as I meant him to, but I’m not describing myself. That’s Jonathan, relentlessly holding those in power to account—for him, whoever ends up with the wealth is always at least partly to blame for the world’s injustices. For my part, I chase the threads to weave the stories. The stories that demand to be told, that make sense of the people in them.

  My father is in Manchester, in a drug rehabilitation center. If you’d told him in his Saint Martin’s days that drugs would have been his downfall, he’d have laughed out loud. Back then he had the odd puff of pot, but that was it. And in truth, it wasn’t the drugs that were to blame—not at first. It was the horses. And then the dogs, then any form of sport he could put a bet on. He was an addict—he knows that, though he suspects only poor gamblers recognize that: surely the good ones never have any reason to stop? The diamond money bought an awful lot of useless slips of paper; you could have wallpapered a house with them. But then the money was all gone and he had to face what he had done—only he couldn’t, and that’s when the drugs took hold. If he doesn’t kick the habit this time, he likely won’t see another Christmas. He knows that. But Christmases don’t mean anything without kids, and he gave up the right to his daughter a long time ago.

  SIXTEEN

  Biscuits. I don’t have any biscuits and Callum is coming. It’s a potential disaster. Or at least, it is in the mind of a mid-thirties woman with zero childcare experience who has just woken up to the fact that she’s offered to look after a seven-year-ol
d. I don’t want to dwell on what other disasters might be in store. I jump in the car and nip down to the village shop in short order.

  Jean is on the cashier’s desk again when I come to pay. “Sweet tooth, hen?” she asks, looking askance at the three different packets of biscuits I’ve chosen.

  “I’m looking after Callum today and I don’t know which he prefers.”

  “That’s good of you. He’s a fine lad.”

  “He is.”

  “Like as not that’s down to Glen being there. Stabilizing influence, he must be. A saint, really, given all those kids of his have put him through.” It’s taking a remarkably long time to ring through three packets of biscuits, a bottle of apple juice, a carton of milk and a newspaper. “Can you imagine being a widower with a small child and then having another bairn dumped on your doorstep?” I can see why Carrie took such a strong aversion to her. If I were a better person I wouldn’t listen. “There’s many who would have demanded a DNA test—and maybe he should have. Jamie looks nothing like Glen.” Her lips purse in a way that tells me what she takes from that. “He’s a right charmer now, but back then he was an angry wee thing.” She nods for effect, the bottle of apple juice in one hand, all pretense of operating the till abandoned. “But that was nothing compared to Fiona as a teenager.” She shakes her head. “The drugs, the police, och, the things I could tell you—and it didnae stop after she had Callum. It’s a wonder they’ve allowed her to keep that wee boy at all—”

  The bell on the shop door jangles abruptly. “Morning, John,” she calls out to the elderly gentleman who has just entered. “I’ve got your paper here; I’ll be right with you.” And my purchases are rung through in no time at all.

  But now, Callum is here. For a moment after we were left alone in the house, after Ben dropped him off, I felt the onset of panic again: What should I do with him? Won’t he be bored? But then he asked very seriously if I wanted to see the Transformers toys he’d brought and the panic cleared before it really had a chance to get started.

  Later, when we are on our hands and knees creating an obstacle course out of household items in the living room for the Transformers to navigate, Callum asks, “Do you have a job?”

  “Yes, but I’m on a break right now.” I can’t think when I last watched the news. I’ve been essentially mainlining it for over a decade, reporting stories, following other stories, never unaware. How is it that I’ve stepped away so easily?

  “A holiday? Here?” He looks around, brow furrowed.

  I suppress a smile. “Sort of. Something like that. Where do you go on holidays?”

  “We dinnae go away. Mum doesnae like to leave here. She says it makes her worse. With time ’n’ all.” With time. There are so many questions I’d like to ask him on that, but I don’t know how to frame any of them for a seven-year-old, so I don’t say anything at all. “I’d like to go to Disneyland, though,” Callum adds wistfully. “My friend Josh has been and he said it was brilliant.” Then he picks up two toys, crashes them together and makes fighting noises before asking, “What were you going to do if I hadnae visited today?”

  “Nothing terribly interesting. I was thinking of sorting through some boxes in the attic.” And of getting some security cameras installed.

  “The attic? Cool! Can I see?”

  “Sure. Though it’s not really an attic. It’s just a small storage room on the top floor that I’ve taken to calling an attic.”

  But Callum is still intrigued, so we climb the stairs to the attic, and he’s endearingly enthusiastic about everything, even the dust. I’m starting to realize that it’s an incredibly attractive characteristic, enthusiasm. There has not been enough enthusiasm in my life lately. Maybe not ever.

  “There are paintings here!” he says.

  “Yes. My mum was a painter. They’re just old canvases.”

  “No, this one is finished,” he says. “It’s all wrapped up.”

  I go to see what he’s looking at. In among what I had taken to be discarded canvases is a proper packing crate. I’ve seen enough of them in my mum’s studio to recognize them, but this is a smaller size than she usually used. Callum is peering in one end, where it’s been levered open. I pull out the crate carefully. It’s about three feet by four feet—the piece itself must be much smaller than she usually painted.

  “Can I see it?” asks Callum.

  “Yes. Let me just . . . Ah, here we go.” The crate had been opened and only loosely shoved back together; I’m able to pull it open. “Oh, careful, Callum. Let me be the one to touch it.” It’s probably worth a fair bit, given most of my mother’s paintings are. I pull it out and prop it against the packing crate for us to look at it properly. It’s mainly dark, blacks and midnight blues.

  “What . . . what is it?” asks Callum.

  “I don’t know,” I say, half laughing. “I think you’re supposed to decide for yourself.” I take a quick photo of it. Technically it’s mine, I suppose. Perhaps I will ask Pete to sell it for me.

  He squints at it dubiously. “Well. I suppose it could be a house. Or a storm. Or a sea. At night.”

  “It could be. Any of those.” We are both laughing now.

  “Did your mum sell her paintings?”

  “Yes. Quite a lot of them. For quite a lot of money.”

  “Really.” He reflects. “Maybe she got better at it,” he says generously.

  I laugh out loud and tousle his hair, and think that I will tell Pete and Carrie about this. It will tickle them both.

  Callum moves to a different area of the room to explore. “Who is M. Cal . . . Cal-der?” he asks, reading from a label on one of the boxes, and stumbling over the pronunciation.

  “Call-der,” I correct him. “My father.” The box he’s reading from is the one that was under the photo envelope. I haven’t got to it yet. I pull off the lid, expecting more photos and albums, but instead the box is full of a bulging cardboard folder, ripped at one end.

  “Where is he?” asks Callum.

  “Who?” I lift the folder out to leaf through the contents.

  “Your dad.”

  “I don’t know. He disappeared when I was seven.”

  “Disappeared.” He digests this for a moment. “I dinnae have a dad, neither.” I glance up from the folder. “Maybe your dad went into before. Or later.”

  “I don’t . . . What do you mean?”

  “Like the bird. Maybe he slipped through.”

  “Through . . . time?” I venture.

  He nods, pleased I’ve caught on. “Cos it’s funny here. I cannae tell anyone at school. They’d think I was mental—the teachers would, anyway. They already think I’m thick because of the reading.” I’m so relieved to hear that he’s keeping Fiona’s nonsense under wraps at school that I’m rather slow in gearing up to reassure him on the reading, but he surprises me by suddenly smiling. “But I’m the best at football, so my friends dinnae care if I cannae read well.” He looks across at me. “Anyway, you can see the bird, so you ken it’s funny here.”

  “Well, I can see the bird,” I say helplessly. It’s all I’m prepared to admit.

  “I bet Carrie cannae.” He takes my silence as agreement. “She wasnae born here, like us.”

  “I was born in town at the big hospital, not in the actual Manse.”

  “But you were here as a bairn.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was born actually here.” He looks around thoughtfully, as if he can see through the walls of the attic. “I dinnae ken which room, though.”

  I stare at him. “Wait, I thought it was your mum who was born here.”

  He nods. “And me too.”

  “What? How did that happen?” Can he be right? Could it really be the case that both Fiona and her son were born in the grounds of the Manse?

  His brow furrows. “I dinnae ken, exactly. But M
um says that’s how we know about time being funny here. Things slip through.”

  “Is that . . . is that what you think happened with your dad?”

  He shakes his head. “Not to him. But maybe . . .” But he stops, suddenly unsure of himself for the first time.

  “What?” I take a step closer to him and put the folder down on top of another box.

  “But maybe I did. Maybe that’s why I dinnae have a dad. He’s before. Or later.”

  “Callum . . .” I feel helpless as he envelops my middle in the tightest of hugs. It catches me unawares every time, how incredibly free he is with his physical affection. My father was tactile; I remember that. He hugged and he tickled, and he would tuck me into his side to watch television. It wasn’t in my mother’s nature to hug.

  “It’s okay,” Callum says seriously, lifting his head to look up my torso to my face. “I think we’re meant to be here now. I dinnae think we can slip through.”

  * * *

  • • •

  After that I bustle us both down from the claustrophobic confines of the attic into the kitchen under the auspices of it being biscuit time, grateful for the cheer of the yellow walls, however artificial. I’m utterly at a loss as to how to address these beliefs of Callum’s—and anyway, is it really my place to? Fiona and Callum’s theories around the Manse and time seem tantamount to a religion for them, and I wouldn’t dare confront someone who, say, believed in creationism rather than evolution. I’m grateful, too, for the single-minded focus of young children when food is mentioned—all difficult topics of conversation have been instantly cast aside in favor of intense deliberating over exactly which biscuits to choose.

  Somehow without conscious decision I’ve brought down the bulging cardboard folder with me. When Callum has wolfed two custard creams, a Jammie Dodger and a glass of apple juice, we leaf through it together. There are several A5 jotters among the loose-leaf papers and maps and photos, and each of them has a familiar phrase written on the front, in blue ink: Love makes a furnace of the soul. Carrie’s words about the inscription, about my mother, float back to me: The man she was living with was obsessed by it. I am holding the evidence of his obsession.