The Storm

by Amanda Jennings

  He makes two cups of tea and hands one to me. I take it and refocus on the back door as if this is the only place I will ever look from now on.

  ‘I’m in client meetings most of the day, but if there’s any news leave a message with my secretary.’

  He drinks his tea, places the mug on the worktop, then kisses me on the head and walks out of the door.

  The rest of the morning passes in a blur with acute periods of alternating fear and guilt interspersed with aching tiredness as I stumble through this nightmarish haze. It’s my day for doing the laundry but instead I pull the door to the utility room closed and shut away the piles of sheets and clothes waiting patiently in front of the washing machine. As I do, I catch sight of the study door on the other side of the hallway. It’s open a crack and I turn away quickly, terrified of glimpsing Charles Cardew lying on the floor, his blood seeped into the threads of the expensive Oriental rug beneath him.

  I need to get out.

  I phone the police station and am reassured that if there’s any news they will call my mobile. I write a note for Alex, hope firing inside me as I form each word, and stick it on the fridge door telling him I’m with my mother and to call me the moment he walks in. I sign it with a kiss and take a moment or two to stem my tears.

  Mum’s care home was one of the first places I telephoned when Alex went missing. Even though they promised to call immediately if he turned up, I still have a glimmer of hope he’ll be there, in Mum’s room, sharing a cup of tea and some Bourbons with her.

  Moving her into Heamoor was horrendous and broke my heart, but after she broke her hip and wrist we had no choice. In a split second, the time it took to trip on a step, she went from fit and independent to frail and reliant on help. She could no longer get to the shops and was unable to cook for herself. She found it hard to dress, and getting in and out of the bath was impossible. I begged Nathan to consider letting her come and live with us but he wouldn’t even discuss it. As care homes go, it’s passable. There are no frills, no luxuries, and the stench of cheap disinfectant lingers in the corridors which are painted beige to match the food. But her room overlooks a small internal rose garden with a birdbath that attracts a variety of wildlife which she loves. Nathan views my mother’s health with contempt, as if she is somehow to blame for growing old, for letting her body atrophy and her joints seize up with arthritis, and now, devastatingly, allowing her memory to fade. By contrast his own mother is hugely capable and maintains every bit of her independence and dignity. She is fit, looks years younger than she is – helped by expensive face creams, weekly facials, and, I suspect, a surgeon’s knife – plays bridge twice a week, does The Times crossword every morning, and plays tennis at a fancy members’ club in West London. She holidays in Tuscany for weeks at a time with Phillip, a man she refers to as her gentleman companion. She sent Nathan a photograph of the swimming pool at the villa they stayed at last year. Phillip was in the background, sitting in a comfortable chair in the dappled shade, reading a novel with a Panama hat perched on his head and thin white legs poking out of salmon pink shorts. Both Phillip and Sylvia are, Nathan tells me categorically, testament to the importance of taking care of your mind and body. What he means is inferior life choices are to blame for my father’s heart attack at fifty-eight and my mother’s incapacity. I can’t be bothered to explain that choice never came into it. We ate what we could afford, exercise and work were one and the same, and a holiday, well, that was a word other people used.

  The sale of my childhood home, the tiny terraced cottage up a steep hill in the backstreets of Newlyn, was never going to be enough to pay for her care for more than a few years, and I was forced to rely on Nathan to top up the meagre council contribution. Nathan views his financial support of my mother as a clear demonstration of his philanthropic nature. He is, by his own admission, a generous and compassionate son-in-law, and takes great pains to point this out at any opportunity. I see it as another reason why I continue to have sex with him.

  The staff at Heamoor are pleasant enough despite being overworked, underpaid and often verbally abused by patients and their unreasonably demanding families. I never kick up a fuss. If something hasn’t been done for Mum, whether that’s emptying the bin or running her dinner tray from the previous night down to Paul in the kitchens or cleaning her toilet, I do it myself in the hope, perhaps misguided, that if I help and don’t complain, they’ll be kinder to Mum.

  Even though I knew Alex wouldn’t be there, my heart sinks to see my mother alone, sitting in her chair, looking out of the window. I close the door behind me and, despite feeling hollowed out, this tiny room envelops me with a blanket of calm. The lemon yellow walls might need repainting and the curtains are decades old, but here, with my mother, it feels like a haven. The windows don’t open all the way, apparently to stop people climbing out, but enough of a breeze gets through to allow the air to feel fresh and light.

  ‘Hello, Dama.’

  My mother turns in her chair and smiles at me. ‘Hello, melder. Oh, goodness, is it Friday already?’ Her voice is faint, but retains the sing-song quality I remember from my childhood.

  ‘Thursday,’ I say as I drag a chair over to sit beside her. ‘I just felt like seeing you, that’s all.’

  Her hand is soft and light against my cheek. I lean against it and close my eyes.

  ‘Sweetheart. Melder. What’s wrong? Is Alex OK?’

  I nod. ‘All OK, Dama.’ When I’ve managed to control my tears, I take her featherlight hand in mine. Her papery skin is so soft. She has always taken good care of her skin. There was hand cream in every room in our house, by the sink in the kitchen, the basin in the bathroom, by her bed, and mine. I lean forward and take hold of the pot from the windowsill. I unscrew the lid. I dip my finger into it, leaving a deep groove in the creamy whiteness, and rub it between my palms. I cream her hands one at a time.

  She looks down. ‘Oh, thank you, melder. That’s kind. I like to keep my hands soft. They take such a beating with all the family chores.’

  Her mind has drifted and she is looking out of the window again. She is watching a blackbird washing in the birdbath, dipping his head into the water, shaking out his wings, using his beak to tease out his glossy feathers.

  ‘Pretty isn’t he?’ Mum says, her watery eyes fixed on the bird.

  ‘He is.’

  My gaze falls to the storm glass on her windowsill. It’s in the form of a bird, about the size of a hen’s egg, and was a birthday gift from Alex. Nathan gives him ten pounds every year to choose something for me. Of all the presents I’ve had in my life it’s the most precious. Nathan sneered at it, dismissed it as ugly, dismissed the chemistry behind it, the idea that a mixture of chemicals dissolved in ethanol can predict the weather by forming different configurations of crystals. He was so carping I decided to bring it up here, to Mum’s, where she and I could enjoy it, and Alex would know it was appreciated. Mum loves to sit peacefully and stare at the opaque crystals suspended in the clear liquid inside. Alex had been fascinated by the mechanics of the storm glass ever since I told him the story Cam had told me about the nineteenth-century admiral who designed a barometer – a storm glass – to help fishermen in poor areas predict storms at sea. When Alex presented it to me, hopping about with excitement as he thrust the badly wrapped gift into my hands, and I’d opened it, seen this delicate thing, weather crystals formed inside her, I cried. I pick up the bird and stroke the edge of my thumb over the smooth glass, remembering his beautiful beaming face when I told him I loved it, then slip it into the pocket of my cardigan.

  There’s a soft knock on the door which then opens. It’s Patricia, my favourite of Mum’s carers, a cheerful, bosomy woman who smells of talcum powder and has unruly brown curls held at bay by an array of brightly coloured hair grips.

  ‘Ah, hello, pet. This is a nice surprise. We don’t usually see you on a Thursday. All OK? The girls on the desk told me you’d phoned looking for Alex. Is he back?’


  I glance at my mother whose eyes have fluttered closed, a streak of sunlight warming her face, like a cat in a sunbeam. Part of me wants to open my heart to Patricia, cry and sob, let her hold me and tell me it’s all going to be OK, that boys will be boys and teens will be teens and who doesn’t know a kid who’s played truant from school. But I can’t risk Mum overhearing. ‘He left a note and said he’d be back later. His room’s such a mess, I didn’t see it before.’

  She chuckles and shakes her head. ‘They have no idea how we worry, do they? Tell him we missed him yesterday. Always a pleasure to see his lovely, happy face.’

  Alex visits my mother every week after school on a Wednesday. He’s done it for the past two years and rarely misses a week. The nurses love him and tell me he brings a breath of fresh air to the place.

  I don’t reply to her. I can’t.

  ‘Last week he was showing me all those lovely photos of yours. I love a bit of—’

  ‘Sorry?’ I say, interrupting her sharply.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What photos?’

  She furrows her brow and gestures towards Mum’s cupboard.

  My heart skips a beat.

  ‘You know, the ones you keep here in her wardrobe. The box with the old photos and letters and bits and bobs. Kids love looking at that sort of thing, don’t they? He had it all spread out on the bed for the whole time he was here. Bless him. We were looking at the photos. Lovely to see Newlyn back then. Not that’s it’s changed too much, of course.’

  My mind is turning over and over. I open the wardrobe door and look up at the top shelf. It’s rammed with those things Mum couldn’t bear to throw out when she moved out of her home: a collection of ornaments she’d chosen with Dad, trinkets, her grandmother’s lace handkerchief, a tiny tarnished photo frame displaying the dried four-leaf clover she found when she was a girl. Photograph albums. The veil she wore on her wedding day, wrapped carefully in tissue paper and slipped into a plastic bag.

  Behind all this is a box which belongs to me which I keep here so it won’t be found.

  I stand on tiptoes and search with my fingers until I make contact with the box. Why was Alex even looking in Mum’s cupboard? Did he stumble on the box by accident or go looking for it? A strange sensation envelops me, as if two separate incompatible parts of me are being forced unnaturally together. I hold the box tightly to my chest as if trying to protect it.

  ‘I loved the photos of you when you were young. You were such a pretty thing, weren’t you? I mean,’ she adds hurriedly, looking comically worried, ‘you still are, of course. I think I mean you must have had a queue of boys at your door. Speaking of which,’ she says, ‘your husband’s quite the looker, isn’t he?’

  There are no photos of Nathan inside the box.

  My heart hammers hard enough to burst through my ribcage. The feeling of exposure makes my knees buckle. It’s as if she’s stripped my skin away. I want her to stop talking. To wipe her memory and tuck everything from my past back into the box and hide it at the back of the cupboard.

  She raises her eyebrows and winks. ‘I can see why you held on to him!’

  I try to smile, but the thought of Alex looking through my private stuff is paralysing.

  ‘Right, well, I should get on,’ Patricia says, suddenly serious, realising, perhaps, her salacious glee isn’t finding its audience. ‘Shout for me when she wakes and I’ll pop along with a cup of tea for you both.’

  Patricia leaves me alone and closes the door behind her. I take the box into Mum’s tiny shower room with its easy-to-hose-down moulded plastic, a handrail and an alarm on a red cord. I close the toilet seat and sit down. The box is old and battered with flimsy sides and bits of yellowed sticky tape holding three of the edges together. The photo of Cam and me is lying on the top. I feel sick at the thought of Alex unpacking everything, pouring over my personal things, then placing it all back. I stare at the photo and presume this is the one Patricia saw, which made her think that he was my husband. We look so in love – which, of course, we were – leaning against the metal railings on the pier. He’s wearing jeans and a thick sweater, a black woollen hat on his head. His beautiful eyes glint as he laughs. I can hear the echo of it, deep and gravelly, and my stomach clenches. In the photo I’m curled into him, my head tilted, so my cheek rests on his chest. My hair has been taken by the wind and both of us are squinting against the early winter sunshine. Sitting in Mum’s room, my heart still thumping, I recall the warmth of him, his smell, the taste of him. I’m laughing too. Though I can’t remember why. Had we shared a joke? Or were we laughing because laughing for the sake of it was what we did back then? I don’t even remember who took the photo. Vicky? Or Geren? Or one of the others whose names I can’t remember. I turn the photograph over and read the writing on the back.

  My a’th kar.

  I stare at the Cornish words I’d taught him. His handwriting is irregular and messy. I trace the shape of each letter with my fingertip as I recall the horrors of that night. What followed. Losing him. Accepting I’d have to live my life without him in it.

  I picture Alex holding this photograph. A window into a time before he was born. A version of his mother he doesn’t know. I see his face as he studies the rest of the photographs, as he absorbs every detail, assesses the people he doesn’t know, the smile he gives when he recognises Vicky, his brain whirring as he tries to piece together this historical jigsaw.

  I pick up my diary and leaf through it. Full of teenage angst and exclamation marks, capital letters, hearts, stars and doodles. Paisley scrawls filling the spaces. The bands I loved scrawled in spiky letters. The names of the boys I kissed. Then the pages dedicated to Cam. Embarrassing entries detailing private thoughts and emotional proclamations in the flowery prose of a twenty-two-year-old girl truly in love for the first time. Those passages where I describe what I want to do to him. What I want him to do to me. God.

  Did Alex read it?

  I turn to the back page of the diary. Drag my fingers lightly over the back sleeve. The edge of the letter tucked into it pokes out. I wish I’d never met him. I wish we hadn’t gone to the cinema that night. I should have stayed home. Gone to the pub or watched television or played cards with my dad.

  I can see his hand on the armrest. Long, weathered fingers resting on the crushed red velvet.

  My finger inches close enough to graze his.

  Don’t do it!

  It’s too late. With dread I watch my finger touch his hand and his thumb move imperceptibly against me. Electricity sparks. A glance. My breath held as he looks at me.

  No!

  I close the diary. I can’t change history, can’t change what happened, can’t alter the events which followed after our fingers grazed against each other in that darkened cinema.

  I pack the letters, photographs, and diary back in the box, and return it to the top shelf of Mum’s cupboard. The air seems to have curdled and the smell of disinfectant and baked beans is creeping through the gap beneath the door like gas. There are footsteps in the hall. Voices. The woman in the next room is moaning, as she often does, the paper-thin walls doing nothing to muffle her. She can make these distressed noises for hours, standing beside the suitcase she keeps permanently packed at her door, telling anybody who’ll listen that her son is on his way to collect her. I don’t have the heart to explain her son is never coming.

  Patricia coughs gently and peers around the door. ‘I’m going home now, love. Marie is taking over. Give Alex my love when he comes in.’

  I sit with Mum for a while longer, but she doesn’t wake from her nap. Her face is serene as she sleeps, her lips loose, mouth open a fraction, her breathing easy. Guilt has thickened in my stomach. It seems wrong not to tell her about Alex but knowing her grandson is missing would devastate her, and I have enough of my own worry to deal with without having to cope with hers on top.

  Before I go, I kiss her forehead. She stirs a little, but doesn’t wake. ‘My a’th kar, Dama.’
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  I don’t usually smoke during the day, but today I sit on the bench outside the care home and have two. As I smoke, I hold the storm glass, my beautiful little bird, up towards the sky. The sunlight passes through her delicate casing. I bring her closer, stare harder, and as I do, I see the crystals trapped inside are now perfect tiny diamonds.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hannah

  The horrendous waiting, coupled with helplessness, is driving me insane. I’ve scratched the inside of my wrist so much the skin is raw. Nathan is calm. Too calm. I don’t understand it. I lean against the sink, my foot tapping, desperate for a cigarette and watch him as he sits in the armchair with a book. His reading glasses are perched on the end of his nose, legs crossed, licking a finger and turning each page deliberately and slowly.

  His serenity makes me want to run at him and scream in his face.

  How can you be calm? Are you made of actual stone?

  ‘There must be something more we can do?’ I mutter.

  He places his book on his lap and looks up at me. When he speaks his voice is placid and soothing, almost priest-like. ‘We have to trust the police to do their job.’

  I ball my fists and dig the nails into the heel of my palm. I glance at the door for the thousandth time. ‘I can’t stop thinking about the argument you had and what—’

  ‘Sorry?’ His brow furrows into a quizzical frown. He closes his book, pauses, then makes a soft scoffing sound.

  I chew the edge of my lip.

  ‘Hang on a moment,’ he laughs. ‘You think this is something to do with me?’ He smiles and shakes his head incredulously. ‘You think this is because of an argument I had with him?’

  I stare at him. ‘When I came back from walking the dog. You were shouting at each other. You took his phone—’

  Nathan stands up and walks over to me. His expression now one of manufactured bafflement. It’s a look I know well. ‘I can’t believe you’d think it was because of me. He got upset because you shouted at him. He’s used to me being the one to discipline him. He and I come to blows all the time. He doesn’t care if he provokes me. It’s water off a duck’s back.’ His words are coated in honey, but his stare is a red-hot poker. ‘How many times in the last month have Alex and I argued?’