I have no idea what to do. I am not used to seeing a grown man cry. I lean over, awkwardly, placing a hand on his shoulder.
‘Listen,’ I say, ‘do you think it might be worth you talking to her mother, seeing as she said that’s where she was going?’ I pause. ‘I mean, I’m guessing you’re estranged, but perhaps …’
John stares at me, his eyes narrowing.
‘What do you mean?’ he snaps. ‘She never said she was going to her mother’s.’
‘She did. That’s what she told me, the day after the party. That’s what I was trying to say to you, before. She texted me, saying she was going to her mother’s for a while. Didn’t the police tell you that already?’
John stares at me as if I have gone mad. ‘She wouldn’t have said that,’ he repeats. There is a new edge in his voice.
‘She did. That’s where she told me she was going. That was why I didn’t worry.’
John’s hands have started trembling.
‘Her mother’s dead.’
It is my turn to stare.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Her mother’s dead. She’s been dead for near on fifteen years.’
Stunned, I pick my phone up then, to show him the message.
‘But she sent me this.’
John snatches the phone, holds it in his hands, staring at it, his fingertips shaking. Then, he drops it like a stone, as if he is too frightened to hold it any longer.
‘Have the police seen this?’
‘Of course.’
He is agitated now. ‘Whoever sent that message, Helen,’ he says, with a tremor in his voice, ‘it wasn’t Rachel.’
40 WEEKS
HELEN
I know they say not to count the days, but what else is there? For nine months I’ve been repeating the date to people, who ask me endlessly when I am due. The question always seems to me to mean, when are you going to stop taking up so much space? When are you going to get on with it?
I’ve had dates before, of course. Dates I’ve never reached. This one always felt different to me, though. When I went to see the doctor to tell him I was pregnant, he put his glasses on. Let me see, he said. I’ll just calculate the date for you. There’s no need, I told him. I’ve done it already. There were tools online.
The doctor looked disappointed. Oh, he said. Did I want him to have a look anyway? I got the feeling he liked doing it. That it was one of the few nice moments of his day, in between the rashes, the hypochondriacs, the dying.
So I said all right, and he retrieved a little tool from his desk drawer, two interlocking cardboard circles, and moved them so that the first little window showed the date of my last period, and the bottom little window showed the due date. 26 November. An unremarkable date. No clashes, no thirteens, no lucky or unlucky omens. This time, I thought. This time.
Now the date is finally here, I should be excited. Something I have wanted for so long. It will happen, I tell myself, any moment now. I will have a baby. But it’s no use. There’s nothing. I feel as if I’ve been anaesthetised. I can’t seem to feel happy, or sad. I try to think of holding a little baby in my arms, dressing him in his first outfit, the one with little penguins on it, packed neatly in my hospital bag with its matching hat. But I just feel like I’m searching for answers in an empty room.
I wish I hadn’t agreed to Daniel working late this week. I know I’ll need him most when I finally go into labour, when the baby is here. But the days are getting shorter and shorter, the nights longer and longer. Serena isn’t returning my calls. And the police keep coming round, checking and rechecking our statements. I feel alone with the ghost of Rachel rattling around the empty house, half our furniture still coated in white dust sheets.
I watch the news endlessly, but they just keep going over the same few facts we all know already. There are no answers. Only questions. What happened to Rachel? Where is she? Where did she go?
Every hour now seems to stretch into the longest of my life. There are flurries of snow, the first of the year. The flakes whizz around, cartwheeling, but not settling. Just a few of them catch in the gaps between the paving stones, on the bare branches of the hawthorns. The house is cold. With some effort, I make a fire, piling the last of the coal on top of some kindling, some scrunched-up balls of newspaper.
I sit in a comfy chair in the front room while it crackles at my feet, staring out of the window, over the front garden. I try to read, but really, my focus is pointed inward. I am waiting for a sign, the slightest shift, the slightest twinge.
I start to become desperate for it – for the drama of birth, the cataclysm everyone talks about – the end of one part of your life, the beginning of another. Nothing will ever be the same, people say. And that’s what I want, more than anything. To be transformed, to shed the skin of this dead time I am stuck in, with nothing to fill my time but thoughts of Rachel. Thoughts about where she might be, what might have happened to her. And others, that I try to push away. About what I might have done, by sending her away. What I might be responsible for.
Yesterday, I went to the hospital for my full-term appointment. Daniel came with me. They said they were going to examine me. I held on to Daniel’s hand, stared at the cheap ceiling tiles and tried to count them. Ten across, fifteen down.
‘You’re doing really well,’ Daniel said soothingly as I breathed in and out. His voice was flat, like something rehearsed. When I glanced over at him, he had his phone in his other hand and was checking his work emails.
‘You’re already one centimetre,’ the nurse said. ‘That’s a really good sign. I’m sure it won’t be long. Shall I give you a sweep, try and get things moving?’
I nodded, pressed my chin to my chest, held on to the edge of the sheet with my fist. The pain was sharp as a knife, unbearable. I cried out, the sound of my voice echoing down the hospital corridor. My nails dug into Daniel’s palm; I felt him flinch, sit up, stare at the midwife in horror. When it stopped, I was panting, staring at her, hot tears clouding my eyes.
‘I didn’t know it was going to be like that.’
The midwife pulled her gloves off and laughed at us both. ‘You wait till the main event.’ Then she saw my face, and her smile fell away. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sometimes a cervical sweep can be a bit more painful for some people. Don’t worry. You’ll be all right.’ She turned to her computer, started tapping up notes.
The sweep hasn’t helped. Nothing happens. By four, the light is failing, the sun dipping below the hill, the spidery shadows of the bushes in the garden lengthen and darken. I take the blanket and pull it around myself. Most labours start at night, I tell myself. It could still happen tonight. I move to the sofa, face up, my gaze fixed on the ceiling roses, the swirls and cracks in the plaster as familiar to me as my own hands.
When nothing has happened for another hour, I throw the blanket to the side, stand up, set about rearranging another one of our drawers. But I soon get bored, put it back, make another cup of tea, sit at the kitchen table. I retrieve my book, but I can’t get into it, my concentration drifting away at the end of each paragraph. I walk back into the sitting room, try to settle on the sofa. I close my eyes. I keep seeing her face.
The embers in the fire die to a weak red glow, then to a grey ash, light and delicate as the snowflakes outside. Finally, I give up and go to bed early but cannot fall asleep.
My phone rings at half past eight. It is Katie. I ask her about Rachel, whether she has heard anything at work. She won’t answer my questions.
‘Can you meet me, Helen?’
‘I’m already in bed, Katie. I’m exhausted.’
‘I know – you must be, I’m really sorry.’ I can hear the noise of chatter in the background. It sounds like she is in a pub. ‘Look, I’m at the end of your road,’ she says, lowering her voice. ‘In the Plume of Feathers. Please?’ She pauses. ‘I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’
‘Why can’t you come here?’
She doesn’t answer.
/>
‘Please, Helen. Ten minutes.’
I dress slowly and make my way there, the wintery wind stinging my fingers. Frost snaps in the air. I wish I’d thought to bring gloves. I walk slowly, unsteadily, fretting about the ice. The pavement isn’t gritted, and the light from the street lamps glints off the surface of the frozen puddles.
When I reach the pub, I throw the door open and feel the warmth on my face. I see Katie at a table on the far side, and she shoots me a relieved smile, rushes to help me sit down.
‘I’m fine,’ I mutter. I wipe the melting snow off my trousers and sink into the green leather of a booth seat. I feel enormous, eclipsed by my baby. A man reaches to help me move the table back so I can fit into the seat.
‘I’ll just grab the drinks.’
As I wait, I look around the pub, wondering how long it will be, after this, until I’m in a pub again. It is a nice pub, cosier than I remember. There is a fire crackling in the hearth, the chimney breast is covered in horseshoes, the wonky shelves squashed full of silver tankards and dusty old bottles with models of boats inside. There is a low hum of chatter, a smell of mulled wine and cider. There are decorations over the bar, in gaudy green, red and gold. I guess it is nearly December. I haven’t even thought about Christmas. It is as if the time has gone ahead without me. I’m stuck on the night she disappeared.
Katie returns with a soft drink for me and a large glass of red wine for herself. She places them down and hugs me, her arms barely reaching around me over the bump. ‘So close now, Helen,’ she says.
Katie looks worried, her shoulders are tense, her brow low over her eyes. She has already drunk one glass of wine; the empty glass sits between us next to the pieces of a cardboard beer mat that she has torn to shreds. Her hand keeps flitting to her right ear to tuck a strand of hair behind it.
‘Thanks for coming,’ she says vaguely. ‘I’ve been here for ages – I hadn’t noticed it had started snowing.’ She grimaces. ‘I hope you were OK getting here.’
She glances at the door, takes a sip of her wine. She has shadows under her eyes.
I shift in my seat. ‘What is it? You said it was important.’
Katie sighs.
My heart sinks as soon as I see the look on her face, and I know what the next words will be, even before she says them.
‘It’s about Rachel.’
HELEN
My train pulls in and out of breeze-block tunnels through the alien city landscape, the huge ghostly towers of blue and green glass. The waters of the docklands are grey and flat. There are endless apartment blocks around the water, backing onto the railway line, outdoor furniture cramped onto tiny balconies. One has a plastic car and a child’s tricycle. In the giant glass office blocks, the lights are still on, the glow of computer screens, people working, even late on a Friday night.
I hadn’t planned to come here. I had planned to hear whatever it was that Katie had to say then head home, have a long bath, get into my pyjamas, see if Daniel wanted to order a takeaway when he finally got home. But I ended up staring at the photo, the one Katie had found in the club. And before I knew it, I was here. On my way to Charlie’s. Texting Daniel to tell him not to wait up.
At South Quay the track starts to bend, taking my stomach with it. I haven’t done this journey in a while. I can’t say I enjoy it much. Reflected in the wobbly mirror panels of a skyscraper, the train looks like a toy in its primary colours. It shudders past the no man’s lands of Mudchute, Westferry, Limehouse. There’s a change at Shadwell, a steep flight of stairs. I can feel sweat under my arms.
On the Overground to Dalston, the landscape changes. Scrappy allotments, low-rise housing estates with long brick balconies. Parks with playgrounds in garish colours, hooded youths lingering among the swings. Teenagers, BMX bikes, dangerous-looking dogs.
Finally, we reach Charlie’s stop. There’s no way I’ll get a taxi here. I try Uber, but it says fourteen minutes. I might be able to find a bus, maybe, but I think better of it. The last time I did that, I went the wrong way, wheeling round and round the estates, one indistinguishable from another. I decide I’ll have to walk. My feet are sore, my ankles swollen. I can feel the pressure at the bottom of my pelvis, hard now, sometimes like a shooting pain. Don’t come now, I tell the baby silently. Not tonight.
I wonder if Charlie will have Ruby this evening. I find myself hoping he doesn’t, and immediately feeling guilty at the thought. I think back to the last time I saw my little niece, in the spring, when Charlie came to see us in Greenwich. Charlie and I sat in the foyer of the Maritime Museum having an awkward coffee while she bounded around with the other children on the Great Map, her little spotty tights on, pink shoes going slap, slap, slap across the continents, her footsteps echoing around the high ceilings. She made her rabbit bounce from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to Nova Scotia.
She hadn’t been that interested in the Cutty Sark, despite Charlie’s attempts. He lifted her under her arms so she could steer the ship’s wheel, pretended to throw her overboard, which made her giggle. But when I tried to show her the storybook of the legend she squirmed in my lap, asked if we could play zombie ships instead. I didn’t know how to play zombie ships, or any of the other games she liked. I would never admit it to Daniel, but I dread the thought of having a child like Ruby – loud, boisterous, with the sort of confidence I have never had. I haven’t the first idea what to do with her.
I walk past discarded McDonald’s cups, their straws sticking out at angles, burst Happy Meal balloons. Mobile phones behind glass cases, neon signs flashing – MOBILE PHONE UNLOCKING REPAIRS – LYCAMOBILE – CALL HOME. The window of one shop is just mannequin heads. Western hairstyles, with a lacquered finish. Another shop window is filled with rolls and rolls of colourful fabric. Saris, block prints, Indian silk, piled up at the front of the windows, like a cross section of a riverbed. Next door the shops spill out onto the street with crates of vegetables I wouldn’t know how to cook. Yams, okra, plantains. Their names are written on neon cardboard stars. There is a smell of fried chicken. My hospital notes are heavy in my bag. What am I doing? I think to myself again. What am I doing here?
When Katie first told me, I could hardly take it in. Not only had she tracked down the address where Rachel was living in Hackney, she’d already been there and spoken to one of Rachel’s flatmates.
‘What did she say?’
‘She said that when she saw Rachel a few weeks ago, just before she moved in with you, she hadn’t looked pregnant. She said she had looked basically the same as normal.’
I shook my head. ‘No one would fake a pregnancy. Why would she want to? Why would she want to do an antenatal course?’
‘I don’t think it was the course,’ Katie said gently. ‘I think she wanted to get close to you. I think that was her plan all along.’
I felt sick. ‘What? But why?’
‘I don’t know.’ Katie reached inside her bag and took out the photograph. ‘But I think this might have been something to do with it.’ She slid it across the table.
Charlie and Rachel together, at the club. Charlie’s hair long, the way it was last summer. Rachel’s much shorter. Rachel’s arms around Charlie’s waist. A little slice of her midriff just visible between her belted black jeans and her tight top.
‘But Charlie would have said something, if he’d known her from before,’ I stammered.
‘That’s what I thought.’ Katie stared at me. ‘What do you think we should do?’
I resented it, then. Her putting this in my lap. ‘I can’t deal with this now, Katie, I just can’t.’ I felt close to tears. ‘This whole thing with Rachel – it’s doing my head in.’
‘I know.’ Katie looked agonised. ‘I don’t want to cause you any more stress. But … the police are asking me questions. And now I’ve found this. Charlie’s your brother. I had to tell you, Helen. I don’t know what to do.’ She paused. ‘You know, the night of your party, I saw Rachel going down into the cellar with someone. I
don’t know who – I just saw the back of her dress and another hand, so I know she was following someone.’ She bit her lip. ‘I think it might have been Charlie. I saw him afterwards, all covered in dust.’
‘Did you ask him?’
‘Yeah. He says it wasn’t him. But when I told him I was going to tell the police about it, he told me not to.’
I became very aware of my breathing. The baby stirred inside me, my stomach pushed aside by his elbow.
‘Katie, I have to go. I really … I just can’t think about this now.’
‘But … Helen, wait. What should I say to the police? Are you going to talk to your brother?’
I was already pushing the door of the pub open, letting the icy air bite at my face. I saw Katie pull her coat on to follow me, but I shook her off.
‘Please, Katie,’ I said. ‘Leave me alone.’
But it was no good. Even as I got home, turned the key in the lock, I knew I would have to go to Hackney. I needed to know the truth. I needed to know who Rachel really was. And what it was she wanted from me.
HELEN
When I reach Charlie’s place – a crumbling Victorian terraced house, broken up into flats – I realise I don’t remember which buzzer to press. I get the wrong one, but his neighbour buzzes me in anyway. There are wet footprints all the way up the communal staircase, a smell of frying onions. When I reach his door and knock on it, I’m breathless, irritable. I’m desperate for the loo, the baby weighing on my bladder. He might not even be in. I should have called, I think. This could all be a waste of time.
But then I see a pair of small purple wellies by the door. I hear Ruby’s muffled voice, and the door opens. She is barefoot, in a T-shirt and leggings, a half-unravelled hair braid hanging down the centre of her face.
‘Auntie Helen!’ Her face lights up into a gap-toothed grin, and she wraps herself around me. ‘Is the baby coming now?’
I laugh nervously. ‘Not yet. Where’s your daddy?’
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