by Alice Feeney
I asked him to put the picture in his study so I wouldn’t have to look at it, and I remember him laughing at the time. Not because he thought I was being ridiculous, but as though the photo were part of a joke that I wasn’t in on. I haven’t seen or thought about it since, but staring down at the black-and-white image now stirs such a peculiar feeling inside me, something that is equal in dread and disgust. My husband and I don’t have any family left on either side, we are both adult orphans. We used to say that it was just me and him against the world, before it changed to me and him against each other. We never said the latter, we just felt it.
Wandering around the house tonight, I notice how horribly big it is for just two people; there’s not enough life to fill up the empty spaces. Ben made it very clear—after we got married—that he never wanted us to have children together. I felt tricked and cheated. He should have told me before that, he knew what I wanted. Even then, I thought I could change his mind, but I couldn’t. Ben said he felt too old to become a dad in his mid-forties. Whenever I tried to revisit the conversation, he’d say the same thing, every time:
“We have each other. We don’t need anything or anyone else.”
It’s as though we had formed an exclusive club with just two members, and he liked it that way. But I didn’t. I wanted to have a child with him so badly, it was all I wanted, and he wouldn’t give it to me: a chance to clone ourselves and start again. Isn’t that what everybody wants? I knew that his reluctance had something to do with his past and his family, but he never spoke about them, he always said that some pasts deserved to be left behind, and I can understand that. It isn’t as though I ever shared the truth with him about my own. We exchange the currency of our dreams for a reality funded by acceptance as we get older.
I remind myself that it cannot be this hard to find a single recent photo of Ben. At one time we had albums full of them, but then I stopped making them. Not because the memories didn’t mean anything, but because I always thought we’d create more. I know other people like to share every moment of their private lives by posting pictures on social media, but I’ve never liked that sort of thing, and neither did he; it was something else we had in common. I’ve fought too hard to protect my privacy to just casually give it away.
I pull down the attic ladder and climb up the steps, telling myself I’m still looking for photos. There is nowhere else I haven’t already looked. Ben was supposed to take care of the move and all the unpacking. I’m guessing there must be a box full of old photo albums up here, along with all our other belongings that I can’t see downstairs: books, ornaments, and the general shared detritus and dust of lives that have been lived together.
I turn on the attic light and I’m baffled by what I see.
There is nothing here.
Literally nothing. It’s as though most of the life I remember has disappeared, and there is very little left of us. I don’t understand. It’s as though we didn’t really live here.
My eyes continue to scan the dusty floorboards and cobwebs, illuminated by a single, flickering bulb. Then I see it: an old shoebox in the far corner.
The ceiling is low, and I crawl on my hands and knees, trying to protect my face from the dirt and spiders lurking in the gloom. It’s cold up here, and my hands are shaking when I remove the lid from the box. When I see what is inside, I feel physically sick.
I climb back down the attic steps, with the shoebox tucked under my arm, then turn off the light. A cocktail of fear and relief stirs inside me; I’m afraid of what this could mean, but also relieved that the police didn’t find it. I put the box in the bottom of the wardrobe, sliding it next to others that contain things they should, instead of things they shouldn’t. Then I practically fall into bed without getting undressed. I just need to lie down for a little while, or I’ll never get through a day of filming tomorrow. I close my eyes and I see Ben’s face; I don’t need a photo for that. It feels as if the us I thought we were is being demolished, lie by lie, leaving little more than the rubble of a marriage behind.
I’m starting to think I didn’t know my husband at all.
Twelve
Essex, 1987
“Time to wake up now,” says Maggie.
I wasn’t sleeping.
The sky outside the car window has turned from blue to black.
“Come on, don’t dawdle, out you get.” She folds down the front seat so that I can climb out. Her hand scrunches itself into a cross shape, just like my daddy’s hands do.
I stand on the side of the street, blinking into the darkness, looking up at the strange-looking line of shops I’ve never seen before. Then Maggie takes my hand and pulls me towards a large black door. I have to run to keep up. She walks just as fast at night as she did during the day.
“Where are—”
“Shh!” She flattens out the hand that was scrunched up and covers my mouth with it. Her fingers smell of bubble bath. “It’s late and we don’t want to be waking the neighbors. No more talking until we’re inside.” Her hand is covering my nose as well as my mouth and it is hard to breathe, but she doesn’t take it away until I nod to show that I understand. “Fingers on lips,” she whispers, and so I do what she says, copying the way she holds her finger to her own lips, doing my best to look just like her.
She takes a giant set of keys out of her bag; there must be at least a hundred of them, or maybe just ten. They are all different shapes and sizes, jingling and jangling and making far more noise than I did when I opened my mouth just now. She slots a key into the lock and opens the door.
I’m not sure what I was expecting to see, but it wasn’t this.
It’s just a staircase. A really long one. It goes so high that I can’t even see what is at the top, as though the stairs might lead right up to the moon and the stars in the sky. I want to ask Maggie whether I could catch a star if I climb all the steps, but my finger is still on my lips, so I can’t. The stairs are made of wood, which has been painted white along the side bits, but left bare in the middle. Just inside the door we’ve walked through is another door on the left. It’s made of metal and Maggie sees me looking at it.
“You don’t ever go through this door unless I say it is okay. Do you understand?” I nod, suddenly desperate to see what is on the other side. “Go on then, up you go.” She pushes me in front of her and closes the outside door behind us.
I start to climb. The steps are quite big for my little legs so it takes me a while, but when I slow down, she pokes her fingers in my back to tell me to hurry up. Adults are always doing that, saying things with their hands or eyes instead of their mouths. There is no rail, so I put my hand on the wall. It’s covered in tiles that look and feel the same as the corks that come out of my daddy’s wine. My brother used to thread them with cotton to make me cork crowns and necklaces, and I would pretend to be a princess.
I’m busy looking down at my feet to make sure I don’t fall, but something like a shadow high above makes me look up. It isn’t a cloud or the moon or the stars though. Instead, a tall, skinny man at the top of the stairs is smiling down at me. He’s funny-looking. He has three bushy black eyebrows, the third resting on top of his lip, his skin is white like a ghost, and when he smiles, I can see that one of his crooked front teeth is made of gold. I scream. I didn’t mean to. I remember that I was supposed to be quiet, but I’m so scared the scream comes out all by itself. I try to turn back down the stairs, but Maggie is in the way and won’t let me pass.
“Stop that noise at once,” she says, twisting her hand around my arm so tight it feels like a burn. I don’t want to go any farther up, but she won’t let me go back down, so I’m left feeling a little bit stuck. I don’t want to be here, wherever this is. I’m tired and I want to go home.
I look back at the man standing at the top of the stairs. He’s still smiling, that gold tooth of his twinkling in the darkness like a rotten star.
“Well, hello there, little lady. I’m your new dad, but for now, you can jus
t call me John.”
Thirteen
London, 2017
“You can just call me Alex,” she says with a childish grin.
“Thanks, but I’d rather stick with Detective Croft, if that’s okay,” I reply.
She’s waiting for me outside my front door when I get back from my morning run. They both are. Her middle-aged sidekick says very little as usual, making the kind of mental notes that are so loud they can almost be heard. It isn’t even seven o’clock.
“I have a lot to do today,” I say, fumbling for my keys and opening the front door, trying to hide us all inside as soon as possible. I don’t know my neighbors, I couldn’t tell you any of their names, but I’m of the belief that while the opinions of strangers shouldn’t matter, they often do.
“We just wanted to update you, but we can come back another time—”
“No, sorry, now is fine. I have to be at Pinewood in an hour, that’s all. It’s the last day of filming, I can’t let them down.”
“I understand.” Her tone makes it clear that she doesn’t. “Did you run far this morning?”
“Not really, 5K.”
“Impressive.”
“It’s not very far—”
“No, I meant it’s impressive the way you’re just carrying on like normal: running, working, acting.” She smiles.
What the fuck does that mean?
I hold her stare for as long as I’m able, then my eyes retreat to the face of her silent partner. He towers over her, must be twice her age if not more, but never says a damn thing. I wonder if all her bravado is just her way of trying to impress this man, her superior.
“Are you just going to stand there and let her speak to me like this?” I ask him.
“Afraid so, she’s my boss,” he replies with an apologetic shrug.
I look back at Detective Croft in disbelief and notice that her smile has disappeared.
“Have you ever hit your husband, Mrs. Sinclair?” she asks.
The hallway feels smaller, seems to turn a little, catches me off-balance.
“Of course not! I’ve never hit anyone. I’m very close to making a formal complaint—”
“I’ll get you a form from the car before I go. We went to the Indian restaurant you said you visited with your husband the last time you saw him…” She reaches inside her bag and takes out what looks like an iPad. “The place has security cameras.” She taps on the screen a couple of times, before holding it up. “Is this you?”
I look at the frozen black-and-white image of us, surprisingly clear and crisp. “Yes.”
“Thought so. Did you have a nice time?” She taps the screen again.
“How is this relevant—”
“I was just wondering why you hit him?” She turns the iPad around again, her childlike finger swiping and scrolling through a series of images. They show me slapping Ben across the face before leaving the restaurant.
Because he accused me of something I didn’t do and I was drunk.
I feel my cheeks burn. “We had a silly row, we’d been drinking. It was just a slap.” I’m mortified by the sound of my own words as they leave my mouth.
“Do you slap him often?”
“No, I’ve never done that before, I was upset.”
“Did he say something to offend you?”
“Successful actresses are either beautiful or good at acting. Seeing as you are neither of those things, I keep wondering who you fucked this time to get the part.”
Ben’s words that night have haunted me, I doubt I’ll ever forget them.
“I don’t remember,” I lie, too ashamed to tell the truth. For the last few months Ben and I lived permanently in the shadows of suspicion, a mountain of mistrust caused by a molehill of misunderstanding. He thought I was having an affair.
Alex Croft looks at her sidekick, then back at me. “Did you know that a third of the phone calls we receive about domestic violence in this city are made by male victims?”
How dare she?
“I’m late.”
She ignores me and takes a pair of blue plastic gloves from her pocket. “There was a receipt in your husband’s wallet for the petrol station on the night you last saw him. We’d like to take a look at his car, if that’s okay?”
“If you think it will help.”
She appears to be waiting. I’m not sure what for. “Do you have his keys?”
They follow me into the living room. “Have you looked into the stalker yet?” I take Ben’s car key from a drawer and form a protective fist around it. I’m not sure why.
She stares at me hard, skips more than just a beat before answering.
“You still think a stalker might have had something to do with your husband’s disappearance?”
“I don’t see how you can rule it out—”
“Is that your laptop?” She points at the small desk in the corner of the room. I nod. “Mind if we take a look?” My turn to hesitate now. “You said it started with emails? We might be able to trace who sent them. Bag it up, Wakely,” she says to the other detective. He obediently puts on his own set of gloves, removes a clear plastic bag from his inside pocket, and takes my laptop.
“Mrs. Sinclair?”
I stare at her small outstretched hand. “Yes?”
“Your husband’s car key. Please.”
My fingers reluctantly uncurl themselves, and Detective Croft takes the key. It leaves an imprint on the palm of my hand, where I’d been holding on too tightly. Before I get a chance to say anything, she’s walking back out to the street, and it’s all I can do to keep up with her.
She unlocks Ben’s red sports car and opens the driver’s door, looking inside. I remember the day I bought it for him: a peace offering when home-front hostilities were last at their worst. We took a spontaneous trip to the Cotswolds, driving with the roof down and my skirt up, his hand maneuvering between my legs and the gearstick, before pulling over at the first B&B with a vacancy sign. I remember laughing and making love in front of an open fire, eating bad pizza, and drinking a bottle of good port. I loved how desperate he was to touch me, hold me, fuck me, back then. But all my talk of having children changed that. He did love me. He just didn’t want to share.
I miss that version of us.
Then I remember finding another woman’s lipstick beneath our bed.
“I appreciate what a distressing time this is…” says Detective Croft, bringing me back to the present. She leans in a little farther and slots the key into the ignition. The dashboard lights up and the radio softly serenades us with a popular song about love and lies. Then Croft walks around to the passenger side of the car and opens the glove compartment. I only realize I’ve been holding my breath when I can see for myself that it is empty. She feels under the seats but doesn’t appear to find anything. “A loved one going missing is always hardest on the spouse,” she says, looking at me. Then she closes the door and moves to the rear of the car, staring down at the boot. I find myself staring at it too. We all are. “You must be worried now,” she says, then opens it. All three of us peer inside.
It’s empty.
I remember how to breathe again. I’m not exactly sure what I thought she might find in there, but I’m glad that it’s nothing. My shoulders loosen and I start to relax a little.
“I think I must be missing something,” she says, closing the boot. Her words intrude on my relief. She returns to the front of the car and retrieves the key. The music from the radio stops, and the silence feels as if it might swallow me. I watch as she removes the gloves from her tiny hands, then I try to speak, but my mouth can’t seem to form the right words. I feel like I’m stuck inside my own bespoke nightmare.
“What do you think you are missing?” I ask eventually.
“Well, it’s just that if the last place your husband went before he disappeared was the petrol station, then doesn’t it seem a little strange to you that the tank is almost empty?”
Fourteen
Essex, 1
987
I’m stuck halfway up the longest staircase in the world, and I’m crying because I think my daddy is dead. I don’t know why else a strange man in a strange place would say he was my new dad. He keeps talking, but I can’t hear him anymore, I’m crying too loud. He doesn’t sound Irish like Maggie and me, his voice sounds strange, and I don’t like it at all.
“Get out of the way, John, give the child some space,” she says when we reach the top of the stairs. I can see four wooden doors. None of them are painted and all of them are closed. Maggie takes my hand and pulls me towards the door that is farthest away. I’m scared to see what is behind it, so I close my eyes, but this makes me trip and stumble a little. Maggie holds on to my hand so tight that my feet just have to catch up.
When I open my eyes again, I can see that I am in a little girl’s bedroom. It isn’t like my bedroom at home, with the patchy brown carpet and gray curtains that used to be white. This room is like something I’ve only seen on TV. The bed, table, and wardrobe are all painted white. The carpet is pink, and the curtains, wallpaper, and bedspread are all covered in pictures of a little red-haired girl and rainbows.
“This is your new room. Do you like it?” Maggie asks.
I do like it, so I’m not sure why I wet myself.
I haven’t had an accident in my pants for a really long time. I think maybe the walls made of corks, the tall stairs, and the man with the gold tooth might have frightened the pee right out of me. I feel a hot trickle of it run down the inside of my leg, and I can’t seem to make it stop. I hope Maggie won’t notice, but when I look at the pink carpet, there is a dark patch between my shoes. She sees it then, and her smiley round face changes into something cross and pointy.
“Only babies wet themselves.” She hits me hard across the face. I’ve seen Daddy hit my brother like that, but nobody has ever done it to me before. My cheek hurts and I start to cry again. “Grow up, it was just a slap.” Maggie picks me up, holding me as far away from her as she can with straight arms. She marches back out into the hall and through the door nearest the top of the stairs. It’s a small kitchen. The floor is covered in lines of strange, squishy green carpet, with words written on it, and the cupboards are all different shapes and sizes and made from different-colored wood. Another door at the end of the kitchen leads to a bathroom. Everything in it is green; the toilet, the sink, the bath, the carpet, and the tiles on the wall. I think Maggie must really like the color. She puts me down inside the bath and leaves the room, then comes straight back, with a big black bin bag. I worry that she wants to throw me away with the rubbish.