After the Eclipse

by Fran Dorricott

  I knew immediately that I shouldn’t have mentioned the ring. Marion’s frown deepened. This wasn’t banter now. She shook her head and I knew I’d overstepped. I sounded crazy.

  “Christ, I didn’t mean to plant that idea in your head, Cass. I was warning you not to connect Olive and Grace.”

  “It’s not just the ring though,” I said. Too late to back down now. “It’s the timing. Two solar eclipses sixteen years apart and both times a girl goes missing? And you obviously must have thought about it, otherwise you wouldn’t have warned me.”

  “It’s a coincidence, Cassie. It was Friday the thirteenth when Grace went missing but you don’t see me linking it to some sort of cult, do you? Just because people might make a connection doesn’t mean there is one, like there being similarities doesn’t mean they’re the same.”

  I could tell I’d touched a nerve, and this time I backed off. I hadn’t meant that Grace and Olive had been taken by the same person.

  Had I?

  Marion didn’t wait for me to say anything else, just turned on her heel to leave. I chased her out of the kitchen, but she was already at the front door.

  “Marion, wait!”

  She didn’t stop. I stumbled out onto the driveway as she got into her car.

  “Marion! Hang on—”

  She backed her car out onto the road before rolling down her window a few inches.

  “Cassie, you shouldn’t get involved. We have to be objective – because a little girl’s life is on the line. This isn’t just a story.”

  She put the car into gear and was gone before my body could unfreeze, before I could say or do anything at all. I hadn’t gone looking for a connection between Olive and Grace – but I had found one.

  Grace Butler’s disappearance happening a week before a solar eclipse in the same town where Olive was taken couldn’t be a coincidence. They were the same age. The location was too close to be an accident. Bishop’s Green might be full of people who had been denied their fresh start in 1999, who felt like the universe owed them more…

  Perhaps whoever took Olive was trying again.

  8

  THE WAITING ROOM AT the doctor’s was quiet tonight. They were trialling late opening hours, and I didn’t think it would last long, although I liked how empty the new health centre was at this time. Our only company was a sniffling old man with watering, beady eyes and a frazzled-looking young mother and her grizzling baby. I held Gran’s arm and guided her to a free spot by a little water cooler, which she eyed with suspicion while I registered her arrival on a machine by the door. Gran was used to the old building, and on every visit she found something new to dislike. A receptionist looked on with a bored expression, glasses riding low on her nose as she stabbed at something with a pen.

  This was the last place I wanted to be right now. I was still smarting from my confrontation with Marion, antsy and snappy, but I also knew that I’d reached the end of my tether with Gran and her night-time antics and I couldn’t put it off any longer.

  I felt like I had failed Gran. Disappointment in myself made me want to curl up and avoid eye contact, but I tried to keep my features schooled to neutrality when we were called into the last of the twelve appointment rooms.

  The room smelled faintly of antiseptic, like hand sanitiser tinged with cologne, but the walls were far from the sterile ones I’d seen in other doctors’ surgeries over the years. These were plastered with posters, most of which were decidedly non-medical – a cat Photoshopped into a yoga pose, a peaceful landscape. All, I supposed, meant to put his patients at ease.

  Doctor White was in his fifties, smartly dressed and with a sort of well-groomed friendliness. He always greeted my gran as though he hadn’t seen her in years. It was no wonder his appointments ran late.

  “Peggy! How are you? And Cassie. What can I do for you both today?”

  Gran smiled and looked straight to me, sure that at least I knew what we were doing here. I didn’t know how else to say it, so I bit the bullet and faced the issue straight on.

  “She’s not sleeping,” I said quietly, explaining that what had started as just the odd occurrence was now happening twice or even three times a week. “She’s out all night sometimes. I don’t know how she manages it, but it’s happening frequently enough that even with locked doors neither of us are getting much sleep.”

  Doctor White raised a dark eyebrow, pursed his lips and made a sympathetic little noise in the back of his throat. It wasn’t judgement that I sensed, not quite, but it reminded me of a time I’d been to visit him as a kid, Olive with some bang or sprain from climbing trees or falling over, and me dragged in just because Gran didn’t know what else to do with me. He’d done the same eyebrow thing back then, almost a question, as though prompting Olive to say more. To explain herself.

  I clamped my lips shut and waited.

  “Well, it’s not entirely unexpected,” he conceded eventually. “Most people with Alzheimer’s do experience changes in their sleep patterns. It sounds like what you’re describing is ‘sundowning’.”

  He explained to both of us about the studies he had read, skimming over the details but expressing the importance of regular meal times and sleep patterns. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. I had been trying to maintain a sense of order, but when you weren’t used to having to care for somebody else it was easy to lose track. The only thing I had managed so far was to keep her blood pressure medication regular.

  I stared at the doctor’s desk while he spoke, taking in the lunchbox that was filled with discarded orange peel and a chocolate wrapper, and the beautifully carved wooden bowl he kept for the children who visited him. I knew it was filled with an assortment of trinkets, little pieces of jewellery and pin badges, and occasionally a fifty pence piece. He’d told me once that it was better for the children than lollipops and he liked the fact that it meant the kids never wanted a different doctor as they got older.

  “Have you thought about sleeping aids?” Doctor White’s tone changed and I snapped back to attention guiltily.

  “I was reluctant to—”

  “I appreciate that it’s not necessarily something you’ll want, but Peggy will feel the benefit after a few uninterrupted nights of sleep. And so, my dear, will you.” He stared at me pointedly, that damn eyebrow raised again, a coil of his brown hair coming free of the oil that usually kept it pushed back.

  “I…”

  “Both of you look tired. I’m going to prescribe something for you, Peggy, to help you sleep. There are a few options, but we’ll try the tablets first since you seem to be managing the other medication okay, right?” He nodded in my direction. “You’ll need to make sure you keep them somewhere safe – a locked cabinet, really – and I suggest given the circumstances that it might be best if you’re in charge of making sure she takes them so she doesn’t have too many. If the tablets don’t work out there is something you can mix with water.” He scribbled something on a pad of paper at his elbow and then turned to his computer screen.

  “Now, Cassie, are you making sure that you take care of yourself as well as your grandmother?”

  Gran nodded emphatically, her expression sad and a little confused. I reached out to her, patting her knee gently.

  “I’m trying,” I said honestly, surprised by the question. “I’ve been thinking about my sister a lot recently. Having dreams. Wondering if there was stuff I didn’t understand back when she was taken. But I’m getting back into the swing of things. I’ve just started working again, freelance.”

  The doctor finished making a note on his computer screen and then turned to take Gran’s blood pressure.

  “Writing again?” he asked. I was surprised he had remembered, but I supposed being a doctor he probably had to have a good memory. And I was happy to talk about anything that wasn’t sleeping pills.

  “Yeah,” I said. Then a thought struck me. Doctor White had always been known for the fact that he saw a lot of children – something about his treat
bowl and warm smile. “I’m working on a piece about Grace Butler, actually. The little girl who’s missing. Do you know her?”

  Doctor White frowned, glancing up from his task. “I know a lot of the children in town,” he said, “they generally come to me for one thing or another. But I can’t talk about them. Don’t get any ideas.” He smiled, but awkwardly, as though he had just made a joke.

  “Sorry,” I said, my cheeks warming. “Seemed like it was worth a shot. I just wanted to know what sort of kid she is…?” I allowed the blush to play to my advantage, a small innocent smile on my face. Doctor White let my grandmother’s arm dip back into her lap and then shook his head.

  “She’s lovely. Shy, quiet. Clever, though. I’m surprised by the whole situation, to be honest. She doesn’t seem like the kind of girl to get herself into trouble, or who wouldn’t ask for help if she needed it.” He fixed me with another knowing look, and I realised that he was only half talking about Grace. “That’s all I’ll say on the matter. Now, I’ve prescribed these for your gran. They’re your basic sleeping tablet…”

  He explained the dosage to Gran and then handed the prescription to me. He ran me through a list of precautions and side-effects, but it was almost as though he knew I was already familiar with it. As though he had understood my reluctance to discuss the sleeping pills as an option. As though I was that transparent about my own misuse. So much for keeping a low profile.

  He knew I had taken them before, and he had just offered me a chance to talk about it. I felt shame slither inside me and avoided his gaze as we left his office. But I filled the prescription on the way home.

  * * *

  I held my breath as the phone rang and rang, scrubbing the corner of my thumbnail hard against a groove in the dining-room table. I’d not long finished writing a piece about my interview with Adelaide Upton and had just sent it to Henry for his opinion, but for some reason I didn’t feel the usual sense of completion. Perhaps I’d feel better after I’d sold it. I was wound up, my chest tight and my palms sweaty. Dad answered the phone on the tenth ring, not that I was counting.

  “Dad,” I cut off the voice at the other end of the phone. “Dad, it’s me.”

  There was a moment of static quiet as my dad took in a long breath, and then I heard him exhale. The sound was muffled, as though he had his hand over the receiver, and another few seconds passed of rearranging, something moving over the surface of the phone, before I heard his voice properly.

  “Hello. How’s it going?”

  “Oh, Dad…” Now that I had him, I didn’t know what to say. I’d run through a hundred different scenarios in my head while waiting for him to answer the phone, and now not a single one seemed right. I thought of my Olive Diary, sitting just across the room, and I got a squirmy feeling in my chest. I didn’t even know why I’d called.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “No, I’m…” I thought about telling him about Gran, about her escape and the doctor’s appointment, but decided against it. He didn’t need another reason to say, ‘I told you so’. “I’m all right. Just a bit tired. I’m writing again, though.”

  It was nice to tell people I was working again. Somehow telling people made it official. I needed a banner proclaiming Cassie is getting her shit together. Although that might have been too much faith.

  “Oh, that’s nice.” Dad made a noise in the back of his throat. “Anything good?” It was clear he didn’t want an argument but I knew he’d never really approved of my career. Even if I was writing for the victims, he had always felt it was somehow disingenuous.

  “No. Well – no. Have you heard about – about the stuff happening in Bishop’s Green?” I didn’t care if we argued.

  Dad lived in Chesterfield and had done ever since my mother’s suicide when I was seventeen. After what happened with the police during the investigation he’d grown distant from me. Mum’s death was the final nail in the coffin, a severing of the ties between us. Now he had another family, another life. One that, despite his best attempts, I’d never felt part of.

  “Yes. It’s tragic,” Dad said, his voice detached. Although I knew this was his way of dealing with his emotions, it still flamed the frustration and anger that seemed to be simmering in me all the time lately.

  “Dad, there’s something not right about it. That’s why I called. The kid’s exactly the same age as Olive. There’s the solar eclipse on Friday. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s making me feel like there might be something worth—”

  “Cassie.” Dad’s voice was a warning. “We’re all thinking of Olive right now, but it’s probably just that. Don’t let it affect your judgement.”

  “I’m not making it up.”

  I heard Dad close a door, a muffled voice calling him on the other end of the line. Probably his other daughter. Hailey. The one who wasn’t “highly-strung”. I let out a long sigh and massaged the bridge of my nose in a gesture similar to the one I knew he was probably making.

  “Sorry sweetheart,” Dad said. “I didn’t mean that. It just rubs me wrong. We shouldn’t get involved in other people’s lives.”

  “I know. Sorry. I just wanted to talk. They’re the same age. It’s just weird.”

  “She’s not your sister.” This could have sounded harsh, but somehow it didn’t. Just sad. I realised that I’d been insensitive to think Dad would want to talk about this. He was probably having a rough time just like I was.

  “Okay,” I said quietly. So I counted to ten, and then I dropped it. We talked about Bishop’s Green, about the weather, about things that Dad thought didn’t matter. He asked if I’d made any new friends yet. I told him I might progress to shopping at the Tesco just so I had more cashiers to befriend. We both laughed – only Dad’s laugh was tinged with pity.

  When we said goodnight, Dad didn’t mention Olive again. Neither did I.

  * * *

  Lying in bed that night I couldn’t stop thinking. About my family, about Gran and Grandad and how they must have felt when Olive disappeared. The fear. The guilt. I thought about Dad, too, and how much I had hated his lies. He couldn’t even tell the truth when the police thought he might be guilty of hurting Olive – all because he was afraid he’d get fired because of Carol. Because she was a student at the university and he was her teacher.

  I avoided thinking about Mum. These days, I felt more like her than ever. Tired, frustrated all the time. At least that’s how she was after Olive was taken. She had always been strong before. Too strong, sometimes, but warm and passionate. Afterwards she never wanted to talk about things. She didn’t talk about Olive or her feelings; she was too proud to appear weak. She locked everything up so tight that none of us even realised she needed help until it was too late.

  I saw a lot of myself in her – the stress to make things perfect, the inability to back down. The downward slope, too: the turn towards the numbing bliss of alcohol, or drugs; the anger, the refusal to talk. I didn’t want to be like that. Mum had always been busy, always thrown herself into her work, but it got worse after Olive. A decline so gradual I don’t think any of us really noticed. And once Dad was gone it was easier to ignore because it was just the two of us.

  When she ended her life, I’d acted surprised. Said all the things that people say about family members who choose to end their lives. But really it was only the same thing I’d thought about doing and I was angry that she got there first.

  That was about when I’d discovered sleeping pills, how just one was enough to curb the panic attacks that left me shaking. It was like smoking weed, only completely legal and cheaper too. And the pills didn’t smell nearly so bad. Alcohol worked at a push but the hangovers were monstrous.

  I thought about my job in London. It hadn’t been perfect, and things getting rocky with Helen hadn’t helped, but it was my own recklessness that had been the final straw; I’d punched an interviewee and expected righteous anger to help me get away with it. Helen had had enough. I didn’t blame her.<
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  Dad and Marion were probably right – I was taking this too seriously. Too personally. I might be drawing connections between Grace and Olive where there were none. But over the years I had written features on several families who’d lost children – always with the desire to help, to fix what was broken – and I hadn’t felt this way about any of them.

  Marion’s warning for me not to connect Olive and Grace only told me that she had had the same thoughts. That the solar eclipse had left us both teetering on the edge of what was logical and what was fantasy.

  As the clock rolled over to 2 a.m., a text lit the screen of my phone, followed by a buzz that made me jump. I felt a shiver of unease ripple through me. Nobody ever texted this late. Not even Henry, who hardly ever slept. My blood zinged and I wondered if it was from Marion.

  It wasn’t. The number was unknown. My skin grew clammy as I opened it. Two words, no punctuation. No preamble. Nothing, except:

  back off

  My heart slammed an uneven rhythm. I copied the number and pasted it into Google. This had to be some sort of joke. The search results yielded nothing. I felt too hot. It had to be another journalist – I was stepping on somebody’s toes. But how did any of them know I was writing? Had they seen me coming out of the Upton house?

  I took a deep breath and massaged my forehead until my chest stopped heaving. Who knew I was asking questions? My mind drew a blank, fear creating a fuzzy confusion.

  Somebody thought I was making a nuisance of myself, that much was clear. It had to be because of Grace. It had to be. Or was it Olive? I couldn’t shake the questions that haunted me. I couldn’t distinguish my thoughts about Grace from the dreams that had been plaguing me, the ones of Olive. Of the eclipse.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence that I was back in town now. That Grace had gone missing near a solar eclipse, just like my sister. It had been a long time since I’d thought about fate. Unlike Marion, who had been sucked into Bishop’s Green’s love of superstition, I’d happily shed that part of myself when I left. But now I could feel in my bones that I was meant to try to help that little girl. And this text message only made me more convinced that I had to do something.