by Ryan Casey
It was in October 2013 that the local government voted in favour of filling in the sinkholes. Erecting several iconic memorials in their place. An image of solidarity. A message that no matter how unpredictable a natural disaster was—and certainly, one large sinkhole in a small English city was an anomaly in itself, let alone five on one day—any natural disaster could be conquered by the solidarity of a city’s people.
Easier said than done for those who hadn’t lost any direct family members. For those who didn’t have any sinker relatives, or didn’t know any of the 114.
Ashley stared in through the tinted window at Grace. He still couldn’t get his head around the fact that she was right here, just a sheet of glass away from him. It was like he was dreaming. He’d imagined what he’d do if, in some fantasy world, he ever saw her again. How he’d run up to her, embrace her, tuck his nose against her neck and sniff her fresh, sweet perfumed skin.
But here he was, looking in through the evidently one-way glass at her, looking at her silver hair, looking at her cute pointy nose and her beautiful blue eyes, and he felt cold. One of the thoughts running through his head was: Why did you go away from me? Why did you leave me and put me through all this?
Ashley felt a hand on his back and he returned to the corridor.
“Mr. Chester,” Officer Pembrokeshire said, clearing his throat. “Again, I realise this must be overwhelming for you. You believed your girlfriend was dead. We all did. But here she is—”
“How is she…” Ashley tasted salty tears on his tongue. He wasn’t sure which of the zillion questions he’d started to ask Officer Pembrokeshire. How was she here? How was she alive? How does she look so…so healthy? Like she’s been through nothing more than a holiday?
He’d watched her. He’d sat on that bus stop seat and chewed cherry Hubba Bubba and watched her terrified face behind the wheel tumble down the sinkhole. He’d heard the screeching of metal. The screams of people on that bus behind her. He’d watched it all happen, and now here she was.
“We have to do this in your own time, Mr. Chester. That’s why I wanted you to see from outside first. To prepare yourself. Because I know it can’t be easy. I’ve seen cases like this before. Not sinkholes, obviously, but cases where missing people show up. And it’s not like the films, is it? It’s tough. Tough to understand. Tough to comprehend. All that pain and all that worry for someone to show up looking just fine.”
Ashley sensed a hint of deeper suggestion in Officer Pembrokeshire’s final words. “I watched her fall. I kissed her goodbye and I swear I watched her fall.”
Officer Pembrokeshire raised his bushy eyebrows, sighed and nodded. “We can talk about the details later. For now, I think it’s about time you went in there and had a catch-up now you’re a bit calmer, eh?”
Ashley bit his lip. His heart raced. All the nausea that he’d felt due to his hangover had been completely replaced by a feeling that he was pretty certain he’d never experienced in his life. A mix of pure sickness, pure dread, and pure delight and happiness. He couldn’t place it. But he got the impression that, like a town hit by a nuclear explosion, his body would take a long while to recover from the ripples of radiation this feeling left swimming through him.
Ashley took in a deep, shaky breath. Looked at Grace, smiling—oh God that smile. He looked at her as she wrapped her arm around her mum. As her mum kissed her on her cheek, face coated with tears. She was wearing that same white cotton jumper she’d been wearing when she fell. The same tight blue jeans from the looks of things, too. And yet…not a mark on either of them. No sign of even a tumble, let alone a disappearance. A year-long disappearance. Maybe this was a belated April Fool from last year. No. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Not anymore.
“I…I just don’t understand. I don’t understand.” Ashley wanted to say so much more but he just couldn’t. Those words were the only ones that escaped his mouth, despite the array of semi-coherent thoughts dancing around his mind.
“None of us do, Mr. Chester,” Officer Pembrokeshire said. “But like I say. Now’s for the catching up. We can talk about more of the details of this return later. Would you like to see Miss Wisdom now?”
Ashley’s muscles tensed to stone. His heart thumped even harder. Just hearing Officer Pembrokeshire’s words crystallised the reality of the situation in his mind.
He was going to see his girlfriend.
He was going to see Grace, for real.
Grace was alive.
Officer Pembrokeshire took a few steps in the direction of another very blank, grey door at the opposite end of the corridor to where they’d entered. Ashley kept on staring through this tinted, one-way window. Doing so was like watching an old tape from childhood on a television screen. Grace might’ve been just through this glass, so close, so close to him again, but she wasn’t real. She wasn’t back. Not until she saw him. Not until he stared into her eyes, kissed her soft skin, smelled her perfume.
“I’m ready,” Ashley said. He tucked his fingers into his sweaty palms.
“Good,” Officer Pembrokeshire said. He opened up this industrial-looking door at the end of the corridor, which must’ve been some shortcut to the entrances of the interview rooms or something. “If you’d like to follow me, please.”
Ashley took one last look at Grace. Took in her hair, her face, her eyes, her smile, so alive, so…so real. He examined her closely. Looked at her white jumper and her blue jeans. Looked at every inch of her, just in case he got to the entrance side of the interview rooms and she’d gone away again.
Then, he took a deep breath in, let it out, and followed Officer Pembrokeshire through the door at the end of the corridor and towards the interview room entrance.
Towards Grace.
SIX
Ashley started shaking even more as he stood opposite the grey, windowless interview room door. Activity buzzed around him—police officers dashing past with their coffees, doors opening and closing, the sound of phones ringing in the distance, nearby, everywhere.
His heart thumped. Grace was behind this door. He’d seen her through the tinted glass. She was alive.
“When you’re ready,” Officer Pembrokeshire said. He had his hand on the steel handle of the door. The blinds at this side of the interview room were on the inside, and they were closed. But from the heightened voices, the whispers, the eyes of so many officers and people looking at him, Ashley knew they knew. Grace was back. She was really back. And he understood how off that would look.
Preach to the choir.
“I’m ready. I think.”
Officer Pembrokeshire nodded. Did something that resembled a smile underneath his silver-grey ‘tache and beard. “Lead the way,” he said, lowering the handle of the door.
The light of the room was piercing compared to how it’d looked through the tinted glass. It was like the saturation option on a television had been turned up, or how a person used to watching black and white television might see colour images for the very first time.
The entire room looked around at Ashley. Steve and his tear-soaked, bearded cheeks. Mr. and Mrs. Wisdom and their joyous, smiling faces.
And Grace.
Ashley knew words were being said. He knew things were inevitably going on around him. But he just stared at Grace, and Grace stared back at him.
They were frozen. Both of them, perfectly frozen. Ashley stared into her eyes, which were even more blue now he was seeing them for real for the very first time. Her silvery-blonde hair was so…so well kept. So shiny. He just wanted to go over there and touch it. He wanted to go over there and hold her and smell her hair and never let go, but he was frozen.
“Grace…how…how…” He started to speak but the words were thoughtless. They just escaped his mouth, creeping out like someone was forcing them out of him.
Grace’s blue eyes welled up with water. Her bottom lip quivered. The sides of her cheeks started to lift, her smile started to turn. As
hley felt the same happening to himself. The burning eyes. The quivering lip.
And then, he threw himself towards her, and she at him.
He felt her warmth tumble against his chest. He sobbed onto her shoulder. Rubbed his face and his nose against her white cotton jumper, saying words that he couldn’t understand, listening to Grace as her tears dampened on his chest too. He held her there, eyes closing, then opening again just to check it wasn’t a dream like so many dreams he’d had. But no. This was her. She was here. Here in his arms. He could still smell the remnants of that beautiful sweet perfume she used to wear that he’d never had the interest to remember the name of. He tucked his eyes further into her shoulder. Sobbed some more. Opened his eyes again to check she was real.
She’s real. She’s here. She’s here.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Ashley said, and they were the first words he actually said consciously. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I know. I know. I did too. I—I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Just hearing Grace’s soft voice—actually hearing it—elicited a strange reaction from Ashley. He’d imagined her voice so many times since she’d gone. In fact, that was the main thing he’d worried about: forgetting how she sounded.
But now he could hear her, sobbing in her high-pitched tones onto his shoulder, saying those words, he felt the hairs on his arms stand up, like a ghost had just walked into the room, walked into his life.
After a few minutes—hell, it could have been seconds or hours for the attention Ashley was paying—the pair of them parted slightly. Ashley became aware of more sobbing in the room. More tears of joy. Tears of happiness. Tears of misunderstanding. But he looked right into Grace’s reddened eyes. He looked right into them, just like he had when he’d watched her car fall into that sinkhole, and he tried to understand. Why wasn’t there a bruise on her skin? Why were her clothes completely undamaged? Why was she healthy?
Why was she here?
Ashley heard somebody clear their throat. Officer Pembrokeshire, who was standing by the door. “I’ll give you time to catch up,” he said. Ashley heard the door squeak open, then close, but all the time he kept his focus on Grace, kept his fingers and hands on her warm shoulders, worried that if he let go she might just slip away and he might never see her again.
“Hi,” he said. His cheeks heated up at this. He’d thought of all the reunion words he’d say to Grace when he imagined her returning in daydreams and drunken stupors, and all he could manage was a “hi.”
“You…you taste of vodka,” Grace said. Her voice was quivery. She let out a little nervous laugh after she spoke, her cheeks reddening and her eyes turning to the floor.
Ashley let out an uncontrollable little laugh too. It reminded him of some of his first relationships back at school, when all of a sudden he’d done the hard work and had a girlfriend and now he had no clue what to say to her.
He looked around at Mr. and Mrs. Wisdom, who held each other, smiling at Ashley. Mrs. Wisdom was wearing a pink cardigan and was dabbing a tissue underneath her thick-rimmed glasses. Mr. Wisdom, a proud man who Ashley never thought he’d see crying, sniffed as he patted his wife on the back, wearing a suit and blue tie, just like he always did no matter whether he was nipping to the shop or taking out the rubbish.
Ashley nodded at them, his heart still pounding, his senses still tender as if everything in his life up to this point had been a dream—a nightmare—and now all of a sudden his senses had awakened to reality.
He turned back to Grace. She smiled back at him, eyes heavy with tears. He wanted to ask her where she’d been. Why she was back. What had happened to her. But he couldn’t. There was a lump in his throat, mixing with the taste of salty tears—some his, some Grace’s—and it was blocking him from asking those seemingly forbidden questions. Because he figured the answers couldn’t be straightforward. He’d watched her die. He’d watched her fall, almost a year ago. And now she was back. How did that happen? There just couldn’t be a rational explanation for that.
So he didn’t ask those questions. Not yet.
Instead, he wrapped his arms around Grace’s back again and let the warmth of her body seep through into his. He wanted this to last. He wanted this perfect reunion to last as long as possible before digging into the “what-ifs” and the “how-dids.”
He closed his eyes. Felt her warmth. Smelled her sweet perfume.
Then he opened his eyes. Just in case she slipped away again.
SEVEN
When Ashley and Grace finally managed to pull themselves away from one another, they both sat down at the grey, school canteen-style table in the middle of the police interview room. Ashley kept hold of Grace’s warm hand, and she kept hold of his. Just feeling her hand—realising it really was there in his hand—was enough to send a warm wave of euphoria through his body.
And also a coldness. A niggling fear that something wasn’t right. For Grace to be back. What did that mean? It had to mean something.
Officer Pembrokeshire had rejoined the party in the interview room. He sat at the opposite side of the table to Ashley and Grace. To Ashley’s left, Mr. and Mrs. Wisdom held onto one another, smiling, crying. To Ashley’s right, Steve stared into space with wide eyes. He was wearing his police uniform but he looked unlike any policeman Ashley had ever seen. He was pale. Red-eyed. The typically hard face of a police officer had been stripped away from him completely.
Officer Pembrokeshire opened up a large black folder and paged through a few laminated pages. He was silent. All of them were silent. Silent in the knowledge that Grace was back. Silent in the shared euphoria—the shared trepidation—about her return.
“Firstly, I guess I should welcome you back to the world, Miss Wisdom,” Officer Pembrokeshire said, only glancing at Grace for a split second. “It’s been quite some time.”
Grace gripped tighter hold of Ashley’s hand. She nodded, just once, a little nervous tilt forward of the head.
Officer Pembrokeshire cleared his throat and turned another page in the black folder. “Of course, we’ll find an official date for you to come in and…and talk about your disappearance. Your return. You understand that, don’t you?”
Another squeeze of Ashley’s hand. Another single nod.
Officer Pembrokeshire looked at Grace for a little longer this time. He looked at her like a person might look at an intruder in their house. Somebody who wasn’t supposed to be there. But Grace was an intruder, in a way. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t supposed to be anywhere.
“You also need to understand that there will be significant media attention surrounding your return—”
“The press. They need to respect her privacy. Respect Grace’s privacy.” Mrs. Wisdom spoke in short, breathless bursts. “She’s—she’s upset. She needs—she needs time. Space.”
“I understand that, Mrs. Wisdom,” Officer Pembrokeshire said. He looked at Mrs. Wisdom directly in her eyes. “But unfortunately the media are naturally going to be interested when a woman missing for almost a year—a sinker—shows up again. Unscratched. Not a mark on her.”
“What is it you are implying, officer?” Mr. Wisdom asked, his voice posh and slow. “Are you suggesting my daughter and my entire family concocted a story about her disappearance? Are you insinuating that my family are liars?”
“I’m not,” Officer Pembrokeshire said, turning another page in the folder. “But I can’t speak for the media. They say things. Hurtful things. You need to be ready for that.”
Mr. Wisdom nodded. He patted Mrs. Wisdom on her upper arm and sat back in his chair, adjusting his blue tie with his other hand.
“So,” Officer Pembrokeshire said, turning back to Ashley and Grace and scratching his beard. “Would Friday be a good day for you to come in and have a proper chat with us?”
Grace turned slowly to Ashley. Her eyes widened. “Um,
when is—”
“Oh,” Officer Pembrokeshire said, reddening at the cheeks a little. “It’s Tuesday today. So…three days from now. Is that enough for you?”
Ashley looked Grace in her eyes. He wanted to ask her all the questions right now. She could save herself a lot of hassle if she just told everybody where she’d been, why she looked so pristine after a year’s disappearance, why she still smelled of the same damn perfume she had that day almost a year ago. But he also felt the warmth of her hand squeezing his, and he figured from the shaky look in her face that she did need a bit of time. All of them did.
“I think Friday would be—”
“Where were you, Grace?”
The voice came from Ashley’s right-hand side. It wasn’t a voice he’d heard once since he’d entered the interview room. The last time he’d heard it, it had delivered the news in that croaky, shaky voice.
It was Steve Wisdom.
Grace looked down at the floor. Her hand tightened even further around Ashley’s. “I—I don’t—”
“Don’t give me any bullshit about ‘not knowing’,” Steve said. He smacked his fist against the flimsy table in front of him, jaw tensed, breathing heavily. “Just…just don’t. You have to know. Was it him, hmm? Did Ashley put you up to this? A way to get money? A way to get attention or—”
“Officer Wisdom,” Officer Pembrokeshire shouted. He too didn’t look the most happy of chaps in the room. “May I remind you of your duties. We all have questions. I know that as well as anyone. But now’s the time for reconciliation. Then, when you and your family have come more to terms with the return of Miss Wisdom, that’s when we talk officially.”
Steve stared at Ashley. Ashley could see sweat dripping down his forehead. Come to think of it, he could actually smell it from here, too. The smell of somebody who wanted to fight. Who was desperate to pin this on somebody.