The Last Lost Girl

by Maria Hoey

  “God, it’s stuffy in here,” said Gayle. “I’ll open a window and let some sweet air in.”

  Jacqueline wondered if it was a way of saying she was looking particularly sour.

  “It’s raining heavier than ever,” Gayle came and sat next to her on the sofa, filled Jacqueline’s glass and topped up her own. “Cheers! There’ll be some food soon. You look well, Jacqueline – wherever you’ve been the air must have suited you.”

  She’s talking too fast, thought Jacqueline, and she’s too cheerful. “I got some sun, that’s all,” she said.

  “It suits you.” Gayle leaned back against the headrest. “How are you doing anyway, about Dad, I mean? I’m still struggling to come to terms with it. It just doesn’t seem possible that he’s gone.”

  “I’m struggling too.”

  “At least he had a good turnout,” said Gayle. “I know it sounds nuts but he’d have hated to have a poor turnout. And I’d have hated it for him too.”

  “I suppose I would too,” said Jacqueline. “Mam always said he didn’t have any friends, only drinking buddies but in the –”

  “Yes, well, Mam wasn’t always right about everything,” said Gayle.

  Something in her voice made Jacqueline look up from her wine but Gayle’s eyes had already softened.

  “Remember the way he used to tell us we were …” Gayle paused and shelved her hands, one above the other.

  Jacqueline smiled and they finished in unison: “That little bit above” and they laughed a little at the common memory.

  “He wanted us to think we were better than everyone else,” said Gayle. “I wonder if that was because he didn’t believe he was really. Remember how he hated the flower women?” She laughed. “But he lumped them all together and that wasn’t fair, because some of them were very nice people.”

  “Probably,” said Jacqueline, “though I couldn’t stand Florence McNally. I thought she was such a stuck-up snob though she turned out to be a good friend to Mam. All the same, Dad was right to be suspicious of her because Mam left him and went to live with Florence in the end. Do you think she realised what people were saying, that she’d gone to live with her lesbian lover?”

  “That was nonsense,” said Gayle. “Florence just gave Mam somewhere to go until she found her feet.”

  “Only she never did find her feet,” said Jacqueline. “All those years living in Florence’s big house, just up the road from Dad– no wonder it sickened him.”

  “Yes, well, I think she was happier there, and that’s what counts, isn’t it?” Gayle’s fingers were worrying the arm of the sofa.

  “I don’t think she was happy anywhere,” said Jacqueline. “How could she be? Still, she liked messing around in the ridiculous big flower room Florence had.”

  She was thinking of one day in particular, maybe a year or so after her mother had moved in with Florence. She had stood, unobserved, in the doorway to the flower room watching her mother busy with an arrangement, her movements deft and sure. She had shrunk to birdlike proportions, so much so that it was hard now to understand how they had failed to guess what was growing inside her.

  Jacqueline had asked, “What are you doing, Mam?”

  Her mother had looked up sharply. “I’m wiring my Gerbers.”

  “Your whats?”

  Her mother had smiled. “Gerber daisies.” She jabbed a piece of wire though the green base at the top of the stem.

  Jacqueline winced. “Ouch, I bet that hurts. Why do you have to wire them?”

  “Right now I’m doing it for anchorage – it helps to support the heavier blooms and stop them drooping. Some flowers can snap off the stem too easily.”

  Watching her, Jacqueline had said, “You’re really good at all of this.”

  “Oh, I’m not that great – I’ll never be a patch on Florence.”

  “I don’t just mean the flowers,” Jacqueline had said. “I mean …” and spreading her hands vaguely she had looked about her. What did she think was great? That somehow, the things her father had mocked, the flowers and the stuck-up women friends, were the things that had saved her mother, kept her connected to people and allowed her to live in the world despite her loss? “I mean everything,” she had said. But what she had wanted to say, was “I think you’re great, Mam.” But then, Florence McNally came in with a silver tray that held tea and floral china and homemade biscuits and the words went unsaid.

  “Why do you think she left him on that particular day, Gayle?” said Jacqueline. “Her 52nd birthday. I mean it’s an odd number, not a significant birthday or anything.”

  Gayle got up abruptly and walked to the window. “I don’t imagine it had anything to do with it being her birthday. I imagine she’d been thinking about going for some time.”

  “She didn’t exactly get very far,” said Jacqueline. “Just up the road to Florence’s house. That never really made much sense to me.”

  “I suppose our house just held too many memories for her,” said Gayle.

  “I would have thought that was a better reason to stay than to go,” said Jacqueline. “Poor old Daddy, he was useless without her.”

  “Poor old you.” Gayle came and sat down again. “That was when you had to leave your lovely little flat and come home and be with him.”

  “It wasn’t all that lovely and I didn’t have to.”

  “But you felt you had to,” said Gayle, “and that’s the same thing. And you did like it – you loved being on your own, I know you did.” She picked up the wine bottle and refilled their glasses. “So, Eddie said he told you everything he remembers. Was it enough?”

  “I don’t know. It was a start.”

  Gayle frowned. “But you can’t still believe that Eddie had something to do with it?”

  “I don’t believe anything. I’m just trying to make sense of things. But one thing I do know – Dad believed Eddie had something to do with it.”

  “No, he didn’t,” said Gayle. “I know you’ve always believed that, but it’s just not true.”

  “I think it is true, and so do you, Gayle. Otherwise why were things always so weird between them? I mean, look at what happened when Alison was born.”

  “Alison?” Gayle’s head snapped up. “What do you mean?”

  “The way you kept the whole thing a secret. For God’s sake, Gayle, we didn’t even find out that you were pregnant until after the baby was born. Who keeps something like that from their own parents?”

  “But you know why that was, Jacqueline. We explained why we –”

  “I know you explained,” said Jacqueline. “There were complications, you didn’t know if you’d go full term, you didn’t want to disappoint Mam. But none of that explains why you didn’t bring Alison home until she was six months old.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Jacqueline, all wrong.”

  “Have I? Then why were Mam and Dad so weird about Alison? Sure, Mam got a bit weird about everyone and everything in the end, but why was Dad so funny about her?”

  “He wasn’t funny about her,” said Gayle. “Dad loved Alison and you can’t say he didn’t. He was very fond of Roy but he adored Alison.”

  “Yes, he adored her, but I still say he was odd about her, he was always odd about her. His voice changed whenever her name was mentioned. Now I come to think of it, he did it just before he died. We were talking about Alison and her baby and it happened again – that funny look came over his face. And I don’t know how many times I caught him looking at her, when you’d bring her home with you on holiday.”

  “I think you’re imagining things,” said Gayle, “and why wouldn’t he look at her? She was his granddaughter.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I don’t care what you say, Gayle, he was never comfortable with the way things turned out. He was too fair a man to hold it against Alison or Roy, but there’s no way you can convince me Dad was happy knowing Eddie Sexton was the father of his grandchildren. He could hardly bear to look Eddie in the eye, and you know t
hat as well as I do.”

  Gayle was shaking her head, more in weariness than anger or denial, it seemed to Jacqueline. “You don’t understand, Jacqueline.” She got up and walked about the room, tidying everything in her path. “If Dad held a grudge against Eddie it was because – I don’t know – maybe it was because he thought that if Eddie had taken her to the dance that night … look, why all these questions all of a sudden anyway? Has something happened, have you found out something?”

  “Stop fluffing cushions and come and sit down,” said Jacqueline. “Then I’ll tell you.”

  Gayle sat down, not next to her this time but in the armchair opposite and Jacqueline told her about the postcard and the sketch of Sea Holly Villa.

  “At first I thought the house itself was significant, but I know now that it wasn’t. It was just a place where Dad stayed while he was looking for Luca, and the reason he was looking for Luca was because he believed Lilly might be with him.”

  She looked at her sister expectantly but Gayle was looking at her own hands, so she told her about Magpie and all she had learned from him, and about Ned Early and going to meet Dawn.

  “I still think that Dawn knows something she’s not telling me, and I intend to find out what that is. But before I do that I need to be sure in my own mind that Dad was right in what he believed, that Lilly was out there somewhere, that she was alive. That’s why I came to talk to Eddie.”

  When Gayle looked up it seemed to Jacqueline that there was nothing in her eyes but dullness and weariness. “What Dad believed was based on what?” she said. “That story about France, something someone thought they might have seen?”

  “Dad believed it,” said Jacqueline, “and it was more than that – there was Ned Early. Dad knew in his gut that Ned wasn’t being honest with him, just like I’m sure Dawn knows more than she’s letting on. That’s why Dad was around Sea Holly Villa trying to find out more.”

  “But he didn’t find out more, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t, but maybe that’s because he gave up too soon. But I don’t have to.”

  “Oh Jacqueline, don’t –”

  “Don’t what?”

  Gayle got up and began pacing again. “I just think you should leave it alone, that’s all. You’re just tormenting yourself with all this … this …”

  “All this what?” Jacqueline put her glass down. “All this trying to find out if my sister is alive or dead? Is that what you mean, Gayle? Whereas you actually believe that Lilly is dead, don’t you, Gayle? Why is that? Is it because of something you know that I don’t?”

  Gayle spun round. “If you mean because of something to do with Eddie, then no. I swear to God, no. Will you listen to me, Jacqueline, once and for all – Eddie did not harm Lilly.”

  For a while there was silence, then Gayle came and sat down in her chair again.

  “You’re right about one thing, Jacqueline,” she said. “I do believe that Lilly is dead. I do and I’m sorry if that’s hard for you to hear.”

  Her hand stole to her sleeve and Jacqueline watched as the inevitable hankie was produced.

  “It’s what I believed too,” Jacqueline said, “for a long time. That last time when they reviewed her case, I asked Detective Gerry to tell me honestly if he thought we would ever find Lilly alive.”

  Gayle looked up quickly, her eyes brimming with tears, “What did he say?”

  “That he didn’t believe so, that people leave trails, credit histories, subscriptions, bills, whatever. Living people leave trails, he said, and Lilly’s trail had grown cold.” Gayle was openly weeping but Jacqueline paid no heed. “Actually he’s Inspector O’Sullivan now but I can only ever think of him as Detective Gerry.”

  Gayle smiled bleakly over the top of her hankie. “You had the most almighty crush on him, I remember that.”

  “Did you know that?” Jacqueline was genuinely surprised.

  “Of course I knew it.” Gayle tucked her hankie away, leaned in and picked up her glass. “You used to light up when he came to the house and you’d follow him out to the car when he was going and stand at the gate until he’d driven away. God, you were a gas little creature!”

  “Was I?” Jacqueline frowned. “How exactly was I gas?”

  “You were funny and clever and so inquisitive. Your head was always in a book and then you’d come up for air, terrified you might have missed something. That was one of the saddest things about what happened, what it did to you, the way the spark went out of you.”

  “That’s what Dad told Magpie,” said Jacqueline.

  “This Magpie, is he the reason you look so well?”

  Jacqueline shook her head vigorously. “Don’t start, Gayle – anything less romantic than Magpie you cannot even begin to imagine.”

  “That’s a pity,” said Gayle, “because imagine if Dad had somehow led you to that place just so you could meet Magpie and –” She stopped when she saw the expression on Jacqueline’s face. “What? It could happen. Life is weird like that.”

  “Weird is one word for it alright,” said Jacqueline.

  “Weird but with wonderful bits dotted through it,” said Gayle.

  “Brilliant passages connected by long prosaic interludes,” said Jacqueline.

  Gayle smiled. “Brilliant passages, I like that. That summer, 1976, that was a brilliant passage – until it happened of course.” She stopped smiling and straightened up in her chair. “Jacqueline, what did you mean earlier when you said there were things about that summer you’d never told anyone?”

  Taken by surprised, Jacqueline looked down at her glass.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” said Gayle.

  But Jacqueline found that, after all, she wanted to.

  She had told it exactly as she remembered it and, as she stopped talking, Gayle got up and came to sit next to her on the sofa once more. She roped her arms about Jacqueline’s neck and pulled her close.

  “I had no idea you blamed yourself,” she said. “Poor Jacqueline, all this time!”

  Jacqueline let herself be held for a few moments, then she gently wriggled free and picked up her glass. “It’s fine, Gayle.”

  “No, but Jacqueline,” said Gayle, her voice urgent, “you have to stop blaming yourself. You have to stop beating yourself up for being human. I know it’s hard, because you never had any chance to put things right, but you have to forgive yourself.” She leaned forward, “I’m going to tell you something, Jacqueline. I used to wish that Lilly would die. Not because I really wanted her to die, but just so that Eddie could see me. Because with Lilly there he couldn’t see me. And afterwards, when she was missing, I used to feel sick with guilt.”

  Without looking at her, Jacqueline reached out and touched her sister’s knee. “It’s alright, Gayle,” she said. “All that proves is that you’re human too.”

  For a while they sat side by side in silence.

  “You know it’s the anniversary tomorrow,” said Jacqueline.

  “I know it is.” Gayle’s fingers went back to worrying the armrest.

  “The house will be empty,” said Jacqueline. “It will be the first time. I’d thought you’d mind about that?”

  “I don’t think I do, not really. I think it’s probably for the best. After all, there has to be a first time, doesn’t there?” Gayle looked up suddenly. “You’re not going to give up, are you, Jacqueline – you’re going to keep on searching for her.”

  It was not a question and Jacqueline shook her head. “No, I’m not going to give up,” she said.

  “Jacqueline, there’s something else …” Gayle stopped as the door was flung open.

  Roy came shambling in, his face creased with uncertainty. “Is it okay if we put on the match now?”

  Gayle stared at him blankly for a moment as though she hardly knew who he was or why he had appeared in her living room, then she jerked to her feet and went to stand at the window.

  Without turning round, she said, “Do what you
like, Roy.”

  Chapter 47

  1976

  It is Jacqueline’s birthday and she is twelve years old. She wanted a poncho and a mood ring but her mother gave her a card with money in it and Daddy said, “Here you are, pet, buy yourself something nice.” Auntie Carol sent her a postal order.

  Jacqueline thinks about Lilly saying, “Money is better than presents” – it sure doesn’t feel that way.

  Last year, Lilly gave Jacqueline a box of Weekend chocolates. When Jacqueline opened them and offered her one, Lilly said, “No, those are for you. Oh, okay, I’ll just have one,” but she had eight and four of them were caramels. Jacqueline didn’t really mind, even though caramels were her favourite. This year, her only present is from Gayle, it is Five Go to Billycock Hill and Jacqueline has already read it. And, anyway, she is too old for Enid Blyton now, but she smiles and says, “Thanks, Gayle.”

  Jacqueline’s mother is “making an effort”. There is no birthday cake but there are two Swiss Rolls and Bourbon Creams. After the tea, she says she will just go upstairs for a lie-down. She does not come down again. Jacqueline watches Bonanza with Daddy and Gayle and when it is over, Daddy says he’s “just popping down the town for the one”.

  Jacqueline is asleep in bed when the sound of the car horn wakes her.

  Gayle is already awake. “It’s cold, Jacqueline,” she says. “Make sure you put your slippers on this time.”

  They don’t even bother to look out of the window. Jacqueline cannot find her slippers so she puts on her socks. Jacqueline’s mother is out on the landing before them.

  “He can’t keep doing this,” she says, pulling her dressing gown around her, and they go down the stairs one by one.

  Outside, the sky is navy blue. The stars look very sharp and the moon is shining down on the roof of Daddy’s red car. The wind blows and Jacqueline hunches her shoulders against it. When she moves her socks stick to the glittery, frosty pebbles.

  Through the car window, they can see Daddy’s head bent forward over the steering wheel.

  Jacqueline’s mother tries to open the door but it’s locked from inside.