The Missing Girl

by Jenny Quintana

  Eventually, I found a copse and stopped, for no other reason than it had a fallen trunk where I could sit. I threw clods of dirt and stones at the trees around me until my arms ached and my face was streaked with mud and tears and my throat was sore with shouting Dad’s name. And then Gabriella’s name. Because it was always Gabriella.

  As for Mum, when Dad died she forgot to function. She stared at the wall saying nothing, went out for walks in the rain, opened and closed cupboards without taking anything from them and didn’t feed herself or me. We relied on the kindness of neighbours who made soup and stews that mouldered gracefully in our fridge.

  Rita organised the funeral. The day passed in a blur of best clothes and serious faces. Mum drifted through the motions, her face ashen, her body wraith-like. Uncle Thomas looked after me. He held my hand in church and packed me in between him and Donald in the pew.

  The house filled with well-wishers, buzzing round my mother where she sat. Uncle Thomas and Donald disappeared. I spotted them talking in the garden beneath the damson tree. Donald had folded his tall, thin body, until he was speaking right into Uncle Thomas’s face.

  I left them to it and circled amongst the guests. Occasionally somebody remembered me and pressed a biscuit or a sausage roll into my hand. I piled up the offerings on the sideboard. (The next day, I found a crumbling edifice of the remains.) In the end I disappeared to Gabriella’s room and stayed there until Rita found me.

  It wasn’t so difficult when I went back to school for the second time. The head teacher made another attempt to talk to me in her office, both of us perched on the leather sofa, but her fragmented sentences were even shorter and the meeting lasted minutes.

  At home, my grandparents came regularly, although each time they appeared, my mother treated them as if they weren’t in the room; as if there was no one there, including herself. But they kept on coming, clinging to their visits, Grandma Grace, her face greyer, her body frailer, choosing the straight-back chair. She talked, but her voice was hesitant and there were no more stories about love, while Granddad Bertrand faded further into the upholstery, until one day, he got his wish and wasn’t there at all.

  The House of Flores stayed closed. I overheard Mum and Rita talking about it. At least Rita questioned. Mum shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ she kept saying.

  Eventually, Uncle Thomas turned up with a single suitcase, like a travelling salesman. Donald had left him. He’d gone suddenly, taken a post in a university in America. Uncle Thomas handed me an envelope as soon as he walked through the door.

  Donald had written a letter and wrapped it around a fossil fish. The fish was millions of years old, nearly as old as he was, he joked. In the letter, he said he was sorry and that these things happened and that no one could predict them or prevent them. He hoped I wouldn’t forget him. He certainly wouldn’t forget me. I put the fish and the letter in the shoebox and closed the lid. I was getting used to people leaving.

  Uncle Thomas sold his shop in north-west London, which hadn’t been doing so well since Donald had left, and took over the House of Flores. He had plans, he said: a special shelf for magic tricks, an homage to Houdini with photographs and replicas of the chains and locks he used. No doubt there was whispering in the village about this new set-up. People thinking there was something Hamlet-like about the arrival of my father’s brother, the funeral baked meats coldly furnishing the marriage table and all of that. I knew there was no chance of a wedding between Uncle Thomas and my mum, but at the same time I received the news with mixed feelings. I was too old for his magic tricks. Besides, I didn’t feel like being amazed. I’d had enough of the unexpected.

  Still, I got used to having him at home. He filled part of the void. His gestures were large and his voice was loud – his deep-throated cough replaced the quiet clearing of the throat that had been Dad’s way. Everything he did was vigorous. He had a habit of brushing his teeth anywhere in the house. He walked around with his toothbrush foaming, down the stairs, along the corridors, finding a sink, or a basin, in the bathroom, or the kitchen, to spit in. He wore holey socks and stretched jumpers and smelled of Old Spice. He left the scent lingering in the house.

  I avoided the shop, but I liked to sit on the floor in the living room, with my arms wrapped around my knees and Jasper beside me, and listen to Uncle Thomas talk. He’d taken to sending me off for chips which we both ate straight from the wrappers before he lit his pipe – a habit he’d adopted since Donald had gone. I watched him tapping the bowl out in the ashtray, filling it again, tamping down the tobacco as he spoke about the past. I loved his stories, the ones Dad used to tell me too: the way they moved from place to place, how they fought, together, wielding sticks, beating off the bullies they encountered, who didn’t want newcomers on their patch, who objected because their mother was Jewish and their surname was Flores. I wanted to hear tales of resilience and victory, to counter the tales of loss and despair.

  But as Uncle Thomas seemed to grow to fill the space of our house, Mum shrank even further into herself. She didn’t eat, despite Rita’s coaxing, and she grew thin and silent, not caring even about the fruit in the garden which she left all through the following autumn until the trees were wretched with their overburdened boughs and then bereft as one by one the rotten plums and damsons dropped.

  About a year after Uncle Thomas arrived we were watching the news when Gabriella’s photo appeared on the screen. A girl in Ireland had disappeared; there was no obvious connection, but still the media brought up the details of Gabriella’s case. The girl’s family heard from her six weeks later. She’d started a new life in Canada. Nobody explained how she managed to get all that way on her own.

  Another time there was a missing girl in London who turned up fine – there she was smiling into the camera, arms wrapped around her thirty-something boyfriend’s neck, apologising for the distress she’d caused. And the girl with the fringe. They showed her face each time even though everyone knew how it had ended for her. And the girl from Glasgow. The one with no family to miss her.

  Uncle Thomas folded the paper, or switched the channel as soon as these stories came on. ‘Let’s have chips,’ he’d say brightly while my mother stared at the screen from the door. And when I agreed, he’d slip me a ten-pound note that he produced with a tired flourish from behind my ear.

  One time, I stopped at the grocer’s for ketchup. The shop was crowded, but the hum of conversation halted when I appeared. It was only for a moment, and then it took off again, the ladies and Mrs Henderson droning on, an endless buzz of gossip.

  ‘Is it on the market yet?’ someone said.

  ‘He’s not selling,’ said Mrs Henderson. I sensed they were back on Lemon Tree Cottage, and the seed of dislike I had for the woman took root inside my belly.

  ‘But they left ages ago, didn’t they?’ said the someone again. ‘Don’t they live in Spain?’

  ‘Not her,’ said Mrs Henderson.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The daughter.’ I tightened my grip on the glass neck of the bottle of ketchup I’d picked off the shelf. ‘He shipped her off, I heard. To a home.’ She lowered her voice. ‘She is mad after all. And they don’t last long in a village, do they? People like that.’

  What did she mean, people like that? Outsiders I supposed. People who didn’t fit in. I pictured the cottage and how lonely it was and how empty it would be with no one inside. Maybe the creatures from the garden and the fields would come in, the mice and the deer and the jackdaws from next door. Maybe if I ever went there I’d find a badger in the fireplace, a family of voles in the fabric of the cushions and gaping holes in the roof from the birds pecking their way through.

  I paid for the ketchup and left the shop, turning my back on the gossiping women. I didn’t think I’d go again to Lemon Tree Cottage. The flash of orange I’d seen was fading in its importance, and even though the place remained vivid to me, and I thought its walls veiled a host of secrets, I didn’
t think those secrets would tell me where my sister had gone. And that was all I wanted to know.

  It was quiet on the streets. No more journalists pouncing on neighbours for inside stories; no more crowds of mothers out in the village stalking their daughters. I trudged along Acer Street, and as I walked, it was as if I was stepping in Gabriella’s footsteps, following the route she’d taken that day. I brushed my hands against a laurel bush, along a wall, across the bark of a tree, and my fingertips tingled as I wondered if Gabriella had touched those places too.

  Martha was sitting on her doorstep. My beautiful sister was gone, presumed dead – a body, cold and lonely in a faraway place. And here was Martha as if nothing had happened. Old anger surged. She must have felt it too because fear skidded across her face and she was on her feet, pushing on the front door, banging at the letter box, but no one was letting her in. She’d been locked out, and she was crying. My anger collapsed and my heart slowed, and I wondered how it had been when Gabriella’s heart had stopped – if it had stopped. How would I ever know?

  31

  They came and searched the house. It was as though they might find Gabriella hiding in a corner. Why didn’t they start in the garden? That’s where she would be. It’s what Martha had said as she’d sat quietly and confessed what she knew.

  And while they searched, I stood outside the house, hands thrust into my pockets for warmth, praying they’d find her and then praying they wouldn’t. Eventually, they moved the hunt into the garden. They came and went, people with digging equipment and a tent; men and women in white overalls carrying bags. I was disconnected: I wasn’t a part of this alien scene. Only the brief nods of the police officers and their sympathetic grimaces reminded me that I was.

  Slowly a crowd gathered, but they knew not to come close. Once again I took on the role of the missing girl’s sister, and I had the right to keep my distance. There was only Rita with her hand on my shoulder. She’d always been with me, through every tragedy of my life.

  It didn’t take them long. Martha had told us exactly where the body had been buried, beneath the roses. Of course it was; no wonder they’d bloomed so well.

  It was the silence that told me, the abrupt cessation of sound. No more thuds of metal on mud, no more grunts and murmurings. Even the wind seemed to blow itself out – as if the world had taken a breath.

  And then came the release. The noise began again, the voices of the men and women, louder, and more urgent. Not that they could do anything for Gabriella now.

  Martha had come home with two packets of biscuits. That’s what she told me. But the door had been shut and locked. She’d hammered and hammered on the wood with both fists; she’d called through the letter box, and sunk onto the step to wait. Eliza Davidson had poked her head out from next door and asked if there was anything wrong. Martha hadn’t answered and Eliza had gone back inside. It had happened before, after all, and the police had done nothing to help.

  When Mr Ellis had let her in, Martha had found her mother lying down, eyes staring, body rigid, grey-faced like a slab of stone. Martha had shaken her, tried to make her say what had happened to Gabriella. She’d screamed and she’d shouted, begging to know the truth, until Mr Ellis had come, his face wild, his breath stale with drink. He’d been frightened, Martha had seen it in his eyes. His victims hadn’t been so close to home.

  He’d slapped Martha to shut her up and he’d dragged her away, threatening to kill her if she didn’t pipe down, until eventually she’d slipped away and searched the house, silently going from room to room. She’d tiptoed into the garden and stood there as the rain had begun to fall. And she’d seen the fresh earth and known what that meant and had given a howl that had brought her father out.

  This time, he dragged her back into the house and locked her in the cupboard, in her own kind of tomb. He’d thrown Gabriella’s school bag in with her and given her food that Martha had refused to touch, and he’d left it there until she’d smashed the bowl against the wall. And he’d beaten her with his belt. But still he didn’t say what had happened to Gabriella while Martha had been exiled in the street.

  Three days later he let her out. By that time, Gabriella’s disappearance was common knowledge, the hunt was on, and the fresh earth had been stamped down and covered over with rose bushes. And the rain had washed evidence away. Nobody noticed when the police questioned the Ellis family. Nobody noticed when they searched their shed. Why would the family be suspects? Mr Ellis had an alibi. He’d been in the pub when Gabriella had last been spotted. He’d been involved in an argument. There were plenty of witnesses to that. Including my father.

  Mrs Ellis had gathered up her strength. She’d told the police about Tom. They did that. Killers. They came forward before anyone else. They stepped into the limelight without being asked, giving information. The wrong information. The kind of thing that could skew an investigation and send it spinning so far in the opposite direction it might disappear from sight.

  ‘It was your mother,’ Mr Ellis had said to Martha after he’d let her out the cupboard, when he’d sat her down and stood over her, belt in his hand, ready to strike.

  ‘No,’ Martha had said.

  But Mr Ellis had nodded. ‘Yes. Itchy fingers round that girl’s neck. Jealous bitch. Your mother didn’t want me to get there first.’

  And still Martha hadn’t believed him. Not until he’d dragged her mother in to prove it. ‘Say it, Dorothy. Tell Martha the truth.’ And she had done. She’d stood, head bowed, cowering in front of her husband, and admitted to killing Gabriella.

  Finally, Mr Ellis had whispered in Martha’s ear. ‘But it was your fault. You brought your little friend home and if you ever tell, I’ll come and get you. Even when I’m dead.’ He’d cut through the air with his fingers. ‘Snip. Snip. You know what happens to little girls that tell lies.’

  Later, he’d taken Gabriella’s bag from its hiding place in the cupboard. He’d taken out the purse and got rid of it, burying it in the woods. He’d forced Martha to take Gabriella’s bag to the station and to hide it behind the bin. Martha was less likely to be seen. The way she crept about the village, she was invisible. And once the whole family was implicated, Martha could never tell the truth.

  When the police found Gabriella, I slipped away. There had been a lingering frost. The hedges were bright with crystallised webs and the paths dusted with white powder as if some cold magic had been performed overnight. I tramped along the streets, walking up the hill in the direction of the green.

  I passed the church, stopped at the lychgate, looked across at the new mound: my mother buried alongside my father. Already there were new bunches of flowers to replace the old. Grief rose and I swallowed hard, waiting for it to break. A crow called and another answered. The wind picked up and scattered the autumn leaves.

  The path narrowed as I left the village, where the houses were large and sprawling, contained on all sides by walls and high hedges as if they’d spread uncontrollably if they weren’t. I picked my way down Devil’s Lane, my mind ticking as I remembered why it was called that. Here the houses took a step backwards until they were out of sight. Hedgerows, threaded with blackberry brambles, rose on both sides. Fields edged into view, wide stretches of furrowed land. Crows hopped, pecking at the frozen ground.

  The lane ended abruptly with a broken stile. I balanced on the wonky step, looked across the familiar expanse of green, bordered by bushes and trees. At the far end was the massive, spreading cedar tree marking the gap to the lake.

  A woman was walking her dog in the distance. I placed my hands flat on the splintered stile, climbed over, and jumped onto the grass, landing awkwardly in a dip in the ground. I clocked the direction of the dog walker, and walked the other way. I wasn’t in the mood for condolences or references to the past.

  And yet, I thought, as I plodded onwards, my boots sinking in the wet grass, how could I avoid it? The past was a ghost, gone in essence, but ever present, lurking in the background with its
queries and its doubts. And when I reached the woods, I sensed it around me: in the sigh of the trees, the flow of the stream; in the air above and around me and the earth beneath my feet. And there was Gabriella, one last time: weaving amongst the trees, with the autumn sunlight slanting through the branches and the mist drifting at her feet; and her laughter fading finally and escaping on the breeze.

  Rita came to the house. She let herself in and found me lying on the floor in Gabriella’s room. She gathered me up and took me downstairs, and made strong, sweet tea.

  I was sitting in the garden beneath the damson tree wrapped in a blanket like an invalid when David came. He smiled uncertainly at first. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there,’ he said.

  ‘How would you have known?’

  ‘You should have told me.’ He reached for my hand and I didn’t pull away. ‘In the future maybe you could rely on me a little bit more.’

  ‘I’ve got some boxes that need shifting,’ I said, enjoying the warmth of his fingers holding mine.

  He grinned. ‘No problem. I’m a man with a van and I can shift anything.’

  My eyes filled with tears. He squeezed my hand and looked away. We both knew nobody could shift the weight of what I was feeling now. Even so, I asked him to be with me when the police gave the results of the post-mortem.

  The coroner declared it had been too long for the exact cause of death to be known. The passage of time had eroded all evidence. Martha’s statement was examined. She stated again that her mother had strangled Gabriella before her father had touched her. It was a case of cheating him of another victim. They said we could only imagine what had happened in that house when Martha had been away; those final details of how Gabriella had died; the final moments of her life.