11 Missed Calls

by Elisabeth Carpenter

  ‘I’m not,’ I say. ‘But the woman behind the counter said photos usually come out well, even after all that time.’

  I grab my laptop and take it into the living room. I still don’t know what to say in my reply to Debbie. It is too important to just fire off a few words when I have a whole lifetime to write about. She won’t be expecting a message from me, but I doubt Monica or Dad have replied yet. They would have told me if they had, though I’m not sure of anything these days.

  ‘Just ask to meet,’ says Jack, reading my mind. ‘You don’t have to write an essay. If she is who she says she is, then you’ll find out soon enough.’

  Perhaps it is as simple as that. There is a tiny part of me – self-preservation, again – that tells me not to give too much away in an email. She must earn the right to hear my news. The least she could do is meet me.

  I click on the email forwarded by Dad. I already know her words off by heart, but I still read it. ‘The memories of shells and sweet things …’ No one else could know about that.

  I type out the reply before I can think about it, and press send.

  I look up and flinch. Jack is standing just centimetres away from me.

  He laughs.

  ‘You were off in dreamland then.’ He hands me a piece of paper. ‘These are a few of the private investigators we use at work. The other partners hire them to find people for court summonses. One of them might be able to help if you don’t get a reply. Tell them to charge it to my account.’

  ‘What makes you think she won’t reply?’ I say. He shrugs. I look at the list. ‘So, are these PIs like Magnum?’

  ‘Er, no. Unfortunately not. They’re more likely to drive a Volvo estate than a Ferrari.’ He laughs at his own joke.

  I settle back into the sofa. Some names to research; it makes me feel useful. I’ve never spoken to a private investigator before; they must lead such exciting lives.

  ‘They’ll probably jump at the chance of this job,’ says Jack. ‘They’re usually sitting in a car for eight hours at a time, pissing into a coke bottle.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m just nipping down to the shop for more wine. Tough case at the moment.’

  ‘But it’s Friday night.’

  ‘If I can get this done, I can relax for the rest of the weekend.’

  ‘You can’t drive – you’ve already had a glass.’

  He tuts. ‘I’m walking to the offy on the corner.’

  It’s what I hoped he’d say.

  As soon as I hear the front door shut, I race up the two flights of stairs to Jack’s office in the loft. Tough case, my arse. He’s a conveyancing solicitor, not a human rights lawyer.

  There’s no door to open – the whole of the loft is his work space. Three walls are hidden by bookcases filled with leather-bound books I’m certain he’s never read, and sports trophies from his university days. There’s a sofa bed to the left and a large mahogany desk under the roof window. The blue screen of his laptop is reflected in the skylight. If I’m quick enough, the screensaver won’t have kicked in yet. He’s protective over his passwords.

  I slide onto his chair. His Facebook account is open. I click on the messages tab, but there are none. Not even the link to our old house for sale that I sent him last week. I check the archive folder. Still nothing. I must have at least fifty messages archived in mine. He must have deleted every one. Who does that? Especially someone who professes to hardly ever use Facebook.

  Francesca was the name of the woman who signed her name at the bottom of the letter. I go to his friends list, my hands shaking. Jack might only be minutes from walking through the door.

  He only has fifty-nine friends. She’s not hard to find. I could have looked on his friends list from my account. Francesca King. Even her name sounds glamorous. She has long chestnut-coloured hair and her photo looks professionally taken. I click on her profile, and jot down everything I can see in her About section. Partner at Gerald & Co, Winckley Square, Preston. She works across town from Jack. I want to look through her posts and photos, but I don’t have time.

  I tear off my notes from Jack’s pad, scrunching the paper into my jeans pocket. I click back to his news feed. As I put both my hands on the chair arms to get up, a red notification appears over the message icon. He has it on silent … of course he does.

  I should leave it. If I read it, he will know – there’s no way of marking them as unread.

  But I can’t stop myself.

  A sharp intake of breath as I read the words.

  Have you told her yet?

  I look to the sender. It’s not Francesca King, but a name that is vaguely familiar: Simon Howarth. Where do I know it from? I thought I had met all of Jack’s colleagues, but they aren’t the most interesting of people – I can’t remember all of their names. It can’t be a relative of Jack’s; he’s an only child, as are both of his parents.

  The front door clicks shut. I race down the loft stairs and go straight into the bathroom. I stand behind the closed door. The kitchen is directly below me; I bet he’s pouring another glass of wine. I hear him put the bottle noisily into the fridge.

  If he sees my face, he’ll know what I’ve been doing. I flush the toilet and run the taps, waiting until I hear him tread the stairs.

  I have a lot of research to do.

  The information I found about Francesca King was the same limited details from her Facebook account. On her firm’s website – no win, no fee ambulance chasers – was a notice for a drop-in consultancy clinic on Monday nights. I wouldn’t have the bottle to face her – what if she’d seen the picture of Sophie and me on Jack’s desk at work?

  After firing a quick email to several of the private investigators, I slam my laptop shut.

  Jack probably won’t come down for the rest of the evening – too busy in the company of wine and Facebook. It’s ridiculous really. Why aren’t I saying anything to him?

  Because of what I did six years ago.

  He had to get me out of the mess I’d got myself into. It wasn’t about him cheating, it was about me, chasing ghosts. It happened before, when I was at college, but Jack doesn’t know about that. It’s not like that now: this isn’t stalking, per se. Everyone looks at what their husbands and partners are up to online, don’t they?

  Anyway, I have proof. I took a picture of the letter on my phone. Jack would be the first to say it: you can’t argue with evidence.

  I look in on Sophie before I go to bed, as I do every night. She looks so angelic when she’s asleep; I imagine all children do. Debbie would have seen me sleeping as a baby. Did she think I was an angel, or an inconvenience? Before now, she was a ghost – I had idolised her, exalted her – thought she disappeared through no fault of her own. I believed it must have been something really awful for her to have left us. But if this email is from her, then I should accept that she chose to leave us.

  If I found her after all this time, I’m not sure I’d even like her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Monday, 7 July 1986

  Debbie

  When I worked, I hated Mondays. I’d spend the second half of Sunday under a cloud of dread, eating chocolate and watching videos from the corner shop. My colleagues weren’t bad people, but being estate agents turned them into arseholes. I’d had dreams of being a fashion designer – leaving home, going to art school and pondering Andy Warhol soup cans, floating about in chiffon and sandals. But I should’ve known I wasn’t good enough for that life. Dad said I was lucky to get a job at all. ‘Get any job you can,’ he said. ‘That’ll show Thatcher. She wants us to disappear into the woodwork like cockroaches.’

  The trouble was, everyone thought estate agents were cockroaches too.

  The office is a distant memory. Now, Mondays are the same as any other day. Peter’s at work and Bobby’s in school and gone is the pressure of playing happy families. Annie won’t mind if I sit and cry all day or if I don’t get out of bed and just stare at the ceiling for hours. As lon
g as she’s fed and changed, she’s fine.

  Today, though, I have a job to do: book a holiday I don’t want to go on. It took too long to get out of the house, but we made it. It’s a job in itself, but Annie is fast asleep in her pram.

  The sun is shining and I’m not in the mood for it. Sunshine is for barbecuing with friends, spending the day at the beach; being happy. I want the weather to match my mood and never stop raining. I keep thinking about that note on the pink paper. I hid it in my knicker drawer. I thought about it at night when the noise of the day had faded. Who would send a letter like that to someone? I haven’t got a dirty little secret. The more I thought about it, the more I reasoned that it wasn’t for me. What if it’s Peter who has the secret? Without a name on the envelope, I could pretend it didn’t exist. That doubt means I can forget about it. For now.

  Peter didn’t stop going on about the bloody holiday all weekend. He got some brochures on Saturday, and dropped the same ones off with Monica. The prices are ridiculous. What’s wrong with going to Wales like we always do? I tried telling him how much we’d save staying in Britain.

  ‘In a year,’ I said, ‘we’ll have enough for a deposit on a house. Property prices’ll go up soon.’

  He rolled his eyes and said, ‘Working as a secretary in an estate agency doesn’t make you a property expert. Anyway, what about what happened to Kevin? We have to make the most of things. You never know when your last holiday’s going to be.’

  Kevin Jackson was Peter’s assistant manager at Woolies. He was only twenty-three when he was killed in a motorbike accident three months ago. Saturday was the first time Peter had mentioned him since the funeral.

  The travel agents is a twenty-minute walk away, and the high street is quiet right now. I take my time; it’s just after eleven and the deadline of the three thirty school pick-up isn’t looming as much. There’s an advert in Mrs Abernathy’s shop for a weekend sales assistant, but I know what Peter will say: ‘Family time is important.’ His dad worked nearly every weekend when Peter was growing up. They’re barely on speaking terms now, even though Peter’s mother passed away three years ago, and his father only lives in Lytham. I can’t face Mrs Abernathy after last week, anyway.

  A dandelion clock passes through the air in front of my face. My uncle Charlie used to call them fairies. ‘Catch them in your hand, make a wish, then let it go on its way.’ Sometimes my wishes came true, which always surprised me. I doubt they would now.

  I let go of the pram and try to clasp the clock between my hands.

  Missed it.

  I don’t take my eyes off it; it floats on the breeze. If I could just catch it, I could wish for things to get better.

  ‘Go on, grab it.’

  I can’t tell if that voice is inside, or outside, my head.

  ‘I’m trying, Charlie,’ I say.

  I swipe again. It wafts down and down until landing perfectly still on the ground. It was meant for me.

  ‘I’ve got it, Charlie,’ I say, feeling the fluffiness of it in my hand. I close my eyes to make a—

  A car horn sounds.

  I turn around.

  I’m in the road.

  A car’s coming straight for me. I look at the driver. I feel like I know everything about her as our eyes meet. My feet won’t move. I’m going to die.

  A hand grabs the top of my arm. I trip up the kerb and onto the pavement. The hand is still holding me. I look up the arm, up his body until I reach his face.

  ‘Nathan.’

  ‘What were you doing in the middle of the road?’

  I look at the woman behind the wheel; she shakes her head at me and drives off.

  ‘I don’t know … I saw a fairy and …’

  ‘A fairy?’

  He frowns at me. He has that same look Peter gives me when I put sugar on my chips instead of salt. Please don’t let Nathan look at me that way too.

  ‘No, no. Not a real fairy … one of those dandelion clocks. You know?’

  He lets go of my arm. ‘I guess. You could’ve got yourself killed.’

  ‘I didn’t realise.’ I look around me. There are people standing a few feet away – more on the other side of the road, just gawping at me. ‘I … I thought it was quiet.’

  The people on the street begin to wander off – it’s not a big drama after all.

  Why didn’t I feel the step down from the kerb? I left Annie on her own again.

  The car horn must’ve woken her. She’s crying, but the sound is muffled, like she’s in another room. How long has she been crying?

  My cheeks burn.

  I look down at my feet and my shoulders relax slightly.

  At least I have my sandals on.

  Nathan and I are sitting opposite the travel agent’s assistant. Her hair is bleach blonde and curly. It’s held in a scrunchie at the side of her neck. I used to do my hair in the morning, too. I want to tell her that I wasn’t always this dowdy.

  ‘So, Mr and Mrs Atherton—’

  ‘No,’ I say for the second time. ‘I’m Mrs Atherton and this is Mr Bailey. We’re booking for both of our families.’

  She raises an eyebrow. She’ll soon believe us when we list four adults and three children, but who cares?

  I look at the wall behind her. There’s a picture of a cruise liner floating on turquoise-blue water. What would it be like to jump from that ship? Would it hurt, or would I go unconscious before I hit the sea?

  ‘I bet there’ll be nothing to do there,’ I say to Nathan outside. ‘It’ll be full of blokes in nylon tracksuits and football shirts.’

  ‘Didn’t have you down as a snob, Debs.’

  I sigh. ‘I’m not. I just don’t think I’m up to it. I only had a baby a couple of weeks ago. New mothers don’t just swan off on holiday.’

  ‘You’re not that new.’ He winks. ‘Come on, cheer up. It’ll give us something to look forward to. We could spend some time catching up – it’ll be like old times. And with us sharing an apartment, it’ll be so much cheaper. I didn’t think we’d go on holiday at all this year. We’re meant to be on a budget.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ I say. ‘Monica won’t even buy a tin of baked beans less than thirty pence because it doesn’t have the right label on it.’

  He shrugs, frowning into the distance. I’m always saying the wrong things.

  ‘Do you think we’ll get under each other’s feet?’ I say. ‘What if Annie doesn’t sleep?’

  ‘Then we’ll all leave you to get up with her.’

  ‘Yeah. Nothing new there.’

  ‘Hey. I was joking.’

  We start walking in silence. Annie’s beginning to get wriggly – it’s nearly time for her next bottle. It must be lunchtime because men in big suits and flashy ties are rushing around, tutting at Annie’s pram as though I shouldn’t be using the pavement between twelve and two. God forbid they miss a precious second of sitting in the pub with a pint.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ I say.

  He goes to look at his watch, but it’s not there.

  ‘Good point.’

  He bends down to say goodbye to Annie.

  ‘Before I forget,’ he says, standing up. ‘You mentioned your uncle Charlie … when you were looking for fairies.’ He puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Is everything okay with you, Debs?’

  Nathan and I had just got together, nearly eleven years ago, when my uncle died. He and I were really close. It made me needier than I usually was. Perhaps Nathan liked that – perhaps he thinks I’m still like that.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I tell him.

  He lets his hand drop away from me.

  ‘You know I’m here if you need to talk.’

  ‘I can’t talk to you,’ I say. ‘I should be talking to Peter.’

  He looks at the pavement. ‘Do you think we made the right choice?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I say, but I know what he’s talking about. But it was another lifetime. There’s no point thinking about it now.
<
br />   He opens his mouth, but he’s already said enough. I pull my handbag-strap higher onto my shoulder and grip the pram.

  ‘Bye, Nathan.’

  Peter’s been in a good mood since I told him the holiday’s booked. He brought chips back from the chippy and it’s not even Friday. He’s offered to put Bobby to bed, which is probably for the first time ever, and said he’ll take us to C & A in town to get holiday clothes. I should be excited. I’ve never been abroad. But I think about all the things that could go wrong: the plane; Annie in the heat; that I won’t be as jolly as everyone wants me to be. I might ruin it for everyone. I keep thinking about the note that came through the door. I couldn’t mention it to Peter; it would only spoil his mood.

  If the holiday had been arranged two years ago – a year ago, even – I’d be bouncing around, picturing sandy beaches, buying so many clothes – that we couldn’t afford – along with miniatures of every toiletry I could think of, giant beach towels, and inflatables for the kids. I’d be ringing Monica every five minutes, asking her to order me things from her catalogue, and exchanging promises of babysitting while we were away.

  But I was a different person then, and I don’t know how to climb my way back.

  I lie and rest my head on the settee, listening to Bobby running around upstairs whilst Peter chases after him with his pyjamas. He let Bobby stay in the bath for forty-five minutes. The boy must be freezing.

  Finally, I hear Bobby’s bed springs as he jumps onto his duvet. He’ll be all clean and cuddly. I should be the one hugging him, but I suppose it’ll do Peter some good to learn.

  It’s eight o’clock at night and Trisha’s husband over the road is still playing loud music, showing off that they’ve got a four-foot-wide garage. It can’t even fit their car in. I’m surprised Peter doesn’t go out and ask him to turn it down. Actually, I’m not. I think he’s a bit intimidated by Dean.

  ‘Debs!’ Peter’s shouting down from the landing.

  I know what’s coming.

  ‘Can you ask Dean to turn it down?’

  I don’t know why he thinks I’m braver than he is. Perhaps he doesn’t care that he’s about to send his very own wife out to talk to the local perv.