The Girl in the Red Dress

by Elaine Chong

  Julia

  Hillcrest House. Once upon a time this was my home, and by the look of it I think it hasn’t changed since my wedding day when I left it for the final time as Miss Julia Oakley.

  Daddy and I were driven to the church in a white Rolls-Royce hired specially for the occasion. I remember I felt like a princess in my voluminous, white dress – Princess Diana had a lot to answer for when it came to wedding dresses in the 1980s. Mine was a veritable explosion of white lace and taffeta and I looked like one of those dollies they used to dress to cover the immodesty of an unused toilet roll. It makes me shudder when I think of it now.

  Mothers are supposed to cry when their daughters get married, but my mother looked relieved.

  Daddy, on the other hand, was tearful throughout the whole ceremony, and when we had our father and daughter waltz at the reception after the wedding, he whispered to me that I was the most beautiful girl in the world and that he would love me forever.

  Sometimes I used to think that my mother was jealous of me. There were days when her sadness was etched clearly in her face.

  Sometimes I think that my marriage to Colin is history repeating itself, but I didn’t marry Colin for money – although if I’m being brutally honest, it did play a part in my decision to accept his proposal: I wanted to have a nice life. I did love Colin in the beginning though, and he completely adored me.

  Maybe that was how it was for my parents in the beginning, but when I was a teenager, I never heard them say a kind word to each other and my mother used her acerbic wit to mock my father – but almost always behind his back. In fact, the only time she told him to his face was when she was emboldened by alcohol.

  The really strange thing is that I don’t remember us being an unhappy, dysfunctional family: we were actually quite conventional, going on holiday together and celebrating birthdays and Christmas just like everybody else.

  The real reason I was so keen to leave home was that I was bored with my nice, safe, conventional existence: marrying Colin and moving to Singapore had seemed like a huge adventure.

  If I’d only realised…

  I tell Maggie straight away that I’m going to have a look round. I explain that I haven’t been home for a number of years. She nods and smiles and offers to make me a cup of tea. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but Richard seemed to think there would be clues, which would confirm that our mother’s mental health is rapidly deteriorating. I’m not wholly convinced this is true after our visit to the hospital yesterday, but I’m prepared to do as he’s asked, and see what I can see.

  The very first thing I notice is that my wedding photograph on Daddy’s desk is missing. I cast my eyes around the room and it’s evident that other photographs have been removed from the walls.

  Upstairs, it’s the same. There are no family photographs anywhere to be found so I make my way back downstairs and head to the kitchen and Maggie. I’m used to dealing with hired help, so I have no inhibitions in demanding to know what’s happened to them.

  Maggie looks embarrassed. “I think your mum took them down.”

  “Why?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Where are they now?”

  She shrugs. “I really couldn’t tell you.”

  “Did she destroy them?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Do you know for a fact that she took them down?”

  Maggie looks shocked at this bold line of questioning. She says, “I didn’t see her take them down and she didn’t talk to me about it. She doesn’t tell me everything she does.”

  I don’t like the tone of her voice and if she were in my employment, I’d tell her so, but this isn’t Singapore and I have to tread more carefully. “Well, I’m going to take another look round the house and see if I can find them.”

  She then tells me that the tea is ready and asks me if I’m going to sleep in my own bedroom or the spare bedroom because she still needs to get the house ready for when my mother is discharged from hospital. As I have absolutely no intention of moving out of the hotel, I suggest she leaves both rooms exactly as they are until we know where my mother’s going.

  Once again, her face immediately reflects her feelings and her hand flies to her chest. “She’s not coming back here?” she gasps.

  I now feel obliged to tell her, “Nothing’s been decided yet. We have to see if she can still manage by herself.”

  “But where will she go?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “What about the house?”

  “What about the house?”

  “I mean … if she’s not living here … what will happen to it … it can’t stay empty … not a big house like this…” The words tumble out of her mouth.

  “If I have anything to do with it, it will be sold,” I tell her abruptly. I want to end the conversation quickly: I’m not used to being subjected to examination by the domestic help and I know I’m going to say something unpleasant if I don’t walk away.

  As I leave the kitchen, I hear her say, “You know the house doesn’t belong to Mrs Oakley?”

  “What?”

  “She’s only allowed to live here,” she says in a low voice.

  I can do quite a good impression of someone who looks like they mean trouble, so I don’t hesitate to walk back into the kitchen and square up to her. “What did you say?”

  I’m expecting her to back down, but she doesn’t. Her bright blue eyes are chips of ice. “Your mum told me she doesn’t own the house.” (Now I’m genuinely angry: my mother has chosen to confide her secret to the cleaner, but not to me, her only daughter.) Without breaking eye contact she goes on, “When you know what’s happening, perhaps you can let me know? Otherwise I’ll be back here next week at the usual time.” And then she sweeps out of the kitchen, grabs her coat from where it’s hanging in the hallway, and slams the front door behind her as she leaves.

  I am speechless. The impudence of the woman, I think to myself. I wonder if Richard has seen this side of her. Though now that’s she’s gone, I actually feel more at ease; feel like I can take a proper look at the place without her hovering and monitoring what I’m doing.

  I decide to start with the garden at the rear of the house. The key to the back door always used to be kept in the kitchen drawer and it’s still there when I search for it. I use it to let myself outside. What greets me isn’t exactly a surprise having already seen the unkempt state of the front garden, but I feel a pang of real sadness. The garden was our mother’s pride and joy: it was where she spent much of her time when the weather allowed. It gave her a reason to remove herself from the house when she and Daddy had fallen out, which was quite a frequent event in the years before I left.

  It’s evident that the grass hasn’t been cut for some while, and the borders don’t look like they used to do when my mother spent her summer in the garden, so I’m guessing that what’s growing between the larger plants are simply weeds. The only thing that hasn’t obviously changed is the tall wooden fence. It’s still covered in pretty flowering plants and, though horticulture really isn’t my thing, I still remember their names: honeysuckle, clematis and passionflower.

  The reason I remember them so well is because I infuriated my mother by treading on the garden and pushing the plants out of the way and sometimes breaking them when I climbed through a gap in the fence by way of a broken fence panel. It hung from a single nail and made it possible for me to swing it to one side then make my escape with no one the wiser. I might even have facilitated the other nail’s removal myself; I can’t remember. I don’t know if Daddy ever knew about the gap in the fence, but I used it as a means to get in and out of the house without him seeing me, and I realise now that my mother must have been a co-conspirator because, although she complained about the plants, she never commented on the fence panel.

  When I investigate further, I discover that the wooden panel is still hanging from a single nail and, though it’s difficult to be completely certa
in, it looks like someone has been getting in and out of the garden through the gap in the fence.

  I add this to the list of the things I’m making in my head, which suggest that my mother is indeed losing her marbles.

  I take a last glance around the garden and go back into the house, remembering to lock the back door and leave the key in the drawer.

  On an impulse I decide to check out my old bedroom first. Nothing in it has changed, not even the cream coloured floor length curtains or the pale yellow-painted walls.

  I remember it was a bright, sunny room, and I simply adored the little balcony, which my father had built for me. It overlooked my mother’s pretty, well-tended garden. I used to pretend I was living in romantic Italy with the sounds of a piazza drifting into my room where I lay on my bed waiting for my lover to scale the wall of the house and rescue me. By the time I turned sixteen, I’d got fed up with waiting to be rescued and used to climb down the drainpipe to make my own getaway.

  The room looks like it’s recently been dusted and vacuumed so Maggie really has been attending to business as usual while my mother’s away, although there’s a lingering smell of Aggie’s perfume. I don’t know when Aggie died but I do know that it wasn’t recently so I can’t understand why the fresh, floral fragrance of Je Reviens is still evident.

  The wardrobe is empty of clothes although there are still coat hangers swinging from the metal rail. I take a cursory look inside the chest of drawers standing next to it. It’s also empty although the drawers are still lined with a decorative paper.

  At the back of the top drawer, something draws my attention. At first glance it appears to be a piece of white cardboard tucked under the drawer liner, but when I pull it out, I can see that it’s a photograph in a decorated mount. It immediately piques my interest because all the other formal family photographs have disappeared from the walls of the house, but when I take it over to the window to get a better look, I can see at once that it isn’t a photograph of one of us: it’s a photograph of Aggie.

  I remember Aggie as a rather buttoned-up, monochrome individual and this was reflected in the clothes she chose and the way she wore her hair. The person in the photograph is neither of these things. In the photograph her hair has been styled and falls in soft waves around her face, and someone has carefully applied make-up to her pale complexion. But most surprising is the dress that she’s wearing: it’s red. No, not just red. It’s an eye-catching shade of scarlet; a brilliant burst of flaming colour. This is Aggie as I’ve never, ever seen her before.

  On closer examination, it’s obvious that the photograph was taken shortly before she died because I can recognise that this woman is in her seventies – there are some things that even a really good foundation and flattering blusher can’t conceal and I consider myself to be a bit of an expert in this area. I study the photograph more carefully and decide that a youthful transformation isn’t what Aggie was trying to achieve.

  I put the photograph back into the drawer for safekeeping.

  I decide to do a circuit of the house after that, checking each room thoroughly even though I don’t know what I’m expected to find. I have absolutely no idea how dementia affects people other than mental confusion and there’s clearly no confusion in the way the house is being kept. It looks exactly as it did when I last visited.

  After another half an hour of pointless wandering from room to room, I’m ready to give up. Whatever it is Richard thinks is here which points to the fact that our mother is checking out early in the mental health department – well, I just can’t see it. Then I remember that I haven’t found the missing photographs. They have to be here somewhere, I think to myself, unless our mother has consigned them to the rubbish bin.

  The only place I haven’t searched is the garage, and that’s where I find them, wrapped in brown paper and shoved into a box. I use the word ‘shoved’ advisedly because I have professional expertise when it comes to packaging fragile objects and I can see that neither time nor care was taken to pack them in such a way that the glass wouldn’t break, and the frames wouldn’t warp. This was done in a hurry.

  One by one I take out each photograph and lay it on the floor. The pictures tell the story of the life of the Oakley family, but they give me no pleasure because it was all a lie. Maybe that’s why Mummy took them down, I suddenly think to myself.

  In the bottom of the box is a pile of smaller frames and when I lift them out to check that the glass is still intact, I nearly drop them back into the box. They’re pictures of our family on holiday. We’re all there – me, Richard, Mummy and Daddy – and we’re at the beach, walking through a field of flowers, eating ice creams in a café … It looks like we’re having a jolly time except that every face in every picture has been obscured, blacked out.

  I don’t know quite how to react to this. With shock and horror? Yes. Probably even anger and hurt. But my overwhelming emotion is blank incomprehension. Why would she do this?

  I don’t waste any more time. I quickly rewrap the photographs in the brown paper and put them back in the box. I need to leave here and get back to the comfort and sanity of my pretentious and overpriced hotel room. Richard can do his own sleuthing from now on, I think to myself.

  Richard

  Sarah Hollingsworth

  Re: Your Mother

  To: Richard Oakley

  Dear Richard

  It was a pleasant surprise to hear from you. I hope, you’re well. I’m sorry to hear that your mother has been hospitalized - I didn’t know. Please do keep in touch and let me know when she’s been discharged so I can arrange for some flowers to be sent to her at home. I remember how much she loved her garden.

  With kind regards

  Sarah

  Sarah’s email pings into my laptop just as I’m preparing to leave the office. I read it through several times, but the content is clear and to the point: she doesn’t know that my mother is in hospital.

  I sit back down at my desk and anxiously try to work out what this means, although the meaning is obvious: someone has been calling the hospital pretending to be Sarah.

  I know that the hospital has a very strict policy about disclosing information over the phone so the only thing this person would have been told is that my mother is recovering from the operation, but probably little else. Whoever it is knows something about our family, but not enough to realise that Sarah is now living in America. Even my mother’s circle of friends and members of her own family have to know that much, so I can’t understand why any one of them would masquerade as my ex-wife.

  I’m still sitting at my desk and mulling over the email when Julia calls.

  “I’ve just got back to the hotel,” she says a little breathlessly.

  “You sound like you ran,” I tease her.

  “It’s called power-walking. I haven’t had a chance to get to the gym since I arrived, and these days I do whatever I can to stay in shape. I’m not like you; I take after our mother. With my genetic heritage, if I didn’t work out, I’d have the fifty-four-year old body of an Anglo-Saxon housewife.”

  “But you are fifty-four.”

  “Only on my driving licence. You have no idea how depressing it can be standing next to the other women at my gym. Middle-aged Singaporeans just don’t get fat.”

  This is an absurd assertion, so I decide not to waste time and ask her, “Did you go to the house today?”

  “I did. And I met that Maggie. She was very rude.”

  That doesn’t sound like the Maggie I thought I knew, but Julia has a tendency to bring out the worst in people when she meets them for the first time. She’s just a little bit too straight-talking and it’s a character trait, which has developed year-on-year since she’s lived the expat life in Singapore.

  “What did you discover?” I ask her. “Other than that Maggie can be rude.”

  “Well, all the family photographs have been taken down and put in a box in the garage. You’re never going to believe this, but Mummy’s a
ctually defaced all those holiday photographs she had in the bedroom.”

  I already know the photographs have been removed but I’m more than a little concerned to hear that something has happened to them. “What do you mean, ‘defaced’?”

  “Defaced as in every face has been blacked out.”

  “What about the other photographs?”

  “Oh, those are fine, they’ve just been wrapped up in brown paper.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. I had a look round the back garden, and I think she’s been using my old escape route.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say.

  “The fence panel: the one I took out, so I could get in and out of the house without Daddy seeing me. You must remember?”

  I do remember. Julia was quite the rebel in her teenage years, but only as long as our father didn’t find out. Our mother turned a blind eye to her late-night comings and goings, but I think it was because she knew what it was like to feel a lack of control over your life: my father held the purse strings and he wielded them like the sword of justice.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” I say.

  “I know and I take back everything I said yesterday about her brain still firing on all cylinders.”

  “You don’t know that she’s been climbing through the fence. I mean, why would she do that? It could just be kids from the estate getting into the garden and causing trouble. Maybe that’s why she’s stopped going out in the garden – because she’s scared.”

  “That doesn’t explain the photographs though does it?”

  I can’t disagree.

  “Are you going to visit her?” I say. “I thought I’d pop in for half an hour.”

  “This evening? Good grief, no!” Julia exclaims. “I plan to have a nice long soak in the bath, room service, and then an early night. I don’t usually suffer from jet lag, but I’m exhausted. I’ll speak to you tomorrow.” And with those parting words, she rings off.