Paving-stones now covered the scrap of lawn my father had been so proud of. I picked a stem of foliage from the narrow border left behind. I slipped away. I didn’t remember getting here. I was very tired. I tried to remember the route to Kath’s family home. I knew it was not far, but which way?
I texted Mete again.
Who is this friend?
I walked up and down the pavement until a reply came.
Leila of course.
This was impossible. As I had thought, it had to be Bernadette. He had heard me talk of Leila in the past and mixed up her name with Bernadette’s. Mete sometimes confuses words and names. Even when we are speaking English together we have to talk about Tuesday and Thursday in Turkish – sail and per?embe – because he can neither hear nor properly pronounce the difference in English. It has led to terrible arguments where I have wasted hours waiting for him on one day or the other. I once had friends in Izmir named Lucy and Louise. He called them both Lu-icy and hoped for the best. Those words sound similar, though. Bernadette and Leila are hardly easy to confuse. But he was tired and, after all, had only met Bernadette once before.
I read Mete’s texts again. I closed my eyes and opened them. I was in Istanbul, walking beside Mete. I closed and opened them again. I was nowhere. Then I was here, in the village. There was another cigarette in my hand. I was acting like the person I used to be, years ago. I flicked ash on the pavement as I clopped along the street in my pointy, muddy shoes.
I must know who is with Mete now. I pull on my shoes, button up the big coat, and tiptoe onto the landing and downstairs. It takes me a moment to unlock the back door and then it swings open. I shut it gently behind me and crouch on the back step. The rain has stopped. The sky is clear and the stars prickle my skin, as if spines are dropping from their rays. The cold stings my nose. We said we would only send texts: calls are too expensive. The phone rings and rings. He must be asleep. I wonder if this woman, my friend, is still there and whether she can hear the phone ringing and is wondering whether or not to wake him. Then I get his voicemail message. It is not even his own voice but some pre-recorded woman. I press ‘end call’.
I remember that I also have Bernadette’s phone number and scroll through my call register to find it. I dial the number.
‘Hello?’ She answers quickly, no trace of tiredness in her voice.
‘Bernadette. It’s Isabel. How are you?’
‘Oh, not so bad. Got a headache I’ve had for days. Sorry I never returned to see you in Istanbul. I had to get back to London in the end. I don’t like this travelling thing. I was homesick so I went straight to Athens and flew home. I should just stay at home, I’ve discovered. Are you calling me from Istanbul? What’s this going to cost us?’
‘I’m not sure where the phone thinks it’s calling from but I’m in Britain, on the edge of the moors where I grew up.’
‘Oh.’
‘I thought you were in Istanbul now, with Mete.’
‘No.’
Bernadette is not lying. I know it. I doubt that she could lie if she wanted to.
‘We’re speaking to each other in the same country, then. That seems funny. Never mind. Sorry I bothered you. It’s late, isn’t it?’
‘It’s all right. I wasn’t in the middle of anything. Call me any time.’
‘Thanks. It was good to see you in Istanbul last week.’
‘Yeah. You too.’
“Bye, Bernadette.’
‘Goodbye.’
So no one is in my flat but Mete and Elif. I suppose I’m relieved to know this, but now I worry about Mete.
‘What’s she writing?’ I once asked Bernadette about Maggie. ‘I know it’s called The Missing Girls’ Club, but what’s the story? Is it all right to ask her?’
Maggie used to go to her study and type for hours at a time. I’d hear her, tap-tapping away. George had a new computer with a word-processing program but Maggie said she would always keep her typewriter. Sometimes I became so used to the sound of the typewriter that I only noticed it when it stopped. She would say whether or not the book was going well and would tell us how many chapters she had written, but she never discussed the plot. Leila’s name was mentioned from time to time. ‘Leila’s had a good day today,’ she’d say. ‘Getting up to all sorts.’
‘Why don’t you go up and see? She leaves the door open. She doesn’t lock her stuff away or anything.’
‘Have you looked?’
Bernadette shrugged. ‘I couldn’t care less what’s in her books. I’m not going to read them.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not interested. I don’t read books.’
‘I can’t look, though. I probably shouldn’t. What do you think?’
As I have mentioned, Maggie’s books were usually more embarrassing to me than interesting, but the title of this one intrigued me. The only missing girl I knew of was Julia. I was convinced that the book must have something to do with her.
‘Go and look.’
‘No, no. It would be wrong.’
Maggie was leaving for the shop. I said goodbye to her in the hall and went upstairs to watch from the landing window. She has definitely walked along the street and cannot be back within the next five minutes now, even if she has forgotten something. I pushed open the bedroom door and went to look beside the typewriter.
I flicked through the pages of The Missing Girls’ Club but couldn’t find Leila. I read parts in detail and I skipped pages in between. A rich philanderer had been murdered. On investigation it transpired that before his death he had tried to contact five ex-girlfriends he had treated badly, begging for reconciliation. The women discovered each other, worked together to set a trap and, eventually, murdered him. The police couldn’t work out which of the five was guilty and they all went missing before the police could interview them. In the last chapter I learned that the women had moved from London to different parts of the English countryside and created new identities for themselves. One was an art teacher on the North York moors. Another followed her childhood dream to work on a farm. There was no character called Leila.
I heard someone moving around on the landing and assumed it was Bernadette. She was in the bathroom with the taps running. Then the bathroom door opened. I kept still. The bedroom door opened. George and I screamed together. He was naked, but for the towel over his arm.
‘Hello, Isabel. Sorry. So sorry.’
George backed out of the room. I replaced the pages of Maggie’s novel and waited until I heard the bathroom door shut once again.
I sat on my bed with the covers over my head for the next half-hour.
‘Sorry about earlier,’ he said to me later, calm as anything. I suppose he was embarrassed, too, but was trying to make me feel better. I pretended not to hear him. I could think of nothing to say. And now he would tell Maggie about this, that I had been snooping at her book.
I loved working in the shop but because of Maggie, or perhaps because of Owen, one day I had to leave. I had to go far away from the shop and from Maggie’s house.
George’s Second-hand and Antiquarian Books was made up of three small, interconnecting rooms on the ground floor, and a tiny basement. I spent most of my days in the basement where there was no window, just a light on the ceiling that never worked and a standard lamp in the corner. There was also a kettle down there, a broken armchair and a couple of cushions. I would climb down the ladder early in the morning and only surface when I needed to carry a box of books up or down. Maggie taught me the pricing system so I sat, usually at the bottom of the ladder down to the basement, with a pencil and wrote the prices carefully inside the covers.
Even with the lights on, the shop was always dark. Maggie and George took it in turns to work at the till. George was a smiling, grey-haired man who peered at the world over the top of his spectacles. He taught an evening class in drama and acted with the local dramatic society. In the shop he was almost silent. Maggie and George communicated in hushed voices and
exaggerated gestures even when the shop was empty. I think they enjoyed the theatre of it.
I liked to sit among the books, reading extracts between pricing and stacking them. Sometimes I worked on all fours, sorting through new books, putting them in piles according to their categories. I liked looking inside them for names, inscriptions and dates. People used all sorts of things as bookmarks. I found photographs, postcards, bank statements, receipts and letters. There was once a letter from a clinic telling a woman that her smear test showed no abnormalities. I put the photographs around the wall and created an odd assortment of friends. There was a christening, a wedding, holiday and party snaps. One showed a group of girls, about my age, holding pints of beer and laughing, pink-faced, at the camera. I used to look at the photo and wonder who they were. There was also a photograph of an empty park with leaves rustling on the grass. When I gazed at the scene, I could feel the leaves around my shoes, the cold wind against my ears.
I had been working at the shop for a few weeks when I found a box of books with ‘Leila’ scrawled on the side in thick black ink. I wondered why she had her own box and if, perhaps, it contained books that Maggie thought Leila would read. They were mostly classic novels. There was a book called Fear of Flying which I thought to be about flying. I found Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin and hid it under a pile of dictionaries. I imagined Leila reading these books in the white bedroom. When no one was around I read them, a few pages at a time. At Maggie’s house I read and reread Jane Eyre but here I read Leila’s books. The pictures in my mind of Owen and Mr McCreadie were drawn in hazier lines as I began to leave them behind. In one book I discovered a character named Leila and wondered if this was where Maggie had found the name for her novel.
I often went out with Bernadette. I never knew whether she enjoyed or wanted my company but she would slouch along with me to the park, or we would walk by the river for hours at a time. We didn’t talk about ourselves but what we could see around us, boats, kissing couples, traffic jams. We went to the cinema or theatre, occasionally to the pub. I had enough money to pay for both of us, and Bernadette was happy to let me. I never understood Bernadette’s situation but I liked the way she seemed to belong to no one, seemed to live outside any kind of system. Her face softened as I grew to know her. As the layers peeled off I began to catch glimpses of the person who might once have been a happily married opera singer.
Maggie would come looking for me, sometimes, if I had been gone for long, if it was getting dark. I always told her not to. I reminded her that I was nineteen and perfectly capable of fending for myself but Maggie would tell me that I had to make allowances. ‘I know I’m an interfering old woman, but indulge me, won’t you? Just for a little while. We don’t want to lose you again.’
‘It’s all right, Maggie. I don’t mind. I really don’t mind.’ And I would laugh. I also laughed whenever she bought me a quarter of toffees or gave me a packet of tissues to carry in my pocket. Yet if we went to the pub together, she was happy to treat me as a drinking partner, gossiping with me about men and sex, always probing to find out whether I had slept with Owen, whether there had been any other boys. I told her the answer to both questions was no, and she would sigh. I once heard her say to George, ‘I’m sure Isabel was more than just friends with Sheila’s son. I think they were sleeping together. I’m sure of it.’
A special customer in New York ordered a rare book from the shop. Professor Mehmet Parlak was a world authority on Middle Eastern history and we had a first edition of an illustrated history of the Russo-Turkish Wars. It was heavy and expensive, and Maggie decided that the book should be delivered by hand. Without telling me, she bought me a return ticket to New York.
‘You could visit Leila,’ she joked. ‘That’s where I sent her. Ha-ha-ha.’
‘Maggie, I don’t want to go. I’m not interested in travel. I won’t know how to do things.’
Maggie told me that Professor Parlak was an important customer and it was worth paying for my flight to make sure the book arrived safely in his hands. I didn’t want to leave the basement of Maggie and George’s shop. I had found a safe place and I was happy. In an unknown city I would be lost, could get blown away. I became angry.
‘Why don’t you go instead? You know him. You know New York and how to get around.’
‘I would if I could. Mehmet is an old flame of mine from a long time ago, before I met George. It was a fling, nothing more, but George knows about it and he’d hate me to go. He’s not a jealous man by any means but we’ve had our ups and downs. It’s always worse, of course, when the competition is in another country. I don’t want to cause any upset but I do want Mehmet to get the book safely. You’ll like him. When he learns that you’re my niece he’ll be delighted. He’ll probably take you to dinner or something. If he offers, let him. He’s charming and funny, and rich, too.’ She nudged me. ‘I think you’re getting very het up about nothing.’
‘But, Maggie, I don’t think I’ve got time to go to New York.’
‘What on earth were you planning to do instead that’s so important?’
‘I was going to sign up for a dance class and I need to go to the dentist. A bit chipped off my tooth last week so I need to get it seen to as soon as I can.’
‘For goodness’ sake. I’m asking you to go for a couple of days. There’s time for you to go to the bloody dentist and a dance class as well. Isabel, this is an opportunity for you to see a bit of the world. You told me you wanted to travel.’
‘Did I?’
‘Well, of course you do. I wanted to travel at your age but I never had the opportunity. No, you need to have fun, expand your horizons. You’ll love it when you get there.’
‘Where will I stay?’
‘I’ll book you into a nice hotel. You could be doing it for yourself but I’ll sort you out this time. It’s what you need. If you stay at the bookshop for ever you’ll turn into a pile ofdust. You’ll be like that crumbling old book we found yesterday.’
I had pulled the book out from under the radiator. As soon as I tried to dust the cover to look at it, the title disappeared and fell away in powder and flakes.
‘I won’t know anybody. It’ll be horrible. I don’t want to go on my own.’
I was probably afraid that Maggie was sending me away because she didn’t want me any more, that I would slip out of the picture-frame into the land of the missing and not find my way back again.
‘Mehmet is a lovely man. He’s very friendly.’
‘I don’t know him.’
Maggie was quiet for a while. I knew she had not given in but was dreaming up ways to persuade me. Eventually she spoke, but it took her two or three attempts to articulate her idea. ‘I’ll tell you what to do. Imagine you are Leila.’
‘Your character from the book?’
‘She goes offto New York to live because she’s an adventurer. I told you. She doesn’t worry herself stupid about a new experience. She can’t wait. And that’s why it works out for her.’
‘But she isn’t real.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Good grief, Isabel. Have an imagination. The point is that she can be a version of you, or you of her. Use her as your role model. Think to yourself, What would Leila do in this situation? and you’ll be able to do anything in this world.’
I went to sleep dreaming of meeting Leila. I had many dreams about her. Some were frightening. What if I met her and she didn’t like me? Leila was impatient, an adventurer. I was a homebody and a drip, and I knew it. But often the dreams were rich and beautiful, and when I woke up I tried to sleep again to finish off the dream. I had a sense that Maggie had not told me everything about this trip but I didn’t worry. I thought perhaps it had something to do with the professor, her old flame. I wondered if she was trying to match-make me with someone in New York. The professor? Surely he must be too old for me. Perhaps she wanted to rekindle her own romance with him and I was a go-between.
The next day another letter from Owen arrived. I
n this one he told me that he was ready to come and see me. We had to talk about Julia. He was angry and I was the only person he could speak to. That stupid Julia was getting inside his head and wouldn’t leave him be. He was in London and wanted to meet me in the next few days.
Maggie stood behind me and read the letter over my shoulder. ‘You should call him.’
‘I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to think about any of that stuff any more. How does he even know I’m here?’
‘I must have mentioned it to Sheila. Sorry, I didn’t think. Why don’t you just meet him?’
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I’m going to New York to deliver a book.’
I took Maggie’s advice, and in New York I pretended to be Leila. I enjoyed the heat and the noise, the speed, the distance from home as I sat in cafes and walked in Central Park. I met the professor and he invited me for lunch. In the afternoon we strolled around the university campus and he took me to his study to see his collection of picture books on East and Central Asia. He told me that, if I wished to travel more, I should go to Turkey next. I must have expressed interest or even excitement at this – after all, Leila would have done – because Mehmet then gave me the addresses of his brothers and sisters in Istanbul and Izmir. One brother had a bar in a resort on the Aegean near Izmir and, if I wanted, I could work there for the summer. He would write to his brother and recommend me. I tucked the paper into my pocket and kissed him on both cheeks. He asked me how Maggie was. My dear and beautiful Margaret Eva. I told him that she was fine but, even as I said it, I knew that it was time for me to move away from Maggie and the bookshop. Leila seemed willing to act as a kind of guide to help me navigate my new life. Owen’s letters were dropping through the letterbox almost daily – and it was Maggie’s fault – but Leila and I were headed for Turkey.
The Missing Person's Guide to Love Page 19