‘Blimey, who took photographs? That’s a strange thing to do. Anyway, you’re here now.’ Kath sat down at the kitchen table. She nudged the other chair from under the table with her foot.
‘Yes, so it seems.’
‘And I’m so glad. I’m so glad to see you again. I can tell that life has been good to you in the end, after everything. Owen was never going to do as well as you. I tell you what, shall we do something together tomorrow? If you haven’t arranged to meet anyone else, we could go for a walk in the country, then find a pub for lunch. I’d like to spend a bit more time with you. When do you have to go back to Istanbul?’
‘I’m supposed to leave in the morning but do you know what? I applied for a job here today.’ I laughed again. ‘You won’t believe what came over me when I saw the new supermarket. I don’t know what I was thinking.’ I told her of my ten minutes in the supermarket and we laughed until our knees buckled, our sides hurt and we couldn’t breathe.
‘Do you really have to go back to Istanbul so soon?’ Kath wiped her eyes. ‘I can see lots of reasons why working at CostRight wouldn’t be the best thing for you to do – that beige uniform for one thing – but there are other jobs.’
‘I do, really.’ I realized we were not quite laughing at the same situation as I had neglected to tell Kath about John, Annie and our attempt to dig up the remains of Julia Smith. Should I explain? Not yet, but perhaps in the morning. ‘I suppose I could look into changing my ticket. I miss Mete and Elif so much, though. Oh, I don’t know. Let me think about it.’
We moved back into the living room to eat. We sat on the floor at the coffee-table and opened a second bottle of wine. Kath talked about her children, asked questions about my life in Istanbul. She wanted to know how I had ended up there but I couldn’t explain it well. It was late, I was tired, and I had forgotten the exact story.
‘I’d love to see more of you, Isabel. You haven’t changed, you know. You’re just the same. In fact, I have photographs somewhere. Shall we have a look at them?’
Kath opened a small cupboard in the corner of the room. Letters and loose photographs fell onto the floor. She flicked them to one side with her fingertips and rummaged around. Eventually she pulled out three or four thick albums, red and blue. We sat next to each other on the floor to see what was inside. The pictures lay under sticky plastic. Many pages had lost their stickiness and the photographs went lopsided as we flicked through.
‘Here’s the school trip to London. That’s the Cutty Sark.’
‘Oh, yes.’
A group of girls, familiar faces and hairstyles, stood in front of the ship. It was a flat, grey day. The water looked cold and the girls were drab in jeans and raincoats but they were trying to make the best of it, pulling faces at the camera.
‘Is that you there?’ Kath pointed to a girl at the end of the row whose face was not in focus.
‘I think it is, yes. I remember seeing the Cutty Sark but only vaguely. I don’t remember this picture being taken. The evidence says I was there, though.’
‘I don’t think Owen will be in any of these. I don’t seem to have been interested enough in the boys to have taken any pictures of them. But look, there s you and me on the bus.’
‘Is that Julia behind us?’
The back row of the bus was filled with boys, a whole heap of them, but in the centre was a girl. Her head was turned away and, again, Kath s camera shake had blurred the picture. The boys were just a lump of dark heads and blue legs. The girl was no more than a dark pony-tail, over a featureless face, and a white shirt.
‘It might be. I tend to forget about Julia. She comes back to me in the middle of the night sometimes, when I m feeling worried or depressed, or when I read bad stories in the newspapers. I always think of her in the science lab that time.’
‘Which time?’
‘Don’t you remember the day she tried to pierce her own ears? In chemistry with Mr Pilkington. It was hilarious. I fainted and there wasn’t even any blood.’ Kath shuddered. ‘Anyway, let me clear away the plates.’
She bumped her hip on the back of a chair as she left the room. I offered to help but she waved me away. She giggled again.
I did remember that day. It had been a disaster.
Julia showed up in the science lab one afternoon with a needle, a small silver stud earring, and an orange ice lolly wrapped up in a small towel. The classroom contained eight large square tables, each with gas taps, a big square sink, strange pockmarks and burns in the wood. Kath, Julia and I sat at a table in the back corner.
‘What are you doing with that?’ I asked. ‘You’re not going to eat it now? It’s going to melt.’
‘I know. That’s why I’ve got to do this quickly, when Mr Pilkington’s over with the boys.’
The boys in our class were riotous in all lessons but a particular pain in chemistry. Lab coats, safety goggles and Bunsen burners created a thrill they rarely found in other classes. Mr Pilkington would move from table to table trying to prevent fire, singed hair, broken test tubes, would try to stay on their good side by humouring their silliness and taking an interest in their jokes. The girls' side of the classroom was usually left to take care of itself, apart from the occasional perfunctory visit to see how our experiments were coming along.
‘Do what?’
Julia had heard that if you froze your ear-lobes with an ice cube, then stuck a needle in a flame for a few seconds, you could pierce your ears without pain or injury. There were no ice cubes to hand so she had been to the corner shop and bought the lolly. She wanted Kath or me to do the job. We winced and squealed at the very idea. Julia got angry. It was unfair, she snapped, because the rest of us had pierced ears but she couldn’t afford it. She called us cowards and said that we were pathetic and not her friends. She didn’t want to look like some virgin who had unpierced ears and still wore white knee socks. She was bare-legged that day, as always in the summer, but I understood what she meant. The ice lolly was beginning to drip from its paper packet so we had to hurry. I said I thought it would hurt and I couldn’t pierce her ears, but I agreed to hold up a hand mirror so that she could do it herself. Julia gave me a sarcastic ‘Oh, thank you so much.’ She grimaced and pressed the lolly against her right ear-lobe. A trickle of orange juice ran down her ear and neck onto the white collar of her school shirt. Kath and I watched, fascinated by Julia s stoicism, the unmoving scowl on her face. The ice turned slushy and crumbled over her fingers as she pressed it hard against her skin. Kath screwed up her face in horror and held the Bunsen burner forward so that Julia could put the needle into the flame with her free hand. When Julia thought her ear was cold enough and the needle hot enough, she took a deep breath and pushed the needle into her skin. It went through and stuck. She gasped in pain and fell forward to the table. Kath saw the needle sticking out, groaned, and fainted. She clonked her head on the table, then crumpled to the floor. Julia wouldn’t lift her head. Her dark hair spilled over the gas taps. She cradled her arms around her face and continued to gasp.
The rest of the class dropped their experiments to see what was happening. Stools crashed to the floor and a crowd formed. Mr Pilkington pushed through. Amid the fuss and chatter, his lab coat caught fire in the flame of our Bunsen burner. One of the boys put out the flame by banging it with a textbook until Mr Pilkington was shouting, ‘Yes, yes, you’ve put it out now, that’s quite enough thank you,’ and the boy moved away in a huff. ‘Sorry for saving your life.’ I stood beside Julia and tried to prise her hands and face from the table while Kath lay on the floor, a heavy white lump.
The school nurse removed the needle and disinfected Julia’s ear. Smelling-salts brought Kath round. Julia was embarrassed, afterwards, and threatened to punch the gob of anyone who mentioned the incident. I knew that she was furious with herself, not for trying it but for failing. A few weeks later she had her ears pierced by the local jeweller. She had the biggest gold hoops in the school. I think Owen paid for them.
K
ath returned with coffee. When she had wriggled into position on the floor, we opened another album.
‘Here’s one of your aunt Maggie.’
Maggie, Kath, Julia and I were sitting on a large rock on the hills. Maggie had her arms around Kath and me. Julia was holding on to Kath. She was smiling but her knuckles were tight on Kath’s sleeve. Our hair blew to the right in coarse lumps. We looked like mermaids under water.
‘I don’t remember this. Who took it?’
‘Your mum did.’
‘Did she? I suppose it was one of those Sunday-afternoon walks when we all got together.’
‘I think it was. I remember your mum and Maggie arguing a lot. They didn’t get on very well, did they?’
‘Chalk and cheese. I think there was some love underneath it all – maybe still is – but Maggie was too wild and unconventional for my family. The funny thing is, I’m not sure she ever did anything particularly daring or outrageous. It was an image she cultivated. My parents were much more eccentric in their attempts to be the most normal people in the village. In fact, Maggie’s life has been steady. Her books are a bit spicy but not shocking. Quite sweet, if anything. You should see the bookshop in Richmond. It’s like going back in time fifty years or more.’
‘She had a special kind of charm, though. I remember looking up to her and thinking she was wonderful. Her house always smelled amazing. Did she burn incense or something? Whatever it was, it seemed exotic back then. And Maggie was a good listener too. I remember pouring out my troubles to her when I thought I was overweight. She listened, then gave me a box of some kind of herbal tea to take home. She also told me something I didn’t really understand, that I should look around, choose myself a thin girl and pretend I was her, do all the things that girl would do. It was probably good advice but I didn’t follow it. I just wanted someone to moan to. Maggie was a sort of village elder for girls.’
‘It’s a pity she’d moved away by the time Julia disappeared. The whole thing was buried so quickly. If Maggie had been around she would have made people talk about it.’
‘I buy all her books. I don’t really read them but it seems disloyal not to.’
‘Is her identity out of the bag, then?’
‘It’s an open secret. People want to believe it’s someone who still lives around here so they pretend it isn’t her. Different names come up, usually women who live in old cottages on their own with lots of cats, but I think everyone who knew Maggie knows that she is Eva Carter.’
We flipped through the pages of the album for another half-hour. By now I was seeing double and my mouth was struggling to pronounce words properly.
I yawned.
‘I’ve worn you out, Izzie. You’ve had a long day. I expect you’re ready to sleep now. Is your stuff at the guesthouse?’
‘Yeah. I’ll leave it there and get it in the morning.’
‘Maybe we should phone to let them know you’re not coming.’
Now that I was snugly at Kath’s, Doreen Fatebene’s big house distorted itself in my mind. It was cold and creaky with hundreds of dark rooms and long, narrow corridors. Empty beds rocked and clattered in the rooms, as though the place were caught in a storm at sea.
‘I don’t think they’ll notice, not until breakfast. I could slope in then.’
‘I’ll give them a ring,’ Kath said. ‘I’m a bit tipsy but I think it’s for the best.’
Kath’s lips were stained black. Mine must have been too. I wiped them with the back of my hand and accidentally scratched my chin with my thumbnail. It hurt, and for some reason this surprised me.
I gave Kath the number for the Lake View. She dialled it and slurred into the phone that I wouldn’t be coming back tonight, after all. Doreen Fatebene wanted to know why and what had happened. She said my bag was a security issue and she might have to call the police. Kath gave her address so that the police could bring the bag round, if necessary. She was laughing as she put down the phone.
As we cleared away our plates and glasses, Kath said, casually, ‘So, had you kept in touch with Owen?’
‘Me? No. Not at all. I’d almost forgotten about him.’
‘I thought you might have kept up your friendship, you know, when that stuff was all over. I thought the two of you might have stayed – uh – friends.’
‘No.’
‘Did you try?’
‘No.’
I told Kath of my suspicions. I did not mention my day’s work, just that I had always wondered about Owen and what he might have done one afternoon in 1982.
Kath considered my words. ‘Funny how when the idea’s in your head it’s hard to shake it out again. I always assumed some stranger in a car abducted her, someone who didn’t live round here. That was what they led us to believe, isn’t it? Awful for her parents. Her mother became an alcoholic after that.’
‘She was already an alcoholic, wasn’t she?’
‘Was she?’
‘I thought so. Or her father was. I’m not sure any more.’
Kath had got it wrong, I knew, but it didn’t matter.
‘I might be wrong about Owen,’ I said.
‘We’ll never know.’
I considered this a disappointing response. We might find out, if only people would make the effort.
Kath changed the subject. ‘I always envied you, Izzie. It’s hard to believe, in the light of what happened, but I felt envious and relieved at the same time when you and Owen were arrested. You’d had this adventure without me. And yet, of course, I was glad I hadn’t gone out that day and ended up in the same situation. I was very confused about it all.’
‘If you had come with us, I’m sure we would never have done it. You were a good influence on people.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You were.’
‘I should have written to you or visited you and Owen in prison. Especially you. I could have visited you easily.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I wasn’t exactly round the corner.’
‘I was scared. I think I was waiting for you to say that it would be all right, that I could go. I wasn’t able to make that kind of decision for myself. I always wondered what became of you. I’m so glad it’s turned out well. Your life has been more exciting than mine.’
Kath stroked the corner square of the crocheted blanket, poked her finger through one of the small holes. Her guilt was nice to know about but it changed nothing. I didn’t want Kath to pity me. I don’t think I would have wanted her life.
‘I always knew it could so easily have been me.’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘It would never have been you.’
‘I almost came with you to the boat that day. I remember.’ Kath’s eyes misted and she rubbed her nose.
‘But you didn’t. You stayed at home to study. That was you.’
‘And look how things turned out. But you’re back now. The job application might have been a strange moment of madness but, still, won’t you want to come home more often now that you’ve done it once?’
‘I’ll have to see. This was a special occasion.’
I would sort it all out before morning. If there had been no Elif or Mete, I would come back, of course, but it was not so simple. Would Mete want to come and would I want him to? Would it be good for Elif to live here or would the place poison her too? Or would I poison Elif by returning to Istanbul and not solving the problems here? All I had to do was work it out in my head. Then I would know the answer, I could tell the police, and I could leave. It was not worth telling Kath about the allotment. We had found nothing. It was a secret between John, Annie and me. We turned out all the lights except the one in the hall, and I followed Kath upstairs. She showed me to the spare bedroom. It was large, with a double bed and an old-fashioned dressing-table, a tall oak wardrobe. The room looked out onto the street. Beyond the terraces of small houses I could see the school playing-fields. There was a piece of clothing, a sweatshirt perhaps, between the goalposts. I leaned my back against the window
to feel the sharp, cold glass on my arms and neck. I was smiling. Kath moved about in her room for twenty minutes or so and then her light went off.
I am in the garden again. There are no clear sounds, no birds or cars, but the night is noisy with the swaying of trees, water trickling from roof tiles, down pipes and drains. I am thinking of Maggie and trying to understand about Leila. I remember the pink mug on the shelf above the sink with LEILA in black capital letters. Who was drinking from that mug?
I call Bernadette.
‘Yeah? What? Can’t you sleep tonight?’
‘Bernadette, when you flew out to Istanbul, was there someone with you on the plane? You said something about a friend but I didn’t pay attention at the time.’ I use my free hand to rub my legs, try to warm them. My jaw is stiffening with cold.
‘There was Leila. Didn’t she talk to you?’
‘Leila?’
‘We sat together on the flight but we didn’t talk much. It was Leila’s idea for me to do the trip. She had air miles and helped me out with my ticket. I thought I told you that.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
I am panicking now, trying to remember conversations I had with Maggie that make no sense at all. All of a sudden everyone seems to think Leila is real.
‘Do you know what she wanted to do in Turkey?’
‘She lives there. She was going back to her husband. You know, the three of us were all in Maggie’s house at almost the same time, but you two never got to meet each other. We’re like sisters, in a way.’ Her voice is growing quieter, smaller, as if she is running away from me, into the distance, into rainy West London streets. ‘I don’t know if I can afford this call. Is it charging me as well as you?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know how it works. I’ll hang up now. Take care, Bernadette.’
‘Yeah, ‘bye.’ Her voice is tiny now, a speck of sound, and it disappears.
I must have slept. I am awake, not rested but confused, and I pick up Owen’s letter and the copy of Goose Island, stuff them into my coat pockets. My sense of why I’m doing this is vague. I walk down the street as I walked up it yesterday.
The Missing Person's Guide to Love Page 21