A Kind of Vanishing

by Lesley Thomson

  As the train left London, Chris had peered out of the railway carriage’s dirty windows at a shantytown of car breaker and rolling stock yards, disused offices and factories with broken windows. Even the flourishing bursts of buddleia growing between the buildings were unnatural and ugly. The Escher-tangle of viaducts and bridges, the boarded-up arches, some patched with corrugated iron, reminded Chris of the constructions she had made as a child, piling on extensions, roofing in enclosures with coasters, playing cards, and bits of cereal packet to make a warren that covered the carpet. Lying on her front, Chris would peep inside, longing to enter these labyrinths. Then it was bedtime and she was never allowed to keep them and would have to dismantle them and tidy everything away. On the train it occurred to Chris that grownups were no different, their buildings were haphazard, created without care, extensions added at random with no concern for design or beauty and then left neglected and forgotten. They were not told to clear them away before bedtime. Maybe that was the thing about growing up, you could create whatever mess you liked.

  Her journey to Victoria station had been jaundiced with crazed examples of humanity. All the commuters were paltry and mean, raddled and reptilian, clammy and lantern-jawed. She could see why Alice wouldn’t go out.

  Except it wasn’t true, Alice had been out of the flat many times. She had gone to the man’s funeral the day before yesterday, the train ticket proved that. Chris had been scared of how murderous she felt. Yet underneath still, like an Achilles heel, was the insidious threat to this new will power: Chris could not help speculating wistfully about what her Mum might be doing at that moment, sitting by herself in the living room, spying on the neighbours in the windows of the other flats and making up lives for them because she didn’t have one of her own.

  The train had rumbled above ragged strips of back gardens, many devoured by geometric conservatories with matching patios and dotted with primary coloured children’s slides and swings, others by piles of tyres and rusting shapes heaped amidst a confetti of litter. Shaking off the city’s suburbia – a mishmash of less coveted Victorian housing, and new-build cul-de-sacs – the train had left London behind. At last clattering out of the tunnel that cut through the South Downs, her carriage had been flooded with sunlight as it raced through lush green pastures, alongside a river lit by dancing darts of light.

  Chris had jumped down on to the platform into a place where nothing had been left to chance or erected with cold pragmatism. She was incredulous to see immaculate hanging baskets and octagonal tubs on a station platform.

  She had been the only person to get off at Charbury and there was no ticket collector. She had faltered yet again as the train receded to a flat shape and vanished under the bridge, leaving her with an unremitting click replacing the clunkety-clunk of the carriages. The clicking had grown louder as she became aware of it, hesitating and entirely bereft on the deserted platform in the baking heat. For a ridiculous moment Chris had assumed it was her heartbeat. Two enormous digital clocks hung from the canopies. The time on both was identical and completely wrong: ten past eleven when it had been nearly one. Nothing was as it seemed or as it should be.

  As she had paused outside the shuttered booking office unconsciously seeking some small interaction, it dawned on Chris that Alice would never have killed herself. All along she had only been concerned with concealment. Chris had to reassess every part of her life. Alice was not agoraphobic; she didn’t go out because she was hiding. Her parents had not been killed in a car crash on the Great West Road in Chiswick. It made a joke out of Chris’s conviction, while peeping through the wrought iron gates of the brewery, that her grandparents were present. There had never been anyone who loved her keeping watch over her. All the time Alice’s real mother was living in a cottage miles away in some village and her Dad had died only eight years ago, thinking his daughter was dead and never knowing he had a grand-daughter who would have loved him.

  For some insane reason, Alice had fooled everyone.

  Chris was crushed by the weight of the pretend years, she was overwhelmed by layers of fake memory, made-up names and made-up places. Her past was quicksand into which solid events like birthdays and Christmas, happy stories of her Mum’s early childhood, of her own childhood and every cherished assumption had sunk without trace. She couldn’t even trust her own experience. As the fables that had moulded her were swallowed in eternal stasis, Chris was a blank page. The terrible enormity of Alice’s deception and its far, far-reaching repercussions had made it impossible for Chris to be near Alice. It was a deception beyond her imaginings. Now she knew that there were more chilling ways of absenting yourself from those who love you than committing suicide.

  A young woman who survived by taking action, Chris was doing the only thing open to her. She would find Alice’s mother and put everything straight.

  At Lewes where she had changed trains, Chris had bought a map covering Newhaven to Eastbourne, but now saw she wouldn’t need it. It would be easy to find Alice’s cottage. She could already see the church spire with its perky cockerel weathervane, over grey slate rooftops and a clump of silvery, green trees at the bend in the road. Halfway down the lane she spotted a sign attached to a lamp-post for the post office and church. Nothing was left to chance. She had noted down that the cottage was next to the post office from a newspaper interview with Kathleen Howland. There was a big chance that Mrs Howland wouldn’t be in, the article had described how she went out regularly searching for her missing daughter. Over the years she had been to all the cities in Britain, sticking posters to tree trunks and on to walls and lamp-posts, getting them displayed in shop windows, and tirelessly handing them to shoppers in malls and high streets up and down the country.

  Missing. Can you help?

  Chris recalled the words with mounting anger. Alice could have helped.

  Mrs Howland had scoured districts in London, ridden the Circle line in both directions, even struck up conversation with beggars in the streets. The reporter had hinted that her searching was indiscriminate, driven by Mrs Howland’s certainty, ‘call it a mother’s instinct’ that Alice was alive. She would not rest until she found her. It was clear to Chris that the man who had written the story thought Alice Howland was dead and Mrs Howland in need of medical help.

  Alice was not dead.

  An Evening Argus headline outside the village stores declared ‘Death Crash: Car was Flying’. There were more flowering tubs outside the shop, Chris was hemmed in by flowers, fresh and sweet smelling. She had never seen so much trouble taken in a street before. She crossed the road and went up to the shop window. Now that she was here, she was cowed by what she was about to do and keen to put off arriving. It had been the hardest thing Chris had ever achieved, to smile, to help with tea, and to appear to share in Alice’s supposed triumph in leaving the flat for the first time in at least ten years. It was only later in bed, her body thrilling with inchoate fury at her Mum’s betrayal, that Chris reached her decision. Indeed it was less of a decision than a viciously inspired impulse for revenge.

  Now Chris was the one who knew the facts. Now she knew more than Alice. Except that once she was here in the village where Alice had lived, she was overawed by the mundane actuality of the deserted lane, the tidy cottages and of Charbury Stores with its adverts for first day covers and a jaunty poster for the summer fête. Chris pressed her nose to the glass to read the postcards slotted in a plastic holder dangling from a rubber sucker. The items advertised were eclectic and eccentric: a motorised mobility buggy with waterproof shopping basket for £900, hardly used; piano lessons at £10 per half hour; domestic help required for six and a half hours at £40 plus travel expenses; purple bunk beds hardly used.

  An elderly woman with a florid complexion emphasised by her sixties-style make-up, tightly clad in a bright blue overall, bustled out of the shop and shut the door behind her making the bell inside jangle discordantly. She stopped in surprise when she saw Chris:

  ‘Oooh! Did
you want something, dear? Post office counter’s shut, but anything else?’

  ‘No, that is…’

  ‘Only I’m closing for lunch. Back in an hour, but if you’re quick…’

  Chris cast around for something trivial to explain her presence. Whatever she came up with would inconvenience the postmistress who was moving away from the door. All Chris could think of were the bunk beds.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you. Just looking.’ The cliché fitted her new counterfeit self.

  The woman appeared satisfied and muttering words that sounded to Chris like ‘two Russians flats’ vanished around the corner of the building. Chris put her hands to her cheeks. She had so nearly given herself away. One of the articles had said that since Alice Howland had disappeared, the village had been ‘overrun’ by the media and sightseers, many with teddy bears and other stuffed animals, on anniversaries, on Alice’s birthday, when Mr Howland had died; or when another child went missing. So the villagers were less friendly to outsiders, they no longer welcomed them as allies in the search for Alice. They guarded their privacy, and were frustrated by invasions from as far away as America and Australia.

  Would Mrs Howland guess her connection to Alice? Chris knew she looked like Alice. She had been proud of this when she was little; with no other family, at least she belonged with her Mum. When she became a teenager the idea had horrified her. Did she too have that grim expression and do that stupid thing with her mouth when she was thinking? Did she roll a sweet wrapper into a tight ball between two praying mantis hands? Chris wanted to break the news to Kathleen in her own time and not have her uncanny resemblance to the missing girl do it for her. Although she was twice the age that Alice had been when she went missing, still Mrs Howland might see her little daughter in her. Chris was the only person who knew Alice’s hair had darkened and was cut into a short bob that didn’t suit her. She was the only person who knew that Alice was smaller than might have been expected, since one of the articles had said she was tall for her age. Chris was the only person who knew what Alice looked like now.

  She sensed a holding of breath in the air and glanced up and down the lane. It was lunchtime in the middle of the week, which could explain why there was no one around. Few cars were parked, which added to the timeless impression. An old motor scooter by the kerb was padlocked to a bucket of set concrete. So they did expect some crime here.

  Apart from Charbury Stores there were only houses on this stretch of the lane. Chris knew from the map that the road went past the church. It was a village, but she would have expected to see at least one person driving or perhaps walking from the station. Chris began to suspect she was being observed, but all the windows were blank. She thought of Alice behind her lace curtains but the image had no substance. She didn’t know Alice, so she couldn’t imagine her.

  Still feigning interest in the cards in the post office window, Chris turned furtively to look at the cottage next door. It was a compact little house on two levels with sash windows, one up, one down, to the right of the front door. There was yet another hanging basket outside the door, but this one was full of dead stuff, pale withered fronds fringing the rim, the chain rusting. In contrast, the privet hedge was trimmed so neatly that individual leaves were not apparent. As this blended in with the one next door, Chris guessed the neighbours had lumped it in with theirs. The cottage was at the end of a terrace of four. Chris remembered from her notes that they had been workers’ houses, part of an estate owned in the nineteenth century by the Ramsay family, and now almost all of them sold off. All the doors were painted green. Chris had read that the Ramsays still owned a large house just outside the village, with about ten acres of the original land. She had also read that the friend Alice had been playing with that afternoon was called Eleanor Ramsay, and was the youngest daughter of the dead professor.

  Chris panicked. She didn’t have a number. This might be the wrong house. It might be the one at the other end of the terrace, or it might be none of them. She had trusted her memory, reluctant to write too much down in case Alice caught her. She shut her eyes. The house in the picture had been to the right of the shop.

  It was a hot summer’s day in 1968 and Chris was Alice hurrying home from her brilliant game of hide and seek, tired, contented and ready for tea. As she pushed open the warped, wooden gate and tried unsuccessfully to latch it back, she imagined skipping up to the front door, or up the side path to go in through the kitchen as she had read Alice usually did. She could call out: ‘I’m back!’ to her Mum and Dad. Chris had scribbled down that Alice’s Dad had died of a broken heart, which was a bit far-fetched. Chris didn’t know what having a father was like. She doubted Gary would die of a broken heart, or that he even had one. Her mother had said she didn’t know much about him, just as she had hardly known her own father. As if the fact that she had done without a Dad meant that Chris should do so too without complaining. Alice’s deprivations always had to be greater than her daughter’s. When Chris questioned her about the man who had got her pregnant, Alice would shrug her shoulders and explain it away: the sex with different men, drunk at parties, a bathroom floor, a bed piled with coats. What’s in a name? The main thing was she had been happy at the time. So Chris could be happy too. Besides she had been young, it was easy to make mistakes when you were too young to know better.

  Everyone made mistakes.

  Chris would stop her Mum, furious at Alice’s stupidity for letting facts escape, and not bothering to find out more about the man who she had known for about an hour at a party, but who Chris would not know for the rest of her life. At eighteen Chris already knew better. Now it occurred to her that perhaps the man on the bathroom floor was made up too. After all why had Alice disappeared when she was nine? What had she been doing all those years? Who was she hiding from? Chris was dizzy with questions. There was too much she was scared to know.

  The scrap of grass in front of the house had dried yellow. Weeds had forced their way between the terracotta bricks on the path and around a cracked pot of woody lavender and thistles. The paint on the front door and on the soffits under the eaves was peeling and there were tiles missing from the roof. Alice could have kept it looking lovely if she had cared to. As Chris hesitated before lifting the doorknocker she was surprised that a house in Charbury was allowed to be so neglected; the locals must disapprove. She supposed Mrs Howland was excused.

  Chris gave two tentative taps, she would go home if there was no reply. She was sure now there wouldn’t be. The house showed no sign of life. As she waited, flicking back her hair, and very nervous, switching her bag to her other shoulder, she hoped Mrs Howland was out.

  From inside the house came a muffled ringing, Chris became nervous as the ringing grew louder and louder. The sound came from her bag. She rummaged furiously in every compartment before finding her mobile in the outside pocket.

  ‘Chris, is that you?’ Her mother always asked the same question, which Chris took as an admonition that she was not with her since it would obviously be her. Now she added a more sinister interpretation. Alice could not afford to have her daughter roam free doing what she pleased. She would probably have liked to have prevented her leaving the flat at all.

  ‘Of course it is,’ Chris snapped.

  ‘Where are you?’

  There was a noise on the other side of the door, a scuffling, a sliding of bolts. The door creaked open. Chris was looking down, the phone clamped to her ear and first saw sensible shoes with light coloured soles, fixed with velcro straps, then a creased trouser leg hanging loosely around a thin bony ankle.

  ‘I can’t talk now.’

  ‘What do you mean? Just tell me where you are.’

  She was guided inside. She had no sense of walking. Objects floated past her, as a hand lightly caressed her shoulder. A dark wooden hat stand laden with garments – a red anorak, a man’s trilby, a walking stick, a plastic mac, a canvas shopping bag. She was Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole to Wonderland, a barometer poin
ting to Rain floated by, followed by a print of a dewy-eyed boy in a straw hat, hands in the pocket of baggy trousers. A gas meter screwed to a thick board above a doorway looked like a school metal work exercise. Chris hissed into the mouthpiece:

  ‘I’m with your mother!’

  She snapped shut the telephone and turned it off. She was confronted by a tan sofa facing an upright chair with wooden arms. On a hearse-like television with spindly legs a framed photograph of Alice Howland smiled right at her. Chris recognised the smile only too well.

  ‘Sit down. Can I get you tea, a glass of water? Here, let me take your jacket, you must be sweltering.’

  Chris allowed herself to be led to the sofa, which received her with a sigh.

  ‘A cup of tea would be nice.’ She remembered her manners. ‘…but please don’t go to any trouble. Can I help?’

  ‘You’ve taken the trouble to come all this way, it’s the least I can do.’

  As the woman walked out of the room Chris noticed she didn’t pick her feet up properly, which would have annoyed Alice, who constantly nagged Chris about her posture. The backs of Mrs Howland’s heels dragged on the carpet and for a moment, in the doorway, she acted like she had forgotten something. Chris expected her to turn round and she put on a bright face in readiness, but then Mrs Howland continued with a more confident step and soon Chris heard the roar of a boiling kettle and the clinking of tea things.

  The room was dim, its small windows were covered by net curtains. Despite the scrubby front garden the room was tidy and a smell of polish lingered in the air, so it must have been cleaned recently. Chris noticed that the carpet was worn around the sofa and the chair and in a path out of the door. She hoped it was the same carpet that Alice would have played on, and then recalled something about her mother playing on floorboards and complaining it hurt her knees. Perhaps they had thought putting carpet down would entice her back.