There were no books, newspapers, or even a clump of knitting in the room. No evidence of how Mrs Howland spent her time. A silver tankard had been placed on one side of a tiled mantelpiece and above, ranged along the wall too high and too far to the left, were three bronze plates embossed with ships in full sail. On the other side was a remote control for the television, the size of a brick. The room could have belonged to anyone.
But pride of place was given to the photograph. Chris shifted along the sofa and examined it. It was taken slightly from the side, with a fake backdrop of the sea and the sky behind it, still effective in black and white. A flick of fringe nearly reached one thin eyebrow, otherwise her hair was in two plaits held by elastic an inch from the ends. The plaits just reached her shoulders. She wore a cardigan and under this the brilliant white collar of her shirt was marginally too big for her, leaving a shadow at the back of her neck and increasing the appearance of frailty. She had never grown into it.
Yes she had.
Chris rushed over to help as Kathleen Howland came back carrying a tray. She was moving more easily than before, and without effort placed the tray on the sideboard. As she handed Chris a cup and saucer her hand shook, making the crockery rattle dangerously. Chris took it off her before the tea was spilt, and mumbled a mixture of thanks and helpless protest, as Mrs Howland lifted out a folding table from behind the armchair and set it up beside the settee.
As the two women sipped tea and nibbled on homemade fairy cakes topped with lemon icing, they looked at each other properly for the first time.
‘So, what can I tell you?’
‘I had to come. Once I knew. I had no choice.’ Chris blurted out the words.
‘Did you?’ Mrs Howland dabbed at her mouth with her serviette. Chris had forgotten about hers and picked it up, at once putting it down again without unfolding it.
‘I used to think it must be interesting doing what you do, meeting people, writing down what they say. Hearing their stories. Every day is different. But you all say it’s a job like any other. You could stay at home, but you wouldn’t get paid. So here you are!’
‘Oh, no I didn’t mean…’
‘Don’t worry, I understand.’ But she didn’t.
Chris shook her head impatiently as Mrs Howland offered her another cake.
‘I’m more thick skinned than they think. Also dear, let’s be honest, I need the publicity.’ She spoke in a quieter voice, almost a whisper: ‘I don’t want people forgetting. There’s a chance someone will read what any of you write, and, I don’t know, listen to their conscience and come clean.’
Chris scalded the roof of her mouth as she gulped her tea. Mrs Howland had been expecting her. She had assumed Chris was a journalist doing a piece on Alice. She didn’t know she was an eighteen-year-old who had come without her mother’s permission. Any minute now the real journalist would turn up and she would be exposed. The gushing scene that featured herself as the rescuer, the restorer, evaporated. Her own hand began to shake and she hastily put down the cup in case Mrs Howland thought she was making fun of her.
‘So, you’ll want to see her room? We kept it the same.’
‘I ought to be goi…’
The words trailed off because Chris had no intention of leaving. She would see the room, then tell Mrs Howland the truth and they could be out of the house before the real journalist arrived. She traipsed behind Mrs Howland up a steep dark stairway. Her shame at her duplicity increased as she saw Alice, running up and down these stairs, waiting on the landing outside her parents’ bedroom door in her new Brownies outfit or to wake them up on Christmas morning. Chris had adopted the stories Alice had told her and made them her own memories. Her mother had done what good liars do: she had kept as much to the truth as possible. So she had said her Dad was a postman and Chris knew the weight of his huge postman’s cap as the peak slipped over her eyes. Her arms ached, and her stomach swooped as they swung her high into the air between them with a one-two-whoaaghgh!
Chris had no better idea than Kathleen Howland what had happened to Alice after she failed to return home that afternoon. But she did know where to find her.
Alice’s mother didn’t open the bedroom door immediately and from the way she hesitated Chris thought for a wild second that there was someone in the room. She steeled herself in readiness. Then Mrs Howland let the door swing slowly open and stood aside.
Chris recoiled. ‘You go first.’
‘No dear, it’s better if you do. It’s not a big room.’
Chris practically stormed in to show Mrs Howland she wasn’t afraid.
The room was indeed small. There was just enough space for a child’s dressing table with a chair, a built-in cupboard and the bed. A beam of sunshine, thick with motes of dust, slanted across the faded candlewick bedspread and a white fluffy rug beside the bed. On the other side of the alcove to the cupboard was a set of shelves on which books – Enid Blyton, Winnie-the-Pooh, Alice in Wonderland and another called Ballet Shoes – were stacked neatly. On the shelf above were three Sindy dolls, propped up against the wall in symmetry. They looked brand new, but had been in her Mum’s stories so couldn’t be. Chris nearly made a sound as she spied the neat parade of shoes: brown sandals with crepe soles, silk ballet pumps, small Wellington boots, yellow woollen slippers with ladybird buttons. Two top shelves were empty. Alice had not stayed long enough to fill them.
There were no pictures on the walls, the dressing table was bare save for an ebony hairbrush and matching hand mirror that were unlikely possessions for an eight-year-old. Chris was disappointed: the room yielded no secrets. The things in it looked new, so obviously bought recently and never used. She realised that what she had most dreaded and most wanted were clues, a trail of signs that would link her to the Alice she had grown up with. Yet if Chris had believed in ghosts, or indeed had believed Alice was dead, she would have been convinced the house was haunted, for Alice’s presence filled the room.
‘What’s in the cupboard?’ She adopted the blunt curiosity of a reporter. One more minute and she would tell Mrs Howland the truth.
‘I’ll show you.’ She was used to showing people around her house, anticipating their questions, managing their responses. She tried twice to raise herself off the soft bed where she had been sitting, then with the air of a confident owner, sure of the verdict of the potential buyer, she opened the cupboard doors. Lavender talc clouded into the room and made Chris sneeze four times in quick succession.
‘Bless you.’ Mrs Howland had a kindly voice. So far Chris could see no resemblance between this calm, sensible woman and the neurotic obsessive described in the articles. ‘Sorry about that. The powder keeps the must at bay. Funnily enough I got that tip from dear Doctor Ramsay. Doctors have to deal with a lot of unpleasant odours, of course.’
Chris nodded sagely as she gazed at the open cupboard. It was crammed with clothes. At the bottom were plastic bags out of which Chris could see folded garments peeping: jumpers, tee-shirts, some with labels still attached. At the top was a charnel house of soft toys, beige, fawn and brown.
‘Most of this is new,’ Chris exclaimed, before she could stop herself.
‘I see things she’d like, dresses she’d look so pretty in, tops and such. I can’t resist them.’
The cupboard, packed with toys and clothes, was a shrine to a well-dressed, well-loved child. Chris recognised a shirt identical to the one she had worn about six years ago. Her mother had got it out of her catalogues. As a child Chris had learnt to submit to keeping things because they fitted, for it was she who would have to take them to the post office if they were too big, too small or just too horrible. Nowadays, she bought her own clothes, scouring charity shops or spending hours in Red or Dead, and dressing just how she wanted. Chris had always suspected that Alice bought her the clothes she would have liked to wear herself. Here was the living proof. A whole bloody wardrobe awaited her.
‘There’s something you should know…’ But Mrs Howland w
as speaking:
‘It’s not that I don’t know how it looks. I know she’s gone. I like, just for a little while, to feel what it’s like to choose something for my daughter. I get such pleasure, you know, well you will know. The cashier thinks I have a little girl, and so we can share the experience. Now I tell them she is a grandchild, a godchild. I’m too old to be her mother. Just to stroke the cloth and agree how hardwearing the cotton is, shake our heads at the scrapes they get into. I let myself be that person for a little while.’
‘My Mum still gets cross if I stain my clothes, she still treats me like a kid,’ Chris replied without thinking as she knelt before the mound of plastic bags.
‘The sales people are happy to go along with you. They only say what you want to hear. They are meant to make the customer comfortable, so that we enjoy what they call the buying process. I did a course on selling, for a job in Hanningtons, oh, this was years ago. Before Steve died. My back couldn’t take the standing…besides I didn’t like leaving the house empty every day.’
‘Did Alice wear any of these clothes?’
‘All the things on this side.’ Mrs Howland seemed anxious to prove the truth behind what Chris could see was only a stage set. ‘The skirt I found in Exeter, and the blouse too, we went there when Alice was six. This cardigan was hers too. She loved pink.’ Mrs Howland shook her head as she straightened the limp woollen sleeve. Then rousing herself: ‘I don’t keep all the new things. I take them to charity. Or return them, saying it’s wrong on her or doesn’t fit. They understand, children grow quickly, and they’re so fussy these days.’ Kathleen sat down heavily on the bed. Her tablet was wearing off. She would take another one after the girl had gone. She wanted her to leave now, but she owed her a proper time for coming all this way. But then there would be another visitor. Kathleen was alone a lot less than people knew.
She didn’t tell the girl that Steve had broken the mirror in Alice’s dressing table.
‘That’s seven years bad luck.’ She didn’t get cross with him often, just that one time.
‘We’ve had our share, what’s another ruddy seven years?’
Kathleen clasped her hands to prevent the girl seeing the tremor.
‘I know she’s dead.’
Chris was beside her.
‘Dead? No, she’s…’
‘After all this time, I don’t kid myself. If she were alive, she would have come back, wouldn’t she? I don’t really think she’s stuck at nine years old. People think I’m not quite the full… If Alice were alive she’d be a grown woman. She could come home if she wanted. Even if she treated me as a stranger, she’d have to at least visit.’
Chris hadn’t thought of that. Why hadn’t Alice come home?
‘You told the papers you knew she was alive!’ This was another betrayal. Chris was out of her depth; nothing was going according to plan. She should have told Alice to come herself instead of being so intent on getting all the glory. Mrs Howland wouldn’t believe Alice was alive. She must get a lot of weirdos knocking on her door claiming to have seen her daughter.
‘Papers print what they like. Besides, I say different things on different days. Depends on my mood. Since Alice went, I get asked all the time how I am coping. I say whatever comes into my head.’ Mrs Howland clicked shut the cupboard with a gesture of finality.
Chris longed to stay in the bedroom, to lie on the bed and read one of the books and listen to the seagulls.
She had expected they would return to the living room. Perhaps they would have another cup of tea, but Mrs Howland stopped in the hallway.
It was time to go.
‘You didn’t have a coat, did you?’ She stroked the collar of a girl’s anorak on the coat stand absently.
‘Just a jacket.’ Chris lifted it down because Mrs Howland wasn’t listening.
‘Forgive me saying so, but you are young. You seem…’
‘I’m eighteen.’
‘You’re not a journalist, are you?’ How did she ever think she could fool this wise old woman? Chris flushed crimson. She had treated Kathleen in just the way her Mum had treated Chris; as a pawn for her own ends.
Long, blonde hair. Blue eyes. Thin legs. Tall. Skin pale as a ghost.
Alive and living in South London.
Before Mrs Howland could speak, Chris heard herself speak:
‘I want you to come to London with me. I know where…’
Her head was in a vice and the breath was being squeezed out of her. Everything was convex and then concave. Chris smelled the sea and saw the word:
Alice.
Then everything went black.
Twenty-Two
Isabel lazily stroked more sun tan cream into her ankles and up her calves, rubbing it in with lingering strokes, noting with satisfaction how smooth her skin was, with no surface veins, which would be remarkable in a woman of over fifty let alone sixty. This comforting observation was straight away eclipsed by the sharp pains in her thigh and at the base of her spine as she stretched. She could not get Mark’s car out of her mind for long. Sunbathing helped. As she submitted to the heat, the watery image would be evaporated by the scorching sun, but every time she moved, her leg hurt and there it was again as if she was under water, her lungs bursting, groping desperately towards Mark.
Shifting about on the wonderfully soft mattress of her new lounger, Isabel applied circles of cream around her eyes with Impressionist dabs and kneaded it into her neck, wiping away the wrinkles. Finished. For a fraction of a second she was calm and content. Then an engulfing wave washed off the good feeling, leaving her old and shivering. She set the bottle on the table, next to her book, radio and empty coffee mug. Was the rest of her life going to be like this? One long to-do list marked off by a series of ticks.
Spots of sunlight flashed on the surface of the freshly filled pool: yellow and gold segments like exotic fish whose progress Isabel tried to follow across the rippling surface until they vanished. She had heard somewhere that gazing at sunshine on water made you happy. Something to do with serotonin, but she hadn’t listened to the medical bit.
Perhaps she did feel a bit better.
Isabel tried to build on this tenuous impression. They were almost back to normal, the pool had been restored, and she had got through the funeral. Now she might believe that nothing had happened. It was a Wednesday afternoon when Mark was usually in London. She told herself he would be home tonight as usual.
Only recently the garden and the house had been teeming with strangers. After the frenzy of trying to save Mark was over and they had driven off with his body, it seemed to Isabel a more measured, calmer crowd took over.
First more police: some in white jump suits like spacemen. One was a woman, which had irritated Isabel, who was more conventional than she preferred to think. They had told her that only when they had completed their measuring and photographing and questioning, could the car be taken out of the pool. Until then it had lain there, bubbling away like a hookah. Isabel had been frantic to right everything to how it had been before Mark drowned. But she had lost the impetus to do it herself. She had bullied Lucian to get on to Mr Bunting and his son to come and clean the pool right away. Lucian had argued, unconsciously imitating the police, which before she might have enjoyed.
‘They will be impeded by the presence of a motor vehicle.’
‘You can be such a prat!’ Isabel found giving her children unconditional love exhausting. ‘They’ll have lots of bookings at this time of year, we need to get in or it won’t happen. I’m not looking at this cesspool for the rest of the year.’
‘Do we actually need the pool?’ Now Lucian was Mark without the good bits.
‘I’ve called them. The police say that the car’s going this afternoon. Mr Bunting will be here in the morning at eight and the fence people on Saturday. Everything will be ready in time for Dad’s funeral.’
Gina was carrying a tray of tea out to the white overalls and didn’t stop.
As the car wa
s winched out of the pool Isabel had stood beside Gina to watch. She identified all the colours of the rainbow, and was saddened rather than outraged at the streams of oily water cascading out of the quarter lights. The bonnet tilted upwards and the car was once more inching up the steep hills of family holidays, as they all sang out in anthemic glee Breathe in, don’t move. First one to speak has to get out and walk! The radiator grill flashed as it caught the sun: a paean to
Mark’s polishing. Mark would have understood Gina’s need to witness everything. He too would have been rapping out instructions, warning them to treat his car with care. Shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare, Isabel had gazed up at her husband’s most coveted possession dangling uselessly. A twisting shadow darkened the patio, the car revolved slowly before swinging away from the pool as the crane chugged past the garage and up the drive. Although Mark’s body had been removed, Isabel didn’t feel he had gone until the crane disappeared round the bend in the lane. She walked back to the house, keeping pace with Gina, neither of them able to speak.
In lots of ways, Isabel reflected, as she let the sun take her over, Lucian and Gina were like herself; they got other people doing things, whether it was compensation for a faulty service, getting a price down or organising a funeral. Isabel twitched a hand to bat away the image of Lucian gazing forlornly at her whenever she was impatient with him. He was too sensitive. He and Eleanor were like Mark in that respect. Gina was made of sterner stuff. Mark had said it was apt that after marrying Jon, Gina took his name to become Gina Cross, because she so often was. But Mark had been crosser, that she wasn’t Gina Ramsay any more. He had taken her decision to change her name as a snub.
Of course he had been right.
When they were little, Isabel had felt powerless when her children bickered and had always relied on Mark to sort them out. Then she had hated to see their faces, white and staring, as he shouted and stamped. Each word was a bullet fired with precision, while Mark appeared to thrill with an electric current. She would feel she had let them down.
A Kind of Vanishing Page 24