by Liz Lawler
*
Waking from an evening nap, she stretched out on her lumpy sofa and felt an achy tightness in her breast. The dressing had to stay on, but she could peel an edge of it away from her skin to relieve the tension and she should take some more painkillers. Emily gazed around her living room, her eyes drawn to test patches of various greys she’d imagined painting the walls and wondered if the paint she’d bought a year ago for her bedroom would still be usable and not have gone hard by now. Maybe it would be better to start again with fresh paint and a different colour. Blue is so much prettier, don’t you think? She quickly tried to silence Zoe’s voice in her head. Sometimes, snatches of remembered conversations could steal hours of her day. They came without warning, tormenting her. Then the unrelenting guilt would set in. She had never admitted feeling this guilt to Eric in case he wanted to explore it further. Nothing he said could change what she felt, but if she told him about these intrusive thoughts, it might make him think that she had something more to hide.
She must never admit what she had done on the day of her sister’s disappearance to anyone. She had seen the evidence of her sister leaving the hospital, of her walking down the road used by business vehicles for deliveries to the hospital, just like the policeman had. This is the memory she needed cemented in her mind. Thinking back to yesterday, Emily now had to consider whether it was guilt and paranoia that had made her imagine that woman beside her. Was that why she never heard her speak? Because her imagination didn’t allow her to hear a voice? She breathed deeply, feeling her heart race at the thought of her mind being this fragile.
She had come a long way in this last year and was now able to fully concentrate on other things in her life. These last three weeks back at work had shown her this. Her mental health problems hadn’t stopped her doing her job. She knew her new colleagues regarded her as highly efficient. She needed no one to rely on, no hand to hold to show her the ropes of the job. She was highly trained. In emergency medicine, every form of illness and accident entered through the same door and there was no stepping back and waiting for others to come and do a job for you. She had gained a lifetime of experience in that department and had no anxiety about her ability.
Now she needed to listen to the warning signs of her own body or eventually she would be of no help to anyone. Especially to Zoe. Neglecting herself had to stop right now. She needed to be both mentally and physically strong. Working had so far been the best medicine and today she may well have jeopardised that. She needed to put that right and reassure Barrows that she was not a liability. She picked up her iPad from the small coffee table by her side and googled Staff Portal for The Windsor Bridge Hospital where she signed in and found Barrows’ work email address, hoping the woman checked her emails regularly. Writing quickly, she thanked the ward sister for looking after her and apologised for her outburst that morning. She said that after sleeping well this afternoon she remembered having a nightmare in the night, which had almost certainly contributed, with the drugs she’d been given, to her believing that what she had dreamed was real. She assured her that her thinking was now straight and that she was looking forward to returning to work.
Once she had sent the email, she leaned back and closed her eyes, trying to imagine that it was her sister she had seen in the bed beside her, her sister lying there in a yellow top and jeans and leather flip-flops. Her sister, with her short black hair, blue eyes and toenails painted an aqua blue. Yet as hard as she tried to replace the face of the young woman, her sister’s image would not stay. Brown eyes stared back at Emily. Brown eyes that were anxious and scared.
Chapter Six
The blare of the television could be heard from outside the house. Having already knocked on the front door and rung the bell twice, Emily made her way along the side of the property to the back door. Stepping into the small kitchen, the sour smell of the unwashed dishes and overflowing bin could not disguise the rancid smell of gone-off food. Placing the shopping bag and cool box on the table, Emily moved aside a loaf of bread and saw mould growing like green moss on top of a casserole dish. The dinner she had made her parents last week had spoiled. It remained untouched where she had placed it. It hadn’t even been put in the fridge. The units and cooker and fridge hadn’t been properly cleaned in a year. She would say her hellos and then give the kitchen a good clean. Though she suspected even that would barely remove the dank odour.
Turning into the narrow hallway, she spied the pile of unopened letters building up behind the front door. She would look through them later, check there weren’t any outstanding bills.
She wished the closed living room door was at least ajar. To save her clothes, her hair from reeking. She held her breath, opened it wide and let out a cloud of cigarette smoke, using the door to fan it into the hallway and then escape to less polluted parts of the house. Her parents sat at either end of the brown sofa watching daytime TV, an ashtray balanced on each arm of the sofa. On a glass coffee table was her mother’s tipple, white wine from a box, and down by the side of her father were cans of Stella.
Her mother looked up. ‘What you doing here? Haven’t seen hide nor hair of you all week.’ Her father either burped or made some sound at the back of his throat.
‘Been a bit busy, but I’m here now. To see how both of you are doing.’ Emily hadn’t told them she was going into hospital for an operation. She hadn’t wanted them to think she was looking for sympathy.
‘So you couldn’t find time to visit us, then? Still looking scrawny, I see. Hope you ain’t hoping to eat. We ain’t done the shopping yet.’
Her mother’s idea of shopping was a nip along to the corner shop for bread, butter, milk, tea and coffee, and wine and beer of course, if they ran out.
‘No, I’m fine, Mum. I brought you two some dinner. Made you a cottage pie, got you a few groceries as well.’
Her parents were both in their late fifties, both on benefits, and they drank and smoked their days away with the TV on from morning till night. It amazed Emily that they never actually seemed drunk and could always hold a conversation – peppered with typically spiteful comments from her mother – and walk in a straight line across the living room. She wondered if bitterness kept you sober. A year ago she had believed their grief to be genuine and had supported them as they both quit their low-paid jobs. She encouraged them to take their prescriptions of anti-anxiety drugs and sleep remedies, and she accompanied them to collect their benefits. When her mother suggested that they should get compensation for the disappearance of their daughter, Emily had been disgusted. They were savvy, that was for sure. Up to speed with everything they could get. Surely that hospital should be held responsible, her mother voiced loud and clear on several occasions, hinting that Emily should look into it, as she was part of the establishment. It wasn’t genuine grief that stopped them from going back to work and trying to carry on. It was the entitlement to grief that they grabbed onto. How could they possibly do anything with their daughter missing?
Her mother seemed mollified for a moment and took a sip of her wine. ‘So, what you up to then?’
Emily went and sat on the only other seat in the room, a leather footstool. ‘I’ve gone back to work.’
Her mother looked at Emily’s father. ‘You hear that, John, she’s back to work.’
Her father glared at his wife. ‘’Course I heard. I’m in the room, ain’t I? Suppose she has to, otherwise she’ll lose her job.’
‘Actually, it’s a new job—’
‘Actually! You hear that, John, she’s using them fancy words again, like we ain’t got a brain between us. She can’t just say “I got a new job”.’
Emily gritted her teeth to hold back her resentment. She would never understand how she could have been born to these two people. From an early age, probably as young as five, she had felt alien to her parents. She had used the word ‘love’ on every card she had ever made them in school, but it was a feeling unfelt, a feeling that simply wouldn’t grow. Ill-equi
pped to meet her emotional and intellectual needs, her parents tried less with her as they viewed the failure to bond to be Emily’s fault. They could not love something that did not love them back. She had learned to not need them emotionally and simply accepted that she belonged to them – the two people who made her. She stopped trying to grow love until the day Zoe arrived. She was nine when her mother, then fat and forty, disappeared for a few days, returning slightly less fat carrying a wicker basket. Emily had gazed into it and seen a baby girl, kitted out in a pink knitted hat and matching cardigan. Her face was red and scrunched up and her tiny fist patted the air. Emily felt as if that tiny hand had left an imprint on her heart. For the first time in her young life she had felt love. She had looked at the pink bundle and been filled with a need to love back. Her life in that moment changed. Loving Zoe was all that mattered.
‘So, you got time to work then?’ her mother now needled.
‘I have to, Mum. I’ll go crazy if I don’t do something.’
‘So who’s gonna be out there looking for her if you’re working?’
‘The police—’
‘Police! Do me a favour. They ain’t looking for her anymore.’
‘It’s an ongoing investigation, Mum.’
‘You spouting that copper woman again?’
‘Leave her be, Doreen. She’s doing her best,’ her father said. Emily glanced at him gratefully, but realised he was trying to settle for a sleep as she saw his slack features. He just wanted them quiet. She eyed him sadly. John Jacobs was a weak man and he took his lead from his wife. Any chance to develop a normal father–daughter relationship had been denied them long ago. He had no determination of his own. If his wife refused their daughter affection, so did he.
‘’Course she is. It’s a pity she didn’t do her best when her hospital rang her to come and fetch Zoe.’
‘They never rang me to come and fetch her, Mum.’
‘’Course they didn’t. Same as she never rang you the night before to ask you to come out with her. What was it you said to that copper woman?’ Her mother frowned as if thinking hard. ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, you were bleedin’ tired.’
She had held nothing back when questioned by her parents about the lead-up to Zoe’s disappearance, and from that moment on Doreen Jacobs never let up reminding her that she had failed her sister.
‘Not too bleedin’ tired now, though. So I suppose you’ve given up?’
‘Of course I haven’t! I’m picking up my spare printer while I’m here so I can print more leaflets.’
‘Leaflets?’ her mother laughed scathingly. ‘What the bleedin’ good do they do?’
‘They keep her in the public eye. They stop people from forgetting. What more do you want me to do, Mum?’
Her mother picked up the TV remote and flipped the volume louder. Over the noise Emily couldn’t be sure if she heard her say, ‘Your lot lost her’ or ‘You lost her’. Either way, she was still blaming her, as the TV was suddenly muted and she aimed her next barb. ‘She followed you every bleedin’ step you took. You encouraged her to go into nursing. She’d have been happier working in a shop or being a hairdresser, but you filled her head with being like you. And when she failed ’cos she found it too hard, you ignore her.’
The failed first year exams had also come out during questioning, along with anything that might be considered a reason for Zoe having gone missing. She closed her eyes to squeeze away the one memory she could never tell them.
‘It’s not your fault,’ had been the opinion of everyone. The police, her colleagues, her GP, her counsellor. Not your fault. They had repeated it many times. But like her mother, Emily believed that it was.
Bagging up the dirty laundry in a black bin liner, she set it by the back door ready to take with her when she left. If she put it on to wash in her parents’ washing machine, the chances were that it would still be in there next week and would end up going mouldy. She vacuumed upstairs and downstairs and gave both the bathroom and kitchen a thorough clean. Putting the cottage pie into the microwave, she set the timer for five minutes and pulled out two clean plates and trays and sets of knives and forks. On the kitchen windowsill was a faded photo of Zoe at the age of two sitting in a paddling pool. The silver-plated photo frame had come from Woolworths and was inscribed with the words: I Love My Mummy. Emily had wrapped it for Mother’s Day as a gift from both daughters and her mother had loved it, though she had never asked why there was only a photo of Zoe and she had never swapped it for one with both daughters.
A short while later, with the spare printer on the back seat of her car and nary a wave of goodbye from her parents, she drove away. Wiping at the tears on her cheeks, she knew it was self-pity that was making her cry. After cleaning their house all day, and being made to feel unwelcome, she was achy and tired and just wanted to get home. She had moved out two years ago, virtually the same week as Zoe, who decided that she too wanted to become a nurse and follow in her big sister’s footsteps. And for the first time in her life, Emily was free. Free of her parents and free of the responsibility of caring for Zoe. She had grown up on this council estate surrounded largely by good, honest, hard-working people. She had grown up in a house that she knew intimately: every blade of grass in the small back garden, every nook and cranny in each square room. She had grown up in a house that she then lived in for most her life, but she had never been able to call it home.
If she never had to go back to that place she wouldn’t be sorry, but like a self-administered penance, she knew she would return. She would go back again and again and probably look after them for ever, or at least until Zoe was found. When that day came, she would stop visiting.
Chapter Seven
Emily pulled on her yellow hi-vis vest, hung her work rucksack over one shoulder and made ready to leave. The smell of new paint was strong, and she crossed over to the lounge window and opened it a few inches, not wanting to come back in the morning and have to sleep in paint fumes. The pale grey had lightened the room, making the white ceiling look whiter, and she was satisfied with the outcome.
She spent the last few days of her sick leave inside, putting her time to good use by turning her flat around. She rearranged furniture and switched pictures to other walls, replaced lamp bulbs and generally gave her home a makeover. The only room she hadn’t touched was her spare bedroom, which she had turned into ‘Zoe’s Room’. To decorate it she would have to remove the dozens upon dozens of brightly coloured Post-it notes that she had stuck up on the wall to make her search for Zoe easier – scribbled notes with names, phone numbers, addresses of people Zoe knew, places she went. A map of the city dotted with multiple coloured pins marked off areas where Emily had searched or put up posters, or showed where friends lived, sightings where the public swore they’d seen Zoe during appeals made for her whereabouts. Emily had checked them all. From morning till night these past twelve months she had spent every day following up on any lead or snippet of news, mostly via Facebook from well-doers in her quest to find Zoe. Misinformation had caused the rise and fall of her hopes on many occasions, but it was worth the heartache to have Zoe’s name out there. She’d chased up on dozens of false sightings in the hope that one of them was the real thing. She’d put up with the cruelty of people, the time-wasters, who thought it was OK to post comments on Zoe’s appearance or rant at the police for not finding her in hope that someone had some real information on her. Alongside the map were newspaper cuttings, both local and national, telling of Zoe’s disappearance. The room had been dedicated to finding Zoe and was filled with all her personal stuff as well. Boxes of clothes, shoes, bags and bin liners packed full of pillows and duvets and cuddly toys. Jo had contacted Emily a month after Zoe went missing and said that the landlord was happy to keep the room rented out to her sister, but that he would need payment. Emily managed to fork out for three months’ rent before accepting that she couldn’t afford to do it long-term, with the result that she was asked remove all of Zoe’s s
tuff. She had spent less time in this room since starting back at work, and vowed not to let things slip. It was helping her stay strong being back at work, refreshing her mind to step away from it all so she could refocus on finding Zoe.
She had camped inside the walls of her flat for the last few days and felt, for the first time in over a year, more like her old self. Energised, organised and, if not exactly happy, settled. She was ready to get back to work. Beneath her bra she wore a light dressing to keep the nylon material from rubbing against the healing wound. She was twelve days post-op, and it looked clean and pink with no sign of infection. She was fit and well and was looking forward to her shift. And the email she’d received from Barrows reassured her that she was welcomed. Emily switched off the last light in her flat and closed her front door.
*
In the mirrored back wall of the lift Emily checked her appearance. Her face was flushed and her black hair fluffed up from the cycle ride. She was caught in the act of primping her hair as the lift door opened. Dalloway stepped aside to let her pass and gave a cordial nod, and she wondered if he recognised her.
The corridors on the second floor criss-crossed, leading into four areas with the lift at the centre. Arrow-shaped signs were affixed to each wall pointing the way to the wards: Nash, Austen, Allen, Sulis. The corridors were empty and quiet. Visiting time had ended and the patients, if still up and out of their beds, were probably now returning to them. On the door by the staff changing room she entered the four-digit code into the keypad and pushed the door open. A fresh smell of deodorant hung in the air, and a locker door banged shut. Then she heard voices and made her way round to her locker.