Grace Is Gone

by Emily Elgar

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my wonderful parents,

  Edward and Sandy Elgar.

  Thank you feels so inadequate for all the love you share—

  but it’s all I have—so thank you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue: Megan

  1. Cara

  2. Jon

  3. Cara

  4. Jon

  5. Cara

  6. Jon

  7. Cara

  8. Jon

  9. Cara

  10. Jon

  11. Cara

  12. Jon

  13. Cara

  14. Jon

  15. Cara

  16. Jon

  17. Cara

  18. Jon

  19. Cara

  20. Jon

  21. Cara

  22. Jon

  23. Cara

  24. Jon

  25. Cara

  26. Jon

  27. Cara

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Emily Elgar

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Megan

  Grace doesn’t know, but every night around 2 a.m. I go to her. It started when she was just a toddler, but still, so many years later, I creep into her room and roll back her duvet to check that her bony chest is still fluttering, her weak heart still doing its best. Tonight is one of those nights I try to be brave, stop myself. I stare at the ceiling, make my legs heavy.

  Stay put, I tell them.

  I try to think about something else. I plan what Grace should wear when we visit the new pediatric unit in Taunton in a couple of weeks; we might be photographed. But even that won’t stick. I don’t see Grace smiling for the camera, a pretty clip in her short, spiky hair. I see her in bed, across the hall, her rosebud mouth gasping for air, her lips turning gray, then blue. I see her green eyes, naked without their glasses, fearful, desperate, searching for me in the dusky light of her room, and then before I know it I’m out of bed, across the hall and by her side. My hand goes straight to her warm chest. It rises and falls, slow and dreamy, just like it should. But that’s not enough. I lean over her, my cheek an inch from her mouth. I feel the breeze of her, her little life puff warm and rhythmic against my skin. She’s OK. Only then does my own breath catch up with me.

  I rearrange her hands under her favorite daisy-printed sheets and stroke my palm lightly over her body, the sweetest little mound. She’s out deep tonight. Dr. Parker said the antibiotics he prescribed after her operation will make her sleep heavier than normal. It’s nothing to worry about.

  I pick Flopsy up from where she’s fallen on the floor, gray ears sticking out at angles, and sit her at the top of Grace’s pillow. It’s a habit, that’s all, this checking on her. Her windows are definitely locked. The nurses say it’s normal, totally natural. They touch my arm and say they’d be the same after everything we’ve been through. I plump the heart-shaped cushion in her wheelchair. They’re not only talking about Danny; they’re talking about the time Grace was rushed to hospital foaming at the mouth, the time we finally decided the only way to get nutrients into her body was through a tube in her stomach, the time he tried to take her like he took my Danny. I pause in the doorway, watch my little mouse sleep for a moment. I always leave her door open so I can hear her call for me if she wakes, or is woken.

  My bed sighs under my weight, and as I turn off my bedside lamp I think how the nurses have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s not what’s already happened that keeps me rushing, terrified, into her room at night. It’s the invisible bomb I hear ticking over our heads, the precious seconds we have left together that are starting to run out, like water through cupped hands. It’s the horrific promise of what I know will come. That one day the locks will slide back, the handle will slowly start to turn, and then there will follow those practiced, determined footsteps and no matter how fast I run to her, how much I plead, there is nothing I can do to save us both.

  1

  Cara

  I hold my finger on the bell for number 52 Woodgreen Avenue for longer than is probably polite. The ringing is urgent, but that’s good, I want them to know I’m in a rush. My Monday lunchtime shift at the Ship starts in half an hour.

  I imagine Grace inside, her little owl face swiveling towards the noise in a way that makes her seem so much younger than most seventeen-year-olds, her thin arms somehow maneuvering her chair down the wide corridor towards me, Meg in her uniform of slippers, leggings, and oversized T-shirt padding behind her, a kindly, dependable guard dog. “Just coming!”

  I nudge my leg against the tote bag full of summer clothes—washed, ironed, and folded—ready for Meg and Grace. Mum and her friends have been collecting them for weeks.

  Come on.

  I take my phone out of the pocket of my ripped jeans, look at the blank screen, and put it back again. The paint on Meg and Grace Nichols’s house is fresh and gives off a chemical tang in the early June sun. Naturally, they went for pink. Mum said the Wishmakers, the charity who adapted the house for Grace’s wheelchair, repainted last month. Next door, the red paint on Mum’s woodwork is peeling away like burnt skin.

  Where are they?

  I press the doorbell again. They’re always in. Maybe Meg is helping Grace in the bathroom? Or perhaps they’re in Grace’s bedroom, Meg changing Grace’s feeding tube—I think she has to change it every week. Last Christmas, Grace lifted her Santa Claus sweater to show me the new hole in her stomach. It looked like a tiny eye socket with the eyeball plucked out. It seemed bottomless, Grace a doll with all her stuffing pulled out.

  “Weird, isn’t it?” she said, looking straight at me. I shrugged and turned away so she couldn’t see how queasy I felt.

  I glance at my phone again. Maybe I should just leave the bag here on the doorstep? I could write a note? But I know Mum will be pissed off if I don’t give them the clothes in person. She’s been saving them for me to bring over, like it’s a special treat. Mum visits Meg and Grace a couple of times a week, sometimes coming home dewy-eyed. It’s as if, for her, spending half an hour with Meg and Grace is some kind of religious experience. She says Grace always asks her what I’ve been up to, if I’ve been dating, that kind of thing. Mum is always trying to get me to visit them. I tell her I’ve been too busy this year, retaking my A-levels, working at the pub, and dealing with the breakup from Chris. I finished my exams two days ago and I’ve run out of excuses, so here I am. The truth is, I never know what to say to Grace these days. It feels mean to tell her about my life—my plans for university, how I’m going to get out of Cornwall as soon as I can, that I’m saving for a big trip to India next year—when her big weekly event is a trip down the beach with her mum.

  I press my face to the mottled glass door. Although adapted for Grace’s wheelchair, the layout of their bungalow is exactly the same as Mum’s and probably very similar to the other one hundred and something houses and bungalows on the Summervale Estate. I can’t see much; the glass makes everything look like it’s underwater. My hand finds the door handle, squeezes. The inside air greets me first. It’s warm, fuggy with Meg’s air fresheners with names like Summer Daze that make my nose itch. I know because my mum buys the same ones.

  “Hello?” I call into the thick silence of their house.

  “Meg? Grace? It’s Cara. I’ve got those clothes . . .” I stop as I turn into the sitting room. Everything is pristine as always. The beige three-piece suite is plump, the armchairs facing the sofa as though holding their own tea party. Polished photos of Meg and Grace, framed in hearts and st
ars, shine from the mantelpiece. But behind the sofa, my eye catches. Something is out of place, something is there that shouldn’t be.

  “Grace?” I move slowly, but fear comes quickly. Grace’s wheelchair has fallen on its side. Her little toy rabbit and the heart-shaped cushion she sits on have skidded across the linoleum, towards the kitchen. The sight jolts me into action, and I rush around the sofa, imagining Grace’s tiny body bruised and broken, her glasses smashed. But there’s nothing, or almost nothing. On the floor lies Grace’s diary, the same one I noticed wedged between her hip and her chair the last time I saw her, just a month ago.

  Unless she’s in bed, I’ve never seen Grace out of her chair. She’s been in a wheelchair for as long as I’ve known her, over half her life. I pick up the diary. Down the hall, behind Meg’s bedroom door, a clock chimes the half hour. A tap drip-drips. The noise shifts the air, helps me find my voice, and I call out again.

  “Guys? Meg?”

  I safely stow the diary in the bag of clothes and leave it in the hall. I’ll give the diary back to Grace when I see her.

  I make my way slowly down the corridor. With each step I take, fear tugs at my stomach, makes me alert. Somewhere a fly whines, blood rushes in my ears, the tap drip-drips. The door to the toilet opens suddenly and I cry out, my body jolting with shock, but it’s just Cookie, Grace’s ginger cat. Cookie ignores me and pads across the corridor, mewing as she slips gracefully into Meg’s room. I follow. Now there’s a new noise, a hum, like static. I tell myself, desperately, that it might be the radio. Maybe that’s why Meg and Grace can’t hear me?

  But as I get closer, I know the humming sound isn’t mechanical. It’s deeper, weirder . . . organic. The back of my hand strokes the smooth, cool wall. The smell of cheap vanilla, so sweet it’s almost putrid, blooms inside me like mold.

  “Hello?” I don’t recognize my voice, cracked and small. Fear grips like a hand squeezing my throat. I’m about to push Meg’s door but it opens wide at the slightest touch, as if eager to give its secrets away.

  I see the bluebottle flies first. They circle above her like tiny vultures. Meg is twisted around the bedsheets, her body brittle and too still to be resting. Her face is gray, her gaze clouded, but fixed on something living eyes can never see. Her mouth is a rictus of fear. Her forehead has collapsed in on itself, no longer a shape, just a dark mass of sticky pulp. Blood stains the sheets, halo-like behind her. Her bruised leg and arm hang over the edge of the bed and from her pink-painted fingertips her blood drip-drips.

  2

  Jon

  As I stand in the middle of a field, looking down at a dead sheep and wondering for the fifty-third time that day what the hell has happened to my life, my phone buzzes with a text. As the farmer, Mr. Leeson, nudges the bloodied sheep with his foot, as though prompting the poor dead animal to confirm that it was definitely “those bloody travellers and their bloody dogs” that ripped her esophagus from her throat, I remind myself this is my second chance. That I’m lucky to have this job, and a way to keep my son Jacob in my life. Not everyone gets a second chance. Mr. Leeson bends low into the mud towards the dead sheep, allowing me to surreptitiously check my phone. I hope it’s a text from Jacob—Jakey—but the screen says Ben.

  Six months ago, a text from Ben wouldn’t have been anything remarkable. But then I wouldn’t have been standing in a boggy field looking at a dead sheep because just six months ago I was busy doing real investigative journalism. The last time I saw Ben was the last time I wrote anything of my choosing. A personable freelance photographer, Ben took the photos that accompanied the article which, in a roundabout way, led me here, to this field, on this dank early June day with Mr. Leeson and his dead sheep.

  “So, are yer going to talk to them then?” the farmer asks, showing me blackened gums that look like their own crime scene.

  I shove the phone back down into my pocket. “Sorry, Mr. Leeson. Who is it you want me to talk to?”

  “Them gypsies . . . them travellers, what yer call them. Are you going ter talk ter them or is it up ter me and my shotgun?” Mr. Leeson lifts his flat cap off his head and wipes his greasy hair with a mucky hand. I have the impression he’s hoping I’ll choose the latter option.

  “How about I go and talk to my editor about a story and we’ll—”

  “All the story you bloody need is right ’ere.” His heavy boot is back on the sheep’s head. I wish he’d stop. I know she’s dead but her eyes are still open, and it’s muddy. It starts to rain again.

  “I heard you’re from London,” Mr. Leeson says with a familiar mixture of disdain and pity. The “poor sod” following the statement is always silent. I don’t want to get into this now. Telling people how I moved here to Cornwall for my wife, my son, for a better life is like being forced to repeat a joke you know isn’t funny again and again. I snap the rubber band against my wrist. The rubber band was suggested by Dr. Bunce, the relationship therapist I’m seeing twice a week with—and at the behest of—my wife, Ruth. The little shocks of the rubber against my skin are supposed to stop negative thoughts. It doesn’t work, of course—instead I have a new tic to accompany all the shit going on in my head.

  “I’d better be getting on,” I say, declining to respond to Mr. Leeson’s statement. The Cornish rain is already soaking through my thin London-bought anorak and my glasses have started to steam up. I’m only standing in this God-forsaken field because I didn’t know how to tell Mr. Leeson that I didn’t want to see the mutilated sheep he found this morning—the third already this summer.

  I’m here reporting for The Rambler, a magazine dedicated to all things Cornish and outdoors, and we’re supposed to be talking about the farmer’s preparations for the Ashford Agricultural Show next month. I’m here to talk winning sheep, not dead ones with jellied eyes.

  Mud sucks around my Converse as we walk across the flat, boggy field towards the farmyard. I shake Mr. Leeson’s hard hand, say sorry again about the sheep, promise to be in touch about the story. As soon as I sit behind the wheel I wipe my glasses with my sleeve and reach for my phone to read Ben’s text.

  Jon mate, long time no see. Thought you’d want to know. Police just removed a body from the Nichols place on Woodgreen Ave. Break-in gone wrong? Fucking nuts. The body looked too big to be the girl. Ben.

  A robbery in the small town of Ashford is headline news, but a possible murder is beyond comprehension. I read the text again.

  From anyone else the “too big to be the girl” bit would sound monstrous but I know Ben just wants to reassure me it’s not Grace in the body bag and I’m grateful for that. But still, shit, does that mean it’s Meg? Ashford’s darling, the perfect mum, dead? Murdered in her own home?

  I wonder where they’ve taken Grace. To a neighbor’s? The police station? I imagine her mute with shock, trembling in her wheelchair, clutching that stuffed rabbit like a much younger girl. I hope someone will know how to comfort her, that they’ll call the doctor, help calm her down. I can’t imagine the trauma will do her already-weak heart any good.

  Out of the grubby farmhouse window Mr. Leeson is staring down at me and frowning. His lips move, presumably saying something to Mrs. Leeson—perhaps he’s finally noticed, is telling her he remembers my face on the front of the Ashford Echo—before he walks away from the window.

  I tap out a response to Ben’s text: Thanks for letting me know.

  My car skids in the mud as I pull out of the farmyard. Hands firm against the wheel, I remind myself why I mustn’t go to Woodgreen Avenue. The police, the restraining order, the custody agreement. I snap the rubber band.

  I glance at my watch. Ruth and I have a session with Dr. Bunce in forty minutes. Ruth sent a text to remind me this morning. As I drive down the bumpy farm lane, I reason that the ten miles to Dr. Bunce’s incense-scented treatment room on the other side of town should only take twenty-five minutes tops at this time of day. I snap harder. The skin on my wrist turns pink.

  All I can think about is B
en’s text, about Meg and Grace. Could it have been a break-in gone wrong? Somehow I don’t think so. Human decency aside, what idiot would target the most beloved family in Ashford? But the idea that it was a personal attack is hardly easier to fathom. My thoughts drift to Simon, Grace’s dad. Mentally unstable and deemed a danger to others, Meg had kept him away from Grace for most of her life. I’ll bet all fingers are already pointed at him.

  I remember the one and only time I spoke to Meg about Simon.

  I was interviewing her and Grace for the article that was about to ruin my life, though I didn’t know it then. They’d welcomed me warmly into their home, though underneath there was a disappointed, restless feel, like the aftermath of an argument. I had an unusual feeling of wanting to leave as soon as I arrived, but Meg and Grace smiled at me, told me they’d made cake, and looked at each other like teenagers about to burst into giggles, then apologized, said they were nervous, excited. They sat next to each other, Grace’s small hand always reaching to hold her mum’s. They finished each other’s sentences. Grace spoke in a little girl’s voice despite being a teenager and Meg’s accent had the full, rolling vowels of someone who’d spent her life in the South-West. Meg showed me albums full of photos of Grace in different hospital beds, doctors and nurses posing at her side like playground buddies. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Meg didn’t understand why the Wishmakers had put us in touch—perhaps the Wishmakers didn’t understand the purpose of the article either—so it was up to me to explain.

  “What, out of interest, were you told the article was about?”

  I directed the question at Meg. She had short, loosely curled brown hair and a full face, unremarkable looking until she smiled. Then, it was like being given a bowl of something warm and delicious. Her brow creased as she tried to remember what she’d been told.

  “Maggie said you were writing about how families cope in times of difficulty. That you’d want to know about our challenges with Grace’s health.” In a quieter voice she added, “Maybe a bit about Danny too.”