Grace Is Gone

by Emily Elgar

  “Well, where the fuck did she go?” Robbie pushes himself in duplicate out of the caravan before the thin door bangs shut behind him. It takes Tony a moment to regain his footing.

  “I told you, Rob, I don’t know.” Tony’s voice rises higher than his brother’s. “Don’t look at me like it’s my fault. I told you that valuation bloke was too far away, that I’d be late. I got back ten minutes ago and she was gone. And all the while you were in the pub.”

  “I was only in the fucking pub, Tone, to pay for the border tip-off. And I’ll look at you how I like. This is your mess, remember? Your mess. You think I’d be here if you weren’t my brother?” Robbie pushes Tony in the chest a couple of times. Tony’s hand forms a fist at his side, but even in the darkness I can tell he’s holding it loosely, halfhearted, intended to boost his own courage rather than to be used against his brother.

  “And how about when I stood up to get you out of a worse mess, Rob? Huh? Four months of my life in a shithole just to save you from having to go through it. You owe me.”

  Robbie’s head drops. He sighs like he’s tired of being reminded of the debt he owes his twin. He pauses for a moment.

  “The money?” he asks.

  Tony hunches slightly. It’s all he has to do to let his brother know the money is gone.

  “Fuck!” Robbie shouts at the sky, before he turns back to Tony, his eyes bright and wild even in the darkness. “I told you, Tone, how many times did I tell you this was rotten from the start, but you couldn’t let it go, your fucking conscience, all because of that kid all those years ago.”

  Tony keeps his head low, like he’s heard this many times already.

  “I just want to make right some of the stuff I’ve done wrong, the stuff I’m not proud of. Prison changed me, it changed me here.” He presses his fingers to his forehead. “It made me realize something. That moment when we didn’t help that kid, even though we knew he was in trouble, that split-second decision is what made everything after go to shit.”

  “I’ve heard enough of your reformed-character bullshit, Tone. You wanted to say sorry because when you were a little kid you didn’t save a toddler from drowning? Send flowers, write a fucking card, that’s what most people do. But not my sensitive brother, no, what do you do, Tone? You get involved. A woman is fucking dead and the whole of the South West is searching for her psycho daughter who could put you in prison for the rest of your life because you wanted to say sorry?”

  Robbie’s face is red from shouting but Tony doesn’t glance up once. He can’t look his brother in the eye.

  “I told you what her mum was doing to her, Rob, she needed my help, I had no idea what she was really like.” At last he looks up at his brother. “She’ll be heading into town, won’t she, Rob? What if she goes to the police? What if she tells them all those lies she made up, about what happened to her mum?”

  There’s a whimper in Tony’s voice and I realize he’s not only afraid of his brother, he’s also afraid of Grace. She has power over him. He knows something about her, about what happened, and it terrifies him. Robbie hears the fear in his brother and, moving forward, he puts his hand on the back of Tony’s neck. Tony rests his forehead on his brother’s shoulder. It looks like a position they know well, one they both seem to find soothing.

  Robbie’s voice is calmer as he says, “We just need to find her. Let’s start by looking in town. She won’t talk to anyone and she won’t go to the police, she wants to disappear as much as we want her to disappear. That’s why the plan is going to work. When she’s back we’ll not take our eyes off her for the next few hours. We’ll get her on that truck first thing tomorrow morning and once she’s away, lost somewhere in Europe, we’ll never hear from her again. It’ll be over.”

  Tony lifts his head, blinks at his brother like these are the words he wants to believe.

  Robbie looks out towards the sea as he says, “She can’t have got far. Let’s go and get the silly bitch.” He turns and is about to start walking when Tony grabs his arm.

  “There’s no need to hurt her though, is there, Rob? Please, you don’t have to hurt her.”

  But Robbie shrugs his brother’s arm away and, without saying a word, he starts to walk down towards the sea, Tony just behind him. I cower back behind the pile of logs, terrified they’re going to come directly past me. I step back; a branch snaps under my foot. To me it sounds as loud as a gunshot. Robbie stops, but Tony only turns his head slightly. Robbie’s jaw tenses before he says, “Badger,” and they both keep moving.

  Robbie leads. He takes a different track from the one we came up just a few minutes earlier. He walks straight ahead from the caravan, crushing the stinging nettles under his boots while Tony trips along behind him, an identical shadow.

  I wait until they’re almost out of sight before I start following. This time there is no path. The brothers move quickly, almost running down the steep hill that leads to the sea, trampling the nettles and brambles as though they are soft as lamb’s grass. I remember Simon called them hares. They grew up here, they know this place, and these hills, these secret tracks, as well as they know each other. They are directly on course to hit the light from the lighthouse on its never-ending sweep when suddenly they vanish. Their timing is perfect: the light doesn’t catch them, and I don’t know where they’ve gone. It is absolutely silent, I can’t even hear the sea. Wherever they are, they aren’t moving, or making a sound. Either they’ve gone so far ahead I can’t hear them anymore or they’ve stopped. I feel out of my natural habitat, like a swimmer in unknown waters, soft belly exposed to the sharks circling below. The light from the lighthouse seems to be searching just for me. I shouldn’t be here. With each flash of light I think I see eyes in the bushes, shiny and black as they watch every move I make. My skin prickles and a small voice I didn’t know was part of me, never needed before, whispers in my ear that the game has changed. I’m not the hunter anymore. I’ve become the hunted. I start to run.

  23

  Cara

  She puts a hand against a large rock next to her for support. She doesn’t turn towards me but I see her whole body tense, suddenly alert when she hears her name. She freezes, like she’s trying to decide what to do. Run or stay. Finally she speaks.

  “I’m not Grace.”

  I move quickly away from the sea, towards Grace, towards the dark caves. The wet sand sucks around my feet. I don’t want to spook her but I need to get to her quickly. All my senses feel sharpened, the wind whips my skin, the waves roar, I smell the salt from the sea but I keep my eyes full only of her, fixed on her back. I won’t let her get away again. She still hasn’t moved. Run or stay. She looks like she’s waiting for me. Stay.

  She’s just a few paces away and I force myself to slow. I’m whispering her name, again and again, like the more I say it the more real this will become. She lifts her hand from the boulder and I watch as she pulls her hood down, exposing the back of her head. Her hair is spidery and fair, like a newborn. I’m only a couple of paces away from her now. She keeps perfectly still as the light whips around the cove, as if searching for secrets, for us. My breath catches, my skin pricks with the realization that this is what I wanted: to find Grace, to be with her alone. Silence stretches out between us, the last before we both say and hear things we can never change. A silent goodbye to the Grace Nichols I thought I knew.

  At last she drops her hand from her head and slowly, with a limp to her right, turns around to face me. Her eyes meet mine, and as we stare at each other I realize that I never really looked at Grace before. Just like everyone else, I assumed I knew what she looked like, who she was. But I only saw what I was told to see. I only saw her limitations, her illnesses, an impenetrable wall between us.

  But tonight I see a whole world within her.

  My lips make the shape of her name again, but it sounds wrong. She isn’t Grace anymore. Grace will always be the little shell in a wheelchair, hiding beneath her hat and behind her glasses. This woman w
ho stands before me, smiling now, with a gaze that feels more like a challenge than a welcome, is someone else entirely. This is Zoe.

  “Cara,” she says. Her voice sounds calmer than the air feels. She smiles again, briefly showing the small teeth that used to cause her so much pain. She takes a slow, hesitant step towards me. She speaks like she moves, slowly, like she’s still learning to trust herself.

  “You know, I used to have all these fantasies about how I’d escape. In one of them, you’d come and I’d tell you everything. I’d show you my legs, how I could make them move more than I ever dared let on, and then you’d take me away.” All that time she was desperate for me to see her, as I see her now. All that time she needed my help and I couldn’t see beyond my own fear of her frailty. She shakes her head gently.

  “But you’re too late, Cara. I’m already away from her, I’m already free.” The light flashes across her face. She’s no longer a seventeen-year-old girl, she’s not even twenty to me now. She seems older than anyone I’ve ever known, worn down by years of abuse and pain.

  “You’re not sick.” The words sound too short, too simple. I know the answer, but I need to hear her say it. The person who used to be Grace shakes her head.

  “Not since I was a little girl,” she says. She keeps her eyes on me, holds her hands palm upwards to the sky, as though to prove her health.

  I keep moving slowly towards her. We’re so close now that when the light comes round again I see the gray shadows below her eyes and I see her fear as she glances up, towards the cliff behind me. She’s on guard, watching for someone. There’s fear in her eyes as she scans the cliff top—the twins aren’t her protectors, they’re her captors. We might not be safe here. But before I can think about what we should do I need to hear about Meg from Grace. I need to know why, in case it’s the last chance I get.

  “Why did she, why did Meg . . .” My voice is barely audible. I find I can’t finish, but Grace’s ears are sharp.

  “Why did she do it?” Grace sighs, tips her head back, as though the answer is somewhere out there, in the night sky, too big for this small beach. I see her life beating in her neck. Apart from occasionally looking towards the path that leads down from the cliff, Grace is composed, and her quiet control helps me stay calm. She lifts her head, meets my eyes again before she says, “Do you remember visiting me in the hospital a few years back? It was Christmas Day. Susie made you come in with her.”

  Mum had to drag me to the hospital. I moaned all the way. I wanted to be with my friends, flirting and laughing in the pub, not trapped in a stale hospital.

  “Remember when our mums went to talk to the nurses?”

  I don’t. I only remember Grace so thin it was painful to look at her, but I nod.

  “You told me a story about a time when Chris tried to kiss you, but you moved and he ended up slipping over in the mud?” I’d forgotten the story I exaggerated to entertain her, but now I remember Grace in her hospital bed, her bone-sharp shoulders shaking so hard with laughter I was worried she’d dislodge the needle in her hand.

  I nod again.

  “What happened when Mum came back in and she saw me laughing with you?”

  I panic. I can’t see what she wants me to see. In my memory, Grace just keeps laughing and laughing.

  “Think about it, Cara, think hard. What happened when Mum came in?” I focus on the fringe of the memory. I remember thinking Mum and Meg would be pleased that I’d made Grace laugh after so long. Grace kept laughing when they appeared in the doorway. Mum looked uneasy; she kept casting quick, nervous glances at Meg because her face was frozen, a fixed mask of rage. She stared at Grace as though her laughter appalled her. Finally, Grace sensed her mum’s stare and stopped laughing immediately. She looked winded, as though she’d just been punched in the stomach. Laughter extinguished, as easy as snuffing out a flame. When she saw the way Meg was looking at her Grace let out a small whine and then her eyes came back to meet mine. Her mouth opened and started to move. She was trying to say something to me before she started to gag and her tiny body started flipping in her bed. Suddenly she was heaving. I touched her arm, it was wet with sweat but I was too clumsy, too slow, and Meg had to push me out of the way to bring a cardboard tub under Grace’s mouth as she quietly vomited. I edged away from her bed, towards the safety of my own mum, and I buried what I thought I heard Grace say into the deepest, most hidden coils of my brain: “Help me.”

  “You remember, don’t you?” the new Grace says now. I taste salt on my lip, touch my face; it’s soaking. I didn’t even notice I was crying. She hasn’t answered my question but she’s shown me how far I was from seeing what was in front of me. How far I still am from understanding the depths of Meg’s abuse.

  “I have so many memories like that. Times someone almost found out what she was doing to me. But it was like none of you wanted to see the truth so you became blind to it, to me. So I studied you and others instead. I watched you. I was good at watching people. I had to be, it was the only way I’d learn anything about the world. Through watching you I learned what I could about relationships, about being a young woman. I listened to Susie moan to my mum about you, about your arguments, problems you were having, her fears for you. You taught me so much without even knowing it. Like it or not, you are part of my awakening.”

  I feel my mouth move to say the only thing I can think of.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Grace . . . Zoe.” It’s the first time I’ve said the name, her real name, but she doesn’t acknowledge it—apologies are no good to her.

  She doesn’t speak for a moment, just stares out to sea as though expecting something or someone to wash up on the moonlit waves before she says, “You know, I’ve never been here before, to the place Danny died. I thought about it a lot over the years, how it would be to come here. I thought it’d be different somehow, that maybe being here would help me make some sense of everything that’s happened.”

  “Does it?” I ask.

  “No. It doesn’t. It’s just a place, isn’t it? It’s just a beach.” She looks at me with a mixture of confusion and something like pity, and I know now is not the time for me to question her. She needs to feel safe, to trust me again, and I have to let her take the lead. After so many years of abuse she needs to feel in charge now.

  “Why are you here, Cara?”

  I’m surprised. I thought it’d be obvious.

  “I’ve been trying to find you.”

  “No, I mean, are you here to help me?” My heart aches with the memory of all those times I could have helped her, when she begged me to take her somewhere, just the two of us. But for the last few years, Meg had such tight control over her that she kept her inside, in her chair, away from the world. I wanted to relieve her pain somehow but I felt blocked by my own awkwardness, my own fear of doing something wrong, making things worse, not better. Grace is still waiting for my answer.

  “I’m here to find out the truth.”

  “Now?” She almost laughs. “After so many years, now you want the truth? OK. OK. Fine. Here’s the truth.”

  She burrows into the pocket of her coat and pulls out a small notebook, folded in half. It’s dog-eared and almost falling apart, not at all the sort of thing Grace, the old Grace, would have. I don’t take it immediately, as though taking something physical from her will make all this real.

  “Cara, take it, please,” she says, shaking the notebook between us. “I’ve written everything down. What really happened.”

  “That other diary?”

  “Most of it was bullshit. I knew she’d be reading every word. I want you to read this. Share it if you want. I want you to know what my life has been like and what really happened that night.” She waves it at me again. I reach out and take it. It feels like I’m holding evidence from another world. Old or new, I can’t tell. The light comes round again and I see her hand is still shaking, even without the notebook. She’s not as calm as she wants me to believe.

  “I wa
nted to tell the truth about everything, about the night he murdered Mum.” She swallows, closes her eyes briefly as if trying to smother the memory. Drip, drip. I wish I could tell her that since finding Meg I think I understand, in a small way, how hard it is to escape, to forget the past. But I haven’t suffered a lifetime of abuse and pain. I don’t know what it is to believe cruelty is love. Grace’s eyes follow the notebook as I slide it into my own coat pocket before she glances back up again towards the cliff. I don’t let myself imagine the twins up there, in the darkness, watching us.

  “There’s one thing I need you to know.”

  I don’t trust myself to speak, so I just nod at her to keep talking. It’s like she knew I was thinking about the twins.

  “I want you to know I would never have told Tony anything about my life, about Mum, would never have replied to his first message if I’d known who he really was. I know you met Robbie, that he frightened you, but Tony’s worse. If I’d known what he would do to her, what he was capable of . . .” Her voice trails off, as though lost for a moment in how things should have been. “When you read the diary, you’ll know. She was only supposed to go to sleep, and when she woke up I’d be gone. He promised me he wouldn’t hurt her. Even after everything she did to me, all the agony, I still didn’t want to hurt her.”

  Her eyes are swollen with tears when she looks at me.

  “I need you to believe me, Cara. Please, tell me you believe me.” And suddenly she’s Grace again, the little bird in her wheelchair asking whether an armful of balloons will carry her far, far away, begging me to help. She’s the Grace who is goodness without end, the Grace who is incapable of lying, the Grace I miss. Looking at her, listening to how she wanted to protect Meg even after everything, I think that maybe Grace hasn’t gone completely.