The Girl Who Came Back

by Kerry Wilkinson

Thursday

  Georgie transitions directly from a yawn into a beaming smile as she opens her front door. She wafts her hand in front of her mouth, trying to flap away the tiredness. Her hair is more of a mess than when I saw her yesterday; curly red wisps darting off in all directions.

  ‘Olivia, my love. I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Natalie’s at the coffee shop if you’re looking for her. She was a right mess this morning, poor dear. Still, she brings it on herself.’

  ‘I was after you, actually.’

  This gets an even wider smile. She holds the door wide and welcomes me inside, before leading me into the kitchen.

  ‘It’s so lovely that the pair of you are spending time together,’ she says – and it takes me a moment to realise she’s talking about Nattie. ‘Shows you still have that bond after all these years.’

  There’s not a lot I can say, so smile and shrug instead. She asks if I want anything to eat or drink and then fusses about whether I had a good night’s sleep, wondering if the Black Horse is comfortable enough for me. It’s suddenly like having two mothers – but I can’t pretend it’s not nice to be wanted. When she’s finally done with that, she asks why I was looking for her.

  ‘I was talking to Nattie yesterday before we went to the pub and she said something about my mum disappearing for a summer…’

  Georgie’s features tighten, the smiles becoming a concerned grimace. ‘She said that?’

  ‘We were talking about all sorts of things. I was trying to figure out what happened between her, my dad and Max.’

  Georgie suddenly becomes very interested in scrubbing the draining board. She dips under the sink and grabs one of those squirty surface cleaners, then douses the metal before pummelling away at it with a cloth. I sit on the high stool next to the breakfast bar and wait until she’s done. She rinses out the cloth and wrings it tightly, then finally turns back to me.

  ‘I’ve not thought about that for a long time,’ she says.

  ‘I wasn’t sure what Nattie meant by “disappear”. Did Mum go away somewhere…?’

  There’s another pause as she continues fiddling with the cloth and then washes her hands.

  ‘It was a strange time... you and Natalie have pretty much grown out of it, but you know what it’s like when you’re fourteen or fifteen and your hormones are going crazy. Everything feels so big, so important. I think Max always had a thing for your mother, even before any of us knew what those feelings meant. We were at that age where you’d have a boyfriend but it didn’t mean anything other than that you might walk to school together. Max and your mum went from that to actually being together in a more serious way when they were sixteen.’

  She twiddles with her hair, screwing up her lips and glancing up. It’s as if she’s extracting the memory from the air. ‘I remember the four of us had gone out to the cinema and then we got burgers or something like that. We’d been together all day and then ended up in the park as it was getting dark. I was sitting on the grass but Sarah and Max were on the swings. Out of nowhere he stopped moving and waited for her to come to a halt as well. Ashley and me were both there, both listening, and he told her he loved her.’

  It takes me a moment to take that in.

  ‘Max said that to my mum when they were sixteen?’

  ‘Right – completely out of nowhere. I remember Sarah’s face, this blank deer-in-the-headlights stare, as if she didn’t know what to say.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘There was this long silence. I remember looking at Ashley – but he was staring at Sarah – and the pause went on and on. It was like she’d forgotten how to speak. Eventually Max goes, “Aren’t you going to say it back?” and there’s nothing she can do.’

  Georgie stops and rubs her head, shuffling the memories. She then fills the kettle and clicks it on.

  ‘Your mum says it back, of course. She apologises, says he took her by surprise but of course she loves him back. Max says they’re going to be together forever and that’s that. We never really talked about it afterwards.’

  She leans on the counter and waits for the kettle to click off, then fills a mug with hot water and cradles it in her hand like it’s a precious newborn.

  ‘What happened with you and Ashley?’ I ask.

  Georgie snorts. ‘Let’s say those brothers are opposites in many ways. Max followed Sarah around like a puppy; his brother would flit from girl to girl. Even now I don’t remember why I went out with him in the first place. Either way, he moved on – so you could say I dodged a bullet there.’

  I’m not entirely sure what she means by that. It might simply be that Ashley isn’t well liked around village – but it’s probably not worth pushing.

  ‘Was that the summer she went missing?’ I ask.

  Georgie shakes her head. ‘I’m coming to that – but it all kind of fits together. That all happened at Easter time. I don’t remember the date but probably April or so. The weather was turning and we used to stay out after school. We’d hang around the park, or sit under the bridge by the river. Sometimes we’d smoke or Ashley would get us a bottle of cider.’ She winks. ‘Don’t let your mother ever tell you she was an angel when she was your age. Neither of us were.’

  ‘She’d already had a kid by the time she was my age.’

  Georgie counts on her fingers again. It must be a family thing. ‘We both had. My mum hit the roof when I told her I was pregnant…’ She tails off and then wafts a hand, brushing the thought away.

  I realise I have no idea about the identity of Nattie’s father. It definitely doesn’t feel like the time to ask – not that it’s any of my business anyway.

  ‘Anyway – that day with the swings was around Easter,’ Georgie adds. ‘It would’ve been about three or four months later, during the summer holidays – and your mum wasn’t allowed out any more.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘If I ever knocked on the front door, her mum would answer and say she couldn’t come out. She was ill, or she had chores, or she was grounded. There was always a reason. Then she simply said Sarah wasn’t allowed out with me any more. I remember asking why but she just stared back, as if I was some sort of devil. Told me not to come round again.’

  ‘That’s the summer she disappeared?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Was she at home the whole time?’

  Georgie holds both hands out, palms up. ‘I don’t know. I remember seeing her in her bedroom window. I was on the street below and waved up. I thought she saw me but all she did was pull the curtains. It was really weird.’

  ‘You didn’t see her for the whole summer?’

  A shake of the head. ‘I only saw her once for the rest of the year. I don’t know if she was at home, or if she’d gone somewhere else. The next time I saw her properly was out in the village, shortly after she turned seventeen. It was after new year.’

  ‘She disappeared for six months?’

  ‘I guess…’

  Georgie tips away the hot water and then refills the kettle. She gets the biscuit tin out of the cupboard and leaves the lid off as she sandwiches two chocolate digestives together and bites into them. ‘It was such a long time ago,’ she says.

  ‘You said you saw her once in that time…’

  Another bite of the double-decker biscuit. ‘Right. I don’t think her mum – your grandmother – liked Sarah having friends. There was a time towards the end of the holidays when Max and me decided to go to the house and wait. We figured her mum had to go out sometime, so we’d hide in these bushes over the road. It was really boring – and he used to eat these beef jerky things that absolutely stank. We didn’t really hang around together except for when we were both with Sarah – but he talked me into it because we were both worried about her. We were there for a whole day and nothing happened but we went back the day after. We’d been there a couple of hours and then Sarah’s mum went out by herself. I think she was going food shopping because she had all these bags. We waited
until she was out of sight and then we knocked on the door.’

  The kettle clicks off for a second time and this time Georgie makes a cup of tea. She dunks her double-decker biscuits and sucks away the juice.

  ‘It took Sarah ages to answer,’ she says. ‘When she did she looked at us as if we were strangers – then she told us both to go away. I remember asking if she was going to college because our exam results had just come out. All she did was shrug and say she wasn’t allowed to talk to me. She told us to leave and then Max said something like, “Does this mean we’re broken up?” – and she looks at him and goes, “What do you think?”. That was it. She closed the door and I didn’t see her again until the next year.’

  I rock back and forth on the stool, trying to take it all in. It’s a strange story… except one of my biggest questions might have been answered. Perhaps the biggest. Georgie doesn’t even know what she’s said.

  ‘Did she ever tell you what happened?’ I ask.

  ‘No… it was different the next year. I don’t think she was so bothered about what her mum thought by then. If she wanted to go out, she went out. She met your dad later that year and that was that. Pregnancy, you, marriage – all that. I guess we grew up pretty quickly.’ She dunks the double biscuit and finishes it off. ‘Well… in some ways we did.’

  Fifteen

  Mum has a finger to her lips when she opens the front door. She must have seen me coming. ‘Harry’s sleeping,’ she whispers as she steps to the side and lets me into the house. ‘He’s been up half the night.’

  ‘Why?’

  She closes the door and hugs me for the briefest of seconds. ‘Who knows? You were exactly the same. You’d sleep when you wanted. Sometimes that’d mean through the night, other times you’d decide you were going to be nocturnal. Used to drive me crazy.’

  I leave my bag in the hallway and then head through to the conservatory. Harry is in a rocking crib in the corner, shaded by a hanging blanket that keeps him in something close to darkness. Mum’s on edge as I poke my head over the side to check on him. His face is scrunched up like a French bulldog puppy and he’s sucking his thumb.

  Mum breathes a sigh of relief as I step away without waking him. She yawns long and wide, before apologising.

  ‘How have you been?’ she asks.

  ‘I only saw you yesterday.’

  ‘I know… I just…’ She tails off and then adds: ‘It’s nice to see you again.’

  ‘I’ve been hanging out with Nattie,’ I say.

  ‘Did you visit your father?’ She speaks breezily, as if this is all perfectly normal.

  ‘Yes.’

  She opens her mouth to reply but then closes it again, giving a small nod as acknowledgement instead.

  ‘I visited my grave, too. The wreath thing at the tree.’

  Mum’s eyebrows rise. ‘Nobody knew what to do,’ she says. ‘You were officially dead… still are, I suppose. I didn’t want to get a gravestone because it felt so final. Some of the girls from the school wove that wooden wreath and carved your name on the tree. It became this official-unofficial thing. I go there a couple of times a year and sometimes leave flowers. I’ve been there on your birthday every year since…’

  I wonder if that’s an invitation for me to close down any minuscule seeds of doubt that could be lingering. To prove that I know my own birthday.

  ‘Christmas Eve,’ I reply.

  It’s like someone’s taken a heavy bag from her. She straightens and breathes out. I’m right. Of course I am. ‘Right. It’s always so cold. The flowers don’t last long. I’ve thought about taking other things – teddies or whatever – but they’d only get taken.’

  ‘It’s the thought that counts.’

  She nods and smiles thinly.

  It’s a nice image of the tree surrounded by small soft toys and flowers. The media might have moved on, a lot of people might have moved on – but there’s a small corner of this village that still remembers.

  ‘Can we talk about Dad?’ I ask.

  Mum stares at me but her eyes are blank, like I’ve asked about someone who’s dead. It feels like a long time passes but then her shoulders slump and she lets out a long breath.

  ‘I loved him once,’ she says.

  It’s so softly spoken that I have no doubt it’s true. She eases herself lower on the sofa, needing it for support, then glances off towards a photo of her and Max on a nearby shelf, as if speaking of my dad is somehow cheating on her husband.

  ‘He was a good man,’ she adds. ‘I’d had the same friends for a really long time – we’d all grown up together, all came from this village and I don’t think I realised how small that made everything.’

  I’m leaning on a sideboard and she looks up to me, squeezing her hands together.

  ‘It’s like there’s this trivial corner of the world, this little village, this group of people you know – and that’s it. You forget there’s a big world out there and Dan was the first time I’d seen that. He didn’t come from here and hadn’t gone to the same school as the rest of us.’

  It is the first I’ve heard of this.

  ‘Where did he come from?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s a Londoner – not that you’d know it from listening to him speak. His dad was a dentist and moved here because he was setting up a practice. Dan was eighteen when he chose to come with his father. I was seventeen, maybe just eighteen and he was four years older.’ She snaps her fingers and it dawns on me that I do that, too. ‘We clicked like that,’ she adds. ‘One minute we’d never met, the next we were doing everything together. I remember early on and we were talking about going out to eat somewhere. I said we could go to the local burger place, which is where I always used to go, and he asked if there was a sushi place nearby. I stared at him as if he’d suggested something so completely stupid. I only knew it was raw fish, I’d never tried it. It sounded disgusting but he said it was really good – rice and spices and all sorts. It was like he was the most exotic person I’d ever met.’

  ‘Did you ever try sushi?’

  She laughs. ‘Yes. He had a car, so drove us miles and miles out to this place he’d found. I couldn’t use the chopsticks, so they gave me a fork. It was really good, not like I expected at all.’ Mum holds her hands out, smiling sadly. ‘I still don’t think the village will be getting a sushi place anytime soon.’

  ‘You could open one.’

  A snort: ‘It’d be out of business in a month. You know what they say about old dogs and new tricks. This village is the oldest of old dogs. You should’ve seen the fuss people kicked up when Tesco wanted planning permission for a new Express store. You’d think they were trying to sacrifice kids or something.’

  There’s a squeak from Harry’s cot and Mum freezes. Her eyes dart sideways, fearing the worst, but the noise is followed by silence. She breathes out in tired relief.

  Everything she’s said about my dad is the opposite of what I saw. He wasn’t particularly exotic as he slept among empty bottles of booze and rodent droppings.

  ‘We’d only been seeing each other for a few months when I got pregnant with you,’ Mum says. It’s as if she’s looking over invisible glasses. ‘We didn’t plan it – but neither of us were unhappy. We were young, but I don’t want you to think you were unwelcome. Unplanned doesn’t mean unwanted.’

  It’s hard to reply because I didn’t expect the honesty. There’s a stigma about being ‘an accident’, but she’s right: unplanned doesn’t mean unwanted. The problem is I know more than she realises.

  ‘I understand.’

  They are two of the hardest words I’ve ever spoken – and I’m not sure she’ll ever know why. There’s a pause, which is good because I need it. She stares off towards Harry and I take the moment to gulp away the words that are on the tip of my tongue. There’s so much I could say – but I know I can’t.

  Mum doesn’t seem to notice. ‘Sex education wasn’t what it is now,’ she says. ‘We were naïve. Four of us in the same year a
t school all got pregnant within a few months of each other. Dan and I told his dad that we wanted to have the baby and he was fine.’ She pauses. ‘Well, not fine, I suppose. He accepted it. My mum wasn’t so pleased – but I was past caring at that point. Your father and I moved into that old house you know and we made it work. When we’d saved up enough money, we got married and made it all official.’

  There’s another rustle from the back of the room and this time it’s followed by a high-pitched gasp for attention. Not quite a cry – but enough to make it clear Harry is awake and wants seeing to. Mum’s face falls and she slowly pulls herself up from the sofa. The crow’s feet under her eyes have developed overnight.

  ‘Can I try?’

  Mum blinks and stumbles over a reply. ‘Oh… um… I suppose. If you want, I mean…’

  I cross to the crib, to where Harry is wriggling his arms up above his head, expecting his mother’s hands to lift him out. He’s gurgling and spluttering, with saliva covering his chin. As soon as I reach for him, he latches onto my hands and squeezes as I pull him from the crib onto my shoulder. I don’t know if he’s big or small for a two-year-old but he’s certainly heavy – not that he cares as he buries his face in my breastbone and flops lazily into my arms.

  Within a second or two, he’s asleep again.

  ‘I didn’t expect that,’ Mum says.

  I stand, bobbing Harry gently up and down as Mum watches the pair of us, a smile slowly creeping across her face. She tells me to wait and then hurries into the other room quickly before returning with her phone to take a series of photos. She stares at the screen afterwards and there are more tears in the corner of her eyes as she turns the phone for me to see.

  It’s a good picture: Harry’s eyes are closed and he’s sucking his thumb, his head directly under mine.

  ‘There’s a place in the village that prints photos directly from your phone,’ she says.

  ‘Won’t Max mind?’

  She looks up and mutters something I don’t catch. I’m not sure it was meant for me.