Someday Find Me

by Nicci Cloke

  That was all it said. Just ‘Cheese’. Nothing else, no type of cheese, how much cheese, anything. No little picture from Stevie. As I walked down the dairy aisle, things swam in front of me. Goat’s cheese, blue cheese, crumbly cheese, cubes of cheese and shreds of cheese. They swam in front of me and numbers filled my head. Calories. Grams of fat. Weights and measurements and hours and days. Half-empty boxes, a torn corner of a packet oozing liquid onto the shelf. Labels in the wrong places, things in the wrong places. People loomed past with their baskets full and their bodies wobbling, fat cheeks moving as they talked, filling their mouths with words instead of food, filling their baskets and eating with their eyes. My hands were sweating, the list wearing thin until the ink started to run on the letters, wiping away the things that were written there. I dropped the basket and pushed through the trolleys until I got to the pavement outside.

  Who you are depends so much on who you are talking to. With someone you don’t know, you can be anyone you want to be. With a childhood friend or enemy, you can try hard to dodge the old you without success. With Stevie I didn’t know who I was. She had known me since I was small, yet she hardly knew me at all. She was family and friend and stranger all at once.

  ‘You didn’t see the money I left out?’

  ‘No, of course I did. I just forgot to pick it up on my way out.’

  ‘Oh. Dozy mare.’

  She was still taking her shoes off, her coat sliding off the back of the sofa, her folders wobbling on the table. She lay back against the sofa and stretched. ‘Don’t worry, babe. Pizza it is. What time’s Top Idol on?’

  I sank into my seat, full of relief and warmth. ‘Half an hour. It’s only the extra show, though, all the rehearsals and stuff.’

  ‘I know. So long as Simon’s in it, I don’t care.’

  Just as she was reaching for the remote, the doorbell rang. She looked at me.

  ‘Who’s that now?’

  I felt my heart stop. Stevie got up and opened the living-room door. I wondered if I should run, but I knew the back door didn’t open and I was frozen in place. And then she called out.

  ‘Saf! Come here!’

  My legs had turned to stone, but somehow I managed to get up and stagger into the hall. Stevie was holding the door open. I stared into the night in terror.

  The two ginger twins from across the road were standing there, grinning cheerfully.

  ‘Hiya,’ they chorused, dancing about on the step in their black Velcro-strapped trainers.

  ‘The lads here are selling a new magazine,’ Stevie said. ‘They reckon it’s a quid a go.’

  They nodded, giggling.

  I tried to smile, but my heart was still thumping in my ears. ‘Oh, right. A pound’s a bit pricey isn’t it? Is it any good?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Stevie chimed in. ‘Let’s have a look then.’

  The twin on the left produced a clump of glossy paper from behind his back, and Stevie and I leant forward to peer at it in the lamplight. It was a load of old takeaway leaflets stapled together. The boys were vibrating with laughter now, elbowing each other and shuffling from foot to foot.

  ‘Cheeky little …’ Stevie said. ‘A quid! Jog on.’ But she gave them a wink and 20p she found in her pocket, which sent them running off down the road in fits of joy.

  ‘Sweet, really,’ she said, as we went back into the warmth of the lounge. ‘But proper little shits. Right, Simon-time, baby.’

  I was still smiling as she turned the telly on, and not about her pervy love for Simon Cowell, but because suddenly I felt newly still; like I could be calm, in one place, even if it was just for a while.

  The news was on before Top Idol. The opening music was just finishing as the picture clicked on. A big picture of Fate Jones was being projected behind the newsreaders, the same one of her with her hair brushed over one shoulder, grinning at the camera and at us behind it. Stevie got up to open a bottle of wine.

  ‘The news that Fate Jones has been found alive and well rocked the nation today, after police tracked her to a private resort in Ibiza.’

  A blurry camera-phone photo of her on a sunbed, blonde hair blonder against Balearic tan. Fate Jones only existed in blurry images, whether she was alive or presumed dead.

  ‘A police spokesman said today that they had been alerted by an anonymous member of the public, and confirmed that the presumed abduction had been staged. Though exact details are not yet known, there is growing speculation that the disappearance had been planned with the intention of a friend posing as a private investigator to extract funds from Fate’s father, well-known businessman Lowen Jones. Miss Jones was arrested this afternoon, along with her former university tutor and rumoured lover, Kevin Kitaki. We’ll keep you updated with information as and when we receive it — turn over to our twenty-four-hour news channel for full coverage.’

  ‘Fucking hell …’ Stevie said from the doorway. She was leaning against the frame, bottle of wine and corkscrew in opposite hands. The TV was playing out the timeline of the case, showing how simply the evidence had been put together, how easily we had all fallen for it.

  I said nothing. I had no idea what to feel. Something I was so jealous of, so angry about, had been snatched away from me. It was like having the world swirled around while you were blindfolded – everything was the same, but I had no idea where it all fitted any more.

  The piece played on, experts drafted in to explain the details, the image of the same red front door made tiny in the top right corner, still shut tight, no sign of the sadness or the fury closed in tight behind it. I heard the pop of the cork, the glug of the wine. I felt the glass in my hand, but I didn’t drink. I just looked at the pretty pink of it, the blue sheen it caught in the shaded light.

  ‘That is fucked up,’ Stevie said, sitting down next to me again. ‘Imagine it. All the people’s been looking for her. All the money people’ve paid. Little fucking bitch.’

  ‘The posters …’ I said, looking at the pretty newsreader’s unreadable face as she read her autocue.

  Stevie took a swig of her wine. ‘There’s a girl on my course’ll be gutted. Swear she’s got a bet on her being dead. Always checking on her phone to see if she’d been found yet. Seriously, what are people gonna do now? What’s gonna be on the news?’

  I didn’t know. ‘Top Idol?’

  She laughed. ‘Suits me. Woah, though. Never seen that coming.’

  No. Who does?

  She clinked her glass against mine. ‘Cheers, babe.’

  Cheers.

  The news was regional after that. A new ward at the hospital, a new John Lennon statue. A child genius selling paintings to Americans for hundreds of thousands of millions.

  ‘Eh, Saf,’ Stevie said. ‘If he can do it, you can. Little knob.’

  I laughed. I wanted to hold her hand but I didn’t know why. The weather came on. Rain and grey. It felt nice in its way, a weird comfort. Where I’d been exposed, shone on, now I was cuddled, protected – hidden in the fug and the drizzle. The constant cold was worth that.

  I looked at Stevie’s almost empty glass and tried to drink some of mine. I tried to tell myself that I could get rid of it later, but as the liquid sank down I felt it seeping through me, creeping through gaps in my cells and bedding down, making new little fat round rosy-pink cells, which seemed to turn bluish when they caught the light. Stevie got up to refill her glass, not noticing or ignoring mine. When she came back, Top Idol was starting and she snuggled up closer to me.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Drink every time someone says they’re giving it a hundred and ten per cent or Simon undoes another shirt button.’

  In life, you have to have balance. Stopping eating made me feel free, in charge, but being drunk or high made me free too. It was all give and take; knowing what you had to give up to have the other. Though I usually stuck with vodka, which was clear and safe, I would have wine or beer if there was nothing else around. It wasn’t a big deal, at least not at the start, when I still had p
lenty of other things to deny myself. But sitting there, on Stevie’s sofa, I couldn’t bring myself to drink it. Because I didn’t want to be free any more. I just wanted to be gone.

  We used to play drinking games sometimes. We used to play games all the time, board games and drinking games and made-up games. Sometimes we played drinking games with cups of tea or glasses of milk. Because everything was fun with him. Everything everyday could be magical and silly and fun.

  When the programme finished, the second bottle of wine was halfway empty and Stevie’s cheeks were rosy pink too. She smiled at me.

  ‘I’ve had a great idea,’ she said. ‘Wait here.’

  She skipped out of the room. I poured some of my glass down the sink and went back to my place. She came bounding back just as I was changing the channel, a heavy book bound in leather tucked in her arms.

  ‘Look,’ she said, and she was smiling at me in a way that took me right back to dens made of bed sheets and handbags made of old cereal boxes. ‘This is going to be funny.’ She opened to the first page, and my own face stared back at me. ‘It’s our family album,’ she said, giggling and leaning into me as we stared at our tiny selves, stuffed into crushed velvet and taffeta and kneeling in a sea of presents under a plastic tree. ‘Mam gave it to me. She doesn’t look at it any more, you know.’ We turned the page so we didn’t have to think about why that might be.

  ‘There’s no baby ones,’ she said. ‘Dad took a box of them by accident. Left his box of porn behind instead.’ It wasn’t as if they could have asked him for them back. He hadn’t left an address or a phone number. I couldn’t even remember what he looked like.

  Our mothers were looking back at us now, backcombed and hairsprayed within an inch of their lives, in matching sparkly sweatshirts and ski leggings. Peggy was a blonde; Mum had lightened her red hair to a nuclear kind of orange.

  ‘They look alike,’ I said.

  Stevie nodded, ran a finger across the picture. ‘Like us.’

  Jelli was waiting for us next, cake smeared across her face, hair teased up into two demonic pigtails. ‘Here, I heard about your neighbour,’ Stevie said. ‘She don’t change, does she?’ I had no idea what she was talking about, but I realised I was smiling.

  Ella was sitting on Granny’s lap, reading to her, concentration on her pale little face. Stevie and I touched our heads together, just for a second. Granny had died two years before.

  The Christmas dinner, the toys unwrapped. A birthday – Stevie’s, with Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Pass the Parcel and tiger masks and lion masks and paper trees hanging in the corners. Granny and Grandpa’s ruby wedding anniversary, with Jelli dancing on my dad’s toes and Stevie and me charging people 5p to look after their coats. Another Christmas, a later one, with Barbie’s dreamhouse and Etch-a-Sketch and hair-braiding kits. A birthday, Ella’s, no party games, just karaoke and a sleepover, films and pyjamas and popcorn. Jelli in panto, stealing the show.

  A summer holiday we took together. Stevie and I must have been eleven. My mother was pregnant with Lulu, big flowery smock and her hair cropped short. It was a cottage near the coast, a whole week of running along the beach and through fields, reading books on the battered old sofa and eating around the big wooden table in the kitchen, all of us.

  We were staring at ourselves again, gap-toothed and freckled. Bundled up in woollen jumpers against the salty wind that blew our sun-blonde hair about. We were spinning around, holding hands, laughing our little heads off with the sun just starting to peek out from behind a cloud beyond us. Stevie stopped turning the pages.

  ‘You could be this happy again, Saf.’

  I felt the blood stop in my veins. I laughed, but it came out shaky. ‘As when I was eleven? Is anyone that?’

  She shut the book softly and turned to look at me. ‘I’m serious. Let me help you.’

  ‘You are helping. I’m really grateful, Vee. You’ve been a star.’

  ‘I don’t mean with that.’ She put a hand on my knee. ‘You’re not well, Saf.’

  I pulled my knee away. ‘Not you too. I’m fine. For fuck’s sake.’

  I tried to look away, but she wouldn’t let me. ‘You’re not fine, Saffy. You’re ill. Please, let me help you. I love you. I’m sorry I haven’t been around. I am now. I’m here. Let me help.’

  I stared at her for a moment, and saw the tears filling her eyes. When I felt them start to fill mine to match, I stood up.

  ‘I don’t have to listen to this. You don’t know me, Stevie. I’m fine. And if you don’t want me around, I’ll just go.’

  She put the book down and stood up too. ‘Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, hun. If you say you’re fine, I do believe you.’

  I was silent for a minute, staring at her. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m sorry. I was being stupid.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Hug?’

  I hugged her tighter than I meant to. I wasn’t letting anything else be taken away from me that day.

  We see it on the news together before he knows she’s there. He has the morning off and he comes round to the flat to see me. We don’t live together then. We haven’t even known each other long. We drink coffee even though he doesn’t like it – he doesn’t tell me this until he has moved in. We’re watching This Morning and suddenly they interrupt it for a newsflash. Until then, I didn’t even think those happened except in bad crime novels and worse films. We watch the footage, the taped-off station and the flashing lights and the crowds of police coats. We are quiet. We put our cups down and we stop drinking.

  In those moments, when something has happened in the world and the information is flooding through, when people are desperate to talk and tell the story before it’s over, the confusion and the assumptions all bubbling up through the screen, you wonder how it relates to you. How it’s connected to you. How you would feel if it were happening to you. You project and picture and you feel something different from sympathy. You feel involved, affected. You want to hear the story faster than they can tell it. You want to know who was responsible for the bomb, who has been hurt, why police were already on high alert. You want to know how the disappearance was staged, how she felt, whether she did it for love or for money. You want to be a part of the story, yet you can be infinitely glad that you aren’t.

  An hour later, while I was washing up the cups, he got the call to tell him his sister had been on the train. You are always a part of the story, whether you realise it or not.

  Stevie shifted in her sleep above me. I was cosy in a nest of duvets and pillows and fluffy cushions from the sofa, but I couldn’t sleep. Things that had seemed solid were being taken away from me, dependable walls falling down and leaving me exposed and alone. I felt as though I was just waiting for the floor to disappear from beneath me.

  I didn’t understand why I was so upset that Fate Jones was a liar. We had all created her story, pieced together the parts she had left us and filled in the rest. We’d all made her into this person, this perfect girl, and now we were left to wonder why she hadn’t turned out the way we wanted. People didn’t understand that nothing is ever true; that the things you hang your hopes on and build your life around can turn to dust in a second.

  As long as I had Stevie, I felt I was safe.

  There was a rift in the clouds. An icy blue puncture in the grey fug that had surrounded me; a tear in the trust and the softness that had kept me briefly still. I heard her on the phone that morning.

  I’d slept in, kept up late by thoughts and feelings all cut loose. I’d slept in until the sun was shining through the clouds and through the window. I got up slowly, hearing Stevie moving about downstairs. I needed to shower away the night, clean away the thoughts, so I went to the bathroom and turned on the hot water. There were no towels hanging on the rail so I went back out onto the landing, to the pile of clean washing on the chair at the top of the stairs. And I heard her.

  I stepped down onto the first stair at the sound of her voice. Somethi
ng stopped me. Something made me crouch there and listen very carefully.

  ‘No,’ she was saying. ‘No, that’s fine. I can do something nice with her today, keep her busy. She wants to take pictures, I think.’

  There was a silence as she listened. Through the gap in the banisters I could see her winding the plastic flex around her finger.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Seven is fine. How far is the place? Will they be able to admit her that late?’

  More silence.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Great. You can text me if you’re going to be late. We’ll be here. A what? … Oh, okay. Where can I get those? And how will I get her to take it? … No, no, I understand. I’ll try and keep her calm.’

  She listened a minute longer. ‘Right. I’ll be ready for you at seven … No, there’s just the front door. The back one’s always bolted … Okay, Pippa. See you then. Safe journey.’

  And she put down the phone.

  Everything hung silent and still in the air after the click of the receiver going down. I felt as if I was breaking into a million pieces, disappearing into dust. Then time snapped back and the blood rushed to my face and I was up and making for the bedroom as quickly as I could.