Esme gives me a hug.
‘Nighty-night,’ she says.
It’s what Amy used to say at bedtime too. I’d respond with a kiss blown from the end of my fingertip and she’d catch it in her palm.
‘Good night,’ I say, turning away.
Esme has her left arm held up over her head, hand upturned. I can’t tell if she’s stretching or ready to catch my kiss. I practically run down the hall to my bedroom.
The room is too full of ghosts for me to sleep. The Spice Girls smile from the walls like airbrushed zombies and the dent in the too-thin mattress is the same shape and size as Amy. It’s like lying in her grave.
The flat is quiet and dark. I heard Libby and Esme go to bed hours ago. Now all I can hear is the groan of the lift and the faint drone of traffic. I turn on the bedside light, wait for my eyes to adjust to its sickly pink glow and slip from under the duvet.
I open the wardrobe door, ready to catch whatever might fall out. But nothing does. The clothes on the shelves are folded into neat piles and those on the rack are pressed and arranged by colour. Amy was neat too; she was like me in so many ways.
I slide my hand between the jumpers and T-shirts, inside the shoes on the floor and the pink wicker linen basket, delve into the pockets of cardigans and coats. I’m not sure what I’m hoping to find – anything will do – but I find nothing.
The books on a shelf are arranged in height order, then alphabetised by title, from The Amber Spyglass to the X-Factor Annual.
Return from Heaven and Children’s Past Lives have been left lying across the top of the others. Useful background reading to get me up to speed, or clumsy, pointed stage props? I can’t be sure. I take them from the shelf and place them on the bedside table, use one of them as a bookmark in the other.
The desk is as tidy as the wardrobe. Beneath a box of pencils and crayons is a sketchbook warped and crispy with dried poster paint. The pictures are crude, the lines wonky and the detail fuzzy. Yellow splodges for flowers in a bulbous vase. Out-of-proportion horses in a flat green field. A triangular mountain, dripping with grubby white snow.
Further on in the book, the pictures become more accomplished. Angels trailing streaks of glitter fall through a jet-black space splattered with planets. At the bottom, two women hold out their hands, catching shooting stars. The picture is repeated and refined on subsequent pages, the sequence ending in a matt-black void. In its centre is a small white cross. Amy’s grave perhaps. Or the light of God, showing the way in the darkness. Towards the truth. Revelations. I slam the book shut and put it back in the desk quickly.
There are no notebooks or pads or diaries. If Esme has written anything at all, it will be on the laptop she did her homework on in the front room earlier.
I open the bedroom door slightly, peer through the gap for any signs of life, then tiptoe down the corridor. The front room glows in the light from the roads and the surrounding blocks of flats; I can see the laptop on the table where Esme left it.
It will be safer to take it back to my room and boot it up there, but as I lift it from the table, I hear a door open down the corridor. I put the computer back as quickly and quietly as I can and duck into the gap between the sofa and the wall. Even if whoever it is can’t see me, I think, they’re sure to hear the pounding of my heart.
I hear someone yawn, and peer from behind the sofa. Esme picks up the computer and walks back out of the room, towards Libby’s bedroom. The door closes and I squeeze out from my hiding place. There are muffled voices from Libby’s room and a thin grey glow beneath the door.
I inch my way back to my own bedroom, heart loud in my ears. I’m relieved when I finally close the door behind me but disappointed that I wasn’t able to get hold of the laptop. Curious, too. What did they want with it so late at night? The possibilities keep me guessing until I finally fall asleep.
The next morning, I hear voices, the flick of a switch, a toilet flushing. I wait a few moments, put on my dressing gown and go into the kitchen. Libby is at the sink, taking the lid off a kettle. She jumps when she turns around.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
Her face is stretched with tiredness, her eyes narrow and watery.
‘Oh, it’s just me being skittish,’ she says. ‘I’m not used to having another adult around.’ She shakes the kettle, gauging the amount of water inside it. ‘Tea?’
‘She has coffee for breakfast,’ Esme calls from along the hall. ‘Black, no sugar.’
She’s right again.
Libby holds the kettle under the tap; the flow of water is grudging. She plugs it in, takes a couple of mugs from the draining board and spoons in some coffee. Cereal boxes, bowls and milk appear on the table. Toast pops up in the toaster.
Libby moves quickly through her well-practised routine, then slumps in a chair, her yawn turning into a call to Esme to hurry up, as time is ticking.
‘It’s always such a rush,’ she says. ‘It’s not natural to start the day at eighty miles an hour.’ She sips from her cup and yawns again.
Esme walks into the kitchen and leans against me. I put my arm around her and give her a kiss on the head. Her hair has a just-brushed smoothness and warmth, the smell of apricots. She pulls away from me and twirls around with her arms out.
‘Do you like my uniform?’
‘Very smart,’ I say.
School uniforms aren’t what they were. Amy’s was a dark green jumper, skirt and tie in the winter, pale green checked dress in the summer. Esme’s is ash-grey leggings and a tomato-red sweatshirt branded with the school’s name.
She sits down at the table. An avalanche of Sugar Puffs tumbles into a bowl.
‘Have you had your grapefruit?’ she says to me.
‘Grapefruit?’
‘You always have it.’ She takes a grapefruit from a glass bowl on the windowsill. ‘I used my pocket money to get this just for you.’
Her thoughtfulness makes me melt a little more. I haven’t the heart to tell her I’ve not eaten grapefruit for years, so spoon the segments into my mouth with feigned relish. It tastes of the resentful, belligerent breakfasts I had with Brian after Amy vanished, the Today programme filling the silence until he left for work.
‘Do I have to go to school today?’ Esme says. ‘I want to stay with my two mums.’
Her pride is palpable. Her happiness, too. This, I realise, is the beginning of our future as she sees it. My gaze collides with Libby’s, then ricochets away.
‘We’ll both be here when you get back,’ Libby says.
‘There’s plenty of time for us to be together,’ I say.
‘There’s for ever!’ Esme says. Her eyes burn into me. ‘Will you take me to school?’
Sirens go off in my head. I can’t be trusted with a child on my own. Not yet. Not ever again.
‘No, we’ll all go.’ Libby raises her eyebrows at me, daring me to say otherwise.
‘Lovely,’ I say.
I’d rather stay and continue my search of the flat, but there’ll be time enough for that.
On the way to school, Esme walks in the middle, a hand in mine and Libby’s. We join a procession of mums with buggies and babies, the older children racing ahead on scooters. The women call out instructions to hurry up, don’t go too far ahead, stop at the kerb, don’t scuff your shoes. Like I used to do with Amy. Like I want to do once more.
Some of the mothers milling around the school gates give me curious stares. A few of them pull away from us, shepherding their children with a hand on their heads. I hear whispers, giggles.
A group of girls playing chase in the playground call out to Esme to come and join in. The girls look familiar from the photos on Esme’s Facebook page.
‘Off you go, love,’ Libby says, bending down and kissing Esme on the cheek. I do the same. The girls stare at me, then wave at Esme, urging her to hurry. I wonder which of them is Esme’s best friend, which might be a chatterbox or prone to telling tales. Esme runs off through the school gates.
&nb
sp; Back at the flat, Libby puts the kettle on and spoons Mellow Bird’s coffee into a couple of mugs. It’s the first time I’ve been alone with her since we sat in the café at the Festival Hall. That nearly ended in disaster. I have to be more careful this time. Let her do the talking.
She makes the coffee and puts my mug down on the table.
‘Actually, I prefer it black,’ I say. ‘Would you mind if I made another one?’
She shrugs and takes a sip from her mug. I tip the coffee down the sink and make another.
‘No doubt Esme would have reminded me if she’d been here,’ Libby says as I sit down opposite her.
‘Yes, probably,’ I say. ‘She knows a lot about me, of course. But there’s so much about you I don’t know.’
‘Oh, I only know the you from ten years ago,’ Libby says. ‘Before Amy died. Me and Esme are pretty much in the dark about what happened after that.’
I run my finger around the rim of my mug.
‘That’s still more than I know about you, Libby. And if we’re going to make this situation work, it would help to be fully in the picture. We’re sort of family now.’
Libby sighs.
‘I’m just a single mum,’ she says, flatly. ‘Battling on, trying to do the best for my kid. And trying to fit in a life of my own along the way.’ She gives a little smile. ‘I’m not very good at the last part. A job at Manchester airport doesn’t exactly pay for the high life. Not quite what my parents had in mind for me. Or what I had in mind for me, come to that.’
‘Oh?’ I say. ‘What did you want to do?’
Libby smiles.
‘I always fancied being a journalist. Used to do stuff on the school magazine. I was good at English. Good at school full stop. Then I fell for Esme. That was that.’
‘You couldn’t go back afterwards?’ I say. ‘I mean, I know it can’t be easy juggling school and looking after a baby, but a lot of girls manage it.’
‘With help, yes. My parents weren’t exactly falling over themselves to babysit.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I say, genuinely sympathetic. ‘They didn’t approve of you having Esme, then?’
‘Not exactly, no. In fact they wanted me to get rid of the baby. Kept going on about lost opportunities. University. Big career. The whole shebang. Plenty of time for kids later, they said. With a husband to make it easier. But I couldn’t have an abortion or give her up for adoption. I just knew from the very first moment that my baby was special.’
‘All new mums feel the same way,’ I say wistfully.
‘Mine didn’t,’ Libby snaps. ‘Before or after I was born. Post-natal depression saw to that.’ She puts her mug on the table. ‘She didn’t have an ounce of maternal instinct in her. I think that’s why she was so set on me having an abortion.’
‘How do you get on now?’ I say.
Her eyes are sad and distant, her mouth tight.
‘She’s dead. Dad found her in the bath with the curling tongs and an electric fan heater. The coroner found a litre of gin and a couple of hundred paracetamol in her system too.’ Another weak smile. ‘She was always very thorough, my mum. In most things, anyway. Love just wasn’t one of them.’
‘What about your father?’
‘He emigrated to Australia after Mum died,’ Libby says. ‘When he looked at me and Esme, all he saw was a granddaughter he never wanted, from a daughter who’d thrown her life away. We were no replacement for his wife. He doesn’t even send Christmas cards.’ She sighs and leans forward. ‘Are Amy’s grandparents still alive?’
‘I haven’t had any contact with Brian’s parents since before the divorce,’ I say, ‘but they’re still alive as far as I know.’
‘And Granny Jam’s still around?’
I try to swallow my surprise at hearing Amy’s nickname for my mother.
‘Still around, yes!’ I say. ‘Still making endless jars of jams and pickles. She forgets there’s only me to eat it now . . . I end up putting a lot of it in for raffle prizes at the church bazaar. Dad’s doing well too.’
I make it sound as though I see them often, which isn’t exactly true. Their visits from their home in Hampshire have gradually tapered off since Amy disappeared. For the first few weeks they were by my side, Mum ready with sympathy and assurances that everything would be fine, my father’s support quieter and less tangible.
I sensed in him a reluctance, a trace of the media’s suspicions about my negligence. He never said anything to me directly, but I could feel a certain detachment where I needed solid support.
I couldn’t broach it with him or with my mother; we just didn’t do that sort of thing. Dad was a former civil servant, Mum a briskly efficient secretary. They were comfortable, accomplished, respectable – stalwarts of the local yacht club. We tackled problems like a boat around a buoy – with a wide berth and the risk of capsizing. Confrontation was bad form. Boats were for sailing, not rocking.
The waters have been choppy ever since. No wonder the jams and pickles from their harvest of berries and vegetables tend to be delivered by the postman rather than in person.
Libby drains her mug and waggles it at me.
‘Another one?’ she says. ‘I always need a couple to get me going properly.’
I shake my head and she stands up to fill the kettle.
‘What about you, Libby? No boyfriends?’
She laughs.
‘Esme’s got more suitors than I have! Single mums aren’t exactly man magnets.’ She flicks the kettle on and leans against the draining board as she waits for the water to boil. ‘It would be tricky with Esme, anyway.’
‘I would have thought she’d like having a man around,’ I say. ‘A dad.’
‘She’s got one.’
I frown, then realise she means Brian. I can’t help wondering how all this will work if Esme really is Amy. She and Libby would become part of my family, of Brian’s. Of Brian’s step-family. We’d be a mongrel assortment of bastards and ghosts and surrogates, the parts of our family tree making nothing but a blighted whole.
Libby pours water and milk into her mug and sits back down at the table.
‘Do you mind it when Esme calls me Mum?’ I say.
She crosses her arms.
‘I’m getting used to it,’ she says sadly. ‘But that doesn’t stop it hurting.’
‘I know. I feel the same.’
Libby looks at her watch.
‘I’d better get a move on or I’ll be late,’ she says. ‘It’s not exactly my dream job, but it’s a job and I don’t want to lose it.’
When she leaves, I watch her from the window until she turns the corner by Fags‘n’Mags. I wait for a few minutes more, just in case she comes back. It wouldn’t surprise me if she did. She must know I’m going to search the flat. She’s either as gullible as she thinks I am, or she’s made sure there’s nothing to find. And maybe there isn’t.
Esme’s computer is back on the table. It’s even older and heavier than my old one. Some of the letters are almost worn away and the screen is streaky with scratches. It clicks and whirs for ages before the screen asks for a password.
‘Shit!’
For any other girl it would be easy to guess. If Amy had had a computer of her own she probably wouldn’t have had a password at all. She had no secrets from me, nothing to hide, and couldn’t have done so even if she wanted to. I knew her inside out because she was so like me.
But if she did have a password she’d have chosen something guessable. Amy Spice, or Tinkerbell. Something girly, fluffy and pink. Esme might be craftier. She’s too clever for it to be Amy or Esme or Libby, but that doesn’t stop me trying them.
I’ve seen reports on television preaching about how people are careless with their passwords, choosing ones that are too obvious. Mix it up, they advise. Numbers and letters but not house numbers, postcodes or birthdays. But when I try them, they don’t work either.
I shut the lid firmly, wipe it with my sleeve. I put it back on the table in the same po
sition I found it. The opportunity will come for me to get into her computer. In the meantime, I have to look elsewhere.
The top drawer of a black lacquered cabinet is a jumble of extension cables, rubber doorstops, Allen keys and instruction manuals for electrical appliances. The drawer below is stacked with pads and paperwork – utility bills mostly, a pile each for gas, water, electricity and phone, held firmly at the top by a bulldog clip. Beneath them is a Thomson local directory and the Yellow Pages, takeaway menus for Chinese and Indian restaurants, Sellotape, stapler and loose biros. The third drawer has piles of place mats and coasters, blue glass tea-light holders scabby with wax and half-empty boxes of matches.
I’m not surprised at finding nothing. I’d be more suspicious if I had found something. But I can’t mistake the feeling gnawing at me – not that I’ve been duped, but that I’ve overlooked something. I open the top drawer once more, slow my breathing, tell myself to concentrate. My hand hovers over the contents, waiting for instinct to guide me like a divining rod. It reminds me of playing with Amy, when she’d hide something and tell me I was getting close to finding it by saying cold, warm or red hot.
Cold.
I open the second drawer.
Warmer.
I pick up the pads and flick through the jumble of doodles, dates and telephone numbers.
Colder.
I pick up the bundle of bills to see if there’s anything underneath or in between the pages.
Red hot.
At first I see nothing but a blizzard of numbers – account details, dates and amounts. There is nothing alarming about the size of the bills and all of them seem to have been paid.
My eyes become accustomed to the uniform layout of the various bills, the length of the name and address at the top of the page, the utility company logos, the boxes with account reference numbers. I dismiss my so-called instinct as wishful thinking and start to put them back.
Then I notice something different.
The name of the account holder on one of the gas bills is Henry Campbell Black. It’s dated eighteen months ago and the following bill in the sequence is in Libby’s name.
The Second Life of Amy Archer Page 15