by Jane Shemilt
At that moment there was a knock at the door; Ian came in. He looked excited.
‘Something you should see,’ he said breathlessly. We followed him downstairs.
Ian had found Theo’s photos of Naomi’s naked body hidden within branches. Michael looked at them, frowning slightly.
At that moment Theo walked out of the bathroom. His face, wet from the shower and disarmed by sleep, darkened with incredulity as he realized his pictures had pushed him into the nightmare. He explained the theme of his project and how Naomi had wanted to take part. Ian, eyes narrowed, asked Theo to repeat what he’d just said. I could tell he didn’t believe him.
‘You can ask Nikita,’ I said quickly, moving closer to Theo. ‘She was there; she’ll tell you.’
Michael went to phone Shan. He arranged for us all to meet at the police station. He said it was a useful place to get some questions out of the way. All I felt was burning impatience that this would hold up the search.
In my head was a moving image of a car with Naomi inside. Her face pressed against a window, driving past me. I could have stopped it at the moment it passed me, but it had moved further so I was just too late. No, if I ran I could still stop it, but that moment passed too. It became endlessly just too late, too late, too late … The desperate feeling replayed itself in a loop as I drove to the station, and the little car in my head that was taking Naomi away drove further and further into the distance until it became a speck and vanished.
In the police station Shan and I sat side by side outside the rooms where the children were being separately questioned in the obligatory presence of a voluntary support worker.
Shan stared straight ahead at the closed door and her voice was quiet. ‘I know you’re going through hell, Jenny, but don’t drag Nikita in. She’s already told you everything she knows.’
‘I’m not dragging her in.’ I was breathless with surprise, with anger. ‘It’s a police investigation.’
Shan didn’t reply.
‘Naomi had a diary.’ My voice was trembling. ‘Nikita’s initial is in there; Naomi might have told her something secret and Nik is frightened to tell us in case –’
‘What secrets?’ Shan’s voice was harder now. ‘Naomi hasn’t been round much lately. They haven’t got secrets. They’re not little kids.’
‘You can’t know that for certain …’
‘I know my daughter, Jen. Leave her. She’s upset enough.’
I know my daughter. The words seemed to echo along the narrow corridor with its green shining floor, hitting against the high walls that were marked with black scuff marks. At the far end I could see a policewoman at the desk, her expression calmly severe. She probably told herself she had to be professional, which in her world meant tough.
After a long time one of the doors opened. Nikita came out followed by Michael. She looked upset and went quickly over to Shan, who put her arm round her. Nikita rested her head on her mother’s shoulder, while I looked away. Michael opened the adjacent doors and the boys came out. Theo squatted down, hands hanging between his knees; Ed leant against the wall, his eyes closed. He looked exhausted.
‘Thanks.’ Michael included us all in his gaze. ‘Great help. Sorry to have to drag you all here. No one’s in any trouble. I understand about the photos now and I apologize for having to ask all these questions.’ He looked at me. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
I took the boys home. They were silent. There was nothing to say.
16
DORSET 2010
ONE YEAR LATER
The unseasonable November weather holds after the storm: a late Indian summer scented with bonfires, the smoke twisting through sunlit branches still hung with the last shrivelled leaves. Smashed tiles lie in the road, a window frame rests on glinting shards of glass. The man who owns the shop bends awkwardly over his paunch, his stocky legs spread wide, to pick up scattered milk crates and an overturned metal bin. Wisps of ginger hair fall forward; he wipes them carefully back into place with thick fingers, all the while talking with relish of the storm’s wreckage in the village.
Then he says, ‘Mary told me young Dan will be cutting up what’s left of your apple tree today. I’ll take whatever you don’t need. Cash.’
I go inside the shop and turn towards the shelves, feeling breathless. Is this what happens when you step outside your space? People start to close in around you. I should have known. I put apples in my basket, coffee and a little pot of Marmite. My hands are stiff from yesterday’s sawing and I almost drop the jar of coffee. Dan will stumble awkwardly into my quietness. I’ll have to get something for him to eat. Biscuits, baked beans. Not enough. There are frozen hamburgers in the small freezer. I reach for milk, juice, beer. A small bag of onions lies in a corner of a dusty cardboard box and I take them too. I can manage this; he’s just a boy. I remember that I’ll need to pay him and ask for cashback at the till, turning my head from the man’s curious stare.
I hear the whine of a saw as I approach the cottage. Over the low wall I can see into my garden, where Dan’s bent back and thin arms are weighted with the machine in his hands, chunks of wood already piled around his feet. Bertie pulls free of his lead and bounds up to him as soon as I open the garden gate. I freeze, thinking Dan might drop the machine in fright, or spin round, hurting himself, but I needn’t have worried. He straightens, turns it off, leans down to pat Bertie. He pulls off the scarf he had tied around his nose and mouth to keep out the wood dust. Close up, his face is flushed and sweaty. Dark hair sticks in clumped strands to his forehead, his eyes are uncertain, his smile lopsided. Again I am reminded of Ed, who had that same shyness before it hardened into blankness. Dan ducks his head and glances away; I’ve been staring at him, looking for Ed. He gestures to where he has put the crown to one side, near the wall. The larger branches, still attached, hold their claw-like shape.
‘Can I take those?’ he asks.
Theo’s photos of Naomi hidden amongst branches.
My face must have changed because Dan’s voice falters in the silence.
‘Only I make sculptures, out of wood. I sort of use shapes that are there already. I like those.’ Then he says, ‘They’re a bit like hands.’
Hands made of curving wood. I make them kind hands, holding her carefully.
‘Course, Dan. Sorry. Help yourself.’ I pull myself together and smile at him.
Theo’s photos fade and I go back to enter by the front door in case the post has arrived. There are three cards on the mat. My heart lifts.
One is a sepia picture of Bristol docks as they used to be. Anya’s tidy writing on the back. It’s her third card to me:
All is fine.
Anya
She stayed, as she promised, even after I left, and for a second I see her picking up Ted’s scattered socks, washing the hardened food from his night-time plates, gently wiping the dust from the photos next to our bed. I usually send her a card of the beach in reply, though there is nothing much to tell her except that I miss her.
There is another card from Ted, a river scene this time. As usual he hasn’t written anything. He may not even be in Bristol; he probably goes to more conferences now that there is nothing to keep him at home.
A thick blue stripe and white spray. Hockney. It’s from Theo, and for a second I think my memories have surely conjured this up:
In California for a w/e, making a ‘Splash’! My pictures in SF City Gallery! Trip paid for by year prize (wood/nature series). Coming home for Xmas. (With Sam?)
x Theo
Christmas with Theo. The past four months in New York must have flashed by for him, full of new experiences the scholarship has brought him. But I long to see him; the fair eyebrows, the sheer length of him, the smattering of freckles. His laugh. How suddenly, briefly, he will still put his head on my shoulder as he did when he was little; the way he lingers late in the kitchen, leaning his frame against the wall, eating cereal, wanting to talk. His fierce, occasional hugs.
I don’t
yet know much about Sam, apart from the fact that he’s an architecture PhD student. Theo sent me a photo once, his arm round this man – long studious face, heavy glasses, smiling. Something I hadn’t seen coming. Or had I? Ed had never teased him about girls; it was always the other way round. I’d thought art was his main focus and that was why he’d never had a girlfriend. I never went beyond that; I’d been blind to the subtext, unwilling to encompass complications. Blind to Naomi’s secrets too, though hers had led to disaster, not love. I put the postcard down as that thought flares. Out of the window I see Dan moving by the tree, and from here it looks easy, the wood falls as if effortlessly, the low screeching muted by glass. I close my eyes, and into my mind comes the image of the tree crashing over in the dark, changing the landscape of the garden for ever.
Ted might not be welcoming to Sam. I want to welcome him. Theo has found someone to love; he has so much love to give. At the same time I’m frightened. Unknown territory. How will Ed feel? How do I feel? I run water into the kettle, sort out the shopping. I know that I mind that he will never have children. I mind that the world may make it hard for him. The man in the shop would whisper to his customers if he knew; in the tiny world of the village they might be curious, gossiping.
I make Dan a mug of tea and take it into the garden with the packet of biscuits; as I put them on the step for him, he sees, giving a thumbs-up sign. The garden feels warm and, fetching my sketchbook, I try to catch the lines of the branches, their curves gleaming in the bright November air, like dark arms swimming, cutting space instead of water. The sun shines brilliantly on the paper, highlighting sooty grains in the harsh lines of charcoal. All the while the robin makes sudden flutters around the stumps of wood, pecking at the dust, flying to perch on the fallen branches. Walking around the twigs searching for other angles, I sense Dan’s presence lightly behind me. Lying down, the wet seeping into my jersey, I have the perspective I’ve been looking for. Lines curving upwards and away above me, coming together at their tips, enclosing a globe of air. Complete.
When the church bells from the clock tower ring out twice I go inside to cook the hamburgers; as they fry in the pan the unfamiliar, rich smell makes my mouth water. I’ve been living off apples, toast and coffee for as long as I can remember. Suddenly craving meat, I cook them all, stirring in a hastily sliced onion, then pile them together between slices of bread and take them outside with two cans of beer. We sit together, on the stone step of the back door in the sun. Dan devours one hot sandwich after the other. I eat more slowly, enjoying the taste of the food, the warm light on my face. The moment feels good.
‘Thanks.’ Dan’s smile is gap-toothed.
I shake my head. ‘Thank you. You’ve done lots here already.’
‘Yeah, well. Gets me out.’
‘Out of what?’ Looking sideways at him, I sense he doesn’t mind questions thrown out like this.
‘School, home. Other stuff.’
‘You like making things?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Wood?’
He nods. ‘I like finding shapes in the pieces, jigsawing them together.’
The sleepy unsure look has vanished. He is looking at the twigs, moving his hands, his voice louder than before.
‘You’re lucky to know what you want to do,’ I tell him.
‘Yeah?’
‘Lots of people don’t.’
He looks at me.
‘My dad doesn’t want me to make arty stuff for a living. Calls it a waste of space. Wants me to go into the police, like him.’
‘Will you?’
‘Dunno. I s’pose.’
His eyes are clouded with struggle.
I stand up and take the plates. ‘Not easy, choosing.’
‘Bloody right.’ He gets up, slides the scarf back on his face.
I come out again to finish the charcoal drawing but it’s colder already, the brightness has gone, the twigs look dull. It all changed in that brief time. Dan starts to gather up the logs into a pile against the wall. Bertie tracks him back and forth, sitting against his legs when he stops. Perhaps Dan reminds him of the boys; they have fallen out of his world completely.
Dan stops for tea, hunkering down on his heels. Bertie pushes into him and he falls back, surprised into a laugh. Later we carry more logs together and stack them beneath the overhang of the garage. Dan says he will come back to split them.
As he swings his rucksack up, he notices the smashed gate. He picks up the pieces of wood tenderly and lays them out carefully, like bones. He looks at the gaping wall. ‘I could make a new one. Using these bits and some new as well. If you want.’
‘Could you?’
I take all the cash I had got earlier and I put it in his hand. A hundred pounds. I had felt reckless when I’d got it. Usually I hardly spend anything. The thick wad feels glamorous, unreal, so many sheets of paper. We both stare at it.
‘I don’t want all that.’
‘Well, so I can ask you back.’
‘Okay.’
I watch him go down the road, towards Mary’s cottage, bending forwards with the effort of pushing the wheelbarrow we have filled with logs for her. He is at that time when the future has no shape. One day it will come close up against him and in boredom or panic, maybe because something pulls at his sleeve, distracting him, he will make his choice.
That night I don’t paint or draw anything in my sketchbook. I think about Dan’s choice, which will lead him to everything else waiting in the future. The choices I made led me to Ted, to Naomi, to here. How could I have known? If I go back far enough, it didn’t feel like I was choosing so much as taking. In my gap year, teaching in Africa, a child had walked past me on her way to the classroom. She was limping. When she showed me her foot there had been an ulcer on the underside, as big as a clementine, packed with stones and grit. At the bottom I saw pink strands of muscle. After that it seemed obvious. I knew what I wanted. Back then I was completely sure.
When you’re young you think you know everything. When I look at Naomi’s portrait I see determination, I see certainty. Sometimes, especially late at night, I think about the terrible moment when that certainty must have deserted her and she realized she’d made a mistake.
17
DORSET 2010
ONE YEAR LATER
‘Hello, darling.’
‘Hi, Mum.’
Ed’s voice is faint; I strain to catch at how he is through the crackling sounds on the line. I sometimes wonder if people listen in.
‘How are you?’
‘All right.’
He lost his mobile a week ago so I imagine him in a corridor, leaning against the wall by the phone. The white paint would be smudged with little black marks where fingertips have been pressed hard against the paint. He will be staring out through the plate-glass window. People pass and look – he is tall and good-looking, people have always looked – but his face will be as guarded as his voice. The pale hand holding the phone is thinner than a year ago, when it was strong and brown from rowing. I noticed on my last visit that his nails were lined with dirt.
‘Sorry, darling. I know I’m phoning ahead of schedule, but I couldn’t wait. I’ve been thinking about Christmas.’
‘Already?’
A little flat word. Barely a question. I carry on quickly, my voice sounding irritatingly bright, even to me.
‘Well, it’s already December. I know we didn’t do Christmas last year, but I thought …’
That it’s time for you to come home. You’ve been away too long and I miss you.
‘… you might want some home-cooking?’
‘They may want extra help, they’re short-staffed.’
That could be true, I can’t tell. He volunteered to stay on at the end of his programme, helping in the kitchen in return for a bed. Mrs Chibanda said giving back was part of the process. I was glad when she told me he could remain at the unit; what would he have done here, with me?
‘Dad’s coming. He’s
going to Johannesburg for a meeting soon, but he’ll be back by Christmas Day. I asked him to join us for lunch.’ I pause, remembering Ted’s few terse words on the phone last week. ‘He sent his love to you.’
There is silence. He probably doesn’t believe me. He never asks about Ted or the separation. I know he sees him sometimes, but he keeps it to himself.
‘What’s been happening with you, darling?’ I glance through the window while I wait for an answer.
The sky is pale grey; behind the church is a banked mass of darker clouds. A few seagulls wheeling high up flash white as they turn and fall. The garden has been swept bare of wood; Dan took all the branches. There is a ragged patch of bare soil where the tree used to be. Brown stumps of some forgotten vegetable and leafless blackcurrant bushes stand in the patch my father used to tend. The new gate is in place, with its two colours of wood, the old bars and raw new ones patched in. A sparrow balances on the top bar, and then, as a magpie swoops to take possession of the space, he flutters to the wall.
Ed’s words come quicker as he tells me he goes running with Jake now.
I remembered the boy who let us into the centre and his sweet smile. ‘Jake’s still there?’
‘Thought I told you. We share a room. His sister brings in cakes and stuff.’
‘That’s great, Ed.’
‘She plays the accordion and lives on this boat.’
Friends. A girl. I won’t ask questions, but my heart lifts.
‘Can I bring anything next week?’
‘Pens, maybe a notebook.’ He pauses, and then continues, speaking slowly: ‘I’ve been writing this … diary. Dr Hagan suggested it months ago. I’ve read a bit to Jake and Soph.’
‘Be careful. Only tell those things you want to.’
‘Well, obviously. But it has to be real. Naomi kept that diary, didn’t she?’