by Jane Shemilt
‘That’s because it is our fault.’ I felt almost too tired to speak. ‘We are the enemy. We didn’t look carefully enough; we were too busy.’
Ted put his arm round me awkwardly across the gap in the seats. ‘We couldn’t have loved him more. We’ve given him everything.’
I shook my head.
‘We couldn’t be there all the time,’ he said. ‘Kids have to grow up. Separate.’
‘Separate like Naomi did?’
‘I’m on your side, Jen.’ Ted looked out of the window. ‘Right here, with you.’
With me? How long had he been with me? Beth’s scarf was coiled in the glove compartment in front of me; when had she last been in the car? And how could he possibly be with me when I had no idea at all where I was?
28
DORSET 2011
THIRTEEN MONTHS LATER
I wake early; outside, the first layer of dark has lifted, leaving the garden as still and flat as a painting under the grey sky. In my dream she had been there, under the tree, shadowed by branches, sun and shade playing on her upturned face. The school uniform she was wearing was tight on her. I had stood at this same window and tried to shout, but my voice came out as a whisper; I couldn’t lift my feet, and as I tried to wrench them from the floor, sweating with effort, I woke.
Minutes pass. The stinging shock of the empty garden fades into the familiar ache that locates somewhere under my heart, settling down deeper into my bones, a weight to be carried. The windowsill is cool under my hands; the dream slips beyond my grasp.
My head is full; the facts that had lined up so neatly yesterday start to whirl again. Yoska the ketamine dealer, Yoska the brother, Yoska the patient. Yesterday I was sure his name would lead us to her, but the clues which seemed so certain have dissolved into suspicions, loosely linked and sliding apart like snakes coiling and uncoiling round each other. There is no proof. Even if Yoska can be found, there is nothing to definitely tie him to Naomi apart from that Y in her diary. He is on Michael’s list of drug dealers, he had been on the ward with his sister, the children in his family had started the fire, he had supplied Ed with drugs, he had come to see me in my practice. A good defence lawyer might say it was all nothing more than coincidence.
‘We need something else,’ I whisper to myself. Outside, the branches stir the morning air and as the light brightens the space beneath them is cleaned of shadows. ‘There must be something better.’
Downstairs I drink cup after cup of tea; my hands shake and my throat is sore but my headache has gone and I feel better than I did. The kitchen has been tidied. I recognize Ted’s way of folding the dishcloth: tightly, over and over. The sink and draining boards are clinically clean. I’d forgotten that about Ted; even his hands are immaculate. I imagine him scrubbing up before an operation, his blue eyes focused but remote above the line of his mask, intent on the operation ahead, the sluice room around him as cold and shining as a morgue.
My surgery, ketamine, the ward, the fire. The little list runs through my head like ticker tape, pushing out the pictures of Ted. Yoska is the link between these worlds, but where is the proof we need?
Michael’s mobile is out of battery and switches to voicemail. I phone his office then and a woman answers. As I wait, I hear her voice telling him I am on the line. Is there the faintest echo of amusement in her voice? A woman, again … it seems to say. You and your women … Then Michael comes on the line. He listens carefully before replying.
‘It’s enough as it is, Jenny. It’s enough to make us want to find him and question him. We have started the search for the family.’ His voice is neutral. He is in an office, people must be walking in and out and maybe that secretary is standing close to him, looking through files in a metal cabinet.
‘But you don’t understand. He’s clever. Really clever.’ Yoska’s own family had turned to him when the little girl was in hospital; Ted had said he was the one who knew what to do. He would know exactly what to say to any policeman who tried to arrest him, or to a lawyer trying to convict him.
‘When we find him we can take it from there.’ Michael’s voice is confident, but I can tell he’s not listening; he must be tired after his long drive the day before. He is probably signalling to the secretary to bring him coffee.
‘He had that asterisk by his name,’ I say slowly. The light has darkened in the kitchen; clouds from the sea must be rolling in.
There is a breathing pause on the phone. I can hear the tapping of his fingers and the blip of the computer as he brings up the list.
‘That was because he stole a car, years ago,’ Michael tells me.
I stare out of the window as I listen. The green smudges of North Hill through the raindrops on the window remind me of the wet copse and the beech trees by the River Severn, the burnt van pushed under the branches. A plan is forming in my head.
‘What records would have been kept from then?’ I ask him.
‘We would have his DNA.’ I sense he is looking at something as he speaks, signing papers maybe, the phone tucked under his chin.
‘So, if we can find recent DNA, linking him with Naomi, and if it matches what you have, we will know for certain the man who took Naomi is Yoska, a drug dealer with a revenge motive.’ My voice is fast, keeping up with my whirling thoughts.
‘Jenny …’
‘And then, when he’s caught, the same recent DNA, matching what you will be able to take from him, will totally incriminate him.’ I pause for breath, my heart is beating fast and my hand clasping the phone is wet with sweat.
‘Jenny, there is no recent DNA. The only way we usually retrieve criminal DNA is from inside a body –’ He stops; I can hear him swallow, as if he wants to take back his words, but it’s too late. ‘I’m sorry, that was stupid.’
There is a pause and I imagine him sipping coffee. Outside the window the rain has thickened; I can hear it on the thatch. Push those words away, blot them out.
‘I’m going back to the wood where the van was.’ I start to scribble a list as I speak, focusing down on the paper. Torch. Spade. Boots. Dog lead.
‘The police raked it over, inch by inch.’ A note of exasperation creeps into his voice. It is strange how I can hear it on the telephone, quite clearly. I’ve never noticed it before.
‘Things come to the surface, don’t they?’ I’m hurrying as I speak so my voice is breathless. ‘Woods change.’
The cottage feels warm. Ted had banked the wood burner before he left. I look around before I leave in case there are things to put away, but it’s tidy. It’s always tidy. There is a spade in the shed, though it’s not shining like Mary’s was when I helped her dig the grave. Clumps of mud cling to the metal and I wash them off by the garden tap. Mary’s birds had tumbled into the muddy pit; their feathers were all Naomi’s favourite colours; but I’m not going to look for a grave. I’m going to look for something he touched.
The journey back to the wood in Gloucestershire takes three hours. The traffic crawls through sheets of rain on the motorway; the car shudders as lorries roar past us, splattering the windscreen with dirty water. Bertie sleeps, his curled body on the seat next to me; my hand rests on his warm back as I drive.
I remember where the place is, between the market town of Thornbury and the little village of Oldbury-on-Severn. I find it easily; the familiarity is instant. I must have unknowingly stored away the bend in the road, along with the gap in the hedge and the ditch. I put the car close into the hedge as Michael had done. With Bertie beside me, I walk slowly along the side of the field towards the hill, the wet wind blowing in my face. As the field starts to slope upwards, I suddenly want to turn and hurry back; the wind would be behind me, pushing me. I want to put Bertie into the car again, and drive away. Its midday. I could find a little café in Thornbury, sit with a sandwich in front of me, and watch everyone about their normal busy lives and pretend my life is like theirs, and there is no need to go into the little wood ahead of us and search for something that might help
find the man who took my daughter away a year ago.
My feet keep walking towards the trees, slipping now and then on the mud; a whole year but the countryside hasn’t noticed. The copse is the same. The trees, no longer ringed by tape, look exactly the same. I hesitate before I enter the darkness under the branches, but I find where the van had been in a few moments because the trunk of the tree it was under is still blackened. Bertie runs around tree roots, nosing the ground. There is a change after all: two trees have fallen, one lies up against the burnt tree, and the mud which clings to the torn-up roots looks new. It must have blown down in the winter storms. Bertie, excited by the smell of fresh earth, starts scrabbling and digging.
I dig near where I think the van was, shifting leaves with the spade, pushing them aside with my feet and my hands, then digging again. The spade hardly makes a dent in the ground. I’m looking for a petrol can, a sodden glove. I push the spade into the soil again and again. After a while, I stop for breath. Rain slicks my hair into my eyes; I push it away from my face and the mud from my gloves runs burning into my eyes.
My spade hits on roots. I dig up mud, stones and bits of broken china. Nothing. Bertie whines and I ignore him. When I have done this circle I will make it wider, then another around that, then another. Bertie starts to bark. I straighten and walk over to him; has he found something, anything? Beneath his furiously digging paws I see small white shapes. The wood swings about me and I fall to my knees. Bertie has hold of one of the shapes now, a curved, white, ridged bone in his mouth. He lets me take it. It’s only the tiny rib of a sheep, perhaps a lamb or a little deer. Bertie is scrabbling now; he finds a skull, a long domed shape, with the molars of a herbivore intact.
Woods change. Things come up.
I sit back on my heels. Michael was right. There is nothing here. The clues must be somewhere else. I’m looking in the wrong place. I’m not being clever enough. I drop the little bone back into the mud. She would laugh if she saw me now or, worse, feel pity. I don’t know which.
BRISTOL 2009
TWENTY DAYS AFTER
Ted and I had run out of things to say. Ed had gone. Theo spent hours in the studio at school and came back strained and silent. He watched me and I knew he wanted to say something but couldn’t and I didn’t try to make him; I couldn’t say anything either. I was mired in silence. I hadn’t the strength to speak.
In the surgery it was easier. I could pretend I was all right. I washed my hair and ironed my clothes so I looked normal. I saw the patients and dealt with the problems. I only went half time now. It worked. I didn’t smile, I couldn’t actually smile at anyone, but I did the job. I measured blood pressure, examined abdomens, looked at rashes, watched, listened, filled out forms and wrote prescriptions. Naomi had never been much to my surgery, so sometimes in my room, for a few minutes, it could feel like nothing had happened. I thought I would be able to go on doing this for a long time, but I was wrong.
Jade wasn’t on my list for that afternoon so Mrs Price must have persuaded Jo to let them come in during a gap between patients. She came through the door shyly, holding a small bunch of flowers in front of her. Her mother was pushing her and she stumbled. She was thin but her bruises had gone and she was wearing a pink beanie pulled low, so no one would have seen she had no hair. It was only five weeks since she had been admitted.
I managed a half-smile. ‘Hello, Jade.’
Mrs Price sat down, and Jade pushed up close to the large body, wedging herself tightly between her mother’s knees.
Mrs Price frowned. ‘Just thought we would come in.’
I stared at her, my throat tightening.
‘Well, I know what it’s like.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I mean, when it’s your own.’
She stopped talking and stared back at me. I was on the other side now, the wrong side; I was the victim. It was difficult to know what to say to me.
She stood up and took Jade’s hand. ‘What I mean is … Go on, then, Jade.’
Jade pushed the flowers at me; she smiled quickly and then buried her face in her mother’s fur coat.
When they were gone I shut the door behind them, stood against it for a moment, then slid down and knelt awkwardly on the floor. The flowers spilt from their cellophane beside me. My head bent forward over my knees; I could smell the dried bleach on the faded lino and see the little cracks that ran across it. Then my face twisted and deep sounds came up from my chest, like some animal might make if it was in pain. After a while I got up and ran the taps so no one would hear, and, pulling the blue paper from the examination couch, pressed it into my face. I had been mad to think I could come back to work so soon. I couldn’t manage it. I couldn’t manage anything. I wanted to go home and curl up in bed and lie in darkness. I wanted to stop breathing.
I sat at my desk and took shuddering breaths. I managed to phone through to reception and Jo listened as I asked her to say I had been called out on an emergency. There was a back door; the waiting patients would think I had hurried away through that.
I sat on in my room. Jo quietly brought me a cup of tea and her arm came round me briefly; she had told Frank and he was seeing the patients on my list who couldn’t wait. Then she left me to myself.
The room darkened around me. The world contracted to my hand on the desk. It was twenty days since Naomi had walked out of the kitchen. Every day, every moment of every day, I had pushed away images of her in pain, tied up, torn, bloodied; her lifeless body in a plastic bag by a road or in a shallow grave somewhere. I closed my eyes, trying to remember something bright and happy to block the images. The party on the first night to celebrate her performance. There had been so many happy voices in our kitchen that night; suddenly she came into my mind as vividly as if I was looking at a photograph. Naomi, standing by the stove, resting a stockinged foot on Bertie’s back, had been on her own for a few brief moments. I had moved towards her but then I stopped; she was looking sideways so intently that I followed her gaze to see what held it, but it was only black night outside the window. When I looked back at her again I saw her mouth was curved, but it wasn’t a smile for anyone else. It was inward, secret. She had looked quite different. It might have been the black costume she was wearing for Tony’s death scene in West Side Story but for a second she had become older, harder, in a way I couldn’t analyse. An edge of disquiet crept into the noisy room. Theo went up to her a second later and said something and she laughed and became herself again; someone touched my shoulder and I turned and the little scene went out of my mind. Until now. Here, on my own in the surgery, I realized that her smile had told me something. It was a clue.
When I left the surgery it was dark and cold but Naomi’s room was warm. I had kept the radiator on and I sat there most evenings. Sometimes I thought that molecules from her skin or her hair might still be in the air and that if they were they might be touching my face or my hands. I imagined that if I kept perfectly still, I might feel them.
That evening I could hardly breathe for the hope that was gripping me tightly. I wanted her to have planned leaving. I wanted that to have been what she had smiled to herself about. I didn’t care if she knew that it would hurt us, or even if she wanted to. It didn’t matter, if it meant she was safe.
Her room had been searched by the police and by Michael. I would try again. If she’d had a plan, there might be a clue. Her thick coat was in the wardrobe, with her school skirts. I felt in the coat pocket. Nothing. All her shoes were neatly lined up: the green pumps, the Converses, the flip-flops. I slipped my hand into one of the pumps, feeling the smooth dips in the leather sole where her toes had been. I opened her chest of drawers, pushed my hands under the jumbled jerseys. Nothing. The ornaments on the mantelpiece had been shifted; expert searching hands had taken the photos out of their frames to feel behind them and replaced them slightly crookedly. Everything else was in its place: the china horse, the autumn leaves, her jewellery case.
Below me in the house I heard the front door open, and
Ted’s footsteps slowly cross the hall.
I sat on the bed and as I opened the white lid of the jewellery case the little plastic ballerina in her pink net skirt pirouetted to faint broken music. I closed my eyes. When she had unwrapped the jewellery case on her sixth birthday she found the curled coral necklace inside. Then my eyes snapped open. The necklace wasn’t there. I searched the inside of the box. Where was it? She always kept the corals in her jewellery case. They must have been taken out, recently taken. They had left a spiky indentation on the soft bed of old satin. I checked on the mantelpiece, on the floor, under the rug. Then I ran downstairs.
‘She knew. She planned it.’
Ted was sitting in the chair, staring straight ahead, glass in hand. He turned to look at me blankly.
‘Planned what?’
‘Her necklace is gone, the corals that my mother gave her. They’ve gone. She must have taken them with her.’ I stopped for breath.
‘How can you know that?’ Ted’s voice was low and flat. ‘She could have lost them years ago.’
‘They were taken out recently; you can still see the imprint.’
‘She lost them recently, then.’
‘No. She would never have lost them. She loved those corals. It means this was planned. She would have taken them with her. She knew she was leaving. That was why she smiled to herself.’
‘She smiled to herself?’
‘Yes. At the party.’
‘What party?’
I ignored the question. My mind was spinning. I tried to remember back to the last time I saw her. Had she been wearing the corals then? Perhaps they had been in the bag with the shoes? The questions started to chase each other round and round.
‘Jenny, you are completely exhausted.’ He stood and put an arm round my shoulder. ‘You look as though you’ve been crying.’
His arm was heavy, his breath smelt sourly of alcohol. I moved back quickly.