Since You've Been Gone

by Mary Jennifer Payne

  “I’m sorry,” I say. I figure saying it might make him lay off. Anyway, I can’t help him unless I find out what’s happened to Mom.

  Jermaine looks slightly unconvinced. He crosses his arms against his chest. “So, does your mum do this often? Take off?”

  My eyes widen. “No! Of course not. This has never happened before. She works nights in the city and just …” I trail off for a moment, not trusting myself to speak without crying and I’m not going to cry in front of him. “She just didn’t come home the other morning.”

  Jermaine lets out a low whistle. “Does she do something dodgy like being a prostitute?”

  “Screw you,” I say bitterly. I push past him and run to the stairwell.

  “Hey! It was just a question. Don’t get angry.” Jermaine is beside me within seconds. He grabs my elbow. I snatch my arm back and wheel around.

  “Don’t touch me,” I snap.

  “Sorry,” he says, holding his hands up as if he’s surrendering to me. “I just don’t think you should go up there alone. I saw community police chasing you today. What’s up with that?”

  So that’s who they were.

  I shake my head. “I have no idea.”

  “Maybe they have some information about your mum.”

  “I bet they do,” I say bitterly. “But I wasn’t sticking around to find out.”

  Jermaine raises an eyebrow at me, but doesn’t probe further. “If you need to find your mum before you’ll come clean about the charity money, I better help you.”

  “Why should I trust you to help me?’ I ask. Hunger, fatigue, and cold are combining to make me super-irritable.

  “Well, let’s see … maybe because I’m the only one that knows you nicked that money. And I also know your mum isn’t anywhere around and that no one is looking after you right now.”

  He has me there. I let the secret out and have no one to blame for that but myself. Besides, Jermaine seems okay from what I can tell. He doesn’t appear to be the psycho that Savitri and Keisha make him out to be. At least I hope he isn’t.

  “Fine,” I say. “You can walk me to the door and then come by tomorrow morning. But make it early. I need to begin looking for Mom a.s.a.p.”

  “Any idea where to start?” Jermaine asks. We begin walking up the stairs. It’s so cold that little clouds of smoky vapour hit the air in front of us as we talk.

  I pause.

  “No. But I’ll figure that out tonight. You just show tomorrow at nine o’clock.”

  Jermaine smiles. “We’ll find her, Edie.”

  I turn and look him in the eye. “I hope you really believe that,” I say. “Because there is no other choice.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Jermaine brought up a good point; I need a plan. In the avalanche of panic I’ve felt following Mom’s disappearance, I haven’t even thought to search the flat for clues to her whereabouts.

  And it ends up being so easy. In the drawer of her bedside table, I find Mom’s brown leather agenda. Inside there’s a hastily jotted note about an interview on January 6. The address is scrawled in her handwriting: Corporate Cleaners, 31b White Horse Road, Limehouse E1.

  I sit down on the side of the bed and stare at the notes in the agenda. Mom always uses blue ink in her agenda. I trace the words with my index finger, savouring the way each letter is formed. These words are a link to her. A wet blotch falls onto the page and my vision blurs. I close the book.

  Enough. There’s no time to sit and cry. After what happened today with the community police officers stalking me outside the flat, I’m positive Mom’s in trouble. Serious trouble. And likely I’m in it up to my neck as well. I need to be ready for tomorrow.

  I put the book into my bag along with one of my favourite photos of Mom, wash up, and climb into bed. Pulling the covers up to my chin, I look out the window. London lights up the night sky. A light blinking on and off at the top of one of the tall buildings across the river catches my eye. I wonder if it is used to warn low-flying planes like the one that Mom and I travelled here on. The thought of our journey makes me think of all the times we’ve picked up and moved. Before this move, the farthest we’d fled was from Toronto to Vancouver and back.

  Suddenly I realize how tired I am of running. And that’s when I decide there’s no way I’ll be scared into running again. I’m older now. This time I’m ready to fight.

  Even though I hardly slept, I get up at seven to give myself time to look decent. After all, I’m heading into London. And I’m going with Jermaine. I try to go for the natural look with my makeup, except I need shovel-loads of concealer under my eyes to cover the raccoon circles I’ve got from not really sleeping since Mom disappeared.

  And, just like he promised, Jermaine shows up at exactly nine o’clock.

  “Ready?” he asks, leaning against the doorframe.

  “Let me just run upstairs and grab a heavier jacket,” I say, glancing up at the grey blanket of sky. Little rows of goosebumps emerge on my lower arms. “God, it feels colder here than in Canada. Come on in.” Jermaine walks past me into the narrow hallway. I close the door and dash up the stairs, hoping the jeans I’m wearing don’t make my bum look wide.

  “Make yourself comfortable!” I shout back over my shoulder.

  Inside my bedroom, I pause for a moment before opening the mirrored door of my wardrobe. Over the last couple of years my appearance has changed so rapidly, I sometimes barely recognize myself. The roundness of my face is completely gone, replaced by angles and protruding cheekbones. My hair is a darker, deeper chestnut colour now and my body is elongated and filled out. Everywhere there are curves that just three years ago were non-existent.

  I tilt my head, noting how my red cotton sweater pulls tightly across my breasts. It looks good, other than the fact that the sleeves are slightly too short so I push them up my forearms. I reach into the pocket of my jeans, take out a pot of deep red gloss and coat my lips so that they shine. Running a hand through my hair, I stand back and take one last, approving glance at my reflection, put on my black winter jacket, and hurry downstairs.

  “Where are we?” I ask as we get off the bus. “That was one of the shortest bus rides of my life.” We’re standing at a busy intersection. The heavy smell of car exhaust invades my nostrils.

  “Deptford Bridge. You said the address your mum wrote down for work was in Limehouse, yeah?”

  I flip back through the agenda. “Yep, Limehouse.”

  “We’ll take the Docklands there,” he says, crossing the street.

  I follow him, realizing just how lucky I am to have Jermaine helping me. I wouldn’t have the faintest clue about how to get around London without him. Over the past twenty-four hours I began to realize the probability of something really unpleasant having happened to Mom was increasing. I still hoped that there’d been some sort of freak accident and that she was lying in the hospital somewhere, unconscious or suffering from a temporary loss of memory.

  “You have an Oyster card?” Jermaine asks.

  I snap back to the present. “No,” I reply. “What’s that?”

  “You’ll need one to travel around. Too late to go to the shop so we’ll grab a Travelcard for today.” He stops in front of the ticket machine at the bottom of a flight of concrete stairs. A train rumbles overhead.

  “Oh,” I open my bag and rummage around for my wallet. I hand him some of the money from the charity fund.

  After purchasing a card, Jermaine bounds up the long set of stairs with me following, trying to keep up as best I can. A train is approaching the platform as we reach the top of the steps. Jermaine runs to the first car, his long legs propelling him forward effortlessly, and punches the button on the side of the carriage with a closed fist. He slips inside as soon as the doors open.

  We take seats at the very front of the train. Despite my worry about Mom, I can’t help feel an electric current of excitement dance up my spine as the train pulls away from the platform and begins slipping toward Greenwich.
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  “You ever been on this ride?” Jermaine asks.

  “No. I haven’t actually been in London very long,” I admit.

  He glances at me. “When did you get here?”

  “Just a day or two before school started after the break. Our move was kind of … rushed.” An image of Peaches curled up at the foot of my bed jumps into my mind. Rushed. What an understatement.

  We sit in silence for a few minutes after that. I can feel Jermaine wanting to ask me more. It’s one of the things I like about him; he can tell I’m holding back information about my situation but isn’t nosy enough to ask about it.

  I look around at the people on the train. Like Toronto, the passengers are from all the corners of the world. A beautiful Muslim woman sits with her little boy on the seats across from us, a silver-and-blue hijab thrown loosely over her head, allowing wisps of dark hair as shiny as silk threads to peek out from either side of the fabric. The little boy, who looks like he’s around four or five, claps his hands together and whoops raucously as our train swoops underground into darkness.

  I smile at the little boy. The mom and her son remind me of Regent Park. Most of my friends, including Rume, were Muslim. I loved being invited to iftar at her house during Ramadan. Somehow, even though we were all different in the Park, it always seemed like everyone was accepted and part of something bigger. I never really knew what being lonely or feeling left out meant while I lived there. I definitely know what it feels like now.

  “You know what the Cutty Sark is?” Jermaine asks me as the train makes its first stop.

  I shake my head.

  “It’s one of the most famous ships in the world. It’s a clipper; it was used as a tea ship. I’ll take you to see it after we find your mum.”

  As the doors close and the train lurches away from the station, I smile to myself. I like the way Jermaine said he’d take me to see the ship. Though I don’t care about old ships, I have a feeling I’ll find this one a lot more interesting with Jermaine showing me it. I can’t understand why the teachers at Windrush don’t notice how smart he is. It’s like they’ve already written him off and no amount of evidence showing them they’re wrong will ever change their minds.

  “We’re under the river now,” Jermaine says, interrupting my thoughts. “We’ll be on the north side in just a few moments.

  “Really?” I think about how crazy it is to be zipping along in a train through a little tunnel under massive amounts of water. Just one random crack and all that water could come crashing down on us. So many random events change people’s lives in just the blink of an eye. Earthquakes, cars losing control, planes crashing … and people going to work and disappearing into thin air. I grimace. Somehow I always manage to think of the worst-case scenarios for everything.

  “North side of the Thames now,” Jermaine says. The train pulls up alongside a platform. I glance out the window, watching passengers disembark.

  “Why do the teachers give you such a hard time at school?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer for a moment and I immediately regret having said anything. If I could, I’d stuff my whole size-seven shoe down my throat until it came out my bum to be able to take the question back.

  “Sorry. It’s none of my business.”

  Jermaine shrugs. “It’s okay … I don’t know why they do it. ’Cos they’re all wankers and twats?” he says, giving me a lopsided grin.

  “Seriously. I mean I hate it when teachers think they know everything about me. They don’t know anything.”

  He nods. “You got that right.”

  We sit in silence for a few moments. I want desperately to ask him what he’s thinking, but that would make me a big, fat cliché of a girl, so I don’t.

  I glance over at the platform. “Mudchute? Is that seriously the name of the station?”

  Jermaine laughs. “Yeah. What of it? I’m sure you have some funny underground station names in Canada.”

  I think for a minute. “There’s Broadview. I don’t know why, but I that always struck me as a strange subway stop name.”

  “Probably some bloke named it after his girl,” he replies.

  I shoot him a puzzled look.

  “You know … he was probably like, ‘Mhmmm, girl. I like your booty. That’s one broad view.’”

  I punch him in the arm. “Pig.”

  He reaches over and grabs me around the neck, putting me in a mock headlock.

  “Take it back or beg for mercy.”

  The fabric of his sweater feels soft and inviting against my cheek and I inhale deeply, taking in the faint smell of lemons and wool. I don’t want to take it back because that means he’ll let go.

  “Did you just smell me?” he asks.

  I wiggle out of his grasp and bolt over to my seat, sitting up as straight as my back will allow. My face is hot. Don’t blush, you fool, I think to myself, willing the blood in my face to somehow instantaneously drain to my feet.

  “No! Are you sick? Why would I go around smelling you?”

  He laughs. “My mum is always saying to me, Boy, you must be smelling yourself.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That I’m about to get my head cuffed.” He stops laughing and his eyes darken. “She’s not well. She hardly notices anything I do right now.”

  I don’t know how to reply. An uncomfortable silence spreads between us as the train surfaces out from the tunnel and into the light again.

  CHAPTER 17

  Salty sea air, the faint smell of dead fish and exhaust fumes all cling to the air as we walk down the stairs at Limehouse station.

  “Where now?” Jermaine asks.

  I pause. “I have no idea,” I admit. “The place is on White Horse Road.”

  We walk onto a bustling street. This place is a way nicer version of London than New Cross. Modern condo buildings intermingle with well-kept, older brick houses that show off carefully tended flowerboxes and brightly painted doors.

  “Hold on,” Jermaine says, stopping and removing the straps of his knapsack from his back. He unzips it and pulls out a book.

  “If you haven’t been in London long, you need to get one of these.” He holds up a white-jacketed book. A–Z London is written across the front cover. It turns out to be a novel-sized map book.

  After finding the direction we need to go in to find the cleaning company, we begin walking with purpose. My stomach feels like a wet towel that’s twisted into tight knots. This all seems like such a shot in the dark. After all, I can’t even be sure Mom made it to work at all on her first day.

  Jermaine gives a low whistle. “Blimey, this is a bit of nice.”

  I look at the building we’ve stopped in front of. Cristina’s Cleaning Company is located above a quaint flower shop. Displays of almost every colour and shape of flower imaginable are set out in shining, silver metal buckets on the sidewalk in front of the shop.

  “31b, yeah?” Jermaine asks, walking toward a blue door located just beside the flowers. A large brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head stares out at us from the middle of the door.

  I nod, reaching into my pocket and taking out the piece of paper I’d torn out of Mom’s agenda. I double-check the address again: 31b White Horse Road. This is definitely it. I carefully fold the paper up and place it back in my pocket. This address is one of the last things Mom wrote before she disappeared.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” I say, though Jermaine’s finger is already pressing down on the entrance button as the words escape my lips.

  After a few moments, a voice crackles through the small speaker above the buzzer.

  “Yes?” It’s the voice of a little kid. Jermaine and I look at each other.

  “Is your Mummy in?” he asks.

  A buzzing sound comes from within and the door clicks to unlock. I pull on the handle and we step inside. The front hall is dim and heavily carpeted. A huge bouquet of flowers sits in a silver vase on top of a small, dark table against the wall.

/>   “Angel, qien es?” a woman’s voice asks from the top of the stairs.

  “Some people to see you, Mummy.”

  “Haven’t I told you never to just let someone in?” The mother’s voice is suddenly sharp and angry. I look over at Jermaine. The bad feeling is threatening to suffocate me. He doesn’t take his eyes off the landing above us.

  A woman appears at the top of the stairs a few seconds later. She’s tall and curvaceous and, though it’s hard to make out the features of her face in the dim light, my gut tells me she’s quite beautiful. I wonder if Jermaine is noticing as well.

  “Why, you’re only children,” she says, the anger dissolving from her voice. “Can I help you? Come up, please.” She waves for us to come up the stairs.

  Jermaine starts up before me. I follow closely behind, trying to force back my feelings of foreboding. This woman might hold the key to finding Mom: so why am I feeling like I want to turn and run as far away from here as I can get?

  Just as I expected, she’s really beautiful, with sky-high cheekbones and large, dark eyes that examine us closely as we reach the landing of the stairs. Her eyes scan Jermaine and the welcoming smile disappears briefly.

  “Come and sit,” she says, motioning us toward a blood-red velvet sofa. “Are you selling something for your school?”

  “Not exactly.” I reply, sitting down on the edge of the sofa. Jermaine is quieter now and seems to expect me to take the lead. We sit side-by-side with Cristina in a chair across from us.

  “What are you here for then?”

  “We’re actually here because my mother works for you,” I say, hesitating for a just a second. It’s difficult to know how much to reveal. My eyes drift downward to my hands, which are folded limply in my lap like a couple of dead, albino fish.