by Unknown
‘I wanna go back,’ she said and plugged in her earphones. ‘Anyway, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’
Laura looked about her and ran her tongue across the metal in her mouth. The wind hurt her teeth. Behind them was Hastings’s derelict pier and up ahead was the Old Town. Chanel was right, they hadn’t seen another black face since the train left Orpington, and as the journey took them further south she had become more and more subdued. The only fun they’d had so far was hiding from the conductor. It was rubbish being here with Chanel if she wasn’t going to be a laugh. The inside of Laura’s mouth felt alien and metallic. For some reason she wanted to cry.
Up ahead on the corner she could see the Italian Way ice cream parlour, where they had red check cloths and vases of carnations on each table. ‘This is the way that ice cream should be eaten,’ Bea always said each time she took them there. Laura pulled at Chanel. They pressed their faces to the window and peered inside. The tables were just as she remembered, but it was empty apart from an elderly couple eating knickerbocker glories. They blinked at Chanel and Laura, glanced at each other and looked back down at their ice creams. Each lifted a spoonful to their mouth.
‘I’m starving,’ said Chanel, misting up the glass with her breath.
The sun came out sudden and bright, illuminating the beach like a stage.
‘Come on,’ said Laura, dragging Chanel across the road. ‘Last one to the sea’s an A star.’
‘Yeah, like Delilah.’
Delilah got A star for everything, even maths.
They climbed the barriers at the side of the dual carriageway and squealed and darted their way between honking cars and vans. As they crunched along the shingle Chanel’s mood lifted. There was no one there apart from a young Chinese man sitting facing the sea, hunched over a textbook. When they staggered past he looked up and gave them a melancholy smile. Laura shoved Chanel towards him. Chanel thumped her hard and said, ‘What’s your problem, bitch?’
The water rolled and rippled as far as the eye could see. A racing sky and bright sun kept the light shifting from sullen to dazzling then back again. Gulls wheeled and cried around them. One hovered low, directly above their heads.
‘What’s it want?’ whimpered Chanel, ducking and swerving towards the water’s edge.
Laura waved her school bag at it and shouted. The gull drifted off and landed on stones up ahead of them.
‘It’s freakin’ me out, all that sky,’ said Chanel.
Bea always said, ‘If you’re feeling down, get on a train and take yourself somewhere else. You’ll feel better when you get there.’ That was how Laura knew Bea had gone to Hastings. She wasn’t sure exactly where, but most likely they’d find her in one of their favourite places, like The Fish Hut or up on the cliffs. Of course Bea would probably pop in on her mum while she was here, but she wouldn’t stay long. Granny didn’t like long visits.
Chanel was holding her phone above her head and filming herself in catwalk poses against the backdrop of the sea.
‘Look at this,’ she screamed against the wind, holding her phone out for Laura and parading along the ridge at the water’s edge.
‘Chips?’ shrieked Laura, starting to run.
Chanel struggled after her, both of them moving in slow motion, heavy and clumsy through the shifting shingle.
Chanel caught up with Laura and stuck one foot out so that they both fell on to the stones. They were laughing and panting and struggling to get upright. Chanel held the phone above their heads and took a picture. They were silent when they viewed it. With their heads against the brown stones, the fur of their hoods framing their faces and the sun in their eyes, they looked strange, otherworldly.
Then Laura started to laugh. ‘We look like them igloo people.’
Chanel giggled, grabbing at the phone for a better look. She began to hoot. ‘What, them Innits?’
‘Innit though?’
‘No, Innits. That’s their proper name.’
Laura snorted. They kicked their legs in the air and screamed. An Old English Sheepdog bounded up to them, a flurry of white fur.
‘Oh my God, it’s a polar bear, man. I am not joking, it is . . .’
‘It’s a wolf thing, man, an Ark-tic fox!’
They scrabbled to their feet and crouched back to back, sobbing with laughter and holding their bags to their knees. The dog ran round them barking and jesting before dashing off up the beach.
‘Ooh . . .’
‘Oh . . .’
‘Oh my God . . .’
‘Oh my God, man . . .’
Drunkenly they helped each other up and pulled their clothes straight. They picked up their bags, spasms of laughter breaking out every time they caught each other’s eye.
‘Come on. The chip shop’s over there.’
With linked arms they staggered up the beach.
It was some time later, as they sat outside the chippy, fingers gritty with hot salty oil, that Laura remembered why they were there. They should get a move on. They had to be back in Cambridge by five at the latest.
‘You’re not looking!’ she said to Chanel. ‘We need to keep an eye open for my auntie.’ She swung round on the bench and squinted at the sea.
Chanel nodded and loaded more chips into her mouth. She looked around them. In the Dolphin pub just along the road, two big women sat drinking pints, a fighting dog on the ground between them. Behind Chanel, a few people queued at the jellied eel bar next door.
‘Where’s your granny live, then?’
Laura pointed with her bag of chips up the hill behind the shops. ‘That way. Not far.’
‘That’s what I’d do,’ said Chanel, nodding.
‘What?’
‘I’d go up me mum’s.’
Laura shrugged. She blinked at the horizon, suddenly unsure of her theory. After all, most people ran away from home, not to it. She looked at the boatyard, where small trawlers were festooned with tattered black flags. They leaned on the stones as if injured. Rope, chains and nets lay in chaotic piles between them. ‘Sweet disorder,’ Bea called it. She used to say it about her bedroom and her kitchen, that chaos was much underrated. ‘Careful chaos and sweet disorder.’
Laura pulled a postcard from her jacket pocket. It pictured the beach at Hastings, a brightly painted fishing boat pulled up on the shingle. She turned it over and addressed it to Bea in Cambridge. She wrote, ‘I came to find you. Miss you lots, love Laura,’ then stuffed it back in her pocket again. Her granny would have a stamp.
She looked up at the black net sheds that stood tall between them and the sea. The sun went in and she shivered.
‘Let’s go.’ Laura swung her legs off the bench seat and headed for the steps that led to her grandmother’s house.
What
MARGARET WOKE with a start and looked about her. Her neck hurt and her glasses had gone awry. The record had stopped and the needle was lisping. There it was again. A rattle at the door. She sat up and patted her hair straight.
When she went out into the hall, she could see a shadow the other side of the frosted glass. A pair of eyes looked at her through the letter box.
A voice was saying, ‘Hello? Hello?’
‘Beatrice?’ said Margaret.
‘Let us in,’ said the voice.
‘What?’
‘It’s me.’
‘Bea?’
Laura rapped on the glass. She watched the shape retreat and become indistinct. After a while it became visible again from the left, where the kitchen door was.
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me, Laura.’
Margaret thought for a moment, put her hand to her lips and looked back towards the kitchen.
‘Beatrice?’ she said again.
‘We’ve come to look for her,’ said the voice.
‘She’s not here yet.’ Margaret put the chain on the door and opened it a crack.
Laura stood up and said, ‘Granny. It’s me, let me in.’
; ‘Well why didn’t you say so?’ said Margaret and shut the door. She removed the chain and opened it again. Laura came in and Chanel hesitated outside.
‘Come on,’ said Laura.
Mute, Chanel followed Laura and stood beside her in the hall, tugging the hem of her skirt.
Margaret put her head out and looked up the street.
‘Well, where is she?’
‘Who?’
‘Who brought you?’
Laura moved into the kitchen and reached for the biscuit tin on top of the fridge.
‘Have you got any of those chocolatey ones, Granny?’ She prised open the lid and looked inside.
Chanel thought they ought to be getting back and said, ‘Laura . . .’
‘Want one?’ said Laura, offering her the tin.
Chanel looked inside. Pink wafer ones, dry plain ones, round ones with jam in the middle, custard creams, but no McVitie’s Milk Chocolate Digestives. She took a custard cream and tried not to drop crumbs as she ate.
‘Did Bea bring you?’
‘We’ve come to get her.’
Margaret gave a little sigh and filled the kettle. She looked around for the teapot.
‘Bea’s not here.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Well she might have come in while I was having a nap. You ought to get those teeth seen to, you know.’
Laura looked across the hall at the closed door of her mother’s childhood bedroom.
‘I’ll just check.’ She squeezed past and put her hand flat to the bedroom door. She listened. ‘Bea?’ she said.
She turned to look back at the kitchen, where Chanel was taking another biscuit and Margaret was opening cupboards, searching for the teapot.
‘Chanel,’ hissed Laura and waved her over.
Laura opened the door. Two single beds with mauve candlewick spreads stood side by side. The window above them was draped in nets. Chanel wrinkled her nose. It smelt of cats.
Laura sat on one bed and Chanel sat on the other.
‘We should go,’ said Chanel. She felt homesick here.
Laura looked about her. The room was bare. No sign remained that two girls had grown up here.
‘She’ll probably be back soon.’
‘No she won’t. She’s not coming. Come on, my mum’s gonna kill me. What time’s the train?’
‘Shut up a bit.’
Chanel pulled up her tights and raised her zipper to her nose. ‘Is your nan a bit, you know . . . ?’
Laura pulled an exercise book from her school bag and ripped a page out of it. Kneeling on the carpet she scribbled a note.
‘What’s that say?’
‘It’s to Bea.’ Laura signed it with several kisses. ‘Just letting her know we’ve been looking for her.’ She slid the note under the pillow then straightened the shade on the bedside lamp. ‘She’ll see it when she gets here. Come on.’
They paused in the hallway. Margaret was in the lounge, looking out of the window, watching the sea. Laura took a stamp from the drawer in the hall table.
‘We’re off now!’ she called. ‘Thanks for the biscuits.’
Margaret turned and waved. ‘Oh. Mind how you go then.’
Outside, Chanel hurried to keep up with Laura. They walked back up the main road alongside the beach. The sun had disappeared behind a blanket of grey. They passed a large complicated sign warning of tides and currents. She couldn’t understand how anyone would want to live in a place like this and she wished they had never come.
‘So your granny’s a bit . . .’
Laura kept walking. She was sniffing and her jaw was clenched. At a postbox she stopped and dropped the postcard to Bea inside.
‘She’s a bit, you know, what’s it called?’ persisted Chanel as they made a dash for a traffic island and stood stranded in a heavy rush of cars and coaches and vans.
‘Yeah,’ Laura said . . . ‘She’s—’
A continental juggernaut sped inches from them, drowning her words.
‘What?’ yelled Chanel.
‘She’s a bit gone!’ shouted Laura.
Sorry
KATHARINE WASN’T sure she could endure an evening at the Elliots’ but Richard had persuaded her it would do her good.
‘After all,’ he said, ‘it’s not as if you’re in mourning. Bea hasn’t died or anything. She’s taken herself off somewhere, she’s having a break . . .’
His voice trailed off as he pulled the laces tight on first one shoe, then the other. His shoes were one of the things she loved about him. He had unerring taste where shoes were concerned, rare in a man, she suspected, and the ones he had on tonight, classic black calf, with a rich sheen, had a dependable, no-nonsense air to them. Katharine abhorred nonsense. She just couldn’t stand it. It was part of what made being a mother so very testing. There was so much nonsense around even the simplest of things. But with Richard, there was never any nonsense. He was like her, the epitome of sense: intelligent, reasonable, sane and smart.
He finished with his laces, lifted his jacket off the coat-stand and called goodbye to the children. They waited for a response. Katharine stared at the floor and thought how she had learnt to tie her laces at three. She had sat on the doorstep, her mother and Bea waiting, while she tied a not very tight but very good-looking knot. ‘See that, Bea?’ her mother said. ‘Fancy being able to tie your laces at three.’ They had all looked at Bea’s black T-bar sandals, the white socks that dented dumpy calves, and Katharine had felt the rush of being best enthral her. Their mother had clapped her hands. ‘What a clever girl.’
Katharine battled a brief disturbance in her guts. She blinked in dismay. She was never sick. Absolutely never sick. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘So sorry.’
Wanda appeared from the kitchen. Her hair bounced and shone. So did her teeth. Richard beamed at her. He can’t help it, thought Katharine. It’s wired in. She thanked Wanda again for agreeing to babysit. At least Wanda knew Bea, understood the situation and would be cheerful with the children. She said she would cook something for them and seemed unperturbed that the fridge held nothing very promising in this respect. Katharine knew too that on their return the kitchen would be spotless and Wanda would find her own way home.
Earlier, the children had said they didn’t need a babysitter. Laura was old enough to be left alone, after all. Katharine would not hear of it, not since the incident with the vodka. They asked to go to Frank’s instead but Katharine refused.
‘Why not?’ asked Adrian.
‘It’s not appropriate.’
Richard backed her up. ‘No, he’s probably—’
But Katharine jumped in before he could finish, a habit of hers he had grown to ignore. ‘He’s probably out looking for Bea.’
‘Absolutely,’ added Richard, looking around for his wallet and keys. ‘After all, I expect Frank is—’
‘I expect Frank is exhausted.’
That seemed to settle it. Adrian had gazed into the middle distance then left the room. She hadn’t seen the children since.
Richard put on his coat. Katharine said goodbye to Wanda.
‘We won’t be late.’
‘You go out and enjoy yourselves.’ She waved them away.
Katharine hesitated on the doorstep, looked down and said, ‘Oh, no.’
‘Are you all right, darling?’ Richard put his hand beneath her arm.
‘Your shoelace,’ said Katharine. ‘It’s undone.’
AS SOON as the front door closed, the children came downstairs. Laura looked Wanda straight in the eye.
‘Where’s Bea?’ she said.
Wanda had found a tin of baked beans and was looking in the freezer for something to go with it. She made her eyes wide, as if it was all a big secret. ‘I think she’s having a holiday, don’t you?’
Adrian stood against the radiator. Wanda had a sharp chin and the straightest nose he had ever seen. Her hair was blonde, the practically white sort, like her skin. He tried to see her eyes but couldn’t put a col
our to them. They should be blue but he didn’t think they were. He wondered if they were orange.
‘Mum says it’s completely out of character.’ Laura jerked her head up and made her arms spring out, a withering and precise impersonation of her mother’s no-nonsense demeanour. ‘And that’s why they’re worried.’
Wanda frowned. ‘Out of character? What does this mean?’ She turned the heat up under a frying pan, poured in a dollop of oil, and opened a packet of fish fingers.
‘It means that they think Bea is very reliable,’ said Adrian.
‘You know, in my country it is against the law to go missing. Here in England it is allowed, I think.’
‘What, like, in Poland they’d put you in prison if you went missing?’ said Laura.
Wanda laughed. ‘Probably.’ The fish fingers sputtered in the pan. She turned them over with a fork, something that Katharine expressly forbade.
‘That’s so stupid.’
Wanda asked Adrian to lay the table and he checked her eyes. Yes, they were orange. Well, hazel. But similar to the tiger in Woburn safari park that had walked up to their jeep, raised itself on its hind legs and glared with malevolent intent into their car.
When they sat down to eat, Wanda gave him six fish fingers without even asking. She was nice, not like a tiger at all.
‘I’m doing a YouTube Missing video for Bea,’ said Laura.
Wanda thought that was an excellent idea and that Bea would love it.
‘I’ve got to say if she had any distinguishing marks.’
Adrian had arranged his peas in a double helix down the centre of his plate. He was eating the fish fingers sandwiched between pieces of bread.
‘The little finger on her right hand is bent where she shut it in the car door,’ he said. ‘Like this.’ He showed her.
Wanda asked whether he was going to eat his peas. He shook his head.
‘No, children don’t eat green things.’
‘And why is that?’
‘It’s the yuck reflex. Makes you gag.’ Adrian gave a demonstration. ‘It’s a survival mechanism. Anything green is liable to be rotten or poisonous . . .’
‘Or vomit,’ added Laura. She started jiggling one leg and chewing her lip. ‘Can I go finish the YouTube thing?’