The One I Love

by Anna McPartlin

  “It’s a nightmare,” Leslie said. “An absolute nightmare.”

  “She was wearing black trousers, a black top with a bow and black boots,” Tom said, repeating the information he had repeated so many times before. “She took her handbag. She never really kept a lot of cash on her but she’s never used her cards. She was fine that morning, in good humour – she’d planned to meet her friend Sherri in Dalkey at five. She was fine.”

  Suddenly Elle felt the urge to cry but she couldn’t because it would have been deeply inappropriate, yet it was hard to fight the tears. She stayed silent and breathed in and out, much like her sister had earlier. The full enormity of Alexandra’s disappearance and Tom’s desolation were causing her actual physical pain.

  “I’d like to help you,” Jane said to Tom. “I know we’re strangers but if there’s something I can do …”

  Tom shook his head. “That’s kind of you but I just don’t know how you can help.”

  “We’ll think of something,” Elle said, and looked at Leslie, who stared at her blankly.

  “What?” Leslie said, after enduring Elle’s attention for what seemed like eternity.

  “Aren’t you going to help?” Elle said.

  “I wish I could,” Leslie said, “but if the police can’t, I can’t, and unfortunately neither can either of you.”

  “I disagree,” Jane said. “I’d rather try than stand by and do nothing.”

  “Well, good luck,” Leslie said, and she meant it.

  “Leslie’s right,” Tom said, moved by the two women’s kindness, “but thank you.”

  “We’re going to help whether you like it or not,” Elle said. “Besides, you look like you could do with some direction. Handing out flyers at a gig? What’s that all about?”

  “If you can think of something better, I’d be happy to give it a go.”

  “I’ll put my thinking cap on,” Elle said. “I suppose postings in Dalkey are taken care of?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right. I had to ask.”

  After that Jane reminisced about Alexandra, making the others laugh. She told them about the time Alexandra insisted they sneak out of her parents’ house during a sleepover. They’d had to get out of a second-storey window, jump onto the extension roof and shimmy down the pipe. When they’d finally made it to the ground without killing themselves and were busy high-fiving, they’d failed to notice that Alexandra’s father was standing in the porch having watched their every move. When he made himself known to them Alexandra stuck out her arms in front of her and, zombie-like, walked towards him, pretending she was sleep-walking.

  “And what did you do?” Tom asked.

  “I wet myself,” Jane admitted, “but Alexandra kept up the act until her dad laughed, and once he did we were off the hook. She could always get out of anything.”

  “What about the time she stayed with us and Mum caught you both drinking her stash of wine?” Elle said.

  “Rose threatened to call the police,” Jane said.

  “Rose is our mother,” Elle said, to clarify it for the group.

  “But Alexandra told her that she’d call the police because our sitting-room carpet was a crime against taste.”

  “Mum nearly lost it,” Elle said. “I was in my bed and I could hear her screaming but Alexandra didn’t care.”

  “Alexandra was too drunk to care,” Jane said. “She called Rose an old lush and challenged her to a drinking competition.” She started to laugh. “I’ve never seen Rose turn purple before or since.” She laughed some more. “Rose walked away. Of course I got it in the neck for the next couple of weeks, but it didn’t matter because Alexandra had got the best of the old bat. That kept me going for years.”

  “Again, you’d have to know our mother,” Elle said.

  “She did talk about you,” Tom said to Jane, having remembered some of Alexandra’s stories involving the girl who’d dropped off the grid after having a baby. Alexandra had felt guilty about losing the friendship with Jane. She had talked about reconnecting with her but never found the will or the time.

  Leslie was smiling. “She sounds interesting.”

  “She is,” Tom said. “She’s amazing.” He fell silent and his mind travelled to the dark place. The weight of his worry permeated the small space.

  His sadness was overwhelming and Elle became desperate to change the vibe. “What about you, Leslie, do you have a story to tell?”

  “No,” Leslie said, and smiled because during their short acquaintance she had come to realize that Elle was not the kind of person to take no for an answer.

  “Liar,” Elle said. “Everyone has a story.”

  They fell into silence again, lost in their own thoughts. Tom was still in the hell he’d created in his head. Jane’s mind had taken her into the past before Kurt, when she and Alexandra were making plans to travel the world. Elle was busy working out what she could do to make everything better.

  “I could set up a website,” Leslie said. “We could go viral.”

  “Now you’re talking!” Elle said, and clapped.

  “I’ve no idea what going viral means,” Jane said, “but I like the sound of it.”

  “Jane?” Elle said. “When is my next exhibition?”

  “First week in February.”

  “How soon could we do another?”

  “What have you got in mind?” Jane asked.

  “Faces.” Elle grinned. “How about I paint the faces of missing people, a collection of twelve to include Alexandra? I could start as soon as I’ve finished this last painting for February.”

  “I could definitely get media attention,” said Jane.

  “Good,” Elle said. “Let’s do it.”

  After seventeen weeks and two days of hopelessness, recrimination, confusion, frustration, fear and suffering, three strangers opened their hearts to Tom and they were kind enough to pretend they didn’t notice when he cried.

  Chapter 3

  You Can’t Get Bitter

  It’s so easy to be cynical,

  you just turn on your TV screen

  and everyone tells you who you should be.

  When I feel stupid, disenchanted,

  those pretty flowers that he planted,

  the pollen comes floating down the breeze.

  Jack L, Broken Songs

  December 2007

  It was just after eleven in the morning of New Year’s Eve and Elle was standing at the back of her garden, knotting her long brown hair before picking up the shovel from the ground. Many years previously her ritual had changed from late evening to late morning because it had got in the way of her social life.

  Jane emerged from the big house and made her way down the patio steps, towards her sister, who was unaware of her and busy staring into the middle distance. Jane often noticed Elle stare at something unseen by anyone else but she was sure that, whatever she was looking at, was real and interesting to her. Weirdo.

  “Morning, soldier,” she said affectionately, patting her sister’s back before crossing her arms, hugging herself tightly and waiting for the ceremony to commence.

  Elle saluted Jane, holding the shovel in one hand and a cigarette between her lips. Jane waited for her to begin breaking the soil but she was slow to start. “What are you waiting for?”

  Elle dropped the shovel and walked backwards towards their mother’s roses. “I’m just double-checking. I know the spot should be five feet from Mum’s rose bushes and eight feet from Jeffrey’s grave, but five feet from Mum’s rose bushes appears to be only six feet from the bloody grave.” She walked forward, toe to heel, counting.

  “But those aren’t proper feet,” said Jane. “As in twelve inches one foot.”

  “I’m not talking about ‘proper’ feet – I’m talking about my feet,” said Elle.

  The recount was the same. Elle was displeased.

  “Well, does it make a difference? Just dig a bigger hole,” Jane said.

  “Can’t,” Elle said
, circling the point where she believed her box to be buried. “Last year I nearly lopped Jeffrey’s head off.”

  Jane laughed. “Jeffrey died when you were six.”

  “So?”

  “So that was twenty years ago.”

  Elle pretended to be confused. “What’s your point?”

  Jane spelled it out. “Jeffrey’s head is long gone.”

  “I’m telling you it was Jeffrey.”

  “Not Jessica, Judy or Jimmy?” Jane asked, then laughed.

  “Definitely Jeffrey,” Elle said, and recounted her steps again. After the third recount she was utterly baffled. “It should be five feet from Mum’s roses and eight feet from Jeffrey’s head so how the hell did the garden lose two feet all of a sudden?”

  “Maybe it’s the shoes you’re wearing,” Jane said helpfully.

  Elle considered this and took them off. In socks she recounted and bizarrely gained one foot. Christ, no wonder my toes look like stumps.

  “You need to get your feet seen to,” Jane said, staring at her sister’s hammer toes.

  “Will do,” Elle said, flexing them, hoping they would stretch back into toe shape. They didn’t.

  “And you need to give up wearing high heels.”

  “Won’t do,” Elle said, and refocused on the ground.

  After another minute or two of standing around and arguing over the lost foot she dug carefully, retrieved the old biscuit tin and walked the short distance to her cottage, situated at the very back of the long garden, with Jane in tow. They headed into the kitchen. Jane made coffee while Elle battled to open the rusty old tin.

  “You need a new tin.”

  “No way. It’s this vessel or no vessel. It’s all about tradition, Jane,” Elle argued, then screamed, “Bollocks!” after nearly losing her middle finger to a sharp end of the rusted tin.

  A few minutes passed before the coffee was made, the tin was open, the girls were sitting opposite one another and Elle was reading silently. Elle always read the letter silently while sipping her coffee before reading aloud the parts she was happy to share. She laughed and Jane smiled, although she didn’t know what she was smiling at, and it was always at this point in the procedure she remembered that sometimes she didn’t like what she heard. Elle put down the letter and nodded to herself with a sheepish grin.

  “Well?” Jane asked, a tad nervously.

  Elle began reading: “‘Sunday, the thirty-first of December 2006. Dear Universe. What in the name of fuck is wrong with you?’”

  “Strong start.” Jane laughed.

  Elle read on: “‘The icecaps are melting, the ozone is burning, and species are actually dying out, the Golden Toad gone, the Black West African Rhino gone, the Baiji Dolphin gone –’”

  She took a breath long enough for Jane to interject, “God, that’s awful!” She was referring to the demise of the Baiji Dolphin. She didn’t give a shit about the toad or the rhino. “Do you remember when I took Kurt to Kerry for a week and we swam with a dolphin? He was only nine then and it seems like just yesterday.”

  “Did you swim with a Baiji Dolphin, Jane?”

  “No, a regular one.”

  “Well, then, it’s not really relevant, is it?” Elle resumed her place in the text. “‘The Pyrenean Ibex, gone.’”

  “What’s a Pyrenean Ibex?”

  Elle thought about it for a minute. “I’ve no idea.”

  “Did you Google ‘Extinct Species’ before writing your letter?” Jane asked, in a tone that approached condescension.

  “Of course I did. I’m not a bloody zoologist.”

  “I just don’t understand your insatiable need to Google depressing subjects.”

  “Because they’re important. We may not know what a Pyrenean Ibex is but I can assure you its extinction will have a fundamental effect on the delicate balance of its ecosystem and vice versa.”

  “Do you even know what you’re talking about?” Jane asked.

  “Not entirely,” Elle admitted, “but it doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  “Well, it sure as Shinola doesn’t mean you’re right either.”

  “Can I read this letter or not?” Elle asked, and Jane nodded, allowing her to proceed.

  “‘Why aren’t you fighting? I’m doing my bit. I recycle, I turn the lights off, I don’t even own a TV, but you don’t seem to care that this world, which is a really big part of you, is dying. I know it’s not your fault. I know it’s ours, but we are trying and we’ll try harder so stop being such a fucking tosser and adapt or at least bloody try to.’” Elle looked up at Jane. “Wow, I was really pissed off with the Universe,” she said. She sniffed and drained her coffee cup, then found her place in the letter while Jane stood up to make more coffee. “‘And as for this so-called Celtic Tiger, I wish it would die.’”

  Jane placed the coffee pot on the counter with a bang. “Bite your tongue,” she ordered. “This so-called Celtic Tiger is part of the reason you can charge forty-five K a painting.”

  “Yeah, well, I was over it last New Year’s and I’m still over it this New Year’s,” Elle said. She read on silently as her sister busied herself rinsing out their cups. “Okay. My promises for 2007.” She looked at her sister. “Please reserve your comments until the end.”

  Jane grinned and steadied herself. She placed a fresh cup of black coffee in front of Elle and sat opposite her.

  “‘One: I will learn to play the piano. Two: I’ll donate the proceeds of my next painting to Warchild. Three: I’ll paint by candlelight. Four: I’ll try to help Jane more with Mum. Five: I’ll get pregnant.’”

  Jane gasped. Elle sighed a little. “Did I get pregnant in 2007?” she asked.

  “Not unless there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “There isn’t,” Elle said, and admitted it was a desire that had passed and she had no intention of getting pregnant in 2008 either. She resumed reading. “‘Six: I’ll be nicer to Jane.’”

  “You’re always nice to me,” Jane said, smiling.

  “I said no talking,” Elle said sternly.

  Jane pulled her index finger and thumb across her lips to indicate that she was zipping them.

  “‘Seven: I’ll take Vincent to China.’” Elle stopped reading, and both women reflected on what had happened while Elle and her boyfriend Vincent were in China, but it was far too painful for either to rehash it so Elle moved on. “‘Eight: I’ll grow my own vegetables.’” She stopped and smiled at Jane, who was still ruminating on China but when Elle’s eyes met hers she brightened.

  “You made a complete mess of that,” she said, remembering the amount of money, time and effort Elle had put into growing her own vegetables to end up with nothing but one crop of pretty poor-tasting potatoes, and some carrots that looked like they’d been shipped in from Chernobyl, never mind the damage she’d done to the patch of land closest to their mother’s gardenias.

  Elle laughed. “Remember Mum’s face?”

  “‘What the fock’s happened to my garden?’” Jane said, mimicking her mother’s faux-posh accent. It was a funny memory and a good distraction from China.

  “‘Nine: I’ll start a pension fund.’”

  “You already have a pension fund. I set it up ten years ago.”

  “Oh, good. ’Cos I didn’t start one. Right. Ten,” Elle said, and bit her lip.

  “What?” Jane asked.

  “You might have a problem with this one.”

  “What?” Jane asked again, becoming quite nervous. “What did you do?”

  Elle cleared her throat. “‘Ten: I’ll take Kurt skydiving.’”

  Jane jumped up and pointed at her sister. “Oh, no, you didn’t?” Actual tears were springing into her eyes. “You didn’t push my child out of a plane?”

  “Of course I didn’t push him,” Elle said soothingly. “The qualified instructor pushed him.”

  Jane’s mouth was open but no sound was coming out.

  “He loved it and he’s fine and it’s ove
r.” Elle was wishing she had kept number ten to herself.

  “When?” Jane managed to ask.

  “End of April, in good time for his birthday.”

  “Seventeen-year-olds need parental consent.”

  “Yeah, I gave that,” Elle said, holding her hand up.

  “How could you give parental consent seeing as you are not his parent and there’s less than nine years between you?” Jane asked, through gritted teeth.

  “I must look older than I am.”

  Jane walked to the door.

  Elle called after her, “Please don’t be annoyed!” But Jane was annoyed and now Elle was sorry.

  “You can’t just do whatever you want to do, Elle.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. He’d been begging me for years and I did hold out until he was seventeen.”

  Jane shook her head. “I’m really pissed off with you.”

  “I know. Sorry.”

  Jane opened Elle’s sliding door.

  Elle shouted after her, “So are you still going to that party with Tom?”

  Jane turned to face her younger sister. “Yes,” she said, and sighed. “Are you coming?” she asked hopefully.

  “I’d rather be dead. Anyway, Vincent’s taking me out.”

  “You could bring Vincent,” Jane said, with hope in her voice.

  “It’s New Year’s Eve and you’re spending it with the family of a missing friend who you haven’t known since you were seventeen. You have got to learn how to say no.”

  “I couldn’t. Breda asked Tom if I’d come and –”

  “And she knitted that bloody blanket. Jesus, Jane!”

  “Right. I’m going.” Jane turned to walk away.

  “Happy New Year!”

  “Happy New Year,” Jane responded, “and, Elle, don’t think that because I want you at that party it means I’m not really pissed off because I am.”

  Elle’s intercom buzzed just as Jane closed her door. She picked up the receiver and a man told her he was standing outside the main gate with flowers. She buzzed him in and told him where to find her. She reopened the door and waved to him as he made his way down the garden.