by Karen Swan
‘He’ll understand.’
But she shook her head. He wouldn’t.
Dan was quiet for a bit. ‘Have you told Gwen?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
She shrugged. ‘I feel too . . . ashamed. I’ve spent all these months and years telling her how much I want my mum back and the second my wish is granted, I reject her.’ A spasm of pain crossed her face at the brutality of the word.
‘I bet she’d say this is quite normal.’
She shook her head again. ‘It’s normal for the missing person to take several attempts to return. It is not normal for their family to slam the door in their face.’
‘That isn’t what you did. You were just shocked, that’s all; it gave you a fright. These things don’t go like they do in the movies, you know.’
‘Don’t they?’ she asked with a flat tone. She stared at the sprig pattern on the sofa, plucking absently at the loose fibres on one of the holes. ‘No. She’s gone for good now. I bet she’s left the area already.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I do. We’ve always been able to read each other. She was going to do it, you know? Come back. I could see it in her eyes.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘She was probably gearing up for some dramatic entrance on Christmas Day or some-thing.’ She stared into the flames, lost in the memory. ‘She held her arm up to me, like she wanted me to take her hand.’ She shook her head again, blinking back to the present.
‘I really think you should speak to your dad and Gwen.’
‘I can’t. He’ll never—’
‘You can, Nets. He’ll understand. He’s angry too.’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘We’re . . . we’re not angry.’
‘Nettie, how could you not be? Everything you’ve been through – all that worry and shock, the searches, walking every weekend, waiting every night, not knowing if she’s alive or dead, safe, nearby, abroad. You haven’t had anything concrete to hold on to. Sometimes I think it would have been easier on you to just know she was dead . . . You’ve put your life on hold while trying to keep it together. Anger is frankly your basic right. You’d be a psycho not to feel it.’
She shook her head, rebutting his words. ‘No, it’s my fault. I’m the one who keeps on making everything harder than it needs to be, refusing to accept the plain fact that she’s gone. That part of my life is over, and yet – ’ Her voice broke – ‘I just can’t let go of the dream of how things should be; the family I ought to have had.’
‘And what would that have been?’
‘A mum who’d never left, a dad who wasn’t frightened to feel. A – ’ She hesitated. ‘A brother.’
His eyes met hers with a start. It was the only time either one of them had ever put a label on the bond that had been forged over years of casual Saturday drop-ins, evenings at the pub and poker nights on the barge. She knew now he had hoped for possibly more, but even without Jamie coming into her life, that moment between them in their teens had flickered and died on its own. It wasn’t what they were to each other, and she sensed that deep down, he knew it too.
‘I’m not going to lose you too, am I?’ she asked quietly.
His jaw was jutting, his blue eyes burning with rare intensity, but he dredged up a smile that made her muscles ease. ‘As if,’ he scoffed. ‘We need each other whether we like it or not. You and me, we’re like mathing pepper pots. I’m the guy with too many dads; you’re the girl with no mum.’
Nettie couldn’t help but smile at his bald, unsentimental logic.
A bubble of boiling liquid spat from the pan suddenly, leaving a grey smatter on the ceiling. ‘Oh shit, the soup,’ he remembered, getting up from the bench and running over to the kitchenette, jumping and cursing as droplets of the boiled soup landed on his wrists.
She watched as he shoved his hands into the oven gloves and slid out the tray of rolls, but she felt so far away from the warm little cabin on the iced water, she didn’t particularly register the invasion of ‘Drinking From the Bottle’, Dan’s ringtone, coming from the worktop.
Dan glanced at the phone, the pan in his hand as he poured the soup into bowls. He looked up at her. ‘It’s Jules.’
She snapped into focus. ‘I’m not here.’
‘But—’
‘I can’t speak to her right now. She’s just going to freak at me for not going to work and I can’t deal with that right now. Please, Dan.’
She looked at him with desperate eyes and he nodded. ‘Sure.’ He picked up the phone. ‘Hey, Jules . . . No, I haven’t seen her . . . What’s up?’
Nettie looked away as he listened, though his gaze remained upon her. She looked into the gardens of the house on the opposite bank, her eyes on the black woven daybed – no cushions at this time of year – on the first-floor veranda. She tried to imagine who got to lounge on it, stepping through the grand French windows and out on the deck, maybe holding a morning cup of tea or an early evening drink, enjoying the peaceful rhythms of the canal and being a part of a life that didn’t have a horror at its core. Downstairs, she could see lilies in the window, shadows flickering on the wall as the inhabitants moved about in the evening light, confident that their only onlookers were the pigeons in the bare trees.
She hadn’t heard him hang up. She was surprised to find him still looking at her. Surprised by the expression on his face.
‘Dan? What is it?’
He came and sat beside her again, the steaming soup and risen rolls forgotten on the counter. He looked at the floor, unsure how to say what had to be said. ‘The press have found out who you are,’ he said quietly.
‘What?’ she murmured, recoiling fractionally.
‘They know you’re the Blue Bunny Girl.’
He looked anxious, but she didn’t notice. She had retreated into her mind again. How had they found out? She had been so careful – keeping a low profile any time she was in danger of being photographed, not travelling with the costume . . . It came to her almost immediately, the one slip-up, as though it had been hovering on the fringe of her consciousness, just waiting to step into the sun.
‘Nettie, how does it feel in there?’ She hadn’t noticed at the time, too busy trying to settle her nerves and keep up with the game that Jamie was playing for the public, but Alex had said her name on live television. Live television! And once they had that, all any enterprising reporter would have to do was grease the palm of a security guard at any of the high-profile events she had appeared at and needed to sign in for – someone like the nosy guy on the door at the O2, for instance; Jules had given their full names.
She sighed. ‘I don’t care. I’ve got bigger things to worry about. Tomorrow’s the last day of the campaign anyway. It’s hardly the end of the world.’ She looked across at him, wondering why he was looking at her like that. ‘What?’
‘Nets . . .’ Dan’s voice was urgent; he looked like he was going to be sick. She realized he had visibly paled. ‘That’s not all. There’s something else you have to know.’
She stared at him, instinctively knowing what was coming.
‘They know about your mum.’
He picked up on the fourth ring. ‘Hello?’
‘Dad? It’s me.’ She couldn’t control the tremor in her voice or the slide up to the next octave.
‘Button, what’s wrong? Where are you? Jules has rung twice looking for you.’
She covered her mouth with her hand, not sure she could go through with this.
Dan put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it, giving her an encouraging look as she faltered.
‘Nets? Are you there?’ he asked into the silence.
‘Y-yes. I’m sorry. I—’
‘Darling, what’s happened?’
‘There’s something I have to tell you and it’s, uh . . . it’s going to be hard for you to hear.’
There was a pause and she wondered whether he was sitting down. ‘OK, then.’
‘I’ve been involved in this th
ing for work for the past few weeks. It’s stupid, really. You may have heard of it – the Blue Bunny Girl campaign.’
‘Yes. There was an article on her in the Telegraph yesterday.’
‘Was there?’ she asked in surprise.
‘Yes, she’s raised nearly two million pounds for charity.’
Nettie swallowed. It was that much now?
‘I’ll keep it for you to read,’ her father continued. ‘It’s quite extraordinary, it really is, but nobody knows who she is.’
Nettie took a deep breath. ‘Well I do. She’s . . . uh . . . me.’
There was a long silence. ‘You?’
‘Mm-hmm,’ she nodded, dreading the next bit, already knowing that the pride would be building, the elation . . .
‘My girl is the Blue Bunny Girl?’ he asked, his voice choked. ‘You’ve raised all that money?’
‘Yes, but, Dad, that’s not why I’m phoning,’ she said hurriedly. She had to contain this before his happiness set in. It would make the rest of it so much harder to bear. ‘The thing is, it was meant to be a secret. I didn’t want anyone finding out who I was – for obvious reasons.’
He got the point immediately, just as she had. ‘But they have,’ he said for her.
The sob burst out before she could stop it. ‘I’m so sorry, Daddy! If I’d ever known for a minute it would become as big as it has, I never would have done it. It all just started by accident, but then, when it started to grow, I thought it would be OK as long as no one knew who I was. We’ve gone to such lengths to keep it a secret, but someone slipped up yesterday. They said my name on TV and now the papers are . . .’ She squeezed her eyes shut, her hand clapped over them. ‘They know about Mum.’
‘Oh, Button.’ Her father’s voice was thin to the point of translucence, like it had been planed away, peeling back in curls.
‘I’m so sorry. I never should have done it. I never should have risked putting you in this position.’
There was another silence and she wondered if he was crying. ‘No! I’m proud of you for what you’ve done, Nets. All those people you’ve helped.’
‘But—’
‘No buts. What you’ve done is important. It’s bigger than us.’
‘But the papers, Dad. You know what they’re like.’
‘Yes. I know what they’re like. We’ll be their latest sob story.’ His voice was flat; he sounded so tired. ‘And we’ll just have to weather it. They’ll move on to something else in a few days.’
They both fell quiet, already imagining the mawkish headlines.
She heard something in the background. It sounded like the doorbell. ‘Just a sec—’ he began.
‘No! Don’t answer it!’ she cried, stopping him in his tracks. ‘It’ll probably be reporters, Dad. They’ll want an interview or quote or something. They’ll take your picture.’
‘Oh.’ Her father sounded taken aback. She could hear the sound of his footsteps on the wooden floor. ‘Oh Lord,’ he muttered after a moment. ‘You’re right. There’s a crowd of them out there already.’
‘Where are you?’
‘In the bedroom. They haven’t seen me.’
‘Dad, it’ll be fine. Just don’t answer the door. And when we’ve hung up, take the phone off the hook, OK? I’ll be right over.’
‘No, I don’t want you trying to get past them, love. They’re . . . It’s not right. You don’t need this.’
‘Dad, I’m not going to leave you alone in the house with a pack of journalists on the doorstep!’
‘Sweetheart, I will be fine. I’ll upend a bucket of cold water on anyone who tries standing on our doorstep.’
She laughed faintly. He would too.
‘What about you?’ Concern threaded his voice. ‘Where can you stay tonight? I don’t want you coming back here to this.’
Her eyes roamed the tiny houseboat. It was cosy but too small. The sofa she was sitting on opened out to make a double bed for Dan, but there was nowhere else for her to stay, except beside him, and there was no question of that. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m a big girl. I’ll sort something out.’
They were quiet for a moment. She felt suffused with guilt – not just to have put him in this position, effectively under house arrest until the media lost interest, but also with the events of this afternoon. She had shunned her own mother, the woman who was his wife, his life partner. He had been alone long enough already and now she had sealed his fate.
But she shook her head, letting the silence blanket this latest secret. Some things had to be said face to face; it would have to wait for another day.
‘I’m really sorry, Dad.’
‘I’m not,’ he replied firmly. ‘I couldn’t be prouder of what you’ve achieved. This is just a storm in a teacup.’
‘Ha! You think?’ she sniffed.
‘I know. Now go and ring Jules and drink some toffee vodka or something.’
She groaned. That was what had kicked off this whole sorry, mad, wild adventure in the first place. ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow, Dad.’
‘Night, sweetheart. Don’t let the paparazzi bite.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
She walked again. But it was different this time. Her eyes weren’t casting into every crevice, following sounds or chasing shadows. She wasn’t fidgety and alert, every fibre in her muscles ratcheted to full tension, ready to tear. Instead, her feet dragged, her head lolled, her face obscured by the deep hood of her coat. Occasionally she stopped and looked for a road sign, something to tell her where she was – not that it mattered anyway. It wasn’t ‘where’ that mattered; it was ‘who’, and she didn’t have the answers to that anymore. She didn’t recognize the daughter who turned her back on her mother and left her father exposed to public scrutiny, who neglected her friends for the good of a corporate secret, who fell for a star but treated him like dirt.
She was adrift, caught between worlds, and as she walked through the quiet, frosted streets, it was with the intention of getting lost. She wanted to hide, not seek this time, be the little girl who got to curl up in a cupboard and hear everyone calling her name; she wanted to be sought, for once. She was so tired of being the one to count to ten and go to find. She just wanted it all to stop.
Her feet moved, though she gave no conscious commands. She didn’t know what time it was, only that the Royal Parks were locked, forcing her to walk the perimeters and stay in the light, moving from one amber street-lamp pool to the next when all she wanted was the shadows.
No car had passed her for fifteen minutes by the time she got back to the black gates of Primrose Hill. It was the witching hour, the very dead of night, although shadows fell long and thin along the pavements from the full moon.
She stood by the railings, one hand clasped round the cold steel and staring up at the Hill’s small white summit. The yellow house was a four-minute walk away behind her; the journalists would be sure to have gone for the night – they couldn’t stay out all night in the snow, surely – and she could slip in unnoticed, dive under her duvet and sleep for a year. Instead, she scaled the railings with the ease and experience of someone who’d been doing it all her life – she had been nine when she’d first jumped the gates and it was second nature now. She didn’t want comfort, or oblivion; she didn’t want to feel slaked. She just wanted, for once, to feel.
She broke into a sprint up the path, fists pumping, her body fierce and light – the soup at Dan’s had gone untouched, the two of them too distracted to eat – surprised by how shaky her legs felt as she got to the benches at the top. She walked round the mount with her hands on her hips, like a marathon runner in recovery, London slumbering like a black dragon before her.
At her feet was the Blake quote, ‘I have conversed with the spiritual sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill.’ She didn’t need to read it; she knew it by heart. How many days had she spent on this spot, waiting for her own epiphany? A miracle that would never come.
She sank down onto her bench, the one with her
mother’s name on it, the one that her father had sold their car for, in order to afford – a public love token intended, if ever her mother saw it, to propel her home to them. But if her father had been standing in her place at the nursery today, would he have done the same and turned his back? Would he have recognized her as his wife? She had been so much changed. Nettie realized it wasn’t just her mother she had been missing; it was the idea of her too – but she didn’t correspond to that now. The person staring back at her through the glass had been no one’s mother, no one’s wife, no one’s daughter. Her mother hadn’t just removed herself from their lives; she had removed from herself what she was in their lives. Their connection had snapped, a thread that been pulled too taut and sprung back into itself.
Her phone in her pocket buzzed suddenly, making her jump.
‘And the view’s so nice.’ She stared at it in alarm. What? Who? The number was unrecognized in her contacts list.
She knew the line well enough: it had been written on the path for years, till the rain had eventually washed it away. But why would someone send her that at this time of night? And why would they send it unless they knew she was here?
The hairs rose on the back of her neck. Someone was watching her.
She looked out into the shadows, her body tight and coiled, ready to run, her lungs full, ready to scream.
‘Blur, in case you didn’t know. Though I’m guessing you probably did.’ His voice was gentle, wary of frightening her. She stared at him in disbelief, too many questions rushing forwards at once as he stood just off the summit on the path, his hands jammed in his pockets, his shoulders hunched around his ears in the plunging temperatures.
Convinced she wasn’t going to scream bloody murder, he walked up to the bench. ‘May I?’
She scooted over slightly, even though there was enough room for eight people on there. ‘Why are you here, Jamie?’
‘I was worried about you. We all were. Jules has been frantic.’
She swallowed and looked away, the humiliation sweeping over her like a million pinpricks. He already knew, then. It was official – her shame was public and tomorrow the rest of the city would wake to find her in the headlines again. ‘Jules knows I’m fine. I got Dan to tell her.’ Her voice was as stiff as if it had been whipped.