by Emma Healey
His questions, the naivety of them (as if she wouldn’t have thought to try Lana’s mobile), and the way he leaned into his father as the wind caught his hair made Jen feel violent towards him. She walked away to call Hugh again. The police had been to their house in London but hadn’t found anything useful, and he had asked Meg to come and stay so he could join Jen in the Peak District.
Everyone was doing something, had a role, a task, but Jen couldn’t decide what she should do. She hadn’t the focus to go out on the search, and her vision seemed to be marred by a great, dark shape that pushed all the colour of the world into her peripheral vision. And she couldn’t call Lana’s name, knowing where it had come from; a kind of superstition stopped her, even made her imagine that the man on the train had somehow discovered them and returned to claim her daughter. A pain in her stomach made her want to sit doubled up, and Peny made her eat some toast, in case it was hunger.
There was something gleeful in the way each person bustled about and spoke to one another; they’d been given a purpose and were enjoying it. Jen could almost believe they’d conspired to make this happen. She began to interpret their words of sympathy, their certainty that Lana would be all right, as proof that they knew where she was. When Stephen came over to lead her in prayer, Jen got up and went back to her room. Their room.
She realized she hadn’t looked in the mirror all day, and seeing herself was a bit of a shock. It wasn’t her appearance which took her aback (though on any other day she would have lamented the greyness of her skin, the depth of the lines, the dark circles under her eyes), it was the familiarity, as if she had never expected to see any face she recognized again. She turned away and stared at the creases on Lana’s pillow instead, studying the way the pale daylight caught the different facets of the crumpled cotton, and she wondered where her daughter’s head might be resting now.
Things will look better in the morning
Night fell and the searchers called it a day, even though Lana hadn’t been found. When Hugh arrived, he was white and drawn, his voice deeper than usual, and Jen was sure he’d had a cry in the car. But he was still full of reassurances, and she appreciated it in him, though it would have made her angry coming from anyone else. When he said, ‘Things will look better in the morning,’ she believed him and didn’t feel like strangling anyone. It was a relief, not wanting to strangle someone.
They booked into a hotel rather than stay on in the holiday centre, and lay fully clothed on the bed. And although she didn’t sleep, somehow, in the turmoil of those hours her brain made a little bit of space for a different time, for a memory of the night, thirty years ago, when she’d tried to sleep in her car.
She had been on her way back from visiting an art-college friend in Scotland and, convinced that her boyfriend was cheating on her with his copywriter, she’d decided to drive home overnight and catch him, or them, early in the morning. It had seemed like a good plan, an exciting plan, when she’d set out, but after four hours squinting against the headlights of oncoming traffic her eyes had dimmed, and stung, until pulling over had been the only option.
By then, there was nowhere to pull over except the car park of an abandoned service station, deserted except for a few rusting cars. As soon as she’d turned off the engine, the cold had materialized, as if it had been lurking on the back seat and waiting to ambush her. That whole night had been about waiting. Waiting for sleep, waiting for the energy to drive again, waiting for a knock at the window or a lunatic to break into the car, waiting until the sun rose and she could feel a bit safer.
Sleep never really came. The car was a thin tin box with a juddering window which let the night air whistle through. Even with a coat, two jumpers and the emergency blanket her mother made her keep in the boot, she’d felt frozen, her muscles cramping and forcing her to move, her teeth chattering unless she tensed hard. But having her eyes closed for a bit had seemed important, and then suddenly it was dawn, and the tarmac was shining gold and the rust on the wrecks of cars seemed to suck all the sunlight in. Those dark, reddish streaks looked warm and she got out of her own car to lay a hand on the rough patches of metal, feeling like she was soothing some sick, gargantuan animal.
She didn’t make it home until mid-morning, by which time her boyfriend had left for work, and his flat looked the same as ever. She never discovered if he’d been cheating. Somehow, it hadn’t mattered by then, anyway.
And when people said things would look better in the morning, Jen always thought of the rust sparkling, the dark pink heads of some tarmac-rooted weeds standing perfectly still in the windless dawn, the white flash of a seagull catching the sun as it swooped low.
Lying on the bed next to Hugh, the gold of that morning lingered under her eyelids, a liquid film: hope. She’d had to be careful not to cry it away.
The dust settles
When Jen and Hugh and Lana got home, to their once-suburban street, now classed as inner-city London, Meg was waiting for them, and the fruit bowl had been filled with red apples. Meg was twenty-six and a genius at tableaux. Her own flat on the other side of the city was full of little collections of things sitting together: a Victorian stoneware bottle might rest next to two pebbles from a Sussex beach; an antique children’s book bound in yellow fabric would bear a mother-of-pearl-handled spoon; or a delicate dining chair, draped with a silk shawl might support a wide, flat candleholder and a long, tapering candle. They were like subjects for a still-life painting, quiet and interesting, and they changed the whole atmosphere of a room.
Jen had tried arranging her own collections, carefully choosing and stacking the things, but when she came back to them later they always looked wrong, like a pile of junk she’d tossed aside, and she would be forced to dismantle the display, sending the elements back into obscurity.
Meg’s mouth moved now without sound, twitching into the shape of a word before the lips pulled flat again and she stood, rubbing her lower back, while Hugh and Jen brought their suitcases in. Jen was too exhausted to smile but patted her as she struggled past and nodded at the offer of tea.
Lana didn’t want tea but did want a hot-water bottle (which meant using all the water in the kettle), and she wasn’t interested in being welcomed home, but she did need a light bulb (which meant searching the house for one of the right size and wattage).
‘We can sort that tomorrow,’ Jen said, unprepared for rooting through kitchen drawers. ‘Aren’t you going to tell Meg congratulations?’
‘No, we can’t sort it tomorrow. My desk lamp’s not working and I need it,’ Lana said. ‘Oh, right. Yeah, sis. Well done for getting knocked up.’
‘Thanks,’ Meg said. ‘I didn’t get knocked up, though, I had donor insemination and it was carefully planned.’
‘Gross.’
‘How is that gross?’
‘Donor insemination? Sounds gross.’
‘Here’s a light bulb,’ Hugh said, fishing one out of a box under the sink and stopping the brewing argument.
Lana took it and went straight up to her room, which Meg had neatened, and freshened with clean sheets, and brightened with a stack of art books and a vase of Fairtrade Kenyan sunflowers.
‘That was sweet of you,’ Jen said, sitting at the kitchen table, her chest pressed against the edge, her head nearly resting on the surface. The scrubbed wood smelled faintly of onions. ‘She’ll appreciate it when she’s had some time to settle in.’
‘If you say so.’
‘You’re not showing yet,’ Jen said.
‘Not through my clothes.’ Meg pulled at the long, chunky-knit jumper she was wearing.
‘I just realized I haven’t said congratulations either. So, congratulations.’
‘Don’t say it like that.’
‘Like what? I’m thrilled, really. I’m just tired.’
Hugh, who had been bringing in bags of walking boots and watercolours, and fiddling with the car’s parcel shelf and checking the parking permit and discarding his mountain of ‘dri
ving chocolate’ wrappers, stopped to hold his mug of tea.
‘You’re not showing yet,’ he told Meg.
‘Jesus, are you and Mum the same person?’
Hugh laughed. ‘Did you just say that?’ he asked Jen, not at all annoyed, though her immediate, silent reaction had been indignation. Some people, she supposed, didn’t have to work so hard at keeping their own identity. ‘And do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?’ he said. ‘When do you find out?’
‘It’s a girl.’ Meg nodded to herself, which had always been a sign she was thinking of something to say, or trying not to say something. ‘I’m sorry it’s coincided with this. I know it can’t seem like good news at the moment.’
‘We don’t see it as bad news,’ Hugh said.
‘But I have thought about it very hard. And so has Tom. And it makes sense to us right now.’
‘That’s great, then,’ Jen said, sounding less than sincere, even to herself. She took a sip of her tea in case a warmer mouth might induce a warmer tone. ‘Is Kayla pleased?’ she asked.
‘Well, not exactly. She does see it as bad news. We’ve broken up.’
‘Oh, darling, I’m sorry. That’s a pity.’
‘Yes. Anyway. What happens next?’
‘You give birth, I imagine,’ Hugh said.
‘I meant with Lana.’
‘She needs a rest,’ Jen said. ‘We all do.’
There was a thud upstairs and then footsteps back and forth across the ceiling. Jen tensed but didn’t get up. It seemed unlikely after everything that had happened that it should be Lana up there, and she suddenly felt as if they’d invited some stranger into the house, or some mythical creature, a unicorn or a griffin, which they had no idea how to care for.
‘Her school’s been in touch,’ Meg said. ‘They can send over the work she’s missed, and a friend has offered to drop off some revision notes. I hadn’t realized her exams were next year.’
Jen could imagine how thrilled Lana would be to hear she was still expected to catch up on the last few days’ schoolwork. There was another thud from above and a speck of dust floated down from the overhead light to land with precision on the shining skin of one of the apples. (Later, she’d find that all the furniture had been moved and Lana’s bed was now up against the window. ‘So I can always see the sky.’)
‘I suppose she’s under a lot of pressure,’ Meg said.
‘A ridiculous amount.’ Jen stretched her arms across the table, wiping the speck of dust from the apple with a fingertip and rearranging the pile so that it formed a peak with one perfect fruit on top. ‘I don’t remember it being like this when I was young. The day of the exam was stressful, of course, but the revision part wasn’t so all-pervading. You either passed the exam or you didn’t, you were clever or you weren’t. There wasn’t this attempt to contort yourself, your brain, into an unnatural shape.’
‘Oh, yes, the good old days,’ Hugh said. ‘Everything was simpler then.’
‘All right.’ Jen was half annoyed. ‘But, in some ways, that’s true.’
‘And you certainly wouldn’t have had some lesbian carrying a straight man’s baby,’ Meg said, returning the pile of apples to their original arrangement. (Jen had to admit it looked better.) ‘Disgraceful.’
‘Okay, I get it. I’ll shut up.’ Jen smiled and let her head drop the last few inches on to the tabletop. ‘I’m going to sleep now,’ she said. ‘Wake me up when I’m a grandma.’
The youngest profession
There was little time to rest, though, as Jen was needed back at work on Monday. Her job was, at a passing glance, desirable, even exciting, and she liked being able to tell people she was a graphic designer. In reality, though, she adjusted layouts for newsletters and in-house magazines at a trade association and she was the oldest member of her team by at least twenty years.
‘This is a great start for me,’ one of the newly hired children would say, a Rupert or a Tori. ‘I see this as a step towards achieving my goals.’
Jen had given up engaging them in conversation years ago, at around the time they’d stopped inviting her to the pub (‘We assumed you had family commitments’), so now she just smiled and silently hoped they’d end up having to post one of those ads on Facebook offering to design logos for £5.
Over the past few years she had found herself spending more and more time in the Ladies. This was partly down to a new sensitivity to caffeine but, mostly, she was hiding. She wasn’t quite sure what she was hiding from, but disaster seemed permanently imminent. Every couple of months the sense of danger would materialize into a sentence which floated above her for a few days. Too old for this work. And she would be suddenly sure that they were all of them after her job.
She’d admitted this once to her friend Grace, who’d prescribed cashew nuts for paranoid-personality disorder and told her to try mentoring her colleagues, who probably wanted to benefit from her experience. As they generally knew more about design software, came to each meeting with dozens of ideas and finished their projects in three quarters the time it took her to complete hers, Jen doubted it. She was only glad that her boss hated fuss, hated change and hated stupid haircuts.
Perspective
Grace was the only person who hadn’t asked Jen where Lana had been, or what had happened, or what she could do to help; she was the only person whose messages hadn’t required a response. Instead, she’d just suggested eating a hundred grams of grapes a day and filling copper bowls with water, and had told Jen to sit cross-legged and repeat the phrase ‘I am going to see my daughter soon.’ Although Jen didn’t follow much of her advice, and didn’t have a great deal of faith in it, she did appreciate the suggestions, was pleased that someone had a plan for her. So Grace was the only person she’d messaged back willingly.
She was full of advice and homeopathic remedies and mindfulness techniques and herbal-tea recommendations. She had a tendency to use phrases like ‘Open yourself to the richness of life,’ and, ‘Put yourself in a place of community,’ and other collections of words which sounded very nice but didn’t bear close attention. She was also, Jen thought, almost pathologically calm.
‘You think I overreact to everything,’ Jen said one afternoon, lifting her coffee cup to her mouth and performing the action of drinking, even though she’d finished the liquid and was just letting milk foam fall against her lips.
‘No, it’s not that.’
‘Then what?’
Grace pulled at her nose for a moment. ‘I shut my cat’s tail in the door once,’ she said.
‘Oh?’
‘It was awful, this crunch, the shriek and hiss of the cat, the way he looked up at me, terrified, as if he couldn’t believe I could hurt him like that. It was the worst feeling ever.’
‘God,’ Jen said. ‘I’ll bet.’
‘Now, whenever I think something is awkward or painful, I concentrate on that moment. Nothing compares; everything else seems small.’
‘Right. So you’re saying I need to find a cat…’
‘No,’ Grace said, showing the brief grin that was always the reward for teasing her. ‘I’m saying you need to find some perspective.’
A family of brilliant conversationalists
Perspective was hard to come by, but Jen got home on Thursday evening determined to be cheerful, reasonable, communicative.
‘I just don’t see why you won’t talk to anyone, Lana,’ Meg was saying, as Jen walked in. ‘Have you done something bad? Something illegal? Did you hurt someone? Are you ashamed?’ She had her back to the sitting-room door, but had surely heard her mother come in.
Beyond Meg, Lana sat on the settee, curled up in that way she always curled – twisted, contorted, her limbs wound around each other so she looked quite uncomfortable – and Jen wanted to say, ‘Wouldn’t you be happier sitting straight on? Wouldn’t it be easier to take that hand away from your mouth, that foot out from under your thigh?’ The sort of questions she suspected Lana expected her to ask and which made h
er look foolish, old and no longer lithe, and overly preoccupied by blood clots and varicose veins.
‘Are you enjoying all the attention you’re getting,’ Meg asked. ‘Is that it? You want to draw out the mystery so that people find you interesting?’
‘What mystery?’ Lana asked, frowning fixedly at the TV. ‘I got lost.’
‘For four days?’
Jen dropped her bag in the hall and hung up her jacket, knowing she should stop Meg’s interrogation but comforted by the idea that someone else was seeking answers.
‘You must have been with someone,’ Meg said. ‘Did you think he was the love of your life but he turned out to be a loser? Or did you just run away and then get scared and come back?’
‘No. I told you, I got lost. How many more times do I have to repeat it?’
‘I don’t know how many times, Lana. Maybe until it actually sounds believable.’
Lana moved suddenly, breaking her pose on the settee. ‘I knew you’d do this. It’s just like last year, with you interrogating me all the time. You’re worse than Mum.’ She put on a high-pitched, nasal voice. ‘What’s the matter, Lana? Is it boy trouble, Lana? Are you being bullied, Lana? Are you sure you’re really depressed, Lana? If I was going to talk to anyone, it wouldn’t be you. Plus, Dr Greenbaum told you you’re not allowed to ask me questions and then say I’m lying when I answer them.’
‘Well, then, try telling the truth for once.’
‘Meg,’ Jen said. ‘That’s enough.’
‘Fine.’ Meg stood aside as Jen came into the sitting room. ‘Your turn.’
There was a smell like cat food and Jen wondered what Lana had been eating but, of course, didn’t ask. The curtains were open to the bright day, but the densely leafed tree in front of the window made almost everything in the room take on a green hue: the scabbing wounds on Lana’s head, the shadows on the underside of her upper arm and in the tight inner bend of the knee, the bruises on her elbows – they were all green, as if she, too, were a tree with patches of moss growing on its trunk.