Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon

by Linda Newbery

  It wasn’t fair, of course – how could it be? Ruth was the last person to ask for sympathy and advice. The idea was forming in Anna’s mind that she might nudge Martin and Ruth back together. Wasn’t that what Ruth wanted? Martin had made an awful mistake, she’d said. And was continuing to do so? He’d admitted to regrets – wasn’t there an obvious solution, one that would suit everyone? Maybe that was behind Ruth’s invitation, Anna thought: it wasn’t for company and support, but because she wanted Martin left on his own.

  ‘Is there someone else?’ Ruth had asked on the phone, and Anna had denied it, but now she recalled Ruth’s ‘No, I meant …’ and heard what she’d missed at the time; Ruth had been asking if there was someone else for Martin. She had him down as a serial adulterer.

  Well, let Ruth think that; but in that case, why would she want him back? And – Martin wouldn’t, would he? He was too busy with work, for one thing. Anna didn’t want to believe that he could be deceptive, that he could lie, and go on lying. But he’d done that before, when he was married to Ruth – why not now?

  And Ruth’s motive in telling her about Hilary? Unless Ruth was totally guileless, and Anna thought she was too clever for that, it could only be to put Anna in her place, to diminish her importance in Martin’s life. How could they be friends? Yet here she was, curled up on Ruth’s sofa, in charge of Ruth and Martin’s son. The only decent thing to do was remove herself from the scene, leaving Ruth and Martin to sort themselves out.

  Stop it, stop it. This is doing my head in.

  She tried to follow what Liam was watching on TV, but found it incomprehensible; she sipped her wine, picked up the book Ruth had left on the low table, The Selfish Gene, and read two pages before putting it down and going upstairs for her mobile. In Patrick’s bedroom she called Bethan’s number, not sure whether this was a good idea or not.

  ‘I’ve got news,’ she said, when Bethan answered. ‘Guess.’

  ‘You’re pregnant!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re getting married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You took the job!’

  ‘Yes, I did. But it’s not that.’

  ‘Go on then, you’ll have to tell me.’ Bethan sounded buoyed up, full of laughter.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Home, in the kitchen. We’re about to start cooking. Come on, spill!’

  ‘I’ve split up with Martin,’ Anna said, relishing the way it sounded: cool, decisive. Against the cosy picture of Bethan and Cliff making a meal together she saw herself as free and independent, about to rearrange her life.

  ‘What?’ Bethan shrieked. ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t working out.’

  ‘Did you have a big row or something?’

  ‘No. It just seemed a good time to finish it.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Anna! What is it with you? You solve one problem and find another. Have you met someone else, is that it?’

  ‘No I haven’t!’ Anna said hotly. ‘Is that the only reason for ending a relationship?’

  ‘So you’re hoping to meet someone else.’

  ‘I’m not! Honestly. I used to fantasize about meeting some man who’d transform my life and me with it, but that’s naïve. I’ve grown out of that now.’

  ‘I thought you had found him. Anna, you’re off your head.’

  ‘I’m not! Just now I want to be on my own.’

  ‘We need to meet up. Have you moved out of the flat, or what?’

  Anna explained about staying with Ruth; Bethan gave a humph of disbelief.

  ‘I’d better go – Cliff’s parents are coming, and I’ve got all these onions to chop. Look, how about Friday – oh no, I can’t, it’s our sales conference. I’ll give you a ring tomorrow. Don’t do anything stupid, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Anna said, meaninglessly, and rang off.

  She went downstairs with her laptop and settled in the sitting room with Liam. Intending to catch up with emails, she was soon sidetracked into one of her regular distractions: entering Rose’s name into Google, Facebook and Friends Reunited, convinced against common sense that Rose would suddenly bob up, cheerful and offhand, as if she’d never been away. When she did this in the flat, she minimized the screen if Martin came into the room, not wanting him to see. Rose’s name was never mentioned between them. When they’d first met, he’d listened and been sympathetic, but the subject was now closed. Her fault, or his? He’d never met Rose, so she may as well never have existed.

  And he’d told Ruth that Rose was dead. That confirmed Anna’s suspicion that he’d think she was wasting her time, clinging to false hope.

  If Rose came back, everything would be different. For Anna, for their mother. Life would pick up; not where it had left off, she couldn’t expect that, but on a steadier and more purposeful course. Anna told herself this, yet the Rose of her imagination was fixed for ever at eighteen. Anna had drawn level, then overtaken, and Rose was stranded at the age of young girls she saw in the street and on the Underground. Not many more years would go by before Anna was old enough to be the mother of the Rose she remembered. She recognized this, but couldn’t adjust her vision, couldn’t see Rose as a mature woman in her late thirties, almost forty in fact; a woman who’d had lovers, maybe children – a life of which Anna knew nothing.

  If she had a life at all. Maybe Martin was right. Maybe eighteen was as far as she’d got.

  On Facebook there were images, links, groups and campaigns to join, threads of conversations; Anna found herself flitting from one thing to another, settling only briefly here and there. She accepted a friendship request from someone she’d only vaguely heard of; she signed a petition about the NHS; she read postings that ranged from pointlessly mundane to self-aggrandizing. On an impulse she posted a statement on her own page: Anna Taverner is still looking for her sister. She could always scrap it later if she decided against making so public a declaration; meanwhile it felt like putting a message in a bottle, and about as much use.

  Friends Reunited was more promising. At least here, when she entered Oaklands School and 1990, she saw names that had a connection with Rose, among them Christina Marchant. On the message board she found another name she recognized: Khalida Malik, clever, bound for Cambridge, who’d had an equally brainy sister in Anna’s year. Khalida had posted a query: Did anyone ever find out what happened to Rose Taverner?

  Anna caught her breath so sharply that Liam turned round and looked at her blankly before returning his gaze to the screen.

  Someone had replied, No, but she used to go out with Jamie Spellman. He might know.

  Jamie Spellman. Anna would rather forget Jamie Spellman, and one of the most shaming episodes of her teenage years, but he kept coming into her thoughts.

  Anna’s friendship with Melanie Spellman hadn’t lasted; Mel had left school at the end of year eleven, and soon afterwards the family had moved away. But Jamie – he’d known Rose as well as or better than her girl friends. He’d been questioned when Rose disappeared; inevitably, there had been speculation that Rose was pregnant, but he had claimed that if so it couldn’t have been by him. Still, he might remember something; something he hadn’t told the police, something that hadn’t seemed important at the time, but that might be significant to Anna.

  Clicking back to Facebook, she typed in Jamie Spellman. A choice of four came up; one was in the States, one showed only a black silhouette, the third was from London but looked too old; and the fourth was also in London, with a photograph of someone too far away to be recognizable, in a long winter coat standing in what looked like a park, but that could – God! – it could be him. Anna felt herself flushing. She clicked ADD A FRIEND, then SEND A MESSAGE, and typed, Are you the Jamie Spellman who went to Oldlands Hall in Sevenoaks?

  As soon as she’d sent it, she wished she hadn’t. Would he respond? And what if he did? Into her mind, alarmingly vivid, came a scene she had tried to forget: the hot grass, children’s voices from the play area; thrilli
ng, excruciating. What choice did she have but to relive and keep reliving? To abandon her teenage self would mean abandoning Rose, too.

  Leaving Facebook, she clicked to the Missing People website she often visited, though it filled her with a confusing rush of hope and despair. So many people disappeared; more were added each month. So many lives abandoned, families left like Anna’s in the torment of uncertainty. The weekly appeal currently showed a young woman in her twenties, missing since Christmas. There were stories too of discoveries, of people turning up at home, sometimes after a gap of twenty or more years. To Anna, their relatives were the lucky few, the jackpot winners. Without telling her parents, both of whom would have objected for different reasons, Anna had listed Rose here as a missing person, uploading a photograph. People would see it. Someone would know.

  She glanced at Liam. It felt underhand, looking at this web page in his presence, as if the sad lives shown on the screen might somehow infect his.

  When Anna first found the site, it had included an Unidentified People page, which she had visited regularly, passing the caution that Some images may be disturbing. They always were, because here were details of dead people, washed up on beaches, found in woodland or half buried in quarries. For some, the only image was of a black silhouette with a large question mark, but most were reconstructions, derived from decomposed bodies or even skeletal remains. They turned before Anna’s gaze, offering themselves full-face, three-quarter profile, side on. They had a waxy, corpse-like look, these faces, and strangely staring eyes, as if the artists – if that’s what they were called – hadn’t been able to forget that they were trying to summon people back from the dead. Often pieces of clothing were shown: jeans, Tshirts, distinctive trainers or badges.

  Bodies, remains, shreds of lives. A whole gallery of them. Anna had found it guiltily irresistible to scan through those lost, dead faces, with their suggested trailings of hopelessness and despair. The more she looked, the more astonishing it seemed that most people managed to hang on, going from day to day with enough obstinacy and dogged hope to give shape to their existence. Yet, now that the website no longer included this section, she wanted it back. Every image that wasn’t Rose had seemed to raise the odds of Rose being alive.

  But all the missing people. What if you lost everything? What if you cut yourself off from everyone who cared about you? How would you live, and go on living?

  Always there hung over these searches the glaring possibility that Rose had been killed. She could have been dead for almost twenty years. She might never be found. Or – any day that felt normal or dull – there could be a police phone call to say that remains had been found: bones, shreds of clothing. Sometimes Anna thought that nothing could be worse than the horror of that, but, yes – worse still was the likelihood that nothing would ever be resolved. The truth about Rose might remain for ever unknown, as impenetrable as on the day of her disappearance.

  Anna and her parents never spoke about it, but she knew that each of them believed something different. To her father, Rose was dead: abducted, on that hot August day, and murdered, in a random act of violence. To her mother, Rose had betrayed them all by leaving, for some reason wanting to punish them. Anna had thought she shared her father’s view, but now something insisted – superstition, misplaced hope, denial? – that Rose must be alive. Somewhere she had to be alive.

  Sharing any of this was too risky. Her father would see it as a foolish clinging to hope that had long since withered. To her mother, the idea that Rose had died was simply un thinkable, a different kind of betrayal, a giving-up; but colluding with her would be unfair, leading only to everlasting disappointment. Martin, on the rare occasions when Anna had mentioned Rose, offered no opinion at all; how could he? It was before his time, and – Anna thought – beyond the grasp of his imagination. Rose wasn’t around, never had been, and there was no more to say. Yet, to Ruth, he’d said that Rose had died, as if he knew something Anna didn’t; as if he were humouring her by letting her dream on.

  That was one of the justifications Anna gave herself for leaving: that he couldn’t know how it felt to have a shadow sister, and that she had no way of telling him.

  Returning to Facebook, she found to her surprise that there was already a reply from Jamie Spellman. He’d accepted her friendship invitation and sent a message: Anna, yes, that’s me. Where are you now? I’m in Islington, married with two kids, working in graphic design. Still nothing about Rose? That’s awful.

  For a second she wondered how he knew, then remembered that she’d entered looking for her sister as her status update. She began a new message. I’m living in Hatton Garden, and in a relationship. She hated that phrase, so altered it to with a partner, not sure whether either part of the sentence was true any more. I’m trying to contact people who knew Rose, she entered, adding, on impulse, Could we meet perhaps? One day next week if you’re free?

  She clicked SEND, then instantly wished she hadn’t. Too late. Would he? Could she?

  With access to his profile now, she went to his page and looked at the photos posted there: several images of his children, a baby and a boy of about four, and of a pretty dark-haired woman, presumably his wife. Only one of Jamie himself, in which he still looked vaguely arty, with his ankle-length coat, tousled hair and plimsolls. Still, married with two kids – what could be more conventional? And at home on a Saturday night, at his computer, probably listening out for the baby crying upstairs. He’d grown up, of course he had. With some people you thought they never would, that they’d stay as glossy and smooth-skinned as they’d been as teenagers. Jamie would be nearing forty now, the same as Rose.

  The reply came back quickly: Could do Tuesday lunch time, 1-ish, and naming a pub near the Barbican.

  Anna sent back Great! I’ll be wearing a black coat and red scarf, and added her mobile number. Almost having forgotten where she was, she came back to the warm room, Liam and the TV. Already she felt nervous. Could she go through with it? Meet Jamie, face him, talk to him normally, as if he were only someone she’d known once, her sister’s boyfriend? She’d have to. Re-examining things, turning them over and looking at them with fresh eyes, might mean facing worse than this.

  In the morning, Anna took care to be out by the time Martin collected Liam for a day at the RAF museum at Duxford. Deciding against accompanying Ruth to Holtby Hall, she took the Underground train and returned to the flat. She aimed to slip in and out, leaving no note, so that unless Martin gave detailed scrutiny to the contents of her wardrobe he wouldn’t realize she’d been and gone.

  She let herself in, hearing the silence; sensing, almost, her own absence. Exasperation mingled with a kind of longing as she moved around the flat – tiptoeing, hardly breathing: why? She touched Martin’s things: the book on his bedside table, Stalingrad; his towelling robe on the hook on the door. The bed was neatly made. Did he miss her in his sleep, turn to her in the night and find her gone? She slid open the wardrobe door and touched the sleeve of one of his shirts, lifting the cuff to her mouth to inhale the clean ironed smell. Always immaculately turned out for work, Martin used an ironing service. Irrationally, Anna felt annoyed by this evidence of continuing meticulousness. He doesn’t need me. Never has. He doesn’t even notice I’m not here. His life was going on exactly as before: he could concentrate on reading, go to the gym, organize his laundry.

  What had she expected? Signs of derangement and despair? Would she have preferred him to be helpless without someone to pluck rumpled garments from the floor and restore them lovingly to their hangers?

  She thought of mornings when she’d watched Martin dressing, choosing a tie, knotting it in front of the mirror. He never looked more desirable to her than when he was soon to leave, about to present himself to strangers. Sometimes – before she’d started at Burton Brown – she had tugged at his sleeve and pulled him to her, murmuring, ‘Don’t go. Be late for your meeting. Come back to bed.’ He would yield for a few moments, then shake her off, laughing,
saying that there’d be plenty of time later.

  Stupid. Stupid. Get on with it.

  Briskly Anna began choosing clothes, folding them into the empty case. A jacket for work, a short black skirt and three tops; a pair of smart shoes as an alternative to the boots she’d worn all week; jeans, fleece and T-shirt, trainers, hairdryer. Enough to be going on with.

  The ringing of her mobile startled her; she hurried back to her bag on the sofa, and fumbled for it.

  Bethan.

  ‘Anna? It’s me. Is this a good time? Where are you?’

  ‘Oh – hi, Beth. I’m back at the flat.’

  ‘Well, thank Christ for that. You’ve seen sense at last.’

  ‘In a bit of a hurry, though. Look, I’ll call you in the week, OK? And – thanks.’

  Too easy, and without even lying. But Anna felt furtive now. Hurriedly she zipped her case, took a last look around to check that she’d left no trace of her visit, and closed the door behind her.

  Late July 1989

  Anna was looking for something to do. Mum and Dad had gone out to visit friends, leaving Rose in charge, so she felt almost duty-bound to play up. Rose had been writing an essay for most of the morning; they’d eaten their lunch together in the garden, and now Rose had fallen asleep on the lounger, her face to the sun. A bottle of sun-lotion lay on the grass beside the book she’d been reading. Her skirt was hitched up, her bare legs stretched out, smooth and shiny with sun-cream, browner than Anna’s would ever go. It wasn’t fair. Mum had told Anna to take care in the sun, not to burn; her skin went red and blotchy if she stayed out too long, and more than once, waking in the night, she’d scratched her arms and the back of her neck into soreness. Rose never burned. She only had to step out into sunshine and her skin turned the colour of tawny honey.

  Rose asleep looked to Anna like someone in a painting. She could be under an enchantment, waiting for a handsome prince to kiss her awake. She might have been made of different stuff from Anna. Anna was all blotches and clumsiness and hot prickling embarrassment, while Rose – Rose had what Melanie’s mother called poise. Poise meant that she could sit in a chair and wrap one leg round the other and look like a model in a magazine, or she could stand in a way that compelled you to look at her. If her long hair was untidy, it might have been arranged like that for a photo-shoot, the way models sometimes looked as if they’d just got out of bed. Anna tried hard to acquire poise for herself. She practised elegant ways of sitting, giving herself pins and needles.