The Missing One

by Lucy Atkins

  ‘Alice?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry that I’ve been so crap, and I didn’t come, and you had to take all the strain of her illness, and everything. I’m really sorry I haven’t been here.’

  ‘Oh, right. No. That’s OK.’

  ‘The thing is, I just didn’t know if she’d want me to be here,’ I say. But I know this is not the whole story. The truth is, I didn’t know how to be here: I was scared that she would push me away when she only had weeks to live, and I knew there would be no deathbed reconciliations. Or perhaps it’s even more messed up than that. Perhaps I couldn’t face the thought that there would be a reconciliation – and then she’d die anyway. I have been a terrible coward.

  Alice drains her coffee then puts the mug carefully on the table. It is an Emma Bridgewater mug, with a cockerel on it. We both look at the cockerel as if it might leap up and tell us what to do now.

  ‘Doesn’t it stop you sleeping?’ I ask.

  ‘What?’

  ‘All this coffee.’

  ‘It doesn’t affect me at all.’ She takes a sharp, efficient breath. ‘I sleep like a baby. You should try drinking more of it yourself, Kal. You might be more helpful if you were less out of it.’

  I look at her. I want to tell her that babies do not, in fact, sleep – not mine, anyway. I have barely had an uninterrupted night in eighteen months. This might explain why my husband has … for a moment, the blood pounds in my ears.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘No, sorry. God. I’m just … I’m tired too. I’m really, really tired.’ She rests her forehead on the heels of her hands. Her fingers are long and tapering, with soft cuticles and delicate pads and perfectly filed nails. ‘This is bloody awful.’

  ‘I know.’ We sit in silence for a moment. Finn chomps at his toast and kicks his heels against the high chair.

  Our lives are so completely different. Alice spends her time in high-octane meetings and negotiations, flying business class to New York and Dubai and Singapore and Hong Kong, while I divide my time between Mummy and Me Music, Little Sunflowers Playgroup, Sainsbury’s, the swings, and the office – where I am becoming increasingly superfluous.

  ‘So when are you going back to Oxford?’

  ‘I don’t know. What about you?’

  ‘Well, I have to head back to London today. I have this thing going on at work … you know what it’s like.’

  I really don’t, at least not any more, but I nod. ‘It’s OK, you should go. You’ve done so much here already.’ Finn has his sippy cup upside down now, and is pouring it onto the plastic table, then smashing his hand flat into the milk and sodden toast, splattering it across the floor.

  ‘Should he be doing that?’ Alice says anxiously.

  I get up and take the cup away. He wails and holds out both hands for it. I give him back the cup and he spurts it into my face. As I wipe milk out of my eye, I remember I have three recorded interviews in the car. I should have left them in the office for someone else to work on. But it all fell apart so fast.

  I used to care about qualitative research into patient experiences. I used to put huge effort into getting the most truthful, enlightening story from each person I interviewed. But my work has been squeezed into one and a half days a week and has, therefore, rendered itself almost pointless. The pay barely covers the babysitter. I leave things undone, half done, badly done – to be tidied up by others. But if I let my work go – the job I once loved, and worked so hard for – then what? I cannot see myself at home full time – I saw what that did to my mother. So the only answer is to work more, not less. But I can’t do that because then I’d have to hand Finn over to the babysitter for even longer, and that feels wrong too. He is so small and he needs me. He needs to know that his mother is always there for him, always puts him first.

  It would be easier if Doug’s work were more flexible. But as my job has been crushed into fewer and fewer hours, Doug’s has swollen, with the promotion to professor, the book, the global speaking invitations. Each month his schedule gets a little more demanding, with more travel, more meetings, more talks, readings, conferences, while my life is shrink-wrapped around Finn and our home. It is not clear how my years of education and ambition have funnelled me into Mummy and Me Music, but I do know one thing: there is a sharp red line leading from that to what is happening with Doug right now.

  I can’t believe that it’s only a week since I tore through our wardrobe at five in the morning with him behind me saying, ‘Stop, stop, please – wait – I should come with you.’

  I couldn’t even look at him.

  I had been up all night in the leather armchair downstairs while he slept. I had just about decided to go and wake him up and confront him with what I’d found when my mobile rang. I wasn’t really surprised to hear Alice’s panicky voice telling me to come down to Sussex. I’d been waiting for her call all week.

  I shoved some of Finn’s clothes and nappies, his bunny, his sippy cup and his toy cars into a bag. Then I went into our bedroom to grab some of my own things before I woke Finn, wrapped him in blankets and coaxed him, gently, out into the January pre-dawn fog, and into his car seat.

  Doug would have put my behaviour down to shock, initially, but at some point, after I’d gone, he would have noticed that his phone was downstairs on the leather chair. Then he would have known that I’d seen her other text, too. Maybe he thought I’d forget about it all, with my mother’s death.

  But of course I have heard his guilt behind every interaction we’ve had since that morning. I have felt it licking at my heart the whole time. His guilt is how I know that this is real and not just a made-up drama, a silly misunderstanding.

  Alice is tapping at her iPad and Finn is battering his cup on the side of the table, singing a nonsense song to himself while drumming his heels.

  ‘That’s a lovely song.’ I sit back down.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Alice says. ‘Are you actually OK?’

  I look at her. ‘I’m not sure. Are you?’

  ‘Not really.’

  We stare at each other. Finn goes quiet and watches us, perhaps concerned that we may be about to bawl again.

  Then Alice takes a breath. ‘Kal – you don’t have to answer this, but why didn’t you want Doug here? I know you said there was a good reason, but obviously … he wouldn’t … I mean. This must be serious. What’s going on with you two?’

  I glance at Finn. I can’t possibly explain all this to her with him sitting there, covered in milk and Marmite, his brown eyes fixed on our faces.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘If you don’t want to talk about it. That’s OK too.’

  I take a gulp of coffee then I lean over and with one hand I stroke the hair off Finn’s face. ‘I can’t really, at the moment.’ His fringe really needs cutting. ‘I just can’t really even think about it, to be honest.’ I try to sluice the bits of soggy toast into a heap on his tray.

  ‘No. That’s OK. Don’t worry.’ Alice pushes her chair back, gets up and starts scraping her papers together. I heave Finn out of his chair and put him on the floor. Drunk with freedom, he toddles off in his spaceman pyjamas towards the open dishwasher. ‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘I can see why you wouldn’t feel able to face anything right now. So. Look. You know what? I still can’t find the bloody birth certificate.’

  ‘But we don’t need it now, do we?’

  ‘I know, but I want to find it. It feels odd not to. It feels incomplete.’

  This is why Alice is the high-earning city lawyer, and not me. ‘But maybe she never brought it with her from America in the first place,’ I suggest. Finn is taking dirty cutlery out of the dishwasher and laying it out, quite neatly and slowly, on the tiled floor.

  ‘You can’t become a British citizen without a birth certificate.’

  ‘Was she ever a British citizen? Do we even know that she was?’

  Alice frowns. ‘I suppose not. I found their marriage certificate, though. Did you know they
didn’t get married till you were eight months old?’

  I nod, surprised that I know something about my mother that Alice doesn’t. ‘They got married just before Dad brought us to England.’

  ‘That’s quite cool of them, when you think about it,’ she says. ‘There must have been a lot of pressure to get married.’

  ‘Well, it was California in the seventies, maybe not.’

  ‘But from Dad’s parents?’

  ‘Actually, that’s true … ’

  The phone buzzes in my jeans pocket.

  ‘Kal!’ Alice cries.

  I follow her eyes to Finn. He is brandishing a Sabatier kitchen knife, feet apart like a warrior. The blade glints. I hurl myself across the kitchen and wrench it out of his hands. He looks up at me with startled eyes.

  ‘Dangerous!’ I say, in a horrified voice, holding the knife high above us. ‘Dangerous! Knives are very, very dangerous!’ I put it in the sink. My hand is shaking.

  ‘Mine!’ He holds out both hands, outraged. ‘Minamineamine!’

  ‘No. Dangerous. It will cut you. Knives cut you. Ow!’

  ‘No. Mine. Mine!’

  We wrangle for a bit, but eventually he settles for the soapy washing-up brush. I gather up the cutlery from the floor and close the dishwasher, aware of Alice behind me.

  ‘They’re quite full-on, aren’t they?’ she says. ‘Toddlers.’

  I sit down again, and watch Finn scrub the kitchen cupboard.

  ‘You’re not tempted then?’

  ‘He’s gorgeous.’ She smiles. ‘But I’m quite glad he’s yours.’

  I don’t know why Alice is single. She is so kind and clever, and immensely beautiful. Maybe she is just too busy for boyfriends. Or maybe she has someone, but hasn’t told me. There is something so self-sufficient about Alice, though. I can’t imagine her as part of a couple, even though she has had boyfriends in the past. Now does not seem to be the right time to ask her about her love life. I look at my phone. There are voicemails and texts, probably all from Doug.

  I just want to be left alone.

  ‘Listen.’ Alice glances at my phone then at me. ‘If you’d like to pick out some of her jewellery, before you go … ’

  ‘No, it’s OK. I don’t want anything, I really don’t. You can have it.’

  ‘What? Why? You should take something. I’m not having it all.’

  ‘No, really, Alice. You deserve it. I don’t want her jewellery.’

  ‘Well, you can choose things when you’re ready,’ she says.

  ‘Look – how about you have the jewellery, and I’ll keep this box.’ I pull the blue box towards me. ‘It’s got her American things in it. I’m the American-born one, so I get this, OK? You have the jewellery.’

  She raises her eyes to the ceiling and sighs. Then she gathers the rest of the paperwork.

  ‘So I have to go back to London around lunchtime … I’m going to finish up here and … ’ She walks to the door, pauses, then turns back to me. ‘Kal, whatever has happened with Doug, you two will work it out, won’t you? You have to.’

  I nod, but I can’t speak. I swig the last of the coffee with my eyes shut, then I get a cloth and kneel down and wipe the Marmite off Finn’s face. He squawks. I kiss him, push back my mess of hair and survey the carnage – milk and toast and smears on the floor by the dishwasher and all over the white kitchen cabinets. I hear the door close behind me and Alice’s light feet on the stairs. Then I reach out and gather Finn’s solid body tight in my arms. He smells of Marmite and milk and, somewhere beneath it, sleep. I squeeze my eyes shut so that stars appear. This is the only thing that really matters. How could Doug throw this away? Finn wraps his arms around my neck and presses his sticky face into my hair. ‘Mama,’ he coos. ‘Mamamamamamamama.’

  *

  At some point I am going to have to confront Doug. I can’t just run away from this. And then suddenly, with Alice’s strong coffee buzzing through my head, I think I’ll just do it. Now. Tell him that I saw the texts and that I know he’s having an affair. I put Finn down, kiss him and get several pans and a wooden spoon from the cupboard. He seizes the spoon and begins to bash.

  And before I can change my mind, I press ‘Doug’. The room spins as it rings, twice, and he picks up.

  ‘Thank God, Kal. I’ve been calling and calling you! Why didn’t you answer? Oh my love – are you OK? What’s happening down there? I’ve been going out of my mind – I can’t believe you wouldn’t let me come down, why … ’ But I hold the phone away from my ear. I breathe in and out.

  I can feel his guilt bouncing off the base stations towards me, and my body vibrates with it. I can’t hear what he is actually saying because everything else is too loud. He has taken our small family and smashed it to pieces. The past eight years suddenly feels like a story that I made up because I needed to believe that love could be simple and constant and he has ripped it up now. This cannot be happening.

  ‘Stop,’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw your phone. I saw it, Doug. Stop lying to me.’

  A pause. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘You mean … ? OK. OK. Now, OK – look … this isn’t … ’

  ‘I can’t talk to you about this now!’ I yell. ‘Jesus!’

  ‘No – listen to me, Kal … I … ’

  But I can’t hear it. I hang up.

  A moment later, it rings again. I throw it across the room and it bounces off the plasterwork, making a dent.

  Finn looks up – his eyebrows are knitted, his eyes wide.

  ‘It’s OK, sweetie, it’s OK.’

  For a while, I don’t know how long, I sit and stare at the pier painting above the table, unable to move, or think, while Finn crashes the spoon on to my mother’s redundant Le Creusets.

  Then my father comes in. His face is still ashen against his white shirt and navy-blue jumper, his cords hanging loosely off his long legs. He asks, slightly formally, whether Finn might like to come into the garden for a stroll. I bustle around, finding Finn’s coat, hat and his red wellies. I wonder what my father overheard, and I am embarrassed, but also rather touched that he is stepping in like this. Then again, I suppose he knows all about infidelity.

  The two of them go out the front door together, my father bending sideways like a tree in a gale, to reach Finn’s small hand.

  *

  I sit at the kitchen table. I can’t go home today, that’s clear. The thought of confronting Doug makes waves of fury and fear rise inside me one after the other so I have to steady myself with both hands on the table edge. I just have to find a way to think clearly. All I want is to get as far away as possible from this mess. I can’t think – or talk to Doug. I can’t go home. But I can’t stay here, surrounded by my mother’s belongings, and all the memories of my complicated childhood and the ghosts of so many lost opportunities. I have to get away so I won’t have to face this any more. I basically want to vanish.

  I always thought there would be time. I never thought she’d die like this, before she even turned sixty. She always seemed younger and more intrepid than other people’s mothers. She was fit and strong. She had odd, adventurous skills that did not fit a life of supermarket shops, dog-walking and painting. She could not only make a fish spear, but actually skewer a carp with it in the shallows of the River Ouse. She once taught me to start a fire like a Boy Scout, using only twigs and a mirror. She had a witchy attitude to the countryside, gathering fungi and picking herbs for medicinal teas; she could name constellations and understood things about the moon and tides. She could tie nautical knots too. I’d forgotten that. A buried memory surfaces: summertime on the beach at Birling Gap, a brusque wind, me sitting in a towelling robe as she showed me different knots. As she manipulated the rope, she gave their names: the cleat hitch, the clove hitch, the bowline, the sheet bend, the square knot. The skin on her hands was weathered and hard – more farmer than artist. There was always a line of soil or oil paint u
nder her nails.

  She was just so physically robust. She never got sick, never made a fuss over cuts or bruises – ours, or hers. I remember one night she slashed into her palm, trying to cut wax out of a candleholder, and I came into the kitchen to find her twisting a pair of knickers into a tourniquet with one hand. There was blood everywhere, like a slasher movie. She hadn’t thought to call for help even though I was next door watching TV, and Alice was upstairs doing homework. I called 999 and an ambulance came. She needed ten stitches.

  She was supposed to be invincible but it all happened so fast – for us at least: diagnosis, decline, death. I never thought I’d have such a short while to make things right.

  This is exactly what Doug warned me about on our Boxing Day visit, a year ago, before her diagnosis. As we drove out of the village, I remember him saying that he thought she was scared of me.

  ‘You’re kidding.’ I gave a dry laugh.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Honestly. She sometimes watches you when you aren’t looking, and she has this sort of anguished look, like she’s desperate to get through to you, but too scared that you’ll brush her off or something.’

  ‘She’s the one keeping her distance, not me.’ I felt the resentment rising again and I was surprised by how near the surface it still was. I had successfully protected myself against my mother for years, but now, with Finn, I was wide open again. I hadn’t considered this when I was pregnant. I didn’t realize that a baby shoots up the generations and ruches them together, like a strong thread. Having Finn had crushed me up against my mother again, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

  ‘She isn’t scared of me, Doug.’ I tried to sound reasonable. ‘It’s not fear that keeps her distant, it’s a total lack of interest. Haven’t you noticed what she’s like with Finn? She hardly even looks at him. It’s like he isn’t there.’

  ‘Come on, that’s just not true.’

  ‘Why are you defending her? I don’t think she held him once today, not one single time. Even my dad held him for a bit and he has never liked babies. And they’ve never even been up to Oxford to see him, have they? I tell you what, Doug, she can come to us next time. I’m not going to keep driving down here like this.’