The Missing One

by Lucy Atkins

  I heard the squeak of his feet on enamel and the slosh of water as he stood up and I put the phone on the bedside table. I went downstairs and stood in our kitchen, hemmed in by the Ikea cabinets that we chose together. And as they swayed in and out overhead, I made myself a mug of peppermint tea. When I got back up, more than an hour later, Doug was already asleep – or pretending to be. I picked up his phone again.

  He had deleted her message.

  He must have deleted others from her, too, because I took the phone down to the living room and searched through all his texts and there was only one more from her, but it confirmed everything.

  She had sent it the previous Tuesday. He’d been to a meeting in London that day. She sent it at 8 a.m., when, presumably, she knew that he would be stepping onto the Paddington train.

  Have a great day, gorgeous.

  Words that small can only come from something huge.

  I sat on our leather armchair in the front room that we painted together – sail white – when we bought the house. There is a tidemark now on the walls, marking Finn’s progress from pulling up to walking: a band of mucky fingerprints, crayon trails, the round imprints of bouncy balls and, above this, pure sail white waiting for him to grow. I sat on our chair all night, surrounded by the sea of our little family life – toys and board books and socks and biscuit crumbs, a pile of bills waiting to be dealt with, the rug we chose last year, way too expensive, already stained by Ribena. And I plucked facts from my memory like poisonous berries.

  I found that I could remember all sorts of surprising things about her. She directs documentaries, mainly on classical or archaeological subjects. Her flat is somewhere off the Goldhawk Road. She reached Grade 8 in piano. She knows how to walk glamorously in stiletto heels. She got a double first in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. She wears Issey Miyake perfume. She went to a girls’ school in Berkshire. She was devastated when Doug finished their relationship. She told him her life was over, and she was only twenty-one. She threatened to take an overdose. Then she took a whole year out, in Florence, or Paris, to get over him. Well, it clearly didn’t work because eighteen years on, she still wants him back.

  They met for a drink in London, some time around Christmas – a year ago, almost exactly. I remember it. Finn was nearly six months old. Just learning to sit up, wobbling and grabbing at things, starting to eat solids, beaming and pointing and giggling, teething. Is that how long this has been going on? A year ago, I was still breastfeeding our child. It is all such a tired old cliché.

  I remember Doug telling me that she’d been in touch after Sean’s wedding. He looked uncomfortable when he told me this. I remember that now. He wouldn’t meet my eye. He said she wanted to talk to him about Cantor or Pythagoras or something for a documentary she was making about mathematicians. He ran a hand through his hair, saying he’d have to get the late train home. I remember that I was furious with him: yet again I’d be doing the bedtime routine alone. Then I felt guilty because he had dark circles under his eyes, too. And his job paid the mortgage now.

  I didn’t even ask how their meeting went. She was ancient history and I had too many other things to think about: should Finn be allowed peanuts? Was baby-led weaning really safe? Should I try Gina Ford because this lack of sleep was killing me? Was he teething? Or was this a genuine fever? If so, could it be the first signs of meningitis?

  I just never tuned in to Doug because all my wavelengths were bursting with Finn. Perhaps that’s why he was sucked in by her. I was too busy with the epic task of keeping our baby healthy and fed and clean and safe, to notice him. She, in contrast, noticed every detail; validated him from the inside out – or the outside in.

  I remember once, last autumn, we got a babysitter for the first time and drove out to the White Hart for lunch. Doug was stressed about some panel, or committee, some new piece of university bureaucracy and I just wasn’t listening – I was somewhere else entirely, circling high above the pub, floating over the russet countryside with the glint of the Thames in my eye as Doug’s voice mingled with the wind. The sheer relief of being out of the house was overwhelming and yet, simultaneously, anxious thoughts bubbled up, one after another. Would the babysitter remember to give him his bunny? Was he crying right now? Would she microwave the milk, causing hot pockets to burn his mouth? No wonder Doug fell for her: a glamorous redhead, who had adored him for more than eighteen years, and was hell-bent on getting him back.

  But even so. How could he?

  I realize that if I do this – if I let myself think all this – I’m going to have to go back over a whole year of academic conferences, meetings, trips, and work out exactly how many times he might have been with her, and lying to me. And I can’t do that.

  But how many times did he lie to me? Casual mentions of her name seem electric now. Some time around Easter, someone’s fortieth in Shepherd’s Bush; her name slotted into a list of five or six of his old college friends. I didn’t go. Finn still wasn’t sleeping through the night. He’d wake four, five times and need to be coaxed, sung to, held, then eased back into his cot, inch by inch. I was sleep deprived to the point of lunacy, forgetting to wash the shampoo out of my hair; driving out of Sainsbury’s with the weekly shop still in the trolley in the car park; losing keys. I didn’t care where Doug was or who he was with.

  But the thing that I really can’t get my head around is that this is Doug. This is not some other man. It’s as if I’m dealing with two entirely separate people here. There is the Doug, my Doug, the solid husband, the good father, who would never, ever do this because he loves me, and always will. And then there is this other Doug, this out-of-reach stranger who has betrayed me, lied and broken us apart.

  Presumably it started at Sean’s wedding. I remember her in a very short dress; all that hair, a Pilates core and those legs. Doug even introduced us. I remember feeling shabby with my belly stuffed into Spanx, my leaking breasts tamped down in a big maternity bra and baby-sick on the shoulder of my black dress. I remember growing dumpier and scruffier every second that she looked at me. And she did look at me – I remember her eyes. How intensely she looked at me.

  Then I forgot all about her. I was mildly curious, but nothing more. After the wedding I slotted her into a list of his posh Oxbridge friends, people I have never really felt comfortable with. I forgot about her when I should have seen her coming at us like a juggernaut.

  I could check his Facebook. I know his password. In situations like this that’s what spurned wives do: they dig for proof. But I can’t do that. Really, what is there to find out? It’s obvious – surely. Isn’t it?

  I wonder if I’d handle this differently if it had happened at another time. The timing is certainly unbelievable. I would have just confronted him. I was going to do that. I was waiting for dawn in our leather armchair, because I was going to go and wake him up, and show him what I’d seen on his phone and demand to know what the hell was going on.

  The blare of a car horn jolts me back – an elbow-straight, furious bellowing. Yellow headlamps loom. I jerk the wheel, swerving out of the oncoming lane with just inches between my bonnet and the bumper of a towering silver truck. The horn continues to sound as it vanishes behind me. Finn lets out a high-pitched, baby animal noise – part terror, part question.

  ‘It’s OK, love. It’s OK.’ My arms quake at the elbows, and there is that metallic taste in the back of my mouth again. The hire car wipers swish and thud and I try to hold the wheel straight but my arms are wobbling. ‘It’s OK, everything’s OK. You’re just in the car. I’m right here.’ His wailing escalates. I have to get off the freeway before I kill us both.

  I veer off at the next exit and pull into a petrol station. My heart is battering in my throat. I get out and walk round to open Finn’s door. He is, rightly, hysterical. I undo the restraints and haul him out. He howls, red-faced; snot and confusion and protest surge out of his body. I hug him tight and shush him; I try to kiss his wet face, but he struggles and w
ails even more loudly, so I pin him to me and run through the rain to the kiosk.

  The woman behind the counter looks at me as if I’m a child murderer. So I take him straight to the toilets and lock the door. I lie him on the nappy-changing table, but he screams and kicks – his foot catches me on the cheekbone and anger suddenly surges up, ‘NO!’ I bark. ‘Stop!’ He pauses mid-yell, his eyes round and startled. Then he takes a huge breath and begins again, louder, from the gut. Proper tears roll down his cheeks like shining gel balls.

  ‘Oh no. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, it’s OK, Mummy’s tired too, that’s all. Poor baby, my poor little boy.’ I wipe at his tears, snap the poppers on his dungarees and scoop him up, holding him close against me again. His cries are more pitiful now, less rage, more genuine distress. He clings.

  ‘What about a treat?’ I suggest. I know it’s desperate. He pauses mid-sob, and looks at me with big, tear-filled eyes. ‘A lovely treat! What about chocolate?’ He hiccups. I wipe the snot from his face with my sleeve. ‘Chocolate would be nice, wouldn’t it, love?’ He gives a weak nod. ‘That’s right. Chocolate will cheer us up.’ This, I realize, is exactly what the baby books tell you not to do.

  I take him to the counter, and buy the smallest chocolate bar I can find, which, this being North America, is not very small at all. I rip off the wrapper and hand a chunk to him. He hiccups again, then stuffs it into his mouth with both hands, palms flat against his face. I glance at the woman behind the counter.

  She is still staring, judgementally. She probably heard me shout at him in the loos. I want to explain to her that I am not quite as bad as I look; that I make him eat fruit and vegetables; that I breastfed him for eight months, through three excruciating bouts of mastitis – that he is the love of my life, this little boy. But instead I buy a horrible hazelnut-flavoured coffee and stand by the newspapers while Finn covers me, and himself, with melting Hershey’s.

  I want to go back out with him into the freezing rain and gun the engine and get away from this place, too, but I know I can’t. I have to wait until my limbs stop shaking before I get back into the car and drive my child along a fast-moving freeway in this weather.

  Rain dribbles down the windows. The woman’s peroxide hair glows in the striplight. I can feel her hostility swelling across the counter packed with sweets and gum, filling the air between us.

  I clear my throat, and ask her how far it is to the turn-off I need.

  ‘’Bout thirty kilometres north.’

  ‘North?’

  I have overshot the Ida May Assisted Living Facility by twenty miles.

  Then, abruptly, I feel tears welling. I turn away and take Finn back into the bathroom. I am going to have to claw back some sense of control. I can’t fall apart like this. Finn stands by my leg, slightly wobbly on his feet, mouthing the last of the chocolate, while I lean both hands on the basin. For a moment I feel as if I’ve unplugged myself from life and am swinging at its borders, completely lost. This would be OK if I didn’t have Finn. I have to get control. I can’t lose it.

  I stare down at my hands on the filthy basin. I splash water on my face. The enamel is stained and the plughole is clogged with a bird’s nest of dark hair. I look up at myself. The silver hoops glint in the harsh light. On the wall above the mirror someone has scratched: Smile! Today could be your last day!

  Southern California, 1975

  She let herself into the condo and put her bags down. There was a smell of sizzling butter; someone was moving around in the kitchen. She should go say hello. She could see the archway to the kitchen, just across the living room. She’d met the guys, but not the third roommate, Susannah. Maybe she could just slip into her room, without being noticed.

  ‘Hello?’ A summons.

  She forced herself to walk across the living room.

  The kitchen was a mass of greenery, with plants cascading from tall shelves. The woman standing at the cooker was barefoot, in faded jeans. She was tall, but not willowy. Blonde hair rippled down her back. She turned her head, and the first impression was of extraordinary pale-blue eyes with pinpoint pupils.

  ‘Hey.’ There was a studied lack of interest in the flat tone, but it didn’t quite go with the intensity of the eyes.

  ‘Hi – I’m Elena. I’m your new roommate – I’m just moving the last of my things in.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ The woman looked at her for a moment, then turned back to her eggs.

  It didn’t matter. Elena had no desire to be part of some pseudo family – she didn’t want new friends or roommates. All she wanted to do was finish her research. Having to move off campus was bad enough at this point – she’d been fine there, with her routines all worked out and the recordings and notes piled high around the tiny space, a complex system that worked. Now she’d been forced to unpick all that, and everything was in boxes. It would take for ever to sort it back into a system. That alone had set her back weeks. Being here was bad enough without some prickly blonde roommate to contend with.

  The move had made her realize just how set in her routines she had become over the past few years – since meeting Graham, really. The time they spent together had settled into an orderly and manageable pattern and she really didn’t need anyone else. Graham planned breaks in their work schedules where they’d eat together, or see a movie. They sometimes crammed into a single bed for a night – his or hers – but not always. They didn’t crowd each other. Theirs was a gently sustaining relationship: they were rooted and shaped differently, but had become quietly linked and harmonious, two plants sharing an ecosystem. The dolphin research took up the rest of her time and energy.

  ‘So, I probably won’t be here much,’ she said, quite loudly, to the back of Susannah’s head. ‘I’m mainly just going to sleep here, my research is – I’m trying to finish—’

  ‘You’re a marine biologist, right?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’ She was surprised that Susannah should know this. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Oh.’ Susannah turned, and this time she smiled. She was striking, with high cheekbones, long hair middle-parted and those unnatural eyes. Under her white cheesecloth tunic she was braless. Elena could see the shadows of her nipples. She shifted her gaze to the plants behind Susannah. ‘Well, I guess I’m at the other end of the spectrum,’ Susannah was saying. ‘I’m on a teaching sabbatical in the art department. Ceramics.’ She turned away and reached behind a ficus to get two plates. She divided scrambled eggs onto both, then put a hunk of sourdough on each. Elena glanced around, in case there was someone else in the kitchen whom she hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Here.’ Susannah held a plate out, across the breakfast bar. ‘You look half starved.’

  Elena hesitated and then perched on a stool. Susannah poured two coffees from the espresso pot on the stove, sat down opposite and, without speaking, began to eat. She ate with her head down, putting food rapidly into her mouth, chewing fast, and washing mouthfuls down with coffee. She ate like someone from a big family, Elena thought, someone near the bottom of the food chain. Every time she leaned forwards for another mouthful, the Indian necklaces around her neck clanked between her loose breasts. Elena bit into the sourdough. Susannah was right: she was starving.

  Susannah swallowed her last mouthful, wiped around the edge of the plate with one thumb and sucked the eggy mixture off it. There was a thick silver ring on the thumb, and a line of clay under the nail.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘I’m kinda with Greg – the good-looking one – you met him, I think, when you came round before? But he was quite taken with you, so he’s all yours if … ’

  ‘No, God. No.’ Elena swallowed. ‘Seriously? No. I mean … I’m really not … I’m with someone already, and the last thing I want right now is—’

  ‘Huh?’ Susannah pushed her hair back off her shoulders and then leaned forward again. ‘He wears odd socks on purpose. He thinks people notice other people’s socks. He told me odd socks make a guy seem intriguing. Odd socks and Birkenstocks.’ />
  Their eyes met and she caught something in Susannah’s – a hint of wildness, or of not caring. This weird, disjointed talk felt like a challenge.

  ‘I had a boyfriend once,’ Elena said, chewing her mouthful of sourdough, ‘who folded up wedges of paper and wore them in the heels of his shoes to make him look taller.’

  There was silence for a second then Susannah lifted her chin. Her laugh was loud, quite startling – almost a howl – and it filled the small kitchen, bouncing off the wood-panelled walls, the plants, and out into the small patio, making birds flutter out of the tree, and sweep up into the sky.

  *

  By the time she carried her bags to her room, Elena had agreed to go swimming with Susannah, who knew the very best place, just down from the condo and round into a deserted cove where you weren’t supposed to swim. The tides were dangerous, but it was fine if you knew what you were doing.

  The friendship, from the start, seemed to be out of Elena’s hands.

  Chapter four

  Harry Halmstrom has obviously done well in life. The Ida May Assisted Living Facility is shiny, newly built, with limestone steps. The sign outside says: ‘Bringing Joy and Purpose to the Lives of Seniors’.

  The interior is done out in shades of yellow, even down to the bouquet of roses and baby’s breath on the circular table beneath the hall window. There is an artificial lemony smell. I have no idea what I am doing here.

  I have Finn in the backpack and I’m glad, because I can’t imagine chasing him down these corridors, crashing into zimmers and trays of cranberry juice. But I wonder what I’m going to do with him in the old man’s room. I feel like a fraud. Worse than a fraud. Like an unstable loon.