The Missing One

by Lucy Atkins

  The house is single-storey, built in unpainted wood. It feels organic, as if it’s formed itself from the forest of pines that surround it. We are positioned above the sea on a triangular patch of rocky land. The house must have a view of the ocean from both sides. The wind is brutally cold. I’m shivering as I lick the salt off my lips and hug my inadequate sweater tighter round my body. The insides of my ears begin to throb.

  She’s wearing a thick brown fleece and yoga pants, and a huge grey scarf, but her feet are bare – red and bony and strong. The cold clearly does not bother Susannah.

  ‘So, who was Isabella?’ I ask, stamping my feet. The freezing damp soaks my socks. ‘This is Isabella Rock, isn’t it?’

  ‘Isabella Point. It’s kind of a sad story, actually. She was the young and beautiful wife of an early settler. She died soon after childbirth, leaving a little baby. Then it died a few weeks later.’

  ‘How awful.’

  ‘Yeah, well, there’s also a story that her husband murdered them both in a drunken rage.’

  ‘Really?’ My voice sounds very English, suddenly, and prim.

  ‘The place names up here are one long trail of tragedy.’ She looks sideways at me. ‘Those British sailors were pretty overwrought by the time they got this far – you can hear their fear in the names: Desolation Sound, Danger Cove, Cape Caution, Strangers Strait, Hope Channel, Blind Channel … ’ She pauses, looks at me. ‘Alert Bay.’

  ‘Yes, well, it does feel pretty remote here, I have to say.’ I jiggle on the icy balls of my feet and hug myself tighter, trying to stop my teeth from chattering. ‘And huge. Everything is just so unbelievably huge here.’

  ‘OK. You’re freezing. Coffee.’ She starts to walk back to the French windows.

  She pours coffee into a squat pottery mug.

  ‘Did you make this mug?’ I hold it up. ‘It’s really pretty.’

  ‘I don’t do mugs.’ She turns away.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘My friend Annie made it. She lives just down the road. She’s a potter too. She’s the one standing to the right of me in that picture you were looking at a moment ago. Short hair, big smile, overalls.’

  I feel myself blush, so I sip the coffee. It tastes strong and dusky, but not bitter. Clearly, gourmet coffee beans have made it to the island. This feels reassuring. So does the fact that Susannah has an artist friend named Annie who makes pretty mugs and lives just down the road.

  ‘Sit.’ She points at a stool. I watch her opening cupboards.

  ‘Bagels? Fruit?’ She doesn’t stop to hear whether I want them or not, but takes a kitchen knife and slices into a sesame bagel. Little seeds scatter. Her wrist is smooth and hairless, lightly tanned despite the season. She doesn’t look pale at all now. In fact, her face is quite golden, as if she has recently been somewhere sunny. She really must have been in shock last night. I wonder what my mother meant to her.

  She pushes up the sleeves of her fleece – chunky veins run up her forearms. She puts both halves of the bagel into a clicking toaster that shunts them along on a treadmill then pops them out at the bottom, perfectly browned.

  While this happens, she is slicing bananas. There is a calendar above her, with a Rodin sculpture on it, and though I can’t read any of the scribbles it’s clear that she keeps busy out here, even in winter. I notice the clock above her head. It’s 6.45 a.m.

  ‘My God, it’s early.’

  ‘I generally get up around five,’ she says. ‘So this isn’t actually particularly early for me.’ She pushes a plate at me. ‘Butter there, blueberry jelly – Annie’s again – there.’ She points to the pots in front of me.

  I bite into the bagel and it’s so delicious – fresh and soft inside, with a chewy crust and nutty seeds that stick in my teeth. The buttery jam oozes over my fingers and I lick it off. I could eat and eat and never stop. I have to force myself to slow down, to breathe and chew.

  I think about what Finn and I ate yesterday – fries and ketchup and greasy grilled cheese that tasted like plastic. No wonder I felt ill. I imagine what the mothers at Finn’s playgroup would say about that particular festival of chemicals. It occurs to me that I can’t stand Finn’s playgroup. I really can’t. Why do I do it to myself? I can’t stand all the snack boxes of rice cakes and the multi-pocketed nappy bags. The other mothers and I have nothing in common except our babies. I will never, I decide, set foot in that church hall again. It is surprising how clear things become when you step outside your boundaries.

  ‘Will we hear the baby?’ Susannah asks. ‘If he wakes up?’

  ‘Finn?’ I say his name, pointedly, between chews. ‘We’ll definitely hear Finn. He isn’t quite as docile as he probably seemed last night. In fact, he’s very active and extremely loud most of the time.’

  She slides another half-bagel on to my plate. ‘Well, eat up while you can, then. I remember when my son was that age it was a luxury just to sit down.’

  I feel myself relax. Friends who make jam. Chats about motherhood. This is all perfectly safe.

  ‘How old is your son now?’

  She turns away as if she didn’t hear me, though I think she must have. I take another bite. My jeans are digging into my stomach and while her back is to me I undo the top button and pull my jumper down to hide it. My body is slowly warming up, but my hands still feel stiff from the cold wind. She pours more coffee for herself, but doesn’t sit down. She unwraps her scarf and walks round the breakfast bar towards me. As she thrusts a hand at me I flinch.

  ‘Here, I won’t bite you. Take this – you’re still cold.’ But she doesn’t put the scarf into my hands, she wraps it round my neck, once, then again, tighter.

  The scarf is so soft and I know the smell now, the scent I noticed in the living room: it is jasmine, my mother’s favourite scent, mixed with something else, slightly acidic, with damp dogs and clay. I mutter a thank you through a mouthful of bagel. I want to tell her that the jasmine smell reminds me of my mother, but it feels too intimate to have noticed her scent, so I keep quiet. And I don’t want to bring up my mother, not yet. Not until I’ve eaten properly. I drink some more coffee.

  ‘So, I’m going to walk the dogs.’ She leans back against the range, holding her cup with two hands and watching me eat. ‘Then I’ll work. You guys can hang out here, then we’ll have lunch.’

  She seems to assume we are staying.

  ‘I’d love a walk,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, well, I need to get moving,’ she says. ‘I’d like to be in my studio by 7.30.’

  ‘Sure. OK. But I should head off when Finn wakes up. You’ve been very kind, but … ’

  ‘All you’ve talked about since you arrived, Kali, is leaving. Are you always this restless or do I make you jumpy?’

  ‘No, God, no, not at all. I just didn’t mean to impose on you like this, that’s all. You have to work.’

  ‘If you want to go, go.’ She doesn’t take her eyes off my face. She knows I won’t go. We both know that she has something for me.

  ‘Well, maybe I should charge my mobile up first, so I can make a few calls.’

  ‘There’s no cell reception up here.’ Her voice is even. ‘No internet either.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I like to keep the house clean of all that.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘You can use the landline, though. And I have broadband in my office at the gallery, if you need to get online.’

  ‘No, no. It’s fine.’ I sip the coffee again. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  I finish the last of the bagel and wipe my hands on my trousers. ‘That was absolutely delicious,’ I say. ‘Amazing. Thank you so much.’

  ‘My friend, Maggie, runs the bakery in town.’ I dimly remember seeing a bakery sign in the shape of a giant cupcake, looming above me as I drove through the fog. I wish Susannah would stop staring at me. Her eyes are unsettling and I don’t know where to look. I remind myself that she has friends who bake and make jam. Friends called Maggie and Annie. Ther
e is nothing alarming about any of this. She’s right: I am jumpy. But she is still staring at me.

  ‘I’m embarrassing you,’ she says. ‘It’s just that you look … ’ She takes a breath. ‘Almost exactly as I remember your mother. Apart from the hair.’ She touches her own cheeks.

  ‘Well, yes, people always say how much I look like her.’

  ‘She was so lovely,’ she says, and there is heaviness in her voice. ‘Like you. Same heart-shaped face, but with hair … ’ She gestures vaguely, as if stroking imaginary hair.

  My hand flies to my head. ‘Actually, I just got all my hair cut off. It was sort of an impulse thing. I’m still not quite used to it myself, I keep forgetting it’s gone.’

  ‘You’re into impulse things, aren’t you?’

  ‘No, actually I’m really not, not usually,’ I say. ‘Usually I’m quite a planner.’

  ‘Well, the Audrey Hepburn thing suits your face shape.’ She says this without flattery, as a professional judgement, and I feel myself inflate, just a little. I imagine that this is the sort of effect her approval has on her chosen artists.

  ‘I remember being very envious of your mother’s hair,’ she says. ‘I wanted her hair and she wanted mine. In those days, my hair was blonde and I grew it right down to the base of my spine. Nobody tells you that going grey changes the whole texture of your hair, but it does. Mine used to be like silk and now – anyway. We were quite a pair, back in the day, me and your mother.’

  I can’t imagine my mother expressing girlish wishes about hair. I can’t quite imagine Susannah doing so, either. But for a second she looks younger, just for dipping into these memories. Two spots of pink have appeared on her cheekbones and her eyes shine like washed pebbles.

  ‘Well, yes, she did have great hair.’ I’m not sure why we’re talking in so much detail about hair when there are so many other things to discuss, but I can’t seem to stop either. ‘She didn’t go very grey.’

  ‘Did her hair … ?’ She stops. ‘When she had treatment … ?’

  ‘Fall out?’ I shake my head. ‘She wouldn’t have chemotherapy.’

  Susannah nods to herself, as if she’d expect nothing less of my cantankerous mother. Her eyes fade and the line appears between her brows again. ‘I should have known she was sick.’

  ‘Were you two in touch regularly?’

  She looks at me, sideways, as if I may be messing with her. ‘Did she … ? She didn’t … ?’

  ‘Sorry – she didn’t what?’

  ‘Oh never mind. Never mind. How did she … ? Did it … ? Was it very long?’

  ‘The illness?’

  ‘Was it long?’

  ‘Her cancer was quite advanced by the time they diagnosed it. She actually didn’t go to the doctor for a very long time after she found the lump. So when she did finally go, it all happened quite fast, really, just a few months.’ I have to work hard to keep my tone even, but somehow I manage it. ‘She wouldn’t have chemotherapy because I suppose she didn’t want to prolong it. I suppose she didn’t want to suffer for longer than she had to.’

  ‘Were you with her when she died?’

  The food lies heavy in my stomach. ‘Actually, I was. I got there just a few moments before. But I don’t know if she knew I was there, or … ’ I stare at my mug. It is almost a relief to be saying this out loud, even to this slightly hostile stranger. I think about my mother, shrunken in her bed. When I arrived everyone was running about fetching towels. I don’t know why towels were needed right then, at that last moment of her life. Why towels? I still had my coat on, Finn in my arms. I dropped my bag, and the smell hit me – an ancient smell that I shouldn’t recognize but somehow did. As I approached the bed, my mother’s hollow face lit up and just for that second I thought it was because of me.

  But she wasn’t looking at me. Finn was tucked against my shoulder, but I’m not sure if she was seeing him, either – she was already somewhere else, and then she gasped, like she was sliding under the water, and her eyes widened, as if she’d seen something surprising and longed-for beneath the surface. She died just as Alice rushed back in with an armful of towels.

  ‘Hey – you don’t have to talk about it,’ Susannah says. ‘If it’s too raw.’

  ‘No, it’s OK. She died at home and she, well, it was … She looked sort of pleased at the very last moment, as if she’d seen someone familiar. I know that sounds weird.’

  ‘She saw you.’

  ‘No. It wasn’t that. Maybe it was Finn – but really, I’m not sure if she even knew we were there. And we weren’t … I wasn’t … my sister had been caring for her a lot, and they were very close. It’s all much harder on Alice, all of this.’

  ‘Your sister?’ Her eyes flick back to my face as if I’ve said something else that is confusing.

  ‘Yes, Alice. She took leave from work the last couple of weeks. The two of them were very close, and I – we – well, my mother and I had quite a difficult relationship. Maybe she told you all this? I suppose I was a bit hesitant to go and see her. But you don’t need to know all this. It’s just messy family stuff.’

  ‘Death and guilt … ’ She sits down, twirling her silver thumb ring with an index finger. I wait for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t. Then she looks back at me again. ‘My God, Kali. You’re so like her. Your voice – you even have her gestures when you talk. It’s like she’s right here, in my kitchen.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t get her eyes. Alice got the beautiful green eyes.’

  ‘Yeah. You have your father’s eyes exactly.’

  ‘Really? No. I don’t think so, not really. Dad’s are more greyish blue.’

  Her whole face flames scarlet and she turns her back on me, putting her mug in the sink.

  Then I hear a crash coming from the other side of the house, and a dull thud, followed by a long, distant wail.

  ‘Oh shit!’ I leap off the stool, and sprint through the living room and down the corridor to the bedroom. The door is shut and I can hear him crying inside. He must have dislodged the bag and it shut itself. ‘Finn?’ I try to open it, but it won’t budge. ‘Finn?’ I call. ‘Sweetheart? I’m here. It’s OK.’

  ‘Mama!’ he howls.

  I shove the door with my shoulder, and whatever is blocking it shifts. Finn is standing, with his arms by his sides, looking up at me, eyes wide and filled with tears. Beside him the big white vase is on its side and there is a large chunk out of its rim. The broken-off shard is by Finn’s leg. I swoop and pick him up, checking him for cuts. He’s fine. But the vase definitely isn’t. The suitcase was blocking the door.

  ‘Oopsie.’ Finn looks down at the vase. He has stopped crying now that he’s in my arms. He just looks shocked.

  ‘Just an accident.’ I smooth his forehead as if I can actually stroke away the fear and shock. ‘It’s OK, love, it’s OK.’

  He must have woken up, then somehow knocked the case so that the door clicked shut. Then he couldn’t reach the door handle. It looks as if he was trying to climb on to the upside-down vase to reach it. He is nothing if not resourceful.

  ‘My poor little love,’ I say. ‘You got stuck in here, didn’t you? The door shut and you got stuck. But it’s OK now.’ My hand is shaking. Silly. He’s fine.

  ‘Mummy’s here and it’s OK.’

  His face lightens then, and he struggles to get down. I know he’d like to go and tug a few more sharp bits off the vase now, to see what will happen next.

  ‘Here, look! Over here! Let’s get you changed. Breakfast time!’ I try to redirect him to the bed. Susannah appears in the doorway.

  ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘God, Susannah – I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for that – I’m really sorry. Finn got stuck in the room, somehow, and he must have broken the vase trying to get out. I’m so sorry.’

  Her expression is closed-off, her mouth small. ‘You shut the child in here?’

  ‘What? No! What? Of course not. I didn’t … The door must have … ’

  But she
isn’t listening, I can tell. She goes and bends over the vase, straight-backed as always, picking up the large broken piece.

  ‘Look, Susannah. Please let me pay for it.’ I think about the Chihuly in the front room – what if this vase is by a world-famous potter? ‘Do let me replace it, please.’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ she snaps, her back to me.

  ‘Seriously, I’d like to replace it.’

  ‘I don’t care about the vase, Kali.’ She looks over her shoulder at me. To my surprise, she doesn’t seem angry, just cold. ‘Toddlers break things. The main thing is that the baby is OK. Don’t you think?’

  I wish she’d stop calling him ‘the baby’, ‘the little guy’, ‘the child’. ‘But he’s fine!’ I say. ‘Totally. Aren’t you, Finn?’

  He wrestles himself out of my grip and runs, with one trouser leg on, the other flapping, towards the bathroom. ‘Ba’ time!’ he shouts.

  ‘No, no bath now.’ I hurry after him.

  Susannah takes the broken vase away. I wrangle Finn back on to the bed, put a clean nappy on him, and finish dressing him in his warmest fleece and the dungarees with the dinosaur on the pocket, as he wriggles and protests and babbles. The incident is forgotten. He has moved on already.

  *

  As I walk with him through to the kitchen again, his small hand tucked inside mine, I realize that I’ve eaten too much too fast. Maybe it was the shock of hearing him scream, or the anxiety about the broken vase, but the bagels are lodged at the top of my stomach now, like big lumps of lead.

  ‘So, if you want to come for a walk, I’m going to go now.’ Susannah is clearing up the kitchen. ‘But I guess you’ll need to give him breakfast?’

  I desperately want to be out in the fresh air, under that high bright sky. ‘Actually, we’d love to come for a walk, if you don’t mind some company? Finn can have some bagel to chew while we walk – I’ll just put him in the backpack, I have one that I carry him in. It’s in the car … ’

  ‘Oh. Sure.’

  She whistles and the dogs leap to the French windows, wagging their tales and turning circles.