The Missing One

by Lucy Atkins

  I stagger to my feet, bracing myself against the bump of the boat, water pouring off me. My skin is on fire, my head feels tight as if my skull is about to crack open and spew its contents on to the deck.

  She is standing at the wheel in a covered area just a few feet away from me. The engine is so loud, but Finn spots me over her shoulder and his tear-stained face collapses. He holds out his arms to me, his little fingers splayed. It takes all my willpower not to move or speak. I can’t fight her for him. She’ll kill us both.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I mouth at Finn. ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Mama!’ he opens his mouth. ‘Maaaaamaaaa!’

  The wind and waves and the sound of the engine roar below his screams, and she still doesn’t know I’m here. It is as if she is in a trance. I stare at her broad back in the brown fleece. I have to think fast. I have to act. I look around for something – anything. And then time seems to slow. The colours of the world intensify, all noise quietens, my vision becomes sharper, clearer; nothing hurts now, I don’t even feel cold: there is a small cabin to her left. I can see down into it – a few steps to a bed and a sort of sofa. My bag on the floor, the red file spilling out. I could try to shove her in there, lock her in. But I can’t risk trying to wrench Finn out of her arms. She’s stronger than me. At any moment she will sense me and turn round.

  I spot a metal pole, lying along the side of the boat. It has a hook on the end. I swoop to it. It is not heavy and it is hard to make my fingers tighten on the freezing metal but I see her begin to turn and with all my remaining strength I sweep the pole at her ankles and jerk it, sideways.

  She topples. I drop the pole – it clangs down – and I throw myself at Finn, wrenching him from her one arm and shoving at her with the other. He comes to me easily – her hands instinctively fly out as her body crashes sideways, and he hurls himself towards me. I see her head bounce, just once, on the fibreglass hull.

  Finn’s arms whip round my neck. I pin him to me with both arms. ‘I’ve got you. I’ve got you.’

  Nobody is steering the boat now and it veers to the right over a big wave. I’m above Susannah, with Finn clinging to me so tightly that I hardly need to touch him to keep him there, but I do, I hang onto him.

  He is silent, perhaps in shock, locked onto my soaked torso. I suck in air, everything inside me is pulsing, throbbing, ready to protect him. Her head is on the floor, resting on one arm. She lifts it halfway up.

  I put a foot on her neck, then, and firmly, but not violently, I press down.

  ‘Don’t.’ The sound of my own voice surprises me. It is deep and loud and threatening. ‘If you get up I will kill you. I will kill you, Susannah. This is over. You hear me? This is OVER.’

  The boat is still motoring through the waves, wildly off course now, careening towards the rocky coastline.

  I take my foot off her neck and seize the steering wheel with one arm, wrenching it round so that we are pointing out to sea again. Then, not knowing what else to do, I see the keys, and turn the ignition off.

  The engine cuts. Suddenly there is eerie silence. Just the bump of waves. Sea mist creeps round us. I am shaking so hard that my teeth clatter against each other. I hold onto Finn but I can’t keep my arms from jerking. Water drips from my body. I stare down at Susannah. I have no idea what to do. She doesn’t move. She lies with her head on her arm. Then I realize that I am no longer scared of her.

  ‘Susannah,’ I say. ‘Are you OK?’

  Her legs crunch up suddenly, into a foetal position. Her massed grey hair covers her cheek.

  And then I hear a new rumbling noise. For a moment, I think it’s the boat engine, and I’ve failed to switch it off, but then I see it, over to the left, through the mist: Sven’s fishing boat.

  I wave one arm. ‘Here!’ I shout. ‘Help!’

  Dawn is breaking through the bruised and misty sky, Susannah is curled at my feet. Sven is coming. And my baby is safe.

  *

  As his boat draws alongside ours, I see that there is someone else in the cabin, a crouched figure in a blue woollen hat. He cuts his engine and Ana stands up.

  ‘You a’right?’ Ana climbs aboard. I nod, but my body is shaking so violently. ‘Baby OK?’ I can’t speak because my jaws are clattering together. I realize that my leg hurts, quite badly.

  Finn points. ‘Boat!’ he says, as if Sven’s boat is the first one he’s noticed today.

  ‘Yes, love.’ I squeeze his solid little body and for a moment I feel as if he is holding me up, not the other way around.

  ‘Big boat!’ he says.

  The pain in my leg is extraordinary, as if there is something burrowing inside the bone. I stand on the good leg, which quakes. The back of my head throbs.

  ‘Susannah,’ Ana kneels at her side. She calls to Sven, ‘Blankets!’ She points at me.

  Susannah still doesn’t move but she is breathing.

  Ana and I both look at Finn.

  She does not seem to require an explanation.

  ‘Down.’ Finn wriggles. I make myself put him down but I hang on tight to his hand. He looks up at me. ‘Carry ’oo?’ he suggests. I pick him up again.

  Sven clambers over into Susannah’s boat. He drops a blanket over my shoulders. ‘Get dry, fast,’ he mutters. ‘Hypothermia.’ My teeth are comedy chattering. I wrap the blanket tightly around us. ‘Go on into the cabin.’ He nods at his boat. ‘There’s clothes in there. Get out of those wet things. Fast.’

  Then he kneels next to Ana. They exchange some mumbled words.

  ‘Susannah,’ I hear Ana say briskly. ‘You have to get up now.’

  Susannah heaves herself off her side and I tell myself it’s OK, because Sven is here, and Ana. But I still don’t trust her. I don’t take my eyes off her. My teeth are still chattering insanely. Beneath the blanket my freezing clothes are plastered to my body.

  Now Susannah is face down with her legs tucked under her, and arms splayed in front, in a yoga child’s pose, but her head is at an odd angle, with her face turned away.

  Her hair tangles on her shoulders and across her cheek. I notice her wasp hair clasp is next to my foot. I kick it, hard, and it skids across the deck, through the railings, and into the sea. Her spine is curved like a turtle’s shell.

  Ana is saying something to her, but I can’t hear what. She is bent over and her hands are on Susannah’s shoulders. The boat rises and falls with the waves. Sven must have anchored, and I can see that our two boats are lashed together, now, with big ropes.

  ‘Susannah,’ Ana says, quite sharply. ‘Get yourself up.’

  But she doesn’t move. Ana reaches down to her wrist and feels for a pulse. There is something about the movement that makes me think Ana might once have been a nurse. My body feels weak and my leg is throbbing. So is the lump on the back of my head. I need to change into dry clothes and get Finn into the warm boat.

  ‘Silly girl,’ Ana murmurs. ‘Silly girl.’

  ‘Ana?’ I say, quietly. ‘Is she injured?’

  ‘She’ll be a’right,’ Ana says without turning round. She scrapes Susannah’s hair off her face. ‘There, now.’

  Susannah suddenly kneels up. Her mouth is slack and she looks like an old woman who has taken her teeth out. A hissing sound comes out of her dry lips.

  ‘Let’s get you up then,’ says Ana. ‘Good girl.’

  Sven hauls Susannah off the floor by her armpits and she stands at last, her head and shoulders sunk like a rag doll. Her breathing is laboured.

  Behind her, down the stairs in the cabin, I see my bag lying half open on the floor – it contains my wallet, our passports, the photos, the red file. Susannah must have taken it out of some confused urge to remove evidence, even though the cuttings are not proof of anything, really, except an unspeakable loss.

  *

  We huddle in the cabin of Sven’s boat, opposite Susannah, who sits with her head almost between her knees. She doesn’t raise it to look at me. Ana is next to her and Sven is at the wheel, steering
us towards Raven Bay. Every now and then, Ana reaches out a dry hand and pulls the blanket up on Susannah’s hunched shoulders.

  I have peeled off my wet things and am wearing a pair of Sven’s overalls, which are about ten times too big and smell faintly of fish, a huge T-shirt and fleece under them and the blanket over the top of it all. Finn is curled inside the blanket with me, sucking his thumb and pointing, every now and then, at objects, as if he will control the world by naming things. He has never said so many words. It is fascinating, and disturbing at the same time.

  ‘Cup,’ he says.

  And I say, ‘That’s right, cup.’

  Then after a few moments. ‘Boot.’

  ‘Yes, boot.’

  Finally, he points to Susannah. But he can’t think of the word.

  I hug him to me. ‘It’s OK, love, it’s OK now. I’ve got you.’

  The boat bumps onwards towards Raven Bay. I wonder if he will be permanently damaged by this experience. He seems calm, but he has been through so much in the last twenty-four hours.

  Then I wonder if plunging into sub-zero water can damage an unborn child.

  Sven’s boat bumps on. I can’t move my leg, which is planted inside Sven’s enormous wellington boot. I looked down at it when I changed out of my wet things, and there was blood, and the flesh was pink and raw and open. I will deal with it when we get to Raven Bay. But it hurts badly now and whenever the rubber shaft of the boot presses against it, the pain is searing. I ease my leg gingerly out of Sven’s boot and rest it on top of my bag.

  I cannot think about what Susannah would have done out there on the ocean with my baby. I cannot allow myself to think about what could have happened if adrenalin hadn’t propelled me up the coastline and then off that rock.

  I can’t think about the contents of the red file. Not yet. But I do know that this is the story that has been crouching in the shadows as I poked and pried and questioned my way through the past few days. In fact, this is the story that’s been lurking inside me for my whole life.

  That little boy with his dense fringe and red wellies looks like Finn because he is Finn’s uncle. My brother. I had a brother.

  I imagine a little boy bravely grabbing his daddy’s leg as Susannah’s oar smashes down. Jonas topples, Kit clings and the boat tilts, tipping everyone, the wave rising behind the two of them. There would have been a horrific moment when my mother knew what was going to happen – saw the wave and couldn’t stop it – then it came over, and took them both, swallowed them.

  His father is mine. My father is not my father. I had a brother, not much more than a year older than me – a brother who died.

  Other things leap out at me. Harry Halmstrom. He really is my grandfather – and suddenly I understand what his words meant – Jonas was his son. Even through the fog of dementia, Harry Halmstrom knew that something was rotten about his son’s death. He could swim like a fish. He just didn’t know about Susannah. If I’m right about this, then Harry Halmstrom is my paternal grandfather.

  And I had a brother. I had a brother who drowned because of something Susannah did almost forty years ago and she’s been carrying the guilt and terror of that moment ever since. No wonder, when I arrived on her doorstep, she looked as if she’d seen a ghost. She had.

  She is unwell. Dangerously so.

  My poor mother.

  But then again – she lied to me. My mother lied to me my whole life. How could she? So did my father. Both of them have lied to me about everything.

  More and more thoughts roar through my head. I imagine my mother up here – out there – with Jonas on these unpredictable seas while my father – whilst Graham – sat heartbroken in California, cerebrally sketching out blueprints, studying in silent libraries. I remember Susannah saying he was a ‘fucking saint’. She is right about that. He not only forgave my mother, he took her back and remained devoted to her for nearly forty years. He raised me as his own.

  The foundations of my identity are crumbling. I am not the firstborn. I’m my mother’s middle child. I am not my father’s biological child at all. I am something – someone – else entirely. My parents are liars. I have different blood in my veins, a different heritage. I am related to an old Swedish man with dementia. I had a brother, a brother who died.

  I need to talk to Alice. Alice must know all this too. This will release her from something too. I need to talk to my sister. And to my father – oh my God, do I need to talk to him.

  Sven’s boat bumps on across the waves. Finn points and names. ‘Water.’ ‘Boat.’ I hold on to him and I don’t want to think these thoughts, but I can’t stop.

  What on earth was my mother thinking, taking a toddler and a baby – me – out on a boat on these dangerous seas to chase after killer whales with a storm coming in? She would never have forgiven herself. It must have eaten her away. It did eat her away.

  The guilt has certainly been too much for Susannah. I look across at the matted crown of her head. This is a dreadful burden for anyone to carry. I am not surprised that Finn, with his red wellies and his dimpled chin, triggered mayhem in her mind.

  Through the mist I can see the flickering lights of Raven Bay. The boat bumps on. Sven mutters into his radio, and it crackles and someone barks back. Susannah doesn’t move. She stares at the floor, catatonic, as if sleeping with her eyes open.

  I squeeze Finn’s warm body closer to mine and I wonder what nightmares my little boy will have of sea and boats and screaming – long after he has forgotten he was ever here.

  But he is safe now. And we are going home.

  Chapter eighteen

  We must make an odd sight, the five of us coming up the quay, our breath mingling above our heads.

  There is Ana, striding ahead with a slight stoop under an oversized man’s coat, her hat rammed tightly on her head. There is Sven, supporting Susannah, who is no longer upright, but slumped onto him like a drunkard with tangled hair and legs not quite moving straight. Then there is Finn, toddling along in his pyjamas and fleece, holding my hand but bending to look at a rock, a lost pen, a fragment of paper, a stick, trying to pick things up, or poke them or bash them, pointing at buildings, the sky, a person, naming everything he can. And finally there is me, hopping beside him in absurdly large fisherman’s clothing, and damp size fourteen wellingtons. I am hopping, because every time my right foot touches the ground, pain ricochets up my body, bringing a wave of heat, then a chill, then nausea.

  But I don’t care. This pain doesn’t matter. It’s just an injury. It will heal.

  *

  Sven hauls Susannah down the guest house corridor and into Ana’s kitchen. The house is so warm and smells of laundry and wood polish. He eases Susannah into a kitchen chair and she slumps, then leans slowly forwards until her head rests on the pine table top. Her arms hang down like a puppet’s. Ana comes round and kneels next to her, saying something. Sven stands above them. His beard shines under the bright kitchen lights. He looks ridiculously calm.

  I call to Ana that I need to use the phone and then, hoiking Finn onto my hip, I go to the hall and dial Doug’s mobile. It clicks straight to voicemail. I leave a brief message, trying to keep my voice very even, saying everything is fine, don’t worry about a thing, I have Finn and we’re going to try and get a flight home tonight. Then I ring his office: the answerphone. He never even listens to that but I leave the same message. Then I ring home and do the same. I hang up and dial Alice’s mobile.

  ‘Oh my God – I’m about to go into a meeting, but do you have Finn?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh thank God. Where were they? The holiday house?’ I can tell by the relief in her voice that she was far more worried than she’d let on in our phone call the day before.

  ‘They were at the floathouse.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The holiday house. Alice—’

  ‘Christ, Kal, I actually didn’t get much sleep last night after you called.’

  ‘Nor did I.’
r />   ‘Is Finn really OK? Are you OK? So what happened?’

  ‘I’ve … it’s been … ’ My voice wavers for a second. ‘Holy crap, Alice, I’ve found out all this stuff – this insane, mad stuff about who I am, and who Mum was. I can’t … it’s … I think Dad isn’t my real father. He lied – they both did, all our lives, they’ve lied to us. It explains so much. I think I’ve just found out that my real father was a whale expert called Jonas Halmstrom. Also, my God, I think we had a brother. I think we had a brother who died up here when he was just a toddler – Mum lost a child – and the man – Jonas, he died too; they both drowned. Alice, I think Mum and Dad have lied to us our whole lives. She lived up here, and married this man and had a little boy called Kit, and then me – and … Susannah … She … ’

  ‘Kal!’ Alice shouts me down. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  I take a long, deep breath. I don’t blame her: if it were the other way around, I’d assume she was having a breakdown too. She’s so used to being the rational one, but for once, I’m the one who has the overview. ‘Look. Don’t worry. OK? We can talk about everything when I get home. I’ve got so much to tell you, but I can’t do it like this. All that matters is Finn is safe. We’re fine.’

  ‘Did you just tell me that Dad isn’t your biological father?’

  ‘No. No – I don’t think he is. Mum was married before, to a man called Jonas. And they had a child before me – they had a boy called Kit. I … Christ, Alice. I actually can’t really get my head round this myself … ’

  ‘Right.’ I imagine her standing up, smoothing down her work skirt. ‘OK. I’m getting on a plane. This is all … where are you now?’