‘Blond, shoulder-length hair, five foot four, green eyes.’
‘When did you last see her?’ She thought back and was about to say the night before she went on holiday when she remembered calling me to cancel. ‘Steve can’t find his passport, bloody idiot that he is, I’m having to turn the place upside down.’
I was secretly relieved. I had promised myself at least two episodes of Breaking Bad. All I wanted to do was pull on my pyjamas and settle down.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll see you when you get back,’ I’d said.
‘A week before I went on holiday,’ she told Gladys. ‘So three weeks yesterday.’ She was thinking of the passport, how they’d found it at the bottom of Steve’s rucksack at five to midnight. She could have killed him then. She’d like to kill him now.
‘What was her state of mind?’
Her state of mind? Were they expecting her to say I was depressed? Was that what they thought? That her daughter had just walked out of her life leaving a half-eaten bowl of cornflakes to congeal and her mother standing waiting at an airport at midnight without so much as a phone call.
‘She was happy. She was always happy,’ she said and realised she had no idea whether this was true or not.
‘That’s great, Mrs Rayworth. Would you happen to have a photograph of your daughter?’ Gladys asked.
Of course she did. She always had a recent one in her wallet: ‘In case you forget what I look like,’ I used to joke.
‘Here,’ she said. She handed her open wallet to Gladys, the photo still encased in the plastic cover.
‘Is it all right if I take it out?’
My mum wanted to say no, really she would rather Gladys kept it right where it was. ‘Just to take a copy. I’ll bring it straight back,’ she said, and she was gone before my mum could protest.
How long did it take to make one photocopy? She’d been sitting there a good twenty minutes, twitching in anticipation every time she heard footsteps. My mum wanted to leave, she’d started something she wished she hadn’t. Given the option she would rewind and make it all go away. Just give me my photograph back and I won’t bother you again.
‘I’ve really got to go now,’ she told the replacement desk clerk, an older man with a bald head that was an angry red colour.
‘I’m sure she’ll be back in a moment.’
He was right. Seconds later Gladys appeared through the automatic doors. Where was the photograph? They’ve lost it, she thought, the photocopier has chewed it up. She knew she should never have parted with it.
It was then that she noticed Gladys was not alone. Another woman, younger and dressed in a creased suit, was by her side. Bobbed brown hair, thick-rimmed glasses, curls licking her face. Just the way Eve’s baby curls used to.
‘Mrs Rayworth?’ the woman said. Rayworth was Steve’s name. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Victoria Rutter.’ She offered her hand. My mum’s trembled as she held it out. Detective Inspector. It was all wrong. This, whatever it was, hardly merited the involvement of a detective inspector.
‘I’m sorry, I’m probably wasting your time. I should go.’
‘I’d like to talk to you about your daughter, Mrs Rayworth,’ said DI Rutter. She’d worried about them laughing at her; now she wanted to hear them laugh. She wished they would laugh her out of the building. ‘If you could come with me …’ the DI said, turning back towards the automatic door.
My mum followed, aware of her insides buckling, pain splitting her head. She’d felt like this before, sea sickness on dry land, twenty-nine years ago when she was pregnant with me.
‘I can’t do it,’ she’d told my dad. But with every kick and butterfly she felt in her stomach, she knew she could. There was a life blooming inside her.
It happened quickly. Steve appeared at her side though she couldn’t remember calling him herself. He held her, not knowing what to say. ‘It’s a mistake, tell me they’ve got it all wrong,’ she wanted to scream at him. But all he did was squeeze her hand and say, ‘Oh love,’ over and over again.
She had to look. Shook her head at first; it wasn’t me, couldn’t be, so still there and lifeless. ‘Ants in your pants,’ she used to say because of the way I jittered and jiggled as a child, always on the move, never in one place for long. Now, staring at my face, her mind shuttered back. Holding me for the first time, warm, wriggly, red-faced, squashed, the marvel of it. Untouched skin, so soft, she’d never felt softness like it. The smell of newness from my head. Complete, that was how she felt, like she hadn’t known there was something missing but now I had arrived it was obvious. ‘An only one,’ people remarked as the years went by. But she didn’t see how she could love anyone else this much. Occasionally she’d read those stories, the sudden death of a child, and she’d pray to God it wouldn’t touch her family. But then she’d look at me, jittering and jiggling and hollering in my big voice, and she’d think, it couldn’t, could it? There couldn’t be this much life and then none at all?
She touched my face, always warm, now cold, and she didn’t understand how so much could be extinguished.
‘What can you tell us about Eve?’
DI Rutter chose her words carefully. The parent in her would have liked to give my mum time to assimilate this new reality, but at work she wasn’t a parent. She was a police officer leading an investigation. She needed information, traction. Something to go on.
My mum had always been a talker. Her conversations were a form of verbal acrobatics, flitting from one topic to another without so much as a breath. Often she’d discuss more than one subject at once, or veer off at a tangent.
Even now she wasn’t short of words. There were too many. She was thinking about the question, the impossibility of it. There was so much to tell, a lifetime of information and anecdotes amassed, now forming an unruly crowd of words that surged against her temples. She needed to find a way to release them, one at a time, in order of importance and priority.
What can you tell us about Eve?
That she doesn’t like cheese unless it’s melted; that if you give her dinner you might think it odd that she eats all her vegetables first before starting on the meat, right down to the last pea on her plate. That she sleeps with her eyes half open, always has done since she was a baby; that she was the fastest runner in her class over 100 metres but always cheated at the egg and spoon (by holding the egg down with her finger); that she hates large ships, not just to sail on but the look of them, they give her the shivers, though we’ve never understood why; that when her dad died she’d sneak into my bed every night when I was asleep and when I woke she’d be holding me and I’d pretend to tell her off but really she was saving me from drowning. I don’t think I ever thanked her.
That I have just seen a body and identified it as my daughter but really my daughter is nothing like that, so still and empty and silent. If only you had met her, just once, you would understand that wherever she went she was surrounded by a field of energy, accompanied by noise and chat and laughter, that you only had to be in her presence to feel revived by the life fizzing out of her.
She looked at DI Rutter, wondered if she too was a mother, if she would understand. How could she? No one could make you understand what this was like unless you were here. If they tried to explain, you wouldn’t believe them. There were no words.
‘She’s a producer. She lived in Shepherd’s Bush, alone,’ she started, and then more words came out and once she had started she didn’t want to stop, as if the words were her strength, her protection from everything else, because as long as she talked she could keep me alive.
‘Did she have a boyfriend?’ DI Rutter asked when my mum told her I lived alone.
‘She did, but they split up in February. There hasn’t been anyone since.’
DI Rutter nodded. ‘I want to show you something.’ She produced a photograph, handed it to Steve, who held it out between himself and my mum. ‘Do you recognise this?’
A caged bird on a gold chain.
&nb
sp; ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen it before.’
Placed in my hand after I died.
She was weary now, bone tired. ‘Just one last thing. Did you ever hear her mention a man called David Alden?’
‘Never,’ she said with conviction.
That wasn’t strictly true. I had mentioned him once a few months ago, Sunday evening when she was watching Downton Abbey. I should have known she wasn’t listening.
‘OK,’ DI Rutter said. ‘We’ll get someone to take you home.’
My mum stepped outside into the night, held up by Steve. The ground beneath her was unsteady. Around her buses streamed past, people spewed out of the station coming home from work. Tomorrow they’d do it all again. Just carry on as if nothing had happened. How could that be?
In the car she rested her head against the cool of the window and watched her breath steam the glass. Was it only last night she was travelling home from the airport wondering where in God’s name I had got to? How could so much time have passed in the space of a day? She looked up at the starless sky. She’d never known dark like it.
Chapter Seven
Melody
POLLY DOESN’T MENTION his name. Him suffices. He is their common denominator, the reason they know each other, although towards the end Mel had to remind herself of this. Polly was being paid to listen to her, so it’s possible she was as bored as everyone else with the circular nature of Melody’s conversations. She was just too professional to say ‘Let’s move on, shall we, I’ve heard this one before.’
In fairness, no one actually said those exact words, not even a close approximation of them, but it didn’t matter. She knew what they were thinking. Their bodies betrayed them, a shoulder turned away, eyes seeking out someone more interesting in the room beyond her. Not this story again. Her first therapist said she should talk about it; ‘Let it all out, Melody, don’t bottle it up,’ as if the talking itself was medicinal and would draw out the pain. So she talked. Sometimes she rarely drew breath, left no pauses or gaps in which anyone else might seize an opportunity to contribute. They were monologues, turning the same story over and over, trying to work it out. Melody could talk all right. She just didn’t know how to stop.
And not even once had Polly attempted to manoeuvre the conversation in a different direction. She hoped they were paying her a lot.
In different circumstances she would have liked to see Polly again. She wouldn’t be wearing those faded jogging pants for a start. Look at me now! she’d say and show her around the house and listen to her ooh and ah about all the glass: so light! And wait for her to squeal when she unveiled the toilet. I have a toilet that washes and dries your arse; you see, it’s true what they say, I am a survivor.
‘You OK?’ Melody jumps. She’s back in the living room now, startled to hear Erin’s voice.
‘Yes, sorry, I was miles away.’
‘You look a bit peaky.’ Erin gets up from the sofa and turns the TV off with the remote. ‘You missed his big moment.’
‘I did?’ She rewinds events in her head, back beyond the conversation she has just had with Polly to where she was before with Erin. ‘The actor, shit, did he steal the show?’
‘If you call three short scenes, including one where he was unconscious, stealing it, then yes.’ She laughs. ‘But it’s a start, I guess. I’d better get going. Thanks for lunch.’ She kisses Melody and shoots her a final look before leaving. ‘You sure you’re all right?’
‘Just tired, that’s all.’
‘Finally. She shows she is human.’
When did Polly say she was coming round? Was it today or tomorrow? Melody has only just put the phone down but she’s struggling to recall the finer details of the conversation. She remembers it in a broad brush stroke that colours everything else. We’re questioning him. Hopefully it was tomorrow. Today would suggest an urgency, a rapid escalation of events. Melody’s worked hard to control events, not have them control her.
It is two o’clock. Four and a half hours until Sam arrives home. She could call him and ask him to come now, but she always has trouble contacting him at work, gets the impression it is a huge hassle to everyone to track him down. Doesn’t she know not to call, is it really that urgent?
Deciding against it, she opens the Facebook app on her phone. She posts her own updates now and again: ta da, look at this cake I baked! Or when they have friends round (Patrick mainly) she’ll take a few shots – never a selfie – just to show she exists and her timeline isn’t void of all activity. But mainly she’s a voyeur. Not the type that derives any gratification, sexual or otherwise, from the act of looking, mind you. It’s more a form of self-flagellation that leaves her feeling empty and worthless and decidedly odd. Photographs of newborn babies, toddlers taking their first steps, old friends pictured on a night out or a holiday, holding a glass of fizz up to the camera. Happy, smile-inducing moments that are out of her reach. If she was more disciplined she wouldn’t look at these at all because they’re not the reason she’s compelled to check Facebook so frequently. They’re a sideshow. It’s Honor she’s searching for, to refresh her mental image of her, keep it current by noting changes to hairstyle or colour. She’s driven by a need to know where life is taking her former friend. Is she happy? It would appear she is, if such a thing can be deduced from status updates. Has she had children? No sign of any. She does have friends, a select group who regularly appear in her photos – the last one taken in Lisbon when a group of five of them were leaning into each other drunkenly outside a bar in the Barrio Alto. That used to be me.
Today she notes that Honor hasn’t posted anything. For five days, in fact, there’s been no word from her. Disappointment solidifies in her stomach. The hurt jags at her skin. It’s in these moments when she needs a friend that she feels the loss of their friendship most keenly. If Honor was here she would talk her down and reassure her. She’d probably tell her to have a shower and put on some decent clothes, suggest lunch and a bottle of wine. But she’s not here. She’s not even on Facebook. There is nothing to persuade Melody that they are connected by even the finest of virtual threads.
She needs to shower and change. This will kill half an hour, longer if she blow-dries her hair. Once, years back when she had a job and the days never seemed long enough to cram in everything she wanted to achieve, she began to resent drying her hair each morning so much that she went as far as to calculate the amount of time it took. The figures are still clear in her head. Fifteen minutes per day, seven days a week. Five thousand four hundred and sixty minutes a year; this almost equated to four full days a year with the hairdryer in her hand trying to tame her hair. The waste appalled her so much she had it chopped into a bob the next week. More time-effective, she reasoned. She wears it long again now.
In the shower she shaves her legs, though the hair growth, a tiny dusting of stubble, hardly merits it. She uses a salt scrub on her thighs and arms and works it into her skin in sweeping circular movements that cause patches of red to form. Maybe she could use a face mask, she thinks as she emerges from the shower, and searches for it in the drawer. There is a separate eye mask that is still in its packaging. It requires lying down, still. She doesn’t do still.
Dressing first, she chooses baggy harem pants and a loose sweater from an online shop that specialises in loungewear. She gave the details to her mother last Christmas when she enquired what Melody wanted. ‘What in the name of God is loungewear?’ her mum asked. ‘Why don’t you just buy a pair of pyjamas from Marks and Spencer like everyone else?’ When she explained that she didn’t want to wear her pyjamas all day long, her mum shot her a look. I haven’t a clue what goes on inside that head of yours.
The face mask is creamy and unctuous and sets quickly on her skin. She feels it tighten (they all say this shouldn’t happen but it does). If she moves her facial muscles to talk or smile the mask will crack. But she’s alone and can’t foresee any reason to smile soon.
The silence is what she struggle
s with the most but she’s learnt to overcome this too by playing music. Probably the only good thing the architect did was suggest a very expensive sound system that streams the music into every room in the house. Her musical tastes are much narrower these days; she plays from a carefully curated track list, songs released in the last six years are deemed safe. Previously she would dip in and out of the decades, cherry-picking her favourites to build an eclectic mix. Or did he do that for her? She can’t remember which songs he introduced her to and which she discovered herself, which is why it’s easier to steer clear.
He always played music, big booming bass that pumped through the walls. Patrick couldn’t stand it, would thump the wall with his fist when it got too loud. But she didn’t mind. It was why they became friends, a shared love of music, wasn’t it? The first time they spoke, a hot summer’s day. She’d just returned from a trip to Sainsburys where everyone was stocking up on sausages and charcoal and bottles of lager. Patrick was away, the first time she’d had her new home to herself, and all she was going to do was lie in the garden reading a book in peace. She had applied suntan lotion carefully on her winter-white skin and had just sunk down on the lounger when the chat from next door’s garden reached her, accompanied by the smell of barbecue smoke drifting over the fence. Someone turned the music on.
Typical.
Melody recognised the song, one from her university days in Manchester, one of the many she loved but could never remember the name of.
So she asked him, shouted over the fence, immediately self-conscious when she caught his attention and she realised she was still wearing a bikini top.
‘Strings of Life,’ he said. ‘“Rhythim is Rhythim”. Now you’re going to ask me to turn it down. Your mate always does.’ He was referring to Patrick. ‘He’s not keen on my musical tastes.’ He had a nice smile, she thought. Friendly, not her type, but good-looking all the same.
The Life I Left Behind Page 6