by Jane Shemilt
“Remember, we have to look at all possibilities at the same time.” He had said that before.
“What sort of possibilities?”
He stood and dug his hands in his pockets. This must be difficult; his gray eyes were strained with effort. In the seconds he took to answer, some detached part of my mind wondered what he would look like if he smiled, really smiled. For a moment I wondered how his wife felt about the times his job stole him away. Did she mind? Would she worry? She might have gotten used to it, as I had with Ted. She would tell herself he was deeply committed to his job.
“Well, it seems likely she did arrange to meet this man, but it is possible he might not have turned up. In that case she might have begun walking home . . .”
I’d imagined this already. The theater was a few minutes away, and although we’d always asked her to call if it was dark, she might not have wanted to bother us. Her spiky shoes tapping the pavement would have been loud in the silent street, so she wouldn’t have noticed the quiet thud of following footsteps until they were very near . . .
“We are going to interview the father of the little girl you told us about. You thought he might want revenge—”
“It can’t be him. He’s a father.” For some reason my eyes filled with tears. “He loves his daughter too much to hurt somebody else’s child.” But perhaps it doesn’t work like that. Perhaps there are no rules. I walked to the window and looked up into the street. The white vans were closed up now; the men with cameras must have been inside or perhaps somewhere else, watching the house out of sight. Other people were coming and going along the sidewalks, cars were driving up and down.
The man who had taken our daughter could be someone I knew or a man on the periphery of our lives whom I had never noticed. It could be anyone, anyone in the world. Perhaps that man over there, I thought, the one who is smiling to himself as he crosses the road. Perhaps he has Naomi somewhere, locked up and helpless. Why is he smiling? I wanted to run out, shout questions in his face, see if he looked guilty. I looked at Michael.
“How am I supposed to do this?”
His hand reached out again, and he grasped my wrist tightly.
“Tell me what to do, Michael.” I kept still. I needed the strength I could feel in his hand.
“Step by step is how you do it.” His eyes traveled over my face. “You have to look after yourself, that’s the first step. Eat something. Wash your hair.” He smiled at me. “I didn’t tell you before, because I didn’t want you to worry about it, but the appeal on television is scheduled for tomorrow morning. We’ll need to prepare a statement. Can you let Ted know?”
By the time Ted came home, I had had a bath. I had even tried on a suit for tomorrow’s appeal, though I’d had to roll the skirt top over to make it stay on my waist. My hair was wrapped in a towel; I was trying to eat a sandwich. I told him James and Michael had been here, and then, sitting close to him, holding his hand, I told him that Naomi was pregnant. He shook me off, got to his feet, outraged and unbelieving. He thought at first James must be lying. I told him everything James had said, and what Michael had told me as well, and the way in which fragments of her diary now made sense. Ted began to pace around the kitchen, I thought he was going to break something. Underneath his seething anger, I felt a bitter backwash of feeling break against me. He must be thinking that as her mother I should have known she was pregnant, even though she kept it secret. Perhaps he was right. When he was sitting down again, his face white and closed. I put my hand on his clenched fist.
“Don’t let this destroy us, Ted.”
He looked at me blankly. I don’t think he heard what I was saying.
Chapter 18
DORSET, 2010
ONE YEAR LATER
Mid-December. The year has deepened; every day the light becomes quieter. From high up on Eggardon Hill the little fields below us tilt to the coast; the slivers of sea in the distance are white as frost. The only noises in the silent countryside are my footsteps and Bertie’s, crunching through the icy turf.
Bridport sits in a valley near the sea; its wide streets are busy at this time of year. The old stone buildings stand plainly to the road and, despite the garish lights strung about them, they look as they always do, as they must have looked two hundred years ago.
The bookshop door jangles open, but instead of the usual book-scented peace, the narrow spaces are jammed with people; there is a smell of wet hair and banana bubble gum. A broad woman with a disgruntled face steps on my toes and glances angrily at me, while a child nearby pulls books from a shelf and throws them on the floor. Naomi’s books were easy to choose; she loved so many different authors: Lawrence, Kerouac, Mark Haddon, Stieg Larsson. Faced with the crowd in the bookshop, I collect an armful of novels for the boys and put them in a basket. My fingers linger on the spines of other books as I try to remember what Ted had on his bedside table a year ago. The novels I had chosen for him had always remained pristine under a thin layer of dust, so perhaps I never knew what he liked. I buy the books I have collected and leave, crossing the road under the clock tower as it strikes eleven.
In Boots I choose Ted a leather bag and collect toothbrush, toothpaste, washcloth, and soap, then wait in a jostling line to pay. A smear of pink glitters peripherally; turning my head, I see those little pots and tubes of makeup and shampoo that I used to put in her stocking, along with spotted panties, bracelets, tangerines, plastic cookies. It had been fun. I’d forgotten that. That world where fun was an end in itself had vanished with her. The games and silly jokes she played on the boys, the fuss at birthdays and Christmas, which they scorned but joined in—all that went when she did. No, of course it went before that. I stop in the line as that thought catches me again, and two girls behind bump into me, mutter, and laugh. The fun had stopped long before. I hadn’t noticed exactly when; it had been gradual. I’d been busy. Even during the summer holiday before the autumn term began, she’d been quieter.
At the cash register, I snap back to myself, pay, and then awkwardly gather the bags that are around my feet. At least this year I have bought presents. Last year I tried, but I couldn’t. Naomi had been gone just over a month. There were teenage girls and their mothers everywhere, choosing decorations, picking out little gifts, calling to each other for approval. I remember I had to leave my full basket on the floor in a shop and walk out in tears through the pushing crowds. Now, going toward the parking lot, I can just about bear to see the families inside these crowds. I see this mother, that child. Now I can watch them, though I couldn’t before.
Once the shopping is loaded in the car, I drive home along the narrow lanes, past the golf course glimpsed through the tattered winter hedge, and the empty donkey field. The field beyond this has rows of empty trailers and a boarded-up shop, dismal in the dull light, then the first little brick bungalows of the village. I know them so well I hardly see them. That was what happened with Naomi too. I stopped seeing her because I knew her by heart. I drive slowly past the church and up my lane.
As I bring the shopping in from the car and dump everything on the floor, Bertie noses at the unfamiliar mass of plastic bags. In the kitchen, the light suddenly darkens: someone has followed me to the doorway. I swing around, catching my head on the corner of the open cabinet, tearing the scar that had formed after my fall into the tree. It throbs immediately and the blood wells.
I recognize his shoulders against the light before I see his face.
“Michael!”
I am surprised by how glad I feel, but as I move toward him my hands feel weak with sudden dread. What has he come to tell me? The tomatoes drop and the foil-wrapped Christmas pudding rolls under the table. Bertie runs to investigate and pats it farther away with his paw.
“What’s happened, Michael? Say quickly.”
“Nothing. Nothing’s happened.” He spreads his arms wide, opens his hands to show they are e
mpty, no secrets. “I was passing—”
“Passing?” No one ever passes Burton Bradstock.
“I’m on my way to Devon to see my folks. Christmas, remember?” Then his face changes, his eyebrows draw together.
“You’re bleeding. You cut your head.”
He pulls a white handkerchief from his pocket, and his hands are careful as he presses the wound through the soft linen. Close up, I catch that familiar, freshly laundered scent mixed with toothpaste. His mouth, inches from my eyes, is unguarded. My skin tingles with the surprise of touch and I am completely still. I feel him registering that. As his hands drop lightly to my shoulders he looks down at me.
“It’s stopped bleeding now.” He pauses. “You look well.” His eyes are warm as he takes in my face. “I’ve wondered . . .” and he reaches for the right words.
I step back. “It’s good to see you again. Sorry to greet you like a death’s-head.”
We stare at each other; he is taken aback by my words. He looks down and I can see how the brightness in my tone has jarred. What had he imagined would happen when we met? That brief kiss months ago in the kitchen in Bristol had come from a moment of exhaustion. My guard had been down; a mistake, nothing more.
“Coffee?” I turn, hands hovering over the mugs, waiting for the moment to pass.
“Yes. No. I thought we might go for a walk . . . I’ll buy you lunch. When I was driving into the village, I saw signs to a restaurant on the beach.”
I pick up the dropped food and push it into the fridge, then put Bertie on his lead. I check quickly in the mirror. He said I looked well. How is that possible? My hair is a wild black tangle and I never wear makeup now, but my eyes are blue against skin turned brown from walking by the sea. The fresh air and simple food have made my face recover. The mirror gives me back my curious glance, as though I am looking at someone whose face I recognize but can’t quite place.
We go out together through the garden gate into the field.
“I’ve thought of you down here so often,” he says, turning to me, smiling slightly. “It looks completely different from how I imagined it.”
Did he think there would still be blood on the floor and dirty wineglasses? Desiccated flies on the windowsill?
“Are you all right, mostly?” His voice is careful; he wants to know but isn’t sure how to ask.
Am I all right? As we walk through the field, then cross the road to the beach path, I think of the evenings in front of the fire, sketching memories. The stack of paintings behind the chair getting thicker. Dan calls after school sometimes to help with odd jobs. He’s painted a room for me. We’ve become friends, though we don’t talk much. I look forward to his company; he reminds me of my boys. There are cups of tea with Mary, and I’ve been to the library with her twice now. Theo phones from time to time and I visit Ed. Ted sends the occasional postcard or text when he leaves the country for meetings. But there is never a moment without pain at the back of it: her face is everywhere. Sometimes the need to know what happened is stronger than I can bear. When I first came to the cottage, I would stand on the pebbles, with the icy water frothing around my legs, holding Bertie to stop me from walking into the sea.
“ ‘All right’ doesn’t quite . . . it’s less than that, but—”
“Tell me.”
And then we are talking, at least I am. He is listening. I am talking and crying; it feels dangerous to let the words flow unchecked but I can’t seem to stop. The despair and loneliness of these last four months flood through me and he puts his arm around me. He lets me tell him everything until I feel emptied out and the tears have stopped. We walk up and down the beach while the wind catches the edges of the pounding waves, tears off bits of foam, and blows them at us.
The Beach Hut café is open. I haven’t been inside for years, not since the children were small, when we would come in for fish and chips. In the summer there are noisy crowds eating out under a new awning, but today it’s quiet. A few of the tables are occupied by old men reading the Dorchester Chronicle, dogs by their feet. The place smells of tea and wet dog. Michael orders fish and chips for us and within minutes we are given fresh slices of flaky haddock and piles of hot salty chips on thick white plates. We take them to a table by the window. I rub a clear patch on the steamy glass and watch the breaking waves crash on the empty beach.
My eyes feel sore with crying but I’ve let something go and I feel better. It’s good to be here with Michael. With the sea outside it reminds me of being on a boat. No one can reach us, different rules could apply.
Michael says quietly that he’s been promoted at work and then, looking outside, tells me that his wife left him six months ago.
I feel guilty; he has listened to me for so long. “You never said. I’m sorry.”
“Should I have? Should I have let you know?” He looks at me and I look away quickly.
A year ago we had reached for each other one night in the kitchen in Bristol. Ted had gone to bed without a word; Michael had come by on the way home. I was tired and tearful, angry with Ted for being able to retreat into sleep. Michael’s kindness had been something to hold on to.
Michael is looking out of the window again; the clouds are reflected in the gray of his eyes. The words come slowly.
“We married young.” He stops, shrugs. “I don’t want to bore you with my stuff.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t talk about it much. It’s over now.”
“Tell me.”
He hesitates a moment longer. “We got married at eighteen in Cape Town; she was pregnant. She miscarried after a few weeks . . .”
I should be able to hear these words, pregnant and miscarried, by now without an answering sharp stab of pain. Naomi’s child would be nearly six months old. I count the months as they go by. If the pregnancy had continued and the baby survived. If she had. I clench my teeth together, and the sharpness fades a little. Michael hasn’t noticed; he has carried on.
“. . . thought England might be different, with less pressure from our families, better medical advice—but she didn’t get pregnant again.” He looks at his hands, then back at me. “I had to make a career, but the hours were long. It was hard for her. She was so alone.”
I know how it would have been. By ten at night she would scrape his waiting supper into the garbage can. Another night she might arrange something, a movie outing or a play, and sit ready, waiting with her coat on at home until after the performance had begun, then she would sit on, simply holding the white envelope with the tickets inside. Days on her own, though the nights would be worse. Every month she would cry when her period came.
Michael continues. “She started volunteering for the Citizens Advice Bureau, then she got pregnant and this time she didn’t lose it.”
“So you do have a child . . .” His eyes are so serious that I falter. “Was it a boy or—”
“A boy. Not mine. The father is a lawyer she met in the bureau. Married, but he’s left his wife.” He pauses. “We should never have gotten married in the first place.”
How could he have known, though? How could I? When you are young you have no idea what you will need as time passes or how strong you might have to be.
“Don’t look so worried.” He smiles. “It’s history now. I’m sorry I took advantage . . .”
He’s sorry he let himself say anything? Or maybe he’s thinking back to the evening in the kitchen a year ago, and so I think myself back there too. His hand had been warm on my back, his mouth had held mine. After all, it had had the rough edge of something real, when nothing else had.
Outside, the air has darkened. The white surf glows through the rain; the waves farther back have merged with the mauve of early evening and have become invisible. It’s colder than before, but the food and talking have warmed me. We walk back over the fields, hands bumping. Insid
e the cottage I feed Bertie, Michael makes the fire. It pulls at my heart to see him here now, quietly making my fire, bending seriously to the task. The kindling catches and flares. Then he turns to me.
I walk into his arms and we begin kissing as though we had never stopped. It is like the heat of sun when it’s been cold and dark for a long time. He leads me to the fire, and takes off my coat, takes his off. We undress by firelight. He pulls the thick blanket from its place on the sofa, and covers us both. We lie together, touching along the length of our bodies; his skin feels familiar and new at the same time. Safe and dangerous. He has sensed my unease, and pulling slightly away he strokes my face in the dark.
“What is it?” he asks softly. “Tell me.”
“How will this work? Are you allowed to do this? I mean—”
“Don’t worry.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “It’s our secret.”
Our secret? Should we have one? His arms are close around me, comforting, and my unease dissolves. His hands move slowly over me, and as my skin begins to heat I turn into him, pulled in by the warmth, wanting this now. Into my mind comes the thought that Naomi did this too; she must have been pulled into something secret before it changed into something dangerous. Then his mouth covers mine and we begin to move together as though we have been waiting for this for a long time.
BRISTOL, 2009
FIVE DAYS AFTER
“I’m sorry.”
Michael looked stricken. His hand dropped to his side.
“It’s okay.” I felt too tired for this; I could hear the impatience edging my voice. “Don’t look so guilty. It doesn’t matter.” I didn’t want this to make any difference, because we still had to work together.
We were in the kitchen, Ted was upstairs.
After the television appeal in the morning he had gone straight to work. He had been there; he said it grounded him to carry on. It worked for him, but for me there was no ground, it had ceased to exist. I lived in a black space across which I saw him distantly. I felt sorry and angry from far away. I couldn’t understand how he could go out, greet patients and colleagues. When he came back he ate quickly, standing up, then went to bed, gray with exhaustion.