The Empty Desk

by Steve Lockley

  It seemed so sad. Four lives ruined, not just one. Maybe Chrissie and her dad were happy now with their new lives, but they weren’t the ones they would have lived if Alice hadn’t disappeared. Everything seemed to have fallen apart for them.

  “I’m sorry,” Melinda said again.

  The woman gave the smallest of forced smiles. “So was that all you came for? To tell me that Alice was dead? I think that even I had come to terms with that after all this time.”

  “Could you let me have a number for Chrissie?” Melinda asked.

  The woman nodded. “You’ll want to tell her too. I understand that, but I’m not sure that she will want to know. It’s almost as if she never thinks of herself as having had a sister anymore. She can’t stand it when I mention her name, so we don’t really talk about anything any longer. We hardly seem to have anything in common. It might be better if it comes from you rather than me. At least it won’t give her something else to hate me for.”

  She took the few short steps to cross the room and retrieved an address book from the drawer of a small table which carried the telephone. She flicked through it and found the entry she was looking for. Melinda put the number straight in her cell phone, ready to call her when she had left the poor woman to what remained of her grief.

  She said goodbye, leaving the last of her tea going cold in the cup, and made to leave, and for the first time the woman asked the kind of question that Melinda had expected to hear, the kind she dreaded being asked. This time she had no answers.

  “Did she suffer?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Melinda answered. “I haven’t managed to get to talk to her properly yet.”

  The woman nodded, showing her understanding, then led her to the door.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Melinda drove away from the little house before parking again to make the call, but the line was busy. It had been much easier to talk to Alice’s mother than she had expected, but somehow she knew that speaking to the little girl’s sister could be much more difficult. Stopping to think about it before she made the call was unlikely to make it any easier. She waited for a few minutes before she tried the number again. This time it was answered right away.

  “Hello, my name’s Melinda,” she began.

  “Hello,” Chrissie said. “Mom just called. She told me that she’d given you my number.” The voice was cold, distant.

  “Did she tell you what I would be calling about?”

  “She did. I’m not sure how I can help. I’m not even sure if I believe you.”

  “But you’re still talking to me,” Melinda said.

  “I have no idea if you can talk to my sister or not, but I want to believe that you can. Would you mind if we had this conversation face to face?”

  “You’re coming home?” For a moment Melinda thought that she might expect her to drive out to wherever she was living now, and that might take some time to organize.

  “I don’t think of it as home, at least not anymore. I haven’t even been back there since I was a child.”

  “How soon will you be coming?”

  “I should be able to make it tomorrow. If all goes well, I’ll be there by lunchtime. Is that okay?”

  “Of course it is. Will you be going to see your mom first?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think I’d like to see you before I talk to her. Maybe it’s time we tried to heal a few wounds, but I won’t be able to do that until I’ve had the chance to talk to you about Alice.”

  “She asked me to find you,” Melinda said. “Not her mother, but her sister. She obviously loved you very much.”

  There was a moment of silence at the other end of the call, but Melinda didn’t want to force her to talk. If she was prepared to come back after all these years, there was probably something she needed to say to either Melinda or her mother, and she didn’t want to make it any harder than it needed to be.

  “Where shall I meet you?” Chrissie asked eventually. “I’m not sure that I’ll recognize many places.”

  “Maybe you could find your way to the school?” Melinda suggested. She decided against mentioning that was where she had seen her sister. She might need to take her there at some point, but she didn’t want to say anything that might delay it if the need arose.

  “Sounds perfect,” Chrissie said. “I’m sure that my GPS will be able to get me there.”

  “Do you have far to come?” Melinda hadn’t recognized the area code in the telephone number.

  “A couple of hours’ drive.”

  “Call me when you’re almost here. I can get to the school within twenty minutes,” Melinda said.

  When they had ended the call, Melinda couldn’t help but feel surprised that the woman was prepared to travel a fair distance to complete a journey that she had not been able to make since she had left. Something had kept her away all this time, and yet she was prepared to return at little notice. There was clearly something unresolved that needed to be taken care of once and for all. Melinda wanted to speak to Alice again before her sister arrived to let her know that she had found her and that she should be there soon. She needed to do everything she could to make sure that the ghost would be on hand at the right time.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Dana was still there at the end of the day when Melinda went to pick up Aiden. He was still talking outside with a couple of his friends who were waiting for their rides home. He was happy enough to hang around with them for a few minutes while she slipped inside. Dana was clearing up the debris from the day’s classes when she found her.

  “Oh, hi, Melinda, I wasn’t expecting to see you today. Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine. I was hoping to have another talk with Alice, if she was still here.”

  “Is she?”

  Melinda didn’t need to look to know that she wasn’t there. She had glanced across the room the moment she had reached the doorway and found the desk empty once more.

  “I’m afraid not,” she said.

  “Have you managed to find anything out that might help?”

  “I spoke with her mother last night,” she said.

  “You’ve found her?”

  “She still lives in town, but she’s gone back to her maiden name. That’s what made her harder to find.”

  “Do you think that Alice wants to see her? Is that what’s keeping her here?”

  “No, she said it’s her sister she wants to see. Her name’s Chrissie. She lives out of town, but she’ll be coming back tomorrow.”

  “You’ve managed to speak to her too? You really have been busy. How on earth have you managed to do all this? I thought you just talked to ghosts?”

  “It’s far more than that, and I have plenty of help,” Melinda said. “But once I start picking at a thread, it doesn’t take long before I’ve unraveled the whole thing. It doesn’t mean that it will be enough to help Alice pass over, unless she turns up at the right time.”

  “Shame you can’t just leave a message for her,” Dana laughed. “Like an afterlife answering machine. That would make life a lot easier for you, wouldn’t it?”

  “Undoubtedly,” Melinda said, then realized that was exactly what she needed to do. “Do you have a piece of paper and a roll of tape?”

  A few minutes later they were admiring their ingenuity. Taped to the desk was a piece of paper with a simple message that read, “Your sister is coming today. Please wait here.”

  “That should do the trick,” Melinda said. “As long as the cleaners don’t try to take it off.”

  “Don’t worry about that. They won’t do any more than run a vacuum cleaner tonight and maybe empty the wastepaper basket if I’m lucky. But I’ll make sure that it’s still there in the morning.”

  “Thanks. Let’s just hope that Alice is back here in the morning, or Chrissie migh
t have a wasted journey,” Melinda said, though she was already thinking that perhaps this might be a turning point for the relationship between mother and daughter as well as the two sisters. She certainly hoped that some good would come out of this.

  “Are you ready?” Aiden said from the doorway. Clearly his friends had all been picked up and he was ready to go home.

  “No rest for the wicked,” Dana suggested.

  “You wouldn’t believe the half of it,” Melinda replied and picked up her bag. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Melinda saw the girl in the distance walking away from her.

  “Alice,” she called, quickening her stride to catch up with her, but she couldn’t get any closer. She felt her heartbeat start to increase, her breathing get a little faster as her brisk walk turned into a jog, but still she couldn’t catch up with her. The girl didn’t seem to be walking any quicker than she had been at the start, but she was moving too fast for the gap to be closed, no matter how fast Melinda tried to run.

  “Alice! Please wait for me.” She thought the little girl would pause and turn to face her, but it was as if she couldn’t hear. She was sure that the little girl could hear every word, but there was no reaction.

  “Alice!”

  Melinda woke with a start, sitting up in bed and struggling to catch her breath.

  “You okay, honey?” Jim said, sitting up beside her and offering a comforting arm. “Bad dream?”

  She tried to hold on to the details of the dream that had been so real, and yet there seemed to be none. She had been trying to catch Alice but couldn’t do it no matter how hard she tried, and even now that she was wide awake she struggled to catch her breath, her heart still racing. Did that mean anything? Was her dream trying to tell her that she was chasing a shadow that would always be out of her reach? She wanted to help the girl, but she had been lucky to spend even a couple of minutes with her before she had disappeared.

  “Something like that,” she said.

  “Was it the girl you’re trying to help?” he asked, pulling her close to him.

  Jim always seemed to know what was troubling her, even though she did not have the same kind of connection with him that she had with Aiden. He knew when to hold her to make her feel better, but he also knew when to give her space to work things out for herself. This time she didn’t really know what she wanted, or what she needed. She kept telling herself that it would be better when this was all over, but she had no idea of when that might be if the meeting tomorrow failed to provide a solution.

  “Her sister’s coming tomorrow,” she said, realizing that she hadn’t told him everything that had happened the night before. After Ned had left she had come upstairs to find him stretched out next to Aiden with a book flat on his chest, both of them fast asleep. She had covered him up, and at some point in the night he had made it back to their bed.

  “Today, you mean,” he said, sinking back into the bed, his voice sleepy. He must have been exhausted after working such a long shift.

  She glanced at the digital alarm clock at the side of the bed and saw the red glow of the numbers in the dark. It was almost three o’clock. She had felt Jim crawl into bed a little after midnight, but by then she had been gripped in the arms of a sleep that did not want to release her. She had felt the soft kiss on the top of her head, but her body had been unable to respond. Now she just wanted to curl up with him again and hope that a dream-free sleep would return.

  She rested her head on his chest and listened to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, felt the rise and fall of his breathing against her cheek. Having Jim in her life made everything else possible somehow. The moment she closed her eyes, though, the girl was there again, but this time she knew it was only in her mind. This time she wouldn’t run after her.

  Instead she watched. Alice seemed to be walking, but she did not move any farther away from her. She heard the girl’s name being called, but the sound had not come from her lips. In the background she could still hear the sound of Jim drifting back to sleep, a comforting sound that helped her see what was real and what was happening inside her mind. But if this was not a dream, what was it? Was it some kind of message that the girl was trying to send to her, some memory that she needed to share? Tiredness overcame her as she tried to hang on to reality, and when she woke again it was with the feeling that she was falling to the sound of a distant beep, beep, beep, which she realized was her alarm clock telling her that it was time to start a new day.

  She left Jim in bed, still fast asleep. Today was a day off that sadly she would be unable to share. He had wanted to take Aiden to school, but Melinda had insisted that it would be better for him to try to get some extra sleep while the house was quiet. It was a luxury that he rarely enjoyed, and she was not about to deny it to him. She knew that she might have to return to the school in the afternoon to try to talk to Alice again and would bring Aiden home then. Instead she left Jim a list of odd jobs that needed to be done around the house if he had the time but that he could easily fit in later in the absence of any other plans.

  “I had a funny dream last night,” Aiden said as he struggled to pour cereal into his bowl, the box too large for him to handle easily.

  “What was that, honey?” Melinda asked as she helped him with the milk. At five, independence was important, but so was avoiding spending time cleaning up spills.

  “Alice was walking away from me and I couldn’t catch up. I ran faster, but she kept getting away from me. It didn’t matter how fast I ran—I couldn’t get any closer.”

  Melinda almost spilled the milk herself. Had they shared the same dream? Had Alice projected it into both of them somehow? Or was it simply a dream Aiden had been so strongly caught up in that it had filtered along their psychic link, causing her to experience the same dream? It was impossible to tell, and there was no way of knowing if it was important anyway. But had his dream continued for him after it had ended for her?

  “So what happened then?” she asked.

  “We kept running through a field. It was like a game. She kept laughing. I don’t think she wanted to be caught, but then she just disappeared. I’ve no idea where she went. Do you think she’ll be back at school today?”

  “I hope so,” Melinda said. “I’ve got someone coming for her to see.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Melinda explained about her sister coming from out of town, for the first time in a long time.

  “I think she’ll like that,” he said.

  “Do you?”

  “Sure. I’d feel happy if I hadn’t seen you for a long time and you came to school. Even if I was a ghost.”

  “Well, don’t you worry about that, honey. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “That’s good,” he said and pushed a spoon overloaded with cereal into his mouth with a smile.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  It was almost lunchtime by the time she received the call. It had been a cold, gray morning but at least it had been dry, and a steady stream of customers had been into the store. Some were familiar faces, while others looked as if they had never set foot inside before and were a little overwhelmed by the range of things she had for sale.

  “My GPS tells me I’m about half an hour away from the school, but there’s somewhere I wouldn’t mind going first, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure,” Melinda said, half expecting her to suggest somewhere where they could grab a bite to eat.

  “Do you know a place called Parker’s Gorge?”

  “Of course. My husband took me out there for a picnic once, before we were married. Very romantic. I have a feeling that it will have changed quite a bit since you were last here. Would you like me to meet you there?”

  “Do you mind? It’s somewhere that Alice and I used to play. I’ll meet you near the bridge.”

  “No problem,�
� Melinda said. “I’ll close the shop and be there as quickly as I can.”

  “Thanks,” the other woman said, then hung up. The only customer in the shop flashed her a smile but made no sign of hurrying to make a purchase. Melinda hoped that he would take the hint when she started to clear some things away. There was the chance that she might not make it back this afternoon, and she hated the idea of leaving it in a mess for the morning. Eventually the man left without a word, and without buying anything. She was later setting off than she had hoped and was sure that Chrissie was going to get to the gorge before her. She tried calling but there was no reply. At least by the time she climbed into her car, the cloud cover had broken and the sun peered through, bringing with it some welcome warmth.

  She picked up the road out of town heading to what had once been farmland but was now gradually being developed as more and more houses were added to the town. Soon they would reach their limit as they grew closer and closer to the river and the land became no longer suitable for building on. As far as Melinda knew the bridge across the gorge was still there, even though it had been some time since she had last been there.

  Without too much trouble, she found her way to the parking area near the sign that pointed in the direction of the footbridge. The air was gray with the dust of heavy machinery and building work, and had deposited a film of grime on most of the cars, which no doubt belonged to the building workers. She parked the car and took a look around for Chrissie. Even though she had no idea what she looked like, there was unlikely to be more than one other woman there on a day like that, unless she was wearing a hard hat.

  Melinda grabbed her purse from the car and locked the doors behind her. The noise was overwhelming and she knew that there was no point in trying to call Chrissie again. Even if she answered there was no way that Melinda would be able to hear a word she said, thanks to the rumble of heavy machinery. Instead she followed the path that led to the footbridge and hoped that she was already there. As it turned out, she needn’t have worried.