I nodded into the phone. ‘Yes. Pool deck?’
‘Yes,’ said Doris. ‘Deck 12. Go to the pool and you’ll find it there. Will you tell Mr Templeton, or would you like me to call him?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Mrs Scrivener? Will you inform Mr Templeton, or shall I call his cabin?’
‘Sorry. Please could you tell him?’
18 July 2013, 10 p.m.
With stuffed dark-leather sofas and armchairs scattered over carpets patterned in red, blue, and gold, the ship’s library was reminiscent of a gentleman’s club, the air within it stiller, quieter than anywhere else on the ship. Passing it on my way to the pool deck, I’d never seen anyone in there besides John. Now, I walked in in silence, nodded to Doris and the captain, who stood by the window, and sat down. John was already there. The tension was palpable as we waited for someone to speak.
The captain stepped forward. ‘Mr Templeton. Mrs Scrivener. Thank you for coming at such a late hour, but I wanted to speak to you as a matter of priority.’
‘Thank you,’ I murmured, not sure if a reply was expected. John shifted in his chair.
Captain Steigman’s gaze swept around the library, shifting like a search light until it had touched everyone in the room. He took a deep breath, steadied his hands on the back of a chair and spoke. ‘The search has been called off.’
I pressed my hand to my mouth, stifling a sob. Even though I’d been primed to hear these words, the sound of them left me winded; until now I’d held out hope. There had been a mistake: Mum had been picked up by another ship. She’d been brought aboard, cold, weak, wrapped in a silver blanket, but alive. She’d floated on her back; she’d clung onto some flotsam; she’d been rescued by a lifeboat. Failing any of those scenarios, her body had been recovered. Anything but this; this inconclusive conclusion.
Captain Stiegman stood motionless. He was waiting for a response. I looked at John. He didn’t meet my gaze. He was looking at the floor, his thin lips pressed in a hard line, his expression inscrutable. The only part of my brother that moved was his hand, his fingers tapping a rhythm on the arm of the stuffed leather armchair. I wanted to speak but there were no words.
Captain Stiegman paced the library floor, his steps lithe in his rubber-soled shoes. Doris stood awkwardly by the bookshelves, her walkie-talkie in her hand, her lipstick rudely red. Outside the picture window, small whitecaps topped the ocean like frosting. I imagined my mother’s arms poking desperately up from the crests of each wave, her mouth forming an ‘O’ as the lights of the ship faded into the distance. In the library, you couldn’t feel the low rumble of the ship’s engines that permeated the lower decks, but snatches of a Latin beat carried from the Vida Loca dance party taking place on the pool deck outside. Doris’s walkie-talkie crackled to life then fell silent.
‘The decision has not been taken lightly,’ said the captain, his English curt with a German accent, his words staccato. ‘We have to face the facts. Mrs Templeton has been missing for over forty hours. The ship was sailing at full speed on the night she was last seen. We have no idea when she went overboard, nor where – the search area covers thousands of square kilometres.’
He paused, looked at John and me, then – perhaps heartened by the absence of tears – continued, ticking off points with his fingers as he spoke. A band of dull platinum circled his wedding finger.
‘As you are already aware, I did not turn the ship. This was because, with Mrs Templeton missing for thirty-nine hours before the search was initiated, I felt there was nothing to be gained by retracing our route. It is my belief that Mrs Templeton did not fall overboard shortly before she was reported missing, but many hours prior to that, most likely in the early hours of the sixteenth of July.’
I opened my mouth to speak – this was pure supposition – but the captain raised his hand in a request for me to be patient. ‘However,’ he said, ‘tenders were dispatched from both Mykonos and Santorini, which is the area in which the ship was sailing when Mrs Templeton was last seen. A fleet of tenders traced our route from either end.’ Now he paused and looked at each of us in turn once more. I gave a tiny shake of my head, eyes closed; there was nothing I could say to change the way in which events had run.
‘The Coast Guard was informed as soon as the ship search yielded nothing,’ continued the captain. ‘Two helicopters were scrambled and all ships within a thirty kilometre radius of the course we took that night were asked to join the search.’ He paused again, looked at his shoes, then up again. ‘I believe there were five vessels involved. The search has been fruitless. Mrs Templeton could now have been in the water, without a floatation device, for up to forty-eight hours. She was …’ he searched his memory … ‘seventy years old?’ His voice trailed off and he looked again at John, then at me, his eyebrows raised, the implication clear: she could not have survived.
John closed his eyes and nodded almost imperceptibly. Captain Stiegman echoed the nod. I opened my mouth then shut it again.
‘Thank you,’ said the captain. He bowed his head; looked up again after a respectful pause. I felt the thump of the music from outside. ‘With the engines on full power we should make Venice by dawn. I’m obliged to inform local police we have one passenger lost at sea. They will come aboard. They will talk to you. In a case like this, it is a formality.’ He removed his captain’s hat, held it to his chest, his eyes closed again for a second. ‘I am sorry for your loss.’
‘Well,’ said John, when the door had clicked shut and silence once more filled the library. The look on his face said, ‘I told you so’. He’d accepted before I had that Mum wasn’t coming back, and now he’d been proven right. I felt beaten; empty. This was it: a five-minute speech, and our mother was no more.
‘Well,’ I said flatly.
I got up and left the library. Latino music jarred my ears as I yanked open the door and walked across the pool deck looking neither left nor right at the bikini-clad dancers swinging their hips in time to the beat. Without thinking where I was going, I walked along and down the ship until I reached the aft: the deserted promenade deck where I’d spent so many hours watching the foaming wake in happier times. I pressed my top rib into the railing. Mum was shorter than I was. I wondered, for the hundredth time, how it had happened.
Gripping my hands around the same railing, I cried out into the wind, but the endlessness of the ocean served only to show me my own insignificance. In the darkness there was no horizon. Black water gave way to black sky. Moonlight sparkled on the water; stars hung above my head. Drawing fresh air into my lungs, I breathed deeply and stared at the sea as the ship drew through the blackness. Even the hum of its engines, louder down here, couldn’t drown out the soul-breaking sadness that thrummed in my chest. I realised my cheeks were wet. Somewhere out there was my mother. Only the ocean knew where.
‘What happened?’ I asked the sea. ‘Did someone do this, or was it your choice?’ My voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Was it because of us?’ I gripped the railing and looked up at the sky. ‘Did we do this to you?’ I paused. ‘I love you. Wherever you are.’ I said it again, louder this time. ‘I love you, Mum.’
Behind me, the electric sliding door clicked and swooshed open. I turned, startled. John came towards me, a hand held out tentatively.
‘I thought you’d be here,’ he said. ‘I came to see if you were all right.’
‘How can I be all right? How can I ever be all right again?’
‘She was my mother, too.’
‘Maybe you should have thought of that before all this happened.’
‘What?’
‘She didn’t slip!’ I shouted, banging the railing with my fist, almost enjoying the physical pain. ‘Look at this! Look how high it is. How could she have slipped? It’s physically impossible!’
‘Do you still think I did it? That I’m some sort of serial mother-murderer?’
We glared at each other and I understood that, for all his faults, he hadn’t done it. Fac
ed with him now, I just felt defeated. I looked away first. ‘Maybe we drove her to it.’
‘What?’
‘Think about it. We made her feel like a burden. Neither of us wanted to look after her. We were always arguing about whose turn it was. She must have known.’ I paused and John didn’t say anything. ‘And she was always so independent. She hated being a burden. And then that whole thing about Harbourside. Remember how upset she was that day in the pub? Did you ever question why she changed her mind so suddenly? She didn’t change her mind. She had no intention, ever, of moving into Harbourside, or anywhere like it.’ I paused. ‘She’s not stupid. She knew we didn’t want to take care of her. We drove her to this. Her death is on both our hands.’
‘But you moved to Cornwall to be closer to her. She knew that, too,’ John’s voice was surprisingly gentle.
‘Mark lost his job because we moved to Cornwall. I took a pay cut. It was because of that move that we had so little money.’ I shook my head, remembering the desperation. ‘We were all right in London. I must have made her feel so guilty when I was going on about not being to afford anything. She knew we were struggling.’ And then another thought hit me. ‘She’s done this so we could get Pa’s money. She did it for us.’
We stood in silence for a moment, then John spoke.
‘Even if she did plan this, she was happy. Did she look unhappy on the cruise? No, she didn’t. Not for a moment. Whatever way you look at it, this is what she planned and what she wanted. I just wish we knew why.’
I could barely swallow for the lump in my throat. ‘She called this trip her “last hurrah”.’
John joined me at the railing and looked out to sea. After a minute or two, he put his arm around my shoulder. We stood there for a long time, in silence.
18 July 2013, 11.30 p.m.
Back in my cabin, I dragged my suitcase out from under the bed and heaved it up onto the bed. I had no will to pack. But we were due to arrive in Venice at 6 a.m. and I knew I had to be ready – for the police, the enquiries, the questions. Ready to face whatever it was that had happened to Mum.
I picked out clothes to wear the following day – travelling clothes – then opened my suitcase. Inside was the collection of bags I’d wrapped my shoes in. I fished them out and saw underneath them an envelope, ‘Alexandra’ handwritten on the front.
I hadn’t put it in my suitcase; it hadn’t been there when I’d unpacked at the start of the cruise. I sat on the bed, pushing myself back against the pillows, lifted the envelope to my face and inhaled: was there a hint of night jasmine, or did I imagine it? I traced my finger over the letters that made up my name, then I put the envelope on the bedside table and closed my eyes.
I knew who the letter was from; I recognised the writing, of course. What I didn’t know was what my mother would have to say. I breathed deeply for a moment, then, with a sense that nothing would ever be the same again, I picked up the envelope with hands that felt drunk. I slid my finger under the flap and pulled out the letter my mother had written me before she’d gone missing. She’d written in Royal Blue ink using the Cross fountain pen she’d had all my life. I could picture her sitting at her desk in Cornwall, gripping the silver pen with her stiff fingers as she mulled over what she was going to say. The blue ink looped across the page, its twists and turns as familiar to me as the pattern of veins in my wrist. I started to read:
Dear Alexandra,
Yes. You’re right. It really is me. That tells you one thing already: my disappearance was not an accident. Did you really think I would be so careless as to let myself slip overboard?
You don’t have to answer that. But I’ll say it again: my disappearance was not an accident.
And I know you, Alexandra. I know you’ll put this letter down now and start going over and over things that were said and done, looking for ways to blame yourself. Please don’t. I’ve not done this because of anything you or John said or did. This is something that came from inside myself; something I needed to do for myself. It was time.
Promise me you’ll move forward with your life, reaping all the success and happiness I know you deserve, secure in the knowledge that I love you, sweet Lexi.
Mum xxx
I threw the letter down on the bed and let the tears come. They spilled down my face, threatening to ruin the ink of my mother’s handwriting. Thoughts churned in my head. Mum planning the cruise. Mum writing the invitations, inscribing the calligraphy on the envelopes, knowing all along what she was going to do; planning her suicide. Mum at her birthday dinner; at the White Night party; dancing with Stavros. Look after yourself, darling. She’d known she wouldn’t see me again. Mum climbing over the railing, taking one last look at the ship, and making her jump down into the blackness.
Lying on the bed my body convulsed with sobs. The sadness was more than I thought I could bear. And among it all, among all that pain was one little word that, each time I remembered it, triggered a fresh round of tears: Lexi.
Not once in forty-three years had Mum called me Lexi.
PART III
Before
September 2012
St Ives
Audrey sits back in her chair and flexes her wrists: if she’s not careful she’s going to end up that RSI thing as well as eye strain. She looks over the laptop screen out of the window, trying to train her eyes past the bright green of her garden and on the sea beyond. It’s warm for September and today the bay is the same bright blue as you see on the covers of holiday brochures – she could be looking at the coast of Italy, Spain, France, or Greece. Audrey smiles at the view – there’s not a day goes by that she’s not grateful to be living in Cornwall, to have this view, even on bleak days when the sea is grey and menacing.
Today, though, with the warmth of the sun already making the garden buzz, is the kind of day that makes Audrey want to spend the afternoon doing nothing more than pottering about in the garden, then perhaps reading outside with a cup of tea. Audrey likes her solitude; being alone has never bothered her, not that her son understands that. His idea of showing her a good time is inflicting his family on her. Speaking of which, Audrey pulls her eyes back to her computer and checks the clock on the screen: 11.30. She’s got about an hour before John arrives – he’s taking her out for lunch. Audrey wonders for a minute if there’s any way that he might not bring Anastasia and the children, then dismisses the idea: it’s customary for Audrey to foot the bill at these lunches and, if there’s any idea of a free meal, her daughter-in-law will be first in line.
Audrey turns back to the computer and flicks screens to her email inbox. Still nothing. She’s been acting like an addict, checking reflexively every time she comes to a break in what she’s doing. But it’s early days yet: she only sent the email last night, and it’s impertinent of her, she tells herself, to expect a reply quite so quickly. She takes a deep breath. Have faith, she thinks. Have faith.
She clicks back onto her search engine. The internet has been a revelation for her; it’s opened up her life. She simply can’t believe how much information is available at the touch of a few buttons and she’s spent the past month searching anything and everything that comes into her head, from holiday destinations and recipes to people she used to know. She laughs now to think how nervous she used to be of using a computer. But Audrey’s treated her internet education as a project, forcing herself to learn something new each day from her bibles: The Internet for Dummies and Computers for Seniors for Dummies. She sees the internet as a friend now – she realises it’s a bit like having the world’s best library right there on her dining room table – and, now she’s become more accomplished at refining her searches, she finds herself dwelling more and more in the past.
Audrey’s favourite topic is India in the 1970s. She’s embarrassed to admit how much time she’s spent poring over photographs and reading the personal accounts and memoirs of people who lived in Bombay around the same time as she did, or who travelled to India on the SS Oriana. She’s sta
red at grainy back-and-white pictures of the ship, and lost herself in memories of that intense time she spent on board. It’s not unusual for her to have tears running down her face as she posts a thank you to those who have painstakingly typed up their diaries and posted them online.
A ping from the computer makes Audrey catch her breath. She flicks the screen from her current search to her email and squints her eyes to see what’s new in her inbox: it’s not the reply she’s been hoping for, but it’s still exciting. She’s subscribed to a website for Indian ex-expats, and the new email is a message alerting her about a talk and photo exhibition on Bombay to be held at Truro Library. One of the pictures is included in the email and Audrey doubleclicks it and zooms in so she can see it clearly – it’s nothing special, just a typical view of a cluttered Bombay street but, as she stares at it, Audrey smells again the distinct smell of the salty, sweaty air; she hears the honks of the cars, the shouts of street hawkers; the thrum of a city living life to the full, and she feels the hum of life in her veins.
‘Truro,’ she says thoughtfully. Alexandra lives there. Without traffic, it’s about forty-five minutes’ drive away. The cogs of Audrey’s brain start whirring and it’s with an unfamiliar sense of excitement that she clicks the link to register her attendance.
The doorbell rings and Audrey jumps. She’s kept the last owner’s electric bell that chimes the Westminster Quarters. Although its tinny sound is cheap, she likes the length of the ring – unlike a quick knock, it leaves her in absolutely no doubt that someone’s at the door.
‘All through this hour, Lord be my guide. And by thy power, no foot shall slide,’ Audrey sings along to the chime as she makes her way to the door. It’s not John yet, she hopes – first, she has an appointment with an art valuer. The picture – the one from the Barnes loo – is waiting on the dining table.
The Disappearance Page 24