‘Excuse me. Is it possible to see a guest list? From tonight?’
‘Um,’ says the assistant. ‘I’m not sure.’ He looks over towards the desk where Audrey had registered on her way in. The desk is unattended. ‘I can go and ask?’ His voice is weary. It’s gone closing time and he wants to leave, not set off on a wild goose chase for a dotty old lady.
‘If you could, I would appreciate it massively, thank you,’ says Audrey, and there’s something in her face that makes the assistant want to help. He heads off to look for the organiser of the night’s exhibition.
Audrey moves towards the reception desk, fully intending to wait until help comes over but, as she approaches the desk, she sees the guest list lying on top. She edges around to the back of the desk and stands there, reading through the names as best she can without picking up the list. It’s no good; although she can just about make out the word ‘Miranda’ her eyes aren’t good enough to read the address or the family name. Taking out her phone, Audrey flicks it onto camera mode, hovers the phone over the list and clicks. Just in time, she slips the phone back into her bag.
‘I’m sorry,’ says the library assistant, returning alone. ‘We’re not allowed to give out details without prior consent. Security. I’m sure you understand.’
He picks up the list somewhat defensively as if realising a breach of security has occurred and Audrey gets the wild urge to laugh out loud. It’s a list of old fogies who attended a photographic exhibition, not a list of terrorist targets. Still, she has what she needs in her bag.
‘Okay, I understand,’ she says. ‘At least I tried. Thank you.’
Suddenly full of a surprising energy, she turns and exits the library.
Audrey doesn’t know how she manages to open the car door, to start the engine, and find her way back to the A30. She’s driving on autopilot, her head too full of Miranda to do much more than go through the motions of driving. She’s aware, at a base level, that she probably isn’t in a fit state to drive; that she should have stayed overnight at Alexandra’s. But she wants to be alone. She needs to work out how it could possibly be that she’s just seen Alice Templeton in Truro Library. Alice Templeton was dead; she had to be: Audrey married her husband and took on her children. How could she possibly think she’d just seen Alice Templeton?
Audrey remembers Ralph’s words to her that night he found out about Mack: ‘No one leaves Ralph Templeton,’ and she shivers involuntarily. Audrey knows Ralph; knows what he’s capable of; knows what can happen in the underworld of Bombay. What happened with Alice? Could the twins’ mother really still be alive? Her thoughts race in circles but always come back to one thing: did they ever find her body? Audrey realises she’s gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles are white.
And then she’s at the roundabout. She sees, too late, a car speeding around the bend. Audrey slams on the brakes, skids for what seems like forever, tyres screaming as she tenses over the wheel and waits for the impact. None comes. Her car stops. The other car flies past. And then, from behind, a sudden screech of brakes and an impact that throws her head forward then slams it back onto the headrest and Audrey’s no longer thinking about Alice Templeton.
November 2012
St Ives
John brings Audrey back from the hospital. She’s stiff and she’s shaken but she’s all right. She barely slept a wink in the hospital bed; her mind was going over and over what Ralph had told her about his first wife. But always she stops at the same point. He hadn’t said much at all, she realises now. Just a few lines. The bare outline of a story. Why hadn’t she asked for more information? With a gush of shame, she remembers how thrilled she’d been that he’d proposed. Oh, sweet, naïve girl that she was, she’d taken his words at face value when he’d said Alice was dead. As he’d known she would. Her husband was a bigamist!
John plumps up the cushions, leads Audrey over to the sofa and settles her with the newspaper open to the crossword page.
‘Now,’ he says, ‘the hospital wants someone to stay with you tonight but I need to go. The twins have a swimming gala this afternoon so I’ll get Lexi to come down. Okay?’
‘There’s no need. She looked so tired last night. I’m absolutely fine on my own.’
‘No, Mum. Someone has to be with you. The hospital said. I’ll call her now, see when she can come.’
Audrey sighs. ‘If you must. Thank you.’
She waits for the front door to close behind John; waits until she hears his car start and reverse out of the driveway. Then she eases herself carefully up from the sofa and walks stiffly over to her laptop, picks it up, and climbs carefully back onto the sofa, balancing the computer on a cushion.
She turns it on and stares at the screen as it whirs to life. She’s well aware that she could walk away from this; could leave sleeping dogs to lie; live out the rest of her days quietly in St Ives without letting John and Alexandra know what she suspects. But then Audrey recalls the look on Miranda’s face as she stared at Alexandra, and she realises that she knew. Oh, the courage it must have taken her to walk away. She feels awed by the generosity of the gesture; can imagine how much Miranda would have ached to let her daughter know who she was.
‘Don’t get ahead of yourself,’ she says out loud.
The internet wasn’t around in the ‘70s, but Audrey hopes there’ll be something, somehow; some archives; someone’s memories. All she needs is a photo. If she sees a photo of Alice Templeton, she’ll know.
She Googles instructions on how to email a photo to herself. Then she opens up her email account and Googles instructions on how to download the picture she’s just sent herself. Within minutes, the picture she’s taken of the guest list is on her screen and Audrey enlarges it until the names are clear enough to read. She scans the list until she finds it.
‘Miranda Smith,’ she reads, testing the feel of the words on her lips. She pinches her bottom lip as she stares at the name. Of course it’s not going to be her real name.
Audrey opens another browser window, types in “Alice Templeton” and waits for a second while the results load. There are hundreds of thousands of entries. How would it be worded, she wonders? She types ‘Alice Templeton+Bombay+drown’ and takes a sharp breath as she sees what she honestly thought she’d never find: an archived article about the young mother called Alice Templeton, who went missing in Bombay. Fingers trembling on the mouse, Audrey looks for the date of the article: it tallies.
‘Missing mother presumed drowned,’ reads the headline, and Audrey’s blood runs cold at the word ‘presumed’. When someone tells you their wife’s dead, you don’t question it.
‘Detectives today confirmed that a pile of clothes found folded on Juhu Beach belong to British citizen, Alice Templeton, who was reported missing four days ago. The victim’s husband Ralph Templeton positively identified the items as clothes his wife had been wearing on the day of her disappearance. Mrs Templeton is presumed to have been washed away by strong currents off Juhu Beach.
The deceased is survived by her husband and three-month-old twins. At the time of her disappearance, Alice Templeton was said to have been suffering postnatal depression.
‘“She was not a strong swimmer,” Mr Templeton said in a statement. “She knew about the currents. I’m devastated.”’
‘But was there a body?’ Audrey asks out loud. ‘Was her body ever found?’ It’s a rhetorical question: she knows the answer. Audrey scrolls down the page and freezes. There’s a picture. She can’t click on it fast enough – her hand’s clammy on the mouse – and then there it is: Audrey enlarges it as much as possible and stares at the eyes looking back at her. It’s a young Miranda.
Audrey slumps back on the cushions, causing a ripple of pain to radiate from her neck down her spine.
‘No,’ she says. ‘No, no, no!’
This changes everything. Everything. Audrey has the sensation of jigsaw puzzle pieces shifting inside her head; of tectonic plates moving under the surface of her l
ife. For the first time in forty years Audrey allows herself to admit something that she’s suppressed each and every day: the knowledge that she’s not been true to herself. Every day she’s lied to Alice’s children; every day she’s let them believe that she – Audrey – was their real mother. She’s done it because Ralph had made her swear she would never tell them. There was no point in them knowing the truth, he insisted – insisted – since Alice was dead.
But now Audrey knows that John and Alexandra’s birth mother is alive, everything changes. Surely the twins have a right to know? To meet her? To forge a relationship with her?
Audrey may be old and tired, but there’s still time to make things right; time to correct the mistakes she’s made. Flicking back to the photograph she took at the library, Audrey looks at Miranda’s address: Truro. She stares unseeingly at the room. Like the ripples caused when a tiny stone’s thrown into a millpond, the implications of what she’s found out tonight are more far-reaching than she can even imagine.
A key turns in the front door lock: Alexandra’s come to look after her. Audrey closes her eyes and feigns sleep.
December 2012
Truro, Cornwall
Despite her nerves, Audrey smiles as a car backs out of a parking space right in front of her. The car park is congested and this stroke of luck is just what she needs.
‘Some things are meant to be,’ she says, turning off the engine and gathering her things from the passenger seat. She takes a look at the map she’s printed off the computer and nods to herself. Then she closes her eyes and takes a calming breath.
‘Please be in,’ she whispers. ‘You have to be in. Please, let her be in.’ Audrey is silent for a moment, her hands clasped in her lap. ‘And please don’t slam the door in my face.’
Audrey’s low heels click-click on the pavement as she finds her way, map in hand, to Miranda’s house. It’s a modest house at the end of a run of white-fronted terraces. Audrey stops outside, double-checks the house number, and puts the map back in her bag before walking up to the front door and pushing the bell. At once she hears footsteps moving towards the door and she puts out a hand to support herself on the wall as her knees go weak. A bolt is drawn and Audrey takes a deep breath and stands upright again. The door opens and Audrey watches Miranda’s face change as the woman recognises her from the exhibition.
Definitely, thinks Audrey. Now she’s primed, now she’s prepared for this moment, she knows what she’s looking for – and it’s there. She examines Miranda’s face, taking in the shape of the eyes, the angle of the cheekbones, the turn of the mouth, the hue of the skin. It’s more Alexandra than John; John was in the walk, the physicality of the body.
Miranda hasn’t moved. She’s frozen in the doorway, staring at Audrey. Audrey puts her hand to her chest, her fingers worrying a necklace at her throat.
‘Alice?’ The word comes out as a croak, but Miranda hears it. She presses her lips together and dips her head in admission.
‘Audrey Templeton,’ she breathes. ‘You came … you found me.’
The two women stare at each other across the threshold, then Miranda presses her hand to her mouth and Audrey realises she’s crying.
At the same moment, both women step forward and hug. They cling together for a second, knowing their shared past. The emotion is there but the hug is awkward, the two women too unfamiliar with each other. Audrey pulls away.
‘I just don’t understand. I don’t understand anything,’ she says. ‘I don’t understand how you’re alive.’
‘You’d better come in,’ says Miranda.
Audrey follows Miranda into a small living room. White linen curtains billow at an open French window; the air smells of coffee. Miranda sinks onto a blue sofa.
‘Please, sit down.’
Audrey perches on the edge of an armchair. ‘Is it Miranda? Or Alice? What do I call you?’
‘Miranda. I’ve been Miranda for forty years.’
‘But – how? You’re dead. You drowned. Well, clearly not – but how?’ Audrey’s shaking her head, trying to take in the fact that her husband’s dead first wife is sitting on a blue sofa in a little house in the middle of Truro.
‘I didn’t drown,’ says Miranda.
‘But what happened? Were you rescued? I just don’t understand.’
Miranda’s head drops into her hands. Her shoulders are heaving so Audrey waits for her to compose herself, her index finger tracing the grain of the fabric on the chair. After some time, Miranda looks up. Her face is wet with tears.
‘I never got in the sea. He faked my death,’ she says. ‘The short answer is that I left him, and he faked my death. I didn’t have postnatal depression. I didn’t drown.’
‘But why? What happened?’
Miranda wipes her eyes, stands up. ‘I need some water. Can I get you anything?’
Audrey shakes her head and Miranda moves into the kitchen. Within seconds she’s back with two glasses of water. She sets them down and takes her place on the sofa, more composed this time.
‘Look,’ she says carefully. ‘I don’t know what your marriage to Ralph Templeton was like.’ She looks at Audrey and Audrey closes her eyes and shakes her head, a wry smile on the corners of her lips.
‘He didn’t change then,’ says Miranda.
Audrey waggles her head in that Indian way that means both yes and no.
‘We both know what he was like,’ says Miranda. A picture pops into Audrey’s mind: it’s Ralph standing over her in the kitchen, his eyes full of rage; of her cowering, absorbing his anger. She remembers the scene but not what she’d done to infuriate him. Something small. Her memory of Ralph is of him bullying her, of him belittling her, possessing her, controlling her – all of that, but also of him lighting her soul, in those early days, with his love. Her overall sense now – four years after his death – is of the complicated, exhausting schizophrenia of the marriage.
‘I couldn’t take it,’ says Miranda. ‘I was twenty-two. My whole life was ahead of me.’
‘But the children?’ Audrey asks. ‘How could you leave your babies?’ As she says it, she remembers the desperation of a night when she, too, was about to leave John and Alexandra. She’d justified leaving them by thinking she was only their stepmother; that it wouldn’t make much difference to them to have another stepmother. But Miranda was their birth mother.
Miranda is pressing both hands to her throat. ‘You have no idea how difficult it was. But …’ Miranda’s voice breaks, but then she looks levelly at Audrey. ‘It’s complicated. I didn’t plan to have the children. I wanted to wait. Even early on, things weren’t good between Ralph and me, and I had a feeling the marriage wouldn’t last so I didn’t want to try for children, but …’ Miranda looks at Audrey, changes the subject. ‘Did he ever – mistreat you?’
Audrey gives a single nod, her eyes closed.
‘Badly?’
‘It varied.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Did he …’ Audrey struggles for the word. She’s never told anyone about the times Ralph raped her. It seems odd to speak of rape within the confines of a marriage. She knows there’s such a thing, but she can’t imagine other people understanding how a husband can rape his wife.
‘Rape me?’ asks Miranda. ‘Yes. The twins were the result of a rape.’ She pauses. ‘A brutal, degrading rape.’
Audrey leans over and touches Miranda’s hand. Miranda takes Audrey’s hand in her own and squeezes it.
‘It affected how I felt about them. I never bonded with them. Every time I saw them, it reminded me.’ She pauses. ‘I tried. I tried so hard. But then, one night, he came home and he found the twins crying.’ Miranda’s eyes slide off to the middle distance as she recalls the events. Her voice is quiet and Audrey strains to hear. ‘I was young. Alone. I had no idea what to do, no one to help. I’d tried to settle them but nothing was working. I was at my wits’ end. As soon as I got one to calm down, the other went off. I was exhausted. I wasn
’t getting much sleep.’
Miranda shudders at the memory and Audrey, too, remembers the frustration of the crying babies; the feeling of hopelessness when neither would settle, and wonders what she’d have done had she not had Madhu.
‘Anyway,’ Miranda continues, ‘Ralph came home and found the twins crying and he called me a useless mother. He shouted at me – screamed at me – in front of them. He was drunk. I remember smelling the drink on him. And then he punched me in the face. In front of them. Broke my jaw. It was the last straw.’ She rubs her jaw as she speaks, and looks at Audrey as if for validation. ‘I know they were only babies but – oh, I don’t know if it was the exhaustion or the hopelessness, but I waited for him to go to work the next day and I left.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘I went to an ashram.’ Miranda shrugs. ‘It was the seventies.’
‘Were you planning to go back for the children?’ Miranda shifts awkwardly on the sofa. ‘Maybe if I’d had some time and space to think; maybe I would have grown up a bit and gone back. I don’t know. I’ll never know. He didn’t ever let me make that decision. We all had to do voluntary work at the ashram – seva they called it. I worked in the office. I used to see the newspaper. I saw the story.’ She looks at Audrey. ‘He’d faked my death. None of it was true. I didn’t have postnatal depression.’
‘Maybe you did,’ says Audrey, and Miranda looks at her sideways.
‘You know, I’ve never thought about it that way – but maybe I did. I always assumed I was that unhappy because of my marriage. But maybe there was more to it.’
‘It’s possible.’ Audrey pauses. ‘So why did he do it? Why did he fake your death?’ Even as she says it, she knows the answer.
‘He couldn’t let me get away without making sure it was on his terms,’ says Miranda. ‘You know what he was like about losing face. I suppose he wanted to clear the way so he could marry someone else without the scandal of his wife having left him. People were still quite judgmental in those days, especially in the circles he moved in …’
The Disappearance Page 26