Her dining table is covered in discarded sheets of paper, each one decorated with the loops and swirls Audrey’s made as she’s tried to rediscover the art of the calligraphy she learned as a child. Her fingers are stained with ink and she’s rubbed her face, leaving a grey smudge down the side of her nose.
The calligraphy has been a challenge, but Audrey wants the invitations for the holiday she’s come to think of as her ‘last hurrah’ to have suitable gravitas; wants John and Alexandra to know that this is no normal invitation, so she’s been practising. She picks up the latest piece of paper she’s been working on and admires her handiwork. It’s not bad, given she hasn’t held a calligraphy pen for decades. Next to her lie two formal invitation cards and two envelopes waiting to be addressed.
Audrey opens her stationery drawer and rummages through her notepaper. Basildon Bond, she thinks. Nothing pretty. It’s a serious letter she’s going to write and she doesn’t want Alexandra to be distracted by fripperies. She holds the pad, feeling the weight of it in her hand as she stares into space. No quitting now, she tells herself. You’ve made your decision. This is for the best.
There’s a soft ping from Audrey’s laptop, which sits next to her on the dining table, and she clicks the mouse to wake the screen. A new email. Audrey’s heart quickens. She opens it and scans it quickly.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Audrey puts her fingers to her lips, then to the screen, stroking them tenderly against name of the sender.
‘Not long now,’ she says. After months of thinking and researching, the last piece of her plan slots into place.
Audrey looks thoughtfully out at the ocean. On the laptop, the screensaver kicks in. The image Audrey uses projects back at her the bright colours of a Greek island: azure sky, white-washed houses with blue-domed roofs cascading down a steep hill towards a sparkling sea. She sits for a long time, staring at the grey sea that she can see in her real life, then she pushes her chair back, grabs her handbag and her blue coat, wraps herself up against the wind, and leaves the house. She drives into town, and heads straight to the travel agent.
PART IV
After
September 2013
Truro, Cornwall
‘Bye darling. Good luck today.’ Mark put his arms around me and gave me a soft kiss. ‘I hope it goes okay.’
I tried to relax in his arms; failed. ‘Thanks.’
‘Are you all right? I can stay if you want me to?’
‘No. I’m fine. If I can’t do it, I’ll wait for you to get home. You’ve just got this job; you can’t skive off in your second week.’
Mark squeezed me tighter. ‘Thanks darling. Just put it in another room where you can’t see it and wait for me. I’ll be back in time for lunch.’
Mark left and I returned to the kitchen, gathered up the breakfast dishes, and put them in the sink. I turned on the tap, put in the plug, squirted in some detergent, and wrestled my hands into the rubber gloves but my eyes weren’t on the washing up; instead, I looked out at the garden. A riot of semi-tropical flowers fringed my view of the sky: the colours today were so vivid, so glorious; everything was so very alive. The scent of flowers in full bloom wafted in on the breeze, and the sound of the birds almost drowned out the radio. Inside the kitchen, a fly circled lazily above the fruit bowl, alighting every so often on bananas that had seen better days, and I realised that, despite the hole inside me that ached for Mum, I was happy; I realised that I loved living in Cornwall; that, even though there was no longer a need for us to be here, I no longer wanted to move back to London. Mark now had a job and, since the cruise, John and I appeared to have reached a different level of understanding. We were closer than we’d ever been, perhaps even as children, and, for the first time ever, I felt surrounded by family on whom I could count.
Hanging in the living room was a visual reminder of Mum: the painting I’d bought for her in Santorini. The splash of Mediterranean colour reminded me of the cruise but I tried to focus on the good bits: my last days with Mum; the conversations we’d had on board the ship; how I’d felt I was getting to know her; how happy she’d been at the White Night party. I’d joined an online support group for family of ‘overboards’ – they were far more common than I’d known – and drawn comfort from their stories. At least I had closure in the form of the letter: many of the relatives didn’t even have that. I could look at the painting now without crying.
I put a hand on my still-flat tummy. ‘What do you think, little beans?’ I said out loud. ‘Where do you want to live?’ I waited, trying to feel some sort of vibe from the two balls of cells in my uterus; from the twin pregnancy that had, after all the time I’d spent worrying, snuck up on me, catching me by surprise when my mind was otherwise occupied. I imagined the embryos absorbing my voice and replying at a cellular level. In a way – a way in which I would probably never admit even to Mark – I thought Mum’s spirit was somehow in the babies; that she’d somehow sent a part of herself back to me.
‘Cornwall?’ I said. ‘Yes, I think so too. Your granny loved the sea.’
The sound of the doorbell jarred me out of my thoughts and, with a start, I tugged off the rubber gloves and hurried to the front door. As I turned the key in the lock – once, twice – I leaned on the door for support, my legs suddenly hollow. The courier had said he’d come between nine and five – it was barely nine now and, despite a fitful night, I’d had no time to prepare myself. I opened the door and there it was, wrapped in plastic: the unmistakable shape of a suitcase.
‘Print and sign here, thank you very much,’ said the courier, handing me a clipboard.
I did as I was told and, seconds later, he was retreating down the driveway while I pulled the bag over the threshold. The return of Mum’s effects from the ship was the last of the formalities that had commenced with the involvement of the Italian police in Venice. Mum’s death had been ruled a suicide; a death certificate issued. The will, however, was yet to be read – John and I were still none the wiser as to exactly how much we would inherit.
I dragged Mum’s bag into the hall and looked at it. Then I went to the kitchen, took out the kitchen scissors, and cut away the courier company’s plastic packaging. The suitcase still had its ‘VCE’ airline tag on the handle. I pressed my hand to my chest as I stared at it, remembering the excitement of the start of the trip: landing in Venice, taking the water taxi down the Grand Canal to the cruise terminal. How annoyed I’d been with John that day; how irritated he was at having to go on a cruise with Mum. Oh, the trivialities that had bothered us then. How things had changed since that tag had been put on that bag. It seemed a million years ago – but it also seemed like yesterday.
I placed the suitcase flat on the floor and pressed the lock:it sprang open, releasing the zipper. Crouching on the hall floor, I started to unzip it, then stopped. If you’re going to do it, do it properly …
I closed the zip, picked up the suitcase and dragged it into the living room, where I placed it flat on the floor and knelt in front of it. Carefully, I edged the zipper around the bag’s perimeter and opened it. One of Mum’s blouses lay on top. I reached out a hand and touched it then, without thinking, leaned down and put my nose to it, catching the faint scent of my mum: perfume, night jasmine, and a slight stuffiness from the garment’s having been unworn for so long.
Slowly I peeled the blouse off the top, and started to make a pile of Mum’s clothes, images of her wearing them on the cruise filling my head. The trousers she’d worn in Mykonos. The dress she’d worn for the dinner in Valentino’s. The t-shirt she’d worn in Corfu. With a jolt I realised that I was holding in my hand the dress Mum had worn for her birthday dinner and the White Night party: so she’d gone back to her room after the party and changed. Frantically I looked through the clothes trying to see what was missing; what she’d been wearing when she jumped. I pieced the outfits together on the floor, laying them out like jigsaw puzzles, but, without knowing what she’d packed, I wasn’t able to tell what was missing
.
Underneath the clothes were her personal effects. Toiletries, cosmetics, the remainder of the scented candle, the papers I’d seen on the table in her suite. Slowly I lifted them out until my eyes fell on the jewellery box I’d given Mum on her birthday. I picked it up and, with sweaty hands, opened it: it was empty. I sat back, breathing hard, my hand pressed to my mouth as I tried to dispel the images that flooded my head: Mum jumping off the ship with the locket around her neck; Mum breathing water into her lungs with the photos of John and me next to her throat; Mum dying with it touching her skin. ‘I shall treasure it always,’ she’d said. Maybe she even touched the locket with her fingers as she died. Maybe she was thinking of us.
I jumped up and stumbled out to the garden, where I sank onto the wooden bench and breathed the fresh air deep into my lungs. I tried to focus on the garden, which was in its last blaze of colour before winter, looking in turn at my favourite trees, listening to the buzz of the bees, and inhaling the scent of the flowers. I closed my eyes and took some calming breaths, imagining serenity flooding my body with each breath. I could wait for Mark to get home and help me through the rest of Mum’s bag, but letting him go through her suitcase seemed like a betrayal. This was something I had to do alone. I stood up, took one last deep breath, and went back to the living room.
Towards the bottom of the case were Mum’s shoes. I rummaged for her handbag, her purse, but found nothing. Then, at the very bottom of the bag, I saw a book: The Rosie Project – a story I’d loved so much I’d given it to Mum to read. I stared at the familiar cover and it was as if Mum were speaking to me from beyond the grave. It was as if the book were saying ‘I love you, Alexandra.’ Mum had read it months ago. Had she liked it so much she’d read it again? Or had she known I’d be the one to find it? Had she put it there deliberately to give me some comfort; to remind me of her love when I opened her bag?
I picked up the book. It was large format, an early edition – a heavy book to carry on holiday. I touched the cover imagining Mum holding the book in bed, chuckling at the story of Professor Don Tillman that had so engrossed me. I flipped through the pages and two pieces of paper fell out. One was no larger than a business card. On it, Mum had written the contact details for ‘Miranda Smith’; the address was Truro. Miranda. I remembered the name from the night at the library. It was the woman Mum had been talking to at the photography exhibition. So you stayed in touch, I thought, and, for some reason, the idea pleased me.
The other was a print-out of a newspaper article on A4 paper that had been folded into quarters. I unfolded it gently and read the headline: ‘Missing mother presumed drowned.’ I wondered if it was about someone Mum had known; a friend perhaps. The quality of the reproduction wasn’t good; the picture unclear, but, squinting at it, I realised it bore more than a casual resemblance to the woman we’d met in the library: Miranda.
Quickly, and with a growing sense of unease, I read the article: a sad story about a young mother who’d committed suicide off Juhu Beach back in the ‘70s. But then I reached two names and I stopped understanding the words printed in black and white on the page in front of me. I couldn’t comprehend what I was reading. Heart hammering, I read it again and again, and then out loud, as if that would help me make sense of the story. The picture was of Miranda but the dead woman’s name was Alice Templeton; her ‘devastated’ husband, Ralph Templeton.
She’d left behind three-month-old twins.
September 2013
Truro, Cornwall
I was still sitting on the sofa, staring into space with the article in my hands, when I heard Mark’s key in the lock. I felt the air pressure change as the front door opened; I heard a slice of noise from the street outside, then the bang of the door reverberated through the small downstairs.
‘Hi darling,’ Mark said. He took in the sight of the unpacked suitcase; me motionless on the sofa. ‘Ah – so it came. Are you …?’ Mark covered the length of the living room in two and a half strides and stopped at my feet. ‘Are you okay?’ He bent to kiss me and I looked up blankly, received the kiss without responding. Mark dropped to his knees and tried to look into my eyes. I looked at him without seeing.
‘Was it difficult?’ he asked gently.
‘Look,’ I said. I held out the article.
Mark took it. ‘What is it?’
‘You tell me.’
Mark’s eyes moved left to right as he read the article. I watched his expression change as the words sunk in.
‘What? Whaaat? No! How can that be?’
‘So tell me I’m not imagining it. John and I are the twins, right? Our mother didn’t die two months ago. She died forty-two years ago.’
Mark was shaking his head. ‘Hang on. Hang on. Let me just read it again.’
I waited while Mark went over the article again, then he looked up and rubbed his eyebrow. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘If this is true, that would appear to be the case.’ He sank down onto the sofa. ‘I’m so sorry, babe. I don’t know what to say. Where did you get it?’
‘It was in Mum’s things. She wanted me to find it.’
‘But why didn’t she just tell you?’
‘Maybe she planned to. And then – god, whatever happened to her? Maybe she did plan to tell me. Or maybe she planned to jump off the ship and she wanted me to find this.’
‘It looks that way. But why now? Why not just let it lie? There doesn’t seem any point in telling you now.’
‘Wait. There’s more.’ I passed Mark the piece of paper with Miranda’s contact details.
‘Miranda Smith,’ he read. ‘Who’s she?’
‘My real mother.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I met her.’
‘What?’
‘I met her. At the photo exhibition.’
‘But it says in the article she’s dead.’
‘“Presumed” dead. Clearly there’s a difference.’
Mark massaged his temples. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
I slumped back on the sofa. ‘It all makes sense now.’
‘What does?’
I sighed, searching for the right words. ‘There was a time, when I was growing up, when I would have given anything to hear that I had a different mother,’ I said slowly. I felt Mark flinch. He’d always been fond of Mum. ‘No, no. Not that there was anything wrong with Mum. But – well – maybe there was something wrong with her.’ I paused, struggling to find the words to explain. ‘It’s just like there was this distance. Almost like a force field around her, keeping me and John separate from her. It just felt wrong. I can’t explain it.’ Mark took my hand in his but I pulled it back and ran it through my hair, intent on remembering, clasping at memories I hadn’t thought about for years. ‘And, when I was little, I used to play this game – oh God, this is going to sound bad – I used to play this game where the front doorbell rang and it was this woman – she was always really beautiful and well dressed – and she said she was my real mother and she’d come to pick me up.’ I remembered plainly this little fantasy I used to play out time after time; I remembered the yearning I’d felt for a mother who’d connect fully with me. ‘It was like there was a part of me missing. I can’t explain it. But now – oh my God – now … oh! I just …’ I buried my face in my hands, tears seeping through my fingers. ‘Mum knew! We talked about this on the cruise. She knew how I felt …’
‘Come here,’ Mark said. He pulled me into his arms and held me tight until I calmed myself. I grabbed a tissue and dabbed at my eyes.
‘It all makes sense now,’ I sobbed. ‘It all makes sense.’
‘But did you feel anything when you met this other woman? Did you feel like she could be your mother?’
I squeezed my eyes shut. In my mind, I went over the moment in the library when I’d seen Mum with Miranda. It was late and I’d been keen to get home and, bar noticing that the other woman was elegant and quite tall, I hadn’t given much thought to her. She’d had a delicate bone structure
, I recalled now; I remembered a deep voice and intelligent eyes. She’d seemed like a nice lady. But had I felt something when I’d seen her? A pull? A familiarity? I rubbed my forehead and thought, but the truth was that I hadn’t. I hadn’t felt anything.
The reality was that I’d been desperate to get back home to Mark. I’d been slightly irritated that it was late; that I’d had to offer Mum a bed for the night; and I’d been relieved when she’d said no. I’d thought I was pregnant. I was waiting for the results of the blood test; my mind was obsessed with the thought. Try as I might, there was nothing that had made me think that woman was my mother. But why would I go around thinking strangers were my mother? I had a mother!
‘Do you think your mum knew all along?’
‘My mum as in Audrey?’ The name felt odd. ‘No, she can’t have done. But maybe she found out that night at the library. Something odd happened that night when I turned up – and then Mum had her accident. Oh God, yes! I think they both realised that night. But why didn’t either of them say something?’
‘How could they have? Miranda – Alice – was supposed to be dead.’
I picked up Mum’s copy of The Rosie Project, folded the article and put it back in the book; I held it in my hand and looked at it as if for the first time. It was obvious that there was something inside the book. There was no doubt in my mind that Mum had known I would find it; had intended to lead me to my real mother.
‘Why didn’t Mum just tell me? She had all that time on the cruise. We had long talks; we talked loads about the past. She could have told me then.’
‘Maybe she didn’t know how,’ Mark said. ‘Maybe she wanted to nudge the ball into your court and leave you to decide what to do.’
‘But what happened back then? How did this all come about? I just don’t get it!’
Mark fingered the piece of paper with Miranda’s number on it. ‘You know, Lex,’ he said gently, ‘there’s only one way to find out.’
The Disappearance Page 28