by Anna Wharton
‘I’m glad you like it,’ Maureen says, ‘because it’s for you.’
‘For me?’ Chloe drops her spoon into the bowl and puts it down on the table.
‘Yes.’ She holds it up then and Chloe sees that it’s a sleeveless top with a white collar and three buttons in a V at the neck. The style you might describe as retro, but she is used to Maureen’s taste, a little more old-fashioned. Maureen passes the top over to her.
‘There are just the last few bits to do,’ she says, ‘but it won’t take me a minute after you finish your breakfast.’
Chloe takes the top and holds it up against her chest, glancing down at it over her dressing gown. She runs her finger along the seam at the bottom; every last stitch is perfect.
‘You really made this for me?’ she says.
Maureen nods. ‘Oh, it’s just a little something. I had some material left over and . . . well, the pattern is a bit young for me now and, what with the warmer weather coming . . .’
Chloe remembers the notes she had made on the symptoms Maureen’s drugs help to ease. She feels for her all over again.
‘Nobody has ever made anything for me before,’ Chloe says.
‘Really?’
Chloe nods.
‘Not even your nan?’
Chloe shakes her head.
‘Well, there you go,’ Maureen says, smiling.
‘Thank you, I love it.’
She gets up from her seat and wraps Maureen in a hug. Maureen pats her arm gently. She steps back then, surprised by herself, by how naturally they had fitted together – she hadn’t expected that. She looks down at the material in her hands.
‘I’m so pleased you like it,’ Maureen says as she gets up and finds some pots and pans to put away.
Chloe wants to show how much it means to her. ‘Shall I try it on now?’
‘Later,’ Maureen says. ‘Have your breakfast first. You can wear it tonight, let Patrick see you in it.’ She takes it back gently. ‘Anyway, I’ve got those last few bits to do.’
Chloe sits back down at the table. She picks up her bowl again and eats slowly while she watches Maureen’s hands work fast, carefully, twisting the material this way and that under the needle. She lines up each sunflower until it is exactly so, taking great care over every stitch because she’s making it for Chloe and she wants it to be just right.
‘I can’t believe you’ve done this for me,’ Chloe says again.
Maureen smiles. ‘The pleasure is all mine.’
After breakfast Chloe makes an excuse to walk up to the village shop on her own. Elm House sits in a black spot with patchy phone signal and she needs to make a call.
‘I’m going to get a magazine,’ she shouts up to Maureen who is in the bathroom. ‘Do you need anything from the shop?’
She shouts a muffled ‘no’ from under the shower.
Chloe holds her phone inside her pocket as she walks, the willow at the top of the lane appearing in no time. She steps through the fronds as she has so many times now. Often it feels as if they mark a curtain between two worlds. She takes the phone out of her pocket and dials Park House. She’s relieved when the answerphone picks up. She knows the routine well enough by now, when the overstretched and under-funded care staff are too busy to serve breakfast and answer the phone.
‘Welcome to Park House,’ the automated voice starts.
Chloe leaves a cheery yet brief message. She’s missed a couple of calls from Park House recently but in every voicemail they’d said how they were sorry to call her during work, which had made Chloe feel better about not being able to get back to them straight away. They know she’s busy. She looks back at the house, though of course it’s not visible from here. In a way she is still working – because she still hasn’t found Angie.
Back at the house, Maureen is washing up in the kitchen.
Chloe puts a celebrity magazine on the worktop between them.
‘I thought you might like this,’ she says.
Maureen glances back, her hands pushed deep in yellow gloves. ‘Oh Angie, you . . .’ Her voice trails off.
The two women look at each other quickly, realising the mistake. Soapsuds pop quietly in the sink between them.
‘Chloe, I’m so sor—’ Maureen starts.
‘It’s OK,’ Chloe says quickly.
It is OK. Really it is.
Maureen looks down into the washing-up bowl and shakes her head as Chloe tries to busy herself rearranging the condiments on the table.
‘It’s not . . . I shouldn’t . . . it’s just sometimes these days I get confused,’ Maureen says. ‘It’s just having you here, it reminds me . . . you understand, don’t you?’
Chloe nods. She does understand.
‘Patrick thinks I’m going mad, he says . . . he says . . .’ She lifts a soapy glove from the bowl to waft away a thought. When she looks up at Chloe her eyes are teary.
Chloe swallows. ‘It’s actually quite warm outside, why don’t we go for a walk? I haven’t seen much of the area and, you know, with Patrick out all day, perhaps some fresh air would do you good?’
Maureen nods, pulling a tissue from her sleeve.
TWENTY-NINE
They walk along those straight Fen roads, the camber often pulling Chloe away from Maureen and into the verge. She picks up her pace to meet her back in the middle of road as Maureen points out the differences between the fields sown with sugar beet and those with barley. As they walk, Maureen paints a picture of the Fens in the summer, hares that box among the birds at dusk and dawn.
‘You make it sound so beautiful out here,’ Chloe says. ‘When I arrived here it seemed so bleak.’
‘Do you still think that now?’
‘Not anymore.’
The two women’s gaits fall in line and they walk on, silently.
‘Now I think about it, maybe it was a bit bleak out here for me too before you arrived,’ Maureen says, looking down at the tarmac. ‘Patrick’s noticed. I know it worries him.’
There’s a beat before she answers. ‘Why would it worry him?’
‘After Angie, I was in a really bad way for a long time. I couldn’t accept that she’d gone and Patrick, he was my rock. I don’t know what I’d have done without him.’
Chloe knows she has prepared for moments like this, but she can’t remember what to say for the thud of adrenalin in her veins. Instead she listens. This is the first time that Maureen has talked to her about Angie, about what happened – what really happened.
‘Angie going, well, it took its toll on us, it was bound to.’
Chloe watches the tarmac, the dull grey of it allowing her to concentrate on every word that Maureen is saying. She’s already filing it away for her notebook.
‘I kept everything, kept her room, her toys, her books, her clothes, everything exactly how it was. Can you believe that?’
Chloe looks at her, but she’s not waiting for an answer.
‘But how long do you wait? How many years? I slept in her room, in her sheets until I realized that they didn’t even smell of her anymore, they smelt of me, and I realized I’d have to wash them, but then I’d be washing her away, and that was all I had left . . .’
She stops on the road, and Chloe stops too. Maureen covers her face with her hands. There is no other life around them except for long fine grass that sways gently at the edge of the road. Maureen sniffs and walks on.
‘Patrick was so worried about me. Sometimes he even said it: that I was clinging on to something – to someone – that wasn’t there any longer. But she wasn’t gone either, was she?’
Chloe shakes her head.
‘That’s the problem. We’re stuck in this no-man’s land, this place in between. We can’t move on – you feel guilty for moving on – but then how could we carry on doing anything that we’d done before when everything was because of Angie? And the guilt . . . you feel guilty for laughing – smiling even. Imagine that, feeling guilty for putting a smile on your face.’ Maureen shake
s her head. ‘It’s no way to live. It’s wicked. It’s cruel, that’s what it is. I wouldn’t wish this not knowing on my worst enemy.’
Chloe wishes there was a script inside her coat. But instead it’s Maureen who grabs her, tucking her arm inside her elbow. She pats the top of Chloe’s hand and they walk on. Arm in arm. Like mother and daughter for all anyone else would see. But there is no one to bear witness, for the road is completely deserted.
‘Listen to me,’ Maureen says, ‘going on like this to you. I’m sorry, Chloe, I shouldn’t, I know I shouldn’t, it’s just . . .’
Chloe looks at her, she sees the way Maureen’s eyes flicker across her face.
‘What?’ Chloe says. ‘What is it?’
Maureen looks away, back down at the road. When she next speaks it’s quieter, as if Maureen is daring herself to say the words.
‘And then you turned up wanting that room. I remember when you said how old you were – twenty-nine, exactly the same age as Angie would have . . .’
Now it’s Chloe’s turn to look down at the tarmac. There’s a lane turning right beside a disused signal box, where wild flowers run up to the road.
‘Shall we go this way?’ Chloe says, not because she wants to change the subject – far from it – but because she isn’t sure how to respond. Or rather, she doesn’t want her response to be too eager, too obvious. She almost feels exposed out here on these open fen roads.
Maureen nods.
The two women walk for a little while and as they do Maureen points out snipe dipping their long beaks into the dykes that run alongside them, and lapwings pecking at fields sown with cereal. Chloe listens – half listens. She knows when she needs to nod, but she doesn’t ask a single question about the flora and fauna because she so desperately wants Maureen to return to the same subject. She wants to hear her talk more about Angie.
‘Do you have any other family?’ Maureen says. ‘I’ve probably asked you before.’
Chloe shakes her head. ‘Just Nan,’ she says.
‘You have another grandmother still alive?’
Chloe looks back at her, then feels her cheeks sting with blood. She looks away. How had she slipped up like that?
‘Oh, sorry. I forgot for a second, I . . .’
Maureen puts her hand on Chloe’s.
‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘It’s so easily done, isn’t it? When you miss them so much, it feels like they’re still here. I know for a long time after Angie . . . well, sometimes I even let myself pretend she was just at school. Anything to ease the pain, although I know some people thought I was mad.’
Chloe is grateful that her slip-up has brought them back to Angie. Now she just needs to keep her here.
‘The day . . . the day Angie went . . . where were you?’ Chloe asks.
‘Me?’ Maureen says.
Chloe nods.
‘I was at home,’ she says, ‘in Chestnut Avenue, you know, our old house? Patrick had taken her out, to the park. He was with her when she . . . well, you know, when she disappeared.’
Chloe nods.
‘He was a broken man, Chloe. Truly broken by it. The police could have done more too, Patrick knew it. But we were in their hands, we had to rely on them that they were doing all they could but . . . well, they called off the search that first night when it got dark, can you believe it?’
Maureen shakes her head as Chloe thinks back to those terrible hours when Nan was missing. Yes, she could believe it, especially back then.
‘But Patrick, he had to be strong for me, see?’ Maureen continues.
‘Did you blame him? I mean, was it hard?’
‘Never,’ she says quickly.
Chloe looks at her sideways.
‘What was the use? Especially when I saw how it had torn him in two. We had to stick together. That kind of thing happening, it tears most couples apart. We needed each other. I needed him.’
Chloe thinks of the cuttings she’d read about his arrest. She’s surprised to hear Maureen criticising the police investigation – Patrick had praised them for looking at every line of inquiry so thoroughly. She hears his quotes again in her head.
‘But if it broke Patrick too, why did he think you were hanging on to the past? Why didn’t he want to hang on to things too?’
Maureen shrugs. ‘People deal with grief in different ways,’ she says. She looks up then, across the fields to the approaching crossroads. ‘It’s left back to the village, or right takes us all the way out on the Wisbech road,’ she says.
Chloe indicates left with her eyes and intuitively Maureen follows her. The road is busier and they’re forced to break off from one another to walk in single file as cars whizz by. Chloe watches Maureen from behind; the warmth of her still lingers, tucked in the curve of her elbow. Soon a grass verge curves up from the tarmac, a well-worn path within it. She thinks for a second of the carpet walkway to the archive at work and feels a longing for her old desk, the safety that office routine had offered. No wonder she still imitates it each day. She wonders how Alec is managing, whether the new computer systems have arrived, whether her beloved archive has lost its texture, whether it has turned yet from paper to metal to machine.
The two women walk in line on the single track. Chloe is grateful for a moment to think. She needs to keep Maureen talking while Patrick isn’t around. It’s obvious he doesn’t understand Maureen like she does. She looks out at this flat landscape, the isolation, trees standing hundreds of yards from their neighbours. How lonely it must have felt for Maureen to have carried the weight of her grief alone all these years.
They walk for another half a mile or so back to the village. By the time they arrive at the house, cloud has stolen the sun and the air is cooler than it had been when they set off. They come in the back door, breaking the stillness of a kitchen they hadn’t bothered to lock, and Maureen switches the heating on while they warm up beside the radiator.
‘Chloe, love, stick the kettle on while I go upstairs to the loo,’ she says.
Chloe does as she asks and listens to her footsteps disappear up the stairs. But five minutes go by, then ten, and she hears no footsteps returning back down. Their tea sits cooling, staining the rim of the mugs. Chloe walks to the bottom of the stairs in the hall. She listens out and hears a faint shuffling across the floorboards.
‘Tea’s ready,’ she calls.
But there’s no response. She puts her first foot on the step, waits. She takes another, then the next one, until she stands at the top of the stairs. She scans the landing. The padlock is missing from the spare room, the door slightly ajar. Inside, Chloe can just make out Maureen, moving around among cardboard boxes.
She steps onto the landing, walks slowly over to the door. How long has she waited to look inside? Maureen doesn’t hear her enter. She is heaving and emptying boxes.
‘Maureen?’ Chloe asks quietly.
Maureen stands still in the middle of the room, her back to Chloe.
‘Are you OK?’ Chloe asks.
Maureen’s head is bent forwards, her shoulders hunched. She’s clutching something to her chest, and all around her toys from the seventies spill out of boxes: Sindy dolls, spinning tops, wooden bricks, Ladybird books and hard plastic baby dolls clothed in hand-knitted jackets. In the middle of the chaos, Maureen turns slowly on the spot, clutching what looks like a rag at first, squashed between her cheek and her neck. She buries her nose into it, taking a deep inhale. Chloe gasps as she realizes what it is, she recognizes it from the newspaper cuttings – Angie’s cloth cat, Puss. Not that she says as much. But it’s Maureen’s response to her recognition that she notices, as if a tiny circuit board has been lit inside her. Chloe knows she could tell her why she recognizes these toys, that she should tell her. But she can’t. Instead she watches as Maureen sobs into the soft cat, calling her missing daughter’s name over and over again.
THIRTY
Maureen insists that everything in the room has to be put away before Patrick comes home. The
tea sits abandoned downstairs, while the two women work together in the room that has been barred to Chloe these last three weeks of living here.
Maureen packs things hurriedly, but Chloe works more slowly, each toy sparking off a different memory, from newspaper cuttings or her own childhood – she and Angie were the same age, after all, and so, quite naturally, everything blurs into one. She picks up a Ladybird book – Hansel and Gretel – and flicks through its pages. She had the exact same one.
Beside her, Maureen searches for the box the cloth cat had been in. Chloe watches her push it back down among the other soft toys – a koala bear with real fur, a polar bear with black eyes and a sewn-on nose.
‘Will you always keep these things?’ Chloe asks.
Maureen pauses, bent over a box.
‘I mean, if Patrick doesn’t like you coming in here . . .’ Chloe adds.
Maureen sinks down on a sealed box. She sighs and looks around at this museum of her missing daughter.
‘In the old house we kept everything just the way it was,’ Maureen says. ‘We never changed a thing, even the sheets on her bed, like I told you. I had to keep everything the same, just in case.’
Chloe nods, remembering the gate at the old house and its peeling paint. She had probably brought the flakes of it in her coat pocket to Elm House. It was this same loyalty Chloe had come to admire in these two shattered parents.
‘When we moved here, we had to take everything down,’ Maureen continues. ‘Patrick said it needed to be a new start in every sense. He knows I want to make her bedroom up again but he doesn’t . . . well, he doesn’t think it’s good for me to live in the past. That’s why he put that padlock on the door. I’ve got the key but he hopes it’ll make me stop before I come in here, to think about him and his pain. That’s why I sneak in at night while he’s asleep. Sometimes just being among her things . . . it makes me feel closer to her, you know?’
Chloe nods, she knows a grave is not a marker for the one you love, not when they have already scored their name inside the skin and bones of you. How could Patrick deny his wife her grief? It’s not like she’s hurting anyone. It seems cruel, harsh, just because she grieves differently to him. But then, how does he grieve? Apart from the photographs in the newspapers, what grief has he ever shown Chloe inside Elm House?