by Anna Wharton
‘I’ve done these pieces in the newspaper every year,’ Maureen says. ‘Interviews, you know, because I wanted the world to keep talking about Angie. I don’t want anyone to forget that she could be out there, that there’s still a chance . . . so when would it be the right time to let go of all this? Surely if I did let go, I would be admitting that she’s never coming back, and I’ll never do that as long as I live. Never. That’s what Patrick doesn’t understand.’
Maureen’s eyes fill with tears, the pain so obviously always sitting just beneath her skin.
‘You know you can talk to me, Maureen – if you want to, I mean,’ Chloe says. ‘We can talk about Angie if Patrick won’t.’
Maureen’s face softens and Chloe feels sure that being granted permission to grieve so openly has ironed out some of the lines that the same pain created.
‘Thank you, Chloe.’
Maureen reaches for a tendril of Chloe’s hair, twisting it between finger and thumb. Chloe stands perfectly still.
‘Angie’s hair was so much like yours,’ Maureen says. ‘Almost jet black, just the same . . . I’m sure of it.’ She whispers that last bit.
Chloe is silent, she dare not even exhale, as if this moment itself is made of fragile glass and even her breath might shatter it.
‘I’m so afraid of forgetting the exact colour of her hair,’ Maureen says. ‘Forgetting anything would be a betrayal of my daughter. There have been times since you’ve arrived when I’ve just caught a glimpse of you, going out into the hall, or walking up the lane in the morning. Sometimes I’ve stood at the window at the top of these stairs and watched you. Does that sound ridiculous?’
Chloe shakes her head gently and her hair falls out of Maureen’s grasp.
‘But I’ve allowed myself to imagine, just for a moment, that you, with your dark hair, walking off up the lane towards the bus stop, are her . . . that you are Angie. I’ve let myself pretend that she’s still here and she lives with us and it’s her, not you, going to work every morning. You must think I’m mad.’ Maureen closes her eyes and smiles. ‘I know Patrick does. I made the mistake of telling him that once, I even said . . .’ She pauses, and dips her gaze towards the floor. ‘I even said . . .’
Chloe holds her breath. What?
A loud rapping on the front door shakes Maureen out of the moment. Her eyes dart around the room.
‘Oh God, what if that’s Patrick?’ Maureen says.
‘But why would he be knock—’
‘Quick, get the last of this stuff away.’
Another rattle at the door.
‘Quick.’
The two women hurry as they put the last of the toys back in the boxes. They throw them in, without the care they’d taken until now, pushing the cardboard sides down.
‘Quickly,’ Maureen says, panic staining her voice.
They step outside the room and Maureen shuts the door behind them, her hands shaking as she clicks the padlock back into place and slips the key inside her bra. She adjusts her hair and hurries down the stairs. Chloe is unsure whether to follow her. A mumbled voice meets Maureen in the kitchen, the sound of the back door closing shut as Chloe puts her first step on the top of the stairs. A woman’s voice:
‘. . . thought you might be in the garden . . . sunny out today . . . murder a cuppa . . .’
Chloe takes a few steps down the stairs and peers over the bannister. She can only see the back of a black coat on a chair, hear the scrape of the wooden legs on the kitchen lino as whoever has arrived sits down at the kitchen table. She sounds as if she’s at home, whoever she is. Chloe listens but doesn’t recognize the voice. But then, why should she? All the way out here she’s never met any of Maureen and Patrick’s friends and relatives. It probably would have been different if they’d still been in Chestnut Avenue, but out here, surrounded by all these fields, sometimes this house feels more like an island.
Downstairs the lightness has returned to Maureen’s voice and Chloe hears her own name being mentioned.
‘A lodger?’ the stranger’s voice asks. She sounds surprised, curious – shocked, even – which piques Chloe’s own curiosity.
She decides then to recommence her descent down the stairs, trying as best she can to make her footsteps sound natural, not as if she’s been eavesdropping.
‘Here she is,’ Maureen says.
The woman twists round from her seat with a smile that falls – just a little – when she sets eyes on Chloe.
‘Chloe, this is my oldest friend, Josie,’ Maureen says, introducing the pair. ‘Josie, this is our new lodger.’
Chloe holds out her hand and Josie takes it tentatively. She’s small and dumpy, with grey hair cut close to her head. Behind the years that she’s grown into, Chloe can see that she was once a very beautiful woman. She wears a silk scarf around her neck and drops her gaze from Chloe to adjust it.
‘How do you do?’ Josie says.
‘Nice to meet you,’ Chloe replies.
Chloe crosses the kitchen to stand beside Maureen at the sink. This stranger’s appearance at Elm House makes her feel more at home here herself, and she gleans some satisfaction from the way that Josie studies her and Maureen standing side by side. In the end it’s Josie who looks away first.
As Maureen makes tea, she tells Josie how Chloe saw the advert in the newsagent’s window. She fills the kettle and describes the first time she walked in the kitchen door. She drops a teabag into each mug and explains how easily she’s settled in, as if she’s always been here. As she adds the milk she raves about how nice it is to have someone to fuss over again, and Chloe smiles and blushes on cue, all the time knowing she is playing her part flawlessly.
But after a while, as the three women sip their tea, something about the way Josie watches her starts to unnerve Chloe. The way Josie’s eyes flicker across her while Maureen continues chatting oblivious. In many ways Josie would be the perfect witness to interview. She wonders if Maureen and Josie would have been friends when Angie disappeared. If so, did detectives speak to her at the time? What might Josie have told them?
Maureen doesn’t appear to have noticed that her friend has remained silent the whole time she has been talking.
‘. . . and the most incredible thing is, how much does she remind you of our Angie?’
Josie had been about to sip from her mug, but it stops mid-air.
‘I’m sorry?’ Josie says.
‘Chloe,’ Maureen says, as she sits down beside her at the table. ‘I was saying how much she reminds me of Angie, doesn’t she you?’
Josie takes a slow sip of tea and over the top of the mug regards the two women in front of her. She shakes her head.
‘No, Maureen,’ she says, placing her cup back on the table. ‘I can’t say she does.’
Maureen looks up at her friend, and then at Chloe.
‘Josie, but of course she does. Look at her hair, her pale skin, and she’s even got this freckle on her neck – show her, Chloe. I saw it the very first night she moved in, not that I said anything but . . . Angie had one just like it. Josie, don’t you see it?’
Chloe reaches up to her neck, her fingertip finding the freckle Maureen had never mentioned before.
Josie takes another sip of her tea without looking. ‘I can’t say I do, Mo.’
Maureen reaches up to fix her hair, and laughs a little.
‘Oh Josie, you’re making me feel like I’m going mad. Patrick’s the same, he can’t see it either.’
‘Plenty of people have dark hair, Maur—’
‘I know, I know, Josie, it’s just . . .’
The two women look at Chloe and she dips her gaze down into her lap. Josie uses the silence as her opportunity.
‘Angie was a little girl when she disappeared, Maureen,’ she tells her friend. ‘How can you say that Chloe reminds you of Angie when she’s a grown woman?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘How old are you, Chloe? Thirty? Thirty-one?’
‘Twenty-nine
,’ Chloe replies.
‘The same age as Angie would have—’ Maureen tries, but Josie talks over her.
‘There you go, Mo, she said it herself – twenty-nine – how can she remind you of a little girl? She’s a grown woman.’
‘But if Angie hadn’t—’
‘Yes, but she did, Maureen.’ Josie’s voice is louder, as sharp as glass.
Silence. Maureen looks scolded.
‘Now let’s stop this talk and enjoy our tea,’ Josie says. ‘I’m sure Chloe has got things she needs to be getting on with rather than hanging around this kitchen with the likes of us.’
Josie looks at her, and Chloe looks at Maureen. Everything they’d shared that morning undone in front of her eyes. She doesn’t know why but deep in her stomach, Chloe feels the ugliness start to stir. Maureen says nothing, just looks down at her hands wrapped round a warm mug of tea as if it were a lifebuoy in a particularly troubled stretch of water. Chloe looks between the two women. How many times have they sat across from one another over the years? How many years has this friendship endured? And has she always spoken to Maureen like this? Poor Maureen. She thinks of Patrick laying out the rules of her grief, and now Josie not allowing her a moment’s fantasy. Perhaps it was Josie who had stirred sugar into sweet tea on the day that Angie disappeared. Couldn’t she just allow her a little fancy now instead of shaming her for it? Why do people insist on being so tied to reality?
Maureen’s chair scrapes the kitchen floor.
‘How about a slice of cake?’ Maureen says, trying to sound cheerful.
Is this how it’s been for Maureen all these years? Both Patrick and Josie denying her an escape from real life, dragging her back to her heartbreak. She thinks of Park House, the residents there entitled to pick whatever year they want from their lives to revisit. They are living with a disease inside their brains, but is that really any different from the trauma Maureen lives with every single day? She thinks of that bathroom cabinet, and all the pills inside it that Maureen has to take just to get through the day. It’s all right for Patrick, all right for Josie. How dare either of them judge how this mother grieves?
Chloe pushes her chair back abruptly, knocking the table a little as she does.
‘Chloe?’ Maureen says. ‘Don’t you want to stay for some cake?’
‘No, I’ll leave you two to it,’ Chloe says, and she’s sure she sees a smile curl at Josie’s lips as she does. Maureen doesn’t argue with her, and as Chloe leaves the kitchen and climbs the stairs, she hears the two women talking, returning once more to the safety zone of their usual chatter.
THIRTY-ONE
Chloe stays in her room for the rest of the afternoon while her signal comes and goes on her phone. She sends Hollie a text wishing her a good trip, and feels grateful to have a best friend like her and not Josie downstairs, one who doesn’t ask too many questions. Through the gaps in the floorboards, their voices float up to Chloe’s bedroom, not that she catches any of their discussion. She doesn’t know why but something about Josie makes her feel nervous. She can’t put her finger on it. Perhaps it was simply the way she looked at Chloe.
Josie’s appearance at Elm House had momentarily made her forget all about the spare room. Does she feel any better for knowing what’s in that room now? That it was Maureen moving around on the other side of the wall in the darkness? Her guilty secret to sit among her daughter’s clothes and toys at night. No one could blame her for that. Except Patrick. Perhaps Josie thinks it’s wrong, too. It makes perfect sense to Chloe, though. After all, she’s blurred enough lines in her own life to stem disappointment, to ease the pain. Don’t we all to some extent? Aren’t we all just lying, even to ourselves, just to make life that bit more palatable? These are the little white lies that we tell every day to live with ourselves, and if we never tell anyone and they’re not discovered, how can anyone say they’re not true? If Maureen had kept her fantasy about watching Chloe to herself, then it would have burrowed itself deeper under her skin, colluding with its keeper. But now she’s told Patrick, she feels wrong – crazy even. But who’s to say that he is right and Maureen is wrong? People, things, places, they’re only as real as you make them.
At about four, she hears Patrick’s car on the drive. She sits up and looks out of her window, watching him coming in through the back door. She listens out, holding her breath in her room, wondering what he thinks of Josie – perhaps he colludes with her to tell Maureen she’s mad? Chloe reminds herself of her job here. She needs to see with her own eyes.
In the kitchen, Maureen and Josie are sitting at the table and Patrick is leaning against the worktop. No one says anything when Chloe walks in and starts making herself a drink, although she feels Patrick’s eyes on her as she opens the cupboard above the kettle. Her hand reaches for the coffee before she decides she needs something that will keep her in the kitchen for longer – tea brews. She picks up a teabag and drops it into her cup. She fills the kettle up to the top because she knows then it will take longer to boil, gifting her more time watching the interaction between Maureen, Patrick and Josie.
She’s surprised that Patrick doesn’t sit down at the table with the two women. The seat next to Josie is free, but instead, he stands next to Chloe as she waits for the kettle to boil. From what she sees he is not particularly friendly towards Josie; if anything, he’s quieter than usual. This piques her curiosity. Josie appears to be talking to both of them, telling them about someone they all know in Chestnut Avenue who has been ill. Maureen asks her questions but, Chloe notices, Patrick mostly keeps his eyes trained on his own shoes.
The kettle boils and clicks itself off.
‘Would anyone else like anything? Patrick?’ Chloe asks.
There’s a split second before he answers, as if he’s not really here in this room, as if he’s somewhere else entirely.
‘No, no thank you, Chloe.’ Patrick has never been this polite; it’s almost as if he’s a different person now Josie is here, as if he’s under scrutiny. But why?
Chloe watches Josie from under her fringe and she notices that since Patrick spoke Josie’s eyes are now trained on him. Maureen carries on talking, oblivious. But Chloe sees it, the way Josie clutches her handbag a little tighter on her lap, the way she pulls her cardigan more tightly around herself, wrapping her arms across her body. Patrick’s sudden appearance here has changed the atmosphere in the kitchen, thickening the air with tension.
Chloe pours the hot water over the teabag. As the tea brews, she turns her attention to Patrick. He’s leaning against the worktop, his feet crossed at the ankles, and – Chloe now realizes – he has his own arms folded across his chest, mimicking Josie’s body language at the table.
Maureen suddenly stands up, seemingly unaware of the change in the air.
‘I shall have to start getting dinner ready soon,’ Maureen says, crossing the kitchen.
And as Chloe goes to replace the milk in the fridge, she sees the way Josie watches Patrick. She looks away quickly and starts picking up her handbag.
‘Yes, well, I should be getting on,’ Josie says.
‘Oh, really, Jo?’ Maureen says, sounding disappointed. ‘But Pat’s only just got in, won’t you stay for some tea?’
Josie’s eyes again flicker to Patrick, but he’s standing staring down at the floor. ‘Oh, no thanks, Mo, not today. Why don’t you come over to mine next week? We’ll catch up with the girls?’
‘OK,’ Maureen says, ‘that’ll be nice. I’ve been so busy getting this place sorted I—’
‘Don’t worry, everyone understands. It takes a long time to get it how you want it, doesn’t it? But it’s all looking good. You’ll get there.’
‘Oh Josie, are you sure Pat can’t run you back to town?’
Patrick looks at his wife quickly. Chloe notices how he doesn’t offer the same.
‘No, no, I’m perfectly fine on the bus,’ Josie says. ‘Well, goodbye, Mo. Goodbye, Chloe.’
The two women hug on the back doo
r step, and it’s only when Maureen follows her friend out and round to the drive that Patrick seems to grow inside his clothes somehow, standing taller. He takes his seat at the kitchen table, pushing Josie’s cup into the middle of the tablecloth and unfolding his newspaper in the space it leaves.
Maureen comes back into the kitchen, fixing her hair.
‘Right, what was I going to do tonight? That’s right, I got some sausages out of the freezer.’
And with that, the kitchen at Elm House breathes easily again.
Back in her bedroom, her cup of tea beside her in bed, Chloe goes over Josie’s visit. She can’t remember ever seeing Josie’s name mentioned in any of the cuttings. She curses herself again that she doesn’t have her complete archive here in Low Drove. She could go to Nan’s and collect it – the cuttings that are still in one piece – but then she pictures the place: the loneliness hanging behind curtains that she’d forgotten to draw in her haste to leave; the post piling up behind the front door, the curtain still hanging from the back of it, trailing on the carpet. Not so long ago that place had been a home, Chloe and Nan’s home. Now it stands empty, neglected.
On the end of her bed is the top Maureen gave her this morning. Chloe pulls it towards her, tracing a finger along every stitch. The thought that Maureen made this for her warms her blood. She stands up and slips off her jumper, pulling the blouse on over her head. She stands in front of the mirror, twisting this way and that as the last of the evening’s pink sky falls through the windows onto the mustard-yellow sunflowers.
She had a friend who had a blouse like this when she was little. Or was it her own? She has a vague memory of the colours – or is it the pattern? She can’t place it. The day is muddling up everything in her head, but the blouse feels familiar and it fits perfectly. And it was made for her – just for her – and that is enough.
She sits back down on the bed in the blouse and fishes the pale blue notebook out from her small archive buried deep under the bed. Picking up a biro, she takes the lid off and opens the next blank page. She pauses, chewing the end of the pen, then flicks back a couple of dozen pages, filled with notes in various shades of blue and black ink. She knows she has so much to write in here today: there was the walk with Maureen, everything she told her about the day Angie disappeared. There was the spare room and all its contents – a neat list of everything she saw in there should fill two pages alone. But instead, she returns to the blank page and writes, Josie dislikes/suspicious of Patrick. Why? Police tip-off? Look into this. She circles that last bit, as if to highlight its importance.