by Anna Wharton
She puts five mugs onto a round tray and carries them carefully through to the living room. The detective now sits on the sofa beside Patrick and Maureen, who have recomposed themselves a little and seem ready to hear more about how their missing daughter was found.
Chloe hands a mug from the tray to the officer in Patrick’s chair. He thanks her with a tight smile, everyone unsure of how they are supposed to behave after this bombshell has swept through the room. The detectives do a good job of seeming awkward, but surely they are used to this? Surely they do this all the time? She thinks about the reporters at the newspaper who were often sent out on death knocks just hours after someone had put an announcement in the newspaper. The receptionists would ring up and tell the news desk if it was a sudden death, or a young age, and a reporter would be dispatched to their home. They’d return to the office the same as they’d left, with a breezy demeanour, their priority only to empty their shorthand pads onto their screens in time for the next day’s paper. Perhaps they had sat in living rooms like this, an intruder into someone else’s most personal moments. Chloe’s job was only ever to file away what they had written. She’d never thought of the reporters’ lives outside of the office, of how close they were to both life and death.
Patrick sniffs and shakes his head when Chloe offers him tea. She puts a mug down in front of Maureen, who thanks her with a small voice, and the detective places her cup beside her feet.
Chloe takes her place at the very edge of the room in the hope of not being noticed. She’d always been good at fading into the background, of disappearing into the wallpaper. Over the years she likes to think she’s perfected the art of camouflage.
Patrick sits forward, balancing his elbows on his knees. He holds his head in his hands and then looks up.
‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘it’s just, well, it’s a shock, you know? After all these years.’
The detective nods, and glancing at Maureen again, Patrick reaches for his wife’s hand. Chloe notices how she squeezes it in return. He’s right, how could he have let go of her hand twenty-five years ago?
‘I don’t . . . well, I don’t quite know what to ask first, like,’ Patrick says. ‘I mean how . . . how was she found?’
The detective takes a sip of her tea and then holds the mug between two hands.
‘Another person was reported missing and it was actually during the search for her that Angela’s remains were found.’
Patrick nods. ‘I see . . . and where? I mean, where was she found?’
‘Not far from the park where she went missing.’
Maureen looks up quickly and a tiny sob escapes from her mouth.
‘You mean, she’s been there all this time, out in the cold?’ Maureen asks, her voice small, child-like.
Patricks wraps her up in his arms again, rocking her as she cries. But Chloe sees something that no one else in the room would notice, a relief in him that is almost palpable. She had been found not far from where he’d left her. They had been looking in the right place all along.
‘You may remember there was a building site nearby the park at the time of Angela’s disappearance . . .’ the detective explains. Patrick and Chloe quickly exchange glances. ‘That building site is now a care home for the elderly.’ She stops to check her notebook. ‘Park House.’
Chloe looks up quickly at the mention of Park House.
‘Park House was under construction at the time of Angie’s disappearance, and recently they’ve been having some building work done. The ground was disturbed during those excavations at a copse at the back of the care home and so during our search for the other missing person, Angela’s body was found in a shallow grave.’
‘She was that close by all the time?’ Patrick says.
Chloe looks to the detective, as eager as these two parents for an explanation that will make sense right now.
‘There have been diggers and all sorts of building equipment raking over that earth recently while they were excavating footings for the new extension at Park House,’ the detective explains. ‘We deepened and extended the search area for the other missing person, and that’s when Angela’s remains were discovered.’
‘So no one . . .?’ Maureen can’t finish her sentence. But everyone in the room senses a mother’s need to write off the unthinkable after all these years.
The detective shakes her head. ‘No, it seems from what can be understood by forensics that her death was a very tragic accident. There’ll need to be a full post-mortem, of course, but we don’t suspect any foul play and at this stage, we’re not launching a murder investigation. I’m just so very sorry.’
‘But it doesn’t make sense . . . I mean, surely that building site was searched at the time . . .’ Maureen says.
‘We have no way of knowing how thoroughly it was searched all those years ago, perhaps resources were allocated elsewhere – it appears that mistakes could have been made and we can of course review the case if you—’
Maureen shakes her head and looks at Patrick. ‘I just want this over now, Pat. I just want Angie properly laid to rest.’
He nods and pulls her in closer.
The room falls silent, and Chloe – still holding the empty tea tray – shuffles from one foot to the other. She feels twitchy somehow at the mention of Park House. She needs air. She needs to breathe.
‘I’m just . . . I’m just going to find some biscuits in the kitchen,’ Chloe tells the room, but it’s only the detective that looks up and nods. Maureen and Patrick still cling on to one another as if they are each lifebuoys and they are trying desperately not to drown in this ocean of grief.
In the kitchen, the two uniformed officers look up when she walks past them to open the back door. The windows are filled with steam which quickly starts to shrink as the cool air rushes in. At the back door she inhales lungfuls of the cold Fen night. She thinks of the recreation room at Park House, of the residents who spend hours looking out onto the garden, all the way down to the copse at the end of the sloping lawn. She has looked out onto that copse herself. Could it really be true, that the whole time Nan has been in Park House, Chloe has been unknowingly watching over Angie’s grave?
From the kitchen, as she opens a cupboard to find the biscuit tin, she hears Maureen asking more questions and the detective answering her carefully.
‘And what about the other missing person?’
‘I’m sorry?’ the detective says.
‘You said that they found Angie when they were searching for someone else. Did they find them? God knows, I wouldn’t want someone else to suffer like we have all these years.’
Chloe finds the biscuit tin and takes out a small plate from the cupboard. On it she arranges bourbons, custard creams, digestives, fanning them out in a semi-circle. She can hear the detective consulting with her colleague about the other missing person.
‘I don’t think we have much information, except that she was found and taken to hospital. Is that right, Pete?’
When he speaks his voice is louder and clearer than his colleague’s, weaving its way across the living room, round the door frame and through to the kitchen where Chloe stands arranging the biscuits.
‘Yes, it was an elderly lady who went missing from Park House.’
Chloe stops as she returns the packets to the tin. She can hear him flicking through his notebook in the living room.
‘Yes, that’s right, IC1 female, eighty-five years old, taken to hospital suffering from hypothermia . . . I’m afraid we don’t have any update on her condition.’
Chloe’s heart beats hard in her chest, the packets of biscuits fall from her hand. She’s already out of the kitchen into the hall, running up the stairs. She hears Maureen and Patrick, the detectives in the living room, but she runs into her room, slamming the door shut behind her. She pulls her phone from her coat pocket. Switches it on. Waits for it to light up.
‘Come on, come on,’ she says as she clutches it in both hands.
Finally it
is on. She waits for the signal – it’s there, but patchy. She curses this black spot as the signal wavers. Her phone blinks with voicemail messages. Three more missed calls from Park House, one from a blocked caller – please not the police. Her heart is beating so wildly, tremors reach her hands. She grips the phone, a split second when she is afraid of the news that it might bring. She stands beside the window, and tentatively presses the voicemail button. Perhaps everything will be fine, she tells herself, Nan can’t be the only eighty-five-year-old woman in Park House. She pleads inwardly for her phone to offer a connection that lasts – just this once. Yet, at the same time, she wants to delay her own heartbreak just that bit longer. But life chooses its own moments to send a meteor down to destroy your world. And so it is that, alone in this room, far out in the Fens, Chloe hears enough through the patchy phone signal to realize that everything she has come to know as family has ended:
‘Been trying to call . . . police search . . . sorry to have to tell you . . . your grandmother passed away in hospital this afternoon.’
FORTY-NINE
It had taken a few weeks to release the body for the funeral. With it being a sudden death there were the inevitable tests that needed to be carried out. It was only once the authorities were satisfied that the death certificate was released. The coroner had recorded a verdict of death by misadventure.
So much time had passed that it was almost summer when a small crowd gathered in the city’s cemetery for the burial. The sun was shining so brightly that the usual black garb worn at funerals conducted the heat and everybody hoped – for more reasons than one – that the Rite of Committal would soon be over. No one likes to see a child go before an adult, except in this case, so many adults had gone before they had found her. The priest mentioned each of them by name during the church service, relatives of the Kyles who hadn’t lived to see little Angela returned to her parents, and even as he did, everybody thought again inwardly what a shame it was that she had been returned to them in death instead of in life. Some people, as ridiculous as it might have seemed, had never given up hope. Sometimes, in the face of so much despair, it really is all we’ve got.
At first Chloe had thought it was best to hang back, but it was Maureen and Patrick themselves who had picked her out of the crowd as they filed into St Gregory’s. Maureen’s hand had found Chloe’s and it has not left hers since. Nobody asked who Chloe was as they filed out of the church to make their way to the cemetery, but Chloe had overheard Patrick telling one group of friends that she was their lodger, and then Maureen had interrupted – her hand still wrapped firmly around Chloe’s – to tell them that she was ‘practically family now’. This had made Chloe glow inside, even on such a sorrowful day. She understands now that Patrick wants only what will make the pain easier to bear for Maureen, and for now, that is Chloe.
As they’d waited for the priest to arrive to commence the committal Maureen had made sure to introduce Chloe to even the most distant of relatives, and if they noticed – by coincidence – the resemblance between Chloe and Angie, nobody commented. Perhaps it wouldn’t have felt right on this particular day.
Chloe stands at the front now, right beside the grave as the tiny coffin hovers over it. On her right, Hollie’s hand fits neatly into hers and she feels her best friend – her only friend – squeeze it every now and then as if to remind her that she is here, that she is always here for her. As they recite the Lord’s Prayer, Chloe looks behind her, and Phil gives her a tight, embarrassed smile.
On Chloe’s left is Maureen, and beside her, Patrick. Maureen’s fingers are wrapped so tightly around Chloe’s that her bones ache, but she doesn’t let go of this mother’s grasp, not for one second. She can see now why Patrick didn’t. And behind Maureen, a hand on her left shoulder, stands Josie. Perhaps she had proved her friendship a hundred times over in all the years that followed. Who knows how much she has also suffered for her own deceit? We rarely have a way of telling.
The priest concludes his prayers:
‘Loving God, from whom all life proceeds
And by whose hand the dead are raised again,
Though we are sinners, you wish always to hear us.
Accept the prayers we offer in sadness for your servant, Angela Rose Kyle:
Deliver her soul from death,
Number her among your saints
And clothe her with the robe of salvation
To enjoy forever the delights of your kingdom.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.’
The congregation, Maureen, Patrick and Chloe, all whisper, ‘Amen.’
Maureen and Patrick stand beside the grave until the crowds disperse and people finish telling them that the service had been ‘lovely’ and ‘fitting’ and ‘beautiful’ and all the other adjectives that people hope will make grief that much easier to bear. In truth, what it takes most of all is time, and haven’t Maureen and Patrick had enough of that already? But their grief starts again at day zero, now they have finally laid their daughter to rest.
Most people are heading for the wake, but Maureen and Patrick understandably want to have the last few moments alone with their daughter.
‘Are you sure you’ll be OK?’ Chloe asks Maureen.
She nods. ‘I’ve got Patrick,’ she says, squeezing his arm underneath hers. ‘I just feel that I need to be near her, you know? After all that time that she had to lie there alone, I just need to make sure she’s truly rested now.’
‘Of course,’ Chloe says, planting a kiss on Maureen’s cheek. ‘Take as long as you need. I’ll see you at the wake.’
She slips her hand from Maureen’s, the first time that morning.
‘Thank you, Chloe,’ Maureen says. ‘Not just for today but all these days. You’ve been my rock. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.’
Patrick smiles from behind her shoulder, and reaches out a hand to Chloe’s arm.
Chloe leaves them with Angie, assuring them she will get a lift to the wake with one of the other mourners.
‘I’m sorry we can’t come with you, Chloe,’ Hollie says. ‘But we’ve both got to get back to work.’
‘It’s OK,’ Chloe says. ‘Thank you for coming, both of you.’
Hollie wraps her in a hug. ‘Remember, you’re never alone,’ she says. ‘You’re as good as family to me and Phil. You’ve always got us.’
Chloe breaks away and nods. ‘Thank you,’ she says.
‘Are you going to walk out with us?’ Hollie asks. ‘We could drop you off at the wake?’
‘It’s OK,’ Chloe says. ‘I want to take a little time here . . .’
Hollie nods. It’s not necessary for Chloe to explain herself to her friend. She has been there from the start, after all. She knows all her secrets. She just hopes that one day there will be fewer of them to keep. Chloe has felt the same, of course, each time she has hoped that this would be the one, that she would finally be content. She is as disappointed as anyone that her life has worked out this way.
Chloe waits until the very last of the mourners have filed out of the cemetery and then heads towards what would appear to be the wrong way out. She has one other thing she needs to do first.
She wasn’t there for the service, so it takes some searching, but finally she finds it among all the others. The earth has not yet sunk back to level on this particular grave, and a stone has only finally been put in place in the last week. Chloe bends down beside it. She lays her coat on the ground and sits on top of it so as not to ruin the new black dress that Maureen had run up on her machine.
‘Hello, Nan,’ Chloe says, gently smoothing the blades of grass with the palm of her hand as if they were fine strands of Nan’s own soft white hair.
She reads out loud the inscription on the grave:
Here lies Grace Hudson
1919–2004
Wife to Hugh
Mother to Stella, taken from this earth still an angel
Rest in Peace
It was simple e
nough, and even if Chloe had been able to have any input, she knew Nan well enough to know there wasn’t much more she would have wanted except to be mentioned alongside her husband and the daughter she lost at just six years old. If anyone knew the pain of losing a child, it was Nan. Her little girl had died of polio, the cruellest of childhood illnesses. Grace had been able to lay her daughter to rest, unlike Maureen, who had endured all those years of not knowing.
Chloe had considered coming to the funeral, even just to watch from afar, but in the end she had decided that it was too risky. Better to blend into the background. She had always been so good at that. She knew that she would celebrate Nan’s life in her own way, or all fifteen months that she had known of it.
Chloe had needed to change her mobile number, of course, but she was used to that. The only person who needed her new one was Hollie. She knew Hollie always understood, each time Chloe convinced her that this time would be the last. But what are best friends if they’re not someone who believes in you utterly? Hollie might not have liked it, but she at least understood Chloe’s search to feel whole, for that perfect place where she would finally belong. Perhaps it had just become one of those annoying habits you come to accept in those you love. We all have them, Chloe thinks.
She sits up and looks around the cemetery. She has other friends here, people she has said goodbye to, other services that she has attended – most that she hasn’t. She’s experienced enough loss in her life to know that you celebrate people inside – that’s where you carry them with you, the people who have made a difference. And she hopes that she has at least done that – made a difference.
Chloe still has her own archive back at Maureen and Patrick’s. In fact, now she has left Nan’s, she has more of it there. In it, this morning, she had found among all the others one envelope marked Grace Hudson, and she had pulled from it a single cutting. The one where their story together had started. It only felt right to read it here today.
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