‘How long has this gone on? If you will stuff yourself with crisps and snacks at odd hours – ’
‘I don’t eat anything like that now. I don’t feel like eating. Everything tastes weird.’ She got up. ‘Can I go?’
‘Maybe we should make a doctor’s appointment for you after Easter. There must be some reason you feel sick.’ Frances stopped, aware of Jack.
Kate went out, and soon they could hear a familiar theme tune from the television.
‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ Jack said. ‘She’s not your problem.’
‘Oh, I think she is now.’
‘See what I mean? Some people just look for work.’
‘Unlike your brother.’
In the living-room, Kate lay on the sofa watching a tense scene between a girl who was expecting her mother’s lover’s child, and the mother, who had only just found out. The girl’s father came in and they all began shouting at each other. Kate switched channels. It wasn’t fair, all her usual soaps were spoiled. They had too many mother-daughter scenes. The mothers were all there of course, none of them had legged it, but she couldn’t stand to watch any more.
The queasy feeling had faded. She began to think about food, and what she might like to eat. Nothing sweet. Maybe something sort of salty like crisps. No, that wouldn’t do either. You’d think with all this giving up chocolate and crisps her skin would be perfect but it wasn’t, it broke out all the time and it took ages to cover up the blemishes in the morning before she set out for school. Maybe make-up was aggravating it, she had read that in Frances’s Good Housekeeping. You had to let your skin breathe, it said.
Her skin breathe! She couldn’t breathe properly herself, it was like being squeezed, stifled. She sat at her school desk, making grooves with a sharp pencil in the soft wood, the teachers’ words floating over her head. What was she doing there?
‘You Ok?’ Michelle had asked as they walked down the High Street after the last day at school. Michelle offered her a stick of spearmint gum, but Kate felt her stomach heave just looking at it. ‘You’re really pale.’
‘I feel sick and I’ve got cramps, I’ll be better when I come on. You know.’
‘I get all bloated the week before,’ Michelle confided, unwrapping more gum. Kate drew away from the blast of spearmint. ‘My belly’s like, absolutely huge and hard, you wouldn’t believe. Mam says drink more water, she’s crazy, how could that help?’
‘I’m not bloated,’ Kate said, feeling her stomach.
Now she lay back on the sofa with her hands on her stomach again. That crampy pain was back, and still no show of blood. Her stomach did seem to be sticking out a bit tonight. She’d just had tea though, that was why.
Wasn’t it?
A wave of heat swept through her, erupting in sweat. Every inch of her prickled, fiery, beneath the hair on the back of her neck, between her breasts, under her arms, her thighs, behind her knees. She pressed hard on her stomach, hands damp on the synthetic fabric of her trousers.
‘What you watching?’ Andrew asked, coming in. ‘Can I change the channel?’
Kate got up without a word and left the room. Andrew reached for the remote control.
‘You look very well,’ Frances said, stacking Gillian’s case in the car boot.
Gillian opened the passenger door. ‘Oh good.’ She smiled, very bright, in case this was some kind of accusation. How else would she look? She hadn’t been ill, for God’s sake.
‘I’m really glad you’re here,’ Frances said as she drove out of the station car park. It was late afternoon, dry but windy with slaty clouds chasing across the sky.
‘When are Mum and Dad coming?’
‘Tomorrow. They’re driving up in the morning and staying until Tuesday.’
‘Are we going to – you know – tackle them about Susan again?’
‘You can,’ Frances said. ‘I need all my energy to cook meals and keep everybody entertained.’ She sighed. ‘Let’s not even think about Susan for three days.’
They were out of the city now and crossing the Kessock Bridge onto the Black Isle. Weary with travelling, Gillian was both restless and fatigued. She shifted about in her seat, talked about work, then lapsed into silence.
As Frances negotiated the Tore roundabout and headed up the Dingwall Road, something moved on the back seat behind them – a file from school, probably – but the faint slither sent a ripple of shock through both women, and for a few seconds, speechless, they believed there was someone else in the car. Gillian even half turned her head.
‘I’ve got school stuff in the back,’ Frances said.
‘Just for a moment I thought – ’
Frances gave a puff of laughter. ‘Me too.’
‘Spooky.’
Silence again: the empty road, the fleeting clouds. Then as the car crested the hill and they began the descent towards the shining water of the Cromarty Firth and the nestled town, its lights winking at them, Gillian said,
‘I wonder where she is.’
Frances did not answer at once. When she did, her voice was harder than she intended.
‘It seems very odd that we don’t speak about her for years, then as soon as she goes off, we can’t stop talking about her.’
‘She seems more present. I don’t know why.’
‘It’s having Kate around.’
‘Kate reminds you of her?’
‘Not really, but Kate being here makes me resent Susan all over again. All those terrible feelings have resurfaced.’ Frances’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. She had not realised she felt so strongly.
‘It’s no wonder I suppose. Kate, and then Alec always turning up. It must be awful.’
Frances slowed the car for the Maryburgh roundabout, her driving as steady as ever. ‘It’s not that. I’m afraid Susan – ’ Again she hesitated, but not because of the change of gear, the corner smoothly turned as the car sailed calmly along the last mile.
‘D’you think something really awful has happened to her? Are you afraid she’ll never come back?’
‘I’m afraid she will. I keep thinking one day she’ll just turn up out of the blue.’
Frances had never been so frank, or so hostile.
‘Even after all this time, you couldn’t stand to see her?’
‘You don’t understand, do you?’
‘What?’
‘I’m afraid she’ll take Kate away. Again.’
Gillian leaned back in her seat. Over her swept the mystery she was never going to fathom now, that she had allowed to be cleared out of her body. Gone, the knowledge and understanding and fear Frances had held within her all those years and which she seemed able now to extend to a sullen girl she barely knew. Motherhood, its smugness and wholeness, and its terrible risk.
Frances extended the dining table to its full length. They would eat family meals here at the weekend, leaving the kitchen clear. At half past seven on Easter Saturday it was still light enough to look out into the garden where a few crocuses had begun to open, clumps of purple and yellow, brave against the cold. Under the apple trees, bunches of snowdrops quivered in a chill wind.
Spoiled by his grandparents, who treated no-one else with such indulgence, Jack made it all easy at first, and there was an almost festive air throughout the house. Everyone but Kate drank wine with the meal on Saturday night, which Gillian was thankful for, and Frances hoped would mellow the atmosphere. Kate did not eat much and said she did not like wine. ‘Alec’s always drinking red wine, I can’t stand the smell,’ she told her grandmother.
Grace nodded, approving. ‘I just have the one glass myself. White.’ She sipped and made a face, smiling at Kate. ‘I like it a bit sweeter, but I know I’m out of date.’
Jack caught his mother’s eye and winked. Andrew was explaining to his grandfather why he was taking four Highers instead of the five Jack had. Nothing, he thought, hating his brother for a moment, was ever good enough if Jack hadn’t done it. It was really himself he disliked, for
not measuring up. His grandfather was flushed: he liked red wine, and had had a few glasses. His beaky face, with its strong nose and eyebrows, was set in frowning lines. And yet Frances knew he was enjoying himslef, pronouncing on the boys’ future careers, advising, laying down his opinions hard as paving slabs.
She and Gillian flew back and forth with plates of food, opened more wine, stoked the fire, made coffee, stacked dishes, and in the sudden gaps of silence which from time to time froze the whole tableful into a tableau of strangers, found new and innocuous subjects of conversation. Frances knew that by Tuesday morning when she waved her parents away, she would be exhausted. Gillian, leaning on the work surface in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil, was suddenly pale and wilting.
‘Help,’ she said, ‘family life. Thank God it doesn’t happen too often.’
‘It’s not as if we’re a big family,’ Frances said. ‘I don’t know why it’s such hard work.’
‘It’s the missing people who make it hard,’ Gillian realised. Startled, Frances paused in the middle of setting out coffee cups.
‘What?’
‘That’s where the risk is. The danger. If we were just any old family, there wouldn’t be anyone missing. Well, not in the way Alec and Susan are. They’d be here, joining in. Or they’d be somewhere else having Easter with friends … or whatever. Do you see what I mean?’
‘I think so.’ Frances took coffee-making over from Gillian, who was ignoring the boiling kettle. ‘But other families must have black sheep. Secrets.’
‘I keep thinking Kate’s bound to say something about her mother. Like, I wish I knew where she was.’
‘Kate hardly mentions her now.’
Gillian picked up the tray of cups and saucers. ‘She looks a bit peaky. Spotty. I suppose it’s just teenage hormones.’
‘Her hormones definitely haven’t settled – but that’s common in teenage girls.’ She followed Gillian out of the kitchen. ‘I don’t believe she’s had a period all the time she’s been here.’ Gillian opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it.
Grace was telling Kate about the girl with the baby who had moved into their street. Frances and Gillian had of course heard the whole story already, heard their father’s views on the thoughtlessness of young people and discussed where the lass got the money to live there. All this had been gone over before Kate and the boys joined them, and Frances had hoped it was set aside for now.
‘You feel sorry for her, in a way,’ Grace said, cutting a small piece of cheese and balancing it on a cracker. ‘Managing a wee one all by herself.’
My God, Gillian thought, does she not remember Frances did it with two of them.
‘Act of selfishness.’ Jim turned suddenly from a football discussion he had been having with Andrew and Jack. ‘Bringing a bairn into the world like that. Not the way to do it.’
Gillian couldn’t believe her father was going on and on about this. Had he completely forgotten what Susan had done? And in front of Kate. She began to help Frances hand round coffee, trying to think of something to say, anything, that would lead them away from this, when she realised Kate had gone white and was twisting her napkin in her hands, tighter and tighter.
Frances had seen it too. ‘Are you all right, Kate? You’re not sick again?’
‘Yeah, I am.’ The girl got up hurriedly. She was wedged between table and window, and had to squeeze behind Andrew and then her grandmother to get out. In a moment she had done it and was gone. They heard her running upstairs.
‘Is she coming down with something, Frances?’ Grace asked. ‘She’s hardly eaten a thing.’
‘It could be that,’ Frances said. ‘Some bug or other. I’ll go up in a minute and see how she is.’
‘Throwing up, I bet,’ Andrew suggested. ‘She was heaving in the bathroom this morning.’
Beside her, Frances felt Gillian grow alert. Briefly, the two women looked at each other and then away, dismissing the thought as it passed from one to the other. Because it was, of course, unthinkable.
Upstairs, Kate rinsed round the basin, spat, washed her mouth out. She was never properly sick. It would be better if she were.
‘Kate?’
It was Frances. Kate splashed her face and wiped it dry with a towel.
‘Kate?’
‘I’m just coming.’
They faced each other in the bathroom doorway.
‘Andrew said you’d been sick today already.’
‘What’s it got to do with him?’
‘What’s wrong?’ Frances asserted herself as aunt, mother, someone who had a right to be concerned. ‘You must tell me.’
‘It’s just a stomach bug, right. Loads of people in my class have had it.’
Frances followed Kate to her room and closed the door behind them. The rest of the household was shut out, the sounds of conversation and dish-clearing faint and faraway, and they were left in quietness together. Andrew’s feet thudded upstairs and along the landing. After a moment, they heard music from his room.
Kate sat on the bed with her head bent, gazing at the floor. Frances, on the bedside chair, clenched her hands tight in her lap.
‘How long exactly has this sickness gone on?’
‘I don’t know exactly.’
‘How long roughly?’
‘A couple of weeks.’
‘It’s not a stomach bug, then.’
Kate bit her lip, not looking at Frances. ‘Nothing comes up,’ she whispered.
‘What?’
‘I said – ’
‘No, it’s all right. I got it. Kate – ’
‘Just leave me alone, right?’ Kate swung her feet up on the bed and turned away.
‘I do have to know what’s going on.’
‘I wish everybody would leave me alone. It’s none of their business.’
I could be wrong, Frances thought, frantic suddenly with doubt, and if I am, she’ll never forgive me. But Kate leaned forward, hands flat on her stomach as if to press away an ache, and Frances knew she was right.
‘You’re pregnant.’ She laid a hand gently on Kate’s arm, slid it down to where the girl’s hands folded over her stomach. Kate looked at her at last, eyes dark with terror.
‘What am I going to do?’ she gasped.
Frances moved from chair to bed and took the girl in her arms. Kate trembled then all at once folded herself into Frances’s embrace. Her words, muffled against her aunt’s jersey, were clear enough. ‘Help me, please help me. I’m so scared.’
Grace and Gillian worked companionably together. When the dishes were done and the surfaces clear, Grace found a broom and swept the kitchen floor. Casually, as she emptied the dustpan into the bin, she asked, ‘No word from Susan?’
Gillian was caught off guard. ‘Not yet.’
Grace squared up to her daughter. She knew perfectly well, Gillian realised, which one to tackle.
‘Where is she exactly?’
Gillian took a deep breath. ‘We don’t know. None of us knows.’
‘I see.’
‘I’m sorry, Mum, we didn’t want to worry you and Dad. Nobody’s actually seen her since before Christmas. Alec thinks she’s all right, though. She’s been back for some of her stuff.’
‘Let me get this straight.’
This was her mother: not a frail old lady worried about noisy neighbours. It was her mother, calm and quiet and in command. Gillian felt herself grow younger, wrong-footed. Grace set the brush and dustpan aside.
‘Susan has left home and no-one has seen her since before Christmas. It’s now Easter, and you still don’t know where she is. Are you sure he doesn’t?’
Does she think he’s buried her in the garden, Gillian wondered. He could have, he could have, the idea hammered for the first time. Get a grip here, get back to reality.
‘No,’ she said.
Grace seemed to consider this. ‘And Kate?’ she asked.
‘She doesn’t know either. Alec thought she’d b
e better off here because he works such long hours in his restaurant.’
‘Frances told us about the restaurant.’ In her mother’s tone was all the foolhardiness of Alec’s life.
‘Alec’s been worried, of course,’ Gillian said, trying to redeem him, ‘but he was thinking of Kate. It’s worse for her.’
‘Do you think I don’t realise that? When I consider what – ’ she stopped, as if words failed her. ‘I don’t know what to think any more. We did our best, goodness knows.’
She sat down abruptly on a wooden chair, dwindling before Gillian’s eyes into old age again.
‘I know you did.’ She was listening for Frances, perhaps they both were. Why didn’t she come back downstairs and get them out of this?
What if Kate is pregnant, Gillian thought, appalled, sitting down with a thump beside her mother. How relentlessly families visited their mistakes on the next generation. Look, just look, what Susan has done now.
Part III
The Open Door
1
There was something different about Kenny when he came back from his son’s house after Easter. Taken up with more urgent preoccupations, Frances did not notice at first. By the time she did, it was almost too late.
Everything was suspended until she could talk to Kate uninterrupted. On Easter Monday her parents left, after an exhausting Sunday night debate about Susan which neither Frances nor Gillian could see had any point at all, except that their parents wanted to make sure every possible avenue for finding her had been explored. All through the discussion, which seemed to circle Susan without in any way explaining her, Frances had the feeling this was a ritual her father needed to observe, and that her mother had tacitly agreed to enact.
Gillian also left on Monday; Frances drove her to the station because she could tell her father did not want to negotiate Inverness traffic and it gave the sisters a last opportunity to talk.
‘Is she?’ Gillian asked as soon as they were on their way.
‘Yes.’
‘I knew it.’ Gillian put her sunglasses on; the day was very bright and cold, the sky pitilessly clear. The glasses gave her the look of a youthful Audrey Hepburn or Jackie Onassis, a little sharp featured, but younger than she really was. Until they were clear of Dingwall neither spoke again, then Gillian said,
Tell Me Where You Are Page 17