‘Yes,’ Frances said, ‘I do.’
‘But now, well, where is she?’
‘Is that why you thought of Amble?’
‘I suppose. I’ve got to see her somewhere.’
For Frances, Susan was still hovering in the past. The girl with the push-chair, walking away across the station concourse. A woman in a red coat, a little overweight, rising past her on an escalator. Or if she thought about Susan for long enough, she saw a girl in school uniform, tie loosened, caught up in a crowd of boys at the Pelican Café. None of those pictures was any use to Kate, of course, or to Frances herself. Years ago, she had had other images of Susan, imagined, but real enough. Susan in Alec’s arms, Susan in bed with Alec, Susan and Alec in some flat in Leeds living together, a newly created family with the two year old Kate. She had worked hard to crush those images.
‘Sometimes,’ Kate admitted, ‘I think she’s dead.’ She said it so matter-of-factly, Frances was taken aback. She had thought this herself, recently.
‘Oh no,’ she protested, but feebly. ‘I’m sure she’s all right. She’s staying with friends or in digs.’ As she spoke she realised Kate too had her terrible visions, images she wanted Frances to render absurd or impossible.
She could not do it. If Susan were still alive, functioning, what was she living on? Alec said she had taken money, but after six months that must have run out. Had she a job, was she living rough? A woman in a red coat, prosperous, her hair glossy with good health, rising on an escalator, or walking swiftly along a busy Edinburgh street, always walking away, leaving them.
‘If she’s dead,’ Kate went on, ‘she can’t come back, and she’s not staying away on purpose. She wouldn’t do that. Only if she was ill, and she can’t help being ill, can she? Alec says mental illness, people go on blaming you for it, but you can’t help it, it’s like cancer or whatever, it’s not your fault.’
‘No of course not,’ Frances agreed, inadequate. Kate was right: it was pointless to be angry with a Susan who was mentally ill, or dead.
Kate’s eyes filled with tears again. ‘I hope she’s not dead. Do you think she is?’
‘Look, I know it’s difficult, I know that, but you have to think of yourself now, of the baby.’
‘I am, I’m eating all this healthy food.’
‘Yes, but you need to rest as well and try not to think of things that upset you.’
‘I’m not going back to school.’
‘There’s not much point now.’
Kate sat up straighter and put both hands over her belly. ‘My brain’s sort of gone to sleep, you know? I couldn’t do any kind of work you had to think about. I feel too fat and stupid.’
Frances was tempted to point out that Kate would feel a good deal fatter and stupider by the time the baby was born.
‘I must get on,’ she said, rising to her feet. ‘Are you all right? Do you want to come to the supermarket with me?’
‘I can’t be bothered. Will you get me a magazine? Michelle’s coming over tonight, is that OK? And Amy and Roxanne, I think.’
‘Sure.’
‘But it’s just Michelle that’ll be here for tea.’
Was Michelle the one who ate everything or nothing? They came and went like butterflies, Kate’s friends, or rather a flock of gulls, descending, squawking, full of shrieks and protests, announcements and opinions. When they left the house became still again and felt empty. Frances had almost got used to it. She wondered if they would keep coming after the baby.
Life was divided now into these two unreal parts: before the baby, after the baby. Only last night she had sat on the long sofa between Andrew and Kate, and the pulse of life was so strong it was visible under Kate’s baggy tee-shirt. She had felt it, laid her hands on hot tight skin and felt the prod of a foot or hand, there and gone again. Weird, Andrew said, not wanting to touch and yet curious. Hey, he’s trying to escape. Wedged between them Frances thought, there are four of us here, soon there will be four of us visible, breathing. The baby batted at Kate’s hard belly, reminding them over and over, I am here, I exist.
In Aberdeen, despite the unaccustomed heat, Grace was knitting tiny jackets and jumpers in white and eau de nil. A cloud of soft wool bulged from the tapestry bag and her fingers flew, in, over, through, out, the slender grey pins flicking to and fro. They sat in their neat back garden on flower pattered padded chairs taken out of the conservatory, and Jim, who had been reading, fell into a doze, the newspaper slipping from his knee, fanning out on the grass. With a dim roar, traffic went past ceaselessly on the Great Western Road, but in the high-walled garden birds sang, and a faint breeze tilted the long buddleia spears, whispered across the purple hebe by the back door.
Alec had taken a temporary job as a bar manager. In mid-afternoon he came home and opened the windows in his stale house, letting air and sunshine in, and stood by the back door smoking. He might as well smoke; there was no-one to mind. The raw taste of the Gauloise soothed him, and he watched the curl of bluish smoke thin out in the windless heat of his back yard. There were weeds flourishing in a corner and a whiff of sourness rose from the dustbin. Above him, the sky was a hard blue. He thought of Frances’s shady garden and then, unexpectedly, of the beach at Amble and the sea rolling over pale sand. Perhaps he should have gone there.
In half an hour someone was coming to view the house. Jesmond was a popular area: even uncared for, echoing with emptiness like his, these houses sold quickly. In a few weeks he could be free to move north, find some other job, rent or even buy a flat. As for the furniture, the bulky Edwardian pieces he and Susan had picked up here and there for this house, could all go into store or be sold. Whatever he had the time and energy to manage. Whatever was least trouble.
He liked the idea of starting again with a few bare rooms, a clean slate. The house here weighed him down, oppressive with memories. Even now, when the telephone rang, he had a pang of fear it might be Susan, even while he knew it never would be again. She had done it so often and the calls had come with such relief then, he had rushed to answer.
‘I want to come home,’ she would say. ‘Please Alec, I just want to come home. It didn’t work out, you were right.’
Why had he taken her back, time after time? He told himself it was for Katie, who needed her mother, but as the years went by and Susan’s affairs became almost predictable, he knew it was because he didn’t have the energy to deal with the inevitable fallout. How long before her lovers left her, instead of her leaving them? He suspected it had already begun to happen. ‘It didn’t work out,’ meant ‘he dumped me’, or at least, ‘he couldn’t handle it’. That, he could understand.
If Katie hadn’t been there he would have ditched Susan that first time, or at least the second. She had the benefit of her beauty, and the proximity of men who worked long hours and succumbed too easily to temptation. They’d all been doctors, except this last one.
He was weak, but he gave himself credit for one thing, in one thing he had been strong. He had never told Kate where her mother was, or who her mother was with. Sometimes he thought she must have guessed or had heard the truth from someone else. She often went silent during her mother’s absences and turned away from him, sullen and unhappy. Together they kept up the fiction of Susan’s ‘illness’. Not altogether fiction, of course. Her violent mood changes had kept them on tenterhooks between lovers.
She had not actually left the first time. The affair was conducted while Kate was at school and he was working; she had managed shift patterns with skill. The next time and all the times after that – at least those he knew about – she disappeared for a few days, a couple of weeks, once as long as a month. Just as he decided he would have to do something, might have to leave himself taking Kate with him, the phone call would come.
He would cover the receiver and turn to Kate aged eight, ten, twelve – all those Kates – and say, ‘It’s Mum!’ and she would dance when she was little, hop down the stairs. I want to speak to her! Later, she
simply sat there, hunched on those same stairs, waiting while he asked Susan, over and over, Tell me where you are, and I’ll come and get you. Just tell me where you are.
When the telephone shrilled this time, deep in the empty house behind him, he jumped and his heart thudded with apprehension.
It was Gillian. Her voice was lower than Susan’s, but the accent, however faded by time and living in other places, the same.
‘Gill, how are you?’
‘Alec, I think you should know, I think I should tell you – ’
‘What?’
‘Maybe it’s nothing. I don’t know.’
It is nothing, he could have reassured her but he waited, and Gill went on,
‘I keep getting these strange phone calls. Nuisance calls, the police say. They’ve advised me to change my number. I might, but then she wouldn’t – I keep thinking she’s going to say something.’
Now she was getting to the point. ‘What is it,’ he asked. ‘Heavy breathing, what?’
‘Just silence, the sort when you know full well there’s someone there. Then they hang up, it goes dead.’
‘You get the line checked?’
‘Oh yes.’ She seemed to take a deep breath, as if making up her mind. ‘Alec, I know this is mad, but I think it’s Susan. I think she’s sort of testing me and some day, sometime, she’ll speak to me. But it’s freaking me out. I thought you should know about it.’
‘You should go back to the police. It could be somebody at work or someone who lives nearby. There’s not some guy harassing you?’
Gillian attempted a laugh. ‘No, that’s ridiculous. Anyway it’s a woman, I know it is.’
‘You could go ex-directory – that would put a stop to it.’
‘You haven’t heard anything, have you – you haven’t been getting freaky phone calls?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘and if Frances had I’m sure she’d have told you.’
‘I haven’t actually spoken to her for a while. The reason I called you is I thought maybe you had heard something and you were keeping it to yourself. For some reason.’
‘No!’ he exclaimed again, startled. She mustn’t start thinking like that; he had to make sure she was left in no doubt. ‘Honestly, Gill, believe me. Susan hasn’t been in touch.’ He let his voice drop, warm with sincerity.
‘Right. I’ll just go ex-directory. I suppose.’
‘You haven’t spoken to Kate recently?’
‘No.’
‘She’s doing fine – huge, she tells me. I’m hoping to go up when this job finishes at the end of August.’
‘What job’s that?’
‘Just a temporary thing. Management infill.’
He would not say anything about the house. Not yet. It was best not to let Frances get wind of his plans till it was all settled. They talked for a few more minutes then he heard a car draw up. Guessing it was his potential buyers, he rang off with a final word of reassurance.
Gillian put the phone down and crossed to the window. It was not often hot and windless here, but this week she had been unable to sleep for heat, the airlessness of the city stifling her. She should have asked about Kate. She should have ended with something more ordinary, family news. He would think she was hysterical, imagining things which could not be.
She had not wanted to ask about Kate, so had not called Frances for several weeks. As summer emerged from Spring and the waiting months went on, something strange and unsettling had happened to Gillian. The baby she had got rid of had, in some phantom form, gone on growing. It was no longer a collection of cells, a comma, a tadpole, rudimentary life. It had a head, arms, legs, and it floated somewhere just out of reach of her imagination, but there all the same, moving, becoming more detailed (fingers, toes, blind eyes) and more human every day.
In nightmares she caught glimpses of it, as if it drifted under water that was green and clouded. She woke sweating and lay with her eyes wide open, terrified of going back to sleep.
Cut off from Frances, she longed for her and yet longed more for someone else she could tell, someone who would not judge her as she knew Frances would. So she did not call and if Frances left a message for her, she did not return it. Recently, Frances was either too preoccupied to think of her or had given up, since there had been no more messages.
The street was empty. Everyone was out, having gone to the shops, the parks, or into the country perhaps, in search of fresher air. The Fletchers’ cat slipped between railings and vanished down the basement steps, looking for a cooler place to sleep.
There had been no more silent messages either. Maybe those phone calls meant nothing, it was just some weirdo who rang up women to scare them. Why had she been so sure it was Susan trying to get in touch?
She knew why. It was because it had happened before.
She was twenty one years old and in the first job she’d really enjoyed, working for a travel agency. She was going to evening classes in Spanish, and was out with friends every weekend. It was just before she met Michael, who came into the agency to book a skiing holiday a few weeks later. She had been back to visit her parents only once since Susan’s return home and the atmosphere was so tense she decided not to go again. ‘It will be different when the baby’s born,’ Frances assured her and she thought, well, I might go then or I might not. Her own life was so interesting she could not bear to leave it for even one night.
She was still in a flat-share in Haymarket, saving for a deposit on her own place. Just three of them by then: Chloe had gone to London to get married.
The first time it happened, Anne answered the phone. ‘It’s for you,’ she said, but when Gillian took the receiver no-one answered, then the line went dead.
‘Cut off,’ she said. ‘Who was it?’
‘Don’t know. Maybe your sister – same accent.’
When it happened again, Gillian called Frances.
‘It wasn’t me. How are you anyway?’
The third time she was sure it was Susan, so called her mother’s house. Susan was out. It happened again twice, weeks apart. Just after the last time Katy was born and Gillian went to Aberdeen after all, to see her new niece. She meant to say to Susan, ‘Did you call me and then hang up? Why? I’d have come if you’d asked me, if you wanted me to.’
The birth had been long and difficult, ending in a forceps delivery. Susan looked exhausted and ill. They were all fussing round, her mother, Barbara, Frances. She remembered Frances saying, ‘When you’re better, come and visit us.’ She said to Gillian privately, ‘She really shouldn’t stay here. Mum will take over so she’ll never be independent. It’s a pity about Adam.’
She should have asked Susan about the calls. It was her then, and I’m sure it’s her now. So, should she have her number changed?
In a few minutes, Paul would be here to take her to a pub in Portobello where they were going to meet some friends of his. She was watching for his car since she had nothing else to do. The phone, ringing again in the quiet flat, made her start. She knew as she went to pick it up that there would be silence at the other end, the silence which was always there, echoing like a buzzing in her ears, the tinnitus of apprehension, voiceless.
‘Hello, it’s Gillian.’ This time, she would not stand for it, would not plead, would not give Susan the satisfaction. ‘Susan, I know it’s you. Just tell me where you are, Ok? That’s all. Are you all right?’
There was only the switch from empty noise to the purr of the dialling tone. With a cry Gillian slammed down the receiver. ‘Fuck you, Susan, as if I haven’t enough – ’ She was shaking. The sound of a car, that must be Paul’s, stopping in the street, made her take a deep breath and calm herself. He would soon get fed up with her moods and unexplained tears and she would lose him just when she was beginning to think it might be worth something after all, to stay with this relationship. By the time she pressed the button to release the front door she was in control again.
When Frances came back with her Saturday shopping, Andre
w appeared to help her unload it, shoving his feet into large loose trainers as he came outside.
‘You’re up at last, then?’
‘Yeah, sort of.’ He grinned at her, taking two heavy bags.
‘How’s Kate?’
‘On the phone.’
‘All these girls are round here nearly every day. What can they possibly have to say on the phone?’
‘It’s not any of them.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s him.’
‘What’s he saying – did you speak to him?’
‘Na. Just Kate. Sounds as if he’s planning a visit.’
They began to unpack the bags in the kitchen.
‘She’s better, isn’t she?’ Andrew said as he stacked milk and cheese in the fridge. ‘Not crying any more. She was mental for a while, eh?’
‘I do think a lot of that was because of her mother.’ Frances opened the larder and put away cereal, biscuits, dried fruit, flour. How did they get through so much food? At least Kate was eating now.
‘What do you think’s happened to her, Mum, really?’
‘I have no idea.’ She turned to face him.
‘Maybe she’s topped herself. You think?’ Seeing Frances wince, he added hastily, ‘Sorry – she’s your sister – sorry.’
‘It’s all right. Kate thinks the same, or she’s beginning to suspect it. The longer this goes on the more likely it seems. I keep thinking someone must know.’
‘Like a friend or something?’
‘Maybe.’
Kate came into the kitchen. ‘Alec wants to speak to you,’ she said, and began opening a bag of rolls. ‘I have one of these? I’m hungry.’
‘Go ahead. Is he still on the line?’
‘Yeah, I said you were back.’
Frances went to pick up the phone. ‘Alec?’
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