The Missing Years

by Lexie Elliott

  I watch the pair of them cross the garden and leap the wall together to be greeted by the excitable Toast. It’s a thoroughly heartwarming image—the tall athletic figure of Ben next to Callum’s sturdy little frame, and the midnight black dog leaping around them—made all the more so by my brief window into the unselfconscious affection between them. I turn back into the kitchen, carefully locking and dead-bolting the door behind me.

  Jamie is finishing his mug of tea, an unreadable expression on his face as he gazes at the photo. He looks up as I join him and flashes his most charming smile. “Peace at last. Though I suppose it’s a lot quieter here than wherever you live in London?”

  “A lot quieter—” Suddenly there is a thud from upstairs. “Well, apart from the slamming doors . . . But yes, generally a lot quieter, though somehow I’m not sleeping well. I guess I’m not used to the house yet.”

  “Will you be here long enough to get used to it?”

  “No.” I think of Callum in the garden. The baby that Jonathan and I don’t have, that I can’t envisage, could play in that garden. “Well, probably not. Though I suppose it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to use it as a holiday cottage. If it’s going to make next to nothing if I sell it, maybe I ought to hang on to it after all.” I look around the kitchen again. “And redecorate. Anyway, you were going to tell me about Fiona’s obsession with the Manse and my father.”

  He grimaces. “Aye. Look, I dinnae want to make a big deal out of it or anything.” He pauses, and I incline my head noncommittally. He sighs. “Aye. Well. It’s just . . . Actually, this is harder than I thought to explain. It’s . . . just that Fiona thinks that our dad isnae her dad.” He looks at me expectantly. I shake my head, uncomprehending. He sighs again. “She thinks he was your dad. She thinks her dad was Martin.”

  “What?” I stare at him. There’s something guarded about his eyes, like he’s reining in more emotion than he wants to show. “Is that even possible? How old is she?”

  He nods. “It’s possible. I’m twenty-six, so she’s twenty-eight—born 1982. Your father didn’t disappear until late 1983, right?”

  “Yes, but that’s like saying he could have fathered any child in the region born prior to the date of his disappearance plus nine months. I mean, it’s technically possible, but that doesn’t mean it actually happened.”

  He extends a placating hand. “I know, I know—believe me, you’re preaching to the converted. But she has it in her head. She’s always had it in her head . . .”

  “But why?” The door upstairs is banging at intervals just long and uneven enough for me to think that it might have stopped before each new thud.

  “I know, it makes no sense. There is no reason. She just . . . I dinnae ken why. She just somehow got the idea in her head and it never left. I cannae remember a time that she didnae believe it.”

  “Does your dad know she thinks this?”

  “Christ, no, that would destroy him. Fiona is his wee girl; she can do no wrong. Especially since she produced Callum out of the blue. My dad is gaga for that wee lad. And believe me, she’s smart enough to know which side her bread is buttered on.” His expression is rueful as he says this, but it’s not completely convincing. I suspect Jamie’s ego does not take kindly to being the less favored child. “I’d never tell him. Though it’s been hard over the years; she can be quite hurtful. And with all the other problems she already has . . . You probably noticed her behavior the other night, right?” I shake my head, not sure what he means. “How she was watching you?” I hadn’t noticed that, but then I was busy trying not to be seen watching her, worrying about my own subtlety. I’m so deeply unsettled now that it’s a struggle to stay in my chair; I want to get up and pace. Jamie’s still speaking though. “It’s because she thinks she’s your half sister.” Half sister. The words jolt me. I already have one of those. Do two half sisters make a whole? “And normally she’s fine, really she is, but with you suddenly here, God knows what is running through her brain . . .” He drags a hand through his hair, then takes a deep breath. “I was thinking . . . ach, it’s a horrible imposition, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I thought maybe . . . It’s going to sound nuts, but I thought maybe if we did a DNA test, if we proved to her that the two of you are not related, then maybe she might, I dinnae ken, let it go or something—”

  “No.”

  “Aye, I figured you’d say that, but please just take a moment to think about it—”

  “No.” His shoulders droop at my blanket refusal. “I’m sorry, but even doing a test suggests the idea has some credibility. Which it doesn’t. I don’t see the point in pandering to the delusions of an obviously sick girl. I’m sorry.” I stop myself abruptly. I shouldn’t have to apologize for refusing to be dragged into this ludicrous nonsense. “Is she on some kind of medication?”

  “Well, sometimes that stuff works better than other times.” He blows out a long breath. “Aye. Well. It was worth a shot. I just thought I had to ask. What with you actually being here and everything.”

  “Yes.” We sit in silence for a moment. He seems smaller, somehow. Like the fight has gone out of him. “It can’t be easy, living with her,” I venture.

  He smiles gratefully despite his dejection. “Well, no. It’s not. And to be honest, I dinnae really have anyone to talk to about it. It’s a pretty small pond here, and it’s not fair to slag her off to folk who are her pals, too. She’s mostly really good at keeping things under wraps, so they might not even believe me anyway. There’s a lot of loyalty round here; my dad makes sure of that. Even when there was all that trouble with the police when she was a teenager, and then the social services investigation over Callum . . .” He sees my confused look. “Oh, it was nothing. He rolled off a bed when he was just a baby and ended up with a head injury. So then there was an investigation for negligence, and what with her police record . . .” He grimaces. Police record? Social services investigation? I suddenly realize I have my mouth open, and quickly shut it, working hard to find some equanimity. “It took all of Glen’s connections to get that cleared.” Glen. Not Dad. “Harassment, it was, he said . . . Anyway, my point is that everybody round here knows about the dyschronometria, and they’re really protective of her. I would sound like . . .” He trails off.

  I find myself nodding. “I noticed that with Ben.” I’ve only been here a few days, and already I can tell that Ben would bridle if I tried to say anything uncomplimentary about Fiona.

  He leaps gratefully on my confirmation. “Exactly! Look, Ben’s a good guy, though nobody is such an open book as he makes out that he is—but I’m not trying to slag him off; I’m just saying it’s not the easiest. And everyone round here thinks Glen is a saint for taking me in at all. Oh—you dinnae ken? Fiona is my half sister. Same father, different mother.” His lips twist ruefully. “I’m the by-blow. I was dumped on him when my mam died, which well and truly scuppered his plan of refusing to acknowledge my existence.”

  “Oh, Jamie.” Now the use of Glen instead of Dad speaks volumes. I, of all people, can empathize. Pete was nothing but kind to me, but Carrie came along when I was eleven, and my pubescent hormones still manufactured all sorts of slights, real or imagined. Carrie was a choice. I wasn’t Pete’s choice; I came with my mother. By then, I wasn’t sure I had ever been my mother’s choice either.

  He shrugs, and aims for a jovial tone. “Aye, well, we all have our crosses to bear.” He pauses. “Look, do you think you could see your way to keeping this private?”

  “I’m not exactly planning to tell all the locals someone thinks my father was playing away. They already think he was a thief, I bet.”

  “Aye. Well. Thanks for that.” It doesn’t escape my notice that he hasn’t contradicted me on the thief part. He half shrugs and smiles. “Well. At least I have you to blether to now.” I smile back. I can’t think when I was the person that some
body turned to, in a nonprofessional context. There’s a pleasure in it that I hadn’t appreciated.

  * * *

  • • •

  Later, Carrie comes back, buoyant of spirit and flushed of cheek after her ride with Fiona, and asks a dozen questions about Ben and Callum and Jamie’s visit. I’m vague on Jamie, but I do my best on Ben and Callum—even so, it quickly becomes evident my answers are wholly unsatisfactory to her. For my part, I want to know about her time with Fiona, what they talked about, how she conducted herself, but I don’t know how many questions are too many, so I hardly ask anything at all. It’s bedtime before I remember to look for Callum’s curly writing. I switch the light on in the dining room, then cross quickly to draw the curtains to prevent the blackness peering in on me. In the corner, just under the window. I can’t see anything anywhere along that wall, but the curtains I’ve just drawn fall below the windowsill. I have to lift them up and scan the wall behind a section at a time, and even then I nearly miss it: faded cursive script in gold paint, maybe half an inch tall, barely distinct from the warm hue of the wood paneling it has been inscribed upon. Callum’s young eyes must be far sharper than mine, or perhaps it’s more visible in daylight. Though now that I can see it, it appears to be gaining in luminosity and it seems ludicrous that I could ever have missed it. I can understand why Callum couldn’t read it, with the loops and curls and each s written to look like an f:

  Love makes a furnace of the soul

  I trace the lettering with a finger, as if I might learn something from that, then snatch my hand back, suddenly worried that I might damage it with the oils in my fingertips. Carrie has already gone to bed, otherwise I would show her this. Who wrote it, and why did they feel compelled to do so? A furnace. It’s such a specific word, and yet I don’t understand. Was it written in quiet contemplation or is it an anguished cry for help? Did the author mean a cozy living room fire, warm and inviting on a winter’s day, or a raging incinerator, reducing all it swallows to ashes, to atoms even, in seconds? I think of the oil rig, blazing with a fury beyond comprehension as it slides below the black surface of the sea. I think of the words tattooed down the pale forearm of the bartender. I think of the furiously buzzing flies. I don’t understand any of it, least of all the roiling unease in my stomach, as if the very ground beneath me was bucking and shifting. I stretch out a tentative hand again, and the angry buzzing in my head increases even as the bile rises to my throat, and before my fingers can touch the lettering, I have to run from the room to retch repeatedly into the blessedly quiet cool bowl of the downstairs toilet.

  My father is living in Orkney under an assumed name. He ran off with the local woman with whom he was having an affair for the previous two years, and they had two children together, but now that the children have grown up, she has left him for the man who runs the Orkney Film Festival. He always liked the film festival, but it rather takes the edge off now to see her there with him; he’s thinking of leaving Orkney. His art gallery can be managed from a distance in any case. He would like to know what his daughter is like—he even knows where she works; he could get in touch—but he can’t help thinking what a disappointment he would be to her. It all feels like too little, too late.

  THIRTEEN

  Carrie assures me that she passed on to Fiona both my number and the message for Glen McCue, but my phone doesn’t ring. It doesn’t ring on account of Jonathan much, either, even though the Deepwater Horizon story has moved past the stage where he needs to be in Louisiana and he’s now back in Washington. It seems my phone is particular about when it chooses to perform its sole required function. Some days all calls get straight through. On others, they stack up and blurt out all at once in a series of missed call messages, though none from Glen McCue. It always rings for Carrie, though, who calls me every day from the train. We have developed a rhythm, Carrie and I. And the Manse, too, to an extent, though it doesn’t keep time very well. Maybe it has dyschronometria, too.

  Carrie’s phone, on the other hand, has no trouble in ringing. It rings on account of Pete, on account of her agent, on account of friends. It rings on account of Fiona, once, while we’re watching a film together: I see “Fi M” pop up on the screen. I pause the film, but she gestures for me to keep watching and takes herself out of the room in one sweeping movement. I’m about to hit play again when something flashes in the corner of my vision, at the window or just below it. I turn toward the wide bay window framed by its open drapes; once again, darkness has fallen without me noticing. What did I see? Something pale: white, perhaps, or a very weak yellow; something moving, just the fleetest of impressions. But there’s nothing to be seen except an oddly misshapen reflection of the lit room superimposed on the darkness by virtue of the old, uneven glazing. I can see blurry versions of the television, the sofa, even a bleed of gray that is myself, hovering uncertainly in the glass as I peer outside. Snatches of Carrie’s words reach my ears, too indistinct for me to follow the conversation, as I continue to look. Perhaps it was an animal, or a bird. An owl, I suppose, at this time of night. If it was anything at all, that is. Anything going bump in the night, Ailsa?

  I shake myself and pull the curtains, carefully making sure they meet in the middle, without a square inch of the window left uncovered. I must get better at drawing them before it gets dark if I’m going to exhibit this ridiculous paranoia every time the sun goes down. Carrie is still on the phone, sounding so much more at ease than I ever could. I call people purely to make plans to see them; in truth, the phone makes me uncomfortable. I feel like I’m operating blind, cut off from all the additional feedback that helps me make sense of the truth that lies beneath what people say. I press play on the remote and try to reengage with the plot of the film, which isn’t entirely fixed in my head, but Carrie returns to the living room and I pause it again to ask with deliberate nonchalance, “Was that Fiona McCue?”

  “Yes.” She sinks back onto the sofa, pulling her feet up under her. “Oh, she said her dad will be at the hotel leisure center tomorrow morning. He’ll be in the café around ten if you want to speak to him.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s . . . that’s good of her,” I say awkwardly. “Thanks.”

  Carrie looks across at me and I busy myself placing the remote on the coffee table, precisely in line with the grain of the wood. “You don’t like her, do you?” She sounds almost as if she’s speaking to herself.

  I can feel the flush spreading across my cheeks. “I’ve hardly even spoken to her.”

  “I know. Which makes it even more unfair that you don’t like her.”

  I could try to equivocate, but she would see right through me. “It’s just . . . from what I hear, she’s a bit . . . unstable.”

  Carrie snorts. “Unstable, my eye. She’s about the most grounded person I’ve ever met.” I can see she’s already gearing up to a robust defense.

  “Well, maybe you haven’t got to know her properly yet.”

  “What, and you have?” she challenges. I knew this would happen.

  “No, of course not, but I think you’d have to accept that Jamie knows her pretty well.” Jamie’s getting to be quite the regular here. He often pops by for a coffee and a blether, as he puts it. It’s a new experience for me: an entirely nonprofessional, non-amorous friendship. My job is social—very social, in fact. Every posting comes with a ready-made gang of journalists and crew keen to hang out. It’s fun while it lasts, but nobody ever looks back. “And Jamie says—”

  “Whatever he says is bollocks,” she says flatly. “I told you they don’t really get along. There’s nothing unstable about Fiona.”

  “Really? Is that when she’s on her medication, or off it? Or when she’s wandering through the Manse when it’s unoccupied?” The words have marched out of my mouth before I can stop them, followed instantly by a twinge of guilt for breaking faith with Jamie. Though surely my first concern has to be Carrie’s safety . . .

&nb
sp; “What?”

  “I saw her here. Up in the box room.”

  Carrie pauses. “You saw her here. You’re one hundred percent sure you saw her here.” She reads my face, and her own erupts in exasperation. “No, you’re not, are you? My God, Ailsa, will you just listen to yourself? Where’s your famous journalistic reason and impartiality?”

  “No, I’m not certain, but who else has that style of haircut?” Unless it was the lampshade after all . . . but I’m certain. I’m almost certain. “Who else would it be? She didn’t deny that she comes here, and someone had been through those boxes. There was no dust on them.” I take a breath and try to lower my voice. “Okay, I’m not certain, but it fits. She’s always been obsessed with this place, apparently.”

  “Are you kidding? Everyone round here is obsessed with this place! I am telling you now, Ailsa, that if you are not prepared to be civil to, and about, the people I call friends, then you’re not the person I thought you were. And . . . and I’m not prepared to live with you if that’s the case.” She cuts off her uncharacteristic outburst abruptly.

  My breath catches as I stare at her. She’s fiercely tight-lipped, her shoulders rigid with fury and resolve. It’s not a bluff; I can see that in her stone-gray eyes even though she’s refusing to look at me. She would actually move out over this. And if she moves out—what then? We would see each other as we always have, from time to time, when I’m in the country. Siblings, but distant. Half sisters, less than half, nowhere near the whole. I can hear her now: Family? Well, there’s only Dad and me now, really. I do have a half sister, but we don’t really talk. “Well . . . I’d be very sorry if you did. I don’t want you to move out.” She looks at me, but nothing has softened. She needs more. And it’s not as if she’s being unreasonable—I’m the one with the inexplicable dread. Nearly inexplicable dread. I’m the one who’s being unfair and unreasonable and impressionable and all the things that are so far from my normal level self that when I sit back and look at myself, I almost can’t find me. How did I get to here? And why can’t I just get over this unease? “I wouldn’t have asked you to stay if I didn’t want you here.”