by Teri Terry
To get her on MIA I have to get in touch with Aiden. Or do I? He told me how to contact someone who knows him here: leave a coded note on the community board, then wait until they get in touch.
That was for emergencies: does this qualify?
Yes.
Getting Madison right turns out to be easy. It’s the look of mischief in her eyes that marks her out: is that what Astrid really objected to?
I’m nearly done when there is a faint knock on my door, and I slip the drawing under the bed. Stella looks in, hesitant, but I nod and she comes across the room.
‘I’m sorry about last night,’ she says.
‘Me, too. But can we not talk about stuff tonight?’ I say. ‘I just can’t deal with it right now.’
‘Of course,’ she says, and relief crosses her face. ‘I’ve got an idea: let’s have some fun.’
‘How?’
She smiles. Holds up a key. ‘Like this!’ She goes across to the other locked wardrobe, turns the key. Looks back at me. ‘Come on.’
I get up and walk across the room. She opens the doors; inside the wardrobe are shelves, and on them are brightly wrapped packages.
I look at her, not understanding.
‘They’re for you: your birthday presents.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. There is one for every year we weren’t together: because I never gave up, Lucy. Not once. Every 3rd of November, another joined them.’ She touches my cheek. ‘I always knew, somehow, you’d come back to me.’ She blinks hard. ‘Here: help me carry them.’ And she fills my arms with packages small and large, then brings the last few herself. We spread them out on the bed.
‘Go on,’ she says.
‘I can unwrap them?’
‘Of course. They’re for you, aren’t they? Though some of them might not be much good to you now. Start at the beginning,’ she says, and hands me one with ‘11’ all over the paper. ‘Where’s your camera? I want birthday photos!’
I smile, shake my head. ‘How could you explain them if they were found?’
Her smile falters. ‘Of course. You’re right; it’s too risky.’
‘No, it’s a good thought. Next year, maybe? But my birthday isn’t in November.’
She goes very still. ‘What did you say?’
‘My birthday is in September now! As Riley, on my fake ID, I turned eighteen on the 17th of September.’
‘Oh. Of course.’ She smiles, tension falling away. ‘Have you been using your camera?’
‘Not really. Sorry. I’ll take it tomorrow.’
We start on the presents, and soon I’m covered in wrapping paper, and presents for an eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen and sixteen-year-old me: clothes, many too small now; art supplies. A gorgeous leather portfolio case.
‘Last one?’ she says and holds out a parcel, the one for my seventeenth birthday.
I pull the paper off carefully. Inside is a gorgeous pale green jumper, of a fine soft yarn. ‘It’s beautiful,’ I say.
‘Really? Do you really like it?’
For an answer I get up and pull it on over my PJs, hug it close. ‘It’s perfect.’
She pulls my glasses off. ‘Perfect with your green eyes. I made it, knitting late at night.’
‘Thank you.’ I put the glasses back on. ‘But the match to my eyes has to stay secret.’
‘Of course.’ She gathers up the wrapping paper, stuffs it in a bag. ‘I’ll burn it,’ she says, matter-of-factly.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What for?’
‘All this being secret about me is hard for you, isn’t it?’
‘Anything to have you back.’ Something crosses her face, she starts to say something, but I interrupt.
‘No talking about stuff tonight, remember?’
‘Okay. Another night. Now get some sleep.’
She helps me hide the presents away in the wardrobe; I keep out the drawing supplies, a few clothes that should fit. She heads for the door, then turns back. ‘I will say one thing, though. You were right. I shouldn’t have interfered with your apprenticeship trials. I’ll make sure they don’t bias where they put you, all right?’
And with that, she is gone.
Well. I stare at the door she just disappeared through. Did she mean it? Time will tell.
I retrieve my nearly complete drawing of Madison, put the final touches on it, and tuck it into my coat pocket.
Restless, sleep feels far away despite the late hour. I unlock the other wardrobe and pull the albums out. Each one starts with a birthday, and I look at the birthday photos again: presents, cake, smiles. Except the first album, of course. Really, your first birthday should be the day you are born, shouldn’t it? You should have a cake with a big ‘0’ on it. Instead the first album starts with photos of me grinning and reaching for toys; crawling across the floor. Very embarrassingly having a bath.
I put them away, and with lights off and eyes closed I hug the soft green wool close, still wearing it over my pyjamas. After the agony of that dream of Dad and his note, and the memories that came from it, at least now I’m feeling warm, feeling wanted. Maybe Stella is enough. One parent who loves me, who would never give me up.
All those presents she searched out every year: they were all stuff I know I’d have loved; still love, now. She wrapped them up with care and locked them in a wardrobe, all for a daughter she might never see again. It’s so unbearably sad, even though I’m here now.
It’s even harder to bear being the one so missed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
* * *
The morning comes early. Finley is on the 7 am bus as planned; I nod to him, but sit down, silent, in the front.
When we get off I walk without comment to the back door of Cora’s Cafe. Finley follows, catches up as I reach the door. I knock; it’s locked this time, but soon opens.
Cora sees it is us and a quick look of hope crosses her face. ‘Get yourselves in,’ she says, and we step through the door. She checks the back lane before shutting and locking it behind us.
‘Is there news?’ She looks between us, then as Finley’s eyes turn to me, she does also.
I shake my head. ‘I’m sorry; no news. But there may be something we can do. Have you ever heard of MIA: Missing in Action?’ They shake their heads no. ‘This is very secret. There is a website run by MIA where missing people are posted; there is a network of people who try to find them, or what happened to them.’
‘What happened to Madison is unlikely to be good,’ Cora says.
Finley winces, shakes his head. ‘Better to know,’ he says. ‘How do we do it?’
‘We need a photograph of Madison, a recent one. Failing that I’ve drawn her.’ I pull out the drawing I did last night.
‘That’s good, but I’ve got photos,’ Cora says, pushes her chair back and goes into an adjoining room.
Finley reaches out a hand, traces Madison’s face on the paper with a finger.
‘I wish—’ And he stops.
‘What?’
He shakes his head. ‘I wish I told her how I really feel.’
‘I think she knew,’ I say, though not sure as I say it that she did. They’d just started out, hadn’t they? Did she know what is so obvious now? He loved her. Loves her, I correct to myself.
Cora returns with some photos and we pick one out to use. Seeing the longing in his eyes she gives another to Finley. ‘Keep the drawing too if you want,’ I say, and he tucks it in his bag.
‘What happens next?’ Cora asks.
‘I’ll take care of it,’ I say.
Promises to tell no one follow, and as we leave, I wonder why I’m doing this. Not getting Madison on MIA, but letting them in on it. It’s a risk, a huge risk, but the only way to give
them hope.
This is what Aiden does, what he is about. Join us, he’d said. Looks like I have.
I’m still hopelessly early for school, and go for a walk by way of the community notice board Aiden described. It is just where he said it would be, tucked on a side street by a hall. No one is in sight, and I tack the note up: Seeking chess partner, please contact Anita c/o hall.
All I can do now, is wait.
I take some photos on the way to school: of Keswick as the sun creeps up. The sun seems to go from hidden to clearing a mountain all at once, and first touches of light transform dark shadows to dazzling clear morning.
Parents are depositing children at the school gates as I walk up, a teacher on the other side watchful as each goes into the grounds.
A woman is coming the other way with two boys, carrying a baby. One of the boys trips over and starts to howl. She shifts the baby in her arms, tries to bend over to help him up.
‘Can I help?’ I smile, coax the boy up, and he and his brother go through the gate.
‘Thank you,’ the mother says. ‘Are you new at the school?’
‘I’m trialling to be an apprentice teacher.’
‘You might be this one’s teacher one day, then.’ She smiles and looks at the baby, a soft look on her face. He? She? I can’t tell; even wrapped up, it is tiny, wearing the smallest hat I’ve ever seen over a pink face, and sound asleep.
‘You never know,’ I say. ‘Maybe.’
Another teacher walks over and coos over the baby. ‘How old is she now?’
‘Almost four weeks,’ the mother answers.
I leave them to it, go through the gates. What I know about babies is precisely nothing. But she was so tiny. Four weeks old? I frown. In that first album of me, I’m fat-faced and crawling, playing with toys. How old am I when that album starts? Maybe Stella has another album tucked away some place. She’s so photo-mad it is hard to believe she didn’t bother taking any when I was really little. That must be it.
Something niggles inside that day, like a sore tooth that you should leave alone but worry at with your tongue, pushing and prodding until it is loose. I’m out of Art and in a Year Two class today, through all their lessons, and my mind wanders so much that their teacher has to repeat instructions to me more than she does to her students. She must think I’m an idiot.
They have reading after lunch and there is a birthday girl in their midst, seven today, who gets to pick the next story to be started. The teacher starts reading her pick: an old and tattered book from a bottom shelf, about princesses who rescue animals, and I fade away again, looking at the birthday balloons tied to her chair float over her head.
As Riley my birthday has changed to the 17th of September. Funny how Stella is about birthdays; they are such a huge big deal to her. She’d actually seemed rattled when I mentioned my birthday wasn’t in November any more.
That night at dinner, thoughts are rattling through my head. I feel disconnected to what is happening around me. When will I hear from Aiden’s contact? It could be anyone, even someone at this table. I grin to think so: Astrid wouldn’t like that. Anyhow, I’m sure she keeps a close eye on this place. I glance about at the other girls chattering, Stella at the head of the table. She looks different somehow. She gives me a quizzical look as if she senses something is on my mind, but I don’t even know what is wrong, so how could she? Mother’s intuition, a voice whispers inside, and I shake it off. What nonsense.
Steph, Stella’s helper, has finished carrying serving dishes out, and sits with the rest of us. I notice she is as quiet as I am; she eats dinner, looking around at the others much as I do.
I can’t shake a deep sense of unease, and can’t work out what it is attached to. But somehow, underlying everything else, there is something about that tiny baby today, about the photo albums. The missing early photos. Everything else is in there. Maybe those are ones Stella keeps for herself.
I notice now what niggled earlier about Stella. Her hair is darker; not a huge amount, but the dark roots are gone, blended in, and the overall colour is a shade darker. She’s been to the hairdresser. I frown to myself: it was like she said when she first saw my blond hair had changed to dark. Bet she goes a shade darker each time until we match.
Why is she so obsessed with matching? Is it just part of her being clingy?
Something does a flip in my stomach. Wait; think. There is too much weirdness mixed up together. Stella matched her hair to mine years ago, as if to say, we belong together; now she is trying to do it again. Then there is how weird she was about my changed birthday. And that there are no early baby photos.
Dinner is like dust; I put down my fork.
‘Are you all right, Riley?’ Ellie says, and I can feel other eyes turning towards me, but I don’t answer.
Birthdays. Dr Lysander told me cell testing said I was under sixteen when I was Slated, but if my birthday is in November, I’d have been over sixteen. She said I was a Jane Doe: not identifiable from DNA. Her eyes had been wrong when she said it: not that she was lying, she just couldn’t believe it. That no one knew who I really was. She said… No. She said I might have been a baby born in an out of the way place?
‘Riley?’ I hear a voice say again, but it is distant and removed.
What did Astrid say that day? Precisely and exactly. I close my eyes, going back, and I’m spinning, I’m someplace else. A dark corridor, crouching down. Full of a game that is going wrong, trying to hear her exact words…
Isn’t it about time you tell him the truth? That his precious daughter isn’t his; that you don’t even know whose she is.
Everything goes black.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
* * *
Gradually nothingness is replaced by cold floor, voices.
‘Lu— Riley.’ Stella’s voice.
I open my eyes and she is holding me, cradling my head.
I stare back at her. ‘Who am I?’
‘She must have hit her head,’ Stella says, her eyes communicating alarm.
Then Steph is there. She holds my glasses in her hands. ‘One of the lenses has come out,’ she says.
I close my eyes. Steph must have seen; she must know my eyes are really green. That the glasses mask who I am.
Who am I? You don’t even know whose she is.
Stella helps me up. ‘To bed with you now,’ she says. And we start across the room.
‘Wait,’ Steph says. ‘I fixed them. The lens just popped back in.’ She holds out my glasses and I reach for them, put them back on. Steph looks between Stella and me, a thoughtful look on her face.
Ellie scampers ahead and holds doors open. I want to shake Stella off and walk on my own, but my head is still fuzzy, and it does hurt. Did I really hit it when I fell? When I fainted.
Stella helps me to my bed; Ellie hovers next to us.
‘That’s fine, Ellie. You can go now,’ Stella says. Ellie looks uncertainly between us, leaves, shuts the door. It clicks to.
Stella looks at me with something like fear in her eyes.
‘You’re not my mother.’ I say it like a statement, not a question.
She breaks gaze, looks away. ‘What nonsense.’
‘Listen to me. I was cell tested by Lorders when I was Slated: I was under sixteen, and it was after my so-called sixteenth birthday that November.’
‘But tests can be wrong—’
‘You nearly flipped the other day when I said my birthday wasn’t in November. There are no early baby photos of me. And that day, my tenth birthday, when I heard you and Astrid—’
‘You remember that?’ she says, her eyes open wide.
‘Astrid said you don’t even know whose I am. I thought that just meant Dad wasn’t my father, but that’s only half of it, isn’t it? You’re not my mother either. Admi
t it!’
Colour has drained from her face. She looks back into my eyes with desperation. ‘I am in every way that counts. I’ve always loved you, Lucy.’
‘No! Not in one way that counts. Tell me the truth. Tell me now!’
‘You should rest. You might have concussion.’
‘I do not. Tell me where I come from! I have the right to know.’
Stella is shaking, her face crumbling. ‘I am your mother. I am.’ She’s choking back tears, and something else: the truth.
Part of me wants to comfort her, to put a hand on hers, but no. She has to face this. Is it something so buried she can’t even say it?
‘We can have nothing between us if we don’t have the truth,’ I say, and turn away from her, to the wall.
Time passes. Minutes, more? A hand touches my shoulder, then pulls away.
‘All right,’ she says, voice dull. ‘I’ll tell you. It’s a sad tale.’
I turn, sit up. ‘I’m listening.’
She doesn’t say anything at first, gathering herself, then nods. ‘Okay. Your dad and I wanted children. Desperately. But every time I got pregnant, I lost the baby. Sometimes a few months in, sometimes longer. I don’t know why; doctors didn’t know why. Then one last time it happened: I was pregnant again. But this time I didn’t tell anyone, even your dad. He went away a while: we weren’t getting along.’ She stops, bites her lip.
‘And?’
‘I was staying with my mother.’ The way she says the words, there is more to that, but I don’t interrupt. ‘My baby was born early: my darling, beautiful daughter. I had Lucy to adore for days, just a few days. And then, she died.’ Stella’s voice is choked, and I don’t know what to say.
She turns to me, takes my hand. ‘Then Mother, months later, brought you to me. You were perfect. And you were mine. I always loved you, Lucy: that is what makes you my daughter. Don’t you see?’
‘Wait a minute. Are you saying Astrid just came up with a baby to replace yours that died? Where from?’