We found somewhere to park – £3.50 for four hours – and walked there together through the early autumn streets. We came in on the ground floor, through the section that sold wheelie suitcases and travel kits. ‘We need to go up a few levels,’ I said.
On the escalator under all the bright lights and the air-conditioning, I saw how washed out Abigail looked. She hadn’t wanted anything but coffee when she woke up – black, no sugar – and though I’d taken her up a banana, she hadn’t eaten it. I checked the directory and took her right up to the top floor. ‘Before we start, we’re going to have lunch.’
We’d arrived well after the midday rush, so the café wasn’t full; I handed Abigail a tray and pointed out the options, as though she couldn’t read them for herself. As though she wasn’t able to read just fine. ‘You can have quiche,’ I suggested, ‘or a baked potato.’ I was hovering and even annoying myself. Stop now, or you’ll do that thing when you start going on and on and don’t know how to stop. Abigail shrugged, her eyes on a salad. I ordered for the both of us, quickly: quiche, with chips because she could really do with the calories, and a slice of crumble each for dessert. Piled up all together like that on the trays it looked a lot.
When we sat down she pushed her food around her plate until I told her, come on. Then she gripped her fork like a shovel and started eating, in quick, gulping bites. ‘See?’ I told her. ‘You were hungry after all.’
In all the dozens of clothes I had bought her, nothing had seemed suitable; I had flicked my way right through her wardrobe, rejecting everything, all the skirts, the T-shirts, the expensive pretty tops. She needed something smarter, less frivolous, I didn’t know what exactly. I just knew the impression I wanted her to make.
Abigail’s fork squealed against her plate. In the end, she had eaten everything, even the crumble. I looked down at my own food, hardly touched, and made myself take three solid bites. ‘All done?’ The quiche sat heavily in my stomach. She pushed her plate away and nodded. I smiled at her. ‘Come on then.’
There were two whole floors of womenswear, everything from beachwear to bridal. I was glad now that we hadn’t gone anywhere bigger. It was only once we began walking round, passing display after display that I realized: no teen section. Children’s clothes, yes, but hardly anything for a fifteen-year-old girl. The dresses and suits we saw were boxy, frumpy things; whatever I held up she shook her head at, and she was right, they were all wrong for her. She clicked through the racks with a sullen look on her face and with each click of a hanger I could feel my heart tighten another notch.
‘Need some help?’ A sales assistant, her head cocked.
‘Yes … please. We’re looking for a formal outfit, something that might suit my daughter. Here, Abigail, come here.’ I presented her to the assistant like she was a doll we were going to dress.
‘For anything special?’
‘My birthday party,’ said Abigail.
A puff of air escaped me in a laugh. ‘Well, yes, her birthday, but she also has …’ All right, what? What was I supposed to tell this kind assistant, who hadn’t – God knows how – recognized Abigail, and who would only become embarrassed and awkward if I said. I pushed my hair back behind my ears. ‘My daughter has an interview,’ I said. And Abigail didn’t correct me.
The assistant’s face brightened. ‘Got you,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’
She took us to an area that we’d missed, where the clothes were young and smart and just what we were looking for. ‘Yes,’ I told her, ‘this is much more like it.’ I could see from the look on Abigail’s face that she was also happier now, hopeful of finding something.
‘Great,’ said the assistant. ‘I’ll leave you two to it. Good luck for your interview!’
‘Better?’ I said to Abigail.
‘Better.’
I thumbed my way through the racks leaving Abigail to do the same. It wasn’t hard to pull items out now: this one could work, and so could this. I lifted out a cream blouse with a button-up collar, a blazer and an outfit that looked like a suit. And for her birthday too, why shouldn’t she pick out something special? It was her sixteenth and it was her first birthday since she’d come home. And then I realized, counting the dates. The girls, always so close for that reason too: their birthdays only two weeks apart. Now Jess’s would fall the week of Abigail’s trial.
‘I’ve got some.’ Abigail was at my elbow, a handful of items folded over one arm, the straps of one already slipping off the hanger. I looked down at the pile in my own arms and smiled at her. ‘Me too. Want to try these on?’
It took us a while to find the changing rooms but when we did there wasn’t a queue. Inside, I helped Abigail hang the clothes in her stall. They barely squeezed onto the hooks. ‘I’ll be right out here,’ I told her. ‘Try them on and come out and show me.’ I sat down on a soft, low chair, just outside.
I could see the flicker of her shadow under the stall door and a clatter and a flash of blue when she dropped one of the blazers. She scooped it up again from the floor.
‘Have you got one on yet? Can I see?’
When she stepped out, in one of the shirts she’d picked out for herself, I shook my head right away. It was far too big; it swamped her. ‘What size did you get?’ I stood up to check. ‘Twelve? You’re not a twelve.’ Could she not tell how much weight she’d lost? So much, too much. ‘I don’t think it’s right anyway. Too casual.’
Abigail turned to look at herself in the mirror. The sullen look was back on her face and the door of her stall banged a little too sharply when she went back inside.
That look. I knew it so well: one of the parts that came from Preston. Nothing changed the fact that she came from him. I remembered the one time he’d broken down and told me the reasons for all his anger, for his bad habits and all of his problems. The mess of his childhood, his mother’s drinking, the stint in foster care at the age of fourteen, split from his brother, because for a few months his mum had lost it completely. All Preston’s anger had such good reasons and I’d had so much hope of making it right.
The stall door clicked and Abigail came out again, this time in one of my choices, the cream-coloured blouse. It had looked good on the hanger and it was smart and modest, all the right things to wear at a trial, and it fit her just fine, only … the colour. Pale cotton with her pale skin. It was too much; she would look like a ghost. ‘Try the blazer on top of it,’ I said. She reached into the stall and tipped it off its hanger with a jerk. When she shrugged herself into it, it rucked up the sleeves of the blouse.
‘What do you think now?’ The blazer gave some definition and was better against the pale of her hair.
She stared at herself in the mirror. ‘It’s fine.’
‘Well, have you tried the other ones on? Is there something that’s better?’
‘This’ll do.’
‘Are you sure? We can keep looking.’ I couldn’t put my finger on it but the proportions were off somehow, or the cut on her, I didn’t know, but something.
‘This’ll do.’
‘I think it’s because you’re wearing it with jeans. We’ll try it on at home with those grey trousers you’ve got. I think then it’ll be just fine.’
‘All right.’
But I had annoyed her and I didn’t know what it was I had said; whether my words had sounded like criticisms, whether she’d wanted to be left alone to choose. The tightness in my heart spread to my stomach and I could feel it between us, that old, old wrenching.
‘What about for your birthday then? Did you pick out anything you liked for that?’
‘A dress.’ Now her voice was sullen too.
‘Okay then. Can I see?’
She closed the door of the stall again, banging it deliberately this time. I glimpsed her bare toe, the back of her foot as she twisted in the small space. I heard her clatter the hangers and something else dropped to the floor. She didn’t bother to pick it up this time.
‘Abigail?’
; No answer. My nose was running; I fished into my handbag for a handful of tissues. Now it had gone quiet in the stall, no flicker of her shadow, just that silence that to me was worse than anything: the silence in which she was cut off from me completely. I didn’t know how she would be when she came back out. Which Abigail – the child of tantrums and inconsolable rage, or the child who smiled, who let herself be loved? Now my eyes were running too, like an allergic reaction, but I knew it wasn’t. She was my daughter and the rest shouldn’t matter, but I couldn’t stop thinking of how it had once been, when she was her best self and I was her loving mother, and I so wanted that daughter, I so wanted it to be that Abigail who’d come home. I found a tissue and pushed it against my mouth, trying not to make a sound.
The stall door opened. I wiped away my tears.
‘What about this?’
I bought myself a second by blowing my nose. Then I looked up. It took me a long time to take it all in. It was as though I could only look at her in stages. The material was dark, a deep blood red, and it pinched her tight around the waist. It had no sleeves and the capped shoulders left the pale thinness of her arms exposed. The skirt flared and didn’t even reach her knees, but the collar was high, circling her neck and highlighting the sharp line of her chin. Her stomach, from the full lunch, made a curve between her hips. All over the dress fitted her so closely I thought I could see her heart beating through it.
‘Well?’ She reached up and pulled the weight of her hair back from her face.
I let out a long, shuddery breath, so glad of the figure who stood before me. ‘Abigail, it looks beautiful,’ I said.
‘Let’s wait and make it a surprise,’ I told Abigail on the drive home. ‘Keep it hidden until your birthday do. Then everyone will see how lovely you look.’
When we got in, Robert was preparing tea and the house swam with the aroma of roast chicken. I kissed him in the kitchen, in front of the twins. ‘Everything smells delicious,’ I told him. We didn’t show them what we’d bought but Robert could tell the trip had been a success – he could see it in my face. With clothes like those, I thought, she would do just fine. From here on in we could manage anything.
Later that evening, I heard the shower running, so I knew she hadn’t yet gone to bed. She hadn’t eaten nearly enough at teatime and she must surely be hungry, hungry enough for the glass of milk and the biscuit I was taking up for her, a caffeine-free snack to settle her for bed. With the glass and the plate, I climbed the stairs; the shower was still running and when I pushed open the bedroom door, inside there was only the smell of her: a cloying note from the deodorant spray she now used. I set the milk and biscuit down by her bed.
The room with its pink-painted walls seemed strangely empty. Despite the posters pinned to the walls, it still felt as though no one lived here. I sat down in the chair at the desk and, not thinking, I pulled open the right-hand drawer. Inside was a ruler that could be folded in half, a pink eraser and a dusting of tiny paper circles where a hole punch had leaked. In the left-hand drawer was a blue paper-clip, bent.
It was as I was sliding that left-hand drawer closed that I saw the bin at the side of her desk, a folded wad of paper stuffed deep into it. Scattered on top were scraps of the blue and white wallpaper we had stripped from her walls months ago, though why she had those I had no idea. I pulled out the folded papers, shaking them free of the wallpaper dust and flakes. The stack of single sheets was covered with her handwriting, joined up letters so neat and pretty they almost looked old-fashioned. At first, I thought perhaps they were from her therapy sessions – weekly exercises, homework – but when I opened them out I realized they were something else entirely.
On some pages there were two, three sentences, on some pages only a few broken phrases and on one, just three words: What he did—
And at the top of each one she’d written the heading: Abigail’s Victim Impact Statement.
My heart climbed right into my throat. I smoothed out the page at the back of the pile. Here at last, her writing had filled the whole sheet; the garbled words made my scalp crawl.
What he did was wrong everyone says it but it was never wrong with him nothing seemed wrong in the beginning, only later on once the kisses – but now everyone says the whole thing was bad, so then who is bad, am I bad? In the beginning I was lost now I’m back home and everyone is very very happy, Mum especially says everything is all right now but is it? What don’t I know, what aren’t they telling me? Are we meant to be a perfect family, how perfect, but perfect isn’t him on me jerking on the pillows and it isn’t Mum unable to look me in the eye and to Sam and Laurie I’m just like a toy to play with, and Dad, Robert I wasn’t properly ever his, so what if they meant it, what if everyone in my family meant it, and never knew it would turn out wrong what if they meant this to be, the whole thing, but I don’t care anyway I do miss him that’s the truth because he said he was mine and said I was his and he would never let me go, never, and everything was true from the very beginning because he knew, he knew, he knew me.
I didn’t register that the shower had stopped running. I only registered Abigail standing over me, wrapped in a towel, her wet hair darkened and dripping. I stood up so fast I banged my knee. ‘I’m so sorry, Abigail. I should never have read them.’ And yet she’d left them somewhere so easy to find, as though part of her had wanted me to look.
She moved slowly, coolly, and to me that was worse than if she had been angry, furious and had torn them from my grasp. Without saying a word, and without meeting my eyes, she reached out and took the pages from my hand; it seemed such an immense power she wielded in that moment.
The towel hitched up to show the bony ridges of her thighs as she dropped the pages back into the bin. I felt myself go very still; her next words were like a straight punch to the head.
‘And you still want me to write that fucking thing?’
Chapter 26
Wednesday 11th September:
Day 108
JESS
On the Wednesday before Abigail’s birthday, I arrived home before either Mum or Dad. The house was quiet and empty. I changed out of my school clothes and sat in the living room to wait for them. As soon as I heard Mum’s car in the drive, I filled up the kettle and put it on.
She came in looking exhausted. Her make-up had rubbed thin and there was a mascara smudge under one eye.
‘How was work?’ I asked.
She gave a smile that looked more like a grimace. ‘Honestly, Jess, you don’t want to know. How was school?’ she asked instead.
I made sure to smile. ‘It was fine.’ I wasn’t going to talk about anything. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
She sat down heavily at the kitchen table and prised off her shoes. ‘That would be great.’
When the kettle had boiled, I made it just the way she liked – strong with only a tiny dribble of milk – and I made sure to wipe up where the teabag had dripped.
‘Aren’t you having one too?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m okay. But listen, Mum, can I borrow your laptop?’
She took a sip of her hot tea, almost scalding herself. ‘Why? What’s wrong with your phone?’
‘Nothing. It’s just that you have all the photographs on there.’
She was too tired, I think, to ask more questions. She waved a hand. ‘It’s through in the sitting room, charging.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I just need the password.’
I left her in the kitchen, drinking her tea with her eyes almost closed. The laptop was fully charged by now, and the screen opened up when I typed in the characters she had given me. I’d had this idea for weeks, and on my way home from school today I’d bought the album. In the shop, I picked out the best one; a broad, thick book of beautiful pages, just waiting to be filled.
I refused to believe what Lena had told me. What she’d said had happened at the music festival. She’d lied, or else she was mistaken, probably she had simply misheard. Or if Abigail had sai
d it, she just never meant it. Because my cousin could have never meant that. I loved Abigail – we loved each other – and nothing Lena said could ever change that.
Now I just needed to collect the right pictures. Along the bottom of Mum’s laptop screen was a row of icons: calendar, notepad, Internet, photos. Mum’s photos. She had hundreds of them stored on here: our official family archives. I remembered, years ago, her saving them all. After Abigail went missing, we rarely looked at them, too sad, but everything was different now.
Here was a copy of the picture I’d given her: me and Abigail from that day by the stream. I think Dad must have taken it when we got home – wet and laughing, one sandal hopelessly soaked. And here were other photos of me and Abigail, of Abigail and her family, and Abigail with us. The ‘last opened’ dates on them were so old. I scrolled through them; there were memories and moments even I had forgotten, me who thought I remembered everything.
Distractedly, I heard the front door slam, Dad getting home from work too. I heard the low murmur of his voice with Mum’s in the kitchen, the soft whirr of the kettle boiling again. I told myself they were doing better these days. Whether they were ignoring their issues or sorting them out, I didn’t care. Mum was back sleeping in the same room as Dad and – bottom line – they weren’t arguing any more.
Here were photos of me and Abigail at a play park, here we were on my fifth birthday, my sixth. Here was an earlier picture of Abigail in her new bedroom, a year or so after Uncle Robert came on the scene. She looked so happy, giggling. On Mum’s laptop I made a new folder. I called it Abigail, and I saved all the best photographs in there. The whole thing would be a beautiful surprise for Abigail. The very best birthday present I could think of.
On Saturday, her birthday, we were the first to arrive: Mum, Dad and me. For some reason my aunt and uncle had picked the posh hotel in the centre of town – definitely not the kind of place we usually ate. Properly fancy: all flock wallpaper, mauve napkins, real silver cutlery. The waitress who came to take our drinks orders wore a little silk necktie. It wasn’t the kind of place we usually came to but this was a special occasion. The absolutely most special.
Little White Lies Page 20