The Nowhere Girl: A completely gripping and emotional page turner

by Nicole Trope

  ‘But she was fine. I saw her yesterday, she was fine, she even went outside.’

  ‘Alice, I’m so sorry. I understand how difficult this must be for you, and I’m so terribly sorry there wasn’t any warning. It’s not unusual for our residents to rally a little in the days before they pass on. I did attempt CPR while we called an ambulance but I’m afraid it was too late.’

  ‘Too late,’ I echo her words. It was too late, too late for everything. I never got to say the things I wanted to say to her, never got to hear the apology I have been chasing all my life. It was too late.

  ‘If you’d like to come over and have some time with her, that would be fine,’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ I answer, ‘yes, I’m coming.’ I hang up the phone. My hands are trembling as I end the call. I take a deep breath, feel acid rise in my throat. I feel cheated. I was going to confront her about the emails and now I can’t. I feel cheated and angry and filled with despair – a whirl of emotions, because I am not sure how a daughter should feel when her mother dies, but I am sure it’s not like this.

  I know I should text Jack and let him know but I don’t think I have it in me to have a conversation with anyone right now. I need to be alone with this news, alone with her.

  In the car, as I pull out of my garage, I have a vision of her before my father died. I am lying next to her on their bed and she is stroking my arm as she sings. It’s an unexpected memory, something I haven’t thought of for years, and I try to conjure up the words of the song as the sensations of that moment wash over me. It must have been summer because the bedroom was warm although not too hot, and I remember the sweet, flowery smell of her perfume, of her. It was the scent she had before she started drinking, and it was the scent of safety, security and love. I take a deep breath, trying to hold onto the memory of it, and sitting in traffic, I am suddenly howling for my lost mother. My mother is gone. I sob as I drive, wiping at my face, as an overwhelming sadness lodges itself inside me. My mother is dead.

  I am an orphan. A real orphan, although in reality I have probably been an orphan since I was six years old and my father died, taking the best parts of my mother with him.

  Anika offers me a silent hug when I arrive, tear-stained, at the home.

  I follow her slowly down the passage to my mother’s room. I stop just before I get there and lean on the wall, feeling dizzy. I’m not sure I can do this. I’m not sure how to do this.

  Anika doesn’t say anything. She touches my elbow lightly to encourage me to continue.

  After a moment I stand up straight, push my shoulders back. I have to do this.

  My mother is lying on the bed, her hands crossed over her chest. Her skin has retained its slightly olive tinge, a result of her failing liver. I had assumed that she would look relaxed, finally released from her pain and the confusion she was living with, but even in death she looks slightly perplexed as though she has no idea what’s happened to her. I question again how severe her Alzheimer’s was and then realise that there is no point in that. She is gone.

  ‘I’ll leave you alone,’ Anika says.

  I sit on a chair next to my mother’s bed and place my hand over hers, feeling her paper-thin skin. It’s dry. I should have bought her some special hand cream to help with that. I should have sat at her bedside and massaged it into her skin, giving her the small pleasure of some physical contact, which she has been denied for so many years. She looks so small and thin, so vulnerable, so powerless. She always seemed powerless and yet she managed to ruin my life, and she was on her way to ruining Lilly’s. I brush my hand across her sparse grey hair. As a child I thought her beautiful. It’s been a long time since anyone thought her beautiful, I imagine. I feel tears begin to fall again at the thought of how she wasted her life, at how she drank away or slept away all the years she had until she couldn’t remember what she was running away from.

  After half an hour I sigh and stand up. I will need to pack up her things, I’m sure. I open her bedside table drawer and stare down at the few things she owned. A pair of glasses and her engagement and wedding rings sit next to a packet of sweets I brought her months ago. A brush and mirror with carved timber backs are wedged next to a plastic packet filled with key rings and bookmarks. The grandfather I never met gave them to her, she told me all those years ago when I was little, telling me that we would visit all the places her father visited one day. Decades later, when I moved her out of her house and into this room, I found them all in a rotting shoebox, tattered and covered with bits of glitter.

  There are no photos, no cards or drawings from grandchildren, like there should be. She never even knew she had grandchildren.

  I pick up the rings from the drawer and slide them onto her finger. They kept slipping off because she’s lost so much weight in the last few months. I look at the thin gold bands, put on with such hope, on her birdlike hand, wondering if I should take them for myself, but I decide against that.

  I don’t know if I want anything from her, and that makes me sadder than anything else.

  It’s then that I notice the music that is playing softly in the room. I glance at her computer, where it’s coming from. A kind gesture from Anika.

  I go up to it and tap a button, illuminating the screen. The aquarium video is playing, the same turtle swimming lazily through a deep blue sea across the screen, but another tab is also open and I click on it. It’s a composed email, not yet sent.

  I know what you did.

  I flush, sweat beading my body, my stomach churning. I can’t believe this, it’s not possible. Dead women don’t write emails. I hit send on the email, and a moment later my phone pings to let me know it’s there.

  A knock on the door startles me and I hurriedly close the screen, making sure the tabs stay open.

  It’s Anika with Dr Townsend behind her. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ he says, his young face solemn with responsibility.

  ‘Thank you,’ I reply. I stay where I am so he can conduct an examination of my mother, but the room is small and I keep having to step aside for him.

  ‘If you’d like to leave for a few minutes,’ Anika says, ‘I can make you some tea.’

  Wordlessly I follow her out of the room. It’s cold in the corridor and Anika hurries to close a door that leads outside.

  She sits me down in the visitors’ lounge and brings me a cup of tea from an urn they have on the boil all day long.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asks.

  I nod. ‘Can you tell me…?’ I begin and then I bite down on my lip.

  Anika nods.

  ‘Did my mother ever use the computer?’

  ‘Not that I ever saw, no.’

  ‘Because it looks like someone has an email account open on it. I saw it just now.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s from before? It’s a very old machine. How long has she had it?’

  ‘Years, but…’ I trail off. The explanation would take too long; where would I even begin? I will take the computer with me and show it to Jack.

  I have no idea what to think anymore as thoughts tumble and whirl through my mind. Why would she have sent them to me? How was she even capable of doing it?

  ‘Maybe ask Ed to take a look,’ says Anika.

  ‘Ed?’

  ‘The young man who works in the garden. He fixes all our residents’ computers. He’s studying computer science at university.’

  ‘Ed,’ I repeat. Ed, who my mother thought was Vernon. Why on earth would he be using her computer to send me emails?

  The doctor comes to find us in the visitors’ lounge. ‘A huge heart attack from what I can see,’ he says. ‘We can do an autopsy if you’d like but her health was very poor. There’s bruising on her chest, most likely from Anika’s attempt at CPR.’

  I think about her heart finally breaking under the strain of a terrible lifestyle and endless poor choices, breaking under the strain of too much tragedy and despair. Her poor broken heart.

  Anika nods, her cheeks flaming. ‘I did
n’t want to hurt her, but I had to try.’

  ‘I’ve signed the certificate and you can organise with your funeral home of choice to come and pick her up now, unless there’s anything else?’ the doctor asks.

  ‘No,’ I reply, my voice thick with emotion. ‘Thank you. I’ll make some calls after I fetch the boys from school and get everything organised.’

  ‘We can do most of it for you, if you’re happy to use Sutton’s funeral home,’ Anika says.

  ‘Thanks, I am.’ I smile gratefully at Anika.

  I make my way back to my mother’s room and head straight for the computer. When I open it up, the aquarium video has changed to one of puppies playing around in a garden. The Gmail tab has disappeared, even though I left it right here.

  I look around the room, at my mother who hasn’t moved, and I wonder if I’m going mad. I feel like I’m going mad. Has someone been in here? Was whoever it is going to send me the email? Were they interrupted by me coming into the room? I think about Anika, who had the most contact with and the absolute trust of my mother. Has my mother told Anika about Lilly? Is Anika involved in some way?

  I look at my phone, see the email there, confirming what I know. I go to the window and look out but there is no one in the garden.

  Grabbing my mother’s laptop, I make my way back to my car, looking behind me as I walk, turning back at every step.

  Someone is watching me, I’m sure. I can feel someone’s eyes on me.

  In the car I lock the doors, rest my head on the steering wheel.

  I wish, just for a second, that I didn’t have a husband and children, that I could simply pack my bags and leave, just pack my bags and run. But the moment I have this thought, I dismiss it. I am not her. I will not run from my life. I will not drown out my life.

  I am not her.

  Thirty-Five

  Molly

  * * *

  ‘I don’t understand,’ says Peter, ‘why would she have deleted the blog? She told you her sister died.’

  They are sitting in their favourite Chinese restaurant, sharing an entrée of spring rolls.

  Molly takes the last one, finishing it in two bites, and Peter laughs. ‘I only got one of those, you know.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t even think. I’m just so hungry these days.’

  Peter smiles. ‘I like watching you eat; I love it in fact. You’re getting that glow.’

  Molly looks down at her lap, folding and twisting her hands in her white napkin. ‘Don’t say that, please, not yet.’

  His face falls. ‘Okay… but when will it be safe to say it? When do we get to enjoy this?’

  Molly looks up at him, feels her eyes filling with unwanted tears. ‘I don’t know. I wish I did know but I’m just so scared to hope even a little bit.’

  Peter leans across the table and wipes a tear off her cheek. ‘Don’t be scared. Don’t be scared because no matter what happens, we’re in this together. Now,’ he sits back and picks up the menu again, ‘I know we’ve already ordered but since you ate my spring rolls, I think I deserve some prawn toast.’ Molly laughs but her laugh feels empty, fake.

  ‘So, why do you think she deleted the blog?’ he asks.

  ‘The only possible explanation is that she was lying. She couldn’t deny it when I told her that I remembered some things. She had to disappear.’

  ‘Or she thinks you’re a crazy woman who’s stalking her,’ says Peter gently.

  ‘Maybe, but then why not just reiterate that her sister died and ask me not to contact her again? Why vanish altogether?’

  ‘She asked you once not to contact her and you did anyway. It could be that she thinks you’re an internet troll or something.’

  ‘So you think this is my fault?’ Molly hears the high pitch of her voice, recognises the roiling anger that seems to assault her these days.

  ‘I really didn’t say that, not at all.’

  The waiter drifts past their table and Peter stops him and asks for the prawn toast before he wafts away again. There is only one other table of diners in the restaurant, and the waiter, who is usually run off his feet, looks bored. Outside, the rain pelts down. They almost decided against going out but Molly is finding her long, lonely hours in the apartment stifling. A dinner out seemed a good way to get away from her circular thoughts.

  Molly feels slightly sick, unsure if it’s pregnancy nausea or because she’s eaten too many spring rolls or because she is devastated at having lost Meredith’s blog, her one link to what she believes is her family.

  She sits back in her chair, rests her head and closes her eyes.

  ‘Moll, it’s only one night until the scan. Perhaps we should leave this for a bit until we know what’s what, and then if everything is good, we can talk about what to do. You’ve got enough on your plate.’

  ‘But what is there to do, Pete? I don’t know her name, I don’t know anything about her. She’s just some random person on the internet. I will never find her again.’

  ‘Except nothing on the internet is ever lost. If you can wait a few days, I can talk to Will at the office. I think he might be able to find the IP address and that could lead you to the person who set up the blog. Everyone needs to use email and nothing can really be hidden; even the smallest detail can help you find out who a person is.’

  Their waiter arrives just then with the prawn toast and their main courses. Molly is hungry once more with the kind of insatiable hunger that only pregnancy brings, but she’s almost too excited to eat.

  ‘Oh my gosh,’ she says, eyes widening. ‘So, you think Will could really do that?’

  ‘I do, yeah. He’s a whizz at that kind of stuff.’

  ‘So, let’s say I find her email address after tracing her IP address. Then what?’

  ‘I guess you have to see what the address is. Maybe he can find a phone number associated with the email and maybe even a physical address.’

  Molly feels little flutters of excitement in her stomach. ‘Can we really do it? You’ll ask Will?’

  ‘I’ll ask him. He may not be comfortable because it’s not exactly legal and it’s basically stalking, but yes, after the scan, I’ll ask him. I know how much this means to you.’

  Molly stands up and walks over to Peter’s chair. She leans down and gives him a quick kiss on the lips. ‘You are the best husband a woman could have,’ she says.

  Peter laughs and touches her cheek. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help you put this behind you. I want you to be able to enjoy what’s coming. I want us to move on and finally settle into the kind of life we’ve been longing for.’

  Molly sits back down and takes a mouthful of noodles but doesn’t reply. She doesn’t want to tell Peter that she doesn’t know if she can ever move on from this. She was abandoned by her mother and now she has been abandoned by the woman who is possibly her sister. There’s no way of letting this go.

  * * *

  The next morning Molly wakes up with the rising sun. She lies in bed, listening to her husband’s even breathing. In her sleep she placed her hand on her stomach, surrounding, protecting the little life inside. Who will I be after today? she wonders. The scan is at 10 a.m. and afterwards she could be a joyful expectant mother or a woman devastated by yet another failed pregnancy. One of those possibilities is almost inconceivable and the other feels like the alarming truth.

  She has never experienced anything beyond the very beginning signs of a pregnancy. She would like to see it as a sign that this time she will be allowed the happy ending she sees around her every day. This time it will be her turn. But she’s sceptical. Why would it have worked this time?

  She turns over in bed. She would like to go for a run. She would like to run until her body is exhausted and her mind is empty of anything except the pain in her lungs and muscles. She sees her mother – her biological mother – a faceless woman who never wanted her, who probably never wanted children at all. Did she count down the days of her pregnancy? Or did she simply ignore the whole process
and hope it would just go away?

  ‘What are you thinking?’ asks Peter, interrupting her thoughts.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Molly, because she cannot lay her fears bare over and over again, she cannot suck him into the whirlwind of her emotions when she needs him to be her strength. There is little, truly, he could say to comfort her.

  They eat breakfast in silence, Molly forcing herself to chew a piece of toast. She sips at a bottle of water continuously, knowing that her bladder needs to be full for the scan. It is eight o’clock and then it’s eight fifteen and then it’s eight twenty-five and Molly feels like she may be going crazy. She can’t read or watch television or concentrate long enough to even unload the dishwasher.

  ‘Why don’t you give Lexie a call?’

  ‘I don’t think I can speak to anyone until it’s over. Maybe we should just go to the hospital and wait there? Being there will help, I think.’

  In the car they crawl along with the other commuters. Molly knows they could have left later and avoided the morning rush, but somehow just being on the road feels better, as though they are at least moving forward. That’s what she wants most out of today: permission to move forward with her life.

  By the time they are seated in the waiting room for an ultrasound, Molly’s bladder is uncomfortably full. She and Peter page through old magazines, filled with pictures of mothers and babies, smiling out from every page.

  Molly looks around the room at the other couples. One woman has a prominent belly and looks to be only weeks away from giving birth. She is scrolling through her phone, ignoring the toddler by her feet, who is singing to himself. Another couple holds hands, occasionally turning to smile at each other with secret joy. Molly remembers looking at Peter like that in the first few weeks of her first pregnancy. They thought they had found the key to pure happiness, and Molly couldn’t believe that anyone in the world could be as ecstatic as she was right at that time. And then the first miscarriage happened. This is the first time she has had a scan that wasn’t simply to confirm a miscarriage.