by Perks, Heidi
‘So, what are you saying?’ Grace says. ‘That Anna had already left the pub?’
‘Yes,’ Nancy says. ‘She must have gone without saying anything to us.’ There is definitely something that resembles fear in her eyes, but fear of what Grace isn’t sure.
She wants to ask if this is typical of Anna, but the question would make it clear that Nancy knows Anna better than she does, and even now she finds she can’t bring herself to give Nancy that satisfaction. Instead she asks Caitlyn, ‘Did you see her go?’
‘I … er …’ As Caitlyn falters, a splat of red creeps up her neck. Vibrant patches reach her face as she blinks, shrugging, her face masked with panic. ‘I’m not sure what happened,’ she says. ‘I guess, like Nancy says, she must have left before we did.’
Peering a little closer, Grace can swear she sees tears forming in the corner of Caitlyn’s eyes and wonders, if she keeps watching close enough, whether they will start to fall. What is it that these women aren’t telling her?
‘Gone where, then?’ Grace asks eventually.
‘Maybe she just started walking,’ Caitlyn suggests. ‘She could have gone the other way? Along the cliffs?’
Grace recoils at the thought. Her eyes widen as she stares at Caitlyn.
‘Why would she have done that?’ Rachel asks. But it is too late, because the thought is there now and Grace cannot shake it.
The bell starts ringing and Matilda pulls on Grace’s hand again and Grace bends to her daughter to give her a hug. By the time she’s returned her attention to Anna’s three friends, their body language is different. Nancy has linked her arm through Rachel’s and is now doing the same to Caitlyn, standing on her other side, and it feels as if they are forming some kind of wall of protection against Grace. As if the questions that are forming in her head and toppling over each other to get out aren’t ones they want to hear.
Of course their animosity could all just be in her head, she thinks, as children scurry past. And of course there could be some reasonable explanation for the fact that Anna didn’t return home: she could have met someone at the pub and made a bad decision and now feels unable to face the thought that she hasn’t gone back to her husband. She is an adult, after all. But is this possible of the thirty-six-year-old Anna that Grace has been trying to get to know?
Whatever she has done, the knowledge that Grace should never have left her last night is all too present. Back when they were seventeen, they’d had rules: never get in a car when someone’s been drinking; always look behind the front seats at night in case someone is crouching, hiding behind them; never leave each other on their own. Ever.
And last night Grace had broken one of their rules. She had left Anna behind, and now look what had happened.
In her heart she doesn’t believe Anna to be the type not to go home to Ben, but more than that she knows, with certainty, that she is not a mother who’d leave her son. Which means something very bad has happened. And now all sorts of images ripple through Grace’s head: Anna lying in a ditch; tied up and gagged in a basement not even that far from here; her body dumped in bushes that would soon be found by a dog walker or lying at the bottom of Crayne’s Cliff. It is amazing how many vivid pictures she is able to conjure up in a moment.
‘Has anyone called the police?’ she calls as she falls behind the three friends, their arms linking them together in a daisy chain. Other parents from the year are still asking if there is any news of Anna. Nancy is carefully batting their questions away and agreeing that of course she’ll let them know as soon as they hear from her, and so Grace asks the question again, louder this time.
Caitlyn stops and shakes her head, turning to look over her shoulder. ‘God, I hope it won’t come to that. Calling the police? Surely we’ll hear from her soon.’ She pulls her phone out of her pocket, checking its screen as if hoping a text from Anna is already waiting.
Grace cocks her head. It doesn’t pass her by how irrelevant she is in this scenario, that she may as well be one of the other mothers who has no clue what has happened either, asking their questions, being left out of the loop. She wasn’t the one to receive the call from Anna’s worried husband and it isn’t likely she’ll be one of the first to hear as soon as there is news. Possibly she’ll just be another person on a WhatsApp group who is filled in at the same time as everyone else.
‘Of course someone needs to tell the police,’ she says firmly, striding up to the group of three who have now paused on the roadside. ‘Ben must have done it already anyway?’ she adds, trying to assume some authority. It would be the first thing Grace would do if Graham hadn’t returned home when he was supposed to be there, but then again she can barely remember the last time Graham was lying in their bed.
‘Well, you can’t report an adult as missing for twenty-four hours,’ Nancy replies. It seems they have found themselves in some kind of stand-off and Grace is conscious of eyes watching her, but she won’t back down.
‘Which is ridiculous,’ Caitlyn adds nervously. ‘Don’t you think? In twenty-four hours anything could have happened. Twenty-four hours wouldn’t be until the early hours of tomorrow morning.’ Her voice rises as she speaks, her fear almost palpable, and Grace knows she needs to speak to Caitlyn alone. That she may be her only chance of finding out what actually happened at the end of the night.
‘There’s absolutely no way we can wait until then,’ Grace says. ‘And anyway, I don’t believe we can’t report it.’ She risks a glance at Nancy. ‘It’s up to the police what they do with the information, but there’s no way we’re not allowed to share it with them.’
Caitlyn looks up at Nancy as if she’s looking for some confirmation about what to do. Rachel’s head is hung low and she gazes at her feet, which scuff at the pavement.
‘So what are you all doing now, then?’ Grace asks, when no one responds.
‘We’ll keep trying to get hold of Anna,’ Nancy says, continuing to assume the role of decision-maker.
‘That’s it?’ Grace laughs, incredulous.
Nancy bites down on her lip again as she stares at Grace. ‘It’s barely nine o’clock in the morning. You call the police and tell them a thirty-six-year-old woman hasn’t come home and they’re not going to take you seriously. And besides,’ she pauses, dropping her voice so the eavesdropping mothers nearby can’t hear, ‘Ben doesn’t want us calling anyone. Not yet.’
‘Why not?’ Grace demands. ‘Why wouldn’t he want to?’ She can feel her insides catch on fire, a flame that leaps up and rides through her. Why the hell would Anna’s husband not want to call the police?
‘He wants to see if he can find her before he starts involving them. Christ, I don’t know,’ Nancy says, ‘he’s probably scared that she didn’t come home for an altogether different reason.’
‘Anna wouldn’t do that,’ Grace says.
‘I’m not being funny,’ Nancy replies, ‘but you haven’t actually got any idea what Anna would or wouldn’t do any more. You haven’t known her for almost twenty years, Grace. A lot has happened since you were seventeen.’
Grace opens her mouth and then clamps it shut again, staring in disbelief. She can feel her tongue crackling with words she’s trying to form into a sentence, unsure which ones to use. Her friend is missing and they shouldn’t be arguing over who knows her best right now. Nancy doesn’t have the right to score points with her in this moment, as if she doesn’t give a toss about Anna. She wants to demand that Nancy tell her what has happened to Anna since they were both seventeen, because she is right about something: Anna isn’t the same person.
She feels the other two women watching as Nancy hesitates and then says sharply, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m worried, we all are.’
She doesn’t look sorry in the slightest, but despite this, Grace nods. Nancy goes on: ‘I’m going to call Ben now.’ She pulls away from Caitlyn and reaches into her pocket, pulling out her phone and clutching it in her hand. ‘And I’ll tell you the minute I hear any
thing.’
Grace waits for her to make the call, but instead Nancy turns and starts walking down the road, hauling Rachel along with her. Caitlyn lingers for only a moment, and Grace takes her chance, reaching out to grab her arm.
‘What happened?’ she asks. ‘At the end of the night, did Anna leave before you?’
Caitlyn’s head gives a glimmer of a shake. ‘I don’t … I’m not actually sure,’ she says. ‘I don’t remember, but I don’t think—’
‘Cait!’ Nancy calls. ‘Are you coming?’
‘Yes, I’m coming,’ Caitlyn says, without taking her eyes off Grace. ‘I’m sorry.’ She shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’
But you do, Grace thinks as she watches the three women disappear around a bend in the road. I think you do bloody know.
Her mind whirls with the weirdness of the conversation, the women’s reactions to Anna’s disappearance. None of it feels right. She needs to speak to Ben. Surely he is more inclined to act than Anna’s friends appear to be. She cannot believe he doesn’t want to alert the police, like Nancy says. And there is no way Grace will sit back and wait for Anna to call, or wait for news from Nancy that may or may not come.
She makes her way to her car. Yes, she will speak to Ben herself. Before she reports Anna missing, she will hear what he has to say and then if he still hasn’t made the call she will do it herself.
She will talk to Caitlyn, too. Dig deeper into what happened the previous evening.
But before she does either of those things she needs to go back to where they were last night. And she needs to walk up the path to Crayne’s Cliff. Because as much as she hopes her friend didn’t go that way, she cannot shake the fear of what might have happened if she did.
September – Three months earlier
Anna
Outside the window there is a pretty street: rows of semi-detached houses on either side, all with patches of perfectly manicured lawns. I haven’t had any need to visit this area before and it was one of the reasons I singled the therapist’s name out of a Google search. I felt inconspicuous parking outside, less likely to be spotted by someone I know when I’m half an hour from home.
‘Maybe you could start by telling me what brought you here today?’ Sally asks me. Her voice is gentle and has a slight lilt to it. She wears her hair mostly pulled back from her face with an Alice band, though a thin wispy fringe escapes beneath it.
I nod but don’t answer for a moment. My stomach is turning over the way it always used to when I was waiting for an exam to start. Even up to the point I pulled up outside Sally’s house I wasn’t sure I wanted to go ahead. Is therapy really the answer? I could have probably done with it when I was a child but it had never been offered to me, and so here I am, thirty-six years old, trying to do it for the first time.
I realise I’ve been balling my hands so tightly together in my lap that I’m beginning to lose circulation. It’s the thought of talking, opening up. I guess it’s never really been a thing for me, which makes my being here all the more ironic. I’m worried that once I start speaking it might open up the floodgates, and I hate the thought of breaking down in front of a stranger.
‘What made you pick up the phone?’ Sally is prompting me. ‘That’s usually a good place to start.’
My mind flicks through countless thoughts so quickly I can barely catch them, each one contributing to my unease. They stop on the notion that I feel myself losing the last vestiges of control and I want to stop the unravelling. Only I have no idea how. But I also have no idea how to explain this to Sally, and so I tell her, more simply, ‘My dad died six weeks ago.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Sally says.
I want to tell her it’s fine, but I can’t say that when I’ve just told her it’s the reason I was scouring the internet a week ago looking for a therapist. Again I find myself nodding. ‘It wasn’t really a surprise by the end,’ I tell her. ‘He’d been ill for a while, but that doesn’t make it any easier.’
In truth, Dad’s death hadn’t been a catalyst, it was the weeks leading up to it, when he decided it was time to tell me some truths that he possibly should have told me many years ago. Or not at all. I’m not certain which is preferable. I think Dad wanted to give me some answers about my mum and my childhood. Only now I find I am left with more questions and I have no one to ask.
‘It doesn’t make it easier,’ Sally agrees. ‘Were you and your dad close?’
‘No. Well, I suppose we were in some ways.’ I stop and give a short laugh. ‘God, I don’t know, that’s a tough question. I guess we were close because it was only me and him when I was growing up, but then on the other hand we didn’t get on well. We weren’t close in that regard. Sorry. It feels weird, talking like this.’
‘To a stranger, you mean?’ she asks.
‘To anyone.’ I turn to look out of the window again, thoughts of my dad filling my head. I’ve never stopped to think about whether we were close or not. It isn’t a question I’ve been asked before. On the one hand I doubt Dad would have been able to name one job I’ve had since I left college. But on the other I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d found a whole scrapbook of my life over the years in his bottom drawer.
I hadn’t, though. A few weeks earlier I’d gone through all his drawers and cupboards, as well as the boxes that were kept in the loft. There had been some surprises, mementos he’d kept of my childhood: essays I’d written, books I’d loved. I was relieved that Ben hadn’t come with me to help sort through Dad’s things because I’d ended up sitting in the middle of his bedroom and howling.
Anyway, the point is I don’t know what he’d be able to recall about me because we didn’t have the type of relationship where we ever discussed anything important. I always left his house with a vague sense of disappointment, not knowing if he’d enjoyed my visit or not. There is no easy way to describe our relationship. In some ways even calling it a relationship feels like a stretch.
‘Can you tell me how you have been feeling since your dad passed?’ Sally asks.
I raise my eyes and focus on a patch on the ceiling as I consider this. It isn’t the first time I have tried to make sense of my feelings. Ben has asked me the same thing. I have always told him I feel sad, of course. But then I always knew that wasn’t quite the truth. I just didn’t want to admit that I also felt relief. How could I even say that? In the end I tell Sally, ‘I feel guilty,’ which is also true.
‘Guilty about what?’ she asks.
‘Maybe that I never tried harder.’ Thoughts of Grace and her family come into my head, and the many hours and days – years even – that I spent with them instead of with my dad. I wonder if I could have had a better relationship with him if I hadn’t spent so much time at Grace’s house.
‘It’s very common to feel like this after someone has died,’ Sally says. ‘We are left with all the what-ifs, the what-we-could-have-done-betters. It sometimes takes time to realise all the things that were good.’
‘Maybe,’ I murmur.
‘Can you tell me a bit about your childhood?’
‘Like what?’
‘You mentioned it was just you and your dad, so your mum wasn’t around?’
‘No.’ I shake my head quickly. I don’t want to be drawn into a conversation about my mum. That’s not why I am here.
Sally is looking at me curiously, but eventually she says, ‘Okay, so what was your dad like as a father?’
‘He did his best, I suppose,’ I say. They are words I’ve uttered many times before, like some kind of mantra. Whenever anyone asks me this I’ve always said, He did his best. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t good enough, or even that I understand how hard it must have been for him, trying to juggle work with looking after a four-year-old daughter, who inevitably brought with her a plethora of problems, especially as she grew older. Just that it seems the easiest, least judgemental and the simplest ‘brush over and move on’ answer.
Sally merely nods and I know she means for me t
o dig deeper, so I try to draw a picture for her. ‘When we were teenagers he’d let us watch movies that were inappropriately scary because he didn’t really have a clue what girls our age should be watching. We’d sit there with snacks piled up to our necks and at school I used to swap one of my shop-bought multipack cakes for someone else’s raw carrots because he rarely packed me anything healthy. And I would eventually put myself to bed when I was so tired I couldn’t stay awake any longer. But then I always had clean clothes and I never went six weeks without a haircut because he worked hard so I didn’t have to. So,’ I pause and shrug, ‘he did his best.’
‘You said we. You and a sibling?’
‘No. I don’t have any siblings. I mean me and my friend Grace. She might as well have been my sister, though, we practically grew up together. She took me under her wing when she found me sitting on my own, crying, in the playhouse at school. We were five, and we were best friends until she and her parents left for Australia when we were seventeen. Her parents did a lot for me. Well, her mum, Catherine, in particular.’
I pause and take a deep breath that catches in my throat as my guilt comes flooding back in waves. How was it that not that long ago life had felt pleasingly simple? My family, our health, safety – does anything else matter?
Nancy is always telling me I’m a simple person. ‘There’s never any drama with you, Anna,’ she’ll tell me, and it’s the way I want it. I always aspired to having a family life like Grace had. Back then I thought that her parents’ marriage was the closest thing to perfection, but then as a child you see what you want to see. Now I see that my marriage to Ben is better. ‘We are in the process of adopting,’ I suddenly tell Sally. ‘Not many people know about it, I haven’t wanted to tempt fate.’
‘Oh? How lovely,’ Sally says.
I nod. ‘Ben and I couldn’t have any more children after Ethan. I thought it wouldn’t matter for a long time because Ethan is enough for us,’ I say. ‘But we talked about it and agreed we wanted more. I want him to have a bond with another child,’ I say. ‘A sister. They found us a little girl earlier this summer. She’s beautiful, her name’s Zadie.’ My hand automatically feels for my handbag. In it I carry a photo of the two-year-old girl I fell in love with the moment I saw her picture. I am tempted to share it with Sally, but I have this strange idea that if I get too carried away something will happen and I don’t want to take any risks.