The Missing

by Daisy Pearce

  A man followed me home one night. I remember blurred lights and chewing gum, my jaw clenched and aching. MDMA. No, speed. It doesn’t matter. He started talking to me, the man. Telling me I looked familiar. He started off nice but it soon turned nasty. What’s your name? Where do you work? We know each other, don’t we? Have we fucked? We have, haven’t we? Hey, hey, look at me. Look at me. We’re just talking. Don’t be shy. You do it for money, eh? I remember you. Sweet girl. Nice tits. Don’t – don’t ignore me. Come on, come on, baby. Are you still at that place – Osborne Road, yeah? You heading there now? You working there now? Fifty. Fifty. It’s all I’ve got. It’s cash. You can get something nice with that. Hey, where you going? You don’t need to be rude.

  Running home, inside, up the stairs. Keys in my fist, jutting out between my fingers. Imagine a world with no men in it, and you could walk at night and simply not worry. I double-lock my bedroom door. In the morning, blue paint, all the way down the hallway. A single word: Whore. There were handprints all over the bannisters in that same blue, the colour of lapis lazuli. Looking at it made me feel sick. The man who lived downstairs came to help me scrub it off, rubber gloves and white spirit, his terrible jokes, designed to make me smile. William means ‘resolute protector’. I found that out after he’d introduced himself. I looked it up. Small towns strangle you; so many hands at your throat. I moved away, big city this time. I kept William’s number, hidden away between the pages of a book. I didn’t find it for another seventeen months and then I didn’t call him for another three. Mud sticks. That’s all I know.

  ‘Do you know why I’m bringing this up now?’ he asks me.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Because the past is the past. I know you’re probably wondering why I didn’t tell you about Edie, but honestly, Frances – cross my heart – I never think about her. I didn’t treat her well, and when I dumped her she was mad about it. Talked about getting her mum’s knife and cutting me’ – when he says that I have a brief flash of Samantha holding the knife against me, the blood blooming on my T-shirt – ‘having me beaten up. All kinds of stuff. We were teenagers. You must remember what that was like?’

  ‘It was very different for me,’ I remind him. ‘I had to grow up very fast. I had no family.’

  ‘No, but look how far you’ve come. You’re a warrior, Frances Thorn.’ He smiles but I’m not mollified. I can still feel the hot pulse of my fury.

  ‘Do you love me, William?’

  ‘More than anything.’

  ‘What have you been spending our money on?’

  ‘What money?’ Smooth. Careful.

  ‘The money we put aside for the baby.’

  ‘Okay.’ He presses the palms of his hands together and holds his fingertips to his lips. He’s looking at me earnestly. ‘I might have lost a little on the poker. I thought I’d be able to pay it back before you noticed and, you know, I’m an arsehole, I should have told yo—’

  ‘William—’

  ‘I know. I know. I’m a sad old man. But that money was just sitting there anyway, not doing anything.’

  ‘But you promised me. “We’ll try for a baby this year.” You swore.’

  ‘I did, I know. I know.’

  ‘You’ll have to pay it back. We’ll need it, won’t we? For when the baby comes.’

  He’s silent and for a moment I forget about Kim – my trump card in her pale pink bra and sheer knickers – and watch him shift uneasily in the beam of my irritation.

  ‘William?’

  ‘I never promised you that.’

  I stare at him, tears brimming. Even though I’ve already figured this out it still hurts to hear it from him.

  He looks away from me. ‘Can’t we just wait and see what happens?’

  ‘That is what we’ve been doing!’ I yell, piston-straight, my head pounding. ‘And here we are, still doing it six years later! You lied to me then and you’re lying to me now!’

  ‘Frances, I swear to you—’

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like, to feel like this,’ I tell him. I’m forcing myself to be composed but it’s hard, it’s hard. ‘To want something so much it hurts. You have no idea!’ He studies me, head tilted. ‘You were never going to agree, were you? You’re just here waiting out the clock, right? If we wait another year I’ll be giving birth at thirty-five. By the time the baby goes to school I’ll be forty. By the time it goes to university I’ll be sixty. Even if I leave you and I’m lucky enough to meet someone else I would have kids with, how long will that process take? Four years? Six? Longer?’

  He reaches for me and I brush him aside. I can barely speak without my voice shaking. Anger, burning my throat like acid.

  ‘Frances, I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘What you should say is what you should have said six years ago. “I don’t want kids.” It would have saved all of this! Why lie to me?’

  ‘Because I had nothing else to offer you! I wasn’t exciting. I didn’t take risks. I hated the parties you went to and the people you hung out with. I hated the drugs you took – cocaine made you nasty, ketamine made you boring. All I had in my favour was my security. That, I could give you.’

  ‘But it’s not enough. And you knew that. And you did it anyway. You’re a fucking monster.’

  I pick up my drink, knocking him aside with my shoulder as I push past him. I hear Alex open the door to the dining room and ask William what the hell is going on in here, Mum’s trying to sleep, but already I’m pushing open the back door and heading into the inky soft night, the grass damp under my hot, bare feet, stars glittering in the vast sky above. Tears blur my vision and my breathing, ragged, uneven, makes a rasping sound in my throat. I find the place where the hammock has been strung between two old apple trees, the ropes of it greyed with age, and sit there, head down, letting the sobs come, letting them slowly erode my defences as the moon rises between the branches of the trees.

  William finds me an hour or so later. By this time I am lying on my back, one leg hanging over the side of the hammock, nudging it from side to side. I don’t respond to his presence, or his questions, and I pretend not to notice the concern on his face as he squats down beside me.

  ‘I know about Kim, William. I went to see her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Rattlesnake80,’ I tell him. ‘She said that’s the name you use.’

  Oh boy, the look on his face. It’s like watching a meteor impact, like a cave-in. I can almost forget my own pain.

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘Since before we came down here.’

  A pause. The rasp of his breathing lifts into the air.

  ‘It’s just money, Frances. It’s a transaction. We’ve only talked once or twice. I don’t even know her real name.’

  ‘It’s Kim.’

  ‘Is it? Huh. She doesn’t look like a Kim. She was using one of those corny cam-girl names like Dallas or Cherry or something.’

  ‘What did you know about her?’

  ‘Not much. She said she’s a student. She wouldn’t tell me which university.’

  I feel oddly calm. Knowledge is power, after all. William, on the other hand, looks swept away, grey-pallored, almost queasy. Good; he deserves it.

  ‘What’s it for, William? If it’s not sex, what is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You gave away nearly three thousand pounds.’

  ‘I know that, Frances.’

  ‘Why?’

  I let him be silent long enough, his eyes downcast.

  Finally he says, ‘She gave me something you didn’t.’

  ‘Oh yeah? What’s that?’

  ‘Distance. You were always so intense. Like you were on the verge of a – I don’t know, a – a breakdown. Your career, your moods, even the way you had sex – it was always so intense. I just needed to get away from that.’

  ‘Huh.’ My temper is a wildfire, fast-spreading and hard to control, always changing direction. But when it burns o
ut, as it inevitably does, I feel washed out. Numb. Fire is cleansing. It purifies. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hurt him back. To sting him like the words will come back and sting me, the sharp pain of them in the middle of the night, at home alone.

  I turn my head upward, looking towards the sky. It’s high and vaulted, a cathedral ceiling finely painted with silvery clouds and pockets of stars, a perfect crescent moon. I almost expect a seraphim to appear.

  ‘I saw your dad’s grave today.’

  William immediately bristles. His posture changes, becomes stiffer. His arms fold across his chest. It’s that subconscious behaviour again, animating him from within. How well I know it. How well I know him.

  ‘Would you say you two were much alike?’

  ‘Frances, whatever you think you know about my dad—’

  ‘That’s the problem, isn’t it, William? You’ve never told me anything.’

  ‘I just – I don’t know how to make you understand. I wish I could be more helpful.’

  ‘Then answer the question.’

  He thinks for a moment. ‘Okay, yes. Very much. From what I remember he was a good, practical man. He liked routine. I know he seemed boring to some, but it was just his way of getting things done.’

  ‘Well, that is like you.’

  ‘Yup. It’s in the genes.’ He laughs weakly.

  ‘Would you say he was capable of keeping secrets?’

  William seems to think about it. ‘I would have said no. Honesty was his bedrock, really. But then I think about how he was with Alex and that bloody sheep’s skull – “Don’t tell your mum or she’ll kill us” – and I wonder. He was obviously able to keep secrets, so maybe he did have that side to him, although it doesn’t sound right. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just thinking. About you. About deceit.’

  ‘Well, you know what they say. The sins of the father and all that. I like to think he was a good man, an honest one. That he wouldn’t have let you down the way I have.’

  Silence. All around us, the dark heart of the night.

  ‘Are you going to leave me, Frances?’

  He swallows convulsively and I am sure he is about to cry. I can’t look at him. I can’t answer his question either, because I don’t know. I once had a patient who had been experiencing a strange pattern in their behaviour. When their anxiety peaked, as it so often did on public transport, they found themselves buttoning and unbuttoning their coat, almost obsessively. They were barely aware of it, until they looked down at themselves and noticed the movement of their hands. It’s a displacement activity, usually seen in animals, a way for the brain to deflect stress or uncertainty. My mind is circling, again and again, back to Edie Hudson, as it has done since I picked up the photo in the shoebox, the one I wasn’t supposed to see. My brain picks over the scant details as a way of deflecting from the way my marriage is collapsing, the way the nursery will remain empty, the money we’ve lost. It’s displacement. I welcome it, for now. ‘Right now I’d really like to just be on my own, William.’

  He gets up silently, walking back towards the house with his hands in his pockets and his head down. I wonder what he’s thinking about. Me, I’m thinking about Alex telling me not to mention the photo to William, but then doing so himself. Mostly I’m thinking that a man who drives his car off a bridge and into the river would at least try to remove his seat belt. But Edward Thorn let himself sink to the bottom and didn’t make any attempt at escape. A man with no secrets doesn’t do that.

  In the middle of the night I wake up in bed, mouth dry and furred. William is gently snoring next to me, one hand pinned to his chest. I ease myself out and down the dark hallway, my head cloudy with sleep. In the kitchen I drink straight from the tap, head bent under the faucet. A dark bib of water appears on the neck of my T-shirt. When I stand upright again there is a thin face reflected next to me in the dark window. Coldness rushes through me.

  ‘Is he seeing to those tomatoes again?’

  I spin around. It’s Mimi. In her long nightdress studded with pink flowers and her bare feet she looks like a Victorian ghost. Her hair is a nebula about her drawn face, her cheeks sunk, deep pools of shadow.

  ‘He’ll get cold out there. Get him in, dear.’

  She’s looking past me, towards the greenhouse. I put a hand on her shoulder. I’m shaking all over, my knees weak and watery.

  ‘Come on, Mimi, back to bed. It’s late.’

  ‘He’ll catch his death.’

  ‘I’ll go and get him in a minute, okay? Through here, that’s right. Back into bed.’

  ‘He told me his secret once,’ she says, as I pull back the covers. I stare at her in the darkness, blood ringing in my ears. My heart thuds against my ribs. I have a very clear image then of Edward Thorn in his shed at the bottom of the garden with a bag of old bones, grinding them into powder, boiling them in huge pots, bent over the stove. Tell me, Mimi. Tell me where they came from. Did you know about Edie Hudson? I look over at her, so pale she is almost transparent. Her eyes are filmy.

  I say, very quietly, ‘What was the secret, Mimi? Can you remember?’

  ‘He said—’ She tilts her head as though listening to a distant voice. ‘He said the secret was to feed the soil, not the plant.’

  Tamped down by disappointment, I tuck her in, pulling the covers up to her neck. What had I been expecting? This is madness, I tell myself sternly. You’re chasing the ghost of an old man through his widow. Look at yourself. Edie Hudson is long gone but your marriage is falling apart right here and now. That’s what you need to be looking at.

  I sit awhile as she falls easily back to sleep, her breathing sliding into a deep and regular rhythm. Her small hand lies in mine, limp and cold. Just before I leave I plant a kiss on her temple, the woman who, at our wedding, took me to one side and told me I’d made her so very, very proud.

  I sleep fitfully for the next two hours and then give up, brewing strong tea and heading back out into the garden. The sky is lightening to lilac, clouds drifting like unravelling wool. The air is punctuated by the bright voices of the birds. I stand at the fork in the path that splits off towards the wood on the left and the greenhouse and allotment on the right. There is a thin mist obscuring the top of the Downs but the sun, already the colour of a warm peach, will soon burn it away. I look back at Thorn House over my shoulder. The silvery panes of the windows reflect the broad blue sky. I cross the lawn on bare feet, my cup of tea curling silvery steam into the air.

  Inside the greenhouse that fertile green smell of the tomatoes hits me again. I try to avoid looking upward but a morbid curiosity compels me. The poor dead bird has been scraped from the glass but there is still a smear of gore left behind, a dark stain. The tomato plants are a lush and vibrant green, the fruits glossy-skinned and plump as if they are about to pop.

  The sack of bonemeal is in the far corner, slumped like a drunk with his head on his chest. Back here, cobwebs fur the window frames and the desiccated corpses of flies crunch underfoot. I reach inside and sift the gritty powder through my fingers. I find myself thinking of the last couplet of the rhyme Alex told me: Give them meat and give them bone, and pray that they leave you alone.

  Beyond the greenhouse is the edge of the garden where gooseberry bushes grow in neat, orderly rows. Beyond that is the woodland, dense and thick and ancient. William told me how his father campaigned to have it protected when it was in danger of being sold off to developers in the mid- nineties. He’d sourced funding from various charities and organisations, held demonstrations, circulated petitions. In the end he raised enough money to buy the two hectares of land just beyond Thorn House and fenced it off. There are still the signs he hung up there reading Private Property and No Entry. I’ve always found it strange that he would campaign so hard to protect the land and then not allow anyone to go in there. It was just trees, after all, wasn’t it?

  And the well, a voice says. Don’t forget that. My mind circles the image of a sheep’s carcass, brist
ling with insect and bone, lying on the cold stones at the bottom of the well, lit by the flare of the boys’ torches. Edward boarded that well up in the end. It was dangerous, Mimi had said.

  I’ve only been in the woods once. William took me on one of our first visits down here to see his mother and brother. He insisted we only use the marked path, the one that leads through the trees towards the pasture fields on the other side. It was autumn, the ground in there churned mud and marshy in places, black standing water lying glassy in ditches. Roots rising from the earth like groping white hands. Dark hollows and mossy hummocks all screened by the thick trunks of the trees. It was silent and very, very still. You could do anything in there and no one would see you.

  Anything.

  Samantha – Now

  I call Frances a little after eleven, nursing a cup of coffee close to my chest. She answers on the third ring, husky-voiced and tired-sounding.

  ‘I was just thinking about you,’ she says, and laughs. ‘How’s your hangover?’

  ‘Deceptively okay. I keep thinking it’ll catch up with me later on. That’s what happens when you get old.’

  ‘I always look worse than I feel. I think in a way that’s harder. I mean, I don’t mind feeling like shit but when people physically recoil at the sight of you, you know it’s been a rough night.’

  Then we’re both laughing, the two of us, bonded women who only yesterday sneaked into a long-abandoned house on a trail of breadcrumbs. The pain in my head eases a little. In my little kitchen I can stand by the sink and see the places in the garden where the cats have dug holes in the flower beds, turning over the bulbs I’ve planted there. I’ll have to do them again. I don’t mind. It’s meditative, gardening. And I still hope, even now, to come across something Edie put there in the dirt nearly thirty years ago. A small plastic bracelet, a tiny rubber dinosaur, a single block of Lego.