The Missing

by Daisy Pearce

  I think back to the last days I saw Edie, how she would tie up the bathroom in the mornings, the sound of the toilet flushing over and over again. Morning sickness. Oh my God. I have to clutch the edge of the table for support. My heart is pounding like it might give out. All these years and I never knew. I promised to take her to the doctor to get some contraception – it was the night of all that rain, the two of us sitting in the garden. But then of course she split up with Dylan and I didn’t think I needed to worry about it.

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Yep,’ Nancy says. ‘I was the only one who knew. Well, me and the father.’

  ‘Who was the father?’ I’m thinking of William with his hand in her underwear. Or Dylan? And who else was there? How many that I didn’t know about?

  ‘She wouldn’t tell me. I mean, Edie wasn’t a virgin. Most of us had – uh – a series of overlapping boyfriends. You know?’

  ‘But you must have some idea.’

  Nancy shakes her head, sighs. ‘Honestly. She wouldn’t say and I didn’t push it because – well, because it was Edie. You didn’t push things with Edie.’

  I have a flash of memory. Shoved into the corner of a room, something spilt across the carpet. It’s the table; Edie’s upturned the dining table. There’s spaghetti all over the floor, red sauce. I can see broken glass glittering on the rug. I’m saying, ‘Edie, stop, I mean it.’ I’m reaching into my back pocket for the knife. This is stupid, I’m thinking, even though my heart is beating at a hundred miles an hour, this is so stupid, it’s just homework. Why can’t she just do her fucking homework? Her face is so angry I don’t recognise her. It contorts her from the inside out. She’s a monster.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say resignedly to Nancy. ‘If she didn’t want to do something, she wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘Listen, I have to go. I’ve got Pilates,’ Nancy says, breaking the spell. Her voice is more precise again and she’s wrapping the scarf around her neck. This moment is over.

  She stands, holding my gaze with her heavy-lidded eyes. ‘You need to try to move on, Samantha. Don’t lose your present to your past.’

  Wow, I think. What a wise thing to say. It seems vaguely familiar and then I remember where I’ve seen it before. On Nancy’s Facebook wall, one of those quotes set against the backdrop of a waterfall, written in calligraphic script.

  I almost laugh. ‘I appreciate your help, Nancy.’

  ‘I’m lactose intolerant but if you ever want to meet for coffee, I’m here. Always here.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

  ‘You look after yourself, Samantha,’ Nancy says, picking up her handbag, and I’m left alone again.

  I walk aimlessly through the market stalls that are set up in the pedestrianised centre of town. I can’t face going home. I feel weak, like I’m getting sick. Edie, pregnant. It changes everything. It means that she could be out there somewhere, living with her own son or daughter, my grandchild. It was a catalyst for her leaving, quietly and without incident, that had nothing to do with my necklace or the argument we’d had that morning. My hope soars. I wish Tony was still here. He’d know what to do. I try to picture him, his soft grey eyes, the gentle burr of his voice. The first thing he ever said to me was, ‘I am here to help you find your daughter.’ At the time it was soothing, like a warm compress. I believed him.

  I buy a paper and sit on a bench with it folded on my lap. Pregnant. She must have been so frightened. I remember how I felt. As though my own body was turning on me. Nausea, exhaustion, pain. All that sickness. And that strange, alien feeling of a life growing inside you. Cells dividing again and again and again, bones forming and hardening beneath soft, stretched skin. I’m unnerved to find that my face is wet with tears. I didn’t realise I was crying.

  There’s a hand on my shoulder. I twitch, swiping at the wetness on my cheeks. It’s Frances, peering at me with concern.

  ‘I thought that was you. Are you okay? Did you speak to Nancy?’

  ‘Yes. What are you – why are you here?’

  ‘I had to get out the house.’ She sits beside me on the bench. ‘I had an argument with William last night. You look like you’ve been crying.’

  ‘Allergies,’ I say, straight-faced.

  She nods. I don’t want to talk about it. Frances understands.

  We sit side by side in silence, pigeons cooing softly in the eaves of the nearby buildings. The River Ouse runs beneath us, brown and tarry.

  Finally, Frances speaks, without looking at me. ‘I think I’m leaving him.’

  ‘Okay.’

  More silence. I reach over and awkwardly pat her hand. She smiles, closes her eyes. When she speaks again she doesn’t open them, doesn’t look at me. ‘There’s something I wanted to mention to you. There’s an old well in the woods near Thorn House. It’s very old and pretty much dry, from what I can tell. Edward Thorn boarded it up when the boys were kids because it was so dangerous. I think it mi—’

  ‘No. No more.’ I stand up, pressing the newspaper against my chest. When Edie first went missing the same newspaper buried her story in its pages, using the headline ‘Troubled Teen Runaway: Missing Edie Hudson may have fled to capital’. Troubled. So polite. So generous. That scar on Nancy’s neck, twisted like rope. ‘No more, Frances. I don’t have the energy. It’s the hope. I don’t know how much longer I can sustain it before I fucking sink. It’s making me sick, that hope. Sometimes I can lose hours just wondering what she looks like now, how she’s grown into a woman. Does she look like me or her dad? Sometimes I even think I see her; a woman who is lean and strong-looking, with dark glossy hair. I double-take when I see women with their jaws set hard like Edie when she was in a temper, or women with multiple earrings, little gold hoops and crosses. That was the kind of thing she loved, always trying on my jewellery when she was a little girl. When I see them, these phantom Edies walking their dogs or bouncing a baby on their knee, it’s like walking into a cold room. I can’t breathe. I try not to stare. I try not to cry. It’s harder than it sounds. Because there’s that hope, you see. Maybe it is her this time. It’s the hope, the fucking hope. I carry it with me, all the time. I can’t – I can’t keep hoping. I’m sorry, Frances.’

  ‘Don’t be. Don’t be sorry.’

  ‘She was pregnant. Nancy told me. They did the test together, in the bathrooms at school. So there you go. My violent fifteen-year-old daughter was facing expulsion and an unwanted pregnancy and she hated me. Some parenting, huh?’

  My voice is shaking by the end. I have to walk away quickly before Frances can reply, before she can see the fault lines in me, splitting all the way through to my hollow, worthless spine.

  Frances – Now

  I watch Samantha walk away from me, hunched over as if she is in pain. I too feel winded, a sucker punch to the gut, a quick one-two. Pregnant. And not just any baby. William’s baby. Not necessarily, that nasty little voice replies.

  This morning I went into Alex’s bedroom. He was at his desk in front of the window, just sitting and staring out at the trees beyond the house. He didn’t turn around when I knocked and opened the door, but I suppose he must have seen my reflection in the glass because he said, ‘Come and see this, Frances. There’s a magpie out there on the grass. I should tell Mum.’

  I walked up behind him, careful to close the door behind me. I didn’t want to be overheard. I put my hand on the back of his chair and peered out towards the woodland. ‘Those woods look awfully dark.’

  ‘Well, there’s been no one to look after them since Dad died. It closes over you, you see, the canopy. The branches reach out towards each other, slowly shutting off the sunlight.’

  ‘I don’t like to think of it being neglected. It’s a shame.’

  Alex shrugged. ‘Who would take the job on? You need to be a specialist.’

  ‘Like your dad?’

  He turned to look at me, face unreadable. He was wearing a button-down shirt tucked into his trousers, hair neatly parted. So tidy. Even his
fingernails were close-cropped and clean, despite all that digging in the dirt.

  ‘I suppose. He learned on the job, but hired people for the big clearance work. You volunteering yourself?’

  I laughed, but he wasn’t smiling. It’s so hard to tell with him sometimes, where the jokes are. ‘No.’ I looked over at the shelf above the bed, as if my eye had just glanced upon the object that sits there and not deliberately sought it out, that it was not in fact the best part of the reason I came in here. ‘Is that the sheep’s skull?’

  Alex looked over his shoulder, nodded.

  ‘Can I pick it up?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I crossed the room and lifted the sheep’s skull from the bookshelf. It was grey, almost dirty-looking, not polished white as I’d been expecting. There were fissures along the surface and on the left-hand side a small dent I could press my thumb into.

  Alex turned to look straight at me. ‘That’s where it got the head injury. That’s how it died.’

  ‘Amazing.’ I wanted to put it back. I didn’t like it, didn’t like the way the teeth jutted down into the palm of my hand. I forced myself to keep holding it, though, and to keep holding Alex’s interest. ‘Do you think you could still find the old well, if you had to?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘I suppose. Certainly the area should be easy enough. It would be entirely overgrown in there now and the boards Dad put over it will probably be rotten. It wouldn’t be very safe.’

  ‘But you’d be able to show me where it is?’

  ‘What did you come in here for, Frances?’

  My heart picked up, just a little. I put the skull back on the shelf, resisting the urge to wipe my hands on my dress.

  ‘I just wanted to talk to you about last night.’

  ‘Oh. The argument you two were having? Yeah. I heard it all.’

  ‘I’m sorry. That was inconsiderate of us.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Thing is, Alex, one of the reasons Will was cross was the photo I found in the shoebox. The one you told me not to mention. What I don’t understand is why you then went and told him about it yourself.’

  ‘He’s my brother, Frances,’ he said simply, as if that answered the question. ‘He needs to know if you’re digging around.’

  ‘I’m not digging around,’ I said. ‘I just think it’s an interesting story. Edie walked away from her friends and was never seen again. And your dad’s car was right there. You don’t think that’s interesting?’

  ‘My dad loved this family, Frances. He did a lot for us.’

  I stared at him. ‘I would never suggest otherwise.’

  ‘He just wanted to help people, all the time. To do the right thing. That was his problem.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Edie Hudson was a pest and her mother’s no better. My dad knew it and William knew it and you’d be wise to stay away from that woman while you’re here, otherwise she’ll taint you, too. Although I suppose you won’t be here much longer now, will you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He turned away again to look out the window, hands flat on the empty desk in front of him. ‘I suppose I just thought after last night, after what William did – I assumed you wouldn’t be staying together.’

  ‘Do you think William is like his dad?’

  Alex didn’t even pause. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Do you think your father was unfaithful?’

  I didn’t know what I was expecting from Alex. I didn’t know if honesty was too much to ask for in this strange situation.

  He thought about it for a good long time, his eyes closed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does your mum suspect?’

  ‘My mum wouldn’t see it. She sees what she wants to see.’

  I thought about Edward Thorn. A good man. A family man. Solid, dependable. It was even on his gravestone, wasn’t it? Steadfast husband and father. William had taken after him – William himself had told me that, and now Alex too. Like father, like son. Had Edward had his own Kim squirrelled away somewhere, like William? A younger girl – much younger, perhaps. Someone like Edie Hudson. Don’t be mad, I told myself. Men like Edward Thorn didn’t do things like that. She was a schoolgirl; he’d have got himself arrested.

  ‘You know, you remind me a bit of Edie, Frances. How troubled she was. I suppose that’s William’s type, though, isn’t it?’

  I smiled, but my insides were curdling. The pain of William’s betrayal was low and sharp and raw and I didn’t know that I would ever get used to it. I opened my mouth to respond but then he asked me another question that froze me in my tracks.

  ‘Were you? A whore?’

  I felt my mouth drop softly open. He’d heard everything. He must have been right outside the door. I felt my knuckles crack as I curled my hands into fists. ‘I have to go, Alex.’

  ‘Sure. See you soon, Frances.’

  As I closed the door I experienced a moment of vertigo so steep it was as if the floor had dropped away beneath me. I gripped hold of the bannister, sure I was going to either fall down or throw up, but neither of those things happened and after a moment I heard Mimi call for William in her small, fragile voice. I walked slowly the rest of the way downstairs to tell her about the magpie in the garden.

  Sitting here on the bench overlooking the slow-moving tidal river, I think about Edie taking her pregnancy test in the toilet block at school among the smells of bleach and paint and wet toilet paper. My mind circles back to the hidden well again, how all your bones would break if you were to fall down it on to the old bricks below. What would drive a man to do that? His secrecy exposed, perhaps? An unforeseen pregnancy? Blackmail? I think of the way Samantha looked yesterday, her face lined and blotchy with tears, and I know, I know I can’t leave yet. I can’t go without finding out where Edie Hudson is, and whether or not she has Edward’s baby with her.

  I stare out the window as the bus judders along the road back to Thorn House. The narrow road is lined with overgrown hedgerows and snarls of brambles. My head is spinning. I keep thinking about missing girls and ghost hitchhikers and the bowlful of round, ripe tomatoes that sits by the kettle in the kitchen and makes my stomach curl every time I look at it. I’m thinking about Kim and Edie and the way poor Mimi’s brain seems to be full of holes. I’m wondering about what really happened the night she fell down the stairs, alone in the house with Alex.

  Don’t be ridiculous, I tell myself, you’ve already got his dad pinned for getting Edie pregnant and bumping her off and now you think Alex is trying to harm his mum? What for?

  I know what for. I don’t even have to think about it. He’s been closeted by fear of her disapproval for years. A young man having to make clandestine trips to London and Brighton to meet men, to forge relationships and just to be himself. How tortuous to carry that secret around with you for your entire life.

  By the time I get back to Thorn House the weather has turned. Low, ponderous clouds gather, charcoal-grey and heavy as iron. It’s going to rain. I carry the bags of shopping into the kitchen and take out the fruit, putting it into the sink to be washed. I’ve been teaching myself how to brew the fragrant tea Mimi likes, using flowers from the garden. Rosebuds and petals of chamomile, dandelion, jasmine and pale yellow chrysanthemums. After I’ve tidied the shopping away I take a pot of it into her room, nudging the door carefully open with my hip.

  ‘Rosebud and jasmine t—’ I cut off.

  Mimi’s flushed, the colour creeping up her neck into her cheeks. Her hands grope blindly across the bedside table, knocking against the phone, which dings brightly. I rush towards her, putting the tea tray down on the bed, noticing the thin sticks of her legs beneath the covers. I catch her hands gently, surprised at the wiry strength I can feel thrumming beneath her skin, and wonder if this is delirium, passing through her like a voltage. I call for Alex and William, but by the time they come running through the doorway Mimi is calming down, glassy-eyed and a little vacant, looking around her as though she has
just woken up. She says there were black spots on her bedside table, ‘crawling all over it like insects’. William, Alex and I exchange concerned glances over the top of her head. Alex begins to insist on calling the doctor but Mimi abruptly shuts the idea down, telling him, ‘All I need is the company of my boys and a good rest. Thank you for my tea, dear heart. Sit with me, William. I’d like to hear you read.’

  ‘I’m busy, Mum. I’ve got a conference call in ten minutes. Can Frances do it?’

  Of course I do it. I read her the headlines and some articles from the supplement, her horoscope. ‘Use your excess energy today to get out there and do some exercise!’ We both laugh at that. I quarter her some oranges and put them in a bowl on her lap. The bright smell of them fills the room, almost tropical.

  ‘You look better now, Mimi,’ I tell her.

  She nods and smiles. ‘I feel it. It’s hard to be unhappy when you’ve got all this garden to look at. See those roses? Edward planted them for me. He wanted us to have a daughter called Rose but sadly, well – these things can’t be planned, can they?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me again the story of how you and William met.’ She squeezes my hand and her eyes are misty. William has always told me his mother was a born romantic, not the Barbara Cartland kind but deeper and more destructive, the kind Kenny Rogers would sing about. I swallow. She’s heard the story before, of course. That’s all it is, a story. Entirely fictional. It’s a tall tale about a man (William) and a woman (me) sitting opposite one another on the 20:22 to Reading. Two people, catching each other’s eyes, both thinking the same thing: How can I strike up a conversation? Alas, these two lovers seem doomed to remain silent and separate as the train pulls into the woman’s station, but when she leaves the man notices – oh no! – that she’s left her purse behind. He gallantly leaps out of his seat and off the train despite the fact that his own stop is another forty minutes away. As the train pulls out of the station he catches up with the woman at the turnstiles, who is getting increasingly upset and frustrated at being unable to find the purse containing her tickets. But wait, what’s this? (I often pause here for dramatic effect and watch as Mimi’s face is dimpled by a small, knowing smile.) It’s William, purse in hand, reaching out to her through the crowd, and their hands touch and their eyes meet and that, as they say, is it.