The Daughter (11 page)

“You can ask Nikita,” I said quickly, moving closer to Theo. “She was there; she'll tell you.”

Michael went to phone Shan. He arranged for us all to meet at the police station. He said it was a useful place to get some questions out of the way. All I felt was burning impatience that this would hold up the search.

In my head was a moving image of a car with Naomi inside, her face pressed against a window, driving past me. I could have stopped it at the moment it passed me, but I was just too late. No, if I ran I could still stop it, but that moment passed too. It became endlessly just too late, too late, too late . . . The desperate feeling replayed itself in a loop as I drove to the station, and the little car in my head that was taking Naomi away drove farther and farther until it became a speck in the distance and vanished.

In the police station Shan and I sat side by side outside the rooms where the children were being separately questioned in the obligatory presence of a voluntary support worker.

Shan stared straight ahead at the closed door and her voice was quiet. “I know you're going through hell, Jenny, but don't drag Nikita in. She's already told you everything she knows.”

“I'm not dragging her in.” I was breathless with surprise, with anger. “It's a police investigation.”

Shan didn't reply.

“Naomi had a diary.” My voice was trembling. “Nikita's initial is in there; Naomi might have told her something secret and Nik is frightened to tell us in case—­”

“What secrets?” Shan's voice was harder now. “Naomi hasn't been round much lately. They haven't got secrets. They're not little kids.”

“You can't know that for certain.”

“I know my daughter, Jen. Leave her. She's upset enough.”

I know my daughter.
The words seemed to echo along the narrow corridor with its green shining floor, hitting against the high walls that were marked with black scuff marks. At the far end I could see a policewoman at the desk, her expression calmly severe. She probably told herself she had to be professional, which in her world meant tough.

After a long time one of the doors opened and Nikita came out, followed by Michael. She looked upset and went quickly over to Shan, who put her arm around her. Nikita rested her head on her mother's shoulder, while I looked away. Michael opened the adjacent doors and the boys came out. Theo squatted down, hands hanging between his knees; Ed leaned against the wall, his eyes closed. He looked exhausted.

“Thanks.” Michael included us all in his gaze. “Great help. Sorry to have to drag you all here. No one's in any trouble. I understand about the photos now and I apologize for having to ask all these questions.” He looked at me. “Sorry,” he said.

I took the boys home. They were silent. There was nothing to say.

 

Chapter 16

DORSET, 2010

ONE YEAR LATER

T
he unseasonable November weather holds after the storm, a late Indian summer scented with bonfires, the smoke twisting through sunlit branches still hung with the last shriveled leaves. Smashed tiles lie in the road, a window frame rests on glinting shards of glass. The man who owns the shop bends awkwardly over his paunch, his stocky legs spread wide, to pick up scattered milk crates and an overturned metal bin. Wisps of ginger hair fall forward and he wipes them carefully back into place with thick fingers, all the while talking with relish of the storm's wreckage in the village.

Then he says, “Mary told me young Dan will be cutting up what's left of your apple tree today. I'll take whatever you don't need. Cash.”

I go inside the shop and turn toward the shelves, feeling breathless. Is this what happens when you step outside your space? ­People start to close in around you. I should have known. I put apples in my basket, coffee, and a little pot of Marmite. My hands are stiff from yesterday's sawing and I almost drop the jar of coffee. Dan will stumble awkwardly into my quietness. I'll have to get something for him to eat. Biscuits, baked beans. Not enough. There are frozen hamburgers in the small freezer. I reach for milk, juice, beer. A bag of onions in a dusty cardboard box—I can manage this, he's just a boy. I remember that I'll need to pay him and ask for cash-­back at the register, turning my head from the man's curious stare. I hear the whine of a saw as I approach the cottage. Over the low wall I can see into my garden, where Dan's bent back and thin arms are weighted with the machine in his hands, chunks of wood already piled around his feet. Bertie pulls free of his lead and bounds up to him as soon as I open the garden gate. I freeze, thinking Dan might drop the machine in fright, or spin around, hurting himself, but I needn't have worried. He straightens, turns it off, leans down to pat Bertie. He pulls off the scarf he had tied around his nose and mouth to keep out the wood dust. Close up, his face is flushed and sweaty. Dark hair sticks in clumped strands to his forehead; his eyes are uncertain, his smile lopsided. Again I am reminded of Ed, who had that same shyness before it hardened into blankness. Dan ducks his head and glances away; I've been staring at him, looking for Ed. He gestures to where he has put the crown to one side, near the wall. The larger branches, still attached, hold their clawlike shape.

“Can I take those?” he asks.

Theo's photos of Naomi hidden among branches.

My face must have changed because Dan's voice falters in the silence.

“Only I make sculptures, out of wood. I sort of use shapes that are there already. I like those.” Then he says, “They're a bit like hands.”

Hands made of curving wood. I make them kind hands, holding her carefully.

“ 'Course, Dan. Sorry. Help yourself.” I pull myself together and smile at him.

Theo's photos fade and I go back to enter by the front door in case the mail has arrived. There are three cards on the mat. My heart lifts.

One is a sepia picture of Bristol docks as they used to be. Anya's tidy writing on the back. It's her third card to me:

All is fine.

Anya

She stayed, as she promised, even after I left, and for a second I see her picking up Ted's scattered socks, washing the hardened food from his nighttime plates, gently wiping the dust from the photos next to our bed. I usually send her a card of the beach in reply, though there is nothing much to tell her except that I miss her.

There is another card from Ted, a river scene this time. As usual he hasn't written anything. He may not even be in Bristol; he probably goes to more conferences now that there is nothing to keep him at home.

A thick blue stripe and white spray. Hockney. It's from Theo, and for a second I think my memories have surely conjured this up.

In California for a w/e, making a “Splash”! My pictures in SF City Gallery! Trip paid for by year prize (wood/nature series). Coming home for Xmas. (With Sam?)

x Theo

Christmas with Theo. The past four months in New York must have flashed by for him, crowded with study and all the new experiences the scholarship has bought him, but I long to see him; the fair eyebrows, the sheer length of him, the smattering of freckles. His laugh. How suddenly, briefly, he will still put his head on my shoulder as he did when he was little. The way he lingers late in the kitchen, leaning his frame against the wall, eating cereal, wanting to talk. His fierce, occasional hugs.

I don't yet know much about Sam, apart from the fact that he's an architecture Ph.D. student. Theo sent me a photo once, his arm around this man—­long studious face, heavy glasses, smiling. Something I hadn't seen coming. Or had I? Ed had never teased him about girls; it was always the other way around. I'd thought art was his main focus and that was why he'd never had a girlfriend. I never went beyond that; I'd been blind to the subtext, unwilling to encompass complications. Blind to Naomi's secrets too, though hers had led to disaster, not love. I put the postcard down as that thought flares. Out of the window I see Dan moving by the tree, and from here it looks easy, the wood falls as if effortlessly, the low screeching muted by glass. I close my eyes, and into my mind comes the image of the tree crashing over in the dark, changing the landscape of the garden forever.

Ted might not be welcoming to Sam. I want to welcome him. Theo has found someone to love; he has so much love to give. At the same time I'm frightened. Unknown territory. How will Ed feel? How do I feel? I run water into the kettle, sort out the shopping. I know that I mind that he will never have children. I mind that the world may make it hard for him. The man in the shop would whisper to his customers if he knew; in the tiny world of the village they might be curious, gossiping.

I make Dan a mug of tea, and take it into the garden with the packet of biscuits; as I put them on the step for him, he sees, giving a thumbs-­up sign. The garden feels warm, and fetching my sketch pad, I try to catch the lines of the branches, their curves gleaming in the bright November air, like dark arms swimming, cutting space instead of water. The sun shines brilliantly on the paper, highlighting sooty grains in the harsh lines of charcoal. All the while the robin makes sudden flutters around the stumps of wood, pecking at the dust, flying to perch on the fallen branches. Walking around the twigs searching for other angles, I sense Dan's presence lightly behind me. Lying down, the wet seeping into my sweater, I have the perspective I've been looking for. Lines curving upward and away above me, coming together at their tips, enclosing a globe of air. Complete.

When the church bells from the clock tower ring out twice, I go inside to cook the hamburgers; as they fry in the pan the unfamiliar, rich smell makes my mouth water. I've been living off apples, toast, and coffee for as long as I can remember. Suddenly craving meat, I cook them all, adding onions, then pile them together between slices of bread, and take them outside with two cans of beer. We sit together, on the stone step of the back door in the sun. Dan devours one hot sandwich after the other. I eat more slowly, with the warm light on my face, enjoying the taste of the food. The moment feels good.

“Thanks.” Dan's smile is gap-­toothed.

I shake my head. “Thank you. You've done lots here already.”

“Yeah, well. Gets me out.”

“Out of what?” Looking sideways at him, I sense he doesn't mind this thrown-­out question.

“School, home. Other stuff.”

“You like making things?”

“Yeah.”

“Wood?”

He nods. “I like finding shapes in the pieces, jigsawing them together.”

The sleepy unsure look has vanished. He is looking at the twigs, moving his hands, his voice louder than before.

“You're lucky to know what you want to do,” I tell him.

“Yeah?”

“Lots of ­people don't.”

He looks at me.

“My dad doesn't want me to make arty stuff for a living. Calls it a waste of space. Wants me to go into the police, like him.”

“Will you?”

“Dunno. I s'pose.”

His eyes are clouded with struggle.

I stand up and take the plates. “Not easy, choosing.”

“Bloody right.” He gets up, slides the scarf back on his face.

I come out again to finish the charcoal drawing but it's colder already, the brightness has gone, the twigs look dull. It all changed in that brief time. Dan starts to gather up the logs into a pile against the wall. Bertie tracks him back and forth, sitting against his legs when he stops. Perhaps Dan reminds him of the boys; they have fallen out of his world completely.

Dan stops for tea, hunkering down on his heels. Bertie pushes into him and he falls back, surprised into a laugh. Later we carry more logs together, and stack them beneath the overhang of the garage. Dan says he will come back to split them.

As he swings his backpack up, he notices the smashed gate. He picks up the pieces of wood tenderly and lays them out carefully, like bones. He looks at the gaping wall. “I could make a new one. Using these bits and some new as well. If you want.”

“Could you?”

I take all the cash I had got earlier and I put it in his hand. A hundred pounds. I had felt reckless when I got it out. Usually I hardly spend anything. The thick wad feels glamorous, unreal, so many sheets of paper. We both stare at it.

“I don't want all that.”

“Well, so I can ask you back.”

“Okay.”

I watch him go down the road, toward Mary's cottage, bending forward with the effort of pushing the wheelbarrow we have filled with logs for her. He is at that time when the future has no shape. One day it will come close up against him, and in boredom or panic, maybe because something pulls at his sleeve, distracting him, he will make his choice.

That night I don't paint or draw anything in my sketchbook. I think about Dan's choice, which will lead him to everything else waiting in the future. The choices I made led me to Ted, to Naomi, to here. How could I have known? If I go back far enough, it didn't feel like I was choosing so much as taking. In my gap year, teaching in Africa, a child had walked past me on her way to the classroom. She was limping. When she showed me her foot, there had been an ulcer on the underside, as big as a clementine, packed with stones and grit. At its base I saw pink strands of muscle. After that it seemed obvious. I knew what I wanted. Back then I was completely sure. When you're young, you think you know everything. When I look at Naomi's portrait, I see determination, I see certainty. Sometimes, especially late at night, I think about the terrible moment when that certainty deserted her and she realized, as she must have done, that she'd made the wrong choice.

 

Chapter 17

DORSET, 2010

ONE YEAR LATER

H
ello, darling.”

“Hi, Mum.”

Ed's voice is faint; I strain to catch at how he is through the crackling sounds on the line. I sometimes wonder if ­people listen in.

“How are you?”

“All right.”

He lost his cell phone a week ago, so I imagine him in a corridor, leaning against the wall by the phone. The white paint would be smudged with little black marks where fingertips have been pressed hard against the paint. He will be staring out through the plate-­glass window. ­People pass and look—­he is tall and good-­looking, ­people have always looked—­but his face will be as guarded as his voice. The pale hand holding the phone is thinner than a year ago, when it was strong and brown from rowing. I noticed on my last visit that his nails were lined with dirt.

“Sorry, darling. I know I'm phoning ahead of schedule, but I couldn't wait. I've been thinking about Christmas.”

“Already?”

A little flat word. Barely a question. I carry on quickly, my voice sounding irritatingly bright, even to me.

“Well, it's December. I know we didn't do Christmas last year, but I thought . . .” That it's time for you to come home. You've been away too long and I miss you. “. . . you might want some home cooking?”

“They may want extra help, they're short-­staffed.”

That could be true, I can't tell. He volunteered to stay on at the end of his program, helping in the kitchen in return for a bed. Mrs. Chibanda said giving back was part of the process. I was glad when she told me he could remain at the unit. What would he have done here, with me?

“Dad's coming. He's going to Johannesburg for a meeting soon, but he'll be back by Christmas Day. I asked him to join us for lunch.” I pause, remembering Ted's few terse words on the phone last week. “He sent his love to you.”

There is silence. He probably doesn't believe me. He never asks about Ted or the separation. I know he sees him sometimes, but he keeps it to himself.

“What's been happening with you, darling?” I glance through the window while I wait for an answer. The sky is pale gray; behind the church is a banked mass of darker clouds. A few sea gulls wheeling high up flash white as they turn and fall. The garden has been swept bare of wood; Dan took all the branches. There is a ragged patch of bare soil where the tree used to be. Brown stumps of some forgotten vegetable and leafless black currant bushes stand in the patch my father used to tend. The new gate is in place, with its two colors of wood, the old bars and the raw new ones patched in. A sparrow balances on the top bar, and then, as a magpie swoops to take possession of the space, he flutters to the wall.

Ed's words come quicker as he tells me he goes running with Jake now.

I remembered the boy who let us into the center and his sweet smile. “Jake's still there?”

“Thought I told you. We share a room. His sister brings in cakes and stuff.”

“That's great, Ed.”

“She plays the accordion and lives on this boat.”

Friends. A girl. I won't ask questions, but my heart lifts.

“Can I bring anything next week?”

“Pens, maybe a notebook.” He pauses, and then continues, speaking slowly: “I've been writing this . . . diary. Dr. Hagan suggested it months ago. I've read a bit to Jake and Soph.”

“Be careful. Only tell those things you want to.”

“Well, obviously. But it has to be real. Naomi kept that diary, didn't she?”

Jesus. “Yes.”

“I think it might've helped her. It helped you, didn't it?”

After we say good-­bye I sit next to Bertie on the floor. He pushes his wet nose into my face and I stroke his warm ears. I have no idea if it helped her to write that diary. They weren't really her thoughts. She kept those to herself. I suppose it helped; it led us to James. I get up to take the sketchbook and pencil from the dresser, and find myself studying the pictures as though they have been drawn by someone else and there may be something there that will surprise me.

The warm kitchen is home now, with the chipped Formica table, faded brick floor, and the tiny, noisy fridge in the corner. It feels safe. The Bristol kitchen had begun to feel alien by the third day; I was pacing around it when Michael phoned to tell me what he had learned from rereading Naomi's diary. I can hear his words as I take the sketch pad to the windowsill and begin to sketch the magpie now strutting on the gate, one for sorrow.

BRISTOL, 2009

FOUR DAYS AFTER

“. . . so I made a lucky guess that J might stand for her friend James.”

“What? Sorry, Michael. Could you say all that again, slowly?”

I was pressing the phone so tightly to my ear that it hurt. It was getting more difficult all the time. I saw everything through a shifting kaleidoscope of her: she was smiling and laughing at first, then the picture would change, her mouth would open, screaming my name. I walked about the house, my hand pushing so hard over my own mouth I could taste blood. Nowhere in the familiar spaces felt like home.

Ted and I had spent Sunday listening and waiting, watching the clock, pacing, silently praying for news. Hour after empty hour passed by relentlessly; no one seemed to be doing anything to find Naomi and bring her back. In intervals of exhausted calm we had talked over what the boys should do. We all agreed it would be easier for them to cope if they had the normal structure of a day around them. I wanted to escape from the torture of waiting and go back to work, but Ted said I would be caught out if I did and break down. Frank agreed. When he came around in the evening he told me he had found a temporary doctor for the duration.

At least the boys slept; they went to school as usual. Ted had gone to work; he said he didn't have a choice. As I'd watched him from the upstairs window, I'd seen him straighten once he left the house and become his work self, his face changing as he thought of his day ahead. It would have been hard for ­people to have known that anything was wrong; he'd walked in his usual way to the car, his dark suit fitting smoothly over his shoulders, blond hair brushed. I'd looked through the glass, knowing my hair hung in strands, my feet were bare, and my face was haggard. There'd been two white vans parked beyond Ted's car, with satellite dishes on top. Seeing two men leaning against the side of one, paper cups in hand, cameras strung around their necks, I had moved quickly out of sight.

Michael's voice grew louder, bringing me back to the moment. “James was J in Naomi's diary. I've interviewed him and Nikita again. I'm coming over.”

I heard the phone click and a few seconds later the doorbell rang.

My sense of time had stretched or shrunk, and I wouldn't have been surprised to see Michael standing there, but it was a tall flame-­haired boy in a school uniform. His tie was knotted low, his shirt was untucked, and there were the grainy tracks of tears on his freckled cheeks. His eyes were so swollen it took a few moments to recognize him.

“James?”

“Hi, Dr. Malcolm.”

I stared at him for a moment. “She's not here, James. We haven't seen her since Thursday evening.”

Four days. Even though I had suffered every minute of that time, the facts still struck afresh as I said them.

“I know. 'Course I know.” He looked angry. “I've been at the police station all night.”

I took in his red eyes, the dark stains under them, and the faint stubble.

“Why?”

“I needed to tell someone. It's my fault.”

His fault? What was his fault? What had he done? He read my face.

“No, I . . . Look, I don't know where she is, I mean, I wish . . . I just wanted to see you, to explain—­”

He swayed on his feet and I grabbed his arm and pulled him in. He half sat, half collapsed on a chair in the kitchen and put his head in his hands. I made a cup of sweet tea and put it in front of him. The bell rang again. Michael this time. He looked serious, but his mouth relaxed into a smile when he saw me. As I stood back to let him in, I realized I knew his smell already, a calm male scent of clean ironed shirts and toothpaste. He felt close but that was an illusion; he was in a completely different place from me. Normal life was running on for him like it was for everyone. I could see it and smell it but I wasn't part of it anymore. The transparent skin of disaster separated me from his world. I couldn't touch that world; I couldn't even remember how it felt now.

James looked up with surprise at Michael, who smiled and touched him briefly on the shoulder.

“James has come to tell me . . . something,” I said, sitting down, so I didn't loom over him.

“Good. We talked a lot last night.”

Michael pulled out a chair and sat next to James. His movements were slow and I realized he probably hadn't slept either. The boy's face was very pale.

“I love her.” James's words spilled out suddenly. “She loves me. I think she does anyway . . . She . . . we . . . We've been together for months.”

Together? They'd both been in the play. Together for the rehearsals? I glanced quickly at Michael.

He said quietly, “They had been sleeping together for the last six months.”

The room felt cold. I should turn up the radiator. Ted's economies were ridiculous in November. It wasn't possible. I would have known if she'd been sleeping with this boy. Naomi would have told me. Even if she hadn't, I would have known. I was her mother.

Perhaps James read my thoughts because he carried on: “She was going to tell you. Well, she knew you'd find out anyway.”

“How was it possible? Naomi was here, or at school. I knew what she was doing . . .”

“After school. On weekends.”

He spoke almost in a whisper; I leaned closer to catch his words. He went on quietly, “She told you she was with Nikita, but we actually went home. My home.”

“Did your parents know?”

I remembered his mother. I used to meet her at medical events, a startlingly pretty redheaded nurse. His father was a pediatrician, a lot older.

“Dad works late. Mum left a year ago. Anyway the real thing is—­”

So he hadn't told me the real thing yet.

“She'd started being sick sometimes.”

Had she? I hadn't noticed.

“In the mornings.”

I wouldn't have heard her vomiting upstairs in her bathroom, not from the kitchen, but I remember she'd stopped having breakfast. She had looked disgusted when I'd mentioned it, but she always ate supper so I didn't worry.

“She fell asleep in class.”

The rehearsals were exhausting. I'd noticed she'd stopped running everywhere.

“So she did a test . . .”

There was a silence. How had I never put it all together? Not eating in the morning, the tiredness, the emotional ups and downs. It was so obvious. Michael was watching me with concern; I got up and walked to the window. Naomi, pregnant. I couldn't make it feel remotely real. I turned to James.

“Do you know for certain?” My voice sounded hard.

“She did three tests altogether.”

“How many weeks?”

“We didn't know.” His white face turned away from my stare. “She thought she'd missed two periods, but she wasn't sure. Ten maybe?”

Cottage tomorrow. J. 10 weeks
.

“Wait. What about the blood on the mattress?” I looked at Michael, then back at James. “In the cottage, the weekend before the play began. When she went there with . . . the man. We thought she'd bled because it was her first time, but it can't have been her first time, she was already pregnant.”

“What man?” James looked puzzled. “It was me. Us. I thought Naomi told you that we went to the cottage. After we . . . afterward . . . she bled, but she did another pregnancy test three days later, last Tuesday actually, and she was still pregnant. Bleeding a bit but pregnant.”

So it wasn't the man who had made her bleed after all, the man from the theater, the bastard who had taken her. This made it worse. The man who had taken her now hadn't been the one to buy the wine; they hadn't shared anything. Not love, of course not that. He didn't care. And suppose she was still bleeding, miscarrying and bleeding, or . . . an ectopic.

I looked at the tear-­stained boy sitting at the table and felt a blazing fury.

“What about you, James? What thoughts did you have about the pregnancy? What exactly was your plan?”

“I wanted whatever she wanted. I love her. I didn't really know what to do about the pregnancy.”

I wanted to hit him; I wanted to kill him for making it more dangerous for Naomi.

“If you didn't know what to do about a pregnancy, why the fuck didn't you use a condom?”

He winced. Michael turned to me.

“She was on the pill,” he said quietly. “But she sometimes forgot.”

More secrets. How the hell was she on the pill? Did one of my friends prescribe it for her?

“You should bloody well have used a condom anyway,” I shouted. “You should have understood what you were doing. You've made it far worse.” I took a deep shuddering breath. “What about the man she was seeing, then? Did you know anything about him?”

James lowered his head. There were tears in his voice. “I knew something had changed. It was soon after rehearsals began. I always used to walk her back home, but sometimes she didn't want me to; she said she wanted to practice on her own in the theater. Stuff like that. She wasn't the same. She stopped telling me everything.”

“Go on.” I hardly recognized my voice, it was so expressionless. I imagined it was like the voice that the blank-­faced policewoman in the corridor must use when she talked to criminals.

“I saw a man once. I was walking out of the changing room at the theater and I saw her talking to someone. I only saw him from behind. He was leaning against the wall, bending toward her; he had long dark hair, messy. I took it in because she was so kind of focused on him. She didn't see me, though I called out that I would wait outside. I waited for ages. Everyone left and she still didn't come out. So I gave up.”