The Daughter (23 page)

“Any sweets?” Ted asked.

The lid shut with a metallic click. Everything in his warm, leather-­scented car shut smoothly, edge to edge. The van I had seen in the wood the day before had no doors.

“No.” I didn't turn to look at him as I replied. Someone had taken her away in that van. I needed Ted. We had more chance of finding her together. I had to put everything else out of my mind. What had happened with Beth was behind us. The scarf didn't matter now.

“We can stop at the next ser­vice station.” Ted looked into his rearview mirror at Ed. “You managing, Ed?”

I twisted around to look at Ed. His face was gray, pressed into the angle between the back of the seat and the window. His eyes were closed and he didn't answer. He was pretending to sleep, perhaps he really was asleep. I edged the window down. Ted preferred air-conditioning, but Ed could do with fresh air.

I sat back and watched Ted's hands on the wheel. The fingernails were clean and close cut, even the fair hair on the backs of his hands looked neatly brushed. His face in profile was calm, even faintly content. How could that be? It took all my focus not to scream out loud and tear the skin off my face and arms.

When I'd gotten home the night before, I couldn't get that little wood out of my mind. The place had been sinister. Now my mind began to go down dark corridors, seeing Naomi being pulled out of the car, her terrified eyes, hands over her mouth muffling her calls for me, for Ted. The flames leaping, terrifying her. My own hands started to tremble. I pushed them under my thighs.

The quietness in Ted's face calmed me in spite of myself. He dealt in facts; he liked things that made sense. He was good at detail. I was glad of him yesterday after Michael had dropped me off. He had taken my sodden raincoat, washed my muddy boots, fed the dog. He told me that while Ed was sleeping he had made a next-­day appointment for us to see around a rehabilitation center in Croydon that a colleague had recommended. He had taken the day off.

“We have to stop this now, Jenny. He needs help fast. The sooner, the better. Being at home now is terrible for him, you can see that.”

Of course I knew Ed needed help. I was the one who had bargained with him for his cooperation, but it had all been organized so quickly. I had hardly had time to get used to it.

“What do you want us to do about school?” Ted asked, his eyes on the road.

I turned to the backseat again. Ed was watching the road, his eyes flicking rhythmically backward as the telegraph poles went by. He didn't answer, but his cheeks were tinged with pink, he looked better.

“Let's not worry about school,” I said, still looking at Ed. “We'll sort it all out. It doesn't matter.”

Ed's eyes went to mine and away again. He didn't believe me, but it was true. We had lost one child; we had to keep Ed safe. Nothing else was important.

The outposts of London began to appear. Bridges, a power station, a biscuit factory. Ted stopped at a ser­vice station, where we bought sandwiches and I checked Ed's temperature; it showed a small spike. The bandage around the crook of his arm had a wet yellow patch in the center. I gave him his midday antibiotics and more acetaminophen. As Ted filled the car with gas, I thought we probably looked like a normal family on an outing, taking our son back to the university after a break perhaps. No one would guess that this calm-­looking, handsome man in fit middle age with fair hair and bright blue eyes had lost a daughter in the last two weeks, or that the thin dark-­haired woman sitting in the front seat of his car was holding on to her sanity with both hands. If they had glimpsed Ed in the back of the car they might have thought he looked like any teenager.

THE CENTER WAS
set back in its green space, on a quiet back street of Croydon, an old Victorian building with wide windows and a Gothic front door.

Ted parked on the gravel in front of the main house. A barefoot boy with a sweet smile answered the door. The tight knot inside my chest loosened just a little.

“Hi there.” The voice had a soft Irish lilt, welcoming, gentle.

“Thanks, Jake. I'll take it from here.” A small middle-­aged man with light-­colored eyes appeared behind Jake, and opened the door wider; he had gray hair in a long ponytail and a T-­shirt stretched over freckled biceps. The boy called Jake smiled at Ed and walked off slowly, looking back over his shoulder.

“Come in. You must be Ed. I'm Finac.”

We followed Ed into the hall and stood, uncertain, rumpled, and cold. Ed yawned repeatedly. Finac's glance took us in, rapid, dismissive. The parents, his eyes said: the problem.

He shook hands with us, unsmilingly. “Follow me.”

He led us to a small room, where the thick smell of cigarettes hung above shabby furniture. Chairs with worn greasy patches were arranged in careful groups. Outside, large leafless trees stood around a lawn.

“Wait here. I'll get Mrs. Chibanda.”

After a few moments a woman walked in wearing bright colors in softly draped clothes. Her dark skin was smoothly stretched over the bones of her face. She smiled as she shook hands; she smelled faintly of roses. Everything about her made me feel better.

“I'm Gertrude Chibanda, the manager. The buck stops with me.” She leaned forward, smiling. Her teeth were perfect. “Finac here will be Ed's coworker if you all decide this is where Ed should be.”

Finac glanced at us briefly and nodded.

“If you're okay with this, I'll talk to Ed on his own while Finac shows you round, and then we can talk while Ed sees where he might be staying if he agrees to come . . .”

We followed Finac down narrow passageways and into quiet rooms. There was a bleak canteen and a music room with peeling posters of Jimi Hendrix on the wall, a new drum kit, and guitars propped against the wall. We weren't allowed in the bedrooms.

Ed was finishing a large mug of coffee when we got back; he disappeared quickly with Finac. Gertrude looked at me, sorrow printed on her face.

“I'm sorry for what's been happening in your family. I lost a son to illness some years ago.” There was a little pause. “I'm sorry,” she said again simply.

I looked at her. “I'm sorry about your son. I can't imagine what that must feel like; but Naomi's not dead. She's just . . . just . . .” I couldn't continue. Conscious of Gertrude's stricken face and Ted's worried one, I turned to the window. The green blurred and swam as the tears poured down my face. Gertrude, still standing close, held out a folded linen hankie. It smelled of roses as well.

Two hours later, all the arrangements had been made. Finac had told us about the twelve-­step program for recovering addicts and how it would work; Ed had decided to stay for a few days on a trial basis. I spoke to the nurse on site about his dressings. The doctor would be coming in that afternoon and he could get more antibiotics then. We would come up with his stuff in a few days and in the meantime I would speak to the school. Ed was silent before we left. He wouldn't look at us, and we left him sitting on his bed, staring into space.

“I like it,” Ted said on the journey home. “I liked that woman, but not Finac. What is it about these ­people who want to make everything the parents' fault, as though we are the enemy?”

“That's because it is our fault.” I felt almost too tired to speak. “We are the enemy. We didn't look carefully enough; we were too busy.”

Ted put his arm around me awkwardly across the gap in the seats. “We couldn't have loved him more. We've given him everything.”

I shook my head.

“We couldn't be there all the time,” he said. “Kids have to grow up. Separate.”

“Separate like Naomi did?”

“I'm on your side, Jen.” Ted looked out of the window. “Right here, with you.”

With me? How long had he been with me? Beth's scarf was coiled in the glove compartment in front of me; when had she last been in the car? And how could he possibly be with me when I had no idea at all where I was?

 

Chapter 28

DORSET, 2011

THIRTEEN MONTHS LATER

I
wake early; outside, the first layer of dark has lifted, leaving the garden as still and flat as a painting under the gray sky. In my dream she had been there, under the tree, shadowed by leafy branches, sun and shade playing on her upturned face. The school uniform she was wearing was tight on her. I had stood at this same window and tried to shout, but my voice came out as a whisper. I couldn't lift my feet, and as I tried to wrench them from the floor, sweating with effort, I woke.

Minutes pass. The stinging shock of the empty garden fades into the familiar ache that locates somewhere under my heart, settling down deeper into my bones, a weight to be carried. The windowsill is cool under my hands; the dream slips beyond my grasp.

My head is full; the facts that had lined up so neatly yesterday start to whirl again. Yoska the ketamine dealer, Yoska the brother, Yoska the patient. Yesterday I was sure his name would lead us to her, but the clues that seemed so certain have dissolved into suspicions, loosely linked and sliding apart like snakes coiling and uncoiling around each other. There is no proof. Even if Yoska can be found, apart from that Y in her diary, there is nothing to definitely tie him to Naomi. He is on Michael's list of drug dealers, he had been on the ward with his sister, the children in his family had started the fire, he had supplied Ed with drugs, he had come to see me at my practice. A good defense lawyer might say it was nothing more than coincidence.

“We need something else,” I whisper to myself. Outside, the branches stir the morning air and as the light brightens, the space beneath them is cleaned of shadows. “There must be something better.”

The kitchen has been cleaned. I recognize Ted's way of folding the dishcloth: tightly, over and over. The sink and draining boards are clinically clean. I'd forgotten that about Ted, even his hands are immaculate. I imagine him scrubbing up before an operation, his blue eyes focused but remote above the line of his mask, intent on the operation ahead, and the sluice room around him as cold and shining as a morgue.

My office, ketamine, the ward, the fire. The little list runs through my head like ticker tape, pushing out the pictures of Ted. Yoska is the link between these worlds, but where is the proof we need?

Michael's cell is out of battery and switches to voice mail. I phone his office then and a woman answers. As I wait, I hear her voice telling him I am on the line. Is there the faintest echo of amusement in her voice? A woman, again . . . it seems to say. You and your women . . . Then Michael comes on the line.

He listens carefully before replying. “It's enough as it is, Jenny. It's enough to make us want to find him and question him. We have started the search for the family.” His voice is neutral. He is in an office, ­people must be walking in and out and maybe that secretary is standing close to him, looking through files in a metal cabinet.

“But you don't understand. He's clever. Really clever.” Yoska's own family had turned to him when the little girl was in the hospital; Ted had said he was the one who knew what to do. He would know exactly what to say to any policeman who tried to arrest him, or to a lawyer trying to convict him.

“When we find him, we can take it from there.” Michael's voice is confident, but I can tell he's not listening; he must be tired after his long drive the day before. He is probably signaling to the secretary to bring him coffee.

“He had that asterisk by his name,” I say slowly. The light has darkened in the kitchen; clouds from the sea must be rolling in.

There is a breathing pause on the phone. I can hear the tapping of his fingers and the blip of the computer as he brings up the list.

“That was because he stole a car, years ago,” Michael tells me.

I stare out of the window as I listen. The green smudges of North Hill through the raindrops on the window remind me of the wet copse and the beech trees by the Severn River, the burned van pushed under the branches. A plan is forming in my head.

“What records would have been kept from then?” I ask him.

“We would have his DNA.” I sense he is looking at something as he speaks, signing papers maybe, the phone tucked under his chin.

“So if we can find recent DNA from him, linking him to Naomi, and it matches what you have, we will know for certain that the man who took Naomi is Yoska, a drug dealer with a revenge motive.” My voice is fast, keeping up with my whirling thoughts.

“Jenny—”

“And then, when he's caught, that same recent DNA, matching what you will be able to take from him, will totally incriminate him.” I pause for breath, my heart is beating fast and my hand clasping the phone is slick with sweat.

“There is no recent DNA.” Michael's voice is patient. “Leave it, Jenny. The usual way we retrieve criminal DNA is from inside a body—­” He stops. I can hear him swallow as if he wants to take back his words but it's too late. “I'm sorry, that was stupid.”

There is a pause and I imagine him sipping coffee. Outside the window the rain has thickened; I can hear it on the thatch. Push those words away, blot them out.

“I'm going back to the wood where the van was.” I start to scribble a list as I speak, focusing on the paper. Flashlight. Spade. Boots. Dog lead.

“The police raked it over, inch by inch.” A note of exasperation creeps into his voice. It is strange how I can hear it on the telephone, quite clearly. I've never noticed it before.

“Things come to the surface, don't they?” I'm hurrying as I speak, so my voice is breathless. “Woods change.”

The cottage feels warm. Ted had banked the woodstove before he left. I look around before I leave in case there are things to put away, but it's tidy. It's always tidy. There is a spade in the shed, though it's not shining like Mary's was when I helped her dig the grave. Clumps of mud cling and I wash them off by the garden tap. Mary's birds had tumbled into the muddy pit; their feathers were all Naomi's favorite colors; but I'm not going to look for a grave. I'm going to look for something he touched.

THE JOURNEY BACK
to the wood in Gloucestershire takes three hours. The traffic crawls through sheets of rain on the highway; the car shudders as trucks roar past us, splattering the windshield with dirty water. Bertie sleeps, his curled body on the seat next to me; my hand rests on his back as I drive.

I remember where the place is, between the market town of Thornbury and the little village of Oldbury-­on-­Severn. I find it easily; the familiarity is instant. I must have unknowingly stored away the bend in the road along with the gap in the hedge and the ditch. I put the car close into the hedge as Michael had. With Bertie beside me, I walk slowly along the side of the field toward the hill, the wet wind blowing in my face. As the field starts to slope upward, I suddenly want to turn and hurry back, the wind would be behind me, pushing me. I want to put Bertie into the car again, and drive away. It's midday. I could find a little café in Thornbury, sit with a sandwich in front of me, and watch everyone go about their normal busy lives and pretend my life is like theirs, and there is no need to go into the little wood ahead of us and search for something that might help find the man who took my daughter away a year ago.

My feet keep walking toward the trees, slipping now and then on the mud; a whole year but the countryside hasn't noticed. The copse is the same. The trees, no longer ringed by tape, look exactly the same. I hesitate before I enter the darkness under the branches, but I find where the van had been in a few moments because the trunk of the tree it was under is still blackened. Bertie runs around tree roots, nosing the ground. There is a change after all: two trees have fallen, one lies up against the burned tree, and the mud that clings to the torn-­up roots looks new. It must have blown down in the winter storms. Bertie, excited by the smell of fresh earth, starts scrabbling and digging.

I dig near where I think the van was, shifting leaves with the spade, pushing them aside with my feet and my hands, then digging again. The spade hardly makes a dent in the ground. I'm looking for a gas can, a sodden glove. I push the spade into the soil again and again. After a while, I stop for breath. Rain slicks my hair into my eyes; I push it away from my face, and the mud from my gloves runs burning into my eyes.

My spade hits on roots. I dig up mud, stones, and bits of broken china. Nothing. Bertie whines and I ignore him. When I have done this circle, I will make it wider, then another around that, then another. Bertie starts to bark. I straighten and walk over to him; has he found something, anything? Beneath his furiously digging paws I see small white shapes. The wood swings about me and I fall to my knees. Bertie has hold of one of the shapes now, a curved, white, ridged bone in his mouth. He lets me take it. It's only the tiny rib of a sheep, perhaps a lamb or a little deer. Bertie is scrabbling now; he finds a skull, a long domed shape, with the molars of an herbivore intact.

Woods change. Things come up.

I sit back on my heels; Michael was right. There is nothing here. The clues must be somewhere else. I'm looking in the wrong place. I'm not being clever enough. I drop the little bone back into the mud. She would laugh if she saw me now or, worse, feel pity. I have no idea which.

BRISTOL, 2009

TWENTY DAYS AFTER

Ted and I had run out of things to say. Ed had gone. Theo spent hours in the studio at school and came back strained and silent. He watched me and I knew he wanted to say something but couldn't and I didn't try to make him; I couldn't say anything either. I was mired in silence. I hadn't the strength to speak.

In the office it was easier. I could pretend I was all right. I washed my hair and ironed my clothes so I looked normal. I saw the patients and dealt with their problems. I only went half time now. It worked. I didn't smile, I couldn't actually smile at anyone, but I did the job. I measured blood pressure, examined abdomens, looked at rashes, watched, listened, filled out forms, and wrote prescriptions. Naomi had never been much to my practice, so sometimes in my room, for a few minutes, it could feel like nothing had happened. I thought I would be able to go on doing this for a long time, but I was wrong.

Jade wasn't on my list for that afternoon, so Mrs. Price must have persuaded Jo to let them come in during a gap between patients. She came through the door shyly, holding a small bunch of flowers in front of her. Her mother was pushing her and she stumbled. She was thin but her bruises had gone and she was wearing a pink beanie pulled low, so no one would have seen she had no hair. It was only five weeks since she had been admitted.

I managed a half smile: “Hello, Jade.”

Mrs. Price sat down, and Jade pushed herself up close to the large body, wedging herself tightly between her mother's knees.

Mrs. Price frowned. “Just thought we would come in.”

I stared at her, my throat tightening.

“Well, I know what it's like.” She pursed her lips. “I mean, when it's your own.”

She stopped talking and stared back at me. I was on the other side now, the wrong side; I was the victim. It was difficult to know what to say to me.

She stood up and took Jade's hand. “What I mean is . . . Go on, then, Jade.”

Jade pushed the flowers at me; she smiled quickly and then buried her face in her mother's fur coat.

When they were gone I shut the door behind them, stood against it for a moment, then slid down it, and knelt awkwardly on the floor. The flowers spilled from their cellophane beside me. My head bent forward over my knees and I could smell the dried bleach scent on the faded linoleum and see the little cracks that ran across it. Then my face twisted and deep sounds came up from my chest, like some animal might make if it was in pain. After a while I got up and ran the taps so no one would hear, and pulling the blue paper from the examination table I pressed it into my face. I had been mad to think I could come back to work so soon. I couldn't manage it. I couldn't manage anything. I wanted to go home and curl up in bed and lie in darkness. I wanted to stop breathing.

I slowly pulled out my chair and sat at my desk and took shuddering breaths. I managed to phone through to reception and Jo listened as I asked her to say I had been called out on an emergency. There was a back door; the waiting patients would think I had hurried away through that.

I sat on in my room. Jo quietly brought me a cup of tea and her arm came around me briefly. She had told Frank and he was seeing the patients on my list who couldn't wait. Then she left me to myself.

The room darkened around me. The world contracted to my hand on the desk. It was twenty days since Naomi had walked out of the kitchen. Every day, every moment of every day I had pushed away images of her in pain, tied up, torn, bloodied; her lifeless body in a plastic bag by a road or in a shallow grave somewhere. I closed my eyes, trying to reach a good memory, something bright and happy to block the images. The party on the first night to celebrate her performance. There had been so many happy voices in our kitchen that night; suddenly she came into my mind as vividly as if I was looking at a photograph. Naomi, standing by the stove, resting a stockinged foot on Bertie's back, had been on her own for a few brief moments. I had moved toward her but then I stopped; she was looking sideways so intently that I followed her gaze to see what held it, but it was only black night outside the window. When I looked back at her again, I saw her mouth was curved, but it wasn't a smile for anyone else. It was inward, secret. She had looked quite different. It might have been the black costume she was wearing for Tony's death scene in
West Side Story,
but for a second she had become older, harder in a way I couldn't analyze. An edge of disquiet had crept into the noisy room. Theo went up to her a second later and said something and she laughed and became herself again. Someone touched my shoulder and I turned and the little scene went out of my mind. Until now. Here, on my own in the office, I realized that her smile had told me something. It was a clue.