Whatever You Love (18 page)

The room was buzzing with useless information by then. All the other mothers wanted in on the act, both ones we knew and total strangers. Other phone calls were being made, a network of enquiry spreading out with us at its centre. News dribbled back to us along those lines of enquiry but none of it was the right news. I didn’t care about knowing anything but the one thing I needed to know.
Where is my daughter
? Why were all the other mothers clouding my head with the bits of knowledge they had acquired – Ferhal goes to chess club which finished at the same time as Capoeira, Shelly goes to play centre on Tuesdays, it has started to rain – all this information was getting in the way.

I had to get out of the changing room. I stood up. ‘I’ll go and look again,’ I said to Sally. Rees flung himself at my legs. Rebecca was still sitting, calm and unconcerned, on the upright chair, swinging her legs gently. The neighbour’s child was still sobbing, ignored. ‘Which streets did you go down?’ I said to Sally.

‘I went the long way,’ Sally repeated, openly cross with me now. ‘I said. The way we said.’

Oh God
… My sensations of nausea were almost overwhelming now. My stomach was full of air. ‘They must have gone the other way,’ I said weakly, trying to ignore the fact that if they had, they would have arrived long ago. Suddenly, the short way had to take ten times as long as the long way. My brain baulked at any other explanation. Short, long, the words had become elastic, almost meaningless. ‘I’ll go that way, I’ll check.’

Sally said firmly, ‘No, listen, right. This is what we’re going to do. I am going to go again with the car so I can drive round. I’ll do all the side streets. You take the three little ones back to your house. I’ve got the car. The traffic was terrible on the main road, backed up, but once I’m off it, it will be fine.’

‘But wouldn’t it be better if…’

‘No.’

It made sense. She had the car. I was on foot. She could drive around, cover more territory. I could take the three small ones home with me – Rees, Rebecca, and the crying child whose name I still didn’t know – and give them tea. She would find Willow and Betty and give them the biggest telling-off of their lives. I had never observed Sally angry but had a feeling it could be fearsome. Then she would bring Betty home and pick up the neighbour’s crying child and take it away and Miriam would come for Rebecca and I would press a drink on her and tell her the whole story and she would say
Oh my God
, then leave with Rebecca and, at last, normality would be restored in my life. I would put my children to bed and pour myself another drink. It is going to happen like that, I said to myself. Everything is going to be okay.

It was gone half past five by then and the tap class would be finishing soon. I wanted to leave the Church Hall before the other girls came tumbling out and ran up to me and said, ‘Where’s Betty? Where’s Willow? Why weren’t they here?’ Wherever the girls were, they would know that they were not just late but disastrously late. Three quarters of an hour late: nothing, in grown-up terms – for a child, a lifetime. They are not disobedient girls. The phrase ‘out of character’ sprang to mind and I pushed it down. It was a phrase I had heard on television, at press conferences. I was not ready for it.

I realised that my growing panic was exacerbated by the fact that Sally had become calmer, the breathy quality gone from her voice. ‘I’ll give Susie my number so she can call me if they show up. Then I’ll drive around,’ she said. She was rising to the occasion, whereas I was falling from it, as if from a great height. I nodded and nodded and nodded. I didn’t want to go home with the other three. I wanted to drive around the streets with Sally looking for my daughter but I knew that if I insisted on accompanying her, or waiting here, then that would be counter to what was sensible when there was a minor hold-up like this. It would be admitting that something was seriously wrong. I was clinging on to normality by the fingertips. I was trying to follow the script.

‘I’ll call Katie’s mum and tell her you’ve got her,’ Sally added. ‘I can pick her up from yours and drop her off when I bring Betty back.’

Katie. So that was the little squit’s name. ‘Come on,’ I said cheerily to the younger three. ‘Rees, Rebecca, Katie. Get your coats on.’ Rebecca shot me a look of contempt as she rose from her upright chair.

I ignored the concerned glances of the other mums as I ushered the three small ones out of the door. It was a twelve- minute walk to our house. All the way, I talked to tearful Katie, quickly and calmly, with that forceful tone of voice that adults use to children when they are demanding an answer. ‘I’m going to make rice and peas for you all when we get back. It’s Rees’s favourite. Do you like rice and peas?’

‘No…’ she sobbed.

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I’ll make plenty because Rees’s big sister will be home soon. Have you got a big sister?’

‘No…’

‘I have,’ said Rebecca, laconically. ‘I’ve got two of them.’

*

Rees adored being in charge. I told him he could take the girls up to my room and show them a game on the computer. He led the way authoritatively, stomping on the stairs. I put my phone on the counter top next to the hob while I cooked rice and peas, so that I could snatch it up in a millisecond when Sally called. The routine of making food was calming, though. I made an inordinate amount, enough to feed everyone back at the Methodist Church Hall.

Miriam arrived while the children were sitting forking rice into their mouths. Even snivelling little Katie was eating. I was eating my own half-portion from a cereal bowl, standing up and watching them while I leant against the counter-top. I often ate kiddie-food with the kids and I had thought to myself as I served,
to not-eat would be an admission that something is
wrong. Eat
.

Miriam had texted me to say she was on her way. When I heard her knock, I ran to the front door even though I knew it was only her, pulling it open, ready to fall upon her – but she almost fell on me. ‘Oh my God,’ she burst out, tumbling in. ‘You won’t believe the afternoon I’ve had I had to threaten to report my boss he’s a bloody psycho, Rebecca Rebecca, Becky darling we have to go
right now
, I’m in such trouble…’ She rushed past me down the hall.

‘Don’t you want…’ I followed.

‘I’d love to, I’m so sorry, you’ve been such a star, I’ve got to snatch this one up and get going,’ she replied with a sigh. I felt a swoop of despair. I was relying on Miriam to stay with me, so that I could tell her, impressing myself with my own calm, about this afternoon’s little hiatus. I had let her in the house without comment. I couldn’t suddenly announce that, yes, I was fine apart from the small fact that my daughter was missing. I wanted to grab her by the lapels and shout into her face, ‘Betty is missing!’ but I didn’t say anything. As we descended into the kitchen, I watched myself with a measure of disbelief, behaving as if nothing was wrong. From wanting her to stay, I suddenly needed her to leave as soon as possible.

‘Oh, hello, Katie!’ declared Miriam. Rebecca jumped off her chair, rice and peas abandoned, and called out ‘Mummy!’ She leapt into her mother’s arms. I felt weak and sick.

‘Get your shoes on
right
now, darling, okay? I didn’t know you knew the Wiltons,’ Miriam was gesturing at Katie but talking to me.

‘I don’t,’ I replied, breathing deeply. ‘Oh God, Katie, I hope Sally has rung your mum. She’ll be wondering where you are.’

Katie looked down at her plate.

‘I can take her back if you like, she’s on my way, won’t take a moment,’ said Miriam, having picked up on the fact that whatever was going on was an emergency arrangement of some sort.

‘Oh yes, thank you,’ I said. ‘I don’t even have her number.’

Katie hopped off her chair, ran to Miriam and stood very close to her. Miriam pulled an amused face at me and began ushering Katie and Rebecca towards the door.

Rees, unconcerned, continued eating his rice and peas.

After I had closed the door behind them, I leaned my head against the glass. Why didn’t I stop Miriam leaving? Why didn’t I say, ‘Please, I don’t know where my daughter is, please please stay with me.’ I drew breath and walked back down the hallway.

‘Can I watch television?’ asked Rees, who knew exactly what the answer would be.

‘No, you’ve already had computer.’

‘Can I have an ice lolly?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I have the last raspberry one?’

‘Yes.’

I picked up Katie’s plate in a sincere but misguided attempt to continue behaving normally. Before I could turn away from the table with it, my arm began to shake. I put the plate back down and leant with my knuckles resting on the plastic tablecloth, breathing. Then my legs began to shake too. I sat down. Rees was at the freezer cabinet, with his back to me. I thought,
be normal again before he turns
. As he turned, I fixed a smile on my face and said, ‘Bath time soon, straight after that ice lolly, okay?’

‘Can I do some drawing?’

‘We’ll see.’

I looked behind me, at the kitchen clock. It was gone six.
Why hasn’t Sally rung me? What possible explanation can there
be for her not ringing me, even if it is just to update me, to tell
me there is no news
? I would give it another five minutes. Five minutes precisely. I would call her and if she didn’t answer her phone then, that was it, I was slinging Rees in the car and going out to find Betty myself. What was I doing, stuck at home, waiting? What was wrong with me?

*

Four minutes later, there was a firm knock at my door. My body froze and clenched. I rose swiftly, leaving Rees colouring at the kitchen table amongst the half-finished plates of food, the discarded lolly stick in a plastic bowl by his side… I can still see that table – the plates, the scattering of neon gel pens that I should not have let Rees use, the lolly stick at a diagonal in the plastic bowl, stained raspberry-coloured halfway up its length.

I was expecting to see the wavery bulk of Sally through the glass, the lower heads of Betty and Willow either side of her. I was welling up with anger and relief, already, prematurely ready to shed tears of fury and gratitude. My feet continued to walk down my hallway even as I saw it wasn’t an adult with two children on the other side of the glass. Those feet walked towards the door as my eyes and my brain registered two adult forms beyond the glass, two dark uniforms. My hand, my automatic hand, reached out to grasp the interior door handle, to open the door, the swinging door, the door that swings open again and again in my memory – the door that will never again close properly in my head. Muscle memory, instinct, call it what you will: I knew, of course I knew. My body was recalling disaster, dredging up the physical sensations of it even as my mind closed itself against that knowledge, turning round and around, like a rat in a cage. The door swung open. Two police officers – there were two police officers on my doorstep, one man, one woman. I stayed standing upright but I began to fall. The officers’ faces were open wide. They both looked at me, their gazes huge. When the woman officer spoke, I saw her lips move but I heard her voice inside my head rather than through my ears, reverberating.

‘
Mrs Needham
?’

Friday evening; it is dark and wet by the time I leave my house: embracing dark, a bitter wind – my natural habitat. I think of the cliffs, out there on the edge of town, waiting in the night, and of how I used to go up there as an adolescent and stand near the edge and holler my rage at life’s unfairness into the huge maw of the sea – an adolescent may be excused their love of melodrama but it is less seemly in an adult. How would I have felt at fifteen if I had known how many times I would be back, raging again and again? I think about the cliffs as I get into my car: the black waves jumping and clashing. As I drive down my road, I pass various neighbours all hurrying in the opposite direction, heads bowed against the bitter, freezing rain. Everybody wants to be at home on a night like this.

It is the first time I have driven to the hospital since the night I visited Betty there. I take the one-way system, unable to retrace the route of that evening. At the hospital, I drive around to the small courtyard at the back, behind our unit. The courtyard is a source of much grumbling on the part of female staff as it is ill-lit and we often leave work after dark in the winter. I park the car in the corner, under the trees, where it is pitch black. I grip the steering wheel and breathe heavily. If I seem upset, there is a chance Jan H will insist on staying with me, which would be disastrous.

Five minutes late, I get out of the car and cross the courtyard. Rounding the corner of the building, I see that Jan is waiting for me at the door to our unit, a single-storey building with an ugly, pre-fab feeling, even though it’s built of brick. She is wearing her pale blue mac, belted tightly, and has her back to me, looking towards the main part of the hospital. She turns as I approach, immaculate hair swinging, handsome face creased with expectation.

‘Sorry,’ I say, hurrying up to her.

She throws her arms around me. I haven’t seen her since the funeral, and then it was only a brief hand-clutch in my sitting room, surrounded by others. I have been so absorbed in the coming task that I have not prepared myself. We embrace for a long time.

I pull back and she hands me the keys. ‘I left the light on in your office and the kitchen,’ she says, wiping at her eyes with a gloved hand. ‘You’d better turn them off when you lock up.’

I nod, wet-eyed. She doesn’t need to tell me, it is just something to say. She grabs my forearm and gives it a little shake. ‘Are you sure about this? It’s such a filthy night, bad enough… it feels weird, leaving you here.’

‘Go home and have a glass of wine with Don,’ I say. I embrace her again but briefly, by way of dismissal. ‘Have one for me too.’

‘How’s Rees?’

‘He’s fine. He’s with David for a bit.’

‘Okay, if you’re sure.’

I dangle the keys from my finger. I raise my eyebrows. ‘Is it the new one?’ I mean the porter. There was a new, younger one arrived just before I stopped work. We had all discussed how he was a great improvement on the bad-tempered old one. ‘Easy on the eye,’ as Jan had put it.

Jan shakes her head. ‘’Fraid not.’ She is already backing away towards the main building. ‘Call me at home if you want, later? I’ve got to go to the shops but I’ll be home in an hour.’

‘I’ll call you Monday, it’s okay.’ I turn sharply, while she is still looking at me. I want to appear confident, so there is no danger she will come back to check on me.

*

Jan has left the door unlocked. I step inside, into the darkness of the hallway, reflexively comforted by the cheap carpet, the fire extinguisher on the wall, the noticeboard with the poster advising the elderly to get a flu jab – my old life, my life before, the normality of it all. To my left is the Reception desk, where Maurice sits. Beyond the curve of his desk, still to the left, is the darkened corridor that leads to our consulting rooms. To the right is the square of plastic chairs where the patients wait and, beyond that, the kitchen. I go into the kitchen and look around. Everyone is very good about washing their own tea and coffee mugs, in our unit. Everything is put away but for a jar of decaffeinated instant coffee that has been left next to the microwave. I go over to the counter and pick it up, open a cupboard to put it away – am felled.

The coffee jars and boxes of teabags are kept on the lower shelf of the cupboard. On the shelf above are mugs. We each have our own and are a small enough unit to know whose is whose. Mine was painted for me by Betty, two years ago. It came from one of those paint-your-own mug kits – plain white enamel, on which she painted a signal – a flower, green stem and spiky leaves, yellow centre, red petals, round and full and out of proportion to the rest of it: a flower like no flower that has ever really existed, a child’s sign to say,
I love you. I did
this for you
.

I was right to come here alone, ulterior motive or no. How could I have forgotten the mug? I close the cupboard and walk carefully and purposefully to the kitchen door, where I flick off the light switch and stand for several minutes in the doorway, breathing. I must not let this distract me, I think. It must be fuel.

I walk swiftly back to the Reception area and sit down at Maurice’s desk. For a moment, I sit and stare at his computer, turned off for the weekend, blank-faced, asleep. My face fills the screen, my scrawny, black-eyed face. Is that really what I look like, now, or is it a trick performed by the slight curve of the dark, the way it distorts my reflection? I switch the computer on at the side of the monitor and it gurgles at me, like a pet.

I open the Upton Centre file, where referrals are listed in alphabetical order of surname. I scan it quickly. I was right. Once I have found what I need, I print it out, then turn everything off and make sure nothing is left disturbed on Maurice’s desk. He is a particularly immaculate and efficient receptionist and he must not know I have even been here.

*

Before I leave, I take a walk down the darkened corridor. I don’t need to go to my office but I want to turn off the light that Jan left on. It is only a few steps but the strangeness of being there in the dark, after hours, seems to elongate the short walk along the thin carpet: thin, cheap, our block was built out of small change. The door to my office is made of some orangey plywood. The metal handle squeaks as I turn it, swings back to reveal my office, which is square and brightly lit by the fluorescent tube above the desk. The filing cabinet in the corner with the empty vase on top, the cork noticeboard behind the desk with out-of-date circulars pinned on it – all is untouched, free of dust, as if I was in here earlier today, leading my normal life. I wasn’t a great one for personalising my work space – no photos of David or the kids. The only non-functional item is the birthday card my workmates gave me last summer, which is still pinned to the frame of the bottom right-hand corner of the noticeboard. Opposite my desk is the chair in which my patients sit and against the wall, the examination table with the cupboard above it. In the corner behind the desk are a paper shredder and the bin I use for recycling. It isn’t the same office that David first visited me in, all those years ago – that was in the main building – but for all its functionality and anonymity, it might as well be. This was the unchanging context of my life, this blank, and despite all that has happened to me it is still here, waiting. Again, I feel the sensation that comes to me on the clifftops; time, folding and parting, folding and parting, like one of those paper puzzles the children make.
Say a
number
…
say another number
… a random choice selects an animal for you to be or a task to perform, and it’s that simple and accidental, the slippage between what we are and what we might have been.

Then there is the window, a perfect black mirror in which my reflection stands, facing me, nothing beyond it, nothing outside.

I flick the switch. The fluorescent tube makes a buzzing sound and dies. I am in darkness. I turn to walk back down the corridor, closing my office door behind me. The only light comes from the Reception area, and as I walk, I see a shadow flicker in that light, a grey shape moving quickly in the yellow glow, small and fleet, as if a creature has dived for cover at the far end of the corridor. I move swiftly down the thin carpet, the one that always makes enough static to raise my hair and give me a small electric shock when I earth the charge by touching something metal. The Reception area is empty. The shadow must have dived into the kitchen. I stride to the kitchen door and push it back. It swings. The kitchen is empty. ‘Betty?’ I say hopefully into the dark.

*

By the time I get home, I am shivering with the cold. I plug in the kettle. While it boils, I remember how once, after we were married but before we had children, I had a heavy cold that I called the flu in order to gain David’s attention. It was hard to get David’s attention when he was distracted, a little exaggeration was sometimes needed, something that played on his knee-jerk chivalry. David’s reaction to any problem was to solve it. So when I told him I thought I had the flu, he made me a hot toddy. What did he put in? I tried to remember as the kettle boiled; lemon juice, honey – whisky. I drag a kitchen chair over to the cupboard above the fridge-freezer. Our few spirit bottles were always kept up here, to keep them safe from the children, ‘To keep them safe from me,’ David used to say, but neither of us were great drinkers. Student drinkers, David and I had been, beer and crisps in the pub, wine with our Friday dinner if we were feeling sophisticated. Our taste in alcohol never really graduated.

I fetch down the bottle of whisky, which is dusty even though it has been kept in a cupboard. I find a large white mug. There is no lemon in my fridge, of course – I haven’t bought any fresh food in weeks – but somewhere at the back of the herbs and spices cupboard I know there is a green bottle of some yellow fluid full of e-numbers that claims to be a substitute.

Our kettle is slow. While I wait for it, I check the telephone. There is a message from Aunt Lorraine, trying to sound cheery but wondering why we haven’t spoken for a while. I remember that my mobile, in my handbag, is switched off. When I turn it on, I find there are three missed calls from David. He only left a message on the last one, saying shortly, ‘Hi, it’s me. Can you call me? On the mobile.’ There is background noise I can’t identify.

This is unusual. After our bad patch, David insisted I call him at the house in the evenings rather than at work or on his mobile, an act of loyalty to Chloe, I suppose. If so, it was an act of loyalty Chloe herself didn’t seem to appreciate. If she answered the phone at all, she would hand it straight to David, and even when David answered, I could feel her presence behind his words, the ghost of her in the pauses between his phrases. She couldn’t leave us alone. It took me a while to find such behaviour gratifying and even when I did, any small sense of victory I might have felt was spoiled by the fact that David could still not see her for what she was. David might never believe what she was like, but I knew, and she knew I knew.

Why had it all started again, now, the letters, after Betty? Because she thought I was weak again? Didn’t she realise that after losing Betty, there was nothing she could do to me, that I was strong as an ox?

I call David’s mobile. He answers immediately. I can hear hubbub in the background.

‘It’s me. Where are you?’ I say.

‘Stag’s Head,’ he replies. ‘I’ve sneaked out for a pint.’ This is also new. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine,’ I reply brightly. ‘I thought there was something wrong with Rees.’

‘Oh God no, sorry, he’s asleep. He had a busy day so I gave him a bath and got him in early. Chloe’s mum is over, so I made my excuses.’ His tone is matey. ‘Listen, I think we should have dinner. Soon. I don’t think I handled it very well, when I saw you in the unit.’

Handled, I think. I am something that must be handled. There is a strange pause on the end of the line. Even though he is not speaking, I can hear that his voice has cracked. I don’t know what to say, so I listen in silence. He is gulping.

I sit down on a kitchen chair, my hot toddy forgotten. I listen. After a while I say, gently, ‘You okay?’

‘No, I’m not,’ he replies in a whisper, and then his voice goes completely. ‘I miss her every day, Laura. I miss her so badly. I don’t think…’ he fades out again. I imagine him with his head down over an open newspaper, trying to hide his distress from anyone who might be seated nearby. When he speaks again, his voice is lowered but every bit as broken and wretched. ‘I just want to talk about her, please, please. Please can we meet for dinner, just us, just nothing else?’ And then he does it. He says my name, in that plain way of his. ‘Laura…’

‘Of course we can.’ I realise I have been waiting for this, ever since Betty was taken away from us, that there is no one I want or need but David.

‘When? When are you free?’

When am I not free? I want to say. What, or who, does he imagine restricts my movements? ‘Well, I can come now if you like.’ I sense a moment here, a door ajar. ‘Or you can come over if you like.’ It occurs to me as I say this – and it is a shocking, transgressive thought – that if he comes over, we might have sex.

I can hear him thinking it through. ‘I don’t think it would be a good idea if I came to the house.’ I wonder if he has had the same thought.

‘Because you would find it too difficult or because you’d have to explain to Chloe later?’

There is a pause. ‘Both.’

‘Okay, where?’

‘There’s a new tapas place, at the end of the road here. It was quiet when I came past.’

‘I know I’ve seen it. Not exactly doing a roaring trade.’

His voice has reacquired its normal tone but I can hear effort beneath. ‘God, I’m starving, actually.’

‘Me too.’

This is untrue but we need this exchange to lighten the mood, to make this unexpected meeting possible. I look at my watch in the same spirit, an empty gesture. ‘I can come now if you like, just give me a minute to have a cup of tea and put my coat on.’ It is quarter to eight. If David put Rees to bed himself then he must have only just got to the pub – the Stag’s Head is on his side of town, only a few minutes’ drive from his housing estate. I wonder how long he will have before he has to explain to Chloe where he has been, that he has seen me: ridiculous under the circumstances, but gratifying too, his need for subterfuge.