Missing, Presumed (27 page)

‘Mum?’

It is Rollo’s voice calling and she follows it into the lounge, where the curtains are perpetually drawn.

‘Look at this,’ he says. He stands in front of the television, which is blaring the excessively jaunty theme tune to
This Morning
. The remote in his hand is still lolling at the screen. The television is never on during the day, except the odd black and white afternoon film when Miriam is particularly exhausted.

‘Why am I watching this?’ she asks.

‘Just wait and see.’

The set is a cacophony of exposed brick, floral wallpaper, and primary-coloured soft furnishings, all yelling ‘CHEERFUL!’ at a bruising volume.

‘Here we go,’ says Rollo.

The presenters – a blonde woman who resembles Bambi and a white-haired, curiously ageless man – have lowered their voices to denote ‘tragedy item’.

‘A month ago, twenty-four-year-old Edith Hind went missing from her home in Huntingdon. The police still don’t know what’s happened to her, but since then a series of lurid revelations have appeared in the press relating to her private life. Indeed, last week, the exposure led to her best friend, Helena Reed, tragically taking her own life. Today, exclusively on
This Morning
, we have Edith’s boyfriend here to talk about the girl he loves and to separate the facts from the fiction.’

‘That’s Holly Willoughbooby,’ says Rollo.

‘That can’t be her real name,’ says Miriam.

‘Shhhhh,’ says Rollo.

Holly’s huge doe eyes are looking up from beneath a voluminous sweep of yellow hair. Her voice is laden with condolence, while along the bottom of the screen, Miriam notices, the next item is on flattering trousers, followed by a discussion on toddlers who bite. Something about the lighting on the show makes its world seem thin and breakable.

‘You were with Edith for two happy years and presumably you had no inkling of what lay ahead. You must be worried sick about her,’ says the ageless man, whose bronzed skin and white hair make him seem like a photographic negative.

Will Carter smiles. He is resplendent in a slate blue open-neck shirt, an exact match for his eyes which, studio lit and in high definition, sparkle on screen.

Ah yes, thinks Miriam, of course.

‘I’m worried and I miss her like crazy,’ he says, ‘but it’s also been devastating to see so many lies and innuendoes in the tabloids. It’s just compounded all our distress.’

‘You mean yours and her parents – Sir Ian and Lady Hind,’ says the ageless man.

‘That’s Phil,’ Rollo says to Miriam.

‘Has TV reversed the passage of time?’ asks Miriam.

‘It has for Phillip Schofield,’ says Rollo.

‘I also need to set the record straight about Helena, who was our dear friend and who never did anything – never
would
have done anything – to hurt anyone. The lies about her have been astounding, with devastating consequences.’

‘What a heartthrob,’ says Rollo.

‘The start of his TV career,’ says Miriam. They are standing in front of the television in the pretence they are not stopping, but they both are mesmerised, like babies in front of their first cartoon.

‘Actually, I could see him presenting
The One Show
, or one of those nature programmes like
Countryfile
, that sort of thing,’ says Rollo.

‘Yes, but he’s so boring,’ says Miriam. ‘Look, even Holly’s suppressing a yawn – did you see that? Her mouth went all tight.’

Rollo is looking at his mother. ‘I thought it was The Tedium That Dare Not Speak Its Name.’

‘I can admit it now.’

‘Well, I admire him for going out to bat for Edith and Helena.’

‘Darling Rollo,’ says Miriam, hugging him, then looking at her watch over his broad shoulder. ‘Oh gosh, I’m late for Julie.’

‘Need your fix,’ says Rollo, and she can hear the disapproval in his voice as she leaves the room in search of her handbag.

She strides the white expanse of King’s Cross, dancing a weave through the frowning throng with their bags and newspapers, paper cups of coffee too hot to sip, and every face, almost without exception, fixed downwards on a tiny screen in hand.

Manon takes out her own phone and finds Harriet’s number. She will never avoid a person who has been bereaved; never put her own embarrassment before their loss, because she’s been on the receiving end; has seen people cross the street to sidestep the conversation when her mother died. And yet she fears Harriet’s state of mind.

She strides over the newly laid honey pavements, inset with solar lights, to St Pancras to board the Thameslink to Cricklewood, the phone pressed to her ear.

‘Turns out I’m rich,’ Harriet says. ‘Elsie had twenty grand’s worth of granny bonds and she’s left it all to me.’

‘That’s something,’ says Manon. ‘How are you holding up?’

‘Oh, you know.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Where are you?’ asks Harriet.

‘London. I’ve come to check on Fly.’

‘Good for you.’

‘When are you coming back?’

‘Oh, I dunno. There’s a lot of clearing out to do, y’know – her stuff, things to organise. Monday, probably.’

In body, perhaps, but not in spirit. Manon knows what lies beneath; how people can seem normal and yet grief swirls about like an unseen tide working against the currents of life, the mourner wrong-footed by its undertow. The bereaved should wear signs, she thinks, saying:
Grief in Progress
– for at least a couple of years.

The wind roughs her up on the walk down Cricklewood Lane to the Broadway, making the tops of the trees sway, noisy as high surf. She is meeting Fly at the Brazilian café where she’ll settle her bill with the owner, Neuza Lima.

She steps in, relieved to be out of the tumble of the weather, her hair falling at last.

‘Hello, Neuza,’ she says.

‘Sergeant,’ she says, kissing Manon on each cheek.

‘How’s it been with Fly?’

‘He is lovely, lovely boy. Gentle boy.’

Fly has pushed the door open, sniffing in that way he has, and Manon smiles broadly at him, though he is reserved – a wan hello and then he embraces Neuza, and Manon is surprised to feel put out.

‘Ola,’ he says to Neuza.

‘Olá, meu querido,’
says Neuza, hugging him to her broad bosom. ‘
Bem-vindo
, both of you! Take a seat – nice one in the window. I bring you, what? Coffee? Eggs?’

The window is full of the buses rumbling up and down Cricklewood Broadway and sharp shadows in confusion with the gleam of the glass.

‘How’s things?’ asks Manon.

He looks well. Neuza’s food has filled out his cheeks and made his eyes shine, yet they are full of sadness still.

‘Mum’s real sick,’ he says. ‘Can’t get out of bed, can’t keep anything down. Doctors say it won’t be long.’

‘Oh, Fly.’

‘She been offered a place in a hospice in Hampstead – Marie Curie place – when the pain gets too much, when I can’t …’

‘Do you know what you’ll do when that happens?’

‘I’ll need to stay with someone. Social worker says it has to be someone good, a good person, a grown-up – otherwise they put me in care.’

He looks into Manon’s face, waiting. The room is filled with the sound of sputtering milk and Portuguese TV and Manon turns to look for Neuza, wondering where her coffee has got to.

‘Have you got a friend you could stay with – someone from school, maybe?’

‘Thought you was my friend,’ he says. She is grateful for the approach of her latte and his juice.

‘I live in Huntingdon, Fly. It’s really important you stay at your school, isn’t it?’

‘Obrigado,’
he says to Neuza.

‘O prazer é meu,’
she says, stroking his close-cropped hair.

Manon takes Neuza to one side and asks if she might look in on Maureen Dent, send someone in to clean the flat.

‘My niece, she do it. Eight pound for hour.’

‘Fine,’ says Manon, frowning, wondering how long she can bankroll the Dent family. ‘Add it to my bill. Could he stay with you when … y’know, at the end?’

Neuza makes a mournful grimace as if she’s smelt something unappetising. ‘Is no possible. Is lovely boy but my hasband, he no take in Fly. He not such a good man.’

‘OK, right, well, I’ll think of something. For now, we’ll keep going with the food tab and the cleaning and looking in on them, OK?’

‘Sem problemas,’
she says, and from her warm pat on her shoulder and her competent expression, Manon understands this to mean, ‘No problem’.

At home again in the evening, in bed,
she listens to the shouts of revellers across the river. A lorry rumbles down some arterial route and its vibrations make the light bulb rattle in its metal shade beside her head like the buzz of an insect. The phone lies on her stomach. She is worrying about Fly. She dials Alan’s number.

‘Hello,’ he says.

‘Are you in bed?’ she asks.

‘I sure am. How was your day?’

‘I went to visit Fly Dent in London. He … he’s only ten. His mum’s not got long.’

‘Poor boy,’ says Alan.

‘He wants to stay with me, once she goes into a hospice. He’s frightened of being taken into care and I don’t blame him. Don’t think care would do him any good, to be honest.’

‘Doesn’t he need to stay near to his school? Thought you said he was doing well.’

‘Well, yes, but he needs to be safe.’

In the silence, she realises she wants Alan to persuade her – to do the right thing, to cast practicalities aside and take Fly in, out of goodness, unalloyed. It matters where his compass lies, to which side of hers.

‘It’s not like I don’t have the resources to look after him,’ she is saying, without conviction. ‘I’ve got a job, a flat. I’ve got money.’

‘It’d be a lot of disruption, for both of you,’ says Alan. ‘It’s not as if he’s your responsibility – not really. This is what the state is for.’

‘I s’pose,’ she says. ‘But don’t you have to take people on sometimes? Don’t you have to step up?’

‘In theory,’ he says.

Perhaps, she thinks, grasping for hope, he is protecting their own trajectory – a chance, not to be scuppered by a ten-year-old lodger. Talk about passion killer. He doesn’t want to share her (maybe).

‘I went out with someone with a son once,’ he says. ‘Didn’t last long.’

‘That probably wasn’t the son’s fault,’ she says, before she’s had time to think. She wants to divert the conversation away from this dark turn. ‘See, that’s the good thing about Internet dating – you can specify “no kids”.’

‘You’ve done Internet dating?’

‘Hasn’t everyone?’

‘Seems a bit desperate,’ he says.

I
am
desperate, she thinks. Or I was. Why lie?

‘Didn’t you want to meet someone?’ she asks him.

‘Just rather do it naturally,’ he says.

‘What’s natural? Getting smashed and falling on someone in a bar?’

‘No, what’s natural is being questioned by the gorgeous Officer Dibble about a dead body,’ he says, sounding conciliatory.

She smiles into the warmer silence.

Then he says, ‘Did you tell the truth about your age then?’

She sits up. ‘What’s wrong with my age?’

‘Well, thirty-nine – danger zone.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I didn’t mean … sorry,’ he says. ‘That was a stupid thing to say.’

‘What about your sperm, hobbling about on Zimmer frames?’

‘Calm down.’

‘Woah!
Calm down?
’ she says. ‘I want to know. What do you mean by danger zone? Where are we heading? I mean, do we actually want the same things?’

He sighs, as if he’s completely exhausted with her. ‘I can’t do this any more, Manon. I’m sorry.’

She lies there. Stunned. Is that it then? All finished before it even began? What has she done, with her hot head so quick to take offence?

She reaches out to turn on the police radio, hoping Control can take her back to a place of safety. Its low murmurings burble out towards her and she closes her eyes. She turns in the bed, curls into a foetal position, her hands clasped between her knees.

She thinks there will always be a gap. A sad loss of a thing that cannot be had; a will-o’-the-wisp, yearned for but never grasped. A woman who cannot be delayed for long enough. Sudden Death Syndrome, the coroner recorded at her mother’s inquest, as if the word ‘syndrome’ made it comprehensible.

One minute you are loved, and then you are not.

She managed a dignifi
ed silence for the first twenty-four hours, told herself it was a blip that could come right if she just gave him some space; he would regret what he said, realising what a special thing they were letting go of.

But nothing.

No calls, no texts, and in his silence she has read equanimity. After a bad night, her emotions are as ragged as the Alps. Fitful sleep, wishful dreams, ended by waking to a vision of Helena Reed’s body hanging from the back of her bedroom door.

Now, Manon is exhausted, slumped over her desk in MIT, glancing again and again at her phone, her collapsing face resting on the heel of one hand. So far she’s sent seven texts, smoked five cigarettes, and pranged the car. And it’s not yet 11 a.m.

I’m sorry for what I said the other night. Let’s not leave it like this. M

Listen, I know I can be difficult, I do know that. I just want to set things straight. M

Hey Big Al, thinkin’ about ya.

(She particularly regrets this one)

Listen, even if you’re sure, let’s just talk it over, as I believe a song once said.

No wonder you’ve never had a relationship last more than six months.

It’s a fucking relief, to be honest. Cocksucker.

Please don’t leave me.

There is Kim at the front of the room, writing on a whiteboard in marker pen, while Manon examines Kim’s bottom. It clenches to a point at its base and then joins to two very ample, ocean-going thighs, not even the hint of a gap between them. My bottom’s probably as big as that, she thinks. A single person’s bottom. I’m about to be forty, I will never have a baby, and I have a bottom the size of— Don’t cry. Just don’t cry, not in the middle of MIT.

‘Dawn’s doing baby-led weaning, which is great because they just learn to feed themselves, and they don’t grow up with any food issues,’ Nigel is saying, as Davy hands Manon a coffee.

‘Kill me now,’ she mouths at Davy.

She hears the trill of a text message alert and her heart flips over itself just as Kim says, ‘Ready, everyone?’ and turns to reveal her work on the whiteboard.