Stranded (34 page)

‘Oh, fuck.’

‘And she was lovely to us. She did a good job. She played us properly. She was warm and sweet and concerned. She walked around the park with us and watched Daisy on the big slide, and she bought us a drink at the café. Daisy liked her, though I think she was a bit baffled that she’d had no idea that she even had a grandmother.’

I know we will be there before long; I need to hurry this along. ‘A trip to the park,’ I say. ‘This was when you were still expecting me to come back?’

‘A couple of days before we were expecting you, yeah.’

‘Then?’

‘Then we had that day. Oh Christ, Esther. It was the worst day. You’d sent all these emails. Or whoever had sent them. And they’d been full of your new life and how much you didn’t want to come back, and it had been fucking alarming, you know? It didn’t sound like you, so I was afraid you were cracking up. Part of me knew you wanted to stay on that beach, but I never thought you actually would. I was glad you were coming back: it’s hard work, making your life revolve around a child. Respect. I was looking forward to going back to sharing the childcare, though it seems crap to say that now.

‘So Daisy was properly excited. She woke up saying “Mummy’s coming home!” She got dressed at six, and because she wanted to make a fuss, we bought you some flowers.’

I look at him. He is staring at the road.

‘You bought me flowers?’

He nods, without looking at me. ‘That’ll be a first, hey?’

‘I’ll say.’ I imagine the flowers wilting and dying. I would have been on the island for nearly a week by that point, longing for Daisy with all my being.

‘She wanted to go to the airport. I told her if it’d been Gatwick, maybe, but there was no need for us to schlep over to Heathrow. She made me agree, though, that after you called to say you’d landed we’d go and meet you at Brighton station. That much I could manage. We sat by the phone. After a long time, a very long time indeed, we decided to go to the station anyway. Probably your phone wasn’t charged and you didn’t have any money for the payphone. You know.’

‘Yes.’

‘We got a drink on the station and waited.’

I can imagine the scene more clearly than I want to.

‘And I didn’t come.’

‘Obviously by this point I’m realising I have to step up and be the responsible guy. I take her home, tell her your plane must be late and start googling for crashes. That seemed to me the obvious, though horrible, explanation. Though there was nothing on the news or anything. Then, as I’m on the phone to Emirates, trying to get them to tell me if you were on the plane or not, since their website is bloody adamant that it’s landed, an email comes through.’

‘From me?’

‘A very fucking breezy one, saying that you’ve made some life-changing decisions. I deleted it because I was so furious, but this is what it said. “I need time out from motherhood. This break has made me see that. I’m going to spend the next couple of years looking after myself.”’

We are on territory that is so familiar now that I keep my attention focused inside the car. I want to ask whether Daisy read the email before he deleted it, but time is running short.

‘Then Cassie came back.’

‘I was glad to see her. She timed it perfectly. No shit, right? She asked to take Daisy out for a pizza. I told her to be my guest. I was stringing Daisy along with lines, ironically as it turns out, about you being trapped in Malaysia because of a boat not working.’

I almost laugh at that. ‘Right.’

‘But she was confused. You know. She’s not stupid.’

‘No,’ I agree.

‘They came back, Daisy having had a lovely time. Cassie asked if I was OK. She wondered where you were. Et cetera. I got Daisy out of the room and confided in her. She was massively sympathetic.’

‘It fitted with the story she’d told you about me stropping off in my teens and ignoring my poor innocent family for ever more.’

‘It did. She offered to help out with childcare. It’s not easy, when you’ve got a job, to manage a child at school too. She suggested taking Daisy out of school until things calmed down. It sounded like a good idea.’

‘So she stepped in and became a concerned granny. Just her? No one else from the Village?’

‘No, very much on her own. Daisy went out with her a few times. Then she started asking for Daisy to spend the night. I brought her to visit. It’s a nice-looking place.’ He is defensive, looking at me pleadingly. ‘I think we’ll get there and she’ll be fine. And very, very glad to see her mum.’

I look at him, then away. ‘Well that’s because you didn’t grow up there. I vowed never to speak of them again when Karen moved to Australia. But I should have done.’

‘Who’s Karen?’

‘A woman like me. She said she’d only feel safe if she was on the other side of the world from them. I should have listened to her. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. How long has Daisy been there?’

‘Two nights.’

‘Right. They’ll be expecting us.’

‘Not until tomorrow.’

‘No. Now. They are going to be expecting us now.’

Then Chris is indicating and pulling into a driveway. I am sixteen again, waiting for the Rapture. I am Daisy’s age, ten, beginning to realise that we are different from other people, starting to envy them and knowing I must not admit it. I am an awkward teenager trying to make myself believe in Moses’ version of God because it would be so much easier to conform. I’m holding Philip’s sweaty hand and trying to convince myself I could love him. I am bristling at being in Martha’s whining company all the time.

The memories overwhelm me, and I lean back in the seat. I want to close my eyes, but if I did that I might miss Daisy. The only thing that could possibly have brought me back here is her: my funny, dependable daughter. She is a girl who deals with everything life throws at her. That attribute will be being tested right now.

I shudder at the idea that she will have met Philip, if he is still here, and Martha.

‘Be strong,’ I whisper to my daughter, ‘and don’t believe anything they tell you about me.’

There used to be a white sign with ‘God’s Village’ painted on it in wobbly black letters, and a looming black cross. It used to fill me with grim ennui, coming home after school. Sometime over the past couple of decades, however, it has been replaced by a larger sign with a rainbow on it, and the words: ‘Welcome to the Community of Peace’.

This could be a yoga retreat, or a Buddhist centre. They have tarmacked the drive and put speed bumps into it. There are wind chimes hanging from branches, and little mirrors and dream-catchers tucked away in the trees. The buildings, I soon discover, have been done up too, though they are still essentially the same: the log cabins are still grouped around a central courtyard, with a longer two-storey building at one side. Flags fly from the eaves, the sort of silky flags you see on people’s tents at festivals, and a banner draped on the main building says ‘WELCOME’ in multicoloured silk letters. There is even a gift shop, which makes me boggle, and a big noticeboard in the courtyard is covered in posters and ‘Information for Visitors’.

There is a bad sculpture in the courtyard that shows a woman cradling a baby. I glance across at it.

‘Someone else’s baby,’ I say, as we turn into the car park. Chris frowns, not following.

There are four other vehicles in the little car park. Three are small, cheap cars, while the fourth is a green-and-red hand-painted minibus that looks spectacularly cultish. Chris reverses into the space directly opposite the road out. He nods at it.

‘We can make a quick exit if we need to,’ he says.

I look at Chris, suddenly fond of him. He let Daisy come here, but that was my fault for not telling him anything about this place. All I ever said was that I hated my family and would never speak of them. The fact that he believes me, that he has brought me here to collect Daisy, gives me the strength I need.

‘You ready?’ he says. He is nervous. ‘I’ll just say we’ve come to get her a day early because you’re back. It’ll be fine. No drama.’

She will not be here.

‘Maybe,’ I say, and try to smile. We look at each other for a second, and get out of the car.

The atmosphere of the place presses down on me. They can put up all the flags and mirrors they like: this is the same place it always was. I can feel its essence, and every fibre of my being wants to turn and run.

They have Daisy. I am not going anywhere.

Chris and I walk in silence to the main building. When we are on its doorstep, I turn to him.

‘You dropped her off here?’

‘Yes. Cassie told me to come to this door to pick her up.’

He knocks quickly, as if to harness the optimism.

When, at last, the door swings open, I see, first, that neither Cassandra nor Daisy is on the other side. The man who stands before us, looking at us with a challenge in his eyes, has a greying beared, cut pedantically close to his chin, and sandy hair. He is stocky, with a belly that strains against the buttons of his checked shirt. I watch his gaze flick dismissively over Chris, then come to rest on me.

‘Philip,’ I say.

‘Catherine,’ he replies. He looks at me, waiting.

‘Where is she?’ I try to keep my voice calm. The only thing that matters is my daughter.

He smiles. ‘Where is . . . ?’ He raises his eyebrows, pretending to have no idea who I am talking about.

‘Come on Philip.’ I make a huge effort to control myself. He wants me to break down and scream and cry. I will not. ‘Daisy. My daugher.’ I look at Chris. ‘Our daughter.’

‘Daisy?’ He pretends to think about this. I always hated Philip, and now I am biting my lip and using every ounce of self-control I possess to avoid thowing myself at him, scratching and kicking and biting.

Chris steps in. Chris still thinks it might be all right.

‘Yeah, mate,’ he says. ‘Daisy. She’s been staying with Cassandra for a couple of nights? While Esther was away?’

‘I’m sorry,’ says my former fiancé, smiling at me in triumph. ‘I’m not sure who you mean. Cassandra’s out at the moment. Would you like me to give her a message?’

‘Tell her we will fucking find her,’ I say, and I pull Chris’s sleeve. ‘She’s gone. They’ve got her.’

‘They might just be out,’ he says, desperately.

‘Of course, there will be an explanation,’ says Philip, with an undisguised smirk.

I wonder how many times Cassandra and Moses have told her that I don’t love her, that I never want to see her again. I wonder whether they have started to implant their God in her mind. We love you, they will say. We are your family now. Our twisted God loves you, and one day soon, he will be taking you to heaven to sit at His right hand.

I remember Sarah’s parents’ fears of a mass suicide.

‘You can fuck off,’ I tell Philip.

‘God bless you, Catherine.’ He closes the door and bolts it.

We sit in the car, but we do not go anywhere.

‘We’ll just wait until they get back, shall we?’ Chris asks, though I can see that he does not expect that any more than I do. ‘And while we wait, Esther. Please. Tell me anything that might help us find Daisy. Anything about being a child here. What was it like living here as a kid?’ His voice is urgent, terrified. ‘You haven’t stopped shaking since we arrived. And biting your lip. Do they still wait for Doomsday?’ I shrug, unable to speak, and he changes tack. ‘That man was Philip, then. The one you were meant to marry. Why did he keep calling you Catherine?’

I look at him. ‘Did Cassandra not call me Catherine?’

‘No. Of course not. She called you Esther.’

‘Right. Well. OK.’ I take a deep breath, and tell him all about my old life here, in bunk beds, being sent to school and being a weird outsider. They will not be able to do that to Daisy, because as soon as she is back, we will come and get her.

I mention my fears when Daisy was born, my determination to have only one child so I could better protect her from them, my occasional certainty that they were keeping tabs on me.

‘Esther,’ he says, his pain palpable. ‘I know we were never the great romantic couple. I know we would never have been together if it wasn’t for Daisy. But I’d thought we both gave it our best shot. I did. I tried as hard as I could to make it work with you. It was never going to, I see that, but I wanted it to. I thought you did too. But you didn’t trust me with . . . well, with anything. If you’d told me, I’d never, never, never have . . .’

‘I know. I’m sorry. This is my fault, Chris. Not yours. I recognise that.’

‘And you getting stuck on that island?’

‘Yes. Somehow that will have been them. Let’s find Daisy first, though.’

‘Let’s call the fucking police. That’s what we’ll do.’

I put a hand on his arm. ‘Not yet. They’ll lie. They’ll turn it back on us. The police would terrify me.’

He is not happy, but he lets it go for the moment.

At last I see a figure I recognise, sticking a notice on to the information board. After all these years I know her at once, just from the way she holds her head. I open the door and bolt towards her.

Her hair is still short, and I briefly think what a waste that is. I hope that at some point in the past twenty-four years she grew it long, but I doubt it. Gravity would have worked wonders on Martha’s hair. It would have made her pretty. She is broad and heavy, and though I know we are both forty, she could easily be fifty-five. She has sunk into middle age. Her clothes are baggy and shapeless; they are old-style Village-wear. No one has told her that, to keep up with the cult’s new image, she should now be wearing tie-dyed trousers and a rainbow jumper.

I look at her. Her face is lined. Mine, I imagine, is worse.

‘Martha,’ I say. I put a hand on her arm in an attempt to make her engage with me.

‘Oh,’ she says, her voice flat. ‘You’re here. Philip said you would be.’

‘I’m here for my daughter,’ I say. ‘Daisy.’

She smiles with her mouth, but not her eyes. ‘Are you?’

‘She’s not here, is she? They’ve taken her. Cassandra and Moses. They took her, didn’t they, right away, so I won’t be able to get her back. Martha. Do you have children?’