The Missing Marriage (11 page)

She wondered, now, why she never challenged him about this, but it was impossible to revisit the perspective of her thirteen-year-old self. At the time, she simply didn't. At the time, she let him go.

That September Laura Hamilton and Bryan Deane started seeing each other in a way that made Anna and Bryan's old friendship seem childish and irrelevant.

Bryan never came into the garden again.

Anna stood up straight, looking around her.

This was where she usually followed the headland for a further two miles to the lighthouse, but she wouldn't manage that tonight. Reluctantly, with an air of defeat, she turned her back on the harbour at Seaton Sluice and started to run slowly back towards Blyth – the copper coloured towers of the Alcan aluminium smelting plant floodlit in the distance.

When she got back to the Ridley Arms, she shut herself in the bathroom. It was the first time she'd shut any doors in the apartment and she didn't just shut it, she locked it as well.

After a while, she turned on the shower then sat down on the toilet, staring at the locked bathroom door as, without warning, she started to cry.

While Anna sat on the toilet, crying, Laura Deane – drunk – walked into her daughter's room and stood staring aimlessly around her.

Martha, who was sitting at her desk working on one of the Victorian porcelain dolls she collected – that Doreen bought her in kit form – turned to look at Laura.

Laura was wearing a grey batwing jumper – the sort she used to wear when she was the same age as Martha, that had once again become fashionable – and a pair of tights.

Martha felt sick looking at her and turned away, back to the doll. She'd made up the calico body, pushing the stuffing carefully into the corners with the stub of an old pencil she kept specifically for this purpose, and was now in the process of attaching the doll's head, arms and feet to the torso. The arms and feet weren't too tricky because there were minute holes drilled through the porcelain, which meant these could be sewn on. The head was more difficult. It required gluing and she had to be careful not to get bits of glue stuck in the doll's hair.

The spotlight angled over the desk – the only light in the room – was hot on her hands as she concentrated hard on applying the glue to the doll's neck, willing Laura to leave.

But Laura didn't leave.

Martha heard her approaching the desk, her shadow falling over it – making it impossible for Martha to see properly. She tried to carry on, but couldn't and in the end laid the doll down, her face set.

‘What's that you're doing?' Laura asked, slowly. Her mouth felt cluttered with the words as she made an effort to get them out in the right order. Talking to Martha was a complex task sober, drunk it felt like she'd just had a stroke.

She hung blearily over the desk, taking in Martha's hair – which had been tied in a plait – and resisting the urge to slip the band off the end and spread her daughter's hair across her shoulders.

‘You've got beautiful hair,' she mumbled. ‘You should wear it down more.'

Martha pulled instinctively away then continued to sit in silence, waiting for her to leave, as Laura's attention was taken suddenly by the tea light flickering on the windowsill, and the photograph of Bryan propped behind it.

‘That's a horrible photograph,' she said, picking it up and frowning as she read the back. ‘I don't remember taking that.'

‘You didn't. I did.'

Laura put the photograph back on the windowsill – unsteadily – and continued to contemplate it.

‘That was a good holiday. We had a great time in Cephalonia.'

‘No we didn't.'

‘I've got some lovely pictures from that holiday.'

‘You did nothing but argue the whole time. I heard you – above the air conditioning.'

‘There was stuff we needed to talk about.'

‘You weren't talking.'

‘We've tried to protect you, Martha.'

‘Protect me?'

‘It's complicated.'

‘It's not his fault.'

‘You've got no idea what I'm going through at the moment,' Laura said quietly.

‘I'm going through it too,' Martha yelled as Laura left the room and went back downstairs.

She remained motionless at her desk listening to her mother in the kitchen opening another bottle of wine – then went downstairs herself.

‘Piss off,' Laura said, without looking at her as she refilled her glass.

Martha remained by the breakfast bar, holding onto the edge of it. ‘I don't believe you. I don't believe any of this.'

‘What the fuck are you talking about?'

‘Dad –'

Laura stared at her for a moment before breaking into uncontrollable laughter.

Martha watched her laugh until eventually she ran out of laughter.

‘You need your head seeing to,' Laura observed, her teeth hitting the side of the glass.

‘So you keep telling me. Anna's on my side.'

‘Anna? What's Anna got to do with any of this?'

‘She was the last person to see dad alive. She cares about him, and when dad saw her yesterday morning outside Nan's – he squeezed my hand so hard, I –'

‘Shut up.'

‘Something happened between them.'

‘Shut up.'

‘I know it did. Why won't you tell me?'

‘Look at you.' Her eyes ran over her daughter, her mouth sagging open. ‘What did I do to deserve you?' She drained her glass and poured herself another. ‘One of these days they'll put you in a straitjacket, you know that, don't you? And I won't have any trouble signing that bit of paper.'

‘Shit. No wonder dad went.'

‘Get out! Get out now!' Laura yelled, throwing the glass at Martha. It smashed on impact with the breakfast bar, spraying Argentine Malbec over the floor and walls.

Martha ran upstairs as Laura knelt down on the floor among the broken glass, cloth in hand, mopping automatically, oblivious to her hair trailing through the puddles of wine that had arranged themselves tidily across the nonporous kitchen floor.

Upstairs, Martha – breathless – sat back down at her desk. After a while, she picked up the doll's head, stroking the delicate features with the tip of her forefinger.

At some point Laura came upstairs, slamming shut her bedroom door and falling face down on the bed, narrowly missing Roxy whose head shot up, momentarily alert.

A white transit van with Reeves Regeneration painted on the side drove over the mini roundabout at the end of Bridge Street, Blyth. It followed the coastal route Anna had taken in her car the night before – Easter Saturday – because its destination was the same: number two Marine Drive on the new Duneside development at Seaton Sluice.

The roads were empty but the van was unable to increase its speed because there was an infestation of speed cameras along this stretch of road, which had been popular with joy riders in the late nineties – something the driver, Jamie Deane, had missed.

He turned up the radio as Metallica's Master of Puppets came on – under the impression it was playing solely for him – and started to thrash about in his seat, pulling viciously on the steering wheel in time to the music.

The world he'd left behind as a child had changed and he didn't recognise the look of it any more, or understand the pace of it. Freedom, he'd come to realise, had its own horrors, and in the beginning it was these horrors that kept him sitting on the floor of his room with his back against the wall, in the Blyth hostel probation had put him in – not far from the Quayside. Unsure when he was meant to go to sleep or when he was meant to get up, he found it easier to just stick to the body clock he'd been running on for the past twenty years.

His counsellor – a woman called Janet, who blushed when she spoke to him – assured him that the symptoms he was suffering (and she could see he was suffering) were normal, but Jamie wasn't interested in normal and it was unrealistic of Janet to set him this fixed idea of normality as a goal when he was still struggling to achieve a sense of reality.

He just wanted to find a place he belonged, and if it wasn't this world, the one he'd been carrying inside him since he was fifteen, then which world was it?

There was too much colour, too many people, and too many cars, which was why he preferred going out at night. There was too much of everything, and his childhood haunts – the rows and their backstreets, the derelict corners – had vanished beneath tailored plots with honey-coloured houses like those on Marine Drive. The houses had fenced in front and back gardens, and drives – because everybody seemed to have at least one car. The world looked better, but it didn't feel better.

Janet encouraged him to sit his driving test, and then helped him to get a job with a contractor the council used for house clearance and waste collection – Reeves Regeneration. The department he worked for was Environmental Services, but the work was essentially rag and bone work, and he got to drive a van – the one he was driving in now. He wound down the window laughing wildly at the dunes running alongside, suddenly excited in a way he hadn't been for a very long time.

He pulled up outside number two Marine Drive, parking across the driveway and peering through the van's window at his brother's house with a happy curiosity.

He'd driven here many times over the past six months, but the reality of their lives – the detached house with all the windows and the big silver cars on the drive – had terrified him. Bryan and Laura had been children the last time he saw them. Since yesterday, however, the reality had changed and although the house looked the same from the outside, he knew Bryan wasn't there. Laura was in the house on her own, and this terrified him a little less.

The Thompsons – next door at number four – were just seeing off the last of their Easter Sunday guests, and Mr Thompson lingered in his front porch as Jamie Deane's white van pulled up outside number two. Mr Thompson didn't like the look of the white transit van, and would have liked the look of the driver even less – but was unable to see Jamie Deane, clocking him as he stood in his front porch.

In the early days of his career, Mr Thompson had driven a white transit van just like Jamie Deane's and didn't want to be reminded of it now, standing outside number four Marine Drive on Easter Sunday. The van had no business being there.

Just as Bryan Deane had no business disappearing like that, which had resulted in his missing a seminal episode of Gardeners' World on Alpines while he answered a series of absurd questions put to him by the police.

The Deanes, in fact, had irritated Mr Thompson ever since they moved in. They were loud in the garden, and when father and daughter played badminton they hit the shuttle-cock over the fence. The girl was forever knocking on their door asking for it back, treading in his borders . . . crouching down and straightening up among his Delphiniums – many of them taller than she was – in her white shorts.

There was that time her throat had risen at him from the collar of her short-sleeve green blouse and he had been unable to take his eyes off it; had not been able to help himself, and all the time she'd carried on – in that knowing way girls did – as if she was playing a game that was new and strange to her with an imaginary friend she had no idea had the potential to become dangerous when provoked.

Mr Thompson wished it was the girl who had gone missing, and not the father.

Then his wife called him indoors.

Inside number two Marine Drive, Laura Deane's phone started to ring.

Outside number two Marine Drive, Jamie turned off the radio, but carried on singing – his phone pressed against his ear.

Inside number two Marine Drive, Martha laid down the doll she was putting the finishing touches to, and listened.

The unanswered phone made the house feel empty.

Then the ringing stopped.

Outside number two Marine Drive, Jamie rang off, aware that his irritation was rising. He started to tap his phone against the dashboard, keeping his eyes on the house and scratching nervously at his face. There were lights on upstairs and down. He'd try again, and if she didn't pick up . . . if she didn't pick up, then what? He could ring on the door, but he didn't feel like doing that just yet. He'd had the idea of doing this gradually, and had been proud of himself for deciding on restraint.

So instead, he got out his Oxford Dictionary of Quotations from the van's glove compartment, opened it at random and found one he liked. He read it out loud a couple of times in a slow monotone and without feeling, trying to memorise the words.

There were no other sounds in the house so Martha crept towards her parents' room and, opening the door, saw Laura lying diagonally across the bed with the duvet only partially covering her, and still semi-dressed in tights and a jumper. A box of Nytol lay open and untidy on the right hand bedside table.

Roxy jumped lazily to the floor and trotted out of the room past Martha, who was crouched down by the side of the bed checking Laura's pulse to make sure that she was only comatose and not dead. Close up, Laura was breathing – deep, steady and unpleasant smelling breaths. Martha pulled on her hair and pinched her upper arm hard, but she didn't stir.

Reassured, Martha picked up the mobile. The unanswered call registered on the screen as ‘Caller Unknown'. She scrolled through the messages in Laura's inbox, but there was nothing untoward. There was a call from Bryan at 15:37 on Saturday. He'd tried phoning her again at 15:45, but she mustn't have picked up because it was logged as a missed call.

She was just putting Laura's phone in her pocket when it started ringing again.

Creeping quickly out of her parents' room, she ran down the corridor back into her own room.

‘Laura? It's me – Jamie.' A pause. ‘Go on – say something.'

Martha kept the phone pressed against her ear, and didn't say anything.

‘Why don't you take a look out the window?'

Martha got up and walked slowly downstairs, tripping on the last tread and falling into a turquoise vase whose dried flower display was shaken, dusty, to the floor.

Through the centimetre gap in the lounge curtains, she could see a white transit van parked on the pavement outside beneath the street lamp, and made out a man, indistinct, turned towards the house, watching.

‘There you are. Hello, Laura,' the voice said softly. ‘It's been a long time and I just wanted to say – I don't know what I wanted to say actually, only that I heard about Bryan and that I'm here. As you can see.'

Martha called off and pulled the curtains together, hanging onto the edges of them.

The phone didn't ring again, and soon she heard the van pulling away.

She exhaled, aware that her heart was beating fast and – suddenly, forcibly – that Laura and she were alone in the house.