The Missing One (22 page)

‘Your foot's wet,' she says. ‘Kali. Take it easy.'

‘I'm fine, I'm
fine
.' The urge to scream in her face is overwhelming, but I make myself lean over slightly, pressing at my belly with both hands. ‘Look. I just don't know what you mean about my mother and the whales.'

She turns and walks away. For a moment the sun bursts through some clouds and she is standing in a patch of almost white light, her wavy hair lit up from behind.

‘Wait!' I yell. ‘Christ, Susannah! Just stop, will you?'

She stops, and now I know that she is enjoying this. She's toying with me.

‘Oh? Oh. She really did tell you nothing, huh? She never even told you about her work up here? The orca-mapping?'

I get, more carefully this time, onto the same rock as her. My stomach feels unstable and there's too much saliva in my mouth.

Susannah smiles down at me. ‘So.' She raises one eyebrow. ‘She really did cut off when she moved to England, didn't
she – from everything? It makes sense, I guess. But wow! Anyway, look, Kali. You should know one thing, at least, about Elena. You can be proud of her. You can be proud of what she did up here. Whatever she turned into, over there in England in that cosy country cottage of yours, she once contributed something important to the world.'

‘What did she do?' The salt wind whips past my face and the force of my words is lost again. ‘Tell me!'

Susannah reaches up and I think she is pulling Finn's hood up. ‘Your mother was involved in the very early days of a Canadian government research project to survey the orca population. Mostly in Puget Sound. She and … she joined some other researchers who'd set out to photo-identify every single orca. The whales were being captured by sea parks and the project was a huge turning point in marine conservation up here. The researchers discovered that the southern residents were being basically wiped out by theme parks. They managed to get that banned, but then they wanted to assess the damage. There's a whole institute built on all this now; there's amazing orca research underway still, and conservation laws … '

I open my mouth to ask if this was what my mother's abandoned PhD was on, but she just keeps talking, looking out to sea, knowing she has me now. Finn is slapping the sides of the baby-carrier with his hands and making ‘OOOO baba' noises. I will him not to lose patience.

‘Killer whale capture was big bucks in the seventies,' she is saying. ‘The theme parks only wanted the babies – the yearlings. They still do – they get them in Iceland now, I
think. Anyway, it was a military operation. They'd literally use explosives and harpoons to separate a baby from its mother. Most of them died within weeks of captivity. There was a famous capture, down in Puget Sound, years ago, where they took five or six in one round-up. Only one survived – in fact, you might have heard of her even in England – a whale called Lolita? She's still alive, down in California somewhere, and there's this movement now to return her to the wild. They know the exact pod she came from. They know her sisters and brothers and mother. Some researchers played her sound recordings of the pod – they know now that each pod has its own dialect. The other whales in the tank with her didn't pay much attention to the sounds, but Lolita went crazy – she seemed to recognize her family's voices. It's chilling, when you think about, what we've done to these animals. But at least the orcas up here are protected now; they're on the endangered species list.'

‘But, hang on. Just hang on.' I can't take this in. ‘What's my mother got to do with all this? She studied dolphins.'

‘Orcas,' she gazes at me, ‘are part of the dolphin family.'

‘So, what – you mean, she did her PhD up here, not in California?'

Susannah doesn't answer. She's looking out at the waves again and her face is troubled, but concentrated. She looks as if she's scanning the water for something. She puts both hands up to her temples and her nostrils flare.

‘Was she doing research up here?' I say, again. My head is buzzing, I feel as if someone has poured ice into my ears.

‘They'd go out on the water in all weathers, all times of
year. She had this all-weather suit, bright yellow, an inch thick – she walked like an astronaut in it – with her binoculars and camera slung round her neck, her hair all over the place. And she had a hydrophone that she'd drop down off the boat, to listen to the whales and record the sounds they made. She was fearless. You get seventeen-foot tides up here, hurricane-force winds. But she'd always say “no picture, no proof”. She was completely obsessed with the work – totally passionate and single-minded. I worried about them a lot up here that winter.'

‘I can't … ' It seems impossible that she's talking about my mother. ‘I just can't … ' Finn whacks my head with his hand and makes a long, loud ‘maaaaaa' sound. I ignore him.

‘So, Kali.' Susannah looks right at me. ‘Whatever she turned into out there in England, her life wasn't ordinary. She did some good.'

I squint at her in the bright sun. For a second, I wonder if she has made this entire story up. The triangle of pain in my gut is intense now; my legs feel shaky. Finn is slapping my head with his hands. ‘Go, go, go, go, go.' But then my stomach lurches and I realize that I'm going to throw up. I open my eyes and look wildly around – I must have made a panicky noise because Susannah steps towards me, with her hand out.

‘Are you OK?'

‘Gonna throw up.' I fold my hands over my lips, lurch away from her over the rock. I throw up a gush of bagels and coffee into a tide pool. I can't bend over too far because of Finn on my back, and I have to hold my legs far apart to stop the vomit from splashing up them.

She is behind me. I want to tell her to leave me alone, but I have sick coming out of my mouth and nose and I'm hideously ashamed of the sounds, of the stench. But as I throw up again, I feel her standing behind me. She doesn't speak. She doesn't touch me. She just stands and waits. Maybe she is distracting Finn in some way.

Afterwards, she hands me a tissue. She looks at the sea while I wipe my face and blow my nose.

I start to apologize.

‘The little guy's hands,' she says, ‘are blocks of ice. We should get back to the house. Give him to me. I'll carry him.' Without waiting for me to agree, she reaches both hands round my waist from behind, unsnaps the belt, then hooks the carrier off my shoulders with Finn still inside, and hoiks him onto her back. Then she sets off.

*

Back in the kitchen, she swings the backpack down as if Finn weighs nothing. She bends to unstrap him, blocking me with her body, and lifts him out.

His cheeks are scarlet and his eyes shine and he wriggles to get down. She puts him down and he toddles off to the stool, still in his red suit. I follow him.

‘Kali, you know what, why don't you just go rest for a bit?' she says. ‘You look like you need it. He'll be good with me. We'll get to know each other. I'll give him some breakfast, then we can hang out for a while. Huh, little guy? You like pancakes?' Finn glances back at her, then makes for the dogs. They're lying by the door.

‘Finn!' I call.

‘Oh, they won't hurt him,' Susannah says, dismissively. ‘They're excellent with kids.' Sure enough, the dogs actually wag the ends of their tails. Finn kneels down and shoves his hands into their curling wet fur. They continue to wag, gently. One licks his face. I feel my shoulders relax. Maybe it's just me that the dogs don't like.

‘Seriously, Kali. He'll be perfectly safe with me.'

‘But you need to work.'

‘Oh, work can wait.'

‘He can be quite a handful … '

‘Kali,' she says. ‘I have done this before, you know. The two of us will just hang out for a bit, get to know each other. You need rest. You look kinda sick to be honest – and you don't want to get any worse, do you? We don't want you stuck up here for days, do we?'

I realize, then, that the offer might be less for my benefit than for hers. The last thing she wants is me loitering here for days in a sick bed. And she's right. I do feel depleted, and queasy, and extraordinarily tired. The thought of someone else having Finn for a bit is tempting.

Susannah is a mother – she'll know how to keep him safe and distracted. I can easily leave him with her for half an hour while I rest. I'm in the same house after all.

*

I clean my teeth and crawl into the bed. I can't keep my eyes open, despite the long sleep the night before. My throat feels as if someone has rubbed it with a Brillo pad. The spare room is warm and the mattress soft. The sheets and pillow smell of fresh laundry powder. The past ten days really have
taken it all out of me. I feel the tension in my body release, just a bit, as I lie down. But the emptiness deep in my belly is more than just the result of throwing up.

I hear Finn laugh, somewhere in the house, a piping noise of pure delight. He hasn't even noticed I've gone.

My brain begins to float, and images skim behind my eyes: my mother on a little motorboat, fearless of winds and tides, teetering on waves with the six-foot fins of killer whales slicing through the water beside her; her hair streaming out, her eyes as green as the sea. And I know Susannah isn't lying. This remote, wild place feels like hers. It is her.

I smell jasmine, very faintly, and for a moment I feel as if she's here with me, standing somewhere in the shadows of the room, just out of sight, watching me even though I can't see her. I think about Susannah's description of her work and I feel as if I have been handed something precious: a tiny window to the woman my mother once was.

I drift into sleep, resurface into the room, then drift back again, and as I sink I feel my mother's hand on my hair. She is here next to me, so close that I feel the warmth of her body, and I can smell her, properly now, jasmine and soil and salty winds. And then I hear her voice, crisp, next to my ear. ‘
Kali
.' She only used my full name when she needed my attention. ‘
Watch out
.'

I snap open my eyes. My heart thuds against my chest.

The room is chilly, divided by sharp clean lines: bookshelves, poster, bathroom door, window frame. I breathe in and out, waiting for my leaping heart to calm down.

I've heard that people do this when they lose someone:
they hear that person's voice – they feel their presence. But I don't want a voice, or a feeling – I want her. I want my mother. I want her back in all her complicated, infuriating flesh and blood. This is the reason for the emptiness deep in my belly; this is my sickness. My mother is gone. She's gone for ever and I didn't say sorry. I didn't tell her I loved her. I could have made everything right, but I didn't.

As I bury my face in the pillow, I realize that I want Doug too. I want to hear his voice, to feel his arms around me and to tell him what I've just discovered about my mother and the whales and the photographic database. I want to smell his skin and feel his broad body and hold on to him as I tell him what I know.

I sit up and crawl across the bed, leaning over to yank his jumper out of the bag. I curl on one side and bury my face in it like a pillow. I can smell him, faintly, in the scratchy wool, and there is a comfort in the simplicity of his smell.

For a short while I let myself imagine what it would feel like to lie here with Doug. These sounds would be different if he was here. The wailing wind would not sound so hollow and bereft; the chimes on the deck would be less eerie, more musical.

I wipe my eyes and nose on Doug's jumper. The persistent moan of the wind up here reminds me of something I had completely forgotten. One Christmas, years ago when I was just a teenager, my mother asked for a cassette tape of wind sounds – and my father actually found one for her. She listened to that tape for months and we all laughed at her: as if there wasn't enough wind in the Sussex countryside. But
she said she found it relaxing. I couldn't stand the tape – it sounded haunting and empty and I'd switch it off if I came into the kitchen to find it playing. It made me feel lonely, it made me think of death. But she really loved those wind sounds. Her favourite track, I remember, was a blizzard in Cape Cod. I remember how, beneath the hoarse rush and moan, you could hear a barn door slamming intermittently.

The wind in this place is definitely not comforting. The gusts are so powerful they shake the walls, as if they might scoop the house – and all of us in it – off this rock and fling us out to sea.

I have to stop. It's just weather. Nothing more. The wind only feels threatening because I am exhausted, and alone, and very far from home, and I am in shock too – this is grief. One of Alice's stages. Everything in this place feels so gigantic and inhospitable. Everything is on a different scale here. The trees tower so much higher, the birds and rocks are so much bigger. But none of this will hurt us. I need to pull myself together and stop being so pathetic; I am stronger than this. I know I am.

Do I really want Doug here, right now, in this bed? Do I really? I remind myself how stressful our bed at home had become. For the first sixteen months of his life Finn woke up several times a night. Because Doug had to work the next day, I would usually get up for Finn. Then even at weekends I'd get up, because Finn was used to me at night, and not Doug. And I did this night after night to the point of lunacy. Often, I'd come back to bed having finally got Finn back to sleep and Doug would be lying on his back, snoring.

I'd twist and turn for a bit with a pillow over my head, aware of the minutes of precious sleep time ticking away before the next wake-up. Then eventually, I'd shake Doug and he'd take himself off to the spare room so we could both snatch a few minutes of sleep before we had to get up again. Most mornings I woke in a cold bed, with Finn babbling next door and Doug in the attic room above us.