The Missing One (25 page)

‘Then you're totally deluded.'

Elena dashed the blood on her jeans. ‘Deluded – how?'

‘Wait – you're bleeding.' Susannah reached out a hand. ‘Look – you're bleeding everywhere.'

‘It's just an old scab.'

‘But there's blood all over your hand, look at it.' She reached across the table and her thumb ring caught the light. It hovered in the air between them for a second like a glinting silver weapon.

Elena swiped her hand away. ‘It's nothing. Stop! OK? Just stop this.' Her T-shirt was sticking to her back. The sky was too blue, and the sunlight made her eyeballs ache. The smell of the apple blossom was becoming sickly.

Susannah stood up, holding out her muscular brown arms. ‘You can't just leave. You can't just go away like this, on some crazy impulse.' Elena smelled the mustiness of Susannah's armpits. She stepped backwards, out of reach.

‘This is not a crazy impulse. This is completely right. This is what I'm for.'

‘What you're FOR?'

‘Jesus! YES.'

Susannah dropped her arms back down and leaned on the table, with her head bowed. ‘Why can't you just be honest?'

‘I am being honest!' Elena heard herself shout. ‘And … and this – and everything else in my life – has absolutely nothing to do with you, Susannah! Nothing at all!'

Susannah's chin snapped back as if she'd been punched. ‘Fine,' she muttered. ‘But what about Graham?'

‘What about him?' She should have done what her instinct told her to do, and just gone, at dawn. This was exactly what she'd wanted to avoid.

‘Have you told Gray?'

‘I told you, he's away. Listen, I'm not expecting you to understand this, OK? I can see it probably does seem impulsive to you – but it's the right thing for me.'

‘Finishing your PhD is the right thing.'

‘You are not,' Elena growled, ‘my mother.'

Then before it could disintegrate any further, she turned and walked off, through the kitchen and into her room, shutting the door.

She half expected to hear Susannah's feet thunder after her. She wished the bedroom door had a lock. She sat on the bed. She could hear the warblers outside, and, far off, the waves. The condo was eerily silent. Susannah must have stayed in the yard. She ripped the elastic out of her hair, and scratched at her scalp with her nails. Her hands, she noticed, were actually shaking. Somewhere in the condo the phone trilled. She really had no idea why Susannah was being so intense. So possessive. It was crazy. They'd only been friends a few months.

She looked at the tapes and notes in unopened boxes around her. There was all the rest of it, too, in her office on campus: stacks and stacks of dolphin research. Perhaps Susannah was right. If she stayed, then in six months, maybe nine, she'd have a PhD. Then she could get a job and funding to research whatever she wanted. She could see why all this would seem lunatic.

But her life here was over. She didn't want a PhD. She couldn't spend any more nights in this condo. She needed to go north and listen to wild killer whales.

She got up off the bed, grabbed the chair and hauled down her backpack from the top of the wardrobe. It smelled stale inside. She began to shove things into it: her two thick winter jumpers, barely used since leaving Seattle six years ago, all four pairs of jeans, cut-offs, sneakers, her only pair of wool socks and walking boots, all her T-shirts, underwear. Telling Susannah had been a huge mistake. Susannah couldn't be expected to get this. Nobody could. Nobody except maybe Jonas and the others up there in British
Columbia, people whose names she didn't even know yet but who would understand.

At one point, as she stuffed handfuls of notes into a box, she heard Susannah call through the door – nervously, softly – with a light tap.

‘Elle?'

‘Yeah?'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘It's OK. It's fine. I'm sorry too.'

‘Can I come in?'

‘Maybe later, OK? I'm just packing right now. I'll come find you in a bit?'

There was silence, then she heard Susannah's bare feet shuffle away down the hall.

*

She'd leave everything in the garage and deal with it when the lease ran out. She got out a roll of trash bags, ripped one off, and began shoving her files and tapes into it – and as she filled each bag she felt a sense of growing lightness.

Graham would be OK. Better than OK. Without her, he would lead a successful and orderly life. She pictured him with a pretty English wife and several well-spoken children, a steady career in London or Edinburgh. Without her, his future would unfold as neatly as one of his architectural drawings.

When he had proposed, lying in his bed with his long arms around her, and his breath warming the crown of her head, he'd said, ‘We should get married because I'll be in London next year and I don't want to be without you.'

It sounded like an arrangement, but when she looked up she saw the hope in his fine grey eyes, and she said, carefully, ‘I don't think I'm ready for marriage, Gray. Nor are you. We're too young.'

‘Then I'll wait – as long as you want.'

For a moment she thought he might be about to cry, but of course, Graham never cried. He just looked at her, with his jaw set in determination. She closed her eyes and kissed him.

Telling him face to face would only make this harder for him. And she couldn't wait – she needed that ride. She needed to go. She kept the letter brief and factual.

She would mail it as she crossed campus at sunrise. Nothing else mattered now – not Graham, not Susannah, not the boxes stuffed with years of research or the wasted rent money or the abandoned office. Her tipping point had been reached; she was already gone.

Susannah washes her hands then puts on a striped apron. She rolls up her sleeves and I notice a rub of clay on her forearm as her silver bangles clink. Her face is ruddy from the fresh air.

Finn is on my lap, chewing a chunk of bread and attacking a notepad with a biro, mainly jabbing holes in it. Susannah takes a large steel chef's knife and begins to chop chives.

‘Are you sure I can't help you?'

She looks up at me, briefly, but doesn't reply. It's as if she's somewhere else, not even seeing me.

She looks more masculine in the daylight. She has a straight nose and a very firm chin. She is looking down, and the lines at the corners of her mouth make her look profoundly sad.

The dogs are in their beds by the window. One is sleeping, the other lies with ears half pricked, big eyes watching her in case she drops something edible. The hopeful
expression suddenly makes me think of Max. He was always in the kitchen with my mother, saucer eyes fixed on her hands as she cooked.

And then I remember how we dug the hole that awful spring evening. Alice was inside – maybe too young to cope with this grim task. I was about twelve years old. It was rare that my mother and I should do something without Alice and I remember, despite the awfulness of what we had to do, feeling glad that she chose me to help her and not Alice.

My parents got Max when they first arrived in England so he had been there since I could remember. In the earliest picture I've ever seen of myself, I'm about one, sitting on the floor next to Max as a puppy, both of us looking up, enthusiastically, at the camera.

My mother and I were both crying as we dug, carelessly shovelling through sprouting bulbs, slicing into daffodils or crocuses. But then, as we removed more layers of soil, her tears began to escalate. She sank onto her knees and her crying became a sort of rage – sobs vomited up one after the other, faster and faster, and I stopped crying then; I put a hand on her back but she just kept sobbing as if I wasn't there. Things were surging dangerously out of her, spiralling noises I'd never heard before, and I knew this couldn't be about Max any more.

I thought about running to the house and getting Alice, six-year-old Alice, or calling Dad at work, or maybe banging on a neighbour's door. But then, abruptly, she stopped. She straightened as if someone had injected her spine with
metal. She got up, and without even looking at me, she walked away, back into the house.

She left her spade in the dirt, and our dead dog, wrapped in a towel, by the half-dug hole. I finished digging the hole as best I could, and rolled him in. His body made a deep, echoey thud as it hit the bottom, and some of the towel came off so I could see the tip of his blond tail, and I had the urge to leap in, and unwrap him again, to check that he wasn't still alive, that this wasn't all a dreadful mistake. But I didn't. I scraped soil over him with the spade. The tip of his tail was the last thing to disappear. I went back into the house, took off my wellies and washed my muddy hands in the downstairs basin. My own tears had gone and my mind felt dense and heavy, like clay.

She wasn't in the kitchen. There is a stable door into the living room and the bottom half was shut. On tiptoe, I peered over the top. She was on the sofa with her back to me. Alice was in her lap. She was stroking Alice's silky hair with one hand. Alice looked up. She had a chocolate digestive in one hand. Our mother's face was buried in Alice's neck. There was chocolate round my sister's mouth.

*

Susannah's dog has given up hope of scraps. It has put its nose back onto its paws again. I have no idea why I'm sitting in this woman's kitchen, with these painful memories rising up in my mind. I should say something. It is rude to just sit here and watch her make us lunch, but I can't think of anything to say, and anyway she doesn't seem bothered by silence.

I wonder, again, about the things she must know about
my mother – and maybe about me. Did she know me as a baby? I have never even seen a picture of myself as a newborn. I suppose my parents lost any pictures in the move to England. Maybe Susannah has a picture of me somewhere. I should ask. I should also, of course, ask her about their relationship. Why not?

As an interviewer, I should be able to find the right questions. I should be able to put Susannah at her ease, open her up, get her to tell me more about my mother's past, their relationship – those California days. But I can't quite work out how to start. There is something deeply forbidding about Susannah, an invisible carapace. I should be able to crack this, of course – I interview people for a living, but the people I interview have volunteered to tell their stories. They want – need – to open up. Instinct tells me that if I ask Susannah directly about her relationship with my mother, I will get nothing.

Finn has finished his bread, and is now eating the biro, wriggling to get down off my lap.

‘OK.' I put him on the floor and take the pen out of his hand.

‘Mine!' he cries. ‘Mine!'

‘Hey! Look at the dogs.' I point at them. ‘I think they're hungry.'

‘Dog.' He toddles towards the sleeping retriever.

I get up and hover behind him as he waddles round the kitchen island, past Susannah's legs, and over to the dogs. He hurls himself face down on them, diving into a mound of fur. I am left standing next to Susannah.

‘He really loves your dogs.'

She says nothing.

The sky outside has darkened. The pines thrash as if trying to escape the murderous clutches of an invisible giant.

Then she looks at me, suddenly. ‘You eat eggs, don't you?' she says. ‘How's the stomach?'

‘Fine. Thanks. Fine now. I'm starving, actually.' I sense that it will irritate her if I offer to help again, but I feel as if I'm standing too close to her.

‘Shall I make us some tea?'

‘You English and your tea.'

I suppose she's right – it's obvious that I am filling an awkward gap with tea. She gestures with the knife tip at a cupboard above the sink. I go and open it, and move boxes of Yogi and Tazo teas around: peppermint. Zen. Chamomile. Calm. Chai. Jasmine Green. ‘Do you want some, Susannah?'

‘Nope.'

I decide against tea, and go and sit on the stool next to the island. I am not going to let her intimidate me. I think about asking if I can use her phone to call Doug. I imagine her shrug, ‘Sure,' and the gesture to the phone that's on the wall by the fridge. It would be impossible to talk to him with her in the room, and Finn bombing around. Even in the living room she'd hear everything – and I'd have to keep Finn off the ceramics in there. Her back is to me and she is reaching up into another cupboard with one strong arm.

Finn is still rolling around in the dog basket, giggling.

There's a bowl of almonds on the counter. It is wide and
white and decorated with swooping, moss-coloured birds. I take a few and crunch on them.

‘I did make that.' She nods at the bowl.

‘It's beautiful.'

She goes across to the fridge. She moves as if wading through water with an urn balanced on her head. It is odd that someone with such hard edges can make such a beautiful bowl, and move with such grace. Her wasp hair clasp is coming loose, slanting in a mass of greying waves.

‘Susannah.' I take a breath. ‘I've been wondering, about you and my mother. Were you very close?'

I see her jaw tighten. She gets out cheese and eggs.

It takes all my willpower to leave the silence hanging.

She puts the food down on the counter and comes over to the breakfast bar. Then she rests both hands on the edge of it. Her back is to Finn, which is good as he has his hands in the dogs' water bowl now, but I don't want to stop him because I don't want her not to speak. I can't look right at her because I know if I do I'll feel smaller – and then the balance will shift, and she won't talk to me the way I want her to. I gaze past her, at my son as he tips the water slowly onto the kitchen tiles, watching it pool and spread.

I can feel her eyes on my face.

I take another almond and crunch into it with my front teeth, very slowly, then look at the remaining half, in my hand.