The Missing One (27 page)

I feel as if she's leaned over and punched me. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. ‘Oh God. That's … that's … horrible.'

‘He was drunk and at the wheel of the car when the accident happened.'

‘What accident?'

‘When your grandmother was killed?'

‘My grandmother died in a
car accident
?' I realize then that I'd always imagined that my mother's mother died from some tragic and somehow old-fashioned illness, like tuberculosis. In the absence of facts, I have apparently invented a family medical history.

‘Wow,' Susannah says. ‘She really told you nothing, huh? Your grandparents were coming back from a night out in Seattle and he'd been drinking; he veered across four lanes and smashed into a tree. Your grandmother was thrown out of the car and died instantly. He staggered out with a few scratches. Your mother was eight years old at the time.'

‘Jesus.' I sit back. ‘This is horrific.' I don't want to ask the next question, but I make myself. ‘Was my mother in the car too?'

‘No. Of course not. She was home alone. She told me it got really late, and they didn't show up, and then the police came to the house. She hid in her mother's closet, because she was scared she'd done something wrong.'

For a moment, I can't speak. I picture my mother as a terrified, abandoned little girl, cowering in a closet on the night her mother died, and it is unbearable. This, presumably, is what my father wanted to tell me about, when he cornered me on the stairs. This would certainly explain my mother's erratic behaviour, her sadness about the past, her unwillingness to talk about it. She would have been badly damaged by such a childhood trauma.

I wonder if I have found the root of our issues at last. Perhaps something dark and unconscious was going on for her. Maybe I reminded her of herself as a child – we looked so similar. Maybe that was it. These things would explain, to some extent, why she couldn't cope with me but was always such an uncomplicated mother to Alice: tall, blonde, calm Alice. I suddenly want to call my sister. Does Alice know any of this? This is ghastly.

Worst of all is that my mother is gone and I will never be able to ask her about this or tell her that I understand, and I'm sorry. This explains why she leaped at the chance to marry my father and become English, and live in a Sussex village and paint and make shepherd's pies, and never, ever go back to the States. I look up at Susannah. She is watching me. She sinks her canines into a hunk of granary bread.

‘Thank you for telling me. This actually explains a lot,' I say.

She shrugs and chews. Then something occurs to me. What if my mother just pretended that her father was dead? What if he is in fact still alive? Could Harry Halmstrom be the man that Susannah has just described? Maybe he changed his name to Harry. But I'm being silly – how did he end up in Vancouver? Of course, Alice is right. I have to stop filling the gaps with my own stories.

‘What?' she says. ‘What is it?'

‘Nothing. It's just that, before I came here, I went to this old people's home in Vancouver. This probably sounds crazy to you – but I went to meet this old man because I thought he might be a relative. He's ninety-three years old, and his name is Harry Halmstrom and Halmstrom is a very uncommon name – so I wondered … But of course it couldn't be him because my grandfather is dead, isn't he? And his name wasn't Harry, it was Theodore. So I don't know why I thought … '

She puts the bread down. ‘You did
what
?' Her face has gone the colour of construction paper.

‘I know. It was a bit silly of me to think that just because of the name … I don't know why I went, but I suppose I was curious, because Halmstrom is an unusual name and … no, but really, the truth is I just needed an excuse to leave England.'

‘Your mother's father died.' She fixes her eyes on mine. ‘He died.'

‘Oh. Right. Well. Yes, I thought so. But the slightly disturbing thing was this old man seemed to recognize me – but maybe he didn't. He called me Elena. He also said lunatic
things about drowning and murder. My sister thinks I must have given him the name and he picked up on it. He was pretty senile, and extremely old.'

Susannah looks as if I've leaned across the table and slapped her.

‘Yes, well, I suppose it was a bit mad of me to go there.'

She closes her eyes and her nostrils flare. She is breathing deeply and slowly. I see her belly rise and then fall again. Yoga breathing. Lines bracket her mouth, her brow remains creased in a frown, and her neck is very straight. Her face is severe, even in repose, as if her features are lodged in their defensive positions. Then her eyes open again. ‘Your mother's father died just before she went to college, Kali.'

‘I know,' I say. ‘Anyway. Can you tell me anything more about my grandmother? What was Katherine like?'

She leans forward, elbows on the table. ‘Terrified of your grandfather, I'd imagine. Your mother told me he'd drink, come home, and hit her – on the body, not her face, so nobody saw the marks. People knew, of course – neighbours, friends – but no one did a thing to stop him. They just accepted that this was what some men did. Your grandmother sounded like a frightened person, but kind and loving. You know what, though, Kali? When I met Elena she was actually OK – despite all the crap. She'd been through it, but she was an incredibly resilient person. She was so strong. Some people can do that – they can defy the past. Your mother was one of those people. She was determined to live life and follow her heart and be afraid of nothing. I
loved that about her. It made her pig-headed, but she was so fearless.'

This doesn't sound like my mother at all. I think about her daily life – the school run, walking the dog, painting the sea again and again and again. Her life was all about routine, repetition and predictability. In fact, this drove me wild as a teenager. I wanted to push at her boundaries and break her boring rules. It was a pretty standard adolescent rebellion but now I know she came out here and chased killer whales across a wild ocean; took massive risks when she was not much more than a teenager herself. Why did she allow her life to get so small and domestic?

I think about my life in Oxford: my ever-shrinking job. Playgroup. Sainsburys. Mummy and Me Music. Fish fingers. I never did get to India. Despite everything, my life has become as domestic as my mother's.

Then again – where am I now? On the rim of a new continent, facing out.

I remember my father in the stairwell – his talk of ‘secrets'. And I make myself ask it because this is the only chance I'll ever get to know the truth.

‘Did my grandfather abuse my mother, Susannah?'

‘Oh no.' She looks at her hands on the table. ‘Not physically, if that's what you mean. It was more neglect, really. He was old-fashioned, strict and away a lot – he sold logging equipment. You knew that, right? He left her with strangers: sitters, neighbours. Then, from the age of about fourteen, he left her to fend for herself when he went away. He didn't drink so much after the accident, but she sure as hell didn't
like him. He had no idea what to do with a sad little girl. She told me that when he died she felt relief. I guess it's impossible to forgive the person who robbed you of your mother.' Her eyes suddenly flick to my face. She looks startled – guilty – as if she's said something appalling, and behind her eyes I glimpse the same twitching fear that I saw when I first walked into her house.

I wonder what has happened in Susannah's life to make her this way. Maybe all this – the beautiful house, the art, the thriving gallery – is her defiance of some equally nasty past. What sort of a mother did Susannah have? And what sort of a mother did she then become?

She pushes her hair back up into the wasp clasp at the base of her neck and glances over her shoulder, through the French windows. ‘There's a storm coming.' She closes her eyes and takes a long breath as if drawing the storm towards her. When she opens them, she does so slowly, her eyes rising up beneath lifting lids.

‘Kali,' she says, almost lazily. ‘Why did you have such a hard time getting along with your mother?'

‘Oh? I don't know. I really don't. It's hard to explain.' It's always like this when I try to describe my relationship with my mother – there is really no way to document it clearly, probably because I have never fully understood it myself.

‘Well,' she says. ‘How about you give me some examples.'

‘Oh. I don't know … OK. The thing is, she could be great, she really could – a great mother. When she was on my side it felt amazing. When I was about fourteen I was suspended from school for writing rude things about my geography
teacher. My mother and I sat in the head teacher's room together, and she had to read this thing I'd written. I was quite scared, waiting for her to get angry. The head teacher said some sanctimonious things, but my mother still just sat there. Finally, she looked at him and said, “If you're going to teach them this sort of language you should at least teach them how to spell the words properly.” '

Susannah's face lights up. ‘Yeah, right. She was never very good with authority figures.'

‘Yes, well, what I mean is – she was complicated. We were complicated together. She could be on my side, like that, totally an ally. But it never lasted. I just never knew where I was with her. We could be fine and then this cloud would descend and she'd withdraw as if I'd committed a horrible crime and she couldn't bear to look at me, or be anywhere near me. That was undermining. It felt unsafe. It probably made things harder that she and Alice got on so well. The two of them were completely harmonious. But I suppose we just clashed. People do, don't they? We brought out the worst in each other.'

‘Huh.' She nods. ‘So that's why you're obsessed with her then? You thought she didn't love you enough?'

‘What? No. I don't know if I'm
obsessed
. And I don't think she didn't love me enough. I know she loved me. It's just … it's a lot more complicated than that.' But I feel the old resentments begin to surface. It all seems worse now that I am a mother myself. Even if I had ten children I can't imagine ever allowing Finn to believe that I preferred one of his siblings.

Susannah is still looking at me, eyebrows raised. I feel as if she is rather enjoying watching me wrestle with all this at her kitchen table.

I make my voice lighter. ‘I really was a vile teenager and Alice was angelic: clever, pretty, talented, helpful – much, much nicer. I don't blame her for preferring my sister. Frankly,
I
prefer my sister too.'

‘Oh. Sisters.' Susannah wipes her hands, gets up, and picks up the plates. ‘Fucking poisonous things. I have one myself. Haven't seen her in nineteen years.' Her tone is brutal. I look at her, probably with horror, and she stares back at me, chin up. Instantly, I feel the need to defend Alice.

‘None of this is my sister's fault,' I say. ‘She didn't ask to be the good girl. She always tried to include me and smooth things over. She was always quite protective of me, in a way, even though I'm the big sister and it should be the other way around. It must have been a nightmare for her to be stuck between me and my mother all the time.' My voice wavers. Behind Susannah the sky is almost dark.

‘Huh, well, I guess there are worse things in life than not being your mother's favourite.' She walks towards the sink. She obviously doesn't get any of this and I can't expect her to. But I wonder, again, what sort of childhood Susannah had.

She is completely right. I do sound like a spoiled, middle-class whinger. I have to stop chasing my mother like this. It's too late – manifestly too late.

Susannah is filling the sink with water. Once again, she
is in control. She's getting information out of me, and not the other way around.

‘You'd be really good at my job.' I get up and gather our plates, fighting the urge to slam them together. And then, of course, she asks what I do for a living. I follow her over to the sink. After I've told her about the website, she asks questions about my social psychology degree, interviewing techniques, the research behind the website, the funding. When she hears that it is partly funded by the NHS and Oxford University, she looks impressed. ‘I guess people like hearing about other people's sicknesses,' she says.

‘Ultimately,' I say, ‘everybody just wants to tell their story, no matter how awful that story is.'

‘Well, I don't,' she says. For a moment, our eyes meet. This time she's the one to look away. She squirts in washing-up liquid and plunges her hands into the boiling water. ‘You like your work.'

‘Actually, it's become a bit frustrating since I had Finn. It's impossible to do it properly. I only work one or two days a week now, so I tend to get given things that no one else wants to do. And I don't even feel like I do those properly.'

‘Well, work more then.'

‘It's really not that simple. I mean, I want to be there for Finn too. I want to be a good mother for him.' She doesn't say anything. I'm sure she's thinking I'll never be that.

‘Where's the baby's father in all this?'

‘Oh.' I glance at my wedding ring. ‘Oh. Well, I … I don't really want to talk about Doug … '

She turns to me, wiping her hands, watching my face. I
can feel her taking in my features, lingering here and there. Her eyes soften, and it suddenly occurs to me that when she looks at me like this, she's looking at my mother's face and not mine – or at least, at the echoes of my mother's face in mine. My mother would have been younger than I am now when Susannah last saw her. I feel a shiver pass over my skin as if she has reached out to stroke me.

‘When you look at me like that I feel a bit like one of your exhibits.' I laugh, and turn away to hang up a saucepan.