The Missing One (4 page)

She didn't get up to cook or take me to the beach, so I spent a lot of time lodged in the apple tree, watching the cars as they came down the village towards the signpost outside our house. I invented a game of guessing which way they'd turn, and I'd keep score by slashing the bark with a penknife every time I got one wrong. Sometimes she sent me up to the shop on my own for bread or milk, and I remember trying to make toast and not knowing how to work the toaster, so holding the bread in with a fork. That was the only time I remember her actually moving: her feet thundering towards me.

My father was presumably aware of the problem, because he'd take me for a drive or an ice cream at weekends. But he probably didn't have a clue what to do about any of it.

I should have taken against Alice. That would have been a healthy response to a new baby rival, but I didn't. I remember feeling protective of this strange little woodland creature, not quite in the world yet.

There were other episodes afterwards, as we got bigger, when my mother would stay in bed all day with her face turned to the wall, her hair massed on the pillow like dead leaves and I would try to make things better. I'd take toddler Alice to the swings or tidy up the kitchen, or pick flowers and put them in a jam jar by her bed. Then, at some point, these episodes didn't happen any more and I was older, almost a teenager. But my resentment had stacked up by then. I knew I couldn't trust her, and that's when the big fights started. Alice and I really did have very different mothers.

*

Several people come up to me after the service to give condolences, and coo over Finn, who bombs around grabbing handfuls of flowers, pinging off people's legs, dodging pats on the head, grabbing and tugging at things. No one mentions the poem, but several people say, ‘You really do look like your mum.' A woman about my mother's age, with hennaed hair and Peruvian earrings, tells me that my mother's art should be exhibited. ‘She was a wonderful artist and a wonderful friend.' She touches my arm and our eyes meet. Hers are kind, the colour of soft leather. ‘I know you two had issues, but she always talked very proudly of you and her beautiful grandson.'

I feel my throat constrict, and for a second it strikes me that this woman must be the magic link to my mother – she will find my mother for me, and bring her back. She hands me a tissue and says, ‘I'm so sorry, Kal.'

*

The morning light is pale and the kitchen windows are fogged. I can see the outline of the apple tree; its bare claws sway in the wind. Alice is by the sink with her back to me. Her hair is swept up off her neck and she is on her mobile. Finn has both arms wrapped around me and is still sleepy and snugly. The tiles are cold underfoot and I wish I had thick socks. The heating hasn't kicked in yet but I am in a warm old jumper of Doug's with the sleeves rolled up. I took it without thinking. It smells of Doug.

It is not even 6.30 but Alice has obviously been going through our mother's papers: documents and files are strewn over the kitchen table. I wonder if she slept at all. She is so diligent and so desperate to do the right thing all the time – she always has been.

I know she has to go back to the office today, but as far as I know no one will be there when she gets home tonight to make her dinner and hold onto her while she cries for our mother. She stands pluckily at the sink in leggings and an oversized sweater, nodding into her phone. Her neck looks fragile beneath the weight of her head.

I will have to leave too. Only I can't go home. It's impossible to imagine even standing in the same room as Doug right now. I have to find somewhere else to go. Alice would have us to stay. I try to imagine myself and Finn in her clean white flat.

‘That's just not realistic,' Alice snaps.

‘Down.' Finn squirms and I press my hand against his thigh, feeling its doughy give. ‘Down!'

‘How about you sit in here, in your chair, and we'll have
some breakfast first, eh?' I slot him swiftly into his portable high chair.

‘We can't do that,' Alice says, curtly. She turns, looks at me over her shoulder, and raises her eyes to the ceiling. Who is she talking to at this time in the morning? Nobody seems to sleep any more.

‘Down!' Finn slaps both hands on to the high-chair table then looks down at them – two chubby starfish. He slaps again, rather pleased by the noise.

‘You just sit there for a minute, love, and I'll get you some milk.' I hurry to the fridge, scraping my hair into a ponytail with the hair tie that was round my wrist. Finn watches me, edgily, as I fill his sippy cup, then he seizes it with two hands, and sucks on the spout, looking up at me from under his fringe. I kiss the top of his head and start to cut bread.

‘Is Dad asleep?' I mouth when Alice turns around again.

She gestures towards the study.

Where else? Even at this time of the morning, the day after the funeral, he is up and working too.

I shouldn't be surprised, since this has been my father's response to almost any difficult situation for as long as I can remember: retreat and work. Go to London. Work a bit more.

But I am being unfair. He is reeling. Last night was awful. Why shouldn't he cling to anything that will keep him upright? The moment she died, a grey veil dropped over his face, and now he is halting and unsteady, as if the blood is no longer pumping quite so efficiently around his body. He
did what he promised to do in his guilt letter: he loved and looked after her until the end.

Of course, nothing will be said about our encounter on the stairs. For as long as I can remember, my father and I have avoided discussing anything remotely personal. I imagine he will be mortified. I wonder how he is going to organize his life now. He can't come down here at weekends to a cold and empty house. I imagine him driving down the village street and letting himself into the echoing hallway every Friday night. He can't. Surely he'll sell. Without her, our family home is just bricks and flint constructed around an unbearable, swollen absence.

I butter Finn's toast, spread it with Marmite and slice it into soldiers. He takes one, and examines it as if it is a fascinating artefact. Then he crushes it in his fist. His hair is all over the place, tangled into fuzzy knots at the back, his fringe too long, and beneath it his eyes are wide and dark-lashed – Doug's chocolate-brown. He shoves a bit of toast into his mouth. I lean over and smooth his hair out of his eyes.

And without warning I'm back there, by our bed, holding Doug's phone, reading the two texts that have changed everything. How could he do this?

There is a cafetière on the table and I grab it, and pour myself some of Alice's thick coffee and sit down next to Finn, swigging at it. Alice drinks coffee all day. This is like treacle, growing cold. It can't be good for her. No wonder she doesn't sleep. I should eat something, but since I found Doug's phone, I have felt slightly sick most of the time. But I
am so tired. I just want to go back to bed. I rub my face with both hands. I need a shower. Badly. Coffee.

Alice comes over, stands by the table and holds up a finger at me. ‘I don't think that's realistic,' she says into her phone. It's strange to see her dominant and brusque. My little sister, I realize, is probably quite intimidating in a work environment.

I have no idea how she could possibly focus on work right now. Still nodding into her phone, she points with one elbow at what looks like an old jewellery box on the table.

She will want to divide everything up. Alice is obsessed with fairness. Maybe it's a lawyer thing – or perhaps it is the old guilt at being the preferred daughter.

‘Yes, quarterly.' She gestures at the box again. Then she holds one hand over her phone. ‘I found that,' she hisses, ‘in the back of her wardrobe. I think it's just a few bits and pieces from her university days in California – but do you want any of it?' She takes her hand off the mouthpiece again. ‘What's the spend on that?'

It is about the size of a shoebox but less deep, and covered in blue velvet. The corners are worn and the material has faded unevenly, with an oblong mark pressed into the padded lid as if it has been wedged behind something for years.

Finn chews his toast. His cheeks bulge like a hamster's; he looks at me expectantly.

‘Is that toast
really
good?' I say. He grins.

Then slowly, I open the lid.

An ivory carving about the size of a matchbox sits on top
of a folded notebook. I lift it out and hold it up to the light. It is a fish-like creature with a hollowed belly and curling lines carved on its body. Something squats inside it. I peer at it from a different angle and realize that I'm staring into a leering human face, or almost human, an oversized block-shaped thing with two big eyes and a grimace that shows tiny, square teeth. For a moment I feel as if it's alive and might bite me. I put it down.

Then I pry out the notebook. The cover won't straighten. The paper is the colour of weak tea but her neat high-school cursive is unmistakable. It is the one thing from her American past that she never managed to shake off.

I am looking at a string of vowels – ‘eeeeoooup'. I turn the page. There is a list of times in one column, starting at 06.00 and going to 18.18. Opposite the times are more vowel-heavy sounds, with notes – ‘pectoral slap', ‘simultaneous dive', ‘B breach'. I flick forwards a few pages – some scientific jargon, more odd observations: ‘tail lob', ‘fluke lift', ‘still'.

*

I haven't thought about all this in years. It is easy to forget that my mother was once a scientist. I don't know if I ever even asked her what her abandoned doctorate was about – marine biology, I know; dolphins, I think. But I probably never asked her for specifics because she was always so prickly about her past. As I got older I realized that her abandoned research was a source of deep regret and possibly shame. This, presumably, caused the early bouts of depression. It is a common enough story: an intelligent, energetic woman forced to drop the career she is passionate about and live
a life of domestic boredom. No wonder she was depressed. When I was a teenager I decided that since I was the reason she had to give up her PhD, I must be the root cause of her unhappiness. The last thing I wanted to do, after that, was to dredge it up for her.

Now, of course, I can see that it must have been more complicated than this. There was an undiagnosed postnatal depression for a start. But it's too late now. I'll never really know why she was so sad and I'll never know what interested her about dolphins, or why she gave up her PhD, and never worked again. They have marine biology departments on this side of the Atlantic too, but she would never even take us to the aquarium. I will never know, now, about her childhood, or my grandparents, or why she disliked her father so much that she refused even to talk about him.

I can't imagine why she kept this ancient notebook. Why on earth would she want a reminder of a period of her life that she had tried so pathologically to forget? I flick forward and back a few times in case there are revelations or diary entries, but it really is just scientific notes.

Still, it is odd to hold this proof of her past in my hands. I have always felt as if this first part of her life, the bit before she married my father and brought me to England, when she was American and young and free and a scientist, never really happened. My father behaved as if she wasn't invented before he brought her to England. And she never seemed particularly American – though traces of an accent always haunted her speech – and there were the peanut
butter and jelly sandwiches that she called PBJ and put in our lunchboxes every day.

She used to wrap them in acres of cling film. It would take us half the lunch hour just to pry them open. She did this with other packages and envelopes too. She used feet of sellotape wound round and round as if readying the envelope for a war zone rather than the sorting office. You'd actually need tools to get into them: Stanley knives, sharp scissors.

For a second I sit, reeling. It is as if someone has opened me up, scooped my insides out and left a pulsing hole. I want my mum. I want her back. She cannot have gone. This is just not possible.

I lay the notebook next to the carved fish thing. The walls swoop in and then out, and I feel quite sick. I try to focus on something outside my body. I'm looking at her painting. It has always been here so I hardly see it now. But it is actually a fantastic bright picture, in greys and blues, of Brighton pier – the living one – with waves crashing towards the eye and white foam flying up, alight with sun. I make myself breathe in and out.

‘Are you OK?'

Alice is off the phone now.

‘I was,' I take another big breath, ‘just thinking about the PBJs – the cling film. And the sellotape – all the sellotape she used when she posted things … ' Alice sits down, heavily, next to me. We look at each other and then we both start to cry. We grip each other's forearms and crumple.

‘Mamamama!' Finn sings. He bashes his cup on the high
chair. ‘Maaaaamaaa. Mammam!' I push back my hair as it is coming loose, and I wipe at my face with the backs of my hands. Alice does the same and we both turn blotchy smiles on him.

‘Alish?' He flashes her his best grin. He has always, practically from the moment they first met, seen Alice as a personal challenge. He can feel both her unease and her adoration, and makes a point of offering her his most irresistible smiles.

Alice wipes her eyes, gets up and runs a hand gently over his hair.

He stuffs some more toast into his mouth.

She bends down and smiles at his level. He offers her some chewed toast and Marmite, crushed in his fist. ‘Oh yum,' she says, pretending to take a bite. He thrusts it closer, leaving Marmite on her reddened nose.

*

A white knitted square lies on the bottom of my mother's jewellery box. I pick it up and pricks of light shine through the fine stitches. I turn it over. Embroidered, in blue thread, is a curling
K
.