The Missing One (40 page)

‘What?' Her head snaps up.

‘She said you'd done some sculptures of my mother's face. She said you and my mother travelled the world together.'

Susannah stops moving. She looks like an animal in the path of a predator. The cotton-wool feeling in my ears thickens. I have to stay upright. I know she's going to tell me something.

‘Oh, Maggie's been on anti-anxiety medication for years.' She waves a hand in the air and turns away. ‘She gets terribly confused, poor thing.' She laughs, an odd, tinkling, off-kilter sound.

‘Your “Elenas”. Are they here?'

‘They're in storage, I'm afraid,' she snaps.

I step backwards and sit, heavily, on a stool. I should ask her about the postcards, but I'm just too tired. I can't think any more. I can't do this. She's going to give me nothing. My arms feel as if I've been doing press-ups. The back of my neck is oddly tight. I rub it, but can't quite feel my own fingers. Finn squats at my feet, running his car up the cupboard door. He might scratch the paint, but I can't move to stop him. Susannah is watching him. She doesn't seem worried about the paintwork. I close my eyes. The world spins again, more violently this time. If I'm going to get ill, I need to get ill away from here. I can't let go – not here. I have to leave.

I have to call Doug. Doug needs to know. I need him to know.

‘Kali?' Susannah's voice is very far away, as if she's standing in a cave, out of sight. ‘Kali? Kali? Are you OK?'

My eyelids are sealed, and my throat feels as if someone has stuffed a small sock inside it. I try to swallow, but then I feel hands on my elbows. ‘Kali?'

I try to tell her I need to go – but I am not sure if the words actually come out of my mouth. I manage to open my eyes a crack as she helps me through to the living room – Finn toddles behind us – and onto the sofa.

‘It's OK, love, I'm just really tired.' My voice slurs – and I
try to hold out a hand to him, but Susannah's legs are in the way and my arm feels so heavy.

Finn is next to me now, his new duck cup in one hand, his ambulance in the other. His eyes are so big. I can see he is worried.

I feel my eyelids close and I can't get them open. ‘Everything's fine, love.' I am not sure if I say it out loud.

I feel a soft hand pat the top of my head and Finn's voice, close by, so clear. ‘Night night, Mama.'

Then I hear Susannah's voice, calm but chilly. ‘Let Mommy sleep now.'

When I wake up I am freezing cold, and stiff as an eighty-year-old. The light has changed – the room looks blurry and washed out.

I haul myself off the sofa. There is mist inside my head and I feel deeply sick. What time is it?

‘Finn?' I croak. ‘Where are you, love?'

I walk, unsteadily, through to the kitchen. The clock says 1.15. But it can't possibly be right. If that's the time then I've somehow slept for three hours again. Why didn't she wake me? Where are they? I lean back against the sink. My legs are unreliable, like the stalks of a young plant. ‘Susannah?' I rasp. ‘Is Finn OK? Are you there?'

I turn and gulp water straight from the tap. I wipe my mouth with the back of one hand. My head feels as if it's been stuffed with a wet cloth. I splash water on my face. I'm aware of it on my skin, but I can't quite feel it. It is as if I'm wrapped in an anaesthetizing blanket.

Her boots aren't by the French windows and the dogs
are gone. They must be outside looking at squirrels again. But it's raining steadily. The deck railing is hardly visible, let alone the path to the studio. The house is so cold. I touch my belly with both hands. Droplets run down the glass like tears. A chill spreads from my stomach, up towards my heart.

I look around the kitchen for a Post-it. My eyes move slower than they should, as if the muscles that anchor them in my skull are weakened too. I can't see any Post-it. But I remember last time. She'll have left one somewhere. Maybe there's a note by the sofa where I was sleeping.

I walk unsteadily back into the living room. There is nothing on the coffee table or the sofa. I move across to the large windows and press my nose to the cold glass – I can see the deck, slicked with rain, and the pines crowding towards the house, but no sign of them. It's too wet to be outside. She must have taken him down to her studio.

I suddenly have to pee. I walk towards the bedroom and push open the door.

Finn's cars are still scattered on the rug. The sight is reassuring, as if he is bound to come back for them at any moment. I go the loo, pee, splash more cold water on my face, gulp at it – I am intensely thirsty. It is freezing in here too. I grab Doug's navy jumper and haul it on as I come back out to the corridor. The overhead light buzzes faintly as if it contains a trapped wasp.

‘Susannah?' My voice echoes back at me. All I can hear is the distant moan of the wind, rain drumming on the roof, the gurgle of the toilet cistern and the persistent buzz of the light bulb.

Then I hear something, down towards the front door, a faint thud.

There they are! Finn will need a nappy change if she hasn't done it. Lunch too. I am impatient to hold him, now, to feel his warm body snuggled against me again and hear what he's seen this morning while I've been crashed out on the sofa. There's still plenty of time till the ferry. I hurry unsteadily through the living room. The corridor is empty and grey. The front door is shut. I sway, gently, by the sofa.

‘Susannah? Finn?'

I rub my head. It's like moving through liquid. I remember pregnancy tiredness. With Finn I'd fall asleep at eight every night. But I never slept like this during the day. Then again, I have to factor in jet lag. And stress. It all adds up.

I walk towards the kitchen again, hugging myself. She should have woken me. It occurs to me that they could be in her bedroom – in there with the door shut, playing a hiding game; that might be where the noise came from earlier. They might spring out ‘
Boo
!' when I come in. I spin round to go towards the corridor, but then I pause on the rug: something is wrong in here. I scan the room, afraid, suddenly, of what I might be about to see. The quilt is where I left it, folded on the sofa arm. The art books and magazines on the coffee table are still in piles. The fireplace has been cleaned out since last night. The abstract painting glows, rich greens and blues, above it.

And then out of the corner of my eye, I see the thing that
is wrong. There are splatters of deep red coming out from behind the sofa. I put my fingers to my lips and take in a sharp breath.

But it is not blood. I walk round the sofa, blinking. I am looking at chunks of deep red glass. I stare at the wreckage. It looks as if a fist has crashed down on the Chihuly orb. Curls and shards litter the floor behind the sofa, and smaller fragments have sprayed over the boards, like droplets of blood. Shit. Shit. I step backwards. Something stings my heel, a wasp sting. I bend and peer at it, then dig a sliver of glass from my bare foot. A bubble of blood follows it. I dab at it with my fingertips, but several more tiny drops plop onto the floor. The sharp pain follows.

I stare at the scattered red shards and then I think of Finn, reaching up to tilt it from its plinth. Shit. I press my heel down, and wince, but I need to wake up. I press it down again. I blink.

But this doesn't make sense. How could this possibly have happened while I was sleeping? There must have been a humongous shattering noise as the bowl hit the floor. I couldn't have slept through that. No way. I stare at the glass. The puncture in my heel throbs. I shake my head, just once. My mouth is very dry still. I press the sleeve of Doug's jumper onto my heel, pressing the little bulge of blood. Something is happening here, but I have no idea what.

*

Her bedroom is off this corridor, opposite the hall cupboard. I knock. Nothing. I knock again. I run a hand over my hair. I am probably going to have to pay for the Chihuly. I have a
feeling that they cost thousands. I could be paying for that Chihuly for years.

I imagine him yanking it down with both hands. She must have been angry. Would she get angry with Finn? Would she have shouted at him? She can't have or – surely – I'd have woken. Was he hurt? I think of him, surrounded by sharp pieces of red glass. I'd definitely have woken up if he'd cried in the same room. Where the hell are they?

I can't think about Finn crying without me, or Susannah being angry with him. I push these thoughts to the back of my mind.

‘Susannah? Finn?'

The wood floor is cold under my bare feet. I touch the handle with my fingertips, and listen. Rain drums on the roof. There are gusts of wind against the side of the house, and the crash of the ocean on rocks far away. I'm very thirsty still, despite all the water. The walls of the house shift and creak like a ship's hull. I turn the handle.

Tall windows along one wall let in a grey light. They must overlook the ocean, but of course nothing is visible through the rain. There are long white curtains, half open. The linen duvet, in a knot, has insects embroidered on it. There are books everywhere, piled by the bed, stacked on shelves, and of course ceramics, too, placed between books, or fixed to the wall. Above the bed is an oil painting of a woman, a seated nude, seen from behind. I look for the light. Above the switch there's a plate with a woman's angular face peering out from it, three-dimensional. I look closely, but it is not my mother's face.

My feet sink into the rug as I step into the centre of the room. It is bitterly cold in here – so cold that I can see my own breath, as I move across the floor. There's a South American wall hanging above a chest of drawers with a stack of colourful African-looking bangles in a woven basket. There are perfume bottles and a tree stand with silver necklaces looped over it. Clothes spill from a laundry basket. A pair of plain black knickers lies by the bed.

OK. So. They must be at the studio then. They are waiting for the rain to ease off before they come back to wake me up. I should not be in here.

There's a closed-up writing desk next to a door which I assume leads to a bathroom. It is one of those old-fashioned bureaus where you open it up to make the writing surface. There are framed photos along the top. I glance behind me.

Then I go across the room. I push the bathroom open – there are Moroccan blue mosaic tiles all across the walls and floor and a deep bath. The sink is a mess of combs and clasps and toothpaste oozing out of its tube, a toothbrush face down on the stained enamel, a ball of grey hair on the shelf where silver rings are scattered.

I glance at myself in the mirror. I look sunken-eyed and white and a bit puffy. I splash some more water on my face and dry it with a stained white towel.

Then I peek in the cabinet: a hairbrush with curling grey tendrils in its bristles, a pair of silver hoop earrings, Band-Aids, Advil, insect repellent and three or four more bottles of pills. I pick one up. The label says ‘Seroquel'. I have never heard of this or of the names on any of the other bottles.

Perhaps Susannah is sick. She looks healthy, but what if she is living with something awful, like cancer? A serious illness would explain her reaction to the memories I've forced her to confront. I've seen this before in people I have interviewed. Their life-threatening illness forces them to face painful memories that they have never come to terms with, and sometimes it's as if they're experiencing the emotions all over again. It is yet another cruel side effect of ill health.

But illness, of course, wouldn't explain Susannah's invention of travels with my mother, or her creation of my mother's ceramic face, ageing through the years. But maybe she was telling the truth when she said that Maggie was mixed up. Maybe there are no Elenas.

I shut the door, hugging Doug's jumper around me. One of the photos on the bureau is of the man I assume was her partner. I recognize him from the photo in the kitchen. He's unshaven and rugged, looking at the camera with weary, lined eyes. Then there are shots of her son as a baby, as a long-haired toddler. I need Finn. They have to be down at the studio. In a moment, I'll go down there and get him.

There is a gold trophy from a soccer tournament six years ago and a photo, in a silver frame, of a good-looking teen in a baseball shirt with a skateboard tucked under his arm. Next to it is an unframed snap of a whale, breaching out at sea – a bit blurry and far off.

They must be sheltering at the studio until the rain eases off. I have to stop panicking. There is still plenty of time for the six o'clock ferry.

The desk has a key in it. I turn it and open out the lid.

The first thing I see is a pot of pens and a glass paperweight with a wildflower trapped inside, but then I begin to take in the rest.

I am looking at a gallery of framed photos. And every single one is of my mother.

In one she's at a desk – maybe this desk – holding a pen. Her hair is long, hanging in waves over her shoulders, centre-parted; her expression is surprised, but pleased, as if the photographer has caught her in a good mood. There's a black-and-white shot of her on a boat, looking lean and fit in cut-offs, beaming and holding the mast, leaning out from it, making a triangular shape with her hair streaming over one shoulder.

In a third, a close-up of her face in colour, she looks sideways at the camera as if her name has just been called and she's about to turn her head. This one takes my breath away. She looks so young, but it is so like her too – there is disapproval in the eye, a look of masked irritation.

Tucked into this frame is a smaller picture of a toddler in a lifejacket, standing on a boat, with his chubby legs planted inside red wellies.

For a moment, I'm confused. I rub my face. It's Finn.

But no – of course it's not. This child's hair is different, darker, and this photo is obviously old – it is slightly blurry, and the colours have that saturated seventies feel. Perhaps Susannah has a nephew? He really does look like Finn – probably because he's a similar age, with the same chubby knees and wellies. But there is something deeply familiar
about the little heart-shaped face. I feel as if I know it – intimately.