Whatever You Love (25 page)

‘You want to pay,’ I repeat.

One corner of his mouth lifts. ‘You want me, over the cliff.’ He speaks the words heavily but his expression has lightened a little, is almost sardonic.

Yes, yes, that is what I want. I want you as dead as my daughter
is dead. I want you wiped off the face of the earth
. I stare at him.
I wonder what you love
, I think. Your nephew? Possibly, but it might not have been love that made you save him, that night in the forest, it might have been simply need, a need to save yourself. How can I know? You may not even know yourself. Maybe the things that have happened to you have wiped all love from your life. Is there anything left to kill? What would I have been killing if I sent you over the cliff, in the dark? It comes to me that in all the maelstrom of hatred and madness since Betty went away, I have never seriously wanted or imagined him dead. I have wanted to hurt him, not kill him – there is only one person I have ever wanted to kill. I rise from my chair and leave the room, to go to the sitting room. When I return, he has not moved. I hold out what is in my hand, a small collection of envelopes, mostly white, one yellow. He looks at them but does not take them. I put them down on the kitchen table, between us, then lift my hand and almost touch his shoulder. I sit down and, as we regard each other, I say, ‘Mr Ahmetaj.’ He looks at me in surprise at the sound of his name. ‘You have told me – your story. I want to tell you something too.’ He nods, uncertainly, and I think of how he carried me in his arms from the clifftop down to the trailer when he could have shoved me over the edge. He is strong, and I am as bony as a baby bird these days. For some reason, I think how that is how my father might have carried me as a young child, if he had lived, and how people who grew up with fathers must sometimes envy their younger selves all that protection. At least I have no protected self to envy. Ahmetaj looks at me, waits for me to speak.

It is David who calls, a week later, just after midnight. I am in Betty’s bed but awake, of course, lying on my back and staring at the ceiling. I hear the phone ringing downstairs and scramble from the bed. Midnight. I had thought I was fully awake but as I clump swiftly, clumsily down the stairs I realise I must have been dozing because what I am thinking is,
something
must have happened to one of the children
. The phone stops before I get there but I stand over it, breathing heavily, waiting for it to ring again. When it does, I snatch it up.

‘Laura,’ David’s voice is low and needy, thickened with distress.

‘Darling, what is it?’ I haven’t called him
darling
for years, but I know from the way he says my name, and the late hour, that something – and a sickening thought occurs. ‘Oh no, oh no, it’s not Rees?’

‘No, no, Rees is asleep. I’ve just given Harry a feed. I can’t belong.’ His voice is so choked I can hardly hear what he is saying. Belong? Then I realise what he said was be long. ‘I’m sorry, there’s other people here. It’s difficult but I just need, I need to tell you. It’s Chloe, Laura. She’s disappeared.’

‘What?’

‘She’s gone. We had an argument last week, a terrible one, that’s why I’ve not been in touch, but I thought things were getting better, I thought things were improving. I was worried but I thought everything was fine. She went out for her walk. I’ve been encouraging it, the walking. They said it was good for her to get out as much as possible, gentle exercise. They found her car, in the car park.’

‘David…’

‘Her handbag was in her boot. It had everything in it. Purse, mobile. There were some books she said she was taking back to the library on the back seat.’

‘What about the car keys?’

‘No.’

‘Then…’ I stop myself. I was about to say, then she was planning on coming back to the car, probably. If she wasn’t planning on coming back, wouldn’t she have left the keys in the ignition or the boot? Isn’t that what people do?

‘Are the police there or do they have to wait twenty-four hours or something?’

‘No, Toni’s been earlier, she’s not here now. Normally you have to wait but considering. They took a statement from me this evening but I’ve been with – I’ve only just had a chance to call you. I’ve just given Harry his feed. They’ve already talked to the doctor, Laura. What am I going to do?’

‘I’ll come over.’

‘No,’ his voice is sharp. ‘No, don’t, it wouldn’t be a good idea. I’m sorry, I just really needed to talk to you. Oh God, Laura, I can’t do this, not after Betty. I just can’t. I know I should have been more sympathetic and listened to her more. I’ve always been frightened for her, Laura, right from the start. Why would she leave her car in the car park and not even take her phone or any money?’ I can hear him struggling with himself. ‘I begged her to take something, Laura, to get a prescription for something, anything, I begged her to do that or get help and I’m frantic but I’m angry, I’m so fucking, fucking angry.’ His voice is harsh, the words running close and hard together. ‘Me, Harry, Rees, for fuck’s sake, doesn’t she think we’ve been through enough? I’m sorry. You’re the only one I can say this to. I don’t want to sound callous but I’m just so
fucking
angry.’ He puts his hand over the receiver and there is muffled talk in the background, then he comes back to me and says, ‘Sorry, it’s gone midnight. God, that has so little meaning. Were you asleep?’

‘Who’s there?’

‘I’ll feel terrible if you were asleep.’

‘No, darling, of course not. Of course I wasn’t asleep.’

There is a long silence on the end of the phone. When he speaks, his voice is calmer. ‘I have to go.’

‘I know, it’s okay. I’m here. Call me.’

‘I will. Bye.’

I put the phone down gently, very gently.

*

I leave the house at first light. Rees will be coming home soon, after this – I feel a surge of joy at the thought. I drive through town, along the wind-whipped esplanade. The shops are still shuttered and the streetlights still on, throwing half-orange patches of light around the grey dawn. The sea crashes ceaselessly, waves topped with white froth. A little freezing rain is falling, lightly. I drive to the car park at the bottom of the clifftop rise and pass it slowly but there are no cars in it at all and no sign of a police cordon or any evidence of investigation. I drive back into town and take the one-way system, out on the main road that leads to the caravan park.

I park in the tiny car park with the squat square building and walk up the grass rise. I don’t know what I am going to do if they are still there but, in my heart of hearts, I know they won’t be. Sure enough, I see, as soon as I reach the crest of the rise. The cars are gone, even the ones I thought were wrecks. The washing lines have been taken down. The caravans are securely locked, curtains drawn. All is neat and tidy. The whole group has gone. They have not waited for me, or the police, or the gangs of youths in town with the half-bricks and bottles. I think about the women. I think about the smiling one in the warehouse, the one who tossed the zip into the bin so casually, just doing her job, just getting on with it and chatting to her friend. I think of the plump grandmother on the cliff, her face carved with so much. I think about the sombre middle- aged one who stared at me at the crematorium with a look that suggested she could guess what I was really like. I don’t think of Ahmetaj or the nephew or any of the men. I think of the sombre woman, of how she would have received the news of their departure, how she would have set about pulling clothes from a washing line with swift, efficient movements, folding them with one quick motion, her mind running swiftly through everything that must be done.

I do not linger. I do not know who else might turn up soon. All I can do now is go home and wait until it is time to call David.

*

It is Toni who brings Rees home. He is very excited to have a lift in a police car. He clings to me like a bush-baby for ten minutes and then snaps out of it, jumps down, runs around the house, from room to room shouting at things, the way he used to do whenever we came back from holiday.

I look at Toni. ‘How is David?’ I ask.

She looks back at me, with a gaze I cannot fathom. We are standing in the hallway and she gestures into the kitchen.

As we descend into the kitchen, she asks for a drink of water, then watches me while I fill a glass at the tap. When I have handed it to her, she takes a sip, then puts the glass down, says quietly, ‘Laura, when was the last time you had any contact with Chloe?’

I look back and say, ‘I don’t know, the wake, I suppose. I saw her at Willow’s wake.’

‘Have you spoken to her on the phone since then?’

I have to think about this one. There have been the withheld calls, the silent messages, the sigh, but no, I haven’t spoken with Chloe. ‘No, no… I’ve spoken with David obviously.’

‘I understand he told you a bit about Chloe’s problems.’

‘The post-natal depression, yes.’

‘Did he tell you anything else about their relationship?’

‘Only that he was worried about her.’ Any minute now, I think, she is going to flip open a notebook. But she doesn’t write anything down. She just asks me questions in that plain, direct voice, looking at me with that plain, direct gaze.

Rees charges into the kitchen and jumps up at me. I catch hold of him, lift him, and he kicks his legs with glee. Toni turns to go, then turns back. ‘Harry, the baby,’ she says to me, ‘how old is he?’

She must know the answer to this. ‘Eight months?’ I suggest, ‘Thereabouts.’

She nods, and turns to leave.

*

Chloe’s disappearance relegates the news of Ahmetaj’s downgraded charges to page three of the local paper. It is Chloe who is the front-page story. The photo they run of her is not flattering – her delicate features do not reproduce well, making her appear pinched. Her hair is drawn back in the photograph. Although she is in a party dress and it is clear the photograph was taken at a social occasion, she is not smiling. There is a quote from David, about his distress. There is another quote, from the police, saying they are keeping an open mind, but the fact that her handbag was left in the car is naturally a cause for concern and, reading the piece as if I know nothing about it, I know what conclusion I would draw.

On page three of the paper, there is a long column about Ahmetaj and the fact that a large group of the clifftop-site residents have moved on. Immigration officials have expressed concern that some of the group have moved on to avoid detention. Ahmetaj had not yet been informed that he was about to be charged with failing to stop at the scene of an accident. Now the charge has been issued and he has gone, there is a warrant out for his arrest.

I know they won’t find him. I saw it in his eyes, the night he came to my house, that here was a man who knew how not to be found.

*

Rees and I attempt to re-establish some sort of routine. It is so good to have him back, and now I do, I miss him far more than I did when he wasn’t here. I take him to nursery with the greatest of reluctance and only because I think it’s important for him to stick to the routine. When he is home, I can hardly bear to be in a different room from him and follow him if he runs off to his bedroom. I realise that I have got through the time without him by blanking him out, using my grief and anger as a smokescreen – but in the face of the compact, joyful reality of my boy, the smoke clears at last. Here is my son, my beautiful, living son. I have so much to make up for to him.

When he is back from nursery, in the afternoons, I am more attentive than I have been at any time since we lost Betty. We go on walks together – the weather is improving enough to make that an enticing prospect. We go shopping, go to cafés. He begins to talk to me about Betty in a way that is different from before. He hasn’t used the past tense yet, but it is apparent he has absorbed that his big sister will not be returning, that he has lost his unknowingness. Once or twice, I catch him with a distracted air, staring at nothing, and I think how this is one of the many beauties of children his age, the way their thoughts flit across their features, how you can almost hear the cogs turning. I wonder at what point we learn to withhold ourselves – gradually, over a period of time, I suppose – the capacity to manipulate must come to us in pieces, before we even understand what that capacity is and just how much it can achieve.

One afternoon, as Rees and I are having an early supper together in the Captain’s Fish Table, I raise the subject of Chloe. Rees has had chicken nuggets from the children’s menu and I have ordered haddock and chips even though I know that after a few bites, my stomach will turn. I have lost the capacity to digest grease. I have just peeled the batter off my haddock and placed pieces of fish on Rees’s plate, quietly, while we talk. There is a chance he will eat it by mistake. I look at the fish on his plate surreptitiously, the tiny black veins in the white flesh.
My mouth corrupts me
. I pick up a chip with my fingers and try to dunk it in the small bowl of ketchup between us but it is already cold and when I push it into the sauce, it buckles.

‘Did you like living with Daddy and Chloe?’ I ask, with my mouth full in order to make the question sound casual.

Rees looks at me suspiciously. ‘Chloe cried a lot but she let us have Cheerios. Every morning.’

‘Us?’

‘Me and Daddy.’

‘I didn’t know Daddy likes Cheerios.’

Rees nods solemnly, pleased to have superior knowledge of his father’s breakfast habits.

‘Why did Chloe cry?’

Rees shrugs. Why do grown-ups do anything?

‘Did they talk about Betty at all?’

‘Not really,’ he says. ‘They talked about how when Harry did a poo once it came out of the sides on to his sleepy-suit.’

After this, Rees talks about Harry for the rest of the meal. He put a Smartie in Harry’s mouth and Chloe started shouting and Daddy said No, Rees, no, and it wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know babies weren’t allowed Smarties. When Daddy put his finger in and pulled the Smartie out then Harry started crying so he must have liked it and he thinks they were being mean not to let him have it. Harry sits up, and can clap, but you still have to put a cushion behind him in case he falls backwards. He likes watching TV. He claps a lot then. He likes Rees best of all. Rees can make him laugh even when Daddy and Chloe can’t.

Rees is clearly besotted. ‘When can we see Harry?’ he asks no less than three times during the meal.

‘Do you miss Chloe, now she’s gone away?’ I ask casually, after we have finished our first course and are waiting for his ice cream and my coffee.

He frowns, shrugs. ‘She’s quite nice. She’s good at drawing. Her spaghetti has bits in. It’s too spicy. She gave it to me once. I could taste spice.’

*

David is off work and could, in theory, be accompanying Rees and me on some of these outings, bringing Harry along, but I don’t push it. I know he will be absorbed in the hunt for Chloe, in talking to her friends and family, helping Toni, so I wait for him to contact me. The poster appeals round town, the police enquiries – so far, nothing has yielded results. The follow-up reports in subsequent editions of the local paper hint at Chloe’s personal difficulties. David rings me most days, ostensibly to talk to Rees and to update me on what is happening but I know he needs me and eventually pluck up the courage to say, ‘Why don’t we take the boys out together tomorrow?’

Gradually, over the next couple of weeks, we begin to spend more time together. We take the boys for walks on the beach. We avoid the cliffs. We discover that eight miles away, in a village called South Ketton, there is a new playground with climbing frames made of old wooden planks and tyres on ropes.

*

One day, I go with David to the police station. Toni has asked David to drop in so that she can update him about the search for Chloe and for some reason she has asked me along. It is an awkward, unproductive conversation. We sit either side of a table in a small interview room. To the right of the table is a television on a stand. Rees and Harry are with us and Rees keeps looking at the television and nudging me, wanting me to ask Toni if he can watch something. I keep shushing him, shaking my head – under other circumstances, I would make a joke about it but the situation is too serious. Chloe had other bank and credit cards apart from the ones in her purse that day but no money has been withdrawn from any of her accounts. Nothing has turned up in the coastguard reports. The weather was very bad – fog out at sea, and icy rain – there have been no reports of anyone seeing her leave the car park or walk along the cliffs. David keeps his face very still as Toni tells us this. Sitting next to Toni is a male police officer in plain clothes who says nothing but when I glance at him I have an odd, uncomfortable feeling, as if he is watching me but has looked away in the second before I look at him.