A Kind of Vanishing (26 page)

Chris nodded sagely as she gazed at the open cupboard. It was crammed with clothes. At the bottom were plastic bags out of which Chris could see folded garments peeping: jumpers, tee-shirts, some with labels still attached. At the top was a charnel house of soft toys, beige, fawn and brown.

‘Most of this is new,’ Chris exclaimed, before she could stop herself.

‘I see things she’d like, dresses she’d look so pretty in, tops and such. I can’t resist them.’

The cupboard, packed with toys and clothes, was a shrine to a well-dressed, well-loved child. Chris recognised a shirt identical to the one she had worn about six years ago. Her mother had got it out of her catalogues. As a child Chris had learnt to submit to keeping things because they fitted, for it was she who would have to take them to the post office if they were too big, too small or just too horrible. Nowadays, she bought her own clothes, scouring charity shops or spending hours in Red or Dead, and dressing just how she wanted. Chris had always suspected that Alice bought her the clothes she would have liked to wear herself. Here was the living proof. A whole bloody wardrobe awaited her.

‘There’s something you should know…’ But Mrs Howland was speaking:

‘It’s not that I don’t know how it looks. I know she’s gone. I like, just for a little while, to feel what it’s like to choose something for my daughter. I get such pleasure, you know, well you will know. The cashier thinks I have a little girl, and so we can share the experience. Now I tell them she is a grandchild, a godchild. I’m too old to be her mother. Just to stroke the cloth and agree how hardwearing the cotton is, shake our heads at the scrapes they get into. I let myself be that person for a little while.’

‘My Mum still gets cross if I stain my clothes, she still treats me like a kid,’ Chris replied without thinking as she knelt before the mound of plastic bags.

‘The sales people are happy to go along with you. They only say what you want to hear. They are meant to make the customer comfortable, so that we enjoy what they call the buying process. I did a course on selling, for a job in Hanningtons, oh, this was years ago. Before Steve died. My back couldn’t take the standing…besides I didn’t like leaving the house empty every day.’

‘Did Alice wear any of these clothes?’

‘All the things on this side.’ Mrs Howland seemed anxious to prove the truth behind what Chris could see was only a stage set. ‘The skirt I found in Exeter, and the blouse too, we went there when Alice was six. This cardigan was hers too. She loved pink.’ Mrs Howland shook her head as she straightened the limp woollen sleeve. Then rousing herself: ‘I don’t keep all the new things. I take them to charity. Or return them, saying it’s wrong on her or doesn’t fit. They understand, children grow quickly, and they’re so fussy these days.’ Kathleen sat down heavily on the bed. Her tablet was wearing off. She would take another one after the girl had gone. She wanted her to leave now, but she owed her a proper time for coming all this way. But then there would be another visitor. Kathleen was alone a lot less than people knew.

She didn’t tell the girl that Steve had broken the mirror in Alice’s dressing table.

‘That’s seven years bad luck.’ She didn’t get cross with him often, just that one time.

‘We’ve had our share, what’s another ruddy seven years?’

Kathleen clasped her hands to prevent the girl seeing the tremor.

‘I know she’s dead.’

Chris was beside her.

‘Dead? No, she’s…’

‘After all this time, I don’t kid myself. If she were alive, she would have come back, wouldn’t she? I don’t really think she’s stuck at nine years old. People think I’m not quite the full… If Alice were alive she’d be a grown woman. She could come home if she wanted. Even if she treated me as a stranger, she’d have to at least visit.’

Chris hadn’t thought of that. Why hadn’t Alice come home?

‘You told the papers you knew she was alive!’ This was another betrayal. Chris was out of her depth; nothing was going according to plan. She should have told Alice to come herself instead of being so intent on getting all the glory. Mrs Howland wouldn’t believe Alice was alive. She must get a lot of weirdos knocking on her door claiming to have seen her daughter.

‘Papers print what they like. Besides, I say different things on different days. Depends on my mood. Since Alice went, I get asked all the time how I am coping. I say whatever comes into my head.’ Mrs Howland clicked shut the cupboard with a gesture of finality.

Chris longed to stay in the bedroom, to lie on the bed and read one of the books and listen to the seagulls.

She had expected they would return to the living room. Perhaps they would have another cup of tea, but Mrs Howland stopped in the hallway.

It was time to go.

‘You didn’t have a coat, did you?’ She stroked the collar of a girl’s anorak on the coat stand absently.

‘Just a jacket.’ Chris lifted it down because Mrs Howland wasn’t listening.

‘Forgive me saying so, but you are young. You seem…’

‘I’m eighteen.’

‘You’re not a journalist, are you?’ How did she ever think she could fool this wise old woman? Chris flushed crimson. She had treated Kathleen in just the way her Mum had treated Chris; as a pawn for her own ends.

Long, blonde hair. Blue eyes. Thin legs. Tall. Skin pale as a ghost.

Alive and living in South London.

Before Mrs Howland could speak, Chris heard herself speak:

‘I want you to come to London with me. I know where...’

Her head was in a vice and the breath was being squeezed out of her. Everything was convex and then concave. Chris smelled the sea and saw the word:

Alice.

Then everything went black.

I
sabel lazily stroked more sun tan cream into her ankles and up her calves, rubbing it in with lingering strokes, noting with satisfaction how smooth her skin was, with no surface veins, which would be remarkable in a woman of over fifty let alone sixty. This comforting observation was straight away eclipsed by the sharp pains in her thigh and at the base of her spine as she stretched. She could not get Mark’s car out of her mind for long. Sunbathing helped. As she submitted to the heat, the watery image would be evaporated by the scorching sun, but every time she moved, her leg hurt and there it was again as if she was under water, her lungs bursting, groping desperately towards Mark.

Shifting about on the wonderfully soft mattress of her new lounger, Isabel applied circles of cream around her eyes with Impressionist dabs and kneaded it into her neck, wiping away the wrinkles. Finished. For a fraction of a second she was calm and content. Then an engulfing wave washed off the good feeling, leaving her old and shivering. She set the bottle on the table, next to her book, radio and empty coffee mug. Was the rest of her life going to be like this? One long to-do list marked off by a series of ticks.

Spots of sunlight flashed on the surface of the freshly filled pool: yellow and gold segments like exotic fish whose progress Isabel tried to follow across the rippling surface until they vanished. She had heard somewhere that gazing at sunshine on water made you happy. Something to do with serotonin, but she hadn’t listened to the medical bit.

Perhaps she did feel a bit better.

Isabel tried to build on this tenuous impression. They were almost back to normal, the pool had been restored, and she had got through the funeral. Now she might believe that nothing had happened. It was a Wednesday afternoon when Mark was usually in London. She told herself he would be home tonight as usual.

Only recently the garden and the house had been teeming with strangers. After the frenzy of trying to save Mark was over and they had driven off with his body, it seemed to Isabel a more measured, calmer crowd took over.

First more police: some in white jump suits like spacemen. One was a woman, which had irritated Isabel, who was more conventional than she preferred to think. They had told her that only when they had completed their measuring and photographing and questioning, could the car be taken out of the pool. Until then it had lain there, bubbling away like a hookah. Isabel had been frantic to right everything to how it had been before Mark drowned. But she had lost the impetus to do it herself. She had bullied Lucian to get on to Mr Bunting and his son to come and clean the pool right away. Lucian had argued, unconsciously imitating the police, which before she might have enjoyed.

‘They will be impeded by the presence of a motor vehicle.’

‘You can be such a prat!’ Isabel found giving her children unconditional love exhausting. ‘They’ll have lots of bookings at this time of year, we need to get in or it won’t happen. I’m not looking at this cesspool for the rest of the year.’

‘Do we actually need the pool?’ Now Lucian was Mark without the good bits.

‘I’ve called them. The police say that the car’s going this afternoon. Mr Bunting will be here in the morning at eight and the fence people on Saturday. Everything will be ready in time for Dad’s funeral.’

Gina was carrying a tray of tea out to the white overalls and didn’t stop.

As the car was winched out of the pool Isabel had stood beside Gina to watch. She identified all the colours of the rainbow, and was saddened rather than outraged at the streams of oily water cascading out of the quarter lights. The bonnet tilted upwards and the car was once more inching up the steep hills of family holidays, as they all sang out in anthemic glee
Breathe in, don’t move. First one to speak has to get out and walk!
The radiator grill flashed as it caught the sun: a paean to

Mark’s polishing. Mark would have understood Gina’s need to witness everything. He too would have been rapping out instructions, warning them to treat his car with care. Shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare, Isabel had gazed up at her husband’s most coveted possession dangling uselessly. A twisting shadow darkened the patio, the car revolved slowly before swinging away from the pool as the crane chugged past the garage and up the drive. Although Mark’s body had been removed, Isabel didn’t feel he had gone until the crane disappeared round the bend in the lane. She walked back to the house, keeping pace with Gina, neither of them able to speak.

In lots of ways, Isabel reflected, as she let the sun take her over, Lucian and Gina were like herself; they got other people doing things, whether it was compensation for a faulty service, getting a price down or organising a funeral. Isabel twitched a hand to bat away the image of Lucian gazing forlornly at her whenever she was impatient with him. He was too sensitive. He and Eleanor were like Mark in that respect. Gina was made of sterner stuff. Mark had said it was apt that after marrying Jon, Gina took his name to become Gina Cross, because she so often was. But Mark had been crosser, that she wasn’t Gina Ramsay any more. He had taken her decision to change her name as a snub.

Of course he had been right.

When they were little, Isabel had felt powerless when her children bickered and had always relied on Mark to sort them out. Then she had hated to see their faces, white and staring, as he shouted and stamped. Each word was a bullet fired with precision, while Mark appeared to thrill with an electric current. She would feel she had let them down.

She had let them down.

No, it was Mark who had let them all down. Isabel closed her eyes.

Mark’s death, a phrase that she wasn’t ready to use, was like a power cut. Although it is easy to grasp the fact of no electricity, in practice it is still a surprise when no light comes on or the kettle fails to boil at the click of a switch. It is the last straw when the television stays blank at the wand-wave of the remote. As Isabel lay on her treasured luxury lounger, she reflected on the yawning future.

That morning she had walked around the side of the house, past the thick bushes of fuchsia and hydrangeas that grew beneath the study and dining room windows, gingerly raising branches, even checking in the old outhouse by the pantry. She had stopped quickly when she realised she was searching for Alice as she had when the girl first went missing.

If she had told them, the family would have called it the Raleigh complex, named after Gina’s stolen bicycle which was cut from its chain outside the Chiswick open air swimming pool when Gina was nine. The police had said it would be local kids having a lark and to keep a look out for it. After that, the whole family stopped to examine every chipped blue bike they came across, looking for the tell-tale dabs of mismatched paint on the cross bar. This habit haunted them for years, long after Gina could have ridden the bike had it been recovered. Now Isabel was doing the same thing, except Alice’s worth hadn’t diminished in the same way as a battered old bike. Her mother, at least, would want her.

At the time Isabel had been desperate to prove that Alice had got herself trapped somewhere. Houses were complicated structures, she had insisted, particularly this one. Alice could be anywhere. She had never told Mark that she had encouraged the police to search their house. There would, she had assured Richard Hall, be a good explanation. She suggested they try the basement.

‘It’s a warren down there, lots of little rooms, great place to hide.’

Isabel had made repeated journeys into the cavernous basement herself and, careful not to be heard by anyone above, called out to Alice. She was cajoling, tempting, luring:
Don’t be frightened; we’re not in the least annoyed with you.
The police had been down there the day before, but Isabel had suspected that Alice would have been too scared to respond to men she didn’t know, however kind they appeared to be. You had to gain the trust of a girl like that. Then she would do anything for you.

But years went by and still Alice had not been found.

More than once, Isabel had sneaked off through the orchard to the Judge’s disused workshop – now filled with bikes, old lawn mowers, tins of paint and bits of broken garden furniture – and cupping her hands, peered through its grimy windows. In the cobwebbed interior, the disused contents kept their counsel.

One evening when Mark was in his study, she made up her mind to tell the police about her dream. It was five years since Alice had gone missing and she had just watched a programme about the Kennedy shooting, which had happened the day after Alice disappeared. After some flicking back and forth she found Detective Inspector Hall’s number in the back of her 1968 diary. Making sure she wouldn’t be interrupted, she started dialling the number. Then common sense had prevailed. How absurd to tell them about a dream. They would section her. Instead she went down to the basement and methodically searched it yet again. As she moved aside boxes and shelving units, felt her way through the cold dank cellar where the ice had once been stored, she whispered Alice’s name, as she often did when she was on her own.

Even after so many years Isabel could not stop looking for Alice although now, more than ever, she was terrified of finding her.

Isabel wriggled her toes, and lay so that her body was aligned, as she had learnt at her transcendental meditation class. She breathed in and out with her palm on her abdomen. While doing this exercise she was supposed to recite the personal mantra given to her by her teacher. For maximum effect she was meant to keep it secret and not share it with anyone else. But these days unless Isabel wrote things down or told other people she forgot them. She had quickly forgotten her mantra and was unwilling to confess this. Instead she would recite as many titles of Thomas Hardy novels as she could remember. This worked just as well. Although the effort of recalling them made her tense, it did at least take her mind off things.

Today the temperature was ideal: a breeze had got up, so it was not too hot, but warm enough to let go. Isabel did find it extraordinary that the sun could shine and that she could feel its warmth while Mark was lying buried under a mound of cold soil up by the church. She closed her eyes, not daring to think what else was possible.

She was aroused from the first driftings of a dream in which she was lying in Mark’s arms, cushioned on his shoulder, by the sound of familiar footsteps.

She was in the car Mark used to drive before they got married and started a family. He was young with bristly
short-back
-and-sides, and eyes that glittered. His white coat with the stethoscope slung around his neck was too safe an image for a man who she had discovered was so unsafe. She tried to grab his leather-clad hand but it slipped away leaving her with a floppy glove. His scent faded as she struggled to reach him, to rest her hand on his thigh; to attract him. But his attention was on the road; he was gripping the wheel of his sports car, a laughing mouth refusing to say where they were going. White teeth bared, lips taut like a fox. She cried out, but made no sound.

The dream had dwindled and Isabel was awake.

The footsteps stopped. Already smiling, already knowing, Isabel opened her eyes and reached out her hands to greet Eleanor, her favourite child.