Among the Missing (7 page)

The rain fell all night, clattering on the roof and cascading off into the ground around the trailer as if it was being poured from a jug. The place would be a mud bath in the morning. I would have to fish out Anna’s boots from the storage space under the mattress. Would they still fit her? As I lay thinking in the dark, working out that if she needed new boots I wouldn’t be able to get them before Friday, the day Vi usually paid me, I heard a different dripping noise. It was inside. It was coming from over near the door. I slipped out of bed, and immediately I knew that we were unsheltered. I felt a chill on my skin as if nothing protected us properly anymore. Either the door was open or the roof was leaking. Rain or night air had entered the trailer. Anything could enter. In a couple of steps I had reached the door. It was shut and locked, but my feet were wet. I touched the wall. It was running with water, seeping in through the join between the trailer’s side and the roof. Reaching up, I discovered that it was dripping from farther along, where the seam turned at a right angle. From there it was plocking down on the shelf where I had left bread for our breakfast in a paper bag, now soaking wet.

You were asleep. I fumbled my way back to Anna’s bed. She was asleep, too, but her covers were pushed up against the wall and they were already damp. I lifted her up gently out of her nest, hoping the sudden cold breath of air wouldn’t wake her, and clasped her against me, willing my arms and the palms of my hands to project all my body’s warmth into her through her back. Without waking, she curled her legs and arms around me and pushed her head in under my jaw, snuffling against my neck. I settled her in against you and got back into bed. I wouldn’t be able to sleep perched on the narrow edge of the bed that
was left now, but I could lie calmly enough, knowing she was warm. I dreaded the morning, so I spent the rest of the night waiting for it, trying to figure out what to do.

First thing, you would climb onto the top of the trailer, which would be slippery, and wonder how to repair it this time. You’d sealed it before, which only worked for a while; if you could get hold of some plastic sheeting or tarpaulin you could cover the roof and weight it with rocks from the shore. That might work for a bit longer. Then we’d have to dry the trailer out, but if it kept on raining, that would take days. The ground would be soaked, and the mud and damp would cling to us; we’d bring it into the trailer and make matters worse. Anna couldn’t be left outside, so she would have to be kept in the trailer, and she hated that, and the floor would be filthy. You would have to get a fire lit somehow to dry out our clothes and bedding, never mind washing off the mud, and I didn’t know how you were going to manage that if the rain poured down all day, and with only soaked wood to burn. There was the propane heater to keep Anna a bit warmer, but it cost so much, and the cartridge was low and I wouldn’t be able to get back with a new one until the evening. How would you manage? You’d need hot food. It took nearly an hour to get up to the service station for hot chocolate and muffins, soup maybe, and nearly an hour back, probably longer if it was muddy, and you’d get so wet coming and going it might not be worth it.

I was glad you were asleep.

I did manage to doze off toward dawn. When I woke again, a soft, pale light was replacing the gray inside the trailer. I was aware of an absence but for a moment couldn’t work out what it was. You and Anna were still beside me; Anna had a few strands of my hair clutched in her hand and had pulled them into her mouth, and you were just beginning to wake but in that eyes-shut way of yours, convincing yourself you were still asleep. You turned and draped your arm across me. I started to prepare in my mind how I would tell you about the weather and the leaking trailer and the horrible day ahead. That was when I realized what was missing. It was quiet because the rain had stopped. All I could hear was the traffic on the bridge. I drew my hair gently out of Anna’s grip and raised myself on my elbows. The trailer was set too far back from the bank of the river for me to see to the horizon at the end of the estuary, but from that direction, over from the east, a few fringes of
sunlight were beginning to sparkle on the pewtery, dark reaches of the water. That meant there was about to be a proper, unclouded sunrise, and if the sun shone bright for even a few hours today, we’d have a chance.

You would be awake in a minute, and soon you’d be outside clapping your hands at the geese and laughing at me for worrying. You’d fix the trailer, you always managed to fix it. By tonight we would be all right again. Maybe if the mini-mart wasn’t too busy or I got a minute when Vi went to lunch or dozed off, I might be able to raid the freezer and bring back some steaks for us. I’d seen some lying in the bottom nobody would want to buy anyway. I could lift a bag of charcoal from round the back on my way home, and if the rain stayed off, we could cook on the old barbecue you picked up that time from the roadside at the top of the track.

But when we were awake and up and dressed, you didn’t say anything to that suggestion. You swore a few times and stared at the trailer and then didn’t seem to care about it anymore. You set your mouth in a grim, thin line, and I didn’t get a happy word or a smile from you before I had to leave for work. You had been that way before, impatient to make it all different, angry about things you couldn’t change, furious with yourself for not giving us a regular life. But you had been getting angry more and more often, and for longer, and it was harder each time to bring you round. I didn’t really see that that was because what made you angry had changed. By then it was me you were angry with.

That day you wouldn’t walk me even part of the way up to the bus. You didn’t take Anna to say good morning to the geese, though they were lovely with the sun on their wings, and they landed so beautifully on the black rock in the river, hooting that low, rounded noise over and over like a thousand wheezy old organs in a fairground, so funny and also so sad a sound it was, like home, and sweet and faraway.

I slept badly and got up long before Col was awake. I didn’t want to speak to him, about the baby or anything else, so I left quietly and drove east from the hotel, as I had done the day before. That early in the morning there was frost on the ground and the grip of ice in the air, as if during the night winter had crept down from the mountains, pushing back the spring. A white fog obscured the hills and shoreline of the north bank of the river. I drove into swirls of it ahead of me on the road, and on either side it hung in freezing clouds under the bare trees and along the hedges.

I had meant to take a different route, striking north at Netherloch across the river at the small stone bridge there and continuing eastward up into the mountains above Netherloch Falls. I had been studying my map and had worked out a route following the road down through the forest on the north bank of the estuary, eventually crossing back to its south side over the City Bridge and entering Inverness. After a couple of hours wandering about in the city, it would not take me long to drive back westward to the service station.

But I didn’t cross the river. Overcome with weariness and nausea and fear, I stopped in a small car park on the south side of Netherloch, just before the stone bridge. I had got up far too early, trying, I suppose, to bring the day’s transaction nearer, because although I was a little shocked by how swiftly my mind had worked out all the details of what I was going to do, I was still very afraid. I was anxious to have it over with, one way or another, both dreading and hoping that it would all come to nothing. Maybe the man wouldn’t answer the phone. Maybe
he wouldn’t show up, or I could take fright myself and reconsider the whole idea. Or I might not have to go through with it at all; my telephone could ring at any moment and it would be Col saying he was sorry, he’d made a terrible mistake. Please come back, he might say. Come back right this minute, we’ll spend the whole day together. I’ll look after you.

That was when I began to cry. The car park was one of those places for tourists, with green areas planted up with bushes and dotted with picnic tables, and there was nobody there. I sat in the car weeping noisily, tears pouring down my cheeks. With the engine turned off, the air was soon stuffy with the peppery, acrylic smell of car upholstery, and to stop myself feeling any sicker, I wound the window down. Cold, foggy air rushed in, and still I could not stop crying. I sank my face into my hands and rested my head on the steering wheel and cried, and cried.

When I raised my head several minutes later, feeling a bit calmer, there was a man watching me. The fog was clearing under the trees, and he was sitting at one of the picnic tables a few yards away, looking at me. He didn’t avert his gaze when he saw I had noticed him. Instead he got slowly to his feet and, with a sympathetic nod of his head, walked away. I wanted to be angry, and I should have felt foolish, but all I felt was that I had been not watched, but watched over. I stared after him. I couldn’t have described his face except for his eyes, which even from a distance had conveyed something light and clear. His head was heavy and square and covered with graying stubble; he was powerfully built and dressed in jeans and a black sweater. He climbed into a Land Rover parked in a space on the far side of some bushes and drove away.

I wound the window up and got the car warm, then I tipped back the seat and slept.

Later, I drove on from Netherloch, staying on the south side, retracing exactly my path of the day before. As before, I kept pulling off the road and loitering along the river, for I had decided against going to Inverness at all. The stopping places were quiet, and because of the fog there was much less to see.

I went again to the café at the service station and sat at the window. Across some fields to the east, near where the squat concrete pillars of the bridge approach studded the ground toward the river, lay a patch of industrial wasteland. Beyond it I could see cold spangles of light on
the water. There was a strong breeze blowing across it, and the breeze was also rocking the bushes and bracken in the fields and lifting the fog out from the trees.

I waited, staring at my phone, until after it was time. When it rang, I didn’t answer. It rang a second time, and on the third ring I picked up.

“You’re supposed to call, you got a problem? Listen, you want to sell the car you call me in next half hour, okay? That’s all the time you got. You don’t call me back, I got other clients, okay? I pay cash, remember, good deal. You call me back.”

I had expected that the man would tell me to drive into Inverness, but when I dialed the number, and once I had assured him I was alone, he gave me instructions to drive back toward Netherloch.

“Go west along the river road. There’s a rest area a mile on the right. Slow down when you see it. Go past it two hundred meters more and there’s a gap in the trees and a gate. On the right, the river side. Pull off the road and stop at the gate. Wait there.”

I did as he said. I followed the road until I saw the rest area. It was where I’d stopped the day before. I bumped the car to a halt over stones and deep ruts on the shoulder opposite the gate. I was glad he’d told me not to go any farther. The gate was rusted and skewed and off its hinges, and a track stretching behind it was barely a track at all, just a narrow scree of stones and crushed branches dipping sharply down through undergrowth in the direction of the river. I waited, my heart thumping, with all the doors locked. Traffic rushed past, buffeting the car. Then I noticed a movement, and from the undergrowth at the edge of the track a figure appeared, a young man in jeans and a short jacket. His arms were clasped around a well-wrapped and heavy-looking bundle: the child. He was wearing a hat but no gloves, and as he came up to the fence, I saw his hands were raw and red. With some difficulty he hoisted the bundle higher up on his shoulder and motioned at me to approach. I started to get out of the car, but he shook his head and waved me back. Then he put the child down at the side of the track and beckoned to me again, and I understood that he wanted me to bring the car forward. He freed the gate and hauled it back, keeping hold of the child’s hand. I started the engine and turned the car, and he waved me on past him. When he’d closed the gate, he gestured at me to keep going, and I did, slowly and carefully, but scraping the car sides against branches as I went, sinking into ruts, skidding on the stones. He followed with the
child in his arms. I had no idea where the track led or how I might get back up it again, with the car or not. But I had glimpsed his face and I had seen how he held his child, and though those were hardly reasons enough to trust him, I kept going, edging the car forward at barely more than walking pace.

A long way down, the ground leveled out into an area of water pools and grimy rock and reeds strewn with jetsam and river debris. Ice lay in patches under fallen trees. The tide was out; the river ran along some distance away, and upriver, almost out of sight, was a disused jetty sticking up from a shining field of mud.

Set on a patch of cleared ground under some trees a long way from the river was an old trailer with plastic sheeting over its roof. Amid the encroaching dereliction, it was still clearly a home; it looked tidy and well kept. Laundry swayed on a washing line fixed between one corner of the trailer and a tree. A bucket and broom, a plastic bath and picnic chairs, some large plastic toys and water containers were stacked neatly along the side. Nearby was an ashy fire pit set inside a circle of rocks.