Christmas on Primrose Hill (33 page)

But the day wasn’t open-ended like hope. Light faded and the sleet turned to snow as the nip in the air began to bite again. She also had an open blister on her left heel. She stopped against a lamp post, taking a minute’s rest as she wondered where to go next. A white van sped past, wipers on max and its fog lights dazzling her, making her wet eyes shine.

She turned on the spot, unsure of where she was now. She’d lost track of where she’d searched and where she hadn’t; she didn’t recognize this street, but perhaps she had come into it earlier at another junction? Or maybe not. Had she . . . had she passed that letterbox before?

One tear fell as her panic rose again and she pressed her hand to her nose to try to stem her breath, to calm down, but time was passing and the trail was cooling. Her mother had been here, in this very vicinity, six hours earlier. She may even have passed this lamp post, that house, those cars . . . But the weather was getting worse, as forecast. She would be driven to find shelter, if not now, then soon, within the hour. No one could stay out in these conditions without suffering from exposure. She would be hidden for another day.

Some people were walking down the street, their heads up, arms swinging as they headed back to warm homes and the families and sanctuaries they took for granted. She stepped closer to the lamp post, out of their way, dropping her head down as they passed. Their eyes slid only very fractionally her way, not slowing down or curious about the girl in the thin coat and wrong shoes, crying in the lamplight.

Except one. She saw the shoes stop – brown leather lace-ups with sturdy rubber soles, ideal for walking in, and non-slip too. Ecco, if she remembered rightly.

She looked up with a hiccup to find her father’s arms already outstretched. His beard was as white as Father Christmas’s as it caught the snowflakes, his pinched cheeks and dull eyes the signal that he too had taken the call and been out all afternoon, searching.

She walked into his hug, all the fight going out of her as he stroked her wet hair.

‘Come on, Button. Let’s go home.’

Jules was sitting on the doorstep when they turned into the square, the giant bunny head on the ground beside her.

Nettie deflated at the sight of her, coming to a stop on the pavement outside the house, pulling her hands out of her pockets and only vaguely aware of her phone dropping to the frozen ground. ‘Not now, Jules,’ she said quietly, with a shake of her head, too tired to fight.

But there wasn’t war in Jules’s eyes. Wordlessly, she got up and wrapped her arms around Nettie’s neck, the snow sifting over them like statues. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Nettie’s father patted Jules’s shoulder lightly as he passed. ‘I’ll get supper on,’ he said, putting his key in the lock.

The women pulled apart, Nettie struggling to meet her friend’s eyes as Jules handed back the phone she had dropped. The screen had cracked. She clicked it on and stared at the screensaver photo, a picture of her and her mother – cheeks pressed together, eyes bright – that had been taken at a friend’s barbecue, just months before her mother had walked through the door for the last time. The crack split not just the screen, but the photo too, running between them like a seismic fault line and telling a truth she didn’t want to face up to.

Jules put a hand on her arm and Nettie looked up at her. How did she tell her – anyone – about this latest development, this horrid twist: that her mother was alive, but her rejection remained absolute? Was that
better
than not knowing if she was alive or dead? Whether she was in this country or abroad? What did it say about her that her mother, even after all this time, still couldn’t walk through that door, that she wasn’t enough to return home to? Nettie felt ashamed, inadequate, lacking and insufficient because her mother’s problems were bigger than her love.

Jules missed nothing. She saw the evasion in her best friend’s face, the fresh devastation. ‘Come on, let’s go in – it’s bloody freezing out here,’ she said, taking Nettie by the arm and, picking up the rabbit head, leading her into the house. She saw Nettie flinch at the sight of it as she shut the door. The house felt chilly, and only the lights in the kitchen were on as her father saw to supper. ‘Oh no, don’t worry about this,’ Jules said, patting the rabbit head fondly. ‘I did it today. I’ve just come straight over from doing the skit, that’s all.’

‘W-what did you do?’ Nettie asked tonelessly, leaning into the cast-iron radiator and trying to absorb all the heat. She felt frozen to the bone, her body composed of fifty-five per cent ice, not water.

Jules brought up an image on her own phone. ‘Look, there it is.’

Nettie smiled at the image of the twisted bunny body (a T-shirt straining over its rotund torso) lying on a skate ramp under a graffitied arch, its head seemingly separated from the torso and placed a metre away. ‘Horse-manning?’

‘That’s my girl,’ Jules said, like a proud mother.

Nettie’s gaze fell to the figure standing behind the bunny – it was Jamie, an axe slung casually over his shoulder. His eyes were dark and hard; he looked menacing. She felt her breath catch, her heart snag at the sight of him. ‘Why’s
he
in it? He’s not been in any of the others.’

Jules looked at her. ‘No, but it sets up the battle. Look at his T-shirt.’

She looked more closely. Jamie was wearing a black T-shirt which read, ‘
#teamjamie’
. And when she looked more carefully at the bunny’s T-shirt, she saw it read, ‘
#teambunny’.

‘Mike’s promised to sell Dave his soul if the wrong song wins, so it’s on. Bit of a shame really that there’s no way we can rig the vote,’ Jules said craftily. Nettie managed a weak smile. ‘Anyway, we’re going large on it for the rest of the week. Everyone went nuts. We got twenty-six thousand retweets in ninety minutes and hit the fifty grand mark just after lunch.’

Nettie blinked, knowing she should feel excited, knowing she should care. But she couldn’t feel anything.

‘Yeah, we went to the South Bank to do it,’ Jules continued. ‘The skaters were cool.’

Nettie nodded. ‘I bet.’

‘Yeah,’ Jules said, but her tone was subdued again and they stood for a moment in silence. She looked at Nettie, still pale, still swaddled in her thin coat and wet shoes. ‘Aren’t you going to take those things off? You’re soaked.’

‘I know. I . . .’ Nettie stared down at her ruined boots. ‘I think I need to have a bath. I can’t seem to warm up.’

‘You’re, like, almost blue. How long have you been out there for, anyway?’

Nettie shrugged.

‘Are you
kidding
? Since the meeting? Nets, you’ll get hypothermia!’

‘I’m fine. I just had to . . . look.’ The suppressed tears made her voice wobble like a slackline and Jules rushed to her again.

‘What is it, Nets? What’s happened? Tell me.’

She shook her head, letting her hair fall forward, one hand pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘It’s not nothing.
You
wouldn’t ever walk out of a meeting and disappear for the day like that without good reason. Something’s happened.’ She ducked down, trying to peer up at Nettie’s hidden face. ‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll just ask your dad – you know I will.’

Nettie gripped the radiator as she leaned against it, inhaling deeply. ‘Mum walked into an outreach centre in Maida Vale today.’

Jules gasped, gripping Nettie’s arm in excitement, slapping her other hand over her mouth. ‘Oh my God!’ she cried after a moment. ‘That’s amazing!’ She saw Nettie’s face. ‘No? Not amazing?’ She frowned. ‘How is that not amazing?’

Nettie rolled her lips and swallowed. ‘Because she’s still missing.’

There was a long silence. ‘I don’t understand,’ Jules said, tense.

‘She wanted us to know that she’s all right. That was all.’

Jules shook her head, like the words were a fly in her ear, something to be shaken out and swatted away. ‘You mean . . . they didn’t hold on to her?’

Nettie looked away.

‘But why didn’t they grab her? Or . . . or sit on her, I don’t know! Whatever the fuck it takes?’

Nettie closed her eyes, remembering the words Gwen had repeated to her over and over in those first, bewildering weeks, four years ago. ‘Because as a sane and functioning adult, she is legally entitled to disappear.’

Jules stared at her, her dark eyes blazing with fury. ‘Bullshit!’ she exploded. ‘That is an utter crock of shit. After . . . after everything you’ve been through in the last four years? What about what
you’re
entitled to?’

Nettie put a hand on her arm, a plea for silence. As much as she appreciated Jules’s fierce loyalty, it was too much on top of her own emotions right now. She needed to be alone, somewhere she could hide away until she’d pushed, squeezed and jammed her emotions back into a box and could feel less. ‘I’m going to run a bath.’

Jules watched her climb the stairs, feeling helpless, regretting her outburst. ‘Is there anything I can do? I’ll do it quietly, I promise.’

Nettie shook her head but managed a smile. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, OK?’

‘Sure,’ Jules mumbled, listening to the stairs creak, the sound of a door being opened. She sighed, before picking up the rabbit head again by one of the ears. She glanced into the kitchen, ready to shout her goodbyes to Nettie’s father, but he was standing by the sink and staring out into the flecked sky. He looked held together by cloth and wishes, his shoulders an inch closer to his ears than they should have been. Upstairs, the sound of water began to whistle through the pipes.

Jules dropped her gaze to the floor. There was no answer to this, no Band-Aid to make it better. Slowly, she walked to the front door and closed it behind her with a click.

Chapter Twenty

‘I thought I’d find you here,’ she said, crouching down by the figure doing rapid press-ups on the hand bars.

Dan lifted his head fractionally but didn’t slow down. ‘Yeah?’

Nettie heard the coolness in his voice and congratulated herself on the fantastic job she was doing of pushing away everyone closest to her. ‘Yeah. You must be mad doing this in the snow,’ she said, resting her chin in her gloved hands. Across the grass, she could see Scout sniffing in the undergrowth, his short tail wagging excitedly at something.

‘Means I’ve got the place to myself,’ he said, panting slightly.

She looked around the outdoor workout area at the pull-up bars, parallel bars, push-up bars . . . There was a bar for every type of torture, as far as she could see. And no one using them.

They were at the bottom of the hill, beside the children’s playground, but everyone else was on the grass, desperately trying to roll meagre balls into snowmen, even though it was the ‘wrong sort’ of snow and their efforts collapsed into powdery heaps.

‘Ha. Well, then maybe I should have a go. See if I can grow me some muscles.’

Dan snorted in reply. Even though there were no rules, as such, it was usually only men who used this facility, although there was never any shortage of women running up and down the paths.

‘What? You don’t think I can?’ she asked, flexing a bicep that was well hidden under her Sweaty Betty layers.

‘By all means, knock yourself out,’ he said, springing himself up and back from the push-up bars and gesturing for her to have a go.

‘All righty,’ she said, rubbing her hands together before assuming the same position and trying to push up. She managed eight.

Dan tutted, moving over to the parallels. They came to his hip height and Nettie watched as he stood between them and jumped up, one hand on each bar, his ankles crossed and legs bent. He began dipping quickly, working out his triceps, working off his irritation.

There was room for two, she figured, coming and standing in front of him, between the bars also. ‘Hmm. Doesn’t look so bad,’ she said, watching him bob up and down. She put her hands on the bars and jumped up, locking her elbows. And promptly froze.

She could dangle but not move. Or move but fall. Those seemed to be the options her body was presenting her with.

Dan looked annoyed by her hovering in front of him as he continued to dip, although she figured she had his attention here.

‘So, listen, about the other night.’ She wrinkled her nose, bit her lip. ‘I’m really sorry.’

He snorted again, looking down at the ground.

‘Really I am, Dan. I know I left you in the lurch.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Not “whatever”. It was a crummy thing to do.’

‘It’s no biggie to me. If you didn’t want to chill, you could’ve just said.’

‘But that’s the thing! I did want to hang out with you!’ she said, her arms beginning to shake. She shifted her hand slightly. ‘Jules and I had made arrangements to see the new Bond, but then she bailed to go . . . go to the concert and I thought that meant I was free. I had no idea she was going to turn up and expect me to go with her.’

‘No idea?’ Dan panted, but his voice was still incredulous as he continued dipping at the same rate as when he’d started. Nettie was beginning to think he was bionic. That or he was more exceptionally pissed off than she’d appreciated. ‘She’s got backstage passes for Jamie Westlake and you’re telling me it was a
surprise
she turned up on the doorstep? After he whisked you off on a just-for-two VIP trip the night before?’

‘It wasn’t like that. It was a work thing. She’d agreed to go to it, not me.’

‘So then why did you go?’

Nettie blinked. She shifted her hands on the bars – they were freezing, even through her gloves. ‘You saw the note.’

He laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you
believed
it? Jesus, Nettie! Can you be that naive? It was a line. A cheesy pick-up line.’

‘No. He—’ She stopped. What good would it be to tell him that it had been true? Jamie had been waiting for her, true to his word. Dan wouldn’t want to hear that either. She realized now that Jamie had been right in his observations – this wasn’t protection she was seeing, the surrogate big brother looking out for her; it was jealousy, plain and simple.

He finished his reps and jumped off, turning away as he clapped his hands together and swung his arms out, back and forth like a boxer.