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Authors: Natasha Mac a'Bháird

Missing Ellen

BOOK: Missing Ellen
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‘A tense and tender portrayal of friendship and loss.
Missing Ellen
is beautifully written and completely addictive.’
Laura Jane Cassidy, author of
Angel Kiss
and
Eighteen Kisses

 


Missing Ellen
is a beautifully-crafted novel about love, friendship and everything in between.’
Michelle Gyo, Random House, Germany

 

‘I really enjoyed
Missing Ellen
! The believable friendship and the compelling mystery at its core are really involving. A lovely,
simply-written
book about a complex subject.’
Deirdre Sullivan, author of
Prim Improper
and
Improper Order

For my lovely mother, Anne.

Dear Ellen,

I missed you in school today. It’s so strange to be starting a new school year without you. Fuddy Duddy was being a
complete
cow as usual – the summer holidays don’t seem to have done her much good. She gave out to me for having too many earrings in. Like she would know anything about fashion. You should have seen the hideous brown blouse she had on today. It was the kind of thing my granny would have given to Oxfam twenty years ago. The colour of Bovril or something horrible like that, with a big frilly collar.

It feels weird to be writing you a letter, but I don’t think you will be checking your emails, and I know Mum will be checking mine. So I’ve found this spiral notebook in the bottom drawer of my desk. The first few pages are filled with sketches of different costumes and outfits, so if Mum picks it up she will take no notice, I hope, and won’t flick on through to here. I’ll be able to write exactly what I want.

It was David’s idea, really. He suggested I should write about what happened, put it all down on paper, a kind of
exorcism
or something. You’re wondering who David is, I know. I’ll get back to that. But first I need to go back to the beginning.

Love,

Maggie.

Actually though, I am not really sure when the beginning is, how far back I need to go to make some sort of sense of it all. If that’s even possible. Did it all start with what happened to Ellen’s family last spring, or did it go even further back?

I can still remember the day I first met Ellen, a bouncy five-year-old, red plaits flying as she dashed from one side of the junior infants classroom to the other, wanting to try everything at once – the books, the sand table, the dolls’ corner. I remember being fascinated by her and how utterly fearless she seemed. I was clinging on to my mum’s hand, not wanting her to go, not wanting to be left alone in this strange place. And here was this girl, no bigger than me, who seemed completely happy to be there and eager to explore our new world. I thought she was amazing. And strangely enough, she seemed to like me too. She took me under her wing, bossed the other children around and shouted at a little boy who tried to take my snack. And from that moment on we were friends.

I think even then I knew that wherever Ellen is is always the best, the most exciting place to be. She lights up the room with her energy and passion for life. When she leaves, I feel deflated, like everything that was going to happen has happened and there’s no point in being there any longer.

But that’s too far back, I think. I suppose the best place to start is a dreary Tuesday last spring, Ellen and I in geography with Fuddy Duddy (Mrs Duddy to her face. The nickname
was kind of inevitable if she insisted on having that surname combined with a complete lack of any sense of fashion). Ellen trying to pass the time by scribbling notes to me on her homework notebook. And Ellen’s father, at home,
packing
his bags and getting ready to move out for good.

Her mother didn’t show up to collect her after school. This wasn’t exactly unusual. Mrs Barrett has never been the most reliable of mothers.

‘Do you want to give her a ring?’ Mum asked Ellen, sounding a little anxious. Mum always leaves in plenty of time to collect us. She was late once a few months back because there were road works along the way. I was almost in tears by the time she arrived, and she wasn’t much better. I felt silly afterwards, for panicking like that, but it was just so unlike her.

Ellen shrugged. ‘There’s no point. She couldn’t find her mobile charger this morning, and she never answers the
landline
in case it’s Granny calling for Dad.’

Mum looked kind of shocked at this. I thought she should have been used to Mrs B by now, but I guess she always wants to think the best of people.

‘Come on then, I’ll give you a lift home,’ Mum said.

When we got to the Barretts’ house all the curtains at the front windows were closed, but again, it wasn’t
something
all that unusual. Even before Ellen’s dad left, her mum was kind of inconsistent. Some days she would be up at the
crack of dawn, heading to the gym before coming home to make pancakes from scratch for Ellen and Robert’s breakfast. Other days she wouldn’t even get up to wave them off to school. It never seemed to bother Ellen. I guess she was used to it.

I think Mum must have sensed that something was wrong though, because she didn’t just wait in the car to make sure Ellen had got in OK like she usually does. She got out of the car and went to the door with Ellen, round to the back of the house. I followed them, not sure what else to do.

Robert’s bike was lying on its side outside the back door. My dad would have gone crazy, he is forever nagging Jamie and me to put our bikes away so they won’t get rusty from the rain. Mum just walked past it and asked Ellen if she had her key. Ellen produced it from where it hung from a chain around her neck – she likes to call herself a latch-key kid – and opened the door. I got this increasing sense of doom, I suppose you could call it. I don’t mean to sound
melodramatic
but I think Mum’s nervousness was infecting me or something. Ellen didn’t seem to notice anything wrong. She was just humming to herself and twisting her ponytail around her fingers.

Mrs B was sitting at the kitchen table, still in her nightie, her elbows resting among the breakfast dishes. Her hair was all over the place and she was just staring into space. She didn’t even seem to hear us come in. 

I looked at Mum, not sure how to react. Ellen was already at the table, pulling out a chair and sitting down. ‘Mum, what’s wrong?’ she demanded, shoving aside a bowl of soggy coco pops to take her mum’s hand.

Mrs B finally noticed us. She looked at Ellen and gave this chilling, bitter sort of laugh. ‘Well he’s finally done it, hasn’t he? He’s left us.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Ellen sounded angry, but also a little frightened. ‘He can’t have. He’s just being
dramatic
. He’ll be back later.’

‘No he won’t. Not this time,’ Mrs B said quietly. ‘He’s taken everything with him. Go and see if you don’t believe me.’

There was a crash as Ellen knocked over her chair in her haste to run out of the room. Mum put her arm around Mrs B and patted her awkwardly, saying ‘There, there’, rather as if she were a small child who had bumped her head and not a middle-aged woman whose husband had just left her after twenty years of marriage and two children.

I stood for a moment not quite knowing what to do with my hands, then I went to put on the kettle. That’s what Mum normally does when there’s some sort of a crisis. Is it just so she will have something to do with her hands? I never thought about that before. I opened the cupboard to take out some mugs, but there weren’t any. As quietly as I could I opened the dishwasher – it was full of dirty dishes. I took out
four mugs and rinsed them under the tap. Just as I was
searching
for tea bags Ellen came crashing back into the room.

‘He’s really being a drama queen this time. His wardrobe is empty, all his CDs, everything.’ She started to cry, and I think that must have set Mrs B off, because she started to cry too, and suddenly the two of them were clinging to each other and sobbing. Mum took over the tea-making duties, locating tea bags and milk and even a few broken biscuits from the bottom of the biscuit barrel.

I watched her, feeling selfishly glad that I had a mum who was good at things like making tea in crises, and a nice
predictable
dad whose idea of doing something really wild was the time he tried to hide his grey hairs with Just for Men. I didn’t know what to say to Ellen. I was used to her parents’ rows, but this was something new.

There, that’s a beginning of sorts, isn’t it? David can’t say I didn’t try.

Dear Ellen,

Fuddy Duddy wore the blouse again today. This time with a frilly skirt in lime green. What on earth was she thinking? She could find nothing wrong with my appearance today (I took out the extra earrings and hid them in my pencil case before I went in) so she decided to complain about my
homework
instead. Apparently my essay on rock formation was ‘long, rambling and lacking in purpose’. You would think she
would be pleased. It sounds exactly like a description of one of her classes.

Siobhan Brady has started a list at the back of her
homework
notebook of boys she wants to snog this year. What is she like? Should we warn them, do you think? Roll up, roll up, all you young men. Don’t just become a notch on someone’s bedpost. Become a tick on Siobhan Brady’s list instead!

PE today was hideous. Pouring rain all day, and Miss O’Neill decides it’s a good idea to play camogie. ‘We don’t call it an all-weather pitch for nothing, girls,’ she trills in this silly fake voice. So we all trudge out onto the pitch in our stupid white shorts and T-shirts and run around for forty minutes, no real idea where the ball is at any time – it’s raining so hard we can barely see each other never mind the ball – and jump every time she blows that stupid whistle. Of course the sporty girls thought it was great fun and spent the whole class trying to outdo each other and see who could impress Miss O’Neill the most. While the rest of us mere mortals tried to hover in the background, saving our bouts of energy for quickly
dodging
in the opposite direction any time it seemed like the ball might be coming our way. I found myself wishing I was sitting at my desk at the back of maths class watching Bouncer draw isosceles triangles on the board. Yes, it was that bad.

Last week, of course, there was blazing sunshine, and instead of taking us outside to work on our tans while
pretending
to play camogie, Miss O’Neill thought it would be a
good idea to run laps around the stuffy gym. She must have been some sort of dictator in a former life. Or maybe a nun.

Siobhan put Liam’s name on her list. Silly cow. Like he has eyes for anyone but you.

Love,

Maggie.

Ellen’s parents have been arguing for as long as I can remember. When we were seven, things were particularly bad. Her house was always filled with tension. You could almost feel it when you walked in the front door. You know how some houses have a warm comforting smell, like
vegetable
stew simmering on the hob, and some are filled with noise, with lots of children running about, a radio blasting in the background, a mum shouting to the kids to keep it down. In Ellen’s house nothing struck me as much as that atmosphere of people disliking each other.

Ellen would keep coming over to my house to escape. She never seemed upset by the way her parents behaved, she just acted crazier than ever. One day she persuaded me that we should turn all my dolls into clowns by painting their faces and have our own three-ring circus (my room, the
landing
and Jamie’s room being the three rings). We got out my paints and set to work decorating our little clowns – orange for the background, purples and reds and blues around the eyes and mouths. We took off all their pretty dresses, put
them in plain white vests belonging to me and then painted those too. They looked absolutely awful by the time we’d finished with them, but we thought they were brilliant – the perfect clowns. Jamie woke up from his nap as we took over his room, but instead of crying he just sat up and watched us. Ellen was delighted to have an audience and started making her clowns turn somersaults and squirt each other with water, making Jamie laugh with delight.

Afterwards, I felt so sorry for my dolls, with their sad little painted faces which were never really the same, even after I’d scrubbed and scrubbed them. They’re in a box in the attic now. Poor little things – most of them still have a distinctly orange hue.

My mum didn’t even get cross with us, I think she knew what was going on in Ellen’s house. She asked her if she wanted to stay for dinner and even rang up her mum to see if she could stay the night. It was our first proper sleepover and we marked the occasion by having a midnight feast (
chocolate
biscuits, crisps and buns smuggled upstairs and hidden in my doll’s pram). We were just getting into the
Malory Towers
books and thought we were just like the girls in those, though it was a pity we didn’t have a swimming pool to have our feast beside, or a mad French teacher to hide from.

We waited and waited for midnight to come around – it wouldn’t have been a proper midnight feast if we’d had it any earlier – and I kept falling asleep, but each time Ellen woke
me up by throwing a teddy at me, until all her teddies were gone. Finally we heard the clock in the hall striking
midnight
and we scrambled out of bed to raid the pram. We’d forgotten to bring anything to drink so I sneaked out to the bathroom and filled two toothbrush glasses with water. That was when Ellen thought of doing the vow. She got me to loop my arm around hers like people do with champagne glasses. I spilled some of the water on my pyjamas but I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want her thinking I was a spoilsport.

‘Repeat after me,’ Ellen said solemnly. ‘I swear that I, Maggie, will be best friends with Ellen now and until the end of time, and that nothing shall come between us.’ I think she’d mixed up the Barbie wedding film with a bedtime prayer. I repeated it just as seriously and we drank the slightly minty-tasting water from our toothbrush glasses.

Dear Ellen,

My mum doesn’t know what to make of me these days. She keeps fussing over me, offering lifts, checking over and over to see what time I’ll be home, and I just lose patience with her.

She’s always been a total worrier of course, but since it
happened
her crazy overprotective mother thing has gone into overdrive. It’s almost as if she feels vindicated for having been so paranoid all these years.

I get so fed up listening to her. It’s not like I’m even going anywhere anyway – just school, for God’s sake. What’s the 
point in going anywhere else without you? So eventually I’ll snap at her, and then she’ll look at me like she really doesn’t know me at all. Because the truth is, I’ve never been any
trouble
. I’m so good it’s embarrassing. I’ve never been grounded or anything like that, and even in those last few months, when you were dragging me into one drama after another, I
somehow
managed not to get caught. And Mum and I have always got along. She always used to say I’m the kind of daughter any mother would be proud to have.

And now? Well, it’s not exactly normal, is it? I mean, I doubt she tells the ladies at her coffee mornings about me seeing David, or any of that. Now she’s dealing with a whole different type of scene. Or not dealing with it, as it happens.

Love,

Maggie.

BOOK: Missing Ellen
7.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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