Missing You (28 page)

‘Daddy?’

‘Amy, honey, hi! How are you?’

‘Daddy,’ she replies and her voice is small and terrified. ‘I came home from school and Mummy’s lying on her bed and I can’t make her wake up.’

forty-one

Fen checks the clock. It’s nearly midnight. She feels empty inside, hollowed out and dry like an old tree. She pours herself a glass of water from the tap, wonders if it’s too late to call Lina and decides it probably is.

On his way out, Sean left a message on her phone telling her everything he knew. He sounded out of breath. In the background Fen heard him closing the door, running up the front garden steps, opening his car door, starting the engine. He said he’d call and let her know what’s happening but he hasn’t.

Fen does not know how bad it is. She does not know if Belle is perfectly all right or critically ill or even . . . She wishes her mind would not keep thinking the worst, but she can’t help herself.

She can’t help thinking . . .

What if Belle has been so lonely, so desperate, that she’s swallowed a bottle of vodka with her antidepressants? What if she doesn’t regain consciousness? It would be Fen’s fault, wouldn’t it? It would be because Fen is with Sean.

She goes upstairs and into Connor’s room. He’s fast asleep, his head a little sweaty on the pillow. Fen blows on his forehead to cool him down. He pulls an exaggerated face in his sleep. She sits on the window ledge and peers through the curtains out onto the street, but there’s nobody about. She can see the blue-grey screens of televisions flickering in the living rooms of the houses opposite, the ones whose occupants haven’t drawn their downstairs curtains. A cat creeps along the kerb and somewhere an urban owl hoots.

Connor grinds his teeth. Fen moves back to the bed and strokes his face gently with the back of her hand.

She’s never met Belle. She only knows her through things that Sean has said and stories Amy has recounted. She’s seen Belle’s photograph. She feels a vague sense of pity towards her because she genuinely believes that any woman who had Sean, who had his love, who had his child, and did not love him as he deserved to be loved, must be blinkered, or a fool. Much stronger than the pity is Fen’s fear of Belle. She knows that Belle has the power to change everything. Fen knows that if Belle is going to use that power, there is nothing she can do about it. And now there’s another, worse fear: the fear that something terrible has happened to Belle. Fen could not bear to see the pain on Sean’s face, or Amy’s, if Belle were to die. She does not know how she would begin to comfort Sean if he were to even taste the guilt she has experienced. She would do anything to protect him from that.

She sits with her son until her glass is empty. She breathes from her diaphragm – in on four counts, out on six – to make the panicky feelings stop, and she turns her thoughts over and over in her mind.

It’s very late. The lights of the televisions up and down the street have mostly been extinguished. Most of the windows, even the upstairs ones, are in darkness now.

Fen goes back downstairs to switch off the lights, and she’s in the kitchen, locking the back door, when her phone rings.

‘Sean?’

At the other end of the connection, through all the miles that separate them, she hears him sigh.

‘Sean.’

‘It’s good to hear your voice,’ he whispers.

‘Where are you?’

‘At home. I’ve only just got Amy off to sleep. Poor little sod.’

Fen tries to ignore the ‘at home’ but her confidence unravels a little further.

‘Are you all right?’ she asks.

She imagines him. He’ll be sitting on the stairs with his knees wide apart. His elbows will be perched on his knees. His shirt sleeves will be rolled up. He’ll be holding the phone to his right ear with his right hand and he’ll be scratching the scab on his cheek with the fingers of his left hand, picking at its perimeters. His wrists are strong and hairy. He will need a shave. There’s a hole in the toe of one of the blue socks he’s wearing. Fen meant to repair it but there were no other clean socks for him this morning so he took the blue ones from her mending basket. She thinks of him and she is afraid she is losing him.

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘I’m fine.’

‘Where’s Belle?’

‘She’s in hospital.’

‘What happened?’

‘It was an accident,’ he says slowly. ‘She says it was an accident. She was worn out and she took a mild overdose, not enough to do any damage. It was carelessness, nothing more than that. She’s going to be fine.’

There’s a pause and she hears him swallow. Her heart contracts with love.

‘Oh God,’ she whispers, ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘No, no, it’s all right,’ says Sean with the kind of emphasis she has heard him use when he is trying to convince himself of something, rather than anyone else.

‘You have talked to her, then?’ Fen asks.

‘Yeah, I took Amy in to see her, to show Amy she’s all right. Belle’s upset, embarrassed, a bit confused, but she’s OK. They’re keeping her in hospital so she can have a proper rest tonight. Apparently she hasn’t been sleeping, that’s why she took an extra tablet. She only meant to knock herself out for a couple of hours until Amy came home. That’s what she says; she just wanted to sleep for a while.’

‘And you believe her?’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘Maybe . . .’

‘No, don’t. Don’t even think that. I can’t go down that route, OK? I cannot doubt her story. Nothing like this has ever happened before; she’s generally a together sort of person. And she’s seeing some shrink or something in the morning. They won’t let her out of hospital if they don’t think she’s up to it.’

‘Oh,’ says Fen, ‘OK. What about Amy?’

‘She’s scared. She’d walked home with her friend from down the road, and she let herself in the back door. When Belle didn’t come down she went upstairs and found her. It was only luck that I’d finished work early and my phone was switched on. That’s what keeps bugging me. What if it hadn’t been? What would she have done then? What’s this going to do to her mind? How’s she going to feel every time she comes into the house on her own now?’

Fen knows exactly how Amy is going to feel. She knows that Amy will never again have the luxury of assuming that the people she loves are invulnerable. She knows that Amy will always, now, worry about her mother. That worry will taint her every moment.

‘Oh, Sean,’ Fen whispers. She looks up at the ceiling.

‘What am I going to do?’ he asks.

‘Stay there,’ Fen says. ‘Stay there for as long as they need you.’

‘It may be some time.’

‘I know.’

Fen turns off the lights and she goes back upstairs. Sean’s bedroom door is ajar, the curtains are still open and the room is dark and empty. She goes into the room and draws the curtains. She finds the Beck CD and she slots it into the machine, then she lies awake in Sean’s bed, listening to the words.

Fen and her brother and sister were brought up to believe in God, not karma, although Fen thinks that really it’s all the same story, the same message, just told in a different way. After the accident that killed Joe, she could not believe in anything. Now she wonders if these bad things are happening to the people she loves because of the lies she once told, and the secret she harbours. She wonders whether she has the power to change things, whether she might ever put things right and restore the balance.

Ever since Lina told her about the newspaper article, ever since she said that Emma Rees would find no peace until she knew the truth about the accident, Fen has known, in her heart, what she should do. Whatever the outcome, whether or not it makes any difference to what’s going on between Sean and Belle and Amy, she must go and see Mrs Rees and tell her what happened the night her son died.

forty-two

The first part is easy. On Friday night she packs a bag for herself and one for Connor and on Saturday morning she locks up the house and they catch a taxi to the station, then at the station they take the train to Merron. During the journey, they play word games. Connor never tires of I Spy but when it’s his turn the word always begins with ‘c’ and the answer is always ‘cow’. Fen tries to find ways to distract him. The other passengers give her kind, amused looks. He takes his crayons out of his rucksack and together they colour in pictures of dinosaurs.

Alan and Lucy meet them at the other end. Alan is carrying William in a sling around his neck. Connor enjoys the fuss made of him by his uncle and aunt, and he is fascinated by the sling, and by the baby.

‘Can I carry Baby William?’ he asks Alan, and Alan ruffles Connor’s hair and says he can help push the buggy later.

They drive back to Alan and Lucy’s house, and Fen waits until Connor is comfortable with his aunt and uncle, lying on his tummy on the floor doing a jigsaw with Alan, before she leaves.

‘I don’t know how long I’ll be,’ she tells Lucy.

Fen has tried to tell her sister where she is going, and what she is about to do, but Lucy does not want to talk about it, she doesn’t want to know. She says she doesn’t mind looking after Connor for a couple of hours, and tells Fen not to rush back.

Fen does not have to think which route to take; her feet lead her, one after the other, along roads which gradually fade from Victorian grandeur to 1970s pragmatism. The size of the houses, and the distance between them, gradually reduce until Fen is on the pavement of a neat road lined with terraced, brick-built former council houses. Their gardens are tidy, bedded with brightly coloured flowers and decorated with garden-centre ornaments. Fen did not have to check the address. She knows which house belongs to Emma Rees. She has been there a hundred times before.

She telephoned last night. She got the number from directory enquiries, and when she heard the number she recognized it. It’s the same number she used to dial all those years ago when she wanted to speak to Joe, to pass on some message from Tomas. The same order of digits. People come and go, but phone numbers remain the same.

She dialled the number and spoke, briefly, to Mrs Rees. She said: ‘You won’t remember me but . . .’

And Mrs Rees said: ‘Hello, Fen, of course I remember you.’

She said: ‘You can come and see me whenever you want. I’ve been hoping you’d get in touch.’

She said: ‘You have never been far from my thoughts, Fen. I know how hard it must have been for you.’

She said: ‘I’ll be at home tomorrow. I’ll have the kettle on.’

And now Fen stands at the end of the short path that leads to the door of 90 Cartref Close and, before she has time to think, the door opens and a small black cat streams out, bringing the smell of warm air and washing powder with it, and there is Emma Rees in slippers and a housecoat looking even more frail and haunted than she did at Gordon’s funeral. Fen is caught off guard by a wave of pity for this broken woman. She steps forward and, awkwardly, the two embrace.

‘Come in, Fen,’ says Mrs Rees. ‘I was watching out for you. Come on in.’

They sit in the conservatory, which takes up most of the tiny back garden, and talk for a while about the birds that congregate around the feeders dotted all over the lawn. Mrs Rees loves the birds. She especially likes the blue and great tits, which are sociable and feed in family groups, but also has a soft spot for the bumptious little robin, who is the self-appointed king of the garden.

Fen sips her coffee – it is decaffeinated and too milky for her taste – and takes a biscuit, even though her mouth is as dry as sand, and when Emma Rees asks: ‘What really brought you back here after all these years?’ she is honest.

She clasps her fingers tightly, holds her breath, then says: ‘I came to talk to you about the accident.’

Mrs Rees’s face clouds. She says: ‘Fen, please, I’m sure you mean well, but whatever your brother told you—’

‘No,’ says Fen very quietly. ‘Tomas didn’t have to tell me anything.’ She continues: ‘I was there.’

Emma Rees sinks back into her chair. She pales.

‘You can’t have been,’ she says. ‘You were with Deborah. Deborah told me you were with her that night. You went to the hospital to see your father, you . . .’

Fen shakes her head. She wonders if she should carry on. She wonders if she is, in fact, doing the right thing, or something terribly cruel.

‘You told the
Gazette
that you wanted to know the truth,’ she says carefully. ‘I didn’t read the article, Mrs Rees, so tell me if I misunderstood. But I think you said you couldn’t rest until you knew what really happened that night. That’s why I’m here. I can tell you . . .’

‘You were really there?’

Fen nods.

‘You were with Joe?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh!’

Emma Rees puts her fingers over her mouth and stares at Fen.

‘I’m sorry . . .’ Fen whispers.

‘Go on,’ says Mrs Rees in a very small, shaky voice. ‘Tell me.’

It was the autumn term, the start of Fen’s last year. Tomas was waiting for Fen when she came out of school. He was leaning on the fence on the other side of the road, looking like a film star, so tall and handsome. Cigarette smoke blew away from the roll-up between his fingers and she was especially glad to see him because he’d been away in Manchester for a couple of days with Joe, working for a friend who owned a stage lighting company. Their father was fading like old silk left out in the sun, and he was missing Tomas, he kept asking when he’d be back. The house was emptier and lonelier and bleaker without Tom. The whole situation was less bearable. Tomas being back took the pressure off Fen. He was her ally.

Now Fen’s handsome brother waved to her, and she smiled and broke away from the group of girls she was with. She ran across the road, swinging her bag, and slipped her arm through his. She could tell from his face and from his demeanour that he hadn’t come with bad news. In fact, he looked cheerful. He looked happy.

‘Hey, you,’ he said, turning immediately, leading her away from the school.

‘Hey,’ she said, trotting to keep up. ‘How was Manchester?’