Missing You (33 page)

‘You don’t say much, do you?’ the driver asks. His name is Ryan. He chews gum. He has high blood pressure, a baby daughter called Lottie and a strong Cardiff accent. There’s a copy of the
Daily Mail
and a plastic packet of egg and cress sandwiches on the seat between them. His wife is a teacher in a primary school. In the evenings she goes to classes – Slimming World, line dancing, GCSE Spanish – and if Ryan’s not home, his mum, who’s called Sylvia, looks after the baby.

They reach the approach to the bridge.

‘You’re sure you want me to drop you here?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘This is no-man’s-land. You can’t go anywhere from here. Only back the way we came or over the bridge.’

‘Here is perfect.’

Ryan looks uneasy. He’s worried about her. The bridge has a reputation.

She finds a breezy smile.

‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘I’ve just come to take some photographs.’

‘Oh!’ he says, relief chasing the fear from his face like sunlight following the shadow of a cloud. ‘You had me worried for a moment. Thought I might be looking at your picture in the paper tomorrow, missing person and all that.’

‘Thank you for the lift,’ says Fen, ‘and good luck with your life, and everything,’ and she slides across the seat and opens the door.

She climbs out of the cab and down the steps. Hundreds of vehicles are in the lines to pay the toll, cars and vans and lorries and coaches; holidaymakers and businesspeople, tradesmen and hauliers, men driving fuel tankers and cement mixers. The motorbikes don’t have to pay. They buzz through.

She waves to Ryan’s lorry as it accelerates towards the span of the bridge, but he probably can’t see her in his wing mirror. The light reflecting off the surface of the estuary water hurts her eyes but the bridge is magnificent, spectacular as a lightning storm, imposing as a cathedral.

Fen turns away from the bridge and she walks on, finding a path which curls up to Severn View services.

She needs to see everything.

She needs to know how it felt to be Tomas as dawn broke that morning.

They found her father’s smashed-up car in the car park. At first the attendant thought it had been vandalized and the police were called, but when they arrived and checked the number they discovered that their Welsh colleagues were searching for the car. They suspected it had been involved in a fatal accident the previous evening. The passenger-side door was missing and a hole had been punched through the shattered windscreen. The roof was buckled and twigs, leaves, mud and stone caked the bumpers and the wheel arches. The key was still in the ignition, the little red-leather fob dangling at the end of its chain.

This is the first time Fen has been here. She has tried never to think about this place, but now she’s here, weirdly, she feels exhilarated. The anticipation of what she must do thrills her.

At the entrance is a sign saying you can only park for two hours but Fen doubts anyone ever checks. She walks around the car park. It’s not a horrible place. It’s not hectic and soulless like some motorway services, where people stop only to use the toilets or to buy coffee and sandwiches or to pass children from one separated parent to the other.

There are two bowls outside the electric doors at the entrance to the services. One contains dog food, the other, water. Fen is touched by the kindness of whoever puts out these animal refreshments.

She goes inside.

It’s small, old-fashioned, poky. Fen has a quick look round.

People used to come here on day trips. They used to organize excursions, to eat a meal in the restaurant, to enjoy the views across the estuary. Then when they built the new bridge, further downstream, the powers that be thought people would stop coming here and they sold off some of the land. But people still come. They come for the views and to walk across the bridge.

Tomas was in the services in the early hours of the morning; the security cameras watched him come in and go out. He was inside only for a few minutes. Enough time to go into the toilets to swallow something, or sniff, smoke or inject something. Not long enough to drink a hot drink, or mingle in the cafeteria, looking for a lift.

Maybe he was lucky. Maybe he met somebody straight away who was prepared to drive him to the docks at Cardiff or Avonmouth, or to an airport. Or maybe he had already arranged to be picked up in the car park by a friend. Somebody with a false passport in his pocket for Tomas; a friend who would take him to meet his freight ship, or the plane that would take him to his new life on the beach. Maybe this is what happened.

But nobody believes this version of events any more. Not even Fen.

She retraces her footsteps back to the bridge. She notices everything. Beside the path that leads back to the motorway are pages torn from a magazine. Glossy cars photographed at arty angles. Glossy women in glossy shoes. Fen doesn’t look at the detail.

She crosses the motorway at the tollbooths. The vehicles stream into the booth-queues like migrating animals navigating an obstacle, like sand rushing towards the nip at the centre of an egg timer.

Fen climbs down the steps and she finds the path that crosses the bridge.

It’s such a long bridge that she can’t see the other side. Still, it’s pleasant, walking with the noise of the motorway – all those people, all those wheels and engines – to her right, and to her left the quiet and the calm of the air, and the sky, and the water. The fabric of the bridge vibrates beneath her feet when lorries go by. The air is cool on her cheeks; it blows loose hair into her eyes. She can smell the water, the water and the ocean at the end of the estuary, and the mud and the sea creatures that live in the water in between.

Estuary birds, so far below they are little more than white commas, feed in the mud which is as glossy as fine silk at the foot of the cliffs, and curly brown streams swirl out through the gravel towards the body of the river. The tip-tilted, blackened ribs of an old barge protrude sadly from the shallows and there’s a long, bandy-legged pier supporting a giant pylon whose reflection in the water is softer and more beautiful than the silhouette of the original, which stands stark against a pale grey sky infused with the palest blue. Its cables trail a mile above the water, drifting towards the sister pylon on the Welsh side of the estuary.

If she looks, Fen can see for miles in three directions. To her left are the flatlands, spreading out like a painting towards the motorways and the factories, chimneys, plants and warehouses in the distance. To her right is the Welsh coast, and in front of her is the estuary, so wide, so still, so ancient and so wonderful it takes away her fear and makes her feel perfectly calm.

She puts on her jacket and pulls it tight then walks for ages with the traffic beside her. She walks to the middle of the bridge, where the metal moves quite dramatically beneath her feet. It’s like being the only passenger on a boat. She holds on to the railings until she is accustomed to the movement. Then she leans on them and gazes out across the silver water and the silver-brown mud. The estuary looks entirely different from this perspective. It is immense and peaceful. Fen has forgotten the lorries and the cars hurtling along the road behind her; all she knows is the expanse of water, the air and the sea birds flying, white, below her. Land is irrelevant here. It’s a lovely place to be, suspended above the river, between the land masses, with the huge tide rising and falling invisibly beneath.

The new bridge is a pencil sketch in the distance. Sunlight makes its way dreamily through clouds the colour of the water, and the grey-silver light and the colours and the slow, slow movement of the water are beautiful together.

Fen brushes the hair out of her eyes.

She stands there, just looking, for ages, for hours.

A couple of cyclists go past. They say: ‘Are you all right, love?’ and she says: ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

Fen takes the flowers out of her bag. She throws them, one by one, over the railings. She does not see where they go. They are carried by the wind, and the water is too far below and she’s not sure which direction the tide is moving. The lavender stems spin and the petals are torn from the rose-heads and float in the air by themselves.

Fen does not know where Tomas is.

But at least, she thinks, if he did come here, that morning.

If he leaned over the railings.

If he fell.

It was a beautiful place for him to fall.

The flowers fall into the water.

She hopes they find him.

forty-nine

‘More beef, Sean? Can I tempt you?’

Belle’s father is holding a bloodied piece of meat on the prongs of a carving fork. He shakes it in Sean’s direction.

‘Really, John, I can’t. I’m absolutely full.’

He turns to Belle’s mother. ‘That was a great meal, Amanda, thank you.’

Amanda primps. ‘I hope you’ve room for some dessert,’ she says. ‘Gooseberry fool, your favourite. I made it specially.’

Sean thinks it is a peculiarly ironic choice of pudding. Belle sends him an apologetic little glance, which he accepts with good grace. This is just another one of those rituals to be gone through. Everyone is pretending that nothing has changed since the last time Sean and Belle spent a weekend with her parents. The atmosphere is so heavy with good intent it’s given Sean a headache and the strain is telling on everyone’s face.

‘Belle was telling us,’ says Amanda, ‘that you’re thinking of moving house. I think that’s a very good idea.’

‘You don’t want to put your house up for sale now,’ says John briskly, ‘not while the market’s as it is.’

‘It’s all relative, Dad,’ says Belle. ‘And we haven’t made up our minds yet.’

‘It would be good for both of you,
all
of you,’ says Amanda, touching Amy’s shoulder, ‘to get away from those . . . memories.’

Sean winces.

‘Mum, please . . .’ says Belle. It is the closest any of them has come, so far, to mentioning any of the events of the last fifteen months.

‘I’d think you were insane if you tried to sell it now,’ John says gruffly.

‘It’s their decision, darling,’ says Amanda. ‘They must do what they think is best.’

‘I’ve never been happy in that house,’ says Belle quietly to Sean as they stack the dishwasher together.

‘Haven’t you?’ That’s news to Sean. He thought she loved it there. He thought it was her dream house.

Belle shakes her head.

‘It’s always felt like a kind of prison to me.’

Sean passes her a rinsed plate. Belle takes it without looking at him.

He says, confused: ‘You always said it was the perfect house for raising children and settling down. You used to tell everyone we’d found the perfect home.’

‘It was. It is. But I don’t think I was ready for all that. I think I probably should have waited a few more years before I had a child. I was too young. I didn’t want to settle down.’

Sean feels a pang of frustration. He feels somehow he’s being blamed for something, but he’s not sure what. He is certain he never railroaded Belle into marriage, or motherhood, or domesticity. It was the opposite, surely, wasn’t it? He was always so eager to make Belle happy that generally he went along with whatever she suggested.

‘I thought it was what was expected of me,’ Belle says, as if that explains everything. ‘I thought it was what I wanted.’

Sean rinses his hands under the cold tap.

‘If that’s how you feel, then I’m not sure that moving house is going to make everything right again,’ he says.

‘Never mind your father, I think it’s a lovely idea,’ says Amanda coming into the kitchen with the condiments. ‘A fresh new start for the family. You have to do what’s best for
you
, don’t you, Sean? You have to be true to yourself. Any less than that and it just won’t work.’

She hands a jar of mustard to Amy.

‘Put that back in the fridge for me, would you?’

Amy takes the jar. ‘Can we go and live with Fen and Connor?’ she asks.

‘Who are they, darling?’ Amanda asks. ‘Are they friends?’

‘They’re who Daddy lived with when Mummy was with Lewis. They’re really nice. Fen could look after me when Mummy needed a rest. She wouldn’t mind. She said we’re always welcome. She said . . .’

‘That’s nice,’ says Amanda.

‘Fen says—’

‘That’s enough Amy,’ says Belle, sharply.

Later, Sean hears voices in the living room and he goes in to find Belle leaning over Amy with a hand on each of her daughter’s shoulders.

Belle is leaning forward so her face is close to Amy’s and she’s whispering in a hissy, angry voice.

‘Why do you do this to me? Why do you have to humiliate me like that? Don’t you love me? Don’t you think I’m a good mother? Would you prefer to be with your father’s little friend? Would you?’

Amy is staring up at her mother. She shakes her head.

‘No!’ she says. ‘No, Mummy. I love you the best I—’

‘This is so hard for me,’ Belle says. ‘I’m doing my best and it’s for your sake. I’m doing this all for you, I’m putting up with all this for
you
, Amy, and it’s so hard just getting through each day and you have to keep hurting me—’

‘Belle!’ Sean steps forward, takes her right wrist gently and turns her away. ‘What are you doing?’

Belle pulls her arm away. With her left hand she rubs the place where his fingers touched her.

‘Mummy!’ Amy reaches over and tries to take hold of Belle’s arm. Belle shakes her off.

‘I’m sick of you both!’ she cries. ‘I’m sick of this pretending. I’ve had enough of everything.’ She runs out of the room. They hear her footsteps on the stairs beyond, and the slam of a door.

Amy looks up at her father, and then she looks towards the door. Her lower lip trembles and her face colours.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers. ‘I want to tell Mummy I’m sorry. I never meant to make her cry.’

Sean takes her in his arms, smoothes her hair. She does not relax; she is stiff and rigid, brittle like her mother.

‘It’s all right, Ames, it’s OK. You didn’t do anything wrong,’ he says, but it’s not OK, it’s not OK at all and they both know it isn’t.