Stolen Child (25 page)

She finished reading the manuscript and stacked the pages together. At least this memoir had a happy ending. She had become fond of endings with redemption. The clock chimed seven. Frank would be arriving in an hour. Time to switch on the oven. Before leaving her office, she opened the www.
FindIsobelGardner.com
website. All the features and news items, all the audio and visual material relating to Isobel’s disappearance were linked to the archival pages. She found it impossible to read through the contents, clicking instead on the contact page at the end of each day. Occasionally, she found emails from students requesting interviews they hoped to include in their theses. Journalists and documentary makers also emailed her but she remained steadfast in her refusal to give personal interviews or quotes. The internet was the shield that protected her and she had no intention of allowing it to be breached.

Only one email this evening. Miranda May again. Carla sighed and debated sending it directly to her spam folder, but, as usual, curiosity got the better of her. Over the years she had received letters and, latterly, emails from Miranda. They were usually variations of the same message: look for your daughter in a place of stone.

Once, after seeing Miranda’s advertisement for psychic readings in the classified section of a newspaper, Carla had visited her. She entered a small roadside cottage that smelled over-poweringly of turf smoke and incense. Miranda’s ears and throat had glittered with cheap jewellery. Bangles jangled on each arm, and her rings flashed each time she moved her hands. Her hair, which looked as if it had not been touched since it was combed into a fifties beehive, was studded with diamanté combs.

‘It’s tat,’ she confided to Carla. ‘But I like to shine and when you get to my great age your options are limited.’ She lifted Carla’s hands and glanced at her palms. ‘You, on the other hand, with all your options, are a shadow. A ghost.’

As assessments went, Carla was impressed. Miranda released her hands and swayed forward, as if buried under the weight of prediction. ‘You love a man who keeps your bed warm,’ she said. ‘You love him with your mind and your body. But not here.’ She straightened and pressed her hand to her chest. ‘You do not love him with your heart and you never will.’

Tonight, Miranda’s email was more cryptic than usual and had a strong biblical overtone.

Dear Carla,

Your faith will be rewarded. Your daughter resides in a place of stone but she is still out of reach. Be brave. The largest boulder is being rolled aside. Deliverance will soon be at hand.

Your faithful friend,

Miranda May.

Definitely, Carla decided, as she switched off the computer, Miranda deserved to be classified as spam but somehow she always remained in the inbox.

Rockrose is silent as the sun rises above the Burren and the hoary rockrose mats the limestone with yellow petals. The aspen leaves shiver and the skeletal cottage, twisted in bindweed, peers through the pearly light. All is silent yet Joy’s body quivers. She has awoken for a reason. A sound crashed through her dreams. She leaves her bed and opens her door, hesitates, then, gripped by fear, runs to her mother’s bedroom and bangs on the door. She calls her name repeatedly until she hears a whimper. The frail sound terrifies her because she knows her mother is calling for help and beyond the locked door there is blood everywhere.

‘Turn left at Dowling’s Meadow and drive to the end of the lane,’ she shouts into the phone, unable to understand how she can speak so clearly when all around her the world is screaming. The ambulance is already on its way. She runs towards the door and kicks at it the way they do on television, all those cops splintering wood, but the door does not budge. Splotch, barking uncontrollably, runs back and forth across the landing.

Yesterday they had a row over Spain and Joy’s refusal to move there. She crashes her shoulder against the door and remembers each careless word she flung at her mother.

Anger races like fever through her when she rings her father and gets his answering machine. She hates him for being on the other side of the world when she needs him here, now, this instant, forcing her mother’s bedroom door open with his big strong shoulders. She phones Miriam and huddles on the landing until she hears the ambulance. Miriam comes running behind the paramedics, taking the stairs two at a time, dragging Joy into her arms. Her grandmother’s eyes are still crusted with sleep but she tries to smile, tries to pretend that everything will be all right.

Nikki is the ambulance driver. She looks different in her luminous jacket and boots, not like on the beach in her wetsuit, surfing beside Dylan. She blocks Joy from entering the room but Joy sees everything before she closes the door. It is as she feared. She waits outside with her grandmother until the door opens and her mother is carried out on a stretcher.

‘I’m sorry…sorry…sorry…it’s my fault. I didn’t mean what I said.’ Joy walks beside the stretcher, not feeling any pain as her mother’s grip on her hand tightens and she can’t stop saying
sorry…sorry…sorry…
until Nikki tells her she needs to be calm and give her mother strength.

In the ambulance her mother’s eyes glisten, bright as sapphires. She grasps Joy’s hand, holding on to something familiar, drawing her nearer, whispering all the time, the words garbled…

Anticipating…see my dead babies and the blind stallion trampling my dreams…and the truth written in blood…in the book…in the blood…the book…the blood…

‘It will all work out…it will…it
will
,’ says Nikki. She presses her foot on the accelerator and sounds the siren. Time is precious, passing through a sieve, each grain matters.

Life is a fleeting glance…moments flickering on the reel of memories…press forward and another comes…sepia tinges lightening…and the paramedic says, ‘On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?’

I tell you about the blind stallion but you don’t hear and the paramedic asks again, his voice cutting through my terror, forcing me to concentrate. On a scale of one to ten – ‘Ten…ten…’ I hit the word off my teeth and the driver, breaking through traffic lights, says, ‘Not to worry, we’re nearly there…nearly there.’

Dylan’s wife…I can’t think of her name…it doesn’t matter…names mean nothing…except that name…I must say it…must…it terrifies me, this weakness that came on me when I awoke and tried to reach you…clutching the edge of the dressing table…further than I realised and I pitched forward…forcing my voice through the silence to summon you, as once you summoned me to your side…my footsteps soft as we fled together into our future…the rain falling silent…seeping…seeping…slipping through the mist that comes and goes before my eyes…control…control…I must keep control…you are weeping, apologising,
begging forgiveness for words neither of us can remember…the Judgement Book…you must find it…you shake your head and apologise again…unaware that it was my wailing wall, my deep depthless well where secrets moulder…the siren is a requiem…I left it too late…Dr Williamson warned me…hospital lights…I grip your hand and pull you nearer…the cottage…dead babies…the blind stallion…you say, don’t talk, your voice a scared whisper as hands lift me…hurry me…the ceiling swaying…voices shouting…your arms outstretched, and Miriam too…masking her fear but it burns her eyes…faces behind masks…real masks…a needle pinching my hand and the light above me is butter…a blob of melting butter…and I melt with it…into a dark space where they remove my womb…such a small cocoon to have caused so much heartache…and now…this final act of betrayal…but what does it matter…I sink deep, deeper until the light shines again and voices call my name…

Susanne…Susanne…Mammy…Mammy…how long have I been sleeping…why are you crying…your head bent…and Miriam’s arms tight around you…David running…why is he here…his face above mine…his breath fast as the wind when it rushes through the sycamores…stay, stay, he cries, his hand hard as a rope pulling me back but he has long since lost the power to woo me…life is a fleeting glance…I see your long legs dangling over the sofa…giggling phone conversations with friends…David leaving…returning…Dowling’s Meadow at sunrise…a gaunt castle…a child falling…the whispering ivy tangling my hair as I bend over an open wound…a bed of bluebells and forget-me-nots…and the blind stallion waits…impatient…

Voices talk about transfusions…I do not want a stranger’s blood in my veins…even your blood, which you have given generously…knowing it takes priority over all blood groups…and
the truth will be revealed…it is written in our blood…in the book…and the reel of memories flicker…sepia tinges…my limbs entwined…David…Richard…Edward…faceless boys…my nails red as sin…you beg me to stay…beg my forgiveness…why do you beg when it is I who must beg and be absolved…the stallion paws the earth…ready to carry me on his broad fierce back…carry me towards the silver lining of the sky…while you…with your bog-brown eyes that belong to her…you draw me back towards pain…pain of the soul…and the past is so close I can touch the flickering moments…the blind stallion tosses his mane…your voice is thick and scared because you know I am letting you go…setting you free at last…my mother beckons…serene Nina…no bitter lines…no bitter gall to drink…her mouth generous with smiles…and hiding behind her long yellow skirt I see them…my slender whispering children…my hair, my eyes…they call me through a path of moonlight…high above the grey pull of the Burren…but there is one last face that binds me still…her eyes, deep as the bogs that preserve their secrets…pleading…always pleading…where is my child…give me back my daughter…but she is trailing behind me now…fainter…fainter…and I am beyond that flash, that instant when all of life is revealed and abandoned…a shell…an empty womb…what is done is done…

For three days her mother struggles to live and, when she dies, the nurses transform the small ward into a mortuary. They lay her out in her nicest dress and light candles. Impossible to believe she’s dead. When Joy blinks and looks again, she believes she can see her mother’s chest rising and falling. Her face has collapsed into softness, the way it had in Spain, as if her skin has been released from invisible clasps. She should have looked like that all the time. Such rows over the Spanish office and her father being so stubborn, refusing to listen. He must feel the same way because when he weeps the sound crashes against the silence surrounding her mother and Joy expects her to open her eyes and say, ‘Get a grip, David.’ But she is beyond them by then, separated by a breath.

Joy wants to hit her father. He should have made her mother happy. He should not have left her all alone so that when she fell Joy was unable to save her. Her anger is too deep to be contained. She shoves him away when he tries to hold her and runs from the ward, her footsteps clattering along the corridor, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

‘Joy!’ She stops and looks up at the man standing in front of her. ‘I’m so sorry, Joy. I came as soon as Nikki phoned.’
Dylan always sounds calm, even now, and she wants him to stroke away her terror, the way he soothed Splotch on the road that time.

‘I need to let Splotch out,’ she sobs against him. ‘I have to go home to Splotch.’

Why does she keep thinking about her dog when her mother is dead and it’s all her fault? Dylan leads her to a chair, he must be used to people crying all the time in his clinic, pouring out all their sorrows, knowing he will understand what it’s like to be lost in the middle of nowhere.

When they return to Rockrose from the hospital, the neighbours have gathered in the kitchen. The women have made sandwiches, plates and plates of sandwiches and cake and scones, and her father pours whiskey and Guinness for everyone. All the talk is about her mother…what a loss she will be to Maoltrán, and Fr Davis – who drove to Rockrose once a week to share a bottle of wine and a beef stroganoff with her mother and her various committees – says, ‘We must pray together so that our dearly departed sister will rest peacefully in the arms of our Lord Jesus.’

Joy wants to laugh out loud at the idea of her mother resting anywhere. Laughter seems better than crying, or throwing up, but Fr Davis won’t understand that if she cries she will never be able to stop. She keeps her hands in front of her face when he decides to say a glorious decade of the rosary. Why not sorrowful, she wants to shout. Nothing glorious about death. She laughs silently when everyone stops eating and drinking and bows their heads to pray. Her shoulders twitch and the tears run so fast into her mouth she tastes salt.

She sleeps that night with Miriam, awakens and sleeps again. Each time her grandmother is watching over her. ‘Hush hush, my little cabbage. Rest now. You’re safe in my arms.’

She says, ‘Don’t be troubling your head with such foolish thoughts,’ when Joy tells her about all the times she stormed off to bed in a huff over things so stupid she can’t even remember what they were…And it doesn’t matter any more…they will never be important again.

Robert had proposed to her in the curve of a Tuscany valley. They sat outside a small Italian restaurant, sharing a bottle of Chianti. The purple evening settled around them and the cicadas, tired from their serenading, gradually fell silent. Into this silence he asked Carla to marry him and she accepted on the same exchange of breath.

When Frank proposed, they were in the middle of an argument as to whether or not he should publish a celebrity kiss-and-tell memoir. Carla had glanced through the opening chapters and let the pages slide to the floor. The story, written by a rock singer who hoped to save his waning career with his lurid revelations, was testosterone-laden and turgid. But Frank, aware that he would sell more copies of this particular memoir than all his hard-hitting exposés put together, was anxious to agree a publishing deal.

‘It’s absolute junk,’ said Carla. ‘I’m not going to work on it, so you can find yourself another ghostwriter. In fact, you can find yourself another full-time ghost because I’m sick of writing other people’s stories. But at least they were worth writing. Not like this piece of self-regarding
rubbish.
’

‘Since when did you become so self-righteous?’ Frank
demanded. ‘You were part and parcel of the celebrity culture once.’

‘Yes…and it broke me.’

‘No, it didn’t. You were never broken, Carla.’

‘You’re wrong. I broke when Anita died. That’s why I live like this.’ She ran her hands distractedly through her short hair and spiked it upwards. ‘Do you know what I’ve been doing lately? Putting myself in the way of people I used to know. It’s like a sick game I play. I don’t want to be recognised yet, at some crazy level, I’m hoping they will see through this face and call me Carla.’

‘If they did, how would you feel?’ He picked up the scattered manuscript and slipped it into his briefcase.

‘Alive again, I expect.’

‘
Alive?
’ He stared down at her. ‘So am I to understand I’m in love with a corpse?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know that’s not what I mean.’

‘Then what do you mean? Are you going through the motions of being
alive
when I make love to you? Are you
alive
and listening when I tell you I love you? We’ve been together seven years now so I should have noticed I was living within the pall of the grave. I don’t give my heart away lightly, Carla. When I do, it would be reassuring to know it’s in safe hands, not in a dead-claw grasp.’

His complexion had deepened as he spoke, flushing high spots of colour into his cheeks. She was used to his outbursts and allowed his anger to run through her. That was the advantage of being a ghost.

‘Trust you to play semantics with a word, Frank.’ Her voice was mild when he paused for breath. ‘Would you feel better if I used the word “affirmed”? It’s difficult living in another skin. I know…I know…’ She shook her head, warding off
his retort. ‘It’s my choice and I must accept the consequences. It’s just…occasionally…’

‘You’d like to be a celebrity again?’

‘No, Frank. Occasionally, I’d like to feel I was living a normal existence. Like Robert with his two sons.’

‘Then move on with me.’ His indignation forgotten, he stood up and drew her to her feet. ‘Marry me, Carla. We could have a baby, maybe two…or none, if that’s what you’d prefer. What do you say?’

‘Why on earth do you want to change anything between us?’ She was unable to hide her astonishment. ‘You’ve told me often enough you’ve no interest in marriage.’

‘I haven’t been
that
definite.’

‘You certainly have. You said you were genetically programmed to remain single and change the world by the might of the pen.’

‘I talk a lot of horseshit, Carla, as you well know. I’m in love with you. I’d like to marry you, if you’ll consider my proposal. I should have gone for violins and roses, not shooting from the hip like this…but it comes down to the same answer in the end. Yes or no?’

She imagined waking up every morning beside him, turning to kiss him last thing at night. Perhaps he was right and they could have a child. At thirty-nine, there was still time but the thought brought her no joy. They would grow old together, send invisible signals to each other, as her parents did, learn tolerance, patience, understanding. Just thinking about it made her exhausted.

‘We’ve everything we need in our relationship as it is,’ she said. ‘And we have our independence. You’d hate sharing a home with me. You’re always on at me for living in a pigsty—’

‘Steady on, Carla. I occasionally comment on your untidiness. But that’s part of your charm.’

‘Charm quickly fades when you live cheek by jowl with its flaws,’ she said. ‘Forget marriage, Frank. We don’t need it.’

‘What if I do?’

His face set stubbornly as she continued to argue. Leo had been right when he warned her that Frank Staunton would always put his own needs first. Now that he had decided he wanted marriage, he would give her no quarter until she made a decision.

‘I can’t deal with this at the moment,’ she protested. ‘It’s too sudden.’

‘You don’t
deal
with a proposal of marriage, Carla,’ he replied. ‘You either accept or reject it.’

‘Or you take time to consider it,’ she retorted. ‘If you want a genuine answer from me, you must give me that space.’

He nodded, his features relaxing. ‘You’re right. I’m too impatient when I make up my mind about momentous decisions. Come to me when you’re ready and let me know your answer. But if you say yes, I need to know if it’s Clare Frazier or Carla Kelly who’s accepting me.’

‘Which one would you like to marry?’ she asked.

He answered without hesitation. ‘The one who will love me most.’