The Missing (12 page)

‘I’ll eat it if you don’t want it.’

I passed it over. He wolfed it down in about three bites, then lay down again, one arm thrown over his face to shield his eyes from the sun. ‘So, how’s your mum?’

‘Mum?’ Until that moment, I had completely forgotten that I’d mentioned her to Blake. I tried to recall what I might have said, settling on a vague, ‘Oh – she’s much the same.’

‘Did you tell her where you were on Monday night? Spending time with evil policemen?’

I laughed. ‘No, I didn’t have to say anything about it. She was asleep when I got back.’

‘Why does she hate the police?’ He lifted his arm away from his face for a second and squinted at me. ‘It’s been bothering me since you said it.’

‘People do.’ I turned my head away. ‘We had a few dealings with them and they weren’t all that helpful, let’s put it that way.’

‘What sort of thing?’

I wavered for a second, tempted to tell him about Charlie, but it was too long a story, and besides, he couldn’t really be that interested. I told myself he was just asking questions as a good policeman should.

‘Ancient history. You know how it is. Surrey Police priorities didn’t match up with hers. She felt a bit let down. If she wasn’t the sort to hold a grudge, I’m sure she’d be over it by now.’

‘Is it just the two of you living there? No dad?’

‘Dad died,’ I said, and I don’t think my voice changed, but he sat up.

‘When did that happen?’

‘When I was fourteen. Ten years ago. God, it doesn’t seem that long.’

‘How did he die?’

I had got used to saying what happened without getting emotional. ‘Car accident. It was after they’d split up. He’d moved out. He was driving up from Bristol to see me and – well, it was just a stupid accident.’

Not suicide, either. Whatever people had thought.

‘That must have been tough.’

‘Mm,’ I said, not looking at him. ‘It made things pretty difficult at home. Mum wasn’t in great shape after the divorce, which was why I’d stayed with her. When Dad died …’ I swallowed. ‘She had to go into hospital for a while. She just couldn’t manage.’

It had been far worse than that. She had been psychotic with grief – out of her mind, dangerously so. She had been sectioned, for her own safety and for mine, and Aunt Lucy had come like an angel and spirited me away to Manchester for a few months. I had written to Mum every day, and never heard a word in return.

‘When she got out of hospital, she was still a bit of a wreck, to be honest. And she’s never really recovered. There’s just the two of us, so I look after her. It’s sort of the least I can do.’

‘What happened to your dad –’ he put his hand out and touched my ankle ‘– it wasn’t your fault, you know.’

‘Did I say it was?’ My voice was sharp; I had spent years listening to Mum tell me that I was responsible. ‘I know it was just bad luck. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did.
And
you wouldn’t have thought that Mum would care, considering they’d split up two years earlier. But she was devastated.’

‘Maybe she still loved him. How did they break up?’

‘Dad left. But she made him go.’ I shook my head. ‘I heard the way she used to talk to him. I heard the things she used to say about him. She
hated
him.’

‘Did she take off her wedding ring?’

‘What?’

‘Did she stop wearing it – after the divorce?’

‘No. Actually, she still wears it.’

Blake shrugged. ‘Then she still loves him.’

I considered it for a second, reluctant to give Mum credit for anything. But maybe he had a point. And for the first time in years, I actually felt genuinely sorry for my mother, who hadn’t wanted her life to work out the way it had, who couldn’t deal with the crappy things that had happened to her, who just wanted the world to go away.

Blake had rolled on to his back again and closed his eyes. My ankle tingled where his hand had rested. Without thinking, without even really meaning to say it out loud, I blurted out, ‘Why don’t you have a girlfriend?’

He twisted his head to look at me and grinned. ‘I work terrible hours, remember? They don’t stick around.’

‘Oh, right.’ More likely that he went through them at a rate – he couldn’t be short of willing candidates. I had more self-respect than that, though. I wouldn’t be joining the queue. ‘Speaking of work, I’d better get back. Janet will be furious.’

I expected him to laugh, but he didn’t. He frowned, then sat up. ‘Sarah … about this case. Promise me that you’ll be careful. Promise me that you’ll keep out of the investigation.’

I felt my face go blank. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Look, you’re a nice person. You take responsibility for things, even when maybe you shouldn’t. But this – this isn’t something you want to be involved with.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I began to fold the sandwich wrappers for the sake of having something to do.

‘Listen, it’s not that you haven’t helped us. You’ve been great. But you’ve been a bit too close to this case from the start. I like you, Sarah, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.’

I was half annoyed, half occupied with trying to work out what he meant when he said he liked me.
Liked
me, or just liked me? I pushed that question out of my head and made myself focus. ‘How would I get hurt?’

‘Lots of ways.’ Blake stood up then, towering over me. The sun was behind him and he was silhouetted against the bright sky. I couldn’t see the expression on his face. ‘Someone always gets the blame, sooner or later, in a case like this. It hasn’t started yet, but if we don’t get any results soon, people are going to start asking questions, wondering who should have spotted what was going on. Believe me, you don’t want to be in the frame when they come looking.’

‘I hardly think that’s likely.’

‘I’ve seen it happen,’ Blake said. ‘Just go back to work,
Sarah
. Don’t try to do our job for us, and don’t put yourself in harm’s way.’

I looked up at him dumbly. Suddenly awkward, he checked his watch. ‘I’d better go. Thanks for having lunch with me.’

I watched him walk away across the lawn, his head down. My throat was aching as if I might cry, but it was anger I felt.
He
had come to find
me
, after all. I had just been trying to help the Shepherds when I spoke to Rachel. Surely there was no harm in wanting to do what I could?

As there was no one to hear my unanswerable arguments, I ran out of steam eventually and got up to go. By the time I had finished collecting the rubbish, there was no trace at all of us having been there, except for some flattened grass.

It had been a mistake to think that my new sympathy for my mother would survive an actual face-to-face encounter with her. I hadn’t been at home for two minutes before the pity withered and died.

I had got home sticky, hot and tired, to be greeted by the smell of stale air and musty fabric that was the signature scent of home. It was a long way from freshly baked bread or roasting coffee. On the sofa, Mum was leafing through a large, leather-effect scrapbook that I recognised immediately.

The scrapbooks had been Granny’s idea. She had spent the weeks and months after Charlie’s disappearance working her way through stacks of newspapers, cutting out any reference to him that she could find. There was a
perverse
kind of pride in it, as if this was Charlie’s outstanding achievement – something to commemorate, like sporting prowess or academic excellence. Why she thought they would help, I had never understood. Mum had inherited them when Granny died: three heavy albums that crackled as the glue-stiffened pages turned. I had seen them many times but never actually looked through them. For one thing, I didn’t want to, and for another, Mum guarded them with her life. She kept them hidden away in a safe place, which I suspected was under her bed, but I had never bothered to look. Recent events seemed to have prompted her to dig them out for a wallow, for old times’ sake.

‘I’m back,’ I said unnecessarily, passing through the sitting room to the kitchen, where I took a tumbler out of the cupboard and filled it at the kitchen tap. The water was tepid and faintly metallic, but I was parched and drank the whole glass in one go. I refilled it and came back to stand beside the sofa. Mum looked up for a second, then returned to the page in front of her. I craned my neck, trying to read the headline upside-down. With a thud that was loud enough to make me jump, she snapped the book shut and glared at me.

‘What do you want?’

I shrugged. ‘Nothing. I was just looking.’ I sat down on the arm of the sofa tentatively. ‘Are you reading about Charlie?’

Something like an electric shock ran through me as the syllables left my mouth. I never said his name, never. Especially not to Mum.
There are two things
, an old teacher
of
mine had once told the class,
that cannot be taken back: the sped arrow and the spoken word
. I waited, cringing slightly, for the reaction.

After a second and quite calmly, Mum said, ‘I’m just looking through these.’ She patted the album that was on her knee.

‘Can I see?’ Without waiting for a reply, I reached over to pick up one of the other scrapbooks from the coffee table. We could look at them together. It might help us to come to a better understanding of each other. I was beginning to think that I didn’t know her at all. Maybe that was the problem.

The scrapbook was a little too far away to reach comfortably. I managed to hook one finger under the spine and pulled it, trying to draw it nearer to me. It had stuck to the book underneath it and I yanked at it to break the seal that had formed. With a crack, the plastic binding ripped in a horrible jagged tear that wavered across the base of the spine for about two inches. The paper lining showed through the tear, stark white against the chocolate-brown of the cover. I froze.

Mum leaned forward and picked up the scrapbook, running her fingers over the damage, not saying a word.

‘I – I’m sorry,’ I started to say, but she turned her face up to me, her eyes blazing.

‘This is typical of you. Typical. You just want to destroy everything that matters to me, don’t you?’

‘It was an accident. The books are old. They weren’t that expensive anyway. The plastic must have perished.’

‘Oh, they mean very little to you, I can tell that. But they
matter
to me, Sarah.’ Her voice got louder, higher. ‘Look at it. It’s ruined.’

Ruined was a bit much. ‘We can tape it up,’ I said, hating that I was in the wrong.

‘No,
we
can’t. You aren’t to touch these again.’ She gathered them into her arms, glaring. ‘You are a destructive, careless girl. You always have been. Especially where your brother is concerned.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I shouldn’t have to explain it to you,’ Mum said, standing up with some difficulty, still cradling the books. ‘You’ve always resented him. Always.’

‘That’s absolutely untrue. I—’

‘I don’t care, Sarah!’ Her words cracked like a whip, and I actually flinched. ‘You are a very great disappointment to me. My only consolation is that your father isn’t alive to see how you’ve turned out. He would be devastated if he knew.’

‘If he knew what?’ I stood up too, and I was shaking. ‘If he knew that I lived here to babysit you, instead of having a life of my own? If he knew the opportunities I’d passed up rather than leave you on your own?’

‘I never asked you to come back here,’ Mum spat. ‘This has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with you not taking responsibility for your own life. It’s much easier to stay here and resent me for the way you live than to make your own way in the world. But you can’t blame me. I didn’t even want you here. I’d rather be alone.’

‘Oh, because you managed so well when I was at university. You wouldn’t last a week,’ I said coldly. ‘Unless
you
actually want to die. I can see how I would be inconvenient to have around the place if you were trying to drink yourself to death.’

‘How
dare
you!’

‘How dare
you
? You really shouldn’t be encouraging me to leave. I might take you up on it, you know.’

‘I would never be that lucky,’ Mum said flatly.

I looked at her for a long minute. ‘You really hate me, don’t you?’

‘I don’t hate you. I just don’t need you.’

Two lies for the price of one. But she knew, and I knew, that it didn’t make any difference. She could say what she liked. I couldn’t leave, and neither could she.

I walked past her without saying another word and went upstairs to my bedroom, slamming the door behind me with violence. Standing with my back to the door, I looked around the room – really looked at it, for once. It was depressing to see how little it had changed since my childhood. The room was small, dominated by the double bed I had bought with my first pay cheque, feeling like a grown-up at last. I had revised for countless exams at the little desk that was jammed awkwardly into the bay window, sitting for hours with my feet braced on the radiator. Beside my bed, there was a bookcase crammed with the books I had read at university and before – the classics, for the most part, their spines threaded with white from reading and rereading. Apart from my chest of drawers and the tiny bedside table, there was nothing else in the room. There was nothing that reflected my own taste. There was nothing I wouldn’t have been happy to
walk
out and never see again, with the exception of my father’s photograph.

A fly was buzzing somewhere in the room. I walked over to open the window, then stood by the desk, opening and closing the drawers aimlessly, looking for nothing in particular. The drawers were stuffed with bank statements, receipts and old postcards that I’d never bothered to throw out, from university friends.
Fell asleep on the beach and burned my back! Greece is lovely – can’t wait to come back here!
Or
Alain is a sweetie and such a good skier … Wish you had come with us!
I wasn’t on the postcard or Christmas-card list for anyone any more. It was hard to keep in touch when the answer to ‘What’s new with you?’ was always ‘Nothing’.