The Missing One (31 page)

‘She
missed
him?'

‘She missed him, “spiritually, emotionally and physically”.' Spoken out loud the words lose some of their power. They are just words. Slightly Mills & Boon words at that.

‘Is that all?'

I pause, knife in the air. ‘Well, you can't miss someone you don't have a relationship with, can you?'

‘Can't you?' Our eyes meet. She doesn't blink. ‘I think you can.'

‘How?' I look down at my hands, red-knuckled from raw onions and cold winds; my wedding ring shines back up at me. ‘You can't. That doesn't make sense. Anyway, she was his college girlfriend eighteen years ago. She can't have missed him for eighteen years!'

She looks at me again. I know what she's going to say.

‘Whatever,' I say, quickly. ‘They'd been seeing each other recently for work, so the missing thing was obviously recent.
And she sent him another text saying, “Have a great day, gorgeous.” You don't say that unless … And he'd obviously deleted other texts. I looked for them. He was guilty. He sounded guilty, when he tried to explain. It's … can we talk about something else now?'

We chop again in silence. Susannah may have a point about the missing, but all the same, I heard the guilt in Doug's voice. If he hasn't slept with her, why would he be guilty?

‘I'm sure you'll work it out somehow,' she says, brusquely. ‘My friend, Maggie, who runs the bakery in town, says we are never given anything in this life that we can't handle.'

‘Actually.' I put down the knife and blow my nose on the paper towel, wiping away onion tears. ‘That's crap, because I'm not handling any of this very well at all.'

‘You came, Kali. You found your breathing space. You're doing your thing.'

‘No, I'm not, really. I just came here on an impulse after a horrible loss and not enough sleep – and to be honest, Susannah, I'm not really sure what I thought I'd achieve except a humongous credit card bill. I mean, I thought maybe you could help me understand my mother, and our relationship. I want to feel connected to her, but right now I feel pretty much disconnected from everything. Sometimes I feel like I can't possibly even be here, in your house, on this island. It's like being awake and asleep at the same time. It's … ' I pick up the wine and sniff it. ‘Sorry. I know I probably sound a bit unhinged.'

‘Killer whales sleep and move at the same time,' she says,
conversationally. ‘They shut down one hemisphere of their brain, but the other stays awake so they can keep moving, breathing and watching for dangers as they sleep. You see them sometimes out at sea, side by side, all of them sleeping – they surface together and take these long, slow dives – they'll go on for miles and miles, sleeping and moving together. It's a beautiful thing, kind of mystical.'

I picture the whales with their loved ones tight around them, synchronized, protecting one another even as they sleep. ‘I just feel,' I say, ‘very alone.'

‘Oh Kali,' she shrugs. ‘You are alone.'

I look at her. She chops on, nonchalantly. ‘You've lost your mother and possibly your husband,' she says. Then she turns her head, and her bleached-out eyes settle on my face. ‘That's why you need to stay here for a bit longer. That's why you came.'

‘Oh, no.' I look down at the mess of onions. ‘Honestly, Susannah, I couldn't stay any longer here – I mean, we really do have to go first thing tomorrow, to get back to Vancouver. I've imposed on your hospitality quite enough.'

‘No, you haven't.' She touches the tip of her knife against her glistening index finger. ‘And anyway. You shouldn't be dragging a young child around like this. You owe it to that baby to stay here at least one more night. You're here for a reason. You need to accept that. And you need to learn to accept help, Kali. Especially in your condition.'

I look at her. I have no idea what she's talking about.

She takes the board with my onions and garlic, and tips them into the frying pan.

She picks up a spatula. ‘Does your husband know about the baby?'

‘What baby?' I look at her and she looks at me. ‘You mean Finn?'

‘No. The one inside you.'

I let out a wild laugh. ‘What? You think I'm pregnant? God no. No. I'm not pregnant.' I glance, involuntarily, at my belly. We both do. I stop laughing. ‘Why … why on earth would you say that?'

‘You just seem pregnant to me.'

‘Good God. Why? Because I threw up?'

‘That, and I don't know – you just seem pregnant, Kali, that's all. I've been around pregnant women plenty of times. I've been one myself in fact. You can't touch your wine and you're very tired; you're kind of out of it, not noticing things. You threw up. But it's more than that, of course. From the moment you walked through my door you just seemed pregnant. You
feel
pregnant. Your aura feels pregnant.'

‘My
aura
feels pregnant? Well, I'm definitely not.' I consider introducing Susannah to the four years it took me to conceive Finn, the diagnosis of unexplained infertility, the eventual mind-blowing success – and the fact that Doug and I have only had sex about four times in the past six months. But of course, I would never go there with her, never in a million years. ‘Well, whatever my aura is telling you has been lost in translation because I am categorically not pregnant,' I say. ‘I'm jet-lagged and … discombobulated.'

‘Discombobulated?' She laughs and shakes her head. ‘OK.'

She cooks the onions for a bit, then adds the tomatoes to
the pan and some chopped herbs, then mixes in tiny foetal clams, stirring until it all thickens to a deep red sauce, with caramel-coloured oils on the surface, and flecks of herbs and the globular shellfish bobbing about. The salty, garlicky smell is overpowering.

I turn away and reach for the plates. My hands feel jittery. The plates are thick, handmade, with a pale-blue glaze and a blue whale design in the centre. I lower them very carefully from the cupboard. They are heavy.

‘So.' She takes one and lifts overcooked spaghetti on to it. ‘We're agreed then. Tomorrow, you rest and I take the baby away for the day.'

‘Oh no. Really! I couldn't let you do that, no – no. Honestly.'

‘Kali,' she snaps. ‘I am offering to help you.'

‘Yes, I know you are. And that's very kind. But Finn would miss me. He hardly knows you, after all, and all this is strange for him – you said that yourself. And, he's hard work sometimes too. No, really. I wouldn't dream of it.'

‘You must.'

‘No, really, Susannah. That's so kind of you, but I couldn't lie here while you entertain Finn all day, it'd feel totally wrong.'

She spoons the sauce onto the spaghetti.

‘And I'm not that bad, honestly,' I continue. ‘I think I threw up because it's all been pretty intense lately – with Doug, and my mother's death, and jet lag and then hearing all that stuff about my mother's life up here – stuff I had no idea about. I mean, what sort of mother has this past
and doesn't mention it – keeps it from her daughers for decades? It was a bit much to cope with.' I take the plate. ‘I'm just, you know, slightly overwhelmed. I probably need to process all this. I'm just not myself right now, I'm really not myself at all.'

‘Who are you then?'

‘What?'

She smiles, and for a moment, I almost like her.

We sit down and pick up our forks. She grates Parmesan onto her pasta and hands the greasy block to me. We eat for a few moments in silence. The food tastes strongly of the sea: it is gloopy and salty. The clams slide over my tongue. I feel like one of her dogs, great lumps forcing themselves down my throat. I rest my fork on the plate.

‘What was your husband like?' I say. ‘Were you together for a very long time? How did you meet?'

‘Which question would you like me to answer first?'

‘Sorry.' I smile. ‘How did you meet?'

‘Well, I was forty and I'd been single for a very long time, many years in fact. I didn't want anyone in my life and I'd decided to be on my own for ever, but then my biological clock kicked in – wham! I didn't see that one coming. I guess the universe was telling me to have a baby. I'd started the gallery by then, I had my life in a good place and my creative work was flowing. But the urge for a baby was … powerful.'

‘And did you meet through your gallery?'

‘No, actually. He was a writer – biographies that nobody reads. I was in Vancouver and happened to be in a bookstore where he was talking.' She reaches over and fills up her glass
again. She leans back on the chair, hooking one arm over the backrest, raising her glass with the other. ‘I told him I was on the Pill.'

‘Oh.'

‘Ah. You're one of those?'

‘One of whats?'

‘A love-at-first-sighter.' She smiles, not very kindly, just with her mouth. ‘Let me guess. You want roses on Valentine's Day. You believe – or maybe believed – that your husband was “the one”, your destiny?'

She's right, of course. I do. Did. Not the roses, but I did believe Doug was the only one for me – I never doubted that I wanted to stay with him for my whole life, not even in our most stressful moments. In fact, I realize, I still do.

When we met, introduced over dinner by the only people I knew in Oxford, he offered to show me round the city. I'd been single for a long time – I felt safer that way. All my friends were getting married and I was thinking about working for a year or so at the new job, then maybe going to India at last. I thought I would be alone for ever.

It was the last Sunday in March and we met in Christ Church meadow. It was so cold, but the daffodils were out – egg-yolk yellow splashed down the riverbank. I was wearing a green woollen hat and no gloves, and Doug had on his big overcoat and the navy-blue wool sweater that is, right now, in Susannah's spare room.

It seemed astonishing that this meadow could exist in the centre of a city, tucked away from the buses, tourists and
Big Issue
sellers. Doug told me there were cows in the
meadow in summertime. That, he said, was the thing that convinced him he wanted to take his job – the city cows.

As we walked along the Cherwell, he told me about getting his college position, and his mixed feelings about it, and I felt the bright egg-yellow swelling inside me until I was bursting with it.

So, yes, Susannah is right: I did know. I knew instinctively from that first walk, when the colours of the world turned up and everything was clearer, richer, bigger because he was there. He always said he knew too on that first day. That was our story: the daffodils, the instinct – the knowing.

We were engaged only a month later. My friends all assumed it was a desperate mistake. Alice was polite, though clearly dubious; and my father asked if perhaps I could bring Doug to meet them. Only my mother got it – unquestioningly. I remember the vibration of happiness in her voice that I had never heard before. She, alone, believed that I could know after such a short time – and she'd never even met him.

Then again, maybe I didn't know. Maybe all that was in my head. Perhaps Doug went along with the story for me. If he has had an affair then our story is twisted and stained now, like everything else.

‘Sore subject, huh?' Susannah's voice startles me. I find I can't answer.

‘You want to talk about it?'

‘No.' I sit up straight. ‘No. Really. So, anyway: your marriage lasted, didn't it? You and your partner made it work.'

‘We were hardly love's young dream, Kali. My son needed a father. And Marc was a pretty good father actually. For a
while he lived on the island, but not with us, and then I had the studio built and he moved in, and we were all kind of together for a bit. Then he died.'

I can't read any sadness. Just a statement of fact.

‘So, where's your son now?' I don't even know her son's name. It seems rude to ask now.

Her face clouds over. ‘Oh, that's enough about my life.' She picks up her wine and takes a slug. The Merlot has stained her teeth a brownish red. I realize she may be a bit drunk. ‘You had a good father too, in the end, didn't you? I'm sure Gray was a wonderful father.'

‘What do you mean “in the end”?'

She swigs the wine. ‘You know what?' she says. ‘You're nothing like your mother.'

‘Yes, I know that.'

‘Elena was open and trusting. You're the opposite.'

‘Open and trusting? My mother? You have to be kidding.'

‘Oh, yeah, well.' She tosses up a hand and looks away. ‘I guess she changed. Of course she would. I knew her a very long time ago. People change. I'm not surprised. Who wouldn't after what … we both changed. I did for sure.' She drinks again and when she clonks her wine glass down, some spills onto the table, staining the pine. If either of us is like my mother then it's Susannah – I can't pin her down, even for a second.

‘So.' She leans forward. ‘Tell me about your travel plans.'

‘Well, I'll head back to Vancouver.'

‘To do what?'

‘I'm not sure. The aquarium?'

‘So you have no plans.'

‘Well, not really.'

‘Are you glad you found me at least? Are you glad you came on this great maternal odyssey?'

I try to ignore the sarcasm. The light above the table makes patterns, like jagged trails of frost, across her pale irises. Her hands, I notice, are broad and strong, with mannish veins running across their surface.

‘To be honest, Susannah, I don't feel like you've told me very much about my mother, though I'm grateful that you told me what you did about my grandparents. That's helped me make sense of a few things. But there are still some things I'd like to know.'