Two Fridays in April (31 page)

‘You’d better buckle up,’ he says, turning onto the main road. ‘Can’t be too careful.’

His breath smells of whiskey. Why hadn’t she noticed it before now? She pulls the seat belt across and clicks it closed.

‘Won’t be long,’ he says, drawing to a stop at a pedestrian crossing to allow an elderly man to shuffle across. ‘Just a few minutes, that’s all.’

She pulls Judy’s wrap more tightly around her. He hasn’t switched on the heat: the air in the car is icy.

‘You got holidays from school today, yes?’ he asks.

Una nods, her mouth dry. She shouldn’t have got into the car. That was a mistake. Her toes curl inside their too-high shoes.

He drives off again, glances at her. ‘You must be in … what? Transition year, yes?’ He makes a left turn onto a side street, leaving the shops behind. ‘Or maybe you didn’t bother with that.’ Houses, more houses, a green, a church. She’s never been this way before.

‘Fifth year,’ she says, watching the road disappearing under the car.

From the corner of her eye she sees him glance over again. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘You needn’t be afraid of me, Una. We’re friends, aren’t we? Friends help one another, don’t they?’

His voice sounds different. She nods again, frightened now, heart thudding.

He begins to whistle, some tune she doesn’t recognise. Again she gets a whiff of alcohol. He makes another turn. More houses, less densely packed. They must be nearly there. She shivers, wishing he’d put on the heat.

He stops whistling to glance at her again. ‘You cold?’ he asks. ‘Not to worry, Jean has a lovely fire on, soon be cosy.’

Jean.

Una forces herself to look at him. ‘You said her name was Joan.’

He smiles, not taking his eyes from the road. ‘Oops,’ he says, turning the car into what looks like an industrial estate.

‘Where are we going?’ she asks, watching low buildings fly by as they lurch over a speed bump. Wrong, all wrong, her insides knotted in fear.

‘Just a little shortcut,’ he answers lightly. ‘Soon be landed.’

Every muscle tense, something hard lodged in her throat, making it difficult to breathe. Fingers clutching Judy’s wrap so tightly her hands ache.

‘I love your hair,’ he says then. ‘Beautiful.’ They pass more buildings. He makes another turn, slows down. Moves a meaty hand from the steering wheel to place it, almost absently, on her thigh.

She jerks away but he hangs on, clamps his fingers around her leg. She clicks open her seat belt, presses herself back against the car door. ‘Stop,’ she says, a pulse banging in her neck, thumping in her ears. ‘Stop the car.’

He laughs, pulls in beside what looks like a warehouse. ‘Thought you’d never ask,’ he says, turning off the engine, twisting in his seat to lift a handful of her hair with his free hand. ‘Beautiful,’ he repeats, pulling it towards his face, forcing her head to follow, closing his eyes as he inhales loudly. ‘Mmmm,’ he says softly, ‘smells like strawberries.’

‘Please …’ She’s fighting to keep her voice steady, rearing back from him as much as she can. ‘Please let me go.’ She tries to pull her head away, feeling the pain in her scalp as he maintains his grip on her hair. It’s black beyond the
windows: she can see nothing but the giant blacker shapes of the warehouses all around. Nobody there, nobody to help her. ‘Please,’ she repeats.

He laughs again. ‘Oh, come on now, sweetheart,’ he says softly, his hand moving swiftly up from her thigh to find the waistband of her jeans. ‘Don’t be like that,’ he murmurs, fumbling at the button, popping it open. ‘Be nice to me, darling.’

She shrieks, scratching at his hand, slapping at it, wriggling her hips in an effort to shake him off but he’s strong, too strong for her as he releases her hair to wrench with both hands now at her zip. She hears the sharp sound of it ripping apart.

‘Good girl,’ he breathes, his mouth pressing into her ear now. ‘I like a good fight, makes it twice as spicy …’ Sliding her towards him, forcing her down in the seat as he tugs at the jeans, trying to pull them past her hips.

‘Come on,’ he pants, his breath hot on her face, ‘that’s the girl, that’s it …’

She reaches down with her left hand and scrabbles around frantically till she succeeds in yanking off one of her shoes. She grabs it by the toe and jabs the pointed heel blindly at his face. He lifts a hand, laughing, and tries to grab the shoe from her – but miraculously she manages, in her wild swipes, to connect with her target.

He howls and jerks his head back, hands flying to his eye. With all her strength she shoves him away and turns to feel in the darkness for the door handle as he curses her loudly, hands still clamped on the stabbed eye. She pushes the door open and half-falls from the car, palms and knees slapping onto the road.

She stumbles to her feet, sobbing with fright. She pulls
off her remaining shoe and throws it aside, then breaks into a hobbling run, one hand holding closed her ruined jeans as she makes her escape, waiting all the time to hear him in pursuit, waiting for the sound of his car starting up.

Her breath tight in her chest, the air coming out of her in ragged, painful gasps, she reaches a corner and darts down another road, trying to remember the route they took, heedless of the tights that are being ripped to shreds under the soles of her flying feet, heedless of Charlotte’s bag, with the silk dress inside, that still sits in his car.

She runs on, knowing where she has to go, knowing she must make her way to the only place she’ll be safe.

S
he hangs up, shakes her head at Mo. Voicemail, for the umpteenth time. Where is she? Where in God’s name is she?

How can a day last so long? How is this still the one that began with her waking to the knowledge, before she’d even opened her eyes, that it was Finn’s anniversary? The morning feels like it happened in another lifetime – breakfast, Una’s present, dropping her to school, going to work – yet here they still are, inhabiting the same interminable twenty-four hours. How can that be?

And where
is
she?

We’ll find her
, Louise said, the same Louise who had made Daphne a cup of tea when her car was stolen a million years ago. Louise, who was miraculously still working the same shift at the police station, who picked up the phone when Daphne rang.
She can’t have gone far
– but, of course, Una can have gone far. Since nine o’clock this morning she can have gone very far indeed.

Find her passport
, Louise said,
see what clothes are missing from her room
– but while the passport was quickly located in a drawer by Una’s bed, figuring out if any items of clothing were gone was impossible. Daphne doesn’t know all the clothes Una has, she doesn’t
know
.

Her birthday top, Daphne’s present, is nowhere to be found – but that’s not much help. One blue top, not nearly warm enough on its own today. If she’s wearing it, she must have another layer at least on top. She
must
.

And without a passport she could still have left the country, couldn’t she? She could get on a boat to England without a passport, couldn’t she? And where are the guards Louise promised to send to the house? What’s taking them so long?

‘Stop biting your nails.’

She rounds on Mo. ‘Leave me alone,’ she says sharply. ‘I’m worried sick.’
Stop, don’t take your guilt out on her, she’s done nothing
.

The photo of Una she has found for the guards sits on the table.
A recent one
, Louise said,
a clear one of her face. We’ll scan it and circulate it
.

Finn had taken the photo in March of the previous year. He and Una had just returned from one of their Sunday-afternoon
cycles. Daphne heard them laughing about something in the garage as she basted the root vegetables she was roasting to go with the leg of lamb.

A minute later the back door opened and in they came, bringing a blast of cold air with them. Una was still giggling, cheeks flushed from two hours of pedalling the roads on a frosty day. Daphne can’t recall what the joke was – did they tell her? – but she remembers Finn, also in high good humour, taking out his phone and snapping his daughter as she peeled off her outer clothes.

She’s standing by the table, her cycling helmet and scarf already shed, in the act of unzipping her jacket. Her hair has been gathered into a fat bunch from which several tendrils have escaped. Her smile is mischievous as she looks at Finn.

Less than three weeks later he was dead, and there were no more smiles. And now she’s disappeared.

Mo gets to her feet. ‘Tea,’ she says firmly, and fills the kettle. As if tea will help.

‘I don’t want any.’

‘Well, I do.’ She plugs in the kettle. ‘Have you any biscuits? I’m sick of that cake.’

Biscuits
– who can think about biscuits at a time like this? ‘Don’t you
care
?’ Daphne demands. ‘Are you so unfeeling that this doesn’t mean
anything
to you?’

For a minute it seems Mo isn’t going to respond. She takes two cups from the draining board and sets them on the worktop. She empties the pot, still warm from its last outing, and drops in new teabags. And then she turns to face Daphne.

‘Let me tell you something,’ she says quietly.

And still standing by the worktop, hands dangling by her sides, she tells Daphne about her babies.

She was never going to tell, it was never on the agenda. She had planned to go to her grave without sharing that secret with anyone. In all her sessions with the counsellor, she never spoke of the babies. And of all the people she wasn’t going to tell, Daphne would probably have been top of the list.

But when she heard,
Don’t you care? Are you so unfeeling that this doesn’t mean anything to you?
something cracked open – maybe something that had been loosened by the counsellor, who knows? – and here it is now, all falling out. Here she is, telling Daphne everything.

The months each of them lasted in her womb, the names she’d picked out in her head for them. The tiny bootees and cardigans and vests and nappies she’d hung on to from Finn’s babyhood, hung on to through all five of her miscarriages. Unable to let them go, unable to give up hope.

And as she speaks, as it all tumbles out, all of it, she’s aware that a part of her feels horrified – what are you
doing
? – but there’s another part that feels like she’s shedding something, like it’s dropping away like a length of rope that was wound tightly around her, now suddenly cut.

‘They did something to me, the miscarriages,’ she tells Daphne steadily. ‘They closed me up. They locked everything up tight in me. It’s not that I don’t feel – I feel everything. It’s that I can’t show it, I can’t let it out, for fear of what it might do to me.’

All the while she’s speaking Daphne remains unmoving, her elbows resting on the table, her eyes locked on Mo’s face. Her mouth is half open, but no words come out. She makes no effort to interject, simply waits to hear what there is to be said.

When Mo finally stops there’s silence in the room, broken only by the soft
chick-chick
of the kitchen clock, and the singing of the almost-bubbling kettle. And then Daphne lets out a slow breath, as if she were the one who’d been doing all the talking, still looking all the while at Mo.

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ she asks quietly. ‘Why did you never tell me about this?’

Mo lifts a shoulder. ‘Why would I?’ But she puts no meanness into the words – she feels no antipathy towards Daphne.

‘Finn never said anything.’

‘Finn didn’t know. Nobody knew except me and Leo, and the people at the hospital.’

‘Mo, I’m so sorry—’

‘Don’t be,’ she replies brusquely, turning to lift the kettle from its base. ‘It’s in the past. It’s over. I just … I don’t know, maybe it was time you knew. Why I am the way I am, I mean.’ She fills the teapot, brings it to the table. She doesn’t want tea, it was just something to do.

She checks the clock again, clicking her tongue with impatience. ‘What’s keeping those guards? And your mother’s taking her time too – I thought she was to be here in fifteen minutes.’

She’s beginning to regret it. She shouldn’t have spoken, shouldn’t have let it out. She feels exposed, she feels her raw edges are showing. Why did she open her mouth? What possessed her?

‘Mo,’ Daphne says.

Mo brings the cups to the table, busies herself stirring the tea in the pot, pouring for both of them. Spooning sugar into her cup, stirring, stirring. When the silence stretches she raises her head.

‘I have something to tell you too,’ Daphne says, pressing palms to her cheeks as if to cool them. ‘Sit down, please.’

Mo sits.

Daphne speaks slowly, taking her time to settle on each phrase, as if she’s assembling it in its entirety before letting it out. ‘We wanted children, we did, Finn and I … We both wanted them … but it didn’t happen, it just … and I know it’s not the same as what you went through, it’s not the same at all … but I wanted you to know … it wasn’t that we didn’t want any.’ She stops, looks up. ‘Just in case you were ever wondering. I wouldn’t want you to think …’