Desire Line (8 page)

The pungency of its pelt was real enough to have Sara gripping the rust-pocked rail even now. Crazed yellow eyes rolled and flashed at her again, more hallucination than memory, the snap of teeth a pistol shot, the child's
shush-sh
so tender… Suddenly she felt able to
see
her daughter at will. They were a single entity. She had only to… only to… But her straining mind touched vacancy.

When she refocused it was still on the extraordinary. Directly across the road was the wreck of The Schooner Inn. This roofless, futurist construct of metal and broken glass stared blindly at the sea with more than a hint of the post-Apocalyptic and as reference point it stood out as the exact spot reached by the woman she had almost driven down yesterday: and now, coming this way, here she was again. There couldn't be two. Ignoring Sara, the woman took up station along the rail and a phone, shiny and new in contrast to her scurfy velvet jacket, was produced. ‘It's Kim. I need, no-oo, hang-on, don't be like that.
Please!
'

Politeness dictated any listener should amble away now but this person's, Kim's, life was there, encapsulated in desperate appeal that managed to break into Sara's self-absorption. And when the speaker realised she was pleading with no one and started towards the town centre, Sara found herself following. Suddenly the sun was turned up and the brassy hair sizzled, making Kim an easy quarry.
Why?
she asked herself.
Because you have to go somewhere. Because it outbids going home
. In a few minutes they reached the base of the white needle. Much bigger than Sara's original estimate made from the bridge, this was the Sky Tower according to its peeling paint. Shabby huts, kiosks and parked cars surrounded it… so was this
thing
their objective? A cluster of bodies blocked her view enabling Kim to give another of her signature darts and disappear off Promenade. Sara almost missed the sudden break into a more densely populated… Queen Street. But here Kim checked, taking a second to rub the back of her neck and fondle the jacket's lapel. Decision made, she chose to enter of all places a little Italianate chapel sandwiched between shops. Sara had neither reason nor the nerve to follow but stood back to observe it from apex to street level… the carved grey stone was finely worked as was the modest campanile: someone once had cared very much that by nodding to Rome or Padua, it should give simple pleasure. And still did. Smout the Pawnbrokers offered Pay Day Advances emblazoned across three arched windows and behind them Kim's head bobbed and shoulders twitched as a dialogue progressed with the inner shadows. Lost in Hogarthian imaginings (shelves that groaned beneath tawdry items, the negotiation of ransoms), Kim caught her out. Straight from heated bargaining, the woman pivoted to stare at her.

Sara took a hasty step and kept on. There was an off-license.

She digs her hands into her pockets. Does the bit of necklace stay with her for luck, does she handle it? She's fresh to all this and any moment Eurwen could walk on stage, she thinks. I'll bet she sees that easy stride eating up the Promenade and then the light of recognition in the eyes. There she is! All you had to do was touch the charm.

I wish I could share the teasing payback all these early shots gave me – of a woman I'd heard everything about and up till now never met. To me she was magnetic and I lingered over them afterwards, Sara's screentest. Her smallness and occasional stillness gives cover in a sparse crowd. Unconscious of being important to anyone, she's playing a nobody! Gets knocked off- course by a blubbery woman half as big again as Libby Jenkinson but she doesn't retaliate. Forced into the gutter, her palm's raised – an apology as if in the wrong herself, misjudging the strength of Rhyl's currents. I've picked her up at the base of SkyTower only to lose her as a coach party's put down, then have her resurface, static and staring. She takes her bearings and makes for tidy, well-populated Queen Street and I tag along, high on the thrill of a successful stalk that even guilt can't spoil.

‘Well?'

Josh refused to acknowledge the fraught one word when he came in at six. Dropping his tie and wallet on a clean bit of work surface, then a check of both trouser pockets all had to be done until finally he looked
at
her, abashed, (surely he could not be surprised to find her still there, cooking for them?) and managed, ‘No.'

The steel platter of sugared citrus on the worktop awaiting the grill was a triumph, each peeled segment testifying to her steady hand, courtesy of wine. Sara stroked the Chianti's neck and then splashed a few ccs onto the pan of scarlet sauce. ‘Have some of that if you like,' she could tell him, loftily. Her own glass was washed, dried and back in a cupboard.

‘I won't. Might need to go out again.'

She fetched herself a glass, a different one for some reason, and made it ruby to the brim.

‘Come and sit down,' he suggested.

‘I'll need to—'

‘Yeah.' Impatiently, he swept the bottle up himself but once next door, seated across from her, undid each shirt cuff slowly, fumbling even, setting her teeth on edge as the crumpled cotton was rolled to the elbow; a series of bruises were exposed beneath the tan.

‘Always sporting a badge of your office,' she prompted.

‘Nope. Helping somebody with their fence.'

‘Your daughter is missing but you won't let that stand in the way of a good deed.' (Drink!
Now! Don't say any more!) ‘You had something to tell me?'

Josh, though, prevaricated, possibly the first time she had ever witnessed it. ‘Did Eurwen mention what she's been up to… while she's been here?'

‘What do you think? I've had long chatty letters?' There was no camouflaging the rawness. ‘I've texted, I've emailed, trying to keep it light. When I rang her number often she wouldn't even answer. And you must have heard how she spoke to me on your phone. No. Yes. I'm getting on with some revision. All lies, I suppose?'

‘If you think I was doing any better, I wasn't. She even tried the Miss Shouty-Pouty act. Realised that wouldn't work! You know Eurwen. It suited her, so then it's trying to keep me on side.' The smile he was tempting her with was almost reflected but she held back. ‘That's something else she's been up to since she could talk.'

Though not with me, she refrained from saying, not for… how long? ‘So what
has
she been doing?'

‘Horse riding. Helping out at some stables.
Missed it
, she claimed.
Fine
, I said. She'd been when she stayed last year. To the same place. Decent enough people run it. They'd had their trailer nicked out of the yard is how I knew them… Upton… they're called.'

‘A couple?'

‘A man and his daughter.'

‘Naturally.'

He was not going to rise: ‘It's impressive, the way kids make this life for themselves you know nothing about. Took her less than a month up here…' In mid-June Eurwen's sudden manifestation had come as a shock. There she was, grinning on the front step, the bag already off her back, her hair wild and mobile as fronds in the tide: Eurwen, arrived. ‘Anyway you—
we
agreed she could see out the summer with me, yeah? I fixed up the riding at the Uptons—'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘There's Megs, Megan Upton… the father's called Clive. She's nearer to Eurwen's age and I thought—'

‘How near?'

‘Twenties,' he said too quickly.

‘And this woman, Megan,' she repeated the name on purpose, aiming for a show of neutrality, ‘she has no idea where Eurwen's gone or—?'

He chopped her off. ‘How could she? If she knew, she'd tell me. She's as worried as we are.'

‘
Really
?'

‘No, ‘course not. Figure of speech.'

‘Yes.' Play better than you are, Sara, don't be the Harpy that falls on his weakness the instant exposed. This internal advice (ignored on countless previous occasions) now came with a charm-like element. Do not step on the cracks! Do not look back! Touch that carven piece of wood every time you mount the stairs. Eurwen is missing and the torment will not be lifted until you, the guilty party, have rooted out whatever drove her away: in this case your entire self.

‘Eurwen's changed.' Josh slumped back, his face bleak. ‘I was still picturing—' a further drop of the shoulders and raised palms replaced ‘a little girl.'

And she wasn't able to respond. Her anger simmering since that early, semi-drunken stagger out into Tackley Close with car keys held out like a weapon had been directed at Josh the deserter who, not content with this first treachery, had lost their daughter. But all it took was this bodily supplication on his part to turn every harsh judgement to vinegar in her throat. And yearning for Eurwen and love for her husband burst through her in a sob as their fierce acids combined. Finally, ‘I know,' she whispered.

It was old news that Josh and Sara had split up. Unlikely as a couple, though not more unlikely than Tomiko and a girl in Rhyl producing me, Josh must've been mega-ineligible to his father-in-law. ‘
A policeman?'
You only had to meet Geoffrey Severing once or catch a recorded interview, to be impressed by his use of mock amazement in an argument. It was always followed up with scorn. Listen to yourself. Don't take my word. Also there's the dates. These two were married early the same year
A First
came out, Meredith replacing Severing on the cover with days to spare. He'll have tried to torpedo that at least! But to go back to what I did know – outstanding doctoral student, marriage to Josh, a bestseller, a daughter – I was now seeing the woman as different to my invented Sara. I've mentioned how much smaller than estimated but she seemed shrunk in other ways. Timid I wasn't expecting – very unSevering.

So right and wrong, Yori. Oxford Sara can still be genuine in her own world and then morph into this visitor jumping out of her skin at a car's backfire, trailing the woman Kim with a phony sense of purpose. But the first night she stayed with Josh counts against. A separated wife would check into a hotel, surely? Even around Rhyl there must've been some that weren't instantly repulsive – a decent farmhouse B&B ‘backaways'. Research was meant to be her thing. Anywhere other than Avonside would impress a husband that
Sara's arrived
! She's an extra factor in their joint problem. Then my attitude changes. I flip – I'm for her. Being at least two people myself, I give her a contingency to draw on. Every build has its hitches. Cost of materials doubles. The virtual drawing looks like it means to stay that way. This woman's secretly expecting to see Eurwen. Half-drunk through the road accidents. Then another near miss down among the seaside kitsch, but with fear sobering the mix, she was looking forward to it all being whisked away the instant Josh's door opens and Eurwen dashes out to meet her—

Instead, she gets frost in more senses than one.

You have to sympathise. If Sara had been told what she calls autumn is actually another season,
higan
,
the Japanese time for renewal, she might have come with a better attitude. Maybe got a better outcome. The leaves are gold, not gone. Fight depression! The temperature takes a dive? Quicken up! Here's a chance to sweep your mistakes out over the threshold. Even sins. For this year's
higan
my own house – flat – has been cleaned and all my wants printed on slips of rice paper. A shrine has been made ready. It's just a small thing in a corner, an arrangement that Libby, Glenn or Tess couldn't interpret anyway, if seen, a tumbler of fresh water, a wristwatch and book, a picture when the time comes, all meaningless to the uninformed. Now I can add an incomplete necklace, Eurwen's discard. The ritual also needs a handful of orange leaves easily got from the Borough's one intact greenhouse. Every leaf must be perfection, nothing sampled by insects and, trying for strict accuracy, I'll be saving each day's offerings for use at the very end. All this has to be on Tomiko's advice because Tomiko is still the only Japanese I know. Growing up in Rhyl meant continually catching sight of a wiry, fawn-skinned kid in the plate glass and thinking Hey, Yori! Another one!

Always me.

Staring at girls, pulling a devil's face behind my mother's back, always me. It taught an important lesson, the need to keep an eye on what Yori was up to— sorry, two lessons. Never expect to recognise your own image nor the things it does.

Chapter 6

Another day. Another evening. From halfway up the stairs, and with her blouse already in the process of unbuttoning, Sara called, ‘What sort of restaurant?'

‘The May Quay does food. At the end of the road… or we can walk in over the bridge if you like.'

She returned. ‘Into
Rhyl?
'

‘The May Quay it is then.'

‘I won't bother to change.'

Josh's bottle of Becks disappeared in one.

The May Quay was the oversized, red-roofed mock cottage she had turned away from, driving into Avonside. It faced the road surrounded by vans and chalets in peeling pastels that blocked any possibility of a view even if the light had not been failing. Mud from the hidden harbour was pungent on the breeze in their faces though and by the time they reached the entrance Sara's teeth chattered. ‘Weather's on the turn,' Josh conceded. Inside a wide choice of empty booths beckoned. She slid without friction across the port wine vinyl to the wall, a sensation of
mal de mer
giving yet another reason to request mineral water.