Elizabeth Is Missing (23 page)

When I looked, his face was white. “Thought I’d lost you,” he said, and it was unnerving to see how thoroughly the blood had drained from his skin. “I thought I’d lost you.” He made light grabs at my limbs, like an incompetent doctor checking for broken bones; he seemed to have to prove to himself I was really there.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a ghost,” I said, though my heart was still beating so hard it was difficult to draw breath, and I wondered what my face had looked like when he touched me. He hung over the banister and his shirt clung to him, showing the muscles in his shoulders and back. I took a step towards him.

He breathed out heavily and started down the stairs. “No, stay where you are,” he said. “I can’t be trusted.”

I stood for a moment, listening to his footsteps as they descended. The blood that had been rushing around my head slowed, leaving the beginnings of a headache, and I let myself imagine, once, what it would have been like if Frank hadn’t stopped me falling. I felt the way my head might have caved in, and how my neck would have crumpled. I pictured blood on the tiled floor, and people screaming. I thought of my parents, already suffering from Sukey’s absence, and I guessed at what might have happened to Frank. He’d have been accused of pushing me, surely? Halfway down the stairs he stopped and his face appeared again between the floors.

“Tell me something about Sukey, Maud,” he said. “Not about this place—tell me something else.”

“What, for instance?”

“I don’t know. Something you did together. That you remember.”

I scuffed my shoe over the sand-sodden carpet. “We went to the beach,” I said, beginning to walk down after him. “The day they removed the barbed wire. That was before you were married. Before the war was even over.”

“I know. Go on.”

“And I buried her in the sand.” My voice echoed off the walls strangely as I followed him down, but I could still hear the way she’d laughed that day and see the sand slipping over itself, streaming into the crevices. “And I pushed shells into the sand to make her a dress. And afterwards, when she’d dug her way out, she shook her hair, and Ma was cross because she got sand on the sandwiches and when we ate them later they were full of grit. But the shell dress was really brilliant,” I said, reaching the bottom of the stairs. “Sukey made me collect white ones for the skirt so it would look like it had a petticoat. I wish we’d had a camera.”

“I wish you had, too,” he said, pulling the collar of my blouse closed around my neck. “Get home now, Maudie,” he said. “I’m going for another drink.”

He bent to pick up the browned and crumpled letter, slipping it into his pocket as he walked away.

“Come and stand under here, Mum.”

I’m wobbling on my feet; it has started to rain and someone’s cigarette smoke lingers in the air. Helen is cowering under a bus shelter. She stands right back against the seat as I get near and seems not to be breathing. I put a hand up to her face and she screws her eyes shut for a second, raising an arm. There is a livid mark on her wrist that looks like it will bruise.

“How did you get this?” I say, taking her wrist as gently as I can, feeling her pulse, strong and quick.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says.

“It matters to me. You’re my daughter. If you’re hurt, it matters to me. I love you very much.”

She stares at me for a moment and I worry I haven’t used the right words, and then I feel a sudden exhaustion. My limbs won’t hold me up. I’m like one of those toys that flop over when you press the bottom in; the wire in my joints has uncoiled. But Helen’s hands are under my arms and I find the seat beneath me. I try to settle the glass pickle jar on my lap, but I can’t get it to stay put. The seat is at an angle and either I or the jar keeps sliding off. The contents jumble and something moves, oozily covering the frog’s eye. It’s irritating. I turn to say something to the woman who is sitting next to me, but tears are running down her cheeks.

“There there, dear,” I say. She sobs and presses the back of her hand to her mouth. I don’t know what to do to help her. I can’t work out who she is. “Tell me what the matter is,” I say. “I’m sure it can’t be bad as all that.” I pat her shoulder, wondering how I got here. I don’t remember getting the bus. Perhaps I’m on the way back from some appointment, but I can’t think what it would be.

“Is it man trouble?” I say. She looks at me again and smiles, though she’s definitely still crying. “He been unfaithful?” I ask. “He’ll be back. Pretty girl like you.” Though in actual fact you couldn’t call her a girl.

“It’s not a man,” she says.

I look at her in surprise. “Woman, is it?”

She frowns at me and gets up to look at the bus timetable. Perhaps she thought I was prying. Two pigeons nod at each other on the branch of a tree; they seem like me and this woman, chatting to each other, as if they are our bird selves. I try to wave at them, but I have to be quick to catch the jar from sliding off my lap. When the woman turns back I look at her face properly. The tears have been wiped away. It’s Helen. The seat seems to tilt under me. It’s my daughter, Helen. I’ve been sitting in a bus shelter with her, not knowing who she was.

“Helen,” I say, touching her wrist, noticing a dark mark on it. “Helen.” I didn’t know my own daughter.

“You’re exhausted,” she says. “You can’t walk back. I’m going to go and get the car. Okay, Mum?”

My stomach seems to have dissolved inside me. I didn’t know my own daughter, and it feels like a reproach to hear her call me Mum. I scrabble about in the jar, for something to do. There’s a bit of mint stuck to a hair band and I nibble the edge, but it doesn’t taste right and there’s some sort of grit on it. An old woman comes towards the bus stop.

“Hello, dear,” she says, sitting and rummaging in her bag.

“Hello,” I say. I notice she has tatty carpet slippers on. She must be even dottier than me.

Helen says hello, too. “I have to run and get my car,” she says. “Would you mind keeping an eye on my mum? It’ll only take me a few minutes.” She looks over at the timetable with a frown. “You won’t let her get on a bus?”

The woman agrees, uncurling a bit of plastic inside the bag. Helen pauses on the curb, biting her top lip, and then begins to leap between the cars, waving back at me.

“Taking you out for the day, is she?” the woman says, unscrewing the lid from a bottle and taking a long drink. “Wish someone would take me out.” She jerks a hand behind her. There’s a stone building with a sign hanging from its façade.

“Cotlands Care Home,” I read.

“That’s it.” The woman’s hair is in tight, white curls, very neat. They don’t match the tatty slippers. “My son asked me to come here. Said it was for the best. I’d be closer to him. He’d be less worried. He could come and visit more, take me for drives in the country. But does he?” She shakes her curls. “And so I’m stuck here. Oh, the carers aren’t bad people, from somewhere foreign, but very kind. Smile all the time. But so tiny! I feel I’ve dropped into Lilliput, you know? And I’m only five foot two.”

She takes another swig from her bottle, and the sound of her swallowing is comforting. She drinks with a focus that makes me think of Frank and the sweaty heat of a pub, and I expect to look down and see my bare knees, but I’ve got trousers on and a jar of jumbled things in my lap.

“And after a while in there you lose yourself. I can’t remember what I like or dislike any more. They say, ‘Mrs. Mapp doesn’t like peas,’ or ‘Mrs. Mapp loves Starburst,’ and then they ask, ‘That’s right, isn’t it, dear?’ and I nod, but I can’t for the life of me remember what peas taste like and I’ve no idea what a Starburst is. Same with TV. They put something on and they say, ‘Like this, do you?’ and I nod. But I couldn’t tell you what the bloody hell it’s about.”

I look back towards the care home. There’s something in that jumble of words, something important, but I can’t grasp on to it. A tiny brown lady is coming out of the gates.

“And worse than that is my name. It’s Margaret, by the way. Margaret.”

“Nice to meet you, Margaret.”

She shakes her curls again. “Yes, yes, you, too. But you see, in there they insist on calling me Peggy. Peggy! I hate that name.”

“Me, too,” I say, thinking of the charity shop.

“Peggy, you no get bus now,” the small brown lady calls, smiling.

“I know that,” Peggy says. “I’m only having a chat. Here, quick,” she says to me, throwing the bottle into my lap, where it clinks against the pickle jar. “Can’t get caught with this. Would get a right old lecture. Pity, because gin’s the only thing I
know
I like.”

“Inside, please, Peggy,” the little woman says.

“See what I mean? Peggy this, Peggy that. Bloody nightmare. They even put it on my records. So now I’m Peggy Mapp, not Margaret Mapp.”

“They put it on your records?” I say, and feel a little jolt.

“Yes. If you called and asked for Margaret, they’d probably say I didn’t live here. Half of them don’t know my real name.” She pauses to sigh. “You see, there was another Margaret when I first got here and they wanted to make sure they didn’t get us confused. She’s dropped dead since, of course. But I’m still Peggy.”

I watch her go in with the tiny carer, and the bus arrives. I’m about to get on when there is a shout from across the road. The driver calls out of his window to someone. There’s a great to-do over something, and the doors fold shut. Helen is here, too, talking, talking, but I can’t concentrate on what she’s saying. I’m thinking of all the different names there are for Elizabeth. Eliza, Lizzie, Liz, Lisa, Betty, Betsy, Bet, Beth, Bess, Bessie . . .

W
hat about this, Mum? Do you want this? Keep packing, just look quickly.”

The white glare from the window softens as Helen holds something up in her hands. I can’t see what. It’s a shadow, a vague shape. I turn my head, trying another angle, but it stays vague.

“I don’t know what that is,” I say, dropping the sleeved thing, the buttoned and sleeved thing I’ve been trying to fold, and putting a hand back to press a knuckle against my spine. I’m uncomfortable sitting like this, twisted round on my bed, but I can’t see anywhere else to sit. There’s a suitcase at my feet, and we’re surrounded by the musty smell of clothes left too long in a wardrobe. “It’s like the charity shop in here,” I say. “Are we going on holiday?”

Helen drops her hands, and the white light from the window makes me blink.

“No, Mum.”

“Because I don’t think I can go on holiday. I think it would be too much for me. I think I’d rather just stay at home.”

“You’re moving house, remember? You’re moving in with me.”

“Oh, yes,” I say. “Of course. Of course, that’s what all the boxes are for.” I fold the jumble of sleeves and buttons, whatever they add up to, that are lying on the bed, laying them in a suitcase and throwing a pair of knickers on top. “Are we going on—” I remember in time and stop myself, but Helen still sighs. She toes something across the floor.

“Do you need that?” she asks.

It’s a pickle jar. There are things squeezed inside: a glove, breathing dampness on to the inside of the glass, two bottle tops, a KitKat wrapper, some cigarette ends spilling the last of their tobacco. “That’s important,” I say.

“How can it be important? It’s disgusting.” She picks it up with the tips of her fingers and peers at the things, before tossing it with a heavy, dangerous clink on to one of the piles of clothes.

The jar rolls down the slope of fabric, sending the sand inside whirling about like one of those snow shakers they sell at Christmas. I pull it on to a sheet of newspaper to wrap, but the metal lid pierces through the first layer and I have to wrap another round it. Helen rolls her eyes.

“Oh, Helen,” I say, pressing pleats of paper over the word “pickle.” “If I move, how will Elizabeth know where I am?”

“I’ll tell Peter,” Helen says. “I’ll tell him to pass the message on. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

I explore the jar’s contours with my fingers, watching her piling things out of a cupboard. “You’ll tell Peter?”

She nods, not looking at me.

“How will that help, Helen?” I say. “He won’t tell Elizabeth. He won’t tell her anything. He’s done something to her. I don’t know what. Hidden her away, or worse. She’s gone, and I don’t know where.”

“Okay, Mum. Okay,” she says. “What about this?”

It’s a ceramic spoon shaped like the head of a cow. The handle of the spoon has been made to look like the cow’s tongue. It’s very ugly.

“Yes. Yes, I need that,” I say, reaching for it. “It’s for Elizabeth.” I find a piece of newspaper and scrunch it round the cow’s head. The printed words are cut in half by the creases in the paper. I try to read them, but they don’t make sense. I don’t think they make sense.

“Elizabeth! Again. You chucked most of Dad’s stuff in the blink of an eye, but you’re desperate to keep all this crap, even though half of it doesn’t mean anything to you.”

I feel something filling my chest and grip the cow spoon tightly in my hands. The newspaper splits. “I can keep what I want, can’t I? I don’t see what it’s got to do with you.”

“You’re moving into my house.”

“So it’s your rules, is it? And I have to do as you say? I don’t think I want to live with you if it’s going to be like this.”

“Well, there’s no choice now. The house is sold.”

For a moment I can’t make sense of the words. It seems an impossible sentence. “You’ve sold my house?” I say, feeling sick. The floor I’m sitting on seems not to be quite stable, as if it’s gone already. “How can you sell my house? It’s mine. I live here. I’ve always lived here.”

“Oh, Mum, you agreed months ago. It’s not safe for you to live on your own any more. Can you keep packing, please. I’ll get you a cup of tea in a minute.”

“Who agreed? You’ve no right.”

“You and me and Tom agreed.”

“Tom?” I say the name, I know it’s someone particular, but I can’t think who.

“Yes, Tom, does that make it all right now, if he agreed, too?”

“Tom?” I say, looking about at the piles of clothes. “Is that the man we’re giving all these things to?”

“He flies in from Germany once a year and flies out again and you think he’s wonderful. But he’s not here day after day arranging your appointments and talking to your carers, checking your cupboards and taking you out shopping, buying you new underwear every time you lose yours and picking you up from police stations at two o’clock in the morning.”