Chapter 19

DORSET, 2010

THIRTEEN MONTHS LATER

A group of small children sing Christmas carols at the entrance to Dorchester station, huddling around a gray-­haired woman at their center. The children are restless in their downward-­slipping Santa hats, two are stamping on each other’s toes, and the smallest girl wipes her running nose with her sleeve. The woman resolutely conducts the singing, but her sharply moving hands look as if she is painting punishments in the air. “Away in a Manger” spirals thinly outward as I walk toward the barriers to Platform One. There is something familiar in the way this woman is driving herself to play her part; she stands so upright, her voice is too cheerful. She belongs to a world I used to be part of, and as I look at her I remember its weight. There are no duties now to push me through the day. Life is stripped down and my roles are simpler: mother, not wife. If I had to put my occupation on a form, I’d write painter.

Ed’s train is due. Sophie is coming with him. They didn’t need him to stay for Christmas in the unit after all.

It only occurs to me now, too late, that a train journey could be difficult for him, with all the noise and crowds, after the routine and order of his days in the unit. In a few minutes the train rushes in, doors slide open, and then there are streams of moving heads to scan, so it’s a jolt when his arms come around from behind to encircle my waist tightly.

“Ed!”

He is laughing. Laughing! I haven’t seen Ed even smile for months. I needn’t have worried. His face is unshaven, his brown eyes deeply alive, his long black hair shining. He has a backpack and his guitar is slung across his body. He turns, puts his arm around a girl almost hiding behind him.

“Mum, this is Sophie. Soph, Mum.”

Her colors light up the drab station. Short bright red hair, green eyes circled with gray kohl, a green knitted coat, stripy blue gloves, orange hat, yellow boots. There is a silver ring through one nostril. She is carrying an accordion strapped to her back. Her face is watchful, calm, and very pretty. I take one of her gloved hands in mine.

“Hello, Sophie.”

She smiles. “Hi.”

“So lucky she could come,” Ed says looking at her. “She nearly couldn’t. Jake wanted her to be there for Christmas lunch on the boat, but in the end it was all right.”

I smile at Sophie.

“Thanks for having me.” Her chin tilts a little as she says this. There is a soft Irish lilt to her voice.

In the car on the way back, Sophie sits close to Ed, and he points out the cliffs and beaches as we pass. I tell him Theo is arriving later with Sam, the partner we haven’t yet met. Then he wants to know what time Ted is expected.

“Tomorrow or the next day. He’s flying back from Johannesburg today.”

“I reckon he’s really on holiday.”

I thought he kept in touch with Ed. So nothing’s changed. He’s been busy all their lives—­birthdays, parents’ evenings, sometimes Christmas and holidays. The burden of responsibility settles down on me again; it feels as heavy as it did during all those years when I thought he was sharing it. Ironically it got lighter after he left, or perhaps I just knew to brace myself. Why then does the disappointment burn now?

“Not on holiday. I told you, he’s been at a meeting.”

“Typical.”

I check in the rearview mirror, but he’s smiling again; there is even a slight air of pride as he slips an arm around Sophie. My father, busy and important.

“Good for your dad. I’ve always wanted to work in Africa,” she says.

“It’s only a conference,” I tell her. “For a ­couple of weeks. His real job is in Bristol.”

“Sophie works for Amnesty International,” Ed says.

“That’s impressive.” I look at her face in the mirror; she smiles and shrugs.

“I just translate stuff. French and German.”

“She and Jake can talk to each other in any language, especially if they want to say something about me they know I won’t understand,” Ed says matter-­of-­factly.

“You wouldn’t understand about you whatever language we spoke in. Would-­be medics don’t get themselves. Too busy being heroes in their own drama.” Her lilting voice is amused.

They both laugh as if it’s an old joke.

In the weeks after his admission to the unit we had skated around what he might do when he left. He never mentioned doing medicine again after he’d had to leave school. He did his final exams in the unit, and when his spectacular results came through, they only added to the grief, the sense of what might have been. He told me he’s happy to stay on helping out for now. This isn’t the moment to talk about plans. He seems as if he is fresh from a holiday.

Bertie is standing in the hall when I open the door. Ed’s face crumples; he kneels down, puts his arms around the dog, and starts to cry. Bertie stands still, blinking. He sneezes once and then sniffs Ed’s hair, tail wagging. Sophie kneels next to Ed and hugs him, laying her cheek next to his. I make tea. I should have seen this coming and prepared him in some way for how the past melts into the present.

After a few minutes, Ed gets up, blows his nose, and laughs shakily.

“Sorry, Bert.” He bends and puts his hand on Bertie’s head again.

“Shall we go to the sea now, and take Bertie?” Sophie asks.

Ed nods and they drink their tea; then they all go out to the fields through the garden. I watch him pause at the gate, touch the post. I wonder for the hundredth time whether he has yet found a place to put everything that has happened, to keep it until he can think about it and try to make sense of it.

I watch them cross the field, then it’s time to take the chicken out of the fridge, slide butter and herbs under the skin, and put lemon and garlic inside. When it’s in the oven I pour a glass of wine and take it to the wooden shed outside that I cleared for a studio a week ago, knowing there wouldn’t be room in the house. With the windows clean, the light had poured through; the old leaves and dust and mouse droppings were swept away. There was a trestle table in there already. I bought a new heater and hung some of my paintings from the nails in the wall.

My oil painting of Mary’s hands is on the table. They look like claws, the fingers deformed by rheumatism, the skin shiny and puffed. She calls them her witch hands, but they make tea, hold eggs and garden tools, bake bread. I’ve painted them loosely open for her kindness. If Mary is a witch, she is a good witch. Dan’s hands are holding a piece of wood. They look careful and careless at the same time—­the wood tilts out of his fingers, but he’s trapped it with his thumb so that the holding and letting go are balanced. And there is a very new pencil sketch of Michael’s hand. Last weekend he was sitting in here in an old deck chair, near the window. He was reading, and resting his hand on his knee. The sketch has captured the power of his fingers and the width of his hand. It needs finishing. I find my pencil, and, as I work, a few flakes of snow fall outside the window. I shade the marked curve of the muscles of the ball of his thumb and it’s as though he’s touching me. I close my eyes remembering the feel of his hands on my body. Naomi’s eyes, as they are in the portrait, shine at me behind my eyelids. Secrets are dangerous; she should have been careful. Should I be, of Michael?

Ed and Sophie come back. Their clothes are flecked with snow.

“I’ve never seen the beach in winter,” Ed says as he strips off his wet coat. “It was so empty.”

Sophie’s teeth are chattering. “The cliffs were amazing, all those layers.”

They go to bathe and shower, and later, after the chicken, after wine and coffee and washing up, they sit near the fire and Sophie plays her accordion. Ed joins in with his guitar. They look comfortable; this must be something they do often. I join them at a little distance, half in the shadows, sitting in my father’s blue chair near the door.

“Who are we going to dedicate this to, then?” Sophie asks.

“Dad.”

“Tell me about him,” Sophie says sleepily. She lets her arms rest and her fingers stop playing.

“I told you. He’s a neurosurgeon,” Ed replies. “He operates on ­people’s heads. You know, fixes their brains?”

I feel sad at this pride in his voice. Does Ted have any idea? Would he care? Two years ago I would have thought I knew the answer. No, I wouldn’t even have asked the question.

“Must have been hard on you, growing up. I mean, you can’t have gotten to see him much.”

“It wasn’t really hard.” Ed is cheerful. “He was kind of around. He used to be there on holidays and stuff. He always came home at night.”

He didn’t, though. Ed was wrong. He didn’t always come home at night.

BRISTOL, 2009

SIX DAYS AFTER

The phone was ringing as I woke. It was on Ted’s side of the bed. I turned over to stretch across him but my reaching hand hit the wall. Of course. Spare bed, spare room. I heard Ted answer on the floor beneath me; his quiet orderly cadences meant it was a call from the hospital. I heard him get up and go downstairs to make coffee. He had kept to the usual routine, though everything around him was different. He would be wondering why I hadn’t slept next to him; he would think it was because I had come to bed too late and didn’t want to disturb him.

He wouldn’t know that I had hardly slept, that, when I did, unspeakable nightmares had filled my mind, nightmares that were still there when I woke, thoughts so monstrous that I felt my head would burst open with them. Ted had lied. He hadn’t been in the hospital the night Naomi disappeared. It was Ted who had taken her. Ted had picked her up from the theater that night and had secretly taken her away. Why would he do that? The answer was there, ready-­made. When he had seen her play Maria, he had realized she was someone different now, not his little Naomi but another girl completely, grown-­up, sexy, challenging. Perhaps he didn’t like that, so he had—­what? Raped her? Killed her? He would know how to; he would know precisely how to block the carotid artery, or crush her trachea. I lay there letting my darkest thoughts torture me until I felt sick and giddy with them. I knew there couldn’t be any truth in them, but wasn’t that what ­people always said when it turned out that the murderer was someone they loved?

I walked down the flight of stairs from the spare room and sat on the edge of the empty double bed in our room. Ted’s returning footsteps were slow on the stairs, and then he came in. He put my coffee on the bedside table.

“Was I snoring?” He leaned to give me a kiss on the head, and then went into the bathroom without waiting for a reply. A give-­and-­take moment that was not what it seemed.

There were probably clever ways of getting at the truth, some trick I could play to catch him out, pockets I could search or a diary hidden somewhere; but I was too tired, too heartsick. I had to know quickly.

“Michael came around last night.” My voice sounded flat.

“Yes?” His voice was thick with toothpaste.

“He wants you at the station this morning.”

“That’s not possible, I’m afraid. Why, anyway?” His voice was faint. He shut the shower door, not waiting for the answer. I quickly put on what clothes came to hand.

He looked surprised to see me dressed when he came out of the shower, toweling himself dry. He wrapped the towel tightly around his waist. His body was good for mid-­forties: strong, slim, and tightly muscled. I watched his face, still smooth from sleep. A face I’ve looked at for years, one that I thought I knew better than mine.

“They need you for questioning.”

“Sorry, Jen. You’ll have to go.” He gave a little shrug as he reached into the closet for a shirt.

“No.”

“I’m really busy today. Back-­to-­back clinics.” He chose a red tie to go with the blue striped shirt. “I know it’s bloody awful, but could you answer their questions for me?”

For a second I wondered whether to wait, but I couldn’t bear the surging nightmare anymore.

“They want to know where you were on the night Naomi disappeared.” I wasn’t sure if it was anger or fear that made it sound as if I was spitting these words at him.

His face hardly altered. If anything it became even smoother. Perhaps his mouth pulled down slightly, as though he had a little tic at one corner.

“You know that already.”

I didn’t want to hear more lies and I didn’t want to look at him as he made them up. I got up and faced the window, looking out at the great, entwined lime trees.

“Where were you?”

“I told you at the time. I had a late operation—­”

I turned to face him. “Your operation was canceled. I checked.”

There was silence. He went on dressing, taking his suit out of the closet, finding socks. I crossed the room and wrenched the suit out of his hands.

“Where the fuck were you that night?” My voice was loud now. “Your daughter goes missing and you’re not where you said you were. What does that mean? What are the police going to think?”

Suddenly his face became suffused with rage as he caught the echoes of my meaning. “What are you saying?” he asked angrily. I heard the boys begin to get up, and the thought of them, unsuspecting and sleepy, made it worse. He’d lied to all of us.

“Shut up,” I whispered. “Let the boys go to school. You have to go to the police station; they’re coming to collect you.”

He stared angrily at me, his mouth set in a line.

“They can arrest you if you refuse to go with them for questioning.”

I didn’t know if that was true, it could be.

He paused, reached for the phone, and took it out of the room. I heard him canceling his clinic. He had chosen to go to work two days after Naomi had disappeared, but now he had no choice.

Ed left after a silent breakfast, and then Theo gathered his art portfolio slowly. He didn’t want to go; perhaps he saw through the pretense. When it was quiet, I faced Ted across the breakfast dishes.

“Okay,” he muttered, as though he was talking to himself. “Okay.” He looked up. “I planned to tell you the day after it happened, but it was the night Naomi disappeared and I couldn’t.”

In that second the sick nightmare vanished. I knew what he was going to say and I told myself it didn’t matter at all. Compared to the torture of thinking he had hurt her, the fact that he was going to tell me he had been unfaithful seemed insignificant.

“Tell me now.”

He looked around the kitchen quickly, as if seeing it for the first time.

“It was just once, that night. I made a stupid mistake. She’s young. I mean, she’s not married.”

I didn’t care. I really didn’t care. As I waited for him to continue, I understood in a flash why he had been so muddled about picking Naomi up; everything about home had vanished from his mind that night.

“I was tired. I had missed lunch. My operation was canceled and Nitin took the slot for an emergency. I’d just finished a late round and Beth was coming out of the ward at the same time—­”

“Beth?” Beth in Little Women was the sweet one, generous, feminine. Everyone loved her.

“The head nurse on the neurosurgical ward. She saw I was exhausted. She said there was a restaurant near the hospital that was better than the canteen, but when we got there it was closed, so I took her home.”

I thought how Beth would have a peaceful home. There would be no muddy rugby boots by the door, no messy dog jumping up. Together they would go over the shared drama of the day’s work. There wouldn’t be family questions to tussle with, the kind that had no easy answers, like how much homework the children should be doing or how late they could stay out. Beth would give him a glass of wine, turn on music, and dim the lights. She would sit close and listen to everything he said. She wouldn’t be too tired for sex.

“Why?” My voice didn’t sound like mine.

There was a long pause, and then he shrugged. “I don’t know whether it makes it better or worse, but there’s no reason. She was there.” He stopped, obviously wondering whether to continue in the face of my silence. Then, avoiding my eyes, he went on slowly, “You and I, there’s never time . . .”

“Say it. Never time for sex?”

“We’re tired. We go to sleep . . .”

“Why can’t you say what you mean?” But I knew what he meant. He was saying it was my fault.

The phone rang. Ted answered it quickly.

“Hi. Yes, my wife told me. I’m ready now. Ring and I’ll come up.” He replaced the phone and turned to me. “Michael’s just parking; he’s coming to collect me.” He squared his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Jenny. I was going to tell you.” He looked at me and I could see him thinking that something else was needed. “I love you, you know that.”

The bell rang. I sensed the full weight of my anger and hurt holding off for the moment. There but not real yet, like the beating edge of a migraine before the pain starts. He stood staring at me for moments longer. His skin was still brown from his recent trip to California. When we met old friends from medical school, they said he was ridiculously unchanged. Sometimes I thought I did the aging for both of us; I had seen the little wrinkles around my eyes appear and deepen, the blue veins flare around my ankles, but I thought that was a fair exchange for what I had. I thought those kinds of changes didn’t matter.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, as if saying it twice would make it better. “We’ll talk when I get back.”

Even then I decided there was no point in talking. Excuses didn’t alter anything. I didn’t want to hear them anymore. I even let him kiss me good-­bye. When he’d gone, Naomi’s face filled my mind again; there was no room for anything else.