When you can’t find the answer online, ask someone else.
Mum hadn’t invited me over to dinner for a while. So it wasn’t the most intrusive thing for me to invite myself over one evening. Although it occurred to me half an hour after texting – ‘Dinner at yours? X’ – that the only way to counteract the assumed invite would be to at least offer something in return – ‘I can even cook if you like x’ – which was an offer that Mum found particularly amusing: ‘LOL. Dinner wud b gr8 xx bring pud xx I’ll cook’. Mum was of the generation that had learnt to text using text-speak and would therefore continue to use it forever – no matter how many texts they were afforded on their contracts. I’d tried to get her into the world of WhatsApp but apparently that was a step too far.
We timed it so I could get home from work and get changed, which meant I didn’t have to take the detritus of the day out with me. It also meant I could spend a cup of tea – a standardised measurement of time, that is – with Caleb when he came in from work. He walked in alone, which was a relief because the last few weeks had prepared me for anything. I still hadn’t been able to find The Redhead on any of his social media; I’d looked through followers and friends as well as commenters. The only way to keep her from it all, I reasoned, would be if she didn’t know him at all – if she couldn’t find him. I wondered whether Caleb had given her a fake name when they met; who was he to her?
My alarm sounded so I ditched the remains of my cold tea and got changed into something that passed as presentable, although it was secretly comfortable clothing. It only took fifteen minutes to walk through the city and arrive at my mum’s which meant that by the time I was buzzing into her building – ‘It’s me, your favourite child.’ – I was early. I’d stopped to collect a cherry pie on the journey over, too, although it was packaged to facilitate a lie.
‘Fresh from my home to yours,’ I said as I handed it over and Mum eyed it with some suspicion. ‘Okay, not my home exactly. But it’s the food of my city.’
‘We live in the same city.’
‘All right, the food of our city.’
‘Cherry pie isn’t the food of Bir–’
‘Okay, fine, whatever, I’m a rubbish guest.’ I gave her a squeeze and headed to the kitchen. ‘But you didn’t specify the pudding had to be home-cooked.’
‘Which is fine,’ she said as she opened the oven door, ‘because you didn’t specify that dinner did either.’ Mum pulled out a tray packed with silver containers and paper lids, each marked with a number that, I guessed, corresponded to a menu item. ‘Am I a rubbish mother for feeding you grease?’
I kissed her on the cheek. ‘You’re the best, for that very reason.’
‘Grab the plates, would you? I put them to heat.’ She set the tray down on the kitchen counter and started to take the lids away. ‘I had no idea what you wanted, or what I wanted.’
‘So you ordered one of everything?’
‘No, I ordered…’ she petered out. ‘Okay, so sue me.’
We both sat down with plates heaving full of food, more than either of us would eat – such was the takeaway tradition. I didn’t want the distraction of Fern over dinner, so I asked Mum about the one topic I knew would set her talking: love. She told me about men she’d been talking to online – ‘I know how you feel about it, but…’ – and I half-listened while I ate rice and noodles and roasted vegetables. There was something in her, excitement, I guessed, that I hadn’t seen for a while.
‘It’s nice to have company.’ She threw her napkin down. ‘And now, I’ve told you a boatload you don’t really want to know about. What’s happening with you?’
‘Ah, everything is average. Work is fine, the person I’m seeing is,’ I hesitated. ‘Fine.’
‘Nice try.’ She pulled the plate away. ‘I’ll wash. You wipe and tell me what’s up.’
She set water running and turned away to fetch the pie.
‘Mum, do you remember Fern Norton?’ I asked, and she froze facing away from me.
‘Christ, of course I do.’ She put the pie in the oven on a low heat. ‘Why?’
‘There were some pictures of her in the bag you brought over.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, love. I should have – well, I should have thought.’
‘No, it’s okay,’ I said, hunting for a towel. ‘I just wondered what you remembered.’
She looked deeply into the running water, and I imagined melancholic music playing behind her when she spoke. ‘Honestly, it feels like yesterday. All your friends hounded, poor Fern’s parents hounded, it was a horrible time for a lot of people.’
‘But do you know what happened to her?’
Mum shot me a look. ‘You mean, how she died?’
‘The papers didn’t say much about it and, seeing the pictures, I just…’
‘She was hit over the head with something, by all accounts. Her body was dumped in the bloody woodlands like she was nothing.’ I’d read that part online; the woodlands had been a perfect backdrop for the media coverage. ‘Those old woods were such a mess, it’s no wonder they couldn’t work out what was what on her. Whoever did it, they thought about it long and hard. Scumbag.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry, love, what – I mean, were you okay, finding her photographs?’
‘See, that’s the thing. I don’t really,’ she turned to face me as I spoke, ‘remember.’
‘What, anything?’
‘Everyone loses some of their teenage years, right?’ I tried to laugh it off but in my peripherals I could see her raised eyebrows. ‘Did the police come to see me?’
‘Only the once. You were there, of course.’ She said it like it was obvious, so I tried not to react. ‘But you’d come home before Fern, you said, and others said. You said she was fine when you’d left, and others said exactly that too.’ She nudged me. ‘You weren’t as much of a boozehound as the others, I don’t think.’
I laughed. ‘Still not.’
‘Big slice or little?’ she asked as she pulled the pie out.
‘Little. I’m stuffed. Were Fern and I close, Mum?’
‘Ah, you weren’t especially close. There was a big group of you, though, so some of you were closer than others, you know how it is.’ She found a knife and cut through the pastry; there was an audible crunch. ‘Oh, lovely stuff this is.’
‘And after she died, what were things like then?’
She sighed. ‘In the town, you mean, or with you?’
‘Both?’
‘The town changed, love, of course it did. Places do when someone dies, especially someone like Fern.’ I wondered exactly what she meant; someone young, or someone pretty, or someone female? Did it make it worse, somehow, that she was all three? ‘You struggled a lot, but most of your friends did too. First taste of grief, I suppose. The funeral was especially hard. Pass the plates, would you?’
‘Why was it hard?’ I followed instructions.
‘Seeing Fern’s family was a lot for you, I think. The kids did it, you know, her brothers and her little sister. You were brave for a lot of it, credit to you, but I think seeing her mum was too much.’ She paused. ‘Seeing her mum really tipped you over, that day.’ There was an abruptness to the way she set the knife down next to her, and the clang made me flinch. ‘You don’t remember any of this?’ she asked, with a suspicion that I recognised.
‘It was a long time ago, Mum, and I was a kid,’ I said, reaching round her to grab the two plates. But no, I thought, I don’t remember these parts at all.