THAT BREDA IS so mad alarms Frances. ‘Why?’ she keeps on shouting. ‘Why won’t you remember?’
‘Because I don’t,’ Frances tells her again, and she covers her face with her hands and stops herself from remembering anything. She knows that underneath her hands is a small forgettable face that will give nothing away. That she has, over the years, practised this face like Breda used to practise piano (manically), went on to practise medicine (diligently), and she is good at it now, giving nothing away. She is the story that will not be told.
As for Breda, her face is big, round and frustrated. As she shouts you can count her fillings (six), catch sight of one enlarged tonsil (on the left), smell the rage on her breath. She hasn’t changed much. Still tall. Almost pretty. Bit more weight. And glasses now. There’d not been glasses at school. Though the laugh is the same, throaty and forced, the sort of laugh that makes you glare. And the voice: coarse and scratchy as if she means to clear her throat. ‘Come on, Frances,’ she says again. ‘You’re not remembering on purpose.’
Frances thinks this is a childish thing to say. ‘If I knew anything I’d have gone to the police.’
But Breda cannot hold back. ‘You were found on the heath, Frances. It was happening right in front of you.’
‘I still don’t know what it is you think I won’t remember.’
‘But you do remember.’ Breda smiles. ‘You’re remembering it all the time, Fran.’
Frances scoops up her daughter Clover from the floorboards where she’s been poking between the grooves with a wooden school ruler. She takes a moment to breathe in her daughter’s hair, to dust off the malted milk biscuit crumbs from her mouth, to remind herself just how lucky she is. She is calm now, clear, able to ask Breda once again for their coats. She would like to take her daughter home.
Frances will tell no one of what happened that afternoon. It is not kept like a secret. Rather, she cannot find the words to describe how it all came about. One minute they were sitting in Breda’s kitchen drinking coffee, the next and Breda’s mobile had begun to ring. She’d jumped up from the table, listened to the call for what, nine, ten seconds at most, then asked Frances if she would mind keeping an eye on Reuben because she had to go.
‘You don’t need to go upstairs to see him,’ Breda had said, zipping up a leather jacket that looked and felt its price. ‘He’ll only panic if he knows I’ve gone out and I’ll be half an hour at most.’
Breda did not tell Frances where she was going, but threw keys and a purse—was it a purse?—into a bag, a black leather clutch bag, saying, ‘I mean it. Don’t tell him I’ve gone. Stay downstairs. Help yourself to another coffee. There’s plenty of stuff in the fridge for your daughter.’ And then she’d added with a faint air of threat: ‘I hope you understand.’
They had not been friends at school. They knew each other, knew of each other, had socialised a handful of times on unremarkable occasions. Neither Breda nor Frances much remember those times. Breda has tried to but Frances has not.
After school came college. Frances had put both Breda and school from her mind. Breda had thought of Frances occasionally. Then she’d found herself thinking about her all the time. And yet Breda had not seemed to recognise Frances at first. Frances had not seen Breda at all. It was Breda who tapped Frances on the shoulder.
‘Hello, you.’ And then, ‘It is you, isn’t it?’
Breda had started talking immediately. She was married. Surrey boy. Rob? Rod? Met at a wedding somewhere down south. She was drunk. So was he. But she knew. She said he knew too. She wore an engagement ring the size of a grape.
She was a doctor. Dementia. Alzheimer’s. Therapeutic work, she did explain, something about reconditioning damaged memories and how madness was but momentary: ‘Because if the brain can forget how to breathe, it cannot be culpable for all it might’ve done.’ But Frances had lost interest after hearing the word doctor. Breda was always going to be a doctor. Saving lives. Inventing cures. No. Her husband wasn’t medical. He worked in construction. Sympathetic renovation. Had spent two years doing up their place on Featherbed Lane and was now working fourteen, fifteen-hour days to compensate, on a building site for Taylor Wimpey. ‘He’s got a lot to make up to his highness,’ Breda said as Frances muttered under her breath, ‘You live on Featherbed Lane?’
His highness was their son, Reuben. Five years old and home-schooled. They’d been trying for another ever since, got a specialist on the case now, exploring IVF. She was forty-two next year. He’d be forty-eight. There’s plenty of time, Breda had said. No age is old any more, and his highness is just dying for a little brother, though she would like a girl. ‘You want things to be perfect, don’t you?’ telling all this to Frances in Sainsbury’s car park where they’d met after twenty-six years. Then Breda had clicked her fingers in Frances’s face. ‘Remind me. God. It’s so embarrassing not to remember your name.’
‘Frances. My name is Frances.’
Before they’d left each other, Breda had asked for Frances’s number. They must meet up, she’d insisted. ‘Now that you’re back home.’
Frances had been startled by this. ‘I’m not back home.’ She’d needed this to be clear. ‘I’m just here, that’s all, and not for long.’
‘It’s been longer than that, Fran,’ and Breda had smiled. ‘Don’t you think that it’s time you brought her round for a play date?’ She’d peered into the buggy. ‘Drop-dead. Got your eyes. What’s of his?’
Frances had made something up. ‘Hair. Flyaway. Quite thin.’ Then, ‘She’s not yet two, Breda. She doesn’t really play yet.’
Breda had waved this away. ‘Twenty-six years!’ She’d said it again.
‘Yes,’ Frances had agreed. ‘I suppose it is.’
‘So, who do you see then? You know, from school?’
Frances had thought this unkind. She’d dropped her head. ‘I’ve lived away a long time, Breda.’
‘Well, you know who’s kicking around? Sarah Lalley. Gave up New York to come back here. Three kids now. Husband’s from Detroit. We’ve had them to dinner twice. And Hannah Middleton. You remember Hannah Middleton? You sat next to her in History for two years. She’s a chemist. Still hilarious. And Madeline Bishop? Come on, Fran! Madeline Bishop! Though I doubt she’d remember you.’
Frances had fixed her expression. ‘School was different for me, Breda. The girls were unkind.’
‘Only because of how you were.’
But Frances had been distracted by the contents of Breda’s trolley. Ten, eleven—no, twelve boxes of Fruit Shoots, she’d counted. Six packs of Kinder Eggs, a surprise every time. Breda had followed her eyes.
‘He doesn’t really drink all those Fruit Shoots,’ Breda had explained. ‘I decant them. Replace them with tap water. I have to pretend a lot these days, don’t you?’ And then she’d gripped onto Frances’s arm as if they really did know each other well. ‘Twenty-six years,’ she’d said again. ‘Can you really believe it’s been twenty-six years?’
Frances had looked down at Breda’s hand on her arm. Long fingers. Splayed fingers. Piano-playing fingers. Another thing she was good at. Except she bit her nails now. But not all of them.
‘Play date,’ Breda had repeated, removing her hand. ‘Then we can catch up properly. You’re at your mum’s, right? I’ll call, because I’ve really got to shoot.’ And then she’d just stood there as if she’d got something else she’d wanted to ask.
Frances was not stupid. She knew what Breda had wanted to ask. She could see it in her face even without looking at her. But then Breda had seemed to think better of it.
‘Twenty-six years!’ she’d said instead, as if she’d forgotten to say it before. And then she was gone. She drove a large black Audi, black leather seats; it was as much as Frances knew about cars.
Frances’s mother, Jane, knocked on her bedroom door to ask if she was decent. The mug of tea appeared first—‘With a splash of Dutch courage. Don’t tell Derek. It’s his Talisker’—her face all smiles, her hair cut too short these days and feathered into the back of her neck. Frances was sitting beside a pile of clothes, smarter clothes than the vest she had chosen to wear that would happily fit a small child. She was paper thin. Gaunt. Dark around the eyes. She’d wear no make-up. Often, her mother had to say, ‘Rub a bit of rouge in, Fran. At least look like you’ve got self-esteem.’
But it was hard not to see the hurt still dulling Frances’s eyes, to know that she’d not begun to mend. It was coming up to a year now and yet she’d made no progress. Still wept. Still yearned. Used drink to sleep. At the funeral, at the graveside, Jane had slipped her hand into her daughter’s and said, ‘No one can stop a train crash when it’s already crashing, Fran. He knew what he was doing,’ but Frances had been adamant: He didn’t. But we did. And she’d let go of her mother’s hand.
Now, sat by the pile of clothes on Frances’s bed, Jane tried again. ‘Talk to me, Frances,’ she said. ‘We all loved Timothy. Not just you.’
But there was that look again. The one that told Jane to back off. You didn’t love Timothy like I loved Timothy because if you did you wouldn’t have sent him away. So Jane asked where she was going.
‘To see Breda,’ Frances said.
‘Do you need the car?’
‘No. She lives on Featherbed Lane.’ She paused. Should she tell her mother where Breda really lived? She decided not to.
‘And you’re happy to go there?’ her mother asked.
‘It’s where she lives.’
‘Even so.’ And there was concern in Jane’s eyes. ‘Couldn’t you just go into town instead? Meet in a café?’
‘They’re just houses, Mum.’
‘Houses on Featherbed Lane.’
‘Don’t do this. Not now.’
‘Well how many kids does she have?’
‘One. He’s five.’
‘That’s manageable in a café.’
‘Stop it!’
Jane picked at the threads of a blanket on the bed.
It is a single bed. It is the back bedroom. The curtains are the same and so are the walls. Jane has not got round to redecorating, and though she is ashamed by this, Frances is happy that the room is as she left it twenty-four years ago. Jane did mention to her husband that it might be nice if her daughter could come home to a different wallpaper, at least give the idea of a fresh start, but her husband has other things on his plate and doesn’t altogether agree with this decision that his wife and step-daughter have come to. He thinks Frances should buck up her ideas and remember she’s a mother now. Children take priority. She had a job. She should get another one. She’s qualified, isn’t she? She went to university. But Jane thinks otherwise. She should’ve helped her get her own place. Put a bit aside. Saved. ‘She needs a home of her own,’ Jane had told Derek. ‘Somewhere that has no memories of here.’
Because a year or two after Frances’s father had walked out, a girl was found dead which started all that trouble down Featherbed Lane. ‘They were brutal with her,’ Jane had explained. ‘She was just a child. She’d not seen a thing.’
But Derek ignores the bit about the murdered girl and the disappearing dad and thinks about the awful lot that has been, he believes, of her own accord. He’s yet to be convinced that Frances has cut all ties with Clover’s father for instance—he is sure he saw her with a mobile phone only the other day—as he fears that her coming home will interfere with his and Jane’s retirement plans. He has seen his wife with Clover. She’s already mentioned that quitting England might not be an option just yet.
Jane looked through the pile of clothes next to her. ‘What about this?’ she offered her daughter. ‘I’ve always liked you in this.’ And then, ‘Goodness, Fran! How old is this? You must’ve had this since you were fourteen.’
Frances looked at what her mother held up. A navy-blue V-neck dotted with purple pearls. She’d remembered the last time she’d worn it. No coat. Barefoot. Running up and down the street. Where was everyone? Why didn’t they answer their doors? Maggie, in the ground-floor flat opposite, finally opening her window to her: ‘I’ve called the police, Frances. Someone has to do something for him.’ But where did he go, Maggie? Which way did he go?
Frances pushed the thoughts and the V-neck aside. It reeked of the heath. Of the dust and the dog shit and the butts she used to collect for Timothy who’d split them with his penknife and tip the hairs of tobacco onto a white saucer—always a white saucer—until he’d enough to roll up. Then she’d watch him smoke, see the relief on his face. Oh, that was good, Frances. That was good. And she’d smile, never really understanding what her big brother had just rolled up. He was here. He was back. And that was all a little sister ever wanted.
Shh! He would grin. Don’t tell a soul.
Frances picked up yesterday’s denim shirt and started to put it on.
‘This friend,’ Jane asked. ‘What did you say her name was again?’
‘Breda. Her name is Breda.’
‘Wasn’t she the one who did that performance, you know, about the … ’ There was a long pause. ‘The one that made all those accusations? About what happened?’
Frances was debating between scarves. ‘Yes. That was Breda.’
‘And you’re still going?’
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘What she did was disgusting.’
‘It was only a play.’
‘It was grotesque. Threatening. You didn’t sleep a wink for months.’
‘It was her way of dealing with it.’
‘And what about you, Fran? Have you dealt with it?’
Frances had knelt to the bedroom floor to look for shoes.
Black linen pumps. She’d been wearing these delicate little black linen pumps. He’d asked her to take one and leave it on the lane so other people would see and know where to look. ‘Because I haven’t done it,’ he’d told Frances. ‘She was already here.’
Frances had opened her eyes as wide as she could. She’d almost seen his face this time, the colour of his eyes.
‘I’m going to be late,’ she told her mother quickly, and busied herself with the toggles on Clover’s winter coat.
Breda’s house was a livid-looking gloomy red brick with a bathroom on every floor, a hallway long enough to roller-skate up and down and a kitchen table that’d comfortably seat a conference. When Frances had lived here, as a child, she’d had two rooms to herself: a bedroom she’d slept in and a den she’d played in, though in there she’d lived the most, under the eaves and between the floors where her parents fought about what she can never remember.
It’d been an inheritance. An old spinster aunt of Frances’s father’s who’d been persuaded not to will the whole place to her cats: ten of them, abandoned at her death, spayed quickly then put up for sale with a sign at the bottom of the road. They’d arrived with three suitcases—there was no need for furniture, the house was full of it—and though there was no mortgage, it was a house for many more than they were. The house quickly buckled under their tiny little routines. They barely touched its sides. Her father was, at the time, an architect on a junior’s wage who dreamt of skyscrapers, buildings so tall they looked down on the rest of the world. Her mother worked in Thornton’s to pass the time. Paid in pennies and lots of toffee that got stuck in your teeth. Then, one day, her father never came home at all.
The house had to be sold. There was no question of that. Frances and her mother took on a two-up-two-down facing the park until they couldn’t afford that either. Her mother was adamant. She didn’t want any fuss but didn’t care who knew. So she invited people in. Everything was for sale. Frances remembered: walking the shops into town, she saw their television and stereo in Eddard’s Electricals, her bedroom furniture up for grabs in Furniture World on the corner of Melloncroft Drive. She’d just turned fourteen, options and mocks pending, so her mother went to see the headmistress of her school to make some arrangements. Not special treatment. Just some understanding. She’s feeling left behind.
Derek seemed to come out of nowhere. He lived on the council estate that skirted the heath, all but a cock-stride from Featherbed Lane, their old home just visible from her bedroom window if Frances stood on her tippy-toes. Tin town, as it used to be known, the houses built after the war to sustain another war, and not long after they’d moved in, Timothy had come home too.
Breda closed the door behind Frances. The click of the lock made her flinch. Breda noticed. ‘People sell houses. People buy them,’ she said to Fran. ‘It’s not that weird being here, surely?’
Frances watched Breda change into a pair of black pumps, the sort they used to wear for P.E. They made her look grief-stricken and Frances remembered that look. For a long time it was all that Breda wore.
‘What do they call you then?’ Breda bent down to address Frances’s daughter.
‘Clover. Her name is Clover.’
‘Where did you get a name like that from?’ But that was as far as Breda’s interest went. ‘Reuben, they’re here! Switch it off!’
Frances had forgotten about the son. There were protests over a television being switched off. His voice was choirboy high. He stumbled into the hallway with two grazed knees and a grey sweatshirt that claimed he was a Dude. ‘Reuben, this is Clover,’ Breda introduced the children. ‘She’s come for a play date. I expect she’ll like your Duplo.’
‘Hi, Reuben. How are you?’ Frances spoke for her daughter.
‘Fine.’
He was a pretty little thing with big eyebrows and didn’t look like he was used to having friends around.
‘Reuben. Take Clover to your room.’
Clover had clung onto Frances’s shin.
‘Go on. Go upstairs with Reuben. He has toys up there.’ Breda pointed towards the stairs.
‘She does this when we’re somewhere new,’ Frances began to explain. ‘Teeth. You must remember. It goes on for months.’
‘She’s just got no siblings,’ Breda snapped. ‘She wouldn’t be clinging onto you like that if she was one of many. What happens if you just leave her?’
‘I’m not going to leave her. She’s never been here before.’
‘That’s ridiculous, Fran, you lived here. She’s feeding off your nerves.’ Breda bent down to address Clover at her level again. ‘Reuben had to learn that Mummy couldn’t be with him always, didn’t you?’ She beckoned her boy closer. ‘Go on Clover. Go with Reuben. He has toys.’
‘Breda, please. She’s just a baby.’
Breda told Reuben to go to his room anyway.
Frances spent a long time looking around Breda’s kitchen, perhaps longer than she thought. At the muted colours: flax, straw. At the solid oak table, the price of a second-hand car. The church pews used for dining chairs. The sharp corners and marble surfaces. The heavy bone china displayed on dressers. The wine. A noticeboard. A calendar. A wedding invitation for June. There was a recipe for something French. Her name was on the calendar. Frances 3 p.m. But no Reuben. No pictures. No paintings. No child’s mess. No fingerprints on the window. No chocolate smudges on the wall. Frances had wondered: who cleans, who cooks, how much was their mortgage? And why here? This house on Featherbed Lane. Where the willows really did weep into the stream that flowed at the bottom of the garden. Where the road bent and buckled into its dead end, beyond it the woody heath with its hawthorns and heathers, its dust, dirt and dog shit, and the death that would never go away. Where Frances had been sent to collect fag butts for her brother who was broke but clean—I’m clean, Fran, squeaky clean—which she’d watch him split with his penknife, tipping the hairs of tobacco onto a white saucer—always a white saucer—until he’d enough for a roll-up to smoke. Where the girl had been found, disturbed by badgers, a shoe on the lane, a naked arm bent awkwardly across her face as if she’d just fainted. Frances had been seen barefoot and running, not long before it’d happened and not far from where the girl was found, with her roller-skates in her hands: But where did he go, Maggie? Which way did he go?
‘Cream and sugar?’ Breda asked, handing Frances a large white mug of black coffee, and the thoughts stopped.
‘You know, I saw Becca Oakley last week. Remember her?’ Breda dumped a plate of malted milk biscuits on the kitchen table. ‘Her marriage broke up last year. He was a pig by all accounts. Obsessive. Wouldn’t let her out of the house hardly. Had to go and pick her up myself to get her to come for a coffee and she sat there, just like you, clockwatching and nervous and refusing to engage.’
‘I’m not your patient, Breda.’ The coffee in Frances’s hand smelt burnt. ‘And I’ve told you. I don’t remember much about school.’
‘You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.’ Breda sipped her coffee. ‘Aren’t you in the least bit curious about me?’
‘We didn’t all make Oxford.’
‘Is that what you think?’ and Breda looked Frances straight in the eye. ‘Don’t be fooled, Fran. This house, this life, it all comes with stipulation. And no, I didn’t go to Oxford. I had a breakdown. Two, three years of my life, completely blank.’
Frances glared. ‘I didn’t know,’ she began.
‘Well, you weren’t the only one, you know, if that’s why you’re here.’ Breda poured more coffee. ‘I was ringing people all the time, every night, saying the same thing. I’d lost my best friend. And she was, Fran. She was the love of my life. Someone knew something. You were just unlucky, I suppose.’
‘But I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know her. Didn’t even know she was missing.’
Breda started to smile.
‘You always didn’t and never did.’
Frances looked down into her coffee, chewed on her lips.
‘You know, they say that the brain, being a muscle, can be trained like you’d train for a marathon,’ Breda lectured. ‘That actually we barely use it. That the brain sees far more than we’ll ever be able to comprehend because we simply cannot entertain all that we see in every second of time and contain all that information to assure ourselves we’ve seen it and as it is. It’s why we never really look at what’s happening right in front of us. Can’t see the wood, as they say, when you’ve been murdered in the trees.’
‘She wasn’t in the trees.’
‘See?’ and Breda clicked her fingers in Frances’s face. ‘You do remember.’
Except that’s when Breda’s mobile began to ring. She’d jumped up from the table, listened to the call for what, nine, ten seconds at most, then asked Frances if she would mind keeping an eye on Reuben because she had to go.
‘You don’t need to go upstairs to see him,’ she’d said, zipping up a leather jacket that looked and felt its price. ‘He’ll only panic if he knows I’ve gone out and I’ll be half an hour at most.’
Breda did not tell Frances where she was going, but threw keys, a purse—was it a purse?—into a black leather clutch bag. ‘I mean it. Don’t tell him I’ve gone. Stay downstairs. Help yourself to another coffee. There’s plenty of stuff in the fridge for your daughter.’ And then Breda had added with a faint air of threat: ‘I hope you understand.’
Frances did not go upstairs straight away. She’d only gone looking for Reuben when she’d realised that Breda had been gone for almost an hour and was worried he must be hungry. The first door she’d opened was obviously the boy’s classroom. A smallish brightly coloured party of a room with dangling planets, maps and buckets of toys with goldfish tanks set into the walls. No, Reuben told Frances later as she made him a sandwich. His goldfish didn’t have any names. They couldn’t remember them so there was no point. Had she never heard of a goldfish memory?
Later, when Frances can’t sleep, she will close her eyes and dream of Reuben sat in his classroom at his little desk and chair, his pencil poised on a blank white sheet of paper that he starts to draw lines on very straight and going nowhere. So he takes another sheet of paper and continues the line, darker this time, straight down the middle of the page, and he carries on, a third piece of paper, a fourth, fifth and sixth, until Frances wakes up and realises she’s got it wrong: only his mouth was black. The rest of his face was white. He was a white man with a black mouth.
Frances backed out of the classroom and closed the door, knelt down to Clover’s level and said, ‘Where’s Reuben? Shall we try another door?’
They’d found him squat among beanbags, one hand clamped around a joystick, the other holding onto a purple Fruit Shoot while a TV, as big as the pool table set for a frame in the far corner, screened a computer game Frances didn’t recognise. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the vending machine: Fruit Shoots and Kinder Eggs, a surprise every time. She was moving towards it to believe it when Reuben switched off the console and asked, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘What did you say?’
What are you doing here?
He was looking down on her and wearing glasses. Thick lenses, dark rims, she could barely see his eyes.
What are you doing here?
The rest of him was black. Coat, shoes, trousers, whatever was under the coat, probably black. It’s why Frances had thought the whole of him black, including his face. He was holding a black shoe.
You’re not supposed to be here.
Lager, stale lager, tobacco, threads of it about his lips, and that smell: the smell her mother used to dread that he’d try to disguise with aftershave sprayed all over his coat.
What are you doing out here? It’s late.
Roller-skating.
One skate on. One skate off.
You shouldn’t be out here. Not now. Something’s happened and it wasn’t me.
It had not been a man’s voice but a voice pretending to be one.
And that’s when their hands had somehow met. Except Frances was still holding onto her roller-skates—there’d been dog shit all over the wheels—and now he was holding onto her arm? Or her elbow? Her hair? He had grabbed her hair with long fingers. Piano-playing fingers. Nails that needed cutting for a man.
She’s in my den. They put her in my den!
No. No.
I want to show you. I haven’t done it. She was already here. Let me show you!
As there’s always the possibility that Frances wasn’t there at all.
It’s my den and she’s in it. We need to get her out. They’ll think it’s me.
Frances had screamed.
Come with me. Come and see!
She started to scream. She clamped both hands over her mouth.
Come with me!
‘Come with me.’
‘I’m sorry … What did you say?’
‘Come with me so I can show you my den. Come on. I want to show you what I’ve done in it,’ and Reuben was tugging at her shirt.
Frances stumbled out of the room as if suddenly drunk and needing to throw up. Except Clover. Where was Clover?
‘Reuben, where’s Clover? Is she with you?’
‘Nope.’
‘She was here, Reuben. Where the hell did she go?’
‘You said you would come and see my den.’
‘What have you done with my little girl?’ Frances stopped breathing. ‘Clover. Where are you? Shout to Mummy. Clover!’
She pushed open a door and yelled her name. Pushed open a second and flicked on lights though they were not needed and shed on nothing, Reuben, all the time behind her, and telling her it was only a den. Just a den. There was no one in it. Pushed open a third.
‘Clover. Thank God.’
Frances sank to the floor in a different room.
Later, when Frances thinks of this room, she will not remember the headlines and the stories and the notes; extensive notes made like a detective and chronologically arranged. She will not allow her mind to recall the photographs or the missing posters or the ones that replaced them asking for witnesses. She will only remember the one in the centre that was hard to avoid: of two girls half-smiling, five years between them yet their cheeks pushed together as if they’d been born hours apart. She will only remember the list of suspects, many of whom Frances had been to school with. Sarah Lalley. Hannah Middleton. Madeline Bishop. Her own name was at the top of the list and when she’d looked at it she’d smelt lager and aftershave and dog shit really strong. Eyes: she is sure that when she hit him with her roller-skate he got dog shit in his eyes because he didn’t run after her though she’d kept on running. No coat. Barefoot. Running up and down Featherbed Lane. Where was everyone? Why didn’t they answer their doors? Maggie, in the ground-floor flat opposite finally opening her window to her: ‘I’ve called the police, Frances. Someone has to do something for him.’ But where did he go, Maggie? Which way did he go?
By the time Frances had arrived home the tin house was in darkness and the phone was ringing. She’d picked it up because there was no one in the house to answer it.
She’s dead, isn’t she? They’ll find her tonight and she’ll be dead. Was it you? Did you do it with your skates? I bet you did and I’ll tell.
The planting of a thought that became a memory of being accused—Frances had been the last person Breda had called—and she’d put down the phone and raced back to the heath because she should’ve brought her big brother home.
Frances was coming down the stairs with her daughter in her arms when Breda returned, some two hours later, and long after Frances had found Reuben, in his den, and seen all of the rooms in the house on Featherbed Lane. Breda looked up at Frances on the stairs.
‘What are you looking for, Frances? Something to remember?’
‘Your son was hungry,’ Frances snapped. ‘You’ve been gone almost two hours.’
‘He knows where to get refreshment when he’s hungry.’
‘That’s a vending machine, Breda. Who has a fucking vending machine to feed their kid?’
And that’s when Frances sees there’s something different about her. She can’t quite put her finger on what, but she definitely looks different from when she went out.
Except Breda is mad, and that she is this mad alarms Frances. ‘Why?’ she keeps on shouting. ‘Why won’t you remember?’
‘Because I don’t,’ Frances tells her again, and she covers her face with her hands and stops herself from remembering anything.
‘Come on Frances,’ Breda says. ‘You’re not remembering on purpose.’
Frances thinks this is a childish thing to say. ‘If I knew anything I’d have gone to the police,’ she says.
But Breda cannot hold back. ‘You were found on the heath, Frances,’ she shouts. ‘It was happening right in front of you.’
‘I still don’t know what it is you think I won’t remember.’
‘But you do remember. You’re remembering it all the time, Fran.’
Now Breda offers Frances wine. It’s red and it’s cheap and it’ll taste of sawdust, but her stomach is already turned and she needs to go home. She asks for their coats then scoops up her daughter Clover from the floorboards where she’s been poking between the grooves with a wooden school ruler. She takes a moment to breathe in her daughter’s hair, to dust off the malted milk biscuit crumbs from her mouth, to remind herself how lucky she is. She is calm now, clear, and she asks again, ‘Our coats, Breda.’ She would like to go home.
‘You weren’t the only one,’ Breda tells her again. ‘I was ringing people all the time, every night, saying the same thing. I’d lost my best friend. And she was, Fran. She was the love of my life. Someone knew something. You were just unlucky, I suppose.’
Frances looks down at the floorboards and hears the rolling thrum of her roller-skates as she goes up and down the hallway. She hears her parents arguing one last time in the kitchen. The thud of her father’s shoes as he storms out, never to come home again. She thinks briefly of the two-up two-down that lasted not a minute before her mother had shacked up with Derek; before the hospital called and her mother was forced to sit Derek down and tell him: ‘I have a son. And he’s not been very well.’
Not very well: Jane had had to explain. She went back a little: the teachers had called him agitated. She called him just busy. A doctor prescribed pills. She’d thrown them away. He turned thirteen. Restless. Bored. Neighbours got burgled. Friends got darker. He liked a girl who didn’t like him. Liked another who broke his heart. He was seventeen when their father left, Jane had explained. And he was taking whatever he could get his hands on. So, I did what I had to do.
Frances turns to Breda. ‘How did you know about the skates?’
‘What?’
‘When you called me on that night. You said, did you do it with your skates?’
Breda flushed. ‘I don’t remember saying that.’
‘You did. You said, did you do it with your skates?’
‘You were there, Frances. Not me. And you do remember.’
Frances took in a deep breath of the house. ‘This house will tell you nothing about me,’ she told Breda slowly. ‘And she was already dead. Dead, they said, ever so long before he found her.’
Breda grabbed at Frances’s arm. ‘He?’
Frances looked down at Breda’s hand on her arm. Long fingers, splayed fingers, piano-playing fingers. Except she bit her nails now. But not all of them.
‘He died, Breda. My brother died. That’s why I’m back here. So now it’s just me who knows who was really there.’
Breda released her grip. ‘Timothy?’ Her face glowed. ‘He’s gone?’
Frances nuzzled into Clover’s neck. ‘He was in no position to take anyone’s life when he could barely live his own,’ she told Breda sadly. ‘I didn’t see that then, but you did. And my brother has saved your life,’ and she and her daughter left their coats behind.
January. Eight months later. Frances finds out via text message that Breda has had a baby boy. Everything is perfect anyway. She hopes Frances will bring Clover for a play date. Reuben would like that. So would she. We still need to reminisce, is what she texts. I’m thinking of organising a school reunion.
Frances will remember their last visit, how she’d thought Reuben looked nothing like his mother, that she’d not seen a photograph of Breda’s husband to know if he took after him. She will also wonder how many others Breda had tracked down from school and lured into her house to see her room. Names on a list. Suspects in a crime: there was still no news about the dead girl and would not be for years to come. Not until Breda remembered herself. Because if the brain can forget how to breathe, it cannot be culpable for all it might’ve done. Until then, she would remain the girl found, disturbed by badgers, a shoe on the lane, a naked arm bent awkwardly across her face as if she’d just fainted, right there on the heath aside Featherbed Lane.
I haven’t done it, Fran. She was already here.
When Frances thinks of him it’s always with their father’s shamed face. And then she sees him for who he really is, a boy who could not be, and wishes, with all her heart, she had just taken him home.
Frances will read Breda’s text and delete it. Then she’ll throw the phone out of the car window. She will watch, in the rear view mirror looking back along the road she has travelled, how it smashes into a thousand black plastic pieces, like ants in a line and trying to survive. And it will jog her memory: Breda had come back into the house wearing a completely different set of black clothes.