1951
REG DECIDES WE SHOULD GO to church. He mumbles something about keeping up appearances and it being good for business. It’s another sunny July day but I barely notice. I feel a sense of separateness from everything around me, as if I’m not really part of the world because how can it be going on as normal? Did yesterday really happen? There is no evidence that it did; there is no confirmation from Reg and, if I can avoid his eye, perhaps I won’t see what’s there.
We put on our hats and our Sunday bests and traipse down to the church. Judy is walking with her parents and younger brother but she ignores me. As we near the church Linda breaks free from her family and sidles up to me. ‘Edie, have you heard about Lucy?’
I manage to shake my head.
‘She’s gone,’ Linda announces. ‘Disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’ My throat feels dry.
Linda skips along beside me. ‘No one’s seen her since yesterday.’
Blood on the floor, her glassy, unblinking eyes. The strange angle of her limbs. I realise Reg is looking over in my direction. Think what it would do to your mother. ‘Where is she now?’ I ask numbly.
Linda giggles. ‘That’s just it. No one knows. Apparently she was with Rupert first thing yesterday morning but no one has seen her since then. She didn’t go to the fete, and she was supposed to be home for tea but she didn’t turn up. At ten o’clock her parents called the police.’
‘Oh.’ The world is closing in on me, narrowing to a point, hazy and grey. All I can see is Linda’s face, her eager eyes, the neat freckles on her nose.
‘They drove around looking for Lucy. They looked everywhere. They even called on Mrs Murdle at home and made her go and open the library in case Lucy got locked in. They did the same with the pictures. They couldn’t find her anywhere. She didn’t come home all night. The police wondered if she might be staying with a friend but Mrs Theddle said she would never stay away from home and not tell them.’
I swallow hard, trying to dispel the solid lump in my throat.
‘And then this morning . . .’ Linda leans in close to my ear. She lowers her voice. ‘They found her bicycle. In a field.’
I squeeze my eyes tightly shut.
We’re nearing the church and my mother glances over her shoulder to see where I’ve got to.
‘Sorry,’ I tell Linda, moving quickly away. My mind is spinning and I wonder if I might be sick. Linda’s words are stuck on repeat like a broken gramophone record. Disappeared, disappeared . . . Her bicycle in a field.
I picture myself, but it’s as if I’m watching someone I don’t know very well. There I am, riding Lucy’s bike, stopping and wheeling it off the road, into a field, behind a tree. A nice shady spot, I think. I’m taking the train tickets from my pocket, opening her suitcase and slipping them alongside her neatly packed things; she should have them, I decide. And then I am walking along the lanes, amongst fields of golden wheat and green summer cabbages, a skylark circling above me. It seems to take hours, this long walk home. And nothing is quite real anymore, as if I’ve stumbled into some alternate world where things like this can happen, and all I have to do is walk and walk and eventually I’ll return and everything will be all right again. I stop on the small stone bridge and stare down at the brown water, feeling numb and cold even though the sun is shining. I still have my diary with me. And then I am throwing it into the river. A plopping sound. A single ripple. I imagine it sinking down amongst the weeds, down into the depths of the riverbed. Lucy’s story, gone forever. When I do finally arrive home, Reg is gone, and so is his van. The keys to the garages are missing from the hook. The kitchen smells of Vim, lemony and too clean. Later, much later, Reg comes back looking dirty and haggard, his boots covered in a thick grey silt. He returns the keys to the hook, puts his clothes straight in the dolly tub and lights the copper for a hot wash. I watch him scrubbing his hands in the sink, getting the grey dirt out from under his nails. I don’t speak to him and he doesn’t speak to me, because if we speak it becomes real and it can’t be real. My mother brings scones home for tea and wants to talk about the fete: whose fortune she read, and wasn’t it a lovely day, and where were you two anyway?
‘Come along, Edie,’ my mother says. I realise I am standing at the edge of the road, that she is beckoning me to join her and Reg as they near the church.
‘It’s Lucy,’ I tell them, my voice coming out strange, unable to look at Reg. ‘She’s missing.’
‘Shh,’ my mother replies as we enter. ‘Yes, we’ve just heard. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.’ She touches my shoulder, steering me towards an empty pew. Although it’s cool, I can feel a trickle of sweat at the back of my neck. It’s clear everyone knows Lucy is missing, there are murmurs and glances, an air of anticipation and anxiety. News travels fast in a small town. The Theddles, who usually sit in the front pew, are not there. No one has taken their place. But of course, they are thinking, it is too early, really, to be very concerned. Lucy has not even been gone twenty-four hours. The congregation are still shuffling in and I catch fragments of conversation. Gone off with a chap, I expect. Having a great time of it. She’ll be home this evening.
I notice Rupert sitting with his parents and brother, his head bowed. The church is unusually full but of course Reverend Thurby says nothing about Lucy or the absence of the Theddles. He ignores the four empty spaces in his front pew. The door behind us closes and we rise as, seated at the cranky old organ, Mrs Murdle begins to play the opening bars of ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’.