Читать книгу 99 Red Balloons - Elisabeth Carpenter - Страница 18

Our secret has been easy to keep from Emma, as we’d only communicated through email. Emma, famously to everyone who knows her, never uses email outside of work, or Facebook, or any of that – she seldom even texts. She says she prefers to hear a person’s voice.

Matt hasn’t mentioned it since the text the other day. We can’t talk about it here. It wouldn’t just betray Emma, it would hurt Mum too. Somehow, I’ve got to access Jamie’s laptop and delete whatever we put online. But I can’t now – I’m frozen on the sofa. Matt is watching every news report about Grace – as is Mum, who’s sitting in the armchair opposite me. Sky News has been running almost twenty-four-hour coverage since she went missing on Monday. It’s now Friday. How has it got to the end of the week without her being found? Grace’s face is everywhere; if someone saw her on the street, would they recognise her? Perhaps they’d ignore the feeling that they’ve seen her somewhere before.

I try not to imagine what that man in the CCTV image wants with her – even though it might not even be her in the picture. But if it is, and their picture is everywhere – on television, in the papers – then the man won’t go out with her in public, he’ll hide her away. We might never see her again.

There are reporters in town, and camera crews everywhere – interviewing the police spokesperson and the residents. It’s like it’s not real, that it’s happening to someone else in a different town.

‘I need to go and look for her,’ says Matt. ‘I should be out there, helping everyone else. They probably think I don’t care. If I could just see a picture of this man’s face – the man who was holding her hand … then I’ll find him, find her.’ He keeps saying the same things. He walks over to Nadia, who’s perched on a dining chair near the door leading to the kitchen. She’s been here every day, from early morning until late at night. ‘Please let me help.’

Nadia has that same look on her face, the same tilt of the head she always uses to address him. ‘Nearly the whole town is looking for her, Matthew. The whole town. We need you to be here in case we find her.’

‘But what if it’s not her in that photograph – what if someone didn’t take her and she’s trapped somewhere? She’ll be waiting for me to come and get her. I’m letting her down just sitting here. What kind of fucking father am I, who just sits watching everyone else while they look for my daughter? It’s my job, I should be there. It’s been nearly four days. She’s going to be really cold.’ His voice is barely a whisper. Tears are streaming down his face. ‘It’s freezing at night.’

She guides him back to the sofa and I just watch, useless, an outsider looking in. It’s the first of October tomorrow; the temperature might start to fall. I can’t think about Grace being cold. I can’t think about her being scared. My fears and my hopes are intertwined: I hope someone has taken her, but that they’re looking after her, keeping her warm. It’s wishful thinking, but better than what my imagination is trying to show me: the worst possible things that don’t correspond with my lovely Grace. My thoughts trigger a rage I’ve never felt before. If anything happens to her, I will kill whoever did it with my bare hands.

The same thoughts go over and over in my head.

I sit up quickly.

Jamie.

Mum looks over at me.

‘He’s at school,’ she says. It must be the first time she’s ever read my mind. ‘Do you want me to ring the school again – check he’s okay?’

I look at Matt – he’s not listening. Every time I talk about Jamie, I feel like I’m rubbing his nose in the fact that my child is safe.

‘How many times have we rung?’ I say.

‘Three.’ She’s staring at the television now.

Three times? I can’t remember the first time. Thank God it’s Saturday tomorrow. When I escorted Jamie to the taxi this morning, there were flashes from the reporters’ cameras. I wish I’d had a blanket to cover his face. Then whoever has Grace won’t come for Jamie.

‘Get me a drink, will you, Steph?’

I stand up automatically and grab the cup at Matt’s feet.

‘Not tea. Something stronger.’

I glance at the clock on the mantelpiece – it’s twenty past one. I look to Mum. She raises her eyebrows and shrugs her shoulders. This from the woman who says drinking before six o’clock makes you either too rich or too common.

‘Do you think it’s wise at this time of day?’ I say. ‘What if …’

I don’t know what to say – no one is listening to me anyway.

‘There’s some vodka on top of the fridge,’ says Mum.

How does one person know where every single thing is in every house she visits?

I walk into the kitchen. My heart jolts when I see Emma at the kitchen table with Jamie’s laptop in front of her.

‘How did you guess the password?’ I say, grabbing the vodka off the top of the fridge.

‘I didn’t guess it, did I? How the hell would I guess that? Jamie gave it to me.’

I don’t even know his password. I stop my mouth before it opens and actually bite my tongue. I hate it when she goes behind my back like this, like she can do as she pleases, like she’s— shit, stop it, Stephanie. I want to slap myself. Grace is not here and I’m thinking about myself.

I get a tumbler and pour the vodka halfway.

‘What does Matt drink with his vodka?’ I say.

‘I wouldn’t know these days.’ Emma’s eyes don’t leave the screen. My heart beats faster at the thought of what she might be reading. ‘You’d know better than I do.’

I say nothing and stride into the sitting room, offering the glass to Matt.

‘Am I supposed to drink it neat? What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you not see the coke in the fridge?’

I just stand there. I can’t believe my hand isn’t shaking. I don’t know if I’m more upset than angry. I hear a noise behind me.

‘Don’t you ever, ever talk to my daughter like that!’

Mum is standing next to me and has her right fist held up. The tears well up in my eyes. Matt has never spoken to me like that; Mum has never stuck up for me like that. The air is charged for what feels like minutes. I look to Nadia; Mum’s looking at her too.

‘Perhaps now is not the time to get angry with your family, Matthew,’ she says.

I can see the venom in his eyes as he looks at me. When he shifts his gaze to Nadia, his expression softens.

I’m shaking as I walk back to the kitchen and sit at the table next to Emma.

‘What are you looking at?’ I say to her.

She glances at me as though I’m a nuisance. Did she hear what just happened? Her eyes are bloodshot and there are tiny red blisters under them.

‘That psychic on Grace’s page on Facebook. I’m doing some research on her.’

‘Oh.’ I relax a little into the chair. ‘I didn’t know you knew your way around Facebook.’

‘Just because you don’t see me on the laptop at home, doesn’t mean I don’t use it all day at work.’

I should’ve realised – she’s on a computer all the time at the recruitment agency. She didn’t look at me when she spoke, but paranoia tells me that there was an undertone. What else has she been hiding from me?

‘I’ve got to keep an open mind about these things,’ she says.

‘I guess.’

She tuts. ‘My daughter is missing, Stephanie. Wouldn’t you consider every possibility if it were Jamie?’

‘Of course. I’d consider every possibility for Grace too.’

She glances at me and purses her lips. It’s her way of saying we’re friends again.

‘Bring your chair nearer to me. You can help me look.’

She clicks onto Deandra Divine’s Facebook page. I say nothing about the name. The profile photo is what I expected: a black and white shot of a woman in her fifties, black straight hair framing her face in a centre parting, her gaze off camera. Emma and I would have laughed at it any other time.

‘I’ve read about other missing person cases she’s given readings about, cases from years ago. She’s been right most of the time.’

If she were the real deal, surely she’d be right all of the time. It’s a thought I keep to myself.

‘I’ve emailed her, Steph. If I manage to get an appointment with her, will you come with me?’

I pause for a second. ‘Of course.’

I couldn’t relax until Jamie was back from school. I didn’t know how long it would take him to get here. At home he’s usually back at 3.45 p.m., but I booked him a taxi to pick him up – no doubt he was mortified in front of his friends – and he didn’t arrive until 3.55 p.m. In those ten minutes I experienced only a fraction of what Emma and Matt are going through. He’s upstairs in his usual place now, in the spare room.

Mum is still hovering over Emma. It’s her way of dealing with things beyond her control. I can tell that she’s been crying because she spent ten minutes in the bathroom and the rims of her eyes are still red. I don’t say anything. I never do. Once you start talking about feelings from the past, there’s no way of forgetting them again.

When Dad died four years ago, she baked and cooked for twelve hours solid until she collapsed on the sofa at three o’clock in the morning. She would never let us see her cry. She tried to hide the noise in their – her – bedroom by putting the television on loud. Emma and I would sit at her door, both too afraid to open it.

It had all happened so quickly. Emma and I had been at Mum and Dad’s house when the phone call came. ‘You need to come to the hospital,’ said the woman on the other end of the line to Mum. ‘It’s your husband. He’s been in an accident.’

‘What do you think it means?’ Mum asked in the car on the way there. ‘Why didn’t your dad speak to me himself?’

She wouldn’t stop talking.

Emma sat next to me in the passenger seat as I drove us there. While Mum spoke, Emma and I kept exchanging glances; I think we both knew what we were about to hear without us saying it aloud.

When I pulled up into the hospital car park I experienced a sense of doom – that I was walking into another life, another chapter. It was a feeling strangely familiar, like I’d been expecting it without realising.

The police officer was waiting for us in the relatives’ room. He already had his hat in his hands.

‘I’m very sorry,’ he said to Mum. ‘But your husband was taken ill this afternoon. He suffered a stroke while he was driving. There was no one else injured.’

‘What?’ she said. ‘I don’t understand. We’re going out for dinner tonight … just the four of us.’

She looked to Emma and me as though we had the answers.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what’s happened.’

‘But I only saw him at midday,’ she said. ‘It can’t have happened. He was fine.’ She grabbed hold of my hand. ‘He looked fine, didn’t he, Stephanie?’

‘I … I haven’t seen him since last week.’

She put her hand on her forehead. ‘Yes, yes. You two only came round an hour ago.’ She looked at the policeman. ‘Are you sure you have the right person?’ She reached into her handbag, took out her purse and flipped it open. ‘Is this the same person?’

The police officer nodded. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Mum buried her face in her hands. ‘It can’t be. It can’t be.’

The room was closing in on me; the door, the walls, the ceiling. The tears fell down my face – a stream that came from nowhere.

Emma looked at me – her eyes wide, her mouth open. She shook her head. ‘I … I … it’s not right,’ she said. ‘Not Dad.’

My dad, my lovely dad, had gone in an instant.

He was pronounced dead an hour before we’d got to the hospital – just as Emma and I had arrived at our parents’ house. For a whole sixty minutes, he’d been lying there, on his own. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for him, dying alone. The suggestion that he’d have felt nothing was of little comfort.

I jump as Mum sets a platter of sandwiches on the coffee table. Being in this house now, with Mum and Emma, is making me think about the past too much. Emma is sitting in her chair, her eyes always locked on the window.

‘I know you won’t feel like eating it, love.’ Mum places a small plate on the arm of Emma’s chair, which contains half an egg sandwich, minus the crusts. ‘But you need to keep your strength up … for Grace. She’ll need you to be strong for when she gets home.’

It’s like watching a switch activate in Emma’s mind: she turns to the plate.

‘Thanks, Mum.’

She stares at the sandwich for a few seconds before breaking it into four, placing one tiny piece into her mouth.

When she gets home. I so hope she’s right – that Mum has more foresight than I have.

Emma’s on her second glass of wine in thirty minutes. Matt phoned the woman at the off-licence and they were all too happy to deliver. Probably wanted to have a good look at the family in turmoil.

‘At least she didn’t charge,’ I said.

‘And so she shouldn’t,’ said Mum. ‘Though I dare say they shouldn’t be getting drunk.’

At a time like this, she didn’t say. Six bottles of wine and two litres of vodka the shop had delivered. We shouldn’t be drinking at a time like this, is what I had thought, until I’d finished my first glass of wine.

It hadn’t taken Mum long to join us. Thirty-five minutes later and she’s swinging her left leg, banging it against the bottom of the armchair. I want to dive on her leg to stop it moving.

Emma gets up quickly, glass in hand, and sways slightly. She collapses in front of the television, landing on her knees.

Mum sits forward on her chair, but doesn’t get up.

‘Emma. Are you okay? Have you drunk too much?’

I look at Mum through narrow eyes. What goes on in her head? Emma can drink as much as she wants; she doesn’t need policing right now.

‘I’ve got to find that DVD,’ says Emma.

When I get up I feel dizzy. My glass clinks on the mantelpiece as I place it between the photographs of Dad and the one of Grace and Jamie last Christmas – their faces covered in pudding and cream after they’d pretended to be cats, eating from a saucer on the floor.

I kneel down next to Emma and flick through the DVD cases in the drawer under the television.

‘The one from last year,’ she says, but I know which one – it’s the only one they had transferred to DVD from Matt’s phone. We both have a copy. I thank God that Jamie is upstairs, so he doesn’t have to see everyone like this.

‘What are you doing, Emma?’ Mum gets up and stands behind us. ‘You’re just torturing yourself.’

I can tell without looking that she’s got her hands on her hips. Three sighs later, she leaves the room and stomps upstairs.

‘Here it is.’

Emma wrestles the case open and opens the disc tray of Grace’s Xbox. She doesn’t move from the floor as the video of Christmas past takes over the television. The camera travels from the Christmas tree to the door to the hallway. Grace appears in her pyjamas, with strands of her shoulder-length hair in a golden halo around her head.

‘You haven’t started without me, have you?’ she says.

‘Course we haven’t, sleepyhead.’ Matt’s voice booms through the speakers.

Grace walks over to the tree, which has at least fifty presents underneath it. She stands with her back to the camera, putting both hands on her head.

‘He actually came!’ She turns round, her eyes glistening. ‘I told Hannah he was real and she didn’t believe me, Daddy.’

The camera turns to the floor while her little feet run to Matt and she jumps onto his lap. The screen goes black for a couple of seconds before Grace is pictured sitting cross-legged on the carpet, yanking open a present wrapped with too much Sellotape.

‘What is it?’ It’s Emma – the camera pans to her at the kitchen doorway, looking flushed and wearing an apron covered with smears of food.

‘Socks,’ shouts Grace off camera.

Emma rolls her eyes, turns round and walks into the kitchen.

The camera goes back to Grace, holding up the socks.

‘They’re Minions! I love them!’

She rips off the cardboard and puts them on. She stomps in a circle.

‘I’m trampling all over my Minions,’ she says, laughing.

Next to me, Emma grabs the Xbox controller and presses pause. It leaves Grace with one foot in mid-air and a huge smile on her lovely face. My hands are soaking wet and I realise that my tears have been dripping onto them.

Emma throws the controller onto the floor. I take the glass of wine from her hands just in time as she buries her face in them.

‘Why didn’t I watch her open her presents? I only saw her open the Xbox and that was it.’ She sobs into her sleeve. ‘I’m a terrible mother. I don’t deserve her.’

I rub her back. It doesn’t feel enough. I want to magic Grace from where she is now and back into this room. My heart hurts.

‘But you had the dinner to cook for everyone,’ I say. ‘She loves your roast potatoes.’

It’s such a shit thing to say. It makes her cry even more.

‘When she comes back,’ she says, ‘I’ll make them for her every day.’

Her cries are so loud and so heartbreaking. I pull her towards me and we cry together.

Mum is upstairs comforting Emma. Jamie went to sleep an hour ago and Matt’s sitting on the sofa, his head resting on the back, his eyes looking to the ceiling. I step over his outstretched legs and sit next to him. I lean back into the sofa, feeling a brief flutter of comfort from the soft cushions around me. It’s so quiet that the ticking clock is the only sound.

The times I have been here, when Grace has been watching the Disney channel, playing her dance game on the console or getting cross with Minecraft— stop, stop. Don’t think about it. I can’t go under too, not when they need me.

I wipe my face with both of my sleeves and try to muffle my sniffs with the tissues constantly balled up in my hand. I don’t know what to say to Matt. He brings his head down.

‘About that text,’ he says. ‘The emails …’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I don’t want you to think that that was all I thought about when the police took the laptop – that I wasn’t thinking about Grace. It’s just that I’d been at work and—’

‘I know. Don’t give it a second thought.’

‘I’m sorry about shouting at you before.’ He breathes in, and his chest rises. He turns his head towards mine. ‘We shouldn’t have started all of that anyway.’

I say nothing in return, but my face flushes.

‘I’d been at work,’ he repeats. ‘While Grace was being taken, or hurt, or God-knows-what – and for what? I work so hard for us, for our little family – and when it counted, I wasn’t even here for them.’

Emma and Matt’s lives are so far removed from mine. Jamie’s father sees him every Saturday night and Sunday, yet my son is never included in Neil and his new wife’s holidays. They put on expensive birthday parties that always put my homemade meal and birthday cake to shame. They invited Jamie for Chrismas the year before last and gave him at least thirty presents. I spent that Christmas with Mum. Jamie worried about me, but I couldn’t show how I really felt – I had to be happy for him being surrounded by Neil and Joanna’s families. It’s something Emma and I never had – a big family gathering. It’s something Jamie deserves.

Tears spring to my eyes again. Everything’s making me cry. I’m being over-sentimental. I wish I could be someone else sometimes.

Matt turns his head towards mine again. This time I turn and face him.

‘You’re always here, aren’t you?’ he says.

I frown.

‘I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean, you’re always there for us. You work, you have Jamie. I don’t know how you do it on your own. You’re so strong.’ He reaches out his hand. With his index finger he strokes my cheek. ‘So strong.’

I sit there for a few seconds. Feeling the warmth of his hand near my face. What must it be like to have that all the time, to have someone close to you with affection at the flick of a finger?

I gently move his finger away with my hand.

‘I’m not as strong as you think.’

He brings his hand down and folds his arms.

‘Emma’s so cold.’

I don’t know where to look. My cheeks are on fire. Emma hasn’t mentioned any problems between them, but then she hasn’t said much about anything for the past few weeks.

‘Shit,’ says Matt. ‘I don’t mean now. I mean before. Before Grace.’ He leans forward and rests his forehead in his hands. ‘What the fuck am I talking about? I’m so sorry, Steph. You always bear the brunt of my shit. Why am I even thinking about it, let alone saying it?’

I’ve known Matt longer than I have my ex-husband. It’s only since last Christmas that I became nervous around him.

We were sitting next to each other at the table. Emma was flitting about, appearing busy when all the food was already laid out. I was wearing the red dress I’d worn to my work’s Christmas party, and had my hair cut shorter so it rested on my shoulders.

‘You’re looking great today, Steph,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘I think being single suits you.’

He’d never commented on my looks before. It was such a harmless remark, but it surprised me so much that I didn’t reply and my face burned. I was relieved when Emma finally sat down, but from that moment, whenever he talked to me, it was as though there was no one else in the room.

I don’t think Emma noticed – she always seemed so preoccupied with other things. I can barely glance at him now when others are around us, in case they guess how I feel.

When I first told Emma that Neil had left, she came round to my house straight away, dragging Matt with her. When she went upstairs to talk to Jamie, Matt sat on the chair by the window – the one Neil usually sat in.

Matt looked around the living room – at the bits and pieces Neil and I had bought over the years; the mantelpiece that gave the impression of a happy marriage – the wedding photograph, the candles, that stupid figurine of a couple dancing that Neil’s mother bought.

Matt clasped his hands together; he looked awkward, as though he didn’t know what to say to me. He hardly ever visited my house, I was always the one going there. He didn’t suit sitting in it.

‘I don’t know the details, Steph,’ he said. ‘But I’m so sorry.’

‘Did Neil say anything to you about it?’

‘God no! To be honest we don’t really talk outside of family gatherings. I don’t think he likes me that much.’

He was right. Neil never had anything good to say about Matt. ‘Full of himself; I’m sure he’s going a bit thin on top; putting on a bit of weight is our Matt.’ Neil could be a right bitch. I wrote it off as harmless jealousy at the time; he was nice to Matt’s face – overly so, to the point that it appeared a little obsequious. Neil hadn’t attended the last few family meals; he was always working on some important project. I should’ve noticed him quietly removing himself from my family.

‘I’m here for you, Steph,’ said Matt. ‘Anytime you need to talk.’

It was strange hearing him say I. Whenever Emma and Matt usually spoke it was as a collective: ‘We’re getting this for Grace’; ‘Are you coming round to ours?’ Neil and I never talked like that.

I lean forward and look at him now – this man I have known for as long as Emma has. When I think about it, Emma had been rather distracted – she does that sometimes when she’s having a hard time at work and doesn’t want to bother anyone with her troubles. ‘Everyone has better things to think about than my problems,’ she always says, but she doesn’t mean it. Perhaps she includes Matt in everyone.

My hand reaches over to him; it hovers for a few seconds before I pat his back. I can’t do anything else.