Читать книгу Lock Me In - Kate Simants - Страница 24

I sat still for a long time on Matt’s sofa, listening to the boats bump and creak. Thinking about the list. I’d looked for all the things on it, ticked them off one by one. Every single one of them was gone.

My phone rang: it was the hospital.

I didn’t even say my name when I answered. ‘Have you found him?’

There was a pause. ‘Sorry, Ellie, found who?’ the caller said, and I placed her voice. It was Helen, who managed the volunteer schedule at the children’s ward where I worked. ‘I was calling about the session you were going to do with the kids this morning.’

‘Oh god, I’m sorry, I—’

‘Look, I’m afraid to tell you that we can’t have you volunteering here anymore.’

‘What? Why?’

‘We need reliability. We can’t have the children disappointed.’

‘You told me you were crying out for volunteers! That’s why Matt got my forms rushed through, so I could—’

‘Nothing was rushed,’ she said. ‘Look I’d love to keep you but the children have to come first, and if you can’t keep your promises to them—’

‘I’m sorry, I just—’

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m sorry too, but that’s where we are.’ She said goodbye coolly and hung up.

I stood there in the kitchen, blinking, not believing it. Matt was going to be so disappointed. He’d suggested the volunteering in the first place, had set up my interview, helped me with the application. I’d loved it, too. I’d even started to believe maybe it could lead to an actual job, one day. And now I’d lost it. I slumped down onto the arm of the sofa.

Something caught my eye. A big metal bulldog clip hanging on a hook next to the sink, and between its teeth a wedge of scraps of paper. I reached over and took the clip down. Just receipts, mostly: a few postcards. But right at the back, with a fold of card across the top to protect it from being marked by the pressure of the clip, was something else. A faded, square-shaped photo, the old-fashioned instant kind that came straight out of the camera, ready-developed to be waved around and blown upon impatiently until the image slowly appears and definition emerges like a fog lifting. The colours were vague, less saturated, as if they were trying to fade back to a sleepy sepia.

A little girl. Less than a year old, probably, hair already thick and black. Even with the colours muted by age, the eyes clearly distinct: one eye sky-blue, one green with a narrow slice of brown in the iris. Her cheeks rounded with health and happiness.

Me.

As a child. The only picture in existence. What was it doing here?

I rubbed my thumb across the top of it, the two rust-stained puncture holes where a staple must once have been. We’d had a burglary when I was two and a half, a few days before we were due to move house. Everything we owned was in boxes by the door of the one-bed flat we’d been renting. Might as well have gift-wrapped it, Mum always said afterwards. All of my baby stuff, a whole load of Mum’s old things, but worst of all, all the photos of me as a little kid.

Maybe because I didn’t have any family, the absence of the pictures felt like a huge hole as I grew up. I used to make up pretend photo albums, drawing pictures of my dead grandparents, my dead dad. In my pictures, he was just like me, dark and broad-shouldered, each of us with one green and one blue eye, standing either side of petite, yellow-haired Mum. I pinned those pictures everywhere, but what I wanted more than anything was a photo. But they were all gone.

All but this one.

I’d found it inside a book. I was ten, and we had just moved flats again. I remember the swell of excitement when it fell onto the floor and I realized what it was. I’d never seen this one before. I ran into her room, beaming with pride at the discovery of such a coveted treasure. I had expected tears of joy.

None came. Just a request not to snoop in her things, and a dark, brittle silence for the rest of the afternoon. Confused, I apologized, and she put her arms around me and said the same.

‘It was a dark time with your dad,’ she’d say, by way of explanation. ‘I’ve got my memories of you, baby, and they’re good enough.’

The next day I found it folded into four, in the bathroom bin. So I saved it a second time. But this time, I kept my secret to myself.

In the picture I was smiling. I looked into the eyes of my infant self and tried to see Siggy. Was she there, in my head, when I was that small? Lurking, waiting for my eyes to close and for the dummy to drop out of my pink little mouth so she could show me all her horrible things?

But more importantly, why did Matt have it? I’d dug it out and shown it to him, maybe a month ago, after we’d gone through an old album of his. I hadn’t given it to him, though. I’d tucked it back into the book where I kept it. He knew how precious it was to me. So why had he taken it?

I tucked the photo into my pocket and looked around. I had come to look for a clue, and all I had was a photo and a printed-out list. Outside, a solid darkness was starting to fall. I noticed Mr Jupp’s light on, and realized he’d be locking up soon.

He snorted and hurriedly took his feet from the desk as I opened the office door. A thread of dribble hung sleepily from the corner of his mouth, which he noticed only when it hit his wrist.

‘You, is it?’ he said accusingly. ‘Police gone, have they?’

‘For now,’ I said, forcing a smile. His eyes swept down to my chest and up again, like a kid reaching for a sweet they knew they weren’t allowed. ‘But I’m still a bit worried, to be honest.’

Not waiting to be asked, I brought over the only other chair, a faded green, moulded plastic thing, and perched on its edge, leaning towards him with as much warmth as I could muster. ‘I know he liked the chats he had with you,’ I lied. ‘I was just hoping he might have said something about a trip somewhere. Anything about being away from the boat?’

He blew his cheeks out. ‘Love, listen. Sometimes us blokes have got to blow off a bit of steam.’

‘He hasn’t fallen out with anyone here or anything?’ I said, knowing Matt would have told me if that was the case. ‘Or got behind on his rent or anything?’

He leaned back importantly. ‘That’s confidential.’

‘Please, Mr Jupp.’ Genuine desperation cracked my voice. ‘I don’t know who else to ask.’

He let out a big sigh. ‘Look, leave your number, sweetheart,’ he said, handing me an opened, empty envelope. ‘Anything occurs to me, or he misses the payment, I’ll be sure to let you know. Now if you don’t mind, my missus is waiting for me, so I’m going home for my tea.’

I wrote my name and number on the envelope, with PLEASE CALL IF YOU HEAR ANYTHING underlined beneath. ‘Anything at all,’ I told him, handing it over and getting up to leave.

‘Oh, while you’re here, get rid of that lot, will you?’ he said, indicating the moorers’ postboxes on the wall, a grid of open-fronted pigeonholes. ‘He got a parcel the other day and I had nowhere to stick it.’

I pulled out the stack from Matt’s box and flipped through it. Bills, circulars. Everything machine-franked.

‘Can I have the parcel?’

‘Fuck knows where it is right now,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop it over if I find it.’

I thanked him, shoved the post into one of Matt’s huge coat pockets, and went back down to the boat. I shook the hoody off and used the chemical toilet. On the inside of the bathroom door was a full-length mirror. I stood in front of it, remembering.

Once, months ago, when Mum was on a night shift and I didn’t have to be home until almost dawn, Matt and I spent hours in front of this mirror. He took my clothes off slowly like he was peeling an exotic fruit. I stood there now, in the dark, the reflection of my body lit just by the moon. Matt had made me look. The fine hairs on my arms bristled with the memory of his fingertips, stroking down my naked sides, kissing each one of the constellation of tiny puckered scars across my shoulder and down my back, from the accident when I was small.

I let my eyes flutter shut, recalled the way Matt raked the backs of his nails softly up my sides, then reached around to hold my breasts, tucking his hands underneath them. How he brushed his thumbs across my nipples, not letting me look away. The light had been just like this, an identical blueish monochrome. He had placed my hands high on the mirror so I was bent forwards, and took me like that. Slowly. Telling me to look myself in the eye, saying it again and again because I wouldn’t, until his insistence took hold and he wasn’t laughing, he meant it. He really meant it. When I eventually looked, he slid his hand around and pressed his fingers against me, making me gasp.

‘Look at who you are,’ he whispered as I came, shuddering hard against his hand. His breath hot and low and liquid against my neck. ‘You are beautiful.’

I blinked the memory away, avoiding my eye in the mirror, and went along to his bedroom at the far end. I lifted the duvet and got into his bed, wriggling down with the covers over my head. I’d been in this bed dozens of times, but never to sleep. Closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.

Damp and woodsmoke and sex.

I slipped my good hand inside my jeans. I held the sense of him, built him up from the smell of his skin, his hair. I started to move, small circles, conjuring his mouth on my mouth. His fingertips on my breasts. I imagined the feel of his chest under my hands, my fingers moving along his shoulders, sliding across to his throat. Glimmers of his face, darts of memory, coming faster.

But then

the skin on his neck, glistening gathering and twisting, pink then white against the pressure of my fingers,

and

his face suddenly panicked tight, and his hands on mine, grabbing,

and

his eyes starting to bulge, looking at me, not understanding,

and

a creaking sound from his open mouth, no air going in or coming out,

and

his hand, coming up to my face, his eyes still locked onto mine. Stones in the ground under my knees digging in to me as I kneel over him. Sticks and leaves the same as when Mum found Jodie and something sharp against my shin. The smell of the wet leaves and the roar of a jet engine descending, low, and his eyes wild with horror, knowing now that I am not going to stop.