Читать книгу On Your Doorstep: Perfect for those who loved Close to Home - Laura Elliot - Страница 16

Christmas was an obscenity wrapped in glitter paper. Carla wanted to go to a hotel and hide in an anonymous room until the festivities died down. The countryside drew her as it never had in the past and she was possessed by a longing to walk along a cliff or gaze at a meadow. But normality had to co-exist with abnormality and the Christmas dinner must be cooked and eaten. Her mother had invited her and Robert to dinner. She wept when Carla hesitated. Now that the sky had fallen, Janet found it an even heavier burden than she had anticipated.

‘My grandchild stolen,’ she cried. ‘I can’t endure it. I simply can’t endure it. You must spend Christmas with us. Your father will be heartbroken if you don’t. We have to support each other through this tragedy.’

On Christmas morning Carla awoke to the sound of bells. Robert was already standing by the window. He leaned his head forward until it touched the glass and Carla knew, before he turned, that he was weeping. They never wept together. An unspoken arrangement kept one of them strong whenever the other fell apart.

Downstairs, they exchanged gifts. She had spent an afternoon with Raine trying to decide what to buy for him. Everything they looked at was unsuitable, too festive or romantic, too flippant or meaningless. But what did she expect? A gift designed for loss? A cracked heart wrapped in tinsel, crystal teardrops? In the end she bought a cashmere sweater for him. The wool would be soft and kind on his skin, and the sea-blue shade reflected his eyes. He had bought her a painting. Carefully, she unwrapped it from its bubble wrapping and held it before her. She recognised the glacial mountains, the intense blue waters, the white belfry of a lakeside church. They had cruised on Lake Garda during their honeymoon, drifting through a lilac haze of hill and valley, drunk on love and the spreading length of their future together. Then it was her turn to cry. He held her to his chest and allowed her to vent her grief into his new sweater.

At noon they collected Raine and Gillian who had agreed to join Carla’s parents for Christmas dinner. Janet, labouring in the kitchen to produce the perfect meal, waved aside all offers of assistance.

‘Too many cooks bring on a panic attack,’ she warned and poured another glass of sherry. Shortly afterwards, Leo arrived with his wife. Gina’s baby was due in early January. She and Carla had talked many times about their pregnancies, comparing symptoms, weight gain and how the two cousins, so close in age, would grow up as friends. From the very early stages, Gina had gained weight and now, with only three weeks to go, her stomach was impossible to ignore. No one made any comment as she settled heavily into an armchair. Music played on the stereo, a little too loud, but it prevented strained silences when conversation died.

Gerard carved the turkey. Janet, unable to break with tradition and serve vegetables everyone could enjoy, passed around the bowl of Brussels sprouts. As usual, everyone took a few to please her. Throughout the meal she drank too much wine. Carla caught Leo’s eye. Christmas Day, under normal circumstances, was always difficult when Janet drank too much and they recognised the signs, her flushed face growing more belligerent, her harried movements as she played with her food, her slurred voice insisting on everyone having second helpings. Unable any longer to control her fury, she glared at Robert.

‘Who is she?’ she demanded. ‘Who is the evil bitch who stole my grandchild?’

‘Janet…please let’s finish our dinner in peace.’ Gerard’s voice was already laden with resignation.

‘Peace! How can there be peace in this house?’ She pointed her index finger at the remains of the turkey and curled it back. ‘God help me, I want to shoot her. I want to shoot her right between her evil eyes.’

Gina, unable to cope with the naked emotion on everyone’s face, moved awkwardly around the table and cleared the dishes. Gerard and Leo skilfully guided Janet from the dining room and up the stairs where she took a sleeping tablet and drifted into a peaceful sphere where the sky was secure and eternally blue.

As soon as Leo reappeared, he handed Gina her coat and helped her into it.

‘We promised my parents…’ She glanced apologetically at Carla and hugged her. ‘We’re already late.’

Gina’s parents would plump cushions behind her back, place a footrest under her feet. They would fuss over her and talk about baby names and ask about the last scan and whether she was still suffering from heartburn. Carla sucked in her breath. If she was to continue to stand upright she must acknowledge her sister-in-law’s reality. She slipped her hand under Gina’s coat and pressed her palm against her taut stomach. The baby kicked. A heart thud, same beat.

‘You’ll find her, Carla.’ Gina struggled not to cry. ‘You have to keep believing. Promise me you’ll keep believing.’

Gina’s baby was born in the second week in January. A baby girl, Jessica, eight pounds, six ounces; one pound four ounces heavier than Isobel. Robert grasped Carla’s arm as they walked along the hospital corridor. His grip hurt but she welcomed the discomfort. It kept her walking in a straight line towards the ward where balloons with congratulatory messages bobbed above the beds and bouquets of flowers scented the air. Gina’s family were already in the ward. They fell silent when Carla and Robert entered. The weight of all the unspoken thoughts gathered together in the small ward was almost too much to bear. Carla was acutely aware of the discomfort of Gina’s family, the sympathy they longed to express if they could only find the right words. Tragedy had turned her and Robert into pariahs, doom-laden victims of an unsolved mystery. The visitors began to talk again but their voices were hushed, as if an inadvertent word would break the brittle calm. Carla bent and stroked her niece’s cheek. Jessica rested in her mother’s arms, cocooned in a pink sheet, a tiny, red-faced chrysalis with a shock of black hair. ‘We’re meeting friends so we can’t stay,’ Robert said and Gina nodded, accepted the excuse along with the baby present in bright wrapping paper. She did not order Carla to have hope. The time for platitudes had passed. Words were no longer an adequate response for people consigned to limbo.

By the end of January, the decision was made to wind down the Garda search. Isobel’s file would remain open but the team was being disbanded and assigned to other, more pressing cases. Another unsolved mystery. There were so many of them. The great void where the ‘missing’ existed. Isobel would become past history, someone who would feature sporadically in the media when she was tagged to a similar tragedy. Not that Carla could imagine anything remotely similar but children disappeared all the time. She had read about such disappearances, tug-of-love children, kidnapped children, slave children, and, sometimes, disappearing mothers who abandoned or killed their babies. She no longer wanted to hear such stories, nor read comparisons. Any extra strain would send her over the edge. She felt herself stepping nearer to it every day; the smooth perimeter of a deep black hole.

Detective Superintendent Murphy broke the news as gently as possible. He had been in regular contact with them throughout the search, his reassurances ringing with less conviction each time. On this occasion, Carla watched his eyebrows moving as he detailed all the avenues that had been explored, the leads followed and abandoned. How strange his face would look if they were shaved off. Like a moon without a shadow.

That night Robert sat in the kitchen with a bottle of whiskey at his elbow. It was after two o’clock in the small hours when he entered the bedroom.

‘Carla…’ His voice shook as he leaned against the doorway. ‘Carla…’ His voice thickened when he repeated her name. He slumped to the floor, his back arched as he encircled his knees. ‘I know you’re blaming me. But I couldn’t prevent the decision…I couldn’t even do that much for her…’ He began to cry, an ugly sound, brutal, bare.

‘I don’t blame you.’ Carla helped him to their bed. ‘But it’s up to us now. We must do everything possible to keep her name in front of the public.’

Once he fell asleep, she entered the nursery. Isobel’s photograph was pinned above the cradle. It was so out of date. She was almost three months old now, the colour of her eyes clearly defined. Carla hoped they were brown but they could just as surely be the same intense blue as her father’s searching eyes. She was smiling and gaining weight, standing sturdily on the lap of some strange woman. Two little ramrod legs determined to stay upright.

The light struck the seahorses. She had forgotten how delicately they moved. The slightest sway of air set them in motion. She remembered the day she and Gillian had bought them. The glass artist had admired the cradle and held the seahorses over it, rainbow colours glancing off the white gauze.

‘It’s for my first grandchild,’ Gillian had confided to the artist, who smiled as she bubble-wrapped the seahorses and told them she would soon also become a grandmother. She was probably enjoying her grandchild now, whereas Gillian could only live with the longing.