Читать книгу Someone You Know - Olivia Isaac-Henry - Страница 10

Tess: June 2018

It’s nearly midnight by the time I reach Aspen Close, the street lamps’ pooled light hinting at the neat lawns and clipped hedges in the shadows. From the end of the road I can see Dad leaning against the door frame, his cigarette a tiny glow against his silhouette. Once he sees me he throws it to the ground and runs to meet me. He puts both arms around me and squeezes hard. When his grip relaxes I look at his face. It’s gaunt, the artificial light exaggerating the shadows under his eyes.

‘It’s not her, Dad,’ I say. ‘I’m sure it’s not her.’

He looks around, as if someone’s watching, picks up my case and walks back to the house without answering. Once inside, he turns and slumps onto the stairs and leans his head against the banister.

‘Dad?’

He closes his eyes.

‘The police seem pretty certain,’ he says.

‘But there’s still a chance…’

Dad sighs.

‘No, Tess. There’s no chance.’

‘They’ve made mistakes before. It could be anyone.’

His certainty frightens me.

‘I’ve just got a feeling. A bad feeling.’

He opens his eyes; they’re red with tiredness.

‘I’m sorry, Tess,’ he says.

He takes my suitcase and drags it upstairs.

It’s never been like this before. He’s always been the one to reassure me, when I’ve been frantic, terrified that all my instincts telling me Edie is still alive are wrong. The fight has gone out of him this time, maybe it’s just been going on for too long. Maybe he wants it to be her, so he has a definitive answer to what happened to his daughter. The only answer I want is that she’s been found alive. I won’t believe this girl is Edie.

I go into the lounge and slump on the sofa. The new chocolate brown leather looks out of place against the faded abstract-patterned wallpaper and scuffed laminate floor. When we first came to Aspen Drive the rooms seemed enormous and the newness was intimidating compared to our tiny terrace on the Limewoods Estate, which was, and still is, a byword for unemployment and minor criminality. Now, the house’s décor is more than a decade out of date. In a Victorian house, it would be charming shabby chic. On a nineteen-nineties executive housing estate it’s just shabby.

Edie would like this sofa, it’s minimalist with clean lines. A spasm grips my stomach. What if she’s not around to like anything any more? Whenever I shop, I consult Edie’s aesthetic. Whether she would choose the music, clothes or homewares I’ve selected. When would she play it, how would she wear it, in what way should it be arranged? I try to do that with the sofa but can’t push away images of the cold dark water and the sailing dinghies circling above her, engrossed in their sport on the reservoir’s surface, just a few feet away. But it can’t be her. She ran off with her boyfriend to London or Tuscany or Marrakech.

I take a cigarette to calm myself. Dad thuds down the stairs.

‘I’ll make you some tea,’ he says.

‘Nothing stronger?’

‘I keep some whisky in the sideboard for Ray. Don’t know how much is left. Or there’s cooking sherry in the kitchen.’

I go to the sideboard. Dad’s not much of a drinker. It interrupts his smoking. But tonight he lets me pour him a glass of Laphroaig and sits down in his armchair.

The whisky burns my throat. It’s bitter and smoky, but better than nothing.

‘What did they tell you about…’ I’m not going to say Edie. ‘The girl in the reservoir?’

Dad manages to grip the whisky glass with both hands and hold his cigarette at the same time.

‘She’s a teenager, been down there for years.’

My fingers feel hot. I look down to see the cigarette’s burnt to its butt. I stub it out and reach for another.

‘How can they be sure?’

‘Dunno. Tests.’

We fall silent. Dad switches on the TV, it’s showing a football match. He sits back and stares at the screen, chain-smoking. I’m sure he has no more idea of what’s going on in the game than I do. It’s just his fear of silence and what I might choose to fill it with.

A girl, a teenager, dumped in a reservoir thirty miles away. She’s been down there for years. How many explanations are there?

*

After the match, I pour another large glass of whisky and make an excuse of an early night.

‘Alright, love, sleep well.’

Dad sounds relieved and opens a new packet of cigarettes.

I take a look at Edie’s room before I go to bed. It was never a shrine, though when she first disappeared, I used to go and curl up on the bed, willing her to come back. I’d smell the clothes that held onto her scent and try them on; they were too large and looked dull and sexless on me.

Later, the room became a home to unwanted objects, a broken Hoover, old cardigans, a garden fork, but enough remains for it still to be Edie’s room, the same furniture in the same place, the walls the unpleasant shade of peach we thought fashionable at the time. In the corner sits the record player she was so proud of, along with a stack of LPs. I should clean them; they’re thick with dust. Edie would hate that. Her books are in a similar condition: Angela Carter, Woolf and Solzhenitsyn. She was always so much more sophisticated than me. The only book out of place is our old scrapbook. In large marker pen the title ‘The Case of The Missing Cakemaker’. My childish attempt at creating a mystery, involving a neighbour who left her husband.

I take it down. It’s covered in the same rosebud wallpaper we used for our schoolbooks. Where it came from, I don’t know, we never had that pattern on a wall. The pages fall open, lots of notes and diagrams and a sketch I’d done of the missing woman, Valentina Vickers. It’s a good likeness for a ten-year-old. Of course, Valentina was never really missing. I saw her shopping in House of Fraser a few years later. By the time I’d crossed the store to speak to her, she’d disappeared into a lift. It left me disappointed. I had wanted so much for there to be a mystery and she’d simply moved away. That’s why I’ve never believed Edie was dead. One day she’d just turn up, like Valentina.

Wouldn’t I know if she was dead, feel it, sense it? We’re twins, we shared a womb, we’re part of one another and I can almost see her in front of me, laughing, dancing, arguing. I can’t think of her as dead when every cell in me screams that she’s still alive.

A few pages have been ripped out of the scrapbook, betrayed by fraying scraps of paper along the stitched spine, probably used for a list of records Edie wanted to buy.

My room has survived better, the same single bed against the wall and only a few stray objects having made their way on top of the wardrobe.

I flop onto the bed and close my eyes. The whisky mingles with the dark and Edie’s standing before me. She smiles and turns to walk into the night, wearing a silver top and thick mascara, and I’m left on my own in the bedroom of our old house on the Limewoods Estate. I’m fully-grown but lying in my childhood bed and my feet stick off the end. I can see the red of my eyelids as the light breaks through the curtains. The smells of Mum cooking breakfast float up my nostrils. If I turn my head, Edie will be in her bed next to mine. The rain patters at the window and I’m sinking back into the soft mattress.

‘Tess,’ a voice says.

Two hands grip my wrist and tug. I nearly tip out of the bed.

‘Edie,’ I say out loud.

‘Tess,’ Dad calls.

I can smell bacon cooking downstairs.

I daren’t lie back in case I fall asleep again. Instead, I swing my feet to the floor.

‘Are you up, love?’

Maybe he heard me shout out.

‘Yes. I’ll be down in a bit.’

My hand’s shaking. I distract myself by checking my phone: three missed calls, two from Max, one from Cassie. I text back, promising to call them later.

In the kitchen, Dad’s lost in the thick smoke from the frying pan. We lived on ready meals after Mum died. Only after Edie disappeared did Dad discover the cookery channel and we started having huge stews, curries and roasts. I got fairly porky before my art foundation year, when I replaced them with boys, cigarettes and speed. I think he did it so he could pretend that we were a family, just the two of us, and to show that he loved me, which he’s never been good at saying. And here he is again, with a plateful of eggs, bacon and mushrooms, as if cholesterol can counteract heartache.

‘I thought you could do with a proper breakfast,’ he says.

I eat as much as I can but hand my plate back nearly as full as when Dad gave it to me before switching to coffee and cigarettes.

The house phone rings and Dad dives into the lounge. I can’t hear the conversation. He comes back into the kitchen and sits next to me; he won’t look me in the eye.

‘Tess, that was the police. They’re coming to pick us up.’ He takes my free hand and squeezes it. ‘We have to go to the station.’