The Missing Years Read online

  This is more affection than Jonathan usually displays on a phone. I wonder if he really is missing me more than either of us expected, or if he’s trying to make amends for Egypt. Today, I’ll take either. “Me too.” My words are almost engulfed by the yawn that overtakes me. “Crawling into bed with you has a lot of appeal right now.” I’ve wandered away from the Golf as we’re speaking. I look back at the Manse, up to the second floor, to the windows of Carrie’s master bedroom. She’s right: only a giant could place an ashtray on that windowsill. From the outside.

  “Really? What dreadful plans do you have for today that lying beside an itinerant fifty-something reporter seems preferable?”

  “Admin.” He groans sympathetically. “Oh, I wanted to tell you—I met a guy last night in the pub that might be interested in buying the place.”

  That wakes him up a bit. “That sounds promising. Can you run the legal thing and a sale process in parallel? With the sale pending the legal resolution, I mean?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll ask my lawyer.” It’s a good idea. If Mr. MacKintyre okays it, I could call some estate agents this afternoon to at least get a valuation on the Manse. “You sound a bit less fraught than yesterday. Is it going better with Rod?”

  “I’m getting a bit more used to him. Or him to me.” I can hear his breathing down the phone. He will be lying on his back in bed now, probably with his eyes closed, his head on one side and the phone resting on his cheek. “Maybe it’s good for me.” He yawns. “Change is as good as a holiday and all that.”

  “In that case I’d better start putting out feelers to work with other people when I get back—”

  “God no! You’re too good. I’d never get you back, and my ego couldn’t cope with that. It’s fragile, you know.” I can almost hear his self-deprecating smile.

  “Ah, so what’s sauce for the gander isn’t sauce for the goose, then?” I know I’m smiling myself. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed our banter.

  “Absolutely correct. I’m not too proud to admit it.”

  My roaming has taken me over by the oak. The branch that broke is lying on the ground now. It’s large, about the diameter of a soccer ball where it has splintered away from the tree. I kick at the ruptured end absentmindedly, and some of the dry, pale inner wood shears off. There’s something pale shimmering inside. “Still there?” Jonathan asks.

  “Sorry. Yes.” I’m peering more closely at the inside of the branch now. “I should let you and your fragile ego get some sleep.” It looks like cotton wool, but . . .

  “Night.”

  “Night—Jesus!” The line goes dead as I jump back from the branch. It’s full of writhing white larvae, each at least a couple of inches long, their glistening bodies wriggling blindly over one another. Their skin is translucent, like uncooked prawns; one can infer movements beneath the membrane. They are from the dark, dank, fetid underbelly of the Manse, from the rot at its core; I can feel them crawling over me, through me, even though I know I’m not touching them, and then I can feel the flies again, tangled in my hair and crawling malevolently across my skin . . . Nausea begins to threaten my throat.

  “Ailsa?” calls Carrie from beside the car, dragging my gaze round to her. “What is it? Ailsa?”

  I’ve got a grip on my breathing, and my heart rate is slowing, but the nausea remains. I head back to the Golf, fighting down the bile. My forehead is clammy. “Sorry. Coming. There was . . . some kind of bug larvae or something in that dead branch.” I feel myself shuddering involuntarily. “Really gross, I have to say.” Carrie looks at me thoughtfully but doesn’t say anything. I duck into the driver’s seat, thankful for the safety of the car around me, thankful for the process of preparing to drive, which means I don’t have to see Carrie watching me.

  “Still no flights?” asks Carrie, peering out of the window.

  “I don’t think so.” It’s a beautiful day, breath-stealingly cold but bright and clear; the kind of day where one can see so very far that the curve of the earth is evident and it seems ludicrous that anyone ever thought the world was flat.

  “It’s weird not to see trails in the sky,” Carrie muses. “Everyone was talking about it at the funeral.”

  I tense a little. Is bringing up the funeral another veiled rebuke? “I suppose I wasn’t the only one whose travel got scuppered by the volcano.”

  “There were a lot of condolence cards from abroad.” I sense rather than see her shrug as I’m concentrating on the road again. “But I don’t know if those people would have come anyway. I didn’t really know who most of them were. Dad said they were from the art world. Or from before she had me. One guy made it. From Denmark, I think. Or maybe the Netherlands—he got a ferry. Dad said he was a big collector, pretty much launched Mum’s career. He said you might remember him.” I can feel Carrie’s gaze on me. “A big guy. Like a rugby player build.”

  I rack my brains as much as I can whilst keeping the car on the road. “It doesn’t ring any bells.” Or rather, it rings too many: to an eight-year-old, every man is tall. “What was his name?”

  “I don’t remember. I’ll have to ask Dad. Anyway, he talked about her a little—Mum, I mean. The way she painted, staying up all night to finish pieces . . . It didn’t sound like her at all.”

  “Well, Pete was a civilizing influence, I guess. She was different before.”

  “Before your dad disappeared?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t remember her much from then.” Only that bright, shining garden image that surely isn’t a memory at all; it’s too distinct. Some memories of my father in the Manse have been returning, but they’re all tactile: the feel of crawling into bed to cuddle into him, the weight of the kiss he dropped on my head as I ate my cereal. My mother wasn’t the tactile type. “The guy from Denmark was right, whoever he was. I have plenty of memories of her staying up all night painting. Her coping mechanism, I guess. Or her escape . . .” That’s a Karen, and a period of time, that I do remember. Chaotic, shambolic years . . . She was angry back then, tight-lipped and hard-eyed with rage. Presumably there was grief in there, too, but I was too wrapped up in my own loss to appreciate hers.

  “You’ve never told me anything about that time.” Carrie has unbuckled her seat belt and turned toward me in her seat, her gray eyes settled upon me.

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs.” Her lips twist sourly at my knee-jerk flippancy and she turns away; I have to put out a hand to stop her. “Sorry. I didn’t . . . Sorry. Though it really wasn’t.” She turns back, waiting for more. And she has a right to more, I suppose. “Didn’t Pete ever tell you?” She shrugs. I can’t tell if that means he did or didn’t. “Well, we had no money. Like, zero; the bank account ran out pretty quick. And there was no family to help. Mum’s parents had already died, and my dad’s parents had never been fond of Mum—there was no way she was going to ask them for help. They would have told her to give up painting and get a proper job . . .” A not unreasonable viewpoint. “So. Anyway. She was trading on old favors and friendships for places to stay. I went to a new school at least twice a year. You can imagine how thrilled I was about that.” Different places to live and different Karens each time, a new spin to the story, a reinvention with every new location. I deliberately move onto safer ground. “But then she met Pete.” I expect her to smile at that, but she doesn’t. She just nods, like she’s slotting a piece of a puzzle into place. I try to conjure up the Karen that Carrie must remember, but it’s impossible. To all intents and purposes, Carrie and I had different mothers.

  A flash of moving color catches my attention. “Shit, that’s your train. Go!”

  “Yikes.” She’s already half out of the car, but she sticks her head back in to say, “Thanks for the lift.”

  The platform extends beyond the station itself in both directions. I’m able to see Carrie climb onto the train before it draws slowl
y away. I can’t see her once she’s aboard; the reflection of the bright sunlight on the windows prevents it. I wonder if she’s sitting by the window, waving good-bye to me, but by the time the thought occurs to me, it’s already too late to wave back. It feels significant, as if it’s an omen of things to come between us. Perhaps I’m destined to forever be a little too late.

  * * *

  • • •

  When I get back to the Manse after dropping Carrie off, I climb on a kitchen chair and reach up to rotate the smoke alarm cover. It slides and releases just as I remember it, but without the same angry buzzing. In fact, the interior is suspiciously clean, and there’s an empty space where the nine-volt battery should be. I have a quick hunt through the kitchen drawers for any spare nine-volt batteries, but to no avail, so I climb back onto the chair. When the cover is once again fitted into place, I can no longer avoid thinking about the implications.

  Either someone was in the house and removed the evidence of the fly incident at some point between 3:30 A.M. and 8:30 A.M., or Carrie is right and I’m delusional. I’m not sure which is worse. In any case, I start with the ground floor, moving systematically through the entire house, checking every possible access point—which as a course of action, I think with grim humor, has the benefit of fitting neatly into either hypothesis—and simultaneously sweeping for any more overlooked ashtrays. But at the end of my search, I haven’t found any ashtrays or any obvious entry points. I remind myself that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Though who would go to the trouble of breaking in purely to move things around, and why? The newspaper-deliverer? But this is an extraordinarily subtle form of intimidation. It doesn’t seem to fit with the naked vitriol of those angry red pen circles.

  But it must have been someone, because I couldn’t have dreamed the flies. I couldn’t have.

  My father is a ski instructor in a resort in Canada. In the summer he’s a rafting guide. He has a girlfriend called Crystal who teaches yoga and believes deeply that the only way to save the planet is through vegetarianism, which is a philosophy that, except for the odd bacon sandwich, he largely buys into. He never talks about his life before, and he barely even thinks about it. It’s like he was a different person; it’s like he was born anew on the night he decided to leave. Sometimes he’s confronted by artwork produced by his ex-wife—that’s how he thinks of her, as his ex-wife—and he congratulates himself on being able to be pleased for her success, in an objective, unemotional sort of way. He doesn’t think of his daughter at all, not since he concluded that she was never actually his.

  ELEVEN

  Mr. MacKintyre—my lawyer—calls me later that morning. It’s a wonder that he not only gets through, but that he can also hear me. On almost all of my calls, I can hear the person at the other end perfectly, but intermittently they have trouble hearing me. It hasn’t been helping my progress on the mountain of administration that seems to be involved with inheriting a house. But in truth, that’s not the only thing that’s been hampering my efficiency. I feel like my brain has been split in two, with half of it trying to concentrate on the job at hand and half unable to drop the mystery of the missing fly evidence.

  But Mr. MacKintyre disturbs this lack of industry and gets right to the point. “I’ve located the police report,” he says. “It turns out I know the lead investigator; I play golf with him occasionally, as it happens. It was Glen McCue.” I can hear the expectation in his voice.

  “McCue.” I can hear the locksmith’s gruff voice: You want to get to know your neighbors. Glen McCue is a good man. McCue is surely a common enough surname round here. The combination of Glen and McCue, though, that can’t be common . . .

  “So you do know him? I thought you might; he lives in your area.” My area. As if any of this landscape could ever belong to anyone. “He’s retired now, of course.”

  Our parents were pals, you ken. Surely the investigating officer wouldn’t be a friend of the target of the investigation? “Does he have kids in their twenties?” I ask neutrally, with a sense that the world is narrowing, ruthlessly and irrevocably, to a focal point that I’d rather wasn’t me.

  “Yes. James, I think, and, what is it . . . Rhona—maybe Shona, or . . .” I can almost hear the furrowing of his brow.

  “Fiona,” I offer reluctantly. There’s a sudden thump from upstairs, and I glance upward as if I can see through the ceiling.

  “Aye! That’s the one. So you do know Glen. Haven’t you ever discussed—”

  “No, I don’t know him.” The thump comes again. A door, perhaps. The Manse possesses eddies and air currents that challenge the laws of physics. “I’ve only recently met Fiona and Jamie. Socially.” I start to climb the stairs, phone to ear.

  “Always a small world.”

  “Yes.” Before I can stop myself, I add, “Though I wouldn’t want to paint it.” It’s a knee-jerk reaction, one of Pete’s much-used jokes. Mr. MacKintyre gives a gruff surprised bark that I can only assume is his version of laughter. I hurry on. “I’m sure I could ask Jamie if I could speak with him as a courtesy, to let him know you’ll be in contact.” Now I’m the one that’s surprised: where did that offer come from?

  “If you like,” says the lawyer. “I imagine he’d like to meet you in any case.” Would he? I don’t have enough detail to flesh out a story. Or rather, I could create far too many from what I’ve got; there’s nothing to sway me in one particular direction over another. Glen McCue and my father knew each other, but were they acquaintances, or true friends? Was he, perhaps, closer to my mother? Or was it Glen’s wife that was the connection, and if so, to whom? These thoughts, and others, are bubbling up inside me, jostling to be heard. Were they always there, sealed tight in a lightless swampy corner deep among my entrails? “Well,” says Mr. MacKintyre, when I don’t speak. “I’ll get in touch with him directly in any case.”

  “Thank you.” I disconnect with an overwhelming sense that it’s too late, the die has been cast. But it’s just a few questions, that’s all. It’s hardly monumentous.

  I shake myself of the fancy and instead look around the second-floor landing. All doors are closed except the one to the family bathroom. As I watch, it moves gently in an undetectable breeze. I cross to it and close it with a firm hand, then push hard against it to test it. It holds fast. But by the time I get to the ground floor, it’s thudding again.

  * * *

  • • •

  Later, Carrie calls from the train. I offer to come and get her from the station, and she protests, though her lack of conviction shouts above her actual words. We drive from the station in a near perfect rerun of the previous day, except it’s not dark as yet. The road is becoming more familiar to me, though I’m nowhere near ready to try it at the breakneck speed of that beaten-up Land Rover.

  Carrie tentatively offers to make dinner, which I interpret as a peace offering to salve the flares of tension between us. I offer to help, of course, but she won’t have any of it, so I sit at the kitchen table while she preps, and before long it’s like our tense exchanges never happened. She has the radio on—of course—and the kitchen is warm from the oven and filled with the smell of the garlic bread that’s baking in there. We talk about her play, all the gossip among the cast. She’s funny, Carrie, in a very different way to, say, Ali. There’s barely any teeth in her humor, even when she’s sending up the pretensions of her theater luvvie colleagues, but it speaks volumes of her talent for quiet observation. The Manse feels different with her in it, too, I realize. There’s less thudding, for one thing. It feels more . . . what? More like a building—a house—should feel.

  “Oh, forgot to tell you, my lawyer called.” She has her head down, chopping chilies on a wooden board. “It turns out the investigating officer for my father’s disappearance was none other than Glen McCue.”

  She pushes her fringe off her forehead with the back of the bent wrist that holds the knife and shakes her head b
lankly. “I don’t—”

  “Jamie and Fiona’s father.”

  That at least stops her in her tracks. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  “He’s a policeman?”

  “Was. He’s retired now.”

  “Wow. Talk about close to home. Will he have to be involved with all of this?”

  “A bit. I shouldn’t think it will be too onerous though: most likely just a phone interview.” She’s stirring the chopped chilies into the sauce, her back to me. “I was thinking someone ought to warn him it’s coming, though,” I say casually. “I don’t suppose you got a phone number from Jamie last night? He could pass on the message.”

  “No, but I got Fiona’s. My phone is—oh, right there.” She points with her knife at the kitchen table, barely looking round. “But I’m seeing Fiona tomorrow. I could tell her then if you like.” She’s one hundred percent focused on the sauce as she says this. I have the feeling it’s deliberate. I consider, then discard any number of possible responses whilst my mind revolts from the same image as last night: Carrie and Fiona, their heads together, giggling at the kitchen table. Even to myself, it’s hard to explain the wrongness I feel about that, the dank cold dread that pools in my stomach.

  “Well, thanks. Yeah, that would be great,” I say eventually, because there is nothing else that I can say. I’m too aware of the fragility of the truce that we’re enjoying. Somehow I know it will be shattered if I start casting aspersions about Fiona. “No rehearsal tomorrow then?”

  “We’re getting Sundays off. At least for now.”

  Tomorrow is Sunday. I’d rather lost track. “So are you . . . are you going for coffee or something?”

  “She invited me to see the equestrian center.” She’s draining pasta now, in movements that are smooth and economical. A small hum escapes her to thread itself around the tinny melody emanating from the radio. It occurs to me that Carrie is enjoying herself. She actually likes to cook. The concept is extraordinarily alien to me.