The Missing Years Read online

  “Oh, you’ll sort that out,” she says. Then she goes on, in an uncanny echo of my own thoughts, “I was thinking, when were we last living under the same roof? It must have been just before you went to university, right?” A very different Carrie then: one without permanent smudged eyeliner and purple dye at the tips of her shoulder-length dark hair, one without a gaze that inexorably presses, silently demanding answers. The Carrie I last lived with was in love with ponies and Michael Jackson music and any makeup she could sneak from our mother; she was seven, the same age I was when my mother and I left Scotland, the age I was when my father left me.

  “Right.” Half a sister and half a house. And I don’t quite know what to do with either.

  “Is it strange, being here?”

  “Not really. I don’t remember much.” She’s watching my face as I answer; I fight the urge to turn away. If I was at work, I’d have my professional persona firmly in place: tough, capable Ailsa, ready for anything, nary a chink in the armor to be found. I can’t be that person with Carrie—it wouldn’t be fair—but I don’t know what to be instead. “I suppose it’s strange how normal everything is inside. Very IKEA. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I guess it wasn’t flat-packed furniture and magnolia-colored walls.”

  She’s nodding. “It should be all oak panels and stags’ heads, like a hunting lodge. But I suppose Mum just wanted to make it rentable for as little outlay as possible.” I tense at the mention of our mother: we haven’t really spoken about her death yet, except in practical terms. And that one, brutal, phone call about the funeral, when Carrie made it quite clear she was at the adult table now:

  It’s on Friday.

  Friday? But there aren’t any flights, I don’t know if I can make it back—

  It’s all fixed. Dad wants it then.

  Pete does? But—why?

  He wasn’t sure you’d come. This way, if you don’t, he doesn’t have to explain.

  But the Carrie that’s here with me now is forging on. She has an energy I haven’t seen all day. In the car from London she mostly slept. “What does Manse mean, anyway? Is it just a Scottish version of Manor?”

  “Yes—no, wait.” That’s not quite right; something is nagging at my brain. “No, it’s a house for the minister. I think.”

  “Bloody inconvenient for the minister, seeing as the church is in the village.” I glance at my watch: just after six. Perhaps she’s an evening person. I suppose that would make sense given all her evening performances. “I meant to ask—is there a bedroom you’d prefer me to take?” she says.

  “Whichever. I don’t mind.” When I take a sip from my mug, the tea is only lukewarm and far too strong for my liking. The time nags at me: just after six, the news will be on. I could turn on the somewhat outdated television I spied in the lounge and see Jonathan reporting from Louisiana on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster. But I know if I do that then Carrie will see me watching Jonathan.

  Another half thing. Half a house, half a sister, half a boyfriend. A sly whisper tells me that boyfriends are just like houses: if you don’t have the whole of one, you might as well not have one at all.

  But no, I’m overdramatizing—half isn’t accurate. Surely at least four fifths. And the rest isn’t available anyway: no one could ever have the whole of Jonathan, because he has forever mortgaged part of himself to broadcast journalism.

  I could tell Carrie I’m keen to find out what’s happening with the volcano, which at least has the benefit of truth. Somewhere in Iceland a malevolent volcano is belching a vitriolic stream of fire, ash and lava into the jet stream, shaking the ground with malicious laughter at the havoc it is causing. Or maybe the volcano is the victim, cruelly assaulted from below by the magma . . . In any case, the resultant ash cloud has grounded all flights in and out of Northern Europe. It’s been the headline news item for the last seven days and my own private obsession, given that it genuinely is the reason I missed being both at my mother’s deathbed and funeral, regardless of whether Carrie and Pete choose to believe me. But if the television is still on when the topic switches to the other major headline—the oil rig explosion—Carrie’s eyes will fill up with all the things that she hasn’t yet found a way to say, and I won’t be able to bear their weight.

  “I’ll leave the biggest for you then,” she says.

  It occurs to me that she’s trying very hard. I am too, of course, but I hadn’t quite expected her to make such an effort, and I’m not sure if her reasons are the same. I have no idea what the landscape between us looks like from her point of view. “I don’t mind.”

  “Okay then. Well, I’ll go and have a look round then and get settled in. Shout if there’s anything you want me to help with.”

  “Okay.” She heads for the door, mug still in hand. “Wait,” I say reluctantly to her back. She turns inquiringly. “I don’t want the master. You take it. If you want to.”

  She pauses for a moment as if about to ask something, but in the end all she says is, “Sure. I’ll take a look.” She doesn’t know what to do with me, either.

  * * *

  • • •

  The keys.

  There are four on the key ring, plus a pink plastic fob labeled The Manse in a curling, jaunty script that in no way matches the building itself. I stand in front of the locked door on the top floor, eyeing the lock and the keys and trying to work out the match. It can’t be the Yale key; this is not a Yale lock. Of the other three, one I know is for the front door, so that seems an unlikely candidate. That leaves a large black iron one that looks more like it would fit a garden gate, and a key very similar to the front door—one for a traditional lever lock. I try the latter first. No luck. The black iron one won’t even fit the aperture. I try the front door key, and for a moment I feel a slight give—Yes!—but then it sticks. It’s not the right key, either. I try the two lever lock keys again, just to make sure, but the door stays resolutely, rebelliously, locked.

  The door itself seems to be constructed the same as every other door in the house: of fairly old, but solid, whitewashed wood. I could take an ax to it, if I had an ax (is there one in the boot room or the cellar?), and if I was on my own, perhaps I would, but I can just imagine Carrie’s surprise if I started smashing the place up. Though perhaps I shouldn’t have expected the managing agent to have a key: if the room is purely for storage of the owner’s things, you wouldn’t want the agent to accidentally give that key to a rental family. Probably I should be asking Pete if he knows where the key is. Irrationally it rankles that I’ve been beaten. The defeat is only temporary, but I know that somewhere in a deep, dark corner of my mind, that dull spherical doorknob is lingering malevolently and looking for the opportunity to spread its malice.

  But there are other things to do, chief among them to decide where to sleep. I take a bedroom on the second floor that looks out to the back, principally because it’s right next to the bathroom and has a large wardrobe, though the latter is unnecessary as I have brought so little clothing that I could have flown up with hand luggage only (if there were any planes flying, that is). My paltry wardrobe looks even more meager and pathetic hanging on the ill-assorted high street hangers that were in the wardrobe (Topshop, Miss Selfridge, Oasis: it’s been years since I bought anything from those). Carrie has dumped her suitcase in the master bedroom, which has an en suite, so I feel able to leave my toiletries in the family bathroom. There’s a full-length wall mirror in there that catches me unawares, causing me to falter mid-step; for a moment it throws out a stranger’s image, but a blink later it’s recognizably me peering back. I stare and stare at the mirror, trying to see what I had a fleeting glimpse of—not even a glimpse, the merest hint: me as other people see me. But what gazes back is entirely familiar: average height, average build, average brown hair (though I like to think it has a touch of auburn to it). Pale skin, paler even than the average Scot, but you might not
notice that right now given the smattering of freckles across my nose from the Egyptian sun. Even my clothes are average: jeans and a lightweight linen T-shirt. Really, the only thing that’s worth remarking upon is my eyes: almond shaped and green, with a distinct black border to the iris. Cat’s eyes, Jonathan called them. My father’s eyes, my mother once said. For God’s sake, you’re just like your father. You even look like him. Those bloody eyes!

  Suddenly I hear Jonathan’s voice floating up the stairs; it throws me for a moment before I realize Carrie must have turned on the news. My legs are taking me down the stairs before I’ve finished deliberating. Carrie is standing in front of the telly, the remote still in hand; she turns at my entry. “Jonathan,” she says unnecessarily.

  It’s a live piece. I try to consider him dispassionately, as any other viewer would see him; but really, does anyone view him dispassionately, when we’ve all grown up with his serious expression and dry BBC English reporting from every notable event around the globe? A tall, slim man in his fifties with a decent head of gray hair and piercing pale blue eyes. A man with authority, a man of gravitas, but not without charm—charm of the old-school variety: terribly Britishly polite. He’s not, though; not in private, with good friends, after a drink or four: then he’s scandalously, wickedly indiscreet. It’s a required characteristic of the perpetual bachelor, presumably, if dinner party invitations are going to be forthcoming after everybody else has coupled up: Oh, we must invite Jonathan, he’s always a scream.

  There are other versions of him, ones that nobody sees but me. Or whoever was there before me, or whoever might come after. Perpetual bachelor: he shouldn’t be considered as such, given we’ve been together for nigh on a decade. But I know that’s how everyone thinks of him. I am presumed to be a barnacle on the hull that will at some point be scraped off, while the ship itself blithely forges on.

  On-screen the oil rig burns, the fiery plume impossibly tall, the black greasy billows above it so thick they appear solid. The Icelandic volcano is not the only part of the earth making its protest through the medium of a deadly cloud.

  Now Jonathan is in the picture again. He’s fielding questions from the news anchor in London, his hand straying up to his earpiece; there must be a lot of background noise. He’s doing a good job—well of course he is, he’s Jonathan Powell—and the professional part of my brain relishes the story. It’s a newshound’s dream: a complex human and environmental disaster with wide-ranging economic, political and environmental implications. I can just imagine the atmosphere in the newsroom, an atmosphere I’ve lived through so many times: so charged your skin prickles with it, like wearing a blanket of static electricity. At the beginning it felt like that for me all the time, but the human body can’t handle that level of adrenaline for a prolonged period. At some point you have to become inured. But for a story like this, nobody would be immune.

  “What time is it there?” asks Carrie.

  “They’re six hours behind,” I say distractedly. Jonathan has his gravest face on, laying out the facts in a final roundup. Eleven people are missing; the rig is in danger of sinking. This is the hard news dilemma: usually every great story is a terrible one, too. Eleven people: I wonder who is waiting anxiously for them. Parents, siblings, young wives? I imagine pinched faces, gray-white with worry; a snot-nosed child, crying . . .

  “When did he get there?” asks Carrie, her eyes on the television as Jonathan explains the next steps for the rescue operation.

  “Last night, I think. He took the last flight from DC.”

  “So did he work all night?”

  “Probably. I should think so.”

  “He doesn’t look tired.”

  “He’s used to it. He’ll catnap.” Everyone is tired in hard news, all the time.

  “You guys must be so good at that,” Carrie comments. “Catnapping, I mean.”

  “I suppose.” Jonathan is offscreen now. I collect myself and turn my attention to Carrie. Conscious I’ve been giving her abrupt replies, I add, “I can do it just about anywhere. But I’m especially good in bed.” The ribald joke slips out before I can stop it, a knee-jerk newsroom habit, where the mantra has always been that if there’s an entendre that can be made double, by all means go ahead.

  Carrie’s eyes jump to mine in surprise, and she laughs. It’s an appealing sound. I remember her giggle from when she was a child. Pete used to tickle her all the time: not the ribs as you’d expect—Carrie’s weak points were her knees and her calves. She’d scissor kick and roll around, and the laughter would huff out of her in wheezes and bursts. It’s gratifying to hear her laugh again. Perhaps she doesn’t want to ruin the moment, or perhaps I was wrong earlier; either way, her gray eyes hold nothing but the return of my own smile.

  * * *

  • • •

  Later I lie in the strange bed, curiously unsleepy for someone who claimed to be able to sleep anywhere. I texted Jonathan before I went to bed (nothing momentous: Arrived at the Manse. It’s rather yellow. Knackered and going to bed, speak tomorrow. Stay safe xx), but he hasn’t replied. There’s nothing to be read into that, he’ll be madly busy with the story. Not that it’s a real story to me yet; it hasn’t taken shape in my mind. Jonathan cautions all newsroom newbies to let the facts speak for themselves, but they don’t, they never do. Facts need to be shepherded and woven into a tapestry of human reactions and interactions, and then they don’t speak—they sing.

  I check the time on my phone: 1:35 A.M. Abruptly I fling back the covers. There’s no use denying it: I can’t sleep. It’s too strange, being here, waiting for memories to strike at any moment. All day long I’ve been simultaneously avoiding thinking about the past and straining to find something familiar; no wonder I’m too overtired to drift off. Even while trying to sleep, part of my mind has been mulling over whether this could have been my bedroom before. I grab my dressing gown and pull it on as I leave the room. Carrie has left the door to the master bedroom open, but I know she’s in bed—I can just make out her rhythmic breathing. I stand in the hallway and listen to those peaceful breaths with a feeling of relief: that she’s comfortable enough to sleep, that with her asleep, I don’t feel her hovering around the edge of my consciousness. My eyes are adjusting to the dark and I realize she’s left the curtains open as well as the door. There’s enough moonlight that I have no need of the hallway light, even if I could remember where the switch is. The stairs are lit by the same moonlight, streaming in through the fanlight above the front door. In this silvery half-light, the house is different again, neither bright and breezy nor uneasily dark, but something . . . other. Something patient, comfortable in its own skin, authentic. I can sense that the well-worn wood of the stairs beneath my bare feet could tell many a tale, some of them presumably relevant to me. When I get to the ground floor, I don’t grope for the light switch—I like this version; I don’t want to chase it away with the glare of artificial light. Instead I wander slowly through the ground floor, trailing my fingers along the walls where the moonlight is painting them gray.

  The linoleum floor of the kitchen is cold beneath my feet; I should have brought my slippers. I try two cupboards before I find the glasses. As I fill one from the kitchen tap, I look out the window, to the back garden. There’s a wood that finishes at the low, crumbling drystone wall at the end of the lawn, some twenty meters away. I know from the boundary map the lawyer showed me that the wood is mine, and so, too, is the fishing lake that lies beyond it, but right now there’s very little to be seen except extreme blackness where the moonlight can’t penetrate—a true darkness that nothing can break through. I wonder what it would be like to walk through that wood right now. Oddly I don’t think it would be terrifying. I expect it can see me now, the wood. I can almost feel its eyes upon me, like a prickle on my skin—not unpleasant, just a constant pressure. Not even a pressure, an awareness. I expect the wood saw my father, too, many years ago, perhaps fill
ing up a glass from the kitchen tap just as I have done, or raiding the fridge for a late-night snack. I wonder if the wood knows what happened to him.

  But now the cold of the floor is chilling more than just my feet, and my warm bed has a certain appeal. The kitchen table is strewn with miscellaneous items from the shopping that haven’t yet found a home. I grab a roll of toilet paper, as there was no spare in my bathroom, and take that and the glass with me, focusing on not spilling the water as I slowly climb the stairs, still relying only upon the moonlight, and relieved to feel the warmth of the wood under my feet once more. When I get to the top of the stairs, I turn for my bedroom, but instantly I know there is something wrong. I couldn’t say what, but I can feel it before I can see it . . .

  There’s a man in the hallway.

  My father is living in Colombia. Or Venezuela. (Really, anywhere exotic without an extradition treaty where a dollar goes a long way.) He’s lithely strong and has grown a beard which is more gray than dark now. He likes to lean on the balustrade of his veranda which overlooks the city as darkness falls. Sometimes there’s a woman with him, but never the same one for long. He leans on the balustrade, a cerveza in one hand, and looks at the stars, and sometimes he wonders if his daughter is looking at the same sky.

  TWO

  For a brief moment of lunacy, a hope flares in me (Can he really be here? Has he been here all along, all these years?), but common sense douses that flame almost instantly. The adrenaline is already coursing through every inch of me; my skin is crackling with it. Fight or flight? I wouldn’t hesitate to flee except this man is only paces from Carrie’s doorway. I can’t see clearly in the dim light—now I’m cursing the ridiculous flights of fancy that led me to leave the light off—but I have the impression of a young man, perhaps six feet; certainly several inches taller than myself. He’s facing the door of the master bedroom—Carrie’s bedroom—and even as my brain gallops through possible weapons (Knife from the kitchen? An umbrella from the hallway? Or even just throwing the glass I’m holding at him?), I’ve run out of time: he’s turning his head toward me.