The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde Read online

  13

  A black hole in the ice. On the edge of the pool, huddled, sodden, very still, Romy and Bella. Jessie hears herself scream and scream. A sequence of events, incomprehensible, unendurable: Joe thundering across the stone, Will grabbing Romy. Blue lights flashing over the yew hedge, an awful noise, wind, a helicopter landing on the lawn. Paramedics. Jessie’s tongue so thick she cannot talk at all, a silver foil blanket put over her shoulders, hands pulling her up, this way, that’s it, the kindness of strangers, the whirr of the blades, a nauseous rise and lift, engine juddering, Romy’s little face covered by the oxygen mask, her tiny cold hand in Jessie’s. Bella, foil-wrapped too, like a Sunday roast, saying, over and over, ‘It was my fault, my fault.’ She looks out of the window, sees Will running towards his car in the drive, the earth shrinking beneath them.

  In Accident and Emergency, they take both girls away. Jessie tries not to unravel in the waiting room. Her mind flings itself into pitch-black corners. Seconds drag like days. Her parrot-print dress, so shockingly out of place, tightens like a corset. Where is Will? When will he arrive? She can’t do this on her own. She is not the person she thought she’d be in a crisis. She is scared. At last, a harried-looking doctor is leading her somewhere. Something is happening. The doctor is telling her things, important medical things, that Bella is fine, just shaken. But then the doctor’s voice changes and she says that they are concerned about Romy. Since they don’t know if she swallowed any water, they have to consider the risk of secondary drowning, water on the lungs, something that might not declare itself until hours after the incident, although most likely much sooner. Jessie’s stomach lurches. Her entire life constricts to this moment, the bright lights, the sharp inhalation of chemical-scented hospital air. At the observation ward’s nurses’ station, there is Bella, asking to see her little sister. From the end of another corridor, still a world away, the sound of Will’s voice.

  Bella stares down at Romy sleeping, a pitifully small mound under white hospital sheets, one foot poking out, tubes and suckers attached to her body. The monitor beeps. ‘You were right not to trust me.’

  Jessie doesn’t know how to answer. She was. She wasn’t. She can’t make any sense of it. A tear slides down her cheek. Wiping it away, she smells the woodsmoke of the pub’s fire on her fingers, a lifetime ago already. What she would give for a chance to live this day again, or just the afternoon, to unpick the small decisions, the ordering of the chocolate tart, the musing over what dress to wear, all things that might have inched the timeline minutely, catastrophically forward and left the girls alone too long.

  ‘Bella,’ Will says softly. Jessie hears his voice as if under water. She looks up at him, the moist red rim of his eyes. He looks like he’s aged ten years. ‘Can you try and tell us what happened again?’ he asks Bella gently. ‘You weren’t making much sense earlier. Why did you say it was your fault?’

  Jessie’s throat tightens.

  ‘I took her outside to play in the snow,’ Bella says quietly, gripping the bed’s metal rail.

  Will nods, clearly trying to be encouraging. But she sees his hand tremble as he rakes it through his hair. The air feels full of tiny electric shocks, like the stings of jellyfish.

  ‘I put on Romy’s gloves, her coat, everything. I made sure she was warm, I really did. We made a snowman. It was fun but then … then …’ She glances at Jessie, away again, as if she can’t bear to see the expression on Jessie’s face.

  There’s an irregularity in the monitor’s beeps. Jessie cannot breathe. The wait for the next beep, a fraction of time, is far too long. Will puts a hand on Jessie’s back, trying to comfort her. But she cannot be comforted. She can barely be reached, nor he. Somehow they are both locked within the same nightmare, yet must suffer it on their own. Beep. Jessie exhales. Will nods to Bella to continue.

  ‘My programme was on, the baking one. I guess I didn’t – I didn’t think to lock the scullery door, Dad. I didn’t think at all.’ Bella covers her face with her hands. ‘So it was my fault.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it your fault,’ says Will.

  ‘I went to the bathroom, leaving her there on the sofa, Dad.’ Bella’s voice breaks. ‘And … when I came back, she wasn’t there. Romy had gone.’

  Jessie screws up her eyes, like someone preparing for a punch. She can see it exactly, like a movie in her head.

  Bella bites down on her lip. ‘I couldn’t find her.’

  ‘So you ran outside,’ prompts Will, his voice less steady now. ‘You followed her footprints?’

  ‘She didn’t make a sound, Dad. She didn’t make a splash.’

  Jessie pictures Romy’s perfect pink lungs, an inhaling choke of dirty icy water.

  ‘I … I just jumped in,’ Bella says.

  Will draws Bella against him. She looks tiny in his arms, a slip of a thing, too young to have managed any of this. Jessie stands beside them, not knowing what to say, at the edge of their embrace.

  The nurse returns, checks Romy’s pulse, records it, then smiles kindly at Jessie. ‘You must be dead proud of your daughter for saving her wee sister like that.’

  Jessie waits for Bella to sharply correct the nurse, as Bella always does if anyone insults her by imagining Jessie is her real mother, but Bella just stares down at her feet, like someone who knows if they dare say anything they will cry.

  ‘Yes, I – I am,’ Jessie manages.

  Bella scuffs her foot along the floor. Then she stands very still, very stern, pressed against the edge of Romy’s bed, eyes blankly pinned to Romy. And Jessie is thrown back to Romy’s bedroom in the midnight dark, Bella sleepwalking, that tall dark column looming over the cotbed. She’d always found it so menacing – only now does it occur to her that it was protective, that Bella might have been watching over her little sister.

  The nurse reassures Will that he can pop out for coffee and sandwiches, an excellent idea, since they’ll be here some hours yet. Reluctantly, Will leaves for the hospital café. The nurse is called away, leaving Jessie and Bella sealed behind the pale-green cubicle curtain watching Romy in anxious silence.

  Bella’s mouth starts to contort and twitch. She lets out a stifled sob. Jessie is unable to stand it any longer, and gathers Bella tight in her arms. Bella doesn’t push her away. Something in her seems to go quite limp, and she buries her face against Jessie’s shoulder.

  Jessie doesn’t want to let go. It’s the closest she’s ever physically been to her stepdaughter. She finds Bella’s scent – a sort of hormonal sweetness mixed with shampoo – and the feel of her flexible, lean body, the softness of her long hair, almost unbearably moving, and deeply comforting. It stirs up a confusing rush of maternal feelings.

  With no warning, Bella pulls away hard, as if catching herself falling for a trick. ‘You were thinking of what happened in London, weren’t you? When you saw me and Romy by the pool?’

  ‘Just for a moment.’ Nothing can be hidden now, everything levelled by the terrible events of the day, the precariousness of Romy’s situation.

  Bella sinks to the edge of the bed, something draining out of her. They listen to the beeping, Romy’s soft, shallow breathing, the wails of the children’s ward. Then Bella says, ‘Just before it happened, that thing with Zizzi, we were in the changing rooms …’

  It takes Jessie a moment to realize that Bella is talking about the incident at the pool in London, and she feels a sudden wave of trepidation about what she is about to be told.

  ‘… and the other girls were chatting about the mothers’ and daughters’ school disco that night, this fundraising evening that Zizzi was organizing. And Zizzi said to me – she said it in front of everyone, Jessie – that … that I’d have to borrow someone else’s mother if I wanted to get in.’ Her cheeks blaze. ‘I know it sounds like a small thing to get upset about.’

  ‘Oh, Bella. It doesn’t. It really doesn’t. I’m so sorry. Why haven’t you ever told your dad this?’

  Bella is silent a moment, cooli
ng her cheeks with her palms. ‘I’m not sure. I just couldn’t for some reason. Maybe I didn’t want to make him sad about Mum again. Or think I wasn’t coping. I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve told me.’ She feels honoured.

  ‘I wanted to scare Zizzi.’ To Jessie’s surprise, Bella opens up further. ‘I wanted to punish her. I was mad. So I held her down.’

  ‘You did?’ Jessie’s heart sinks.

  ‘Yeah, I held her down really hard. And it felt good. It felt like I could punish Zizzi for everything that had happened to me.’

  ‘Oh,’ Jessie says weakly, refusing to judge her for it.

  ‘But only for a second or two, then I came to my senses and I stopped. I swear. I let go. I waited for Zizzi to pop up and call me a bitch. But she stayed under, flapping her arms about, gasping, dramming it up for the lifeguard.’ Her eyes fill with tears. ‘I didn’t try to drown her, Jessie. I’d have liked to, for a moment. But I didn’t. I dunked her, that’s all.’

  Jessie doesn’t know what to say, her emotions scattered in all directions.

  Her silence makes Bella’s eyes narrow, untrusting again. ‘Do you still not believe me?’

  Jessie knows she cannot lie, or sidestep this question, that to Bella it’s fundamental. After all, if Romy offered such an account, even if it was at odds with the lifeguard’s and the victim’s, wouldn’t Jessie believe her? And hasn’t she always said that she will treat the girls the same, or is the shameful, unsayable truth that she doesn’t, that Romy is hers and Bella is Mandy’s, that blood is blood? Is that it?

  ‘I believe you, Bella,’ Jessie says simply, but with all her heart.

  It is very late when Romy is given an all-clear by the doctor. Jessie and Will thank her profusely, tearfully. They ache for home. Outside, it is very cold, the sky a powdery starless grey. Bella tucks a blanket over Romy in her car seat. Romy smiles sleepily at this unexpected fussing by her big sister, then nods back to sleep.

  Too shattered to talk, they drive silently out of the gritted town streets into the skiddy, treacherous country lanes. Hedgerows crouch against the car’s windows. Through the black slats of farm gates, Jessie glimpses snowy fields, desolate and strange. Falling flakes catch in the cones of the car’s lights, almost phosphorescent in the icy night air, like something from the ocean’s sunless depths. Jessie does feel submerged, still sealed off in the trauma of the last few hours, no longer having anything in common with the busy, casual lives that exist on the surface. She twists in her seat, holds the warm loaf of Romy’s socked foot. Even though Romy is safe the anxiety is still within her. Perhaps it always will be, that heightened sense of danger: life can change in an instant, as it must have done for poor Mrs Wilde in the 1950s, the fear as primal, the stakes the same. This comes as a shock, a deadly blow to Jessie’s belief that bad things happen to other people. Will and Bella already know this, of course. She feels humbled by that now, foolish too. And still, really, she has no idea of what they must have gone through. Because Romy survived, and Mandy didn’t. Romy was lucky, Mandy wasn’t.

  So many things could have altered the fateful timing of the lorry’s approach on the roundabout, Mandy’s spinning wheels – a delivery needing a signature on the doorstep, a punctured bicycle tyre that Mandy would have cursed, unaware it had saved her life. Jessie wonders how Bella, so young, bears those what-ifs, and finds herself filled with a newfound respect for the exhausted pale girl resting her head on the window, eyes half closed, as if still not feeling safe enough to sleep.

  After taking the girls up to bed, Jessie and Will huddle in front of the fire, Jessie still in her dress, Will his shirt, like the two surviving guests from a party that has gone horribly wrong. Jessie recounts her conversation with Bella about Zizzi, and he nods numbly, his reactions delayed. Jessie knows he is elsewhere, that something about the hospital, the trauma of the last few hours, has taken him back to the accident.

  ‘You’re not okay, are you?’ she asks gently.

  He says nothing at first then speaks flatly, sincerely: ‘If something happened to one of the girls that would be it for me.’

  Jessie watches the smoke rise from the logs in fabric twists, and thinks of Mandy’s scarf, the one she found behind the radiator in London, and, not knowing what to do with it, stuffed back behind the radiator’s dusty grille. It occurs to her that, in different ways, she’s kept doing that ever since. And it hasn’t worked. The past rises out of corners, gaps, keeps moving to the centre of the room. She wonders what would happen if, rather than pushing it back, she pulled it towards her. ‘Did it feel like that when Mandy died?’ she says uncertainly, not quite sure of the ground beneath her feet.

  Will looks surprised. The question stretches over the silence as he considers it. ‘Well, I had Bella. I always had Bella. And my heart had … reserves. Mandy filled it up when we were together. And she didn’t take it back when she died,’ he replies thoughtfully. ‘If that makes any sense?’

  Jessie nods, moved by his honesty. She can’t remember when they last spoke like this, without agenda or rush. And something of the intimacy reminds her of their early days, lying in the grass of St James’s Park, revealing bits of themselves, feeling their way around each other’s hearts as the city surged behind the plane trees.

  ‘Mandy left me the capacity to love.’ Will pauses, catching up with his own thoughts. He flashes a smile at her. The distance between them starts to shrink. ‘But I only realized that when I met you.’

  Jessie blinks back tears. For the first time, Will is holding his marriage to Mandy on the open palm of his hand, saying simply, This is it, Jessie. This is the beautiful thing I had. This is what I lost.

  And his words ring true. She thinks back to the handsome man she first noticed during lunchtimes in the park, how he was angry, hurt, grieving, but not broken, not a man who needed total rebuilding – she wouldn’t have been attracted to that. He was still Will. He was always Will. The idea that she has Mandy to thank for this is both unsettling and humbling.

  ‘Mandy would have hated me to be alone. She’d have thought it a waste of life.’ He shoots her a small smile. ‘She had a great joie de vivre. Like you.’

  ‘Like me?’ Jessie flinches, feeling too many things at once then – flattered, stripped of her own uniqueness, sad that she never met Mandy, that she can’t befriend her, yes, all of those things.

  ‘She’d be immensely grateful for all you’ve done for Bella.’ Will’s voice falls to a husky whisper.

  ‘Don’t say that. I haven’t been a good stepmother, you don’t have to pretend.’ Tears strangle her voice. ‘I haven’t done anything for Bella, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You don’t need to do anything, Jessie. Don’t you see? She just needs to know you’re there for her, whatever crap she throws at you.’ He pokes the fire with the iron. The logs move, settle into new places. Jessie feels something moving inside her too. ‘And she’s thrown lots and lots of crap at you, I do know that, Jessie. And you’re still there.’

  ‘Hanging on by my bloody fingernails.’

  They catch each other’s eyes and laugh, the past sitting next to them easily, relaxing, warming by the fire. A branch scratches at the iced window, the truth at the edges of their conversation. It is time. ‘Will, I need to tell you something.’ She takes a breath. ‘Bella has your old love letters, the ones you sent to Mandy over the years, when you were abroad, that were stored in the loft in London.’

  ‘My letters?’ He looks puzzled, then seems to remember, rubs the back of his neck. ‘Shit. I haven’t even thought about where those might be.’

  ‘In Bella’s sock drawer.’

  He raises an eyebrow. ‘Right.’

  ‘I found them when I was putting away washing. I think Bella left them there purposefully for me to find. But that’s no excuse.’ The flames flare blue and orange. ‘Will, I did an awful thing. I read them.’

  ‘You read them?’ he says, with an astonished laugh.

  Jessie nods, br
aced for his anger. ‘Back in September.’

  ‘Ah,’ he says, with a slowly dawning smile, as if this might explain a few things about her mood these last few months.

  ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t. I’d hate to read so much as a text you sent to an old lover. I’d want to chop his balls off.’

  For a moment, Jessie almost feels cheated by Will’s response, the way it sucks the power from those letters, makes a mockery of months of jealousy. ‘You’ve never written me a letter,’ she says, unable to let go of it easily.

  ‘Haven’t I?’ He sounds genuinely surprised.

  ‘No. You definitely haven’t.’

  ‘Well, I will, then.’

  ‘You can’t now. It wouldn’t be the same.’

  His eyes soften. He leans closer, until the tip of his nose touches hers. ‘It was a different life. You are my life now, you and the girls. And I know it’s not perfect. But there’s nothing else. Nothing else that matters. No woman I love more than you, Jessie.’ His hands skate along her tights, brushing the hem of her dress. ‘Although I miss your dungarees.’

  She smiles, her body starting to heat, tighten. ‘You were doing so well. Don’t over-egg it.’

  ‘I’m actually not joking.’

  ‘There’s something else I haven’t told you, Will.’ Jessie pulls away. Complete disclosure. It must all come out now. A new wariness settles over Will’s shattered features. ‘The story about the vanishing girl, the one Bella’s obsessing about?’

  He shakes his head. ‘So you found out too. That poor kid.’

  ‘You know?’ she stutters, baffled.