Steve sat in Alice’s bedroom, in the chair he used for bedtime stories, holding the book they had been reading when she vanished. It was Alice in Wonderland, Alice’s favourite. He opened and shut it, a thumb inserted at the place they had left off – ‘A Caucus Race and a Long Tale’ – rubbing the words perhaps to make them vanish too. He only came downstairs if the police asked to speak to him. He would have nothing to do with the journalists. After a while he did not even talk to Kathleen, but retreated into silence. She understood, for silence was where Alice was.
Kathleen wondered how her husband would have coped if Alice had gone missing today. The media interest had been less then, or perhaps it was just not so polished. Having learnt the importance of what was called the ‘oxygen of publicity’, she now regretted that Robert Kennedy had been shot dead in the same week and that there had been riots at some university in Paris in the days after. She had learnt the importance of keeping the story in readers’ minds. She knew that it was the public that caught criminals, or found missing people, hardly ever the police. People soon forgot. One missing child becomes another missing child: their fresh faces forever smiling in spotless school uniform generic as sheep.
As the weeks went by and there was no sign of Alice, the aftermath of the death of Kennedy and the American election eclipsed the disappearance of a small girl in Sussex. In return, Kathleen forgot about most of the journalists. She did keep the newspapers, although she could not bear to read them. She had been frightened by the lack of intimacy in the black and white picture of her daughter in the papers. Alice’s face was made up of hundreds of dots. Her daughter had become a story like the ones Kathleen had read many times while drinking coffee and taking the weight off her feet. The same portrait had been in pride of place on top of the television since Alice brought it home from school the previous September, but in the newspaper it made Alice unfamiliar. Kathleen had stacked the newspapers in a cardboard box and got Steve to put it in the loft. He wanted to throw them away, but however alienating they were, she said it was like throwing away Alice. Kathleen didn’t tell Steve that she hoped one day, perhaps when Alice was about thirty, around the same age as Kathleen had been then, she would haul them down and show them to her. Then they would fall about at the pictures of Kathleen and Steve, in his postman’s cap with his stiff old-fashioned face. They would not talk about how awful it had been, but just how long ago it was. It would be a past life and they would be relieved that like in fairy stories, everything was ‘happy ever after’. Outside, Alice’s children would be playing with their grandad in the sandpit, and he would be explaining to them that he had made it for his princess in the olden days.
But thirty-one years and four days later Alice had not come back. Thirty had passed and this year Alice would have been forty. The papers were still in the loft, probably turned to ash by mice and moths, and Steve was dead of a broken heart at the age of fifty-eight.
One reporter had stayed in Kathleen’s memory. Jackie Masters looked twenty, with blue eyes and fair hair. Over the years Kathleen had looked out for her name, but had never seen it. Until recently Jackie Masters had vanished as completely as her daughter.
At the time she had been very present. Arriving with a big ‘Hullo!’, she would march in treating the cottage as her home: filling the kettle, mashing the tea, getting out the milk bottle and flicking off the foil top with such confidence. The place was her own. Kathleen had relinquished everything, her home, her habits; her life. Jackie learnt which cup Kathleen preferred, and washed up and dried and wiped down the draining board. Kathleen found she could talk to Jackie without crying, and say exactly what she meant. The words came out right, not like when she was with the police or with neighbours, when she was unable to speak or move. Jackie could nearly have been Alice’s big sister, she tossed her hair in the same way and, like Alice, she had come top in her schoolwork and had wanted to be a ballet dancer but was too small. They discussed the length of Alice’s hair, would it look good up, did she have a boyfriend? (Kathleen had not liked the question. No.) Which Beatle did she like best? Or did Alice prefer the Monkees? As they chatted Kathleen could hear Alice in her bedroom upstairs, small feet mousing about as she dressed up her dolls or rearranged her glass animals. Jackie was encouraging when Kathleen confessed she had started leaving the porch lamp on and the back door unlocked at night so Alice could get in. She told Jackie that when they were coming home after dark from her father’s in Newhaven, she would insist on putting the light on before they left, so that it would be shining if Alice turned up while they were out. Alice had called the light the ‘beacon’. Until then they hadn’t known she knew the word. Steve had put this down to the Ramsays who he didn’t like. Remembering this stopped Kathleen telling Jackie. She had wanted her to like Steve, although he never came down when she was there.
‘Such a grownup word for a little girl, she must have been good at reading.’ Jackie Masters had written ‘beacon’ in her notebook as if it was a new word to her too.
Oh she was. She loved her books. She always came top at spelling. She knew so many words.
Alice would know the beacon was a message for her. Kathleen had assured Jackie that Alice would come round to the back. They never used the front door except for special occasions. Although of course, her return would be a special occasion.
One night Kathleen took Jackie to the kitchen door and pointed timidly at the packet of sandwiches placed next to the empty milk bottles and yoghurt jars. In case Alice was hungry, she explained. Strawberry jam, her favourite. It had felt wonderful making them, she had whispered not wanting Steve to hear. He would say sandwiches were going too far. She had almost been her old self as she laid the slices out on the board exactly square, then smeared a thin layer of butter on each one. You see she doesn’t like too much, but she likes jam right to the crust. She doesn’t like the crust, but she must have it, for her teeth. Jackie had squeezed her hand and given such a nice smile. She had no children of her own yet, but said she understood exactly.
Alice liked Robertson’s Jam, and was collecting golliwog tokens. Kathleen had helped her send off for a brooch the Tuesday she went missing. Jackie was writing busily as Kathleen recalled Alice skipping and jumping next door to the village stores to post the tokens. Kathleen leaned on the gate, to wait for her, just as excited. Years later, Kathleen still ran this scene like a film. Sometimes it had a different ending, where Alice came home in the evening, hungry and so full of things to tell her, sliding on to a chair at the kitchen table going on and on, like a canary let out of its cage.
After lunch Alice had gone off to play with Eleanor Ramsay; Kathleen had not watched her leave and try as she might, she could not think what the last words Alice had said to her were, however many times Jackie asked.
The golliwog brooch had arrived two weeks after Alice disappeared. Jackie was there and opened the envelope self-addressed in Alice’s pretty writing to save Kathleen. Jackie had behaved like a child, clapping her hands and exclaiming ‘What a surprise!’
‘Oh, she’ll love this.’ By now they had both forgotten that Jackie had never met Alice. Jackie had become a family friend who Alice would be so pleased to find waiting for her when she came home.
‘When she comes back, I’ll give it to her.’
‘Yes, make things normal again as fast as you can.’ Jackie was wise before her time.
Kathleen had forgotten that Steve was in the house as she told Jackie how she spread out her treats, the sandwiches, switching on the beacon, changing the sheets on Alice’s bed, preparing her school bag for the new term; different tasks spread throughout each day.