No, it was Mark who had let them all down. Isabel closed her eyes.
Mark’s death, a phrase that she wasn’t ready to use, was like a power cut. Although it is easy to grasp the fact of no electricity, in practice it is still a surprise when no light comes on or the kettle fails to boil at the click of a switch. It is the last straw when the television stays blank at the wand-wave of the remote. As Isabel lay on her treasured luxury lounger, she reflected on the yawning future.
That morning she had walked around the side of the house, past the thick bushes of fuchsia and hydrangeas that grew beneath the study and dining room windows, gingerly raising branches, even checking in the old outhouse by the pantry. She had stopped quickly when she realised she was searching for Alice as she had when the girl first went missing.
If she had told them, the family would have called it the Raleigh complex, named after Gina’s stolen bicycle which was cut from its chain outside the Chiswick open air swimming pool when Gina was nine. The police had said it would be local kids having a lark and to keep a look out for it. After that, the whole family stopped to examine every chipped blue bike they came across, looking for the tell-tale dabs of mismatched paint on the cross bar. This habit haunted them for years, long after Gina could have ridden the bike had it been recovered. Now Isabel was doing the same thing, except Alice’s worth hadn’t diminished in the same way as a battered old bike. Her mother, at least, would want her.
At the time Isabel had been desperate to prove that Alice had got herself trapped somewhere. Houses were complicated structures, she had insisted, particularly this one. Alice could be anywhere. She had never told Mark that she had encouraged the police to search their house. There would, she had assured Richard Hall, be a good explanation. She suggested they try the basement.
‘It’s a warren down there, lots of little rooms, great place to hide.’
Isabel had made repeated journeys into the cavernous basement herself and, careful not to be heard by anyone above, called out to Alice. She was cajoling, tempting, luring: Don’t be frightened; we’re not in the least annoyed with you. The police had been down there the day before, but Isabel had suspected that Alice would have been too scared to respond to men she didn’t know, however kind they appeared to be. You had to gain the trust of a girl like that. Then she would do anything for you.
But years went by and still Alice had not been found.
More than once, Isabel had sneaked off through the orchard to the Judge’s disused workshop – now filled with bikes, old lawn mowers, tins of paint and bits of broken garden furniture – and cupping her hands, peered through its grimy windows. In the cobwebbed interior, the disused contents kept their counsel.
One evening when Mark was in his study, she made up her mind to tell the police about her dream. It was five years since Alice had gone missing and she had just watched a programme about the Kennedy shooting, which had happened the day after Alice disappeared. After some flicking back and forth she found Detective Inspector Hall’s number in the back of her 1968 diary. Making sure she wouldn’t be interrupted, she started dialling the number. Then common sense had prevailed. How absurd to tell them about a dream. They would section her. Instead she went down to the basement and methodically searched it yet again. As she moved aside boxes and shelving units, felt her way through the cold dank cellar where the ice had once been stored, she whispered Alice’s name, as she often did when she was on her own.
Even after so many years Isabel could not stop looking for Alice although now, more than ever, she was terrified of finding her.
Isabel wriggled her toes, and lay so that her body was aligned, as she had learnt at her transcendental meditation class. She breathed in and out with her palm on her abdomen. While doing this exercise she was supposed to recite the personal mantra given to her by her teacher. For maximum effect she was meant to keep it secret and not share it with anyone else. But these days unless Isabel wrote things down or told other people she forgot them. She had quickly forgotten her mantra and was unwilling to confess this. Instead she would recite as many titles of Thomas Hardy novels as she could remember. This worked just as well. Although the effort of recalling them made her tense, it did at least take her mind off things.
Today the temperature was ideaclass="underline" a breeze had got up, so it was not too hot, but warm enough to let go. Isabel did find it extraordinary that the sun could shine and that she could feel its warmth while Mark was lying buried under a mound of cold soil up by the church. She closed her eyes, not daring to think what else was possible.
She was aroused from the first driftings of a dream in which she was lying in Mark’s arms, cushioned on his shoulder, by the sound of familiar footsteps.
She was in the car Mark used to drive before they got married and started a family. He was young with bristly short-back-and-sides, and eyes that glittered. His white coat with the stethoscope slung around his neck was too safe an image for a man who she had discovered was so unsafe. She tried to grab his leather-clad hand but it slipped away leaving her with a floppy glove. His scent faded as she struggled to reach him, to rest her hand on his thigh; to attract him. But his attention was on the road; he was gripping the wheel of his sports car, a laughing mouth refusing to say where they were going. White teeth bared, lips taut like a fox. She cried out, but made no sound.
The dream had dwindled and Isabel was awake.
The footsteps stopped. Already smiling, already knowing, Isabel opened her eyes and reached out her hands to greet Eleanor, her favourite child.
Twenty-Three
Alice’s mother helped Chris on to the settee. She was now the stronger of the two as she snatched up cushions and tucked them in behind her, plumping them smartly, easing her backwards with the economic efficiency of a nurse. A warm dry hand stroked Chris’s forehead, tidying back her hair, brushing her cheek. Chris blinked as her eyes stung with sudden tears; it was just how her Mum would have been. She couldn’t think of that now. She gave in as her legs were gently lifted, so that she was lying full length on the settee, her feet propped on another cushion. If only she could stay here. The village was no longer a science-fiction nightmare; she wanted to live here and start again. But of course once she was better she would have to go. When she had gone Mrs Howland wouldn’t care because she would have Alice.
‘Have a few sips.’
As she took the cup and saucer Chris noticed there was no trace of the earlier shake and that Alice’s mother walked without catching her heels on the carpet.
‘What happened?’ Chris gave a groan.
Alice would have the right to stay as long as she liked. Her mother would be newly alive. Upstairs a fluffy hot water bottle would once again warm the immaculate bed. On an impulse Chris decided it could not happen. She wouldn’t tell Kathleen Howland about Alice and she wouldn’t tell Alice where she was. She too could start a new life, with a new name and story and see how Alice liked it. Mrs Howland would be her new mother.
Chris could be Alice. She could fill her space and stay with this kindly woman, who was after all her grandmother, lulled by the cluck-tock-cluck of the old clock on the mantelpiece. There was nothing to stop her. She needed a mother and this mother needed a daughter. This was the ‘grandma’ she had gone looking for outside Fuller’s Brewery.
Chris could not know that she was one of a long line of women, and some men, who, claiming reasons of research or detection, had come to Alice’s cottage wanting to occupy the vacant role of the nine-year-old child. If only for an hour. There had been many ‘orphans’ drawn like magnets to this mother going spare. With the callous vigour of the cheated and betrayed, Chris reasoned that if a life could be invented for her, populated with phantoms she had been taught to love like kindred spirits, she could take a loving mother and hot sugary tea and make up a new life for herself.