‘You fainted, that’s what happened. Down like a nine-pin. Lucky you didn’t hit your head.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be daft. It’s the heat. Abroad apparently they have thick walls and tiled floors. That’s better, you’re looking more yourself now.’
Chris sipped the tea and settled further into the cushions. Already she loved this woman with soft hands, adorned only with a gold band on the wedding finger, who talked with quiet confidence. When she had brought in the tea, she had sat on a footstool next to the settee, her hands gathered around her knees like a girl.
‘You came out with something a bit odd before you keeled over.’ Alice’s Mum took the empty teacup off Chris and set it on the coffee table. ‘About going to London.’
Chris could say she felt ill again, but this would mean more pretending. Despite the perfectly placed cushions and caring attendance, Mrs Howland was going through the motions. She was not Chris’s mother, nor did she want to be. No amount of fainting would change that. Chris would have to make her come to the flat and let her see Alice for herself.
In her bafflement at Alice’s terrible deceit, Chris had viewed Mrs Howland as no more than a catalyst, a prompter of events that would blast apart Alice’s world in the way Alice had shattered her own. Her trip to the eerily deserted village baking in hot sunshine and her arrival at a dark cottage had been for Chris part of a plot to make her Mum very sorry. She had been so intent on knocking down the tower of cards that her mother had painstakingly erected that she hadn’t taken on board the stark truth that there is no knowing how people will react.
‘It is a bit much. The heat.’ Chris didn’t know what to do next. ‘The bedroom…the dolls.’
‘You’re not the first. They think I don’t know how it looks, but it’s not possible to be normal. No parent should outlive their child. It’s normality turned on its head.’
‘I think I’ve found…’ Chris heaved herself into a sitting position. She would sort this thing out and put everything back in its place. She could do that, no problem.
‘Found what, dear?’
It was the second time she had asked the question.
‘It’s best you come with me and see for yourself.’
‘Now? To London?’
‘I’ll explain when we get there.’
Kathleen got up unsteadily.
‘I’d have to book a bed and breakfast. There was a good one in Hammersmith.’
Already Kathleen was arranging the expedition with no trace of indecision. She thought nothing of getting on a train and being in a different city by nightfall. No one understood that for her nowhere was home, so it didn’t matter where she was. It was a relief to be kept busy. All these years the one thing she had learnt was to keep an open mind and trust that anything was possible. She would go wherever this young girl wanted to take her.
Kathleen’s practical willingness emphasised the flimsiness of Chris’s own intentions.
‘Hammersmith is miles away. You could stay with us.’
‘Who is us, dear?’ Alice’s mother was rifling through her purse, a bus pass between her lips as she flicked through the credit card section, zipping and snapping, opening and shutting compartments.
‘Me. And…my Mum.’
‘Your Mum?’ Kathleen looked up. ‘Have you asked her?’ She looked at Chris as an adult checks the story of a child, respectful yet doubting.
‘She won’t mind. She’ll be pleased.’ Chris nodded firmly. Everyone would be pleased.
On the train down, Chris had watched a little girl sobbing and being mopped up by her Mum and decided that nothing was certain. The child believed that her mother was protection against the world. Just as Chris had once assumed her own Mum was, until at three years old she had first seen her cry. She had not explained why she was crying, and would not stop. Chris got her tissues and patted her shoulders, repeating, ‘there, there’, but she had gone hollow inside and after that she had not felt safe.
The mother on the train was troubled and tired, and embarrassed that her daughter was wailing loudly in a quiet railway carriage. Earlier Chris had helped her load a suitcase on to the rack above their heads. The shared effort hadn’t opened up further interaction. Chris hated knowing that the child’s sense of safety was an illusion. Yesterday she had discovered that all certainty was illusionary.
Once thought, she could not unthink it.
‘I’ll be ready in two ticks, my bag is packed, just need to check I’ve got my pills, water, bits and bobs.’
Chris wandered to the window.
A blue Range Rover was parking outside the cottage. Its glass reflected the sun, so she couldn’t see the occupants. A door opened slowly, sending a lighthouse beam around the living room. Chris went up to the pane, interested now to see who would get out. So far the village had been devoid of life.
Two women emerged, one from each side of the car. Although they were dressed differently, and one had short hair, the other shoulder length, there was a similarity that contributed to an impression of choreographed symmetry. The woman nearer the cottage had her back turned as she bent back inside the car and then, standing up, she slung a handbag on to her shoulder. The other woman held a bulky plastic bag in her arms. The doors slammed shut at the same time, and the woman who had been driving strode around the bonnet, a hand trailing over it as if staying an animal. As she came into view something fell out of the carrier bag on to the road. Chris stepped closer to the glass. It was a video tape. The woman who had been driving fumbled for it, and finally picked it up. Both women paused and examined it briefly. Then the woman with the short hair and the handbag turned to face the cottage and this stopped being a play in which Chris had no part.
The woman was Alice.
Her companion lifted the latch on the gate. Chris bounded across the room to get to the door before they rang the bell. Already they were coming up the path. In the hall, she collided with Mrs Howland, nearly knocking her over.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I was going to tell you…’
‘Calm down, you’ll be ill again.’ Mrs Howland was in slow motion. Chris held on to the wall as the hallway reeled and dipped.
A shadow fell across the porthole of moulded glass in the door and the barometer needle trembled on Fair as the knocker thundered down.
Already Mrs Howland was far away as Chris pitched forward trying to stop her getting to the door. Too late. The front door opened with a deafening creak over which Chris was shouting. Later she wasn’t sure she had made any sound at all.
‘It’s Alice. I’ve found Alice!’
Sunlight flooded the hallway. In the glare, two figures on the doorstep loomed – shapes with no features. Chris was helpless as Kathleen stepped forward and all the while in the background, a voice was talking.
‘Mrs Howland, we’ve brought Dad’s camera tapes. Quite a collection, over two weeks’ worth, but what with…’
Kathleen Howland gave a cry, of pain or joy, Chris couldn’t tell, and grabbed Alice’s hands, grasping them, intertwining them, and jigging them up and down. She drew the other woman in too, pulling them to her.
‘It’s Eleanor Ramsay! And Gina too. How thoughtful of you both, with all that’s happened…oh, come in, come in! You can meet my new friend.’
Kathleen ushered the Ramsay sisters into the living room. There was no one there. The young woman whose name she had already forgotten had vanished. Kathleen wasn’t surprised. She was almost used to it. They got what they came for and went.