Did you love each other once?
Do you ever think of him, wonder about him?
I’m sorry. I ask a lot of questions sometimes. It’s just that I worry for King. He’s been on a destructive path for years, and I fear that if something drastic doesn’t happen soon, he’s going to kill himself. He drinks far too much, more and more each day, it seems. I try to help him, we all do, but there’s no point trying to help a person who doesn’t want it. Then I think, if you came, if he could see you, then maybe he would want to be helped. Maybe he’d have something to live for. I see glimpses in him, Alexis, glimpses of a fascinating mind, of a great man from whom circumstance has stolen everything.
Please come and see us. I think you’re the only one who has a chance of saving him.
Yours sincerely,
Lille.
Tears filled my eyes again as my heart pounded. King. He was alive. For so long I’d lost hope. I hadn’t seen him since that night at his mum’s house, where he’d fled after he thought he killed his father. He hadn’t killed him. The paramedics managed to revive Bruce, and just a few short weeks later, he was sent to prison for the attempted murder of Elaine. It was a hard time for all of us, especially since King had all but become a ghost. We searched high and low, spoke with everyone he’d ever known, but he’d vanished without a trace. I even quizzed Elaine about the gypsy woman, but she had no clue who I was talking about. She was the one missing link, and I knew deep in my heart that if I could just discover who she was, I would find him.
Now I held a letter in my hands that explained everything.
On the other side of it was an inner city location where the circus was currently camped for shows. It was no more than a car journey away, and my skin prickled to think he was so near. Was this real, or was someone playing a trick?
No, it had to be real. No one other than Bruce would think to do something so cruel, and he’d died in prison six months after he was put there, shanked by a young guy who didn’t want him coming in and taking over. I thought it was a fitting death.
Bruce Mitchell.
Marina Mitchell.
King had a sister. How had I not known this? How had Elaine not known? A memory of the gypsy woman King once said was family flashed in my mind again. This Marina must have been his half-sister, born of Bruce and a different mother. That’s why Elaine didn’t know her. But why the hell would King be living with someone who had anything to do with that monster? It was all too much to take in, too confusing. I leaned back in my chair, trying to make sense of it.
After he’d disappeared, I’d gone through all the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then finally acceptance. Now each of those stages were rushing back all at once, becoming a strange muddle of hope and anger, happiness and fear.
I’d finally settled into my life. How could a single letter flip everything on its axis?
Four years ago, I’d stopped modelling and started up my own agency. It did so well that I’d finally saved up enough money for a mortgage, and had purchased a small two-bedroom house in Waltham Forest. Elaine, who I’d grown close to over the years, sold her big house in Bloomsbury that held too many bad memories, and bought herself a small cottage in Waltham in order to be close to us.
Us.
The very thought made my tears increase. Life had been so hard since King disappeared. For a long time, I couldn’t move on. My heart refused to believe he’d stay away of his own volition, but at the same time I understood the trauma he must have been suffering to think he’d killed a man with his own bare hands. Now I was being told he was out there, close enough for me to reach. To touch. To pull close.
And yet, here I was living in my little house with the love of my life. The one who’d come along after King and mended my broken heart.
I heard him pull on the doorknob and step into the room, probably wondering why I was upset, why I was crying. I wiped at my tears and tried to plaster on a brave face, not wanting to worry him.
“Mummy,” he asked, “what’s wrong?”
My boy was so beautiful, so like his father with his pale blond hair and blue eyes. I didn’t even realise I was pregnant for a long time after King vanished. I’d put it all down to heart sickness. Yeah, I thought I was vomiting my guts up every morning because of how much I missed him. I soon came to realise that wasn’t the case. Apparently, the pill isn’t always one hundred percent effective.
But still, some small part of me was grateful. My love had disappeared, but he’d left something of himself behind. Nevertheless, I was depressed for much of my pregnancy. Karla and my parents were worried sick. Elaine, too. She wanted a grandchild so badly. And then, my Oliver came along, and I fell in love again.
My strength returned. I needed to live for the little one who needed me. So I put my all into my career, began modelling as much as I could. Elaine helped out with money until I was doing well enough to go it alone. I think the combination of Oliver’s birth and Bruce’s death changed something in her. She started going outside more, becoming independent. She even played piano every once in a while. She was often sad, as she grieved for her missing son, but she was no longer the shell of a woman she once was.
Even though I’d accepted the fact that he was gone, I grieved, too. Every day. For King.
I think it was the fact that we had so little time together that made it worse. I had all these possibilities to wonder about. What might our lives have been if certain events hadn’t come to pass? It’s different from losing your love at eighty after a lifetime together. The pain is so much sharper, more cutting. It guts you to the core, because you’d once held perfection in your hands, only to have it drift away like mist. You have to go on knowing you’ll never feel how he made you feel ever again, knowing no one else will ever compare.
I had to go to him. And yet, I hesitated.
The words in Lille’s letter frightened me. What would I find at the circus? What sort of man? Summoning some strength, I knew I still had to go. For him. For our son. For my heart.
I pulled Oliver up onto my lap and gave him a soft squeeze. “I was just thinking of a sad story, that’s all.”
“Why do you think about sad stories?” he asked, curious, fingers going to my damp face.
“Because sometimes my brain makes me,” I answered, and his hands travelled to my forehead, giving it a poke.
“Brain, stop making Mummy sad.” His words made me laugh. In just a couple of months he was going to turn six. The time was flying by so fast. Sometimes he’d ask about his dad, ask if he had one, because all the other boys at school did. I told him that his daddy was far, far away. I hated the sad tilt to Oliver’s mouth afterwards and wished I could have come up with a better answer.
It felt unnatural to see him sad, because he was such a happy, gregarious child. He was never shy or insecure, always open to the world and the possibilities each day might bring. He made friends easily, too. The teacher of his Montessori class said he was always the one bringing the kids together, making suggestions for new games they might play.
I let him off my lap and went into the kitchen to prepare lunch. It was Saturday, my day off. Usually, either Elaine or my mum took Oliver when I was working, but I always had him on weekends. If I asked one of them to babysit tonight, they’d want to know why, and I didn’t want to explain Lille Baker’s letter yet, not to anyone. I especially didn’t want to tell Elaine in case it wasn’t real. Getting her hopes up would be too cruel.
After I’d made Oliver his food, I went and called Karla. We were still as close as ever, even though we no longer lived together. We didn’t get to see each other as much as we used to, but we spoke on the phone almost every day. Having been my rock when Oliver was a baby, she loved my boy just as much as I did, and I knew she’d jump at the chance to have him for an evening. In fact, she’d be so happy she wouldn’t think to ask questions.