It seems that everyone wants to listen now—the press, the police, solicitors—pens scribble, heads crane forward, tape recorders whir. This afternoon I am giving my witness statement to a lawyer at the Crown Prosecution Service in preparation for the trial in four months’ time. I’ve been told that my statement is vitally important to the prosecution’s case, as I am the only person to know the whole story.
Mr. Wright, the CPS lawyer who is taking my statement, sits opposite me. I think he’s in his late thirties, but maybe he is younger and his face has just been exposed to too many stories like mine. His expression is alert and he leans a fraction toward me, encouraging confidences. A good listener, I think, but what type of man?
“If it’s okay with you,” he says, “I’d like you to tell me everything, from the beginning, and let me sort out later what is relevant.”
I nod. “I’m not absolutely sure what the beginning is.”
“Maybe when you first realized something was wrong?”
I notice he’s wearing a nice Italian linen shirt and an ugly printed polyester tie—the same person couldn’t have chosen both. One of them must have been a present. If the tie was a present, he must be a nice man to wear it. I’m not sure if I’ve told you this, but my mind has a new habit of doodling when it doesn’t want to think about the matter in hand.
I look up at him and meet his eye.
“It was the phone call from my mother saying she’d gone missing.”
When Mum phoned, we were hosting a Sunday lunch party. The food, catered by our local deli, was very New York—stylish and impersonal; same said for our apartment, our furniture and our relationship—nothing homemade. The Big Apple with no core. You are startled by the about-face, I know, but our conversation about my life in New York can wait.
We’d got back that morning from a “snowy romantic break” in a Maine cabin, where we’d been celebrating my promotion to account director. Todd was enjoying regaling the lunch party with our big mistake:
“It’s not as though we expected a Jacuzzi, but a hot shower wouldn’t have hurt, and a landline would have been helpful. It wasn’t as if we could use our cell phones—there’s no cell system out there.”
“And this trip was spontaneous?” asked Sarah incredulously.
As you know, Todd and I were never noted for our spontaneity. Sarah’s husband, Mark, glared across the table at her. “Darling.”
She met his gaze. “I hate ‘darling.’ It’s code for ‘shut the fuck up,’ isn’t it?”
You’d like Sarah. Maybe that’s why we’re friends—from the start she reminded me of you. She turned to Todd. “When was the last time you and Beatrice had a row?” she asked.
“Neither of us is into histrionics,” Todd replied, self-righteously trying to puncture her conversation.
But Sarah’s not easily deflated. “So you can’t be bothered either.”
There followed an awkward silence, which I politely broke, “Coffee or herbal tea, anyone?”
In the kitchen I put coffee beans into the grinder, the only “cooking” I was doing for the meal. Sarah followed me in, contrite. “Sorry, Beatrice.”
“No problem.” I was the perfect hostess, smiling, smoothing, grinding. “Does Mark take it black or white?”
“White. We don’t laugh anymore either,” she said, levering herself up onto the counter, swinging her legs. “And as for sex…”
I turned on the grinder, hoping the noise would silence her. She shouted above it, “What about you and Todd?”
“We’re fine, thanks,” I replied, putting the ground beans into our seven-hundred-dollar espresso maker.
“Still laughing and shagging?” she asked.
I opened a case of 1930s coffee spoons, each one a different colored enamel, like melted sweets. “We bought these at an antiques fair last Sunday morning.”
“You’re changing the subject, Beatrice.”
But you’ve picked up that I wasn’t, that on a Sunday morning, when other couples stay in bed and make love, Todd and I were out and about antique shopping. We were always better shopping partners than lovers. I thought that filling our apartment with things we’d chosen was creating a future together. I can hear you tease me that even a Clarice Cliff teapot isn’t a substitute for sex, but for me it felt a good deal more secure.
The phone rang. Sarah ignored it. “Sex and laughter. The heart and lungs of a relationship.”
“I’d better get the phone.”
“When do you think it’s time to turn off the life-support machine?”
“I’d really better answer that.”
“When should you disconnect the shared mortgage and bank account and mutual friends?”
I picked up the phone, glad of an excuse to interrupt this conversation. “Hello?”
“Beatrice, it’s Mummy.”
You’d been missing for four days.
I don’t remember packing, but I remember Todd coming in as I closed the case. I turned to him. “What flight am I on?”
“There’s nothing available till tomorrow.”
“But I have to go now.”
You hadn’t shown up to work since the previous Sunday. The manager had tried to ring you but she had only got your answering machine. She’d been round to your flat but you weren’t there. No one knew where you were. The police were now looking for you.
“Can you drive me to the airport? I’ll take whatever they’ve got.”
“I’ll phone a cab,” he replied. He’d had two glasses of wine. I used to value his carefulness.
Of course I don’t tell Mr. Wright all of this. I just tell him Mum phoned me on the twenty-sixth of January at 3:30 p.m. New York time and told me you’d gone missing. Like you, he’s interested in the big picture, not tiny details. Even when you were a child, your paintings were large, spilling off the edge of the page, while I did my careful drawings using pencil and ruler and eraser. Later, you painted abstract canvases, expressing large truths in bold splashes of vivid color, while I was perfectly suited to my job in corporate design, matching every color in the world to a Pantone number. Lacking your ability with broad brushstrokes, I will tell you this story in accurate dots of detail. I’m hoping that as in a pointillistic painting, the dots will form a picture and when it is completed, we will understand what happened and why.
“So until your mother phoned, you had no inkling of any problem?” asks Mr. Wright.
I feel the familiar, nauseating, wave of guilt. “No. Nothing I took any notice of.”
I went first class—it was the only seat they had left. As we flew through cloud limbo land I imagined telling you off for putting me through this. I made you promise not to pull a stunt like this again. I reminded you that you were going to be a mother soon and it was about time you started behaving like an adult.
“‘Older sister’ doesn’t need to be a job title, Bee.”
What had I been lecturing you about at the time? It could have been one of so many things; the point is that I’ve always viewed being an older sister as a job, one that I am ideally suited for. And as I flew to find you, because I would find you (looking after you is an essential part of my job description), I was comforted by the familiar scenario of being the superior, mature, older sister telling off the flighty, irresponsible young girl who should know better by now.
The plane started to descend toward Heathrow. West London sprawled beneath us, thinly disguised with snow. The seat-belt light came on and I made deals with God: I’d do anything if you were found safe. I’d have made a deal with the devil if he’d been offering.