Back at the police station, Mum met me in the changing room. I was soaked through, shivering uncontrollably from cold and exhaustion. I hadn’t slept for more than twenty-four hours. I started to take off your dress. “Did you know that smell is made up of minute fragments that have broken away?” I asked her. “We learned about it at school once.” Mum, uninterested, shook her head. But as I’d walked in the sleet I’d remembered and realized that the smell of your dress was because tiny particles of you were trapped in the fine cotton fibers. It hadn’t been irrational to think you close to me after all. Okay, yes, in a macabre sort of way.
I handed Mum your dress and started putting on my designer suit.
“Did you have to make her look so shabby?” she asked.
“It’s what she looks like, Mum. It’s no good if nobody recognizes her.”
Mum used to neaten us up whenever our photo was taken. Even during other children’s birthday parties she’d do a quick wipe of a chocolaty mouth, a painful tug with a handbag-sized brush over our hair as soon as she spotted a camera. Even then she told you how much better you would look if “you made an effort like Beatrice.” But I was shamefully glad, because if you did “make an effort” the glaring difference between us would be clear for everyone to see, and because Mum’s criticism of you was a backhanded compliment to me—and her compliments were always sparse on the ground.
Mum handed me back my engagement ring and I slipped it on. I found the weight of it around my finger comforting, as if Todd were holding my hand.
PC Vernon came in, her skin damp with sleet and her pink cheeks even pinker.
“Thank you, Beatrice. You did a fantastic job.” I felt oddly flattered. “It’s going to be broadcast tonight on the local London news,” she continued. “DS Finborough will let you know immediately if there’s any information.”
I was worried a friend of Dad’s would see it on TV and phone him. PC Vernon, emotionally astute, suggested the police in France could tell Dad “face-to-face” that you were missing, as if that was better than us phoning, and I accepted her offer.
Mr. Wright loosens his polyester tie, the first spring sunshine taking centrally heated offices unawares. But I’m grateful for the warmth.
“Did you speak anymore to DS Finborough that day?” he asks.
“Just to confirm the number he could reach me on.”
“What time did you leave the police station?”
“Six-thirty. Mum had left an hour earlier.”
No one at the police station had realized that Mum can’t drive, let alone owns a car. PC Vernon apologized to me, saying that she’d have driven her home herself if she’d known. Looking back on it, I think PC Vernon had the compassion to see the fragile person under the shell of navy pleated skirt and middle-class outrage.
The police station doors swung shut behind me. The dark, ice-hardened air slapped my face. Headlights and streetlights were disorientating, the crowded pavement intimidating. For a moment, among the crowd, I saw you. I’ve since found out it’s common for people separated from someone they love to keep seeing that loved one among strangers—something to do with recognition units in our brain being too heated and too easily triggered. This cruel trick of the mind lasted only a few moments, but was long enough to feel with physical force how much I needed you.
I parked by the top of the steps to your flat. Alongside its tall pristine neighbors your building looked like a poor relative that hadn’t been able to afford a new coat of white paint for years. Carrying the case of your clothes, I went down the steep icy steps to the basement. An orange streetlamp gave barely enough light to see by. How did you manage not to break an ankle in the last three years?
I pressed your doorbell, my fingers numb with cold. For a few seconds I actually hoped that you might answer. Then I started looking under your flowerpots. I knew you hid your front-door key under one of the pots and had told me the name of the occupying plant, but I couldn’t remember it. You and Mum have always been the gardeners. Besides, I was too focused on lecturing you on your lack of security. How could anyone leave their front-door key under a flowerpot right by their door? And in London. It was ridiculously irresponsible. Just inviting burglars right on in.
“What do you think you’re doing?” asked a voice above me. I looked up to see your landlord. The last time I’d seen him he was a storybook grandpa—stick a white beard on him and he’d be a regular Father Christmas. Now his mouth was drawn into a hard scowl, he was unshaven, his eyes glared with the ferocity of a younger man.
“I’m Beatrice Hemming, Tess’s sister. We met once before.”
His mouth softened, his eyes became old. “Amias Thornton. I’m sorry. Memory not what it was.”
He carefully came down the slippery basement steps. “Tess stopped hiding her spare key under the pink cyclamen. Gave it to me.” He unzipped the coin compartment of his wallet and took out a key. You had completely ignored my lecture in the past, so what had made you suddenly so security conscious?
“I let the police in two days ago,” continued Amias. “So they could look for some clue. Is there any news?” He was near to tears.
“I’m afraid not, no.”
My mobile phone rang. Both of us started—I answered it hurriedly. He watched me, so hopeful. “Hello?”
“Hi, darling.” Todd’s voice.
I shook my head at Amias.
“No one’s seen her and she’s been getting weird calls,” I said, startled by the judder in my own voice. “There’s going to be a police reconstruction on TV this evening. I had to pretend to be her.”
“But you look nothing like her,” Todd replied. I found his pragmatism comforting. He was more interested in the casting decision than in the film itself. He obviously thought the reconstruction an absurd overreaction.
“I can look like her. Kind of.”
Amias was carefully going back up the steps toward his own front door.
“Is there a letter from her? The police say she bought airmail stamps just before she went missing.”
“No, there was nothing in the mail.”
But a letter might not have had time to reach New York.
“Can I call you back? I want to keep this phone free in case she tries to ring.”
“Okay, if that’s what you’d prefer.” He sounded annoyed and I was glad you still irritated him. He clearly thought you’d turn up safe and sound and he’d be first in line to lecture you.
I unlocked the door to your flat and went in. I’d only been to your flat, what, two or three times before, and I’d never actually stayed. We were all relieved, I think, that there wasn’t room for Todd and me so the only option was a hotel. I’d never appreciated how badly fitting your windows are. Squalls of sleet-cold air were coming through the gaps. Your walls were impregnated with damp, moist and cold to touch. Your ecofriendly lightbulbs took ages to throw off any decent light. I turned your central heating up to maximum, but only the top two inches of the radiators gave off any heat. Do you simply not notice such things or are you just more stoical than me?
I saw that your phone was disconnected. Was that why your phone had been engaged when I’d tried to ring you over the last few days? But surely you wouldn’t have left it unplugged all that time. I tried to cool my prickling anxiety—you often disconnect the phone when you’re painting or listening to music, resenting its hectoring demand for undeserved attention; so the last time you were here you must have just forgotten to plug it in again.