The Stepmother(97)

* * *

 

 

 

It’s the simplicity with which she was living that kind of breaks my heart, you know, when I arrive at her cottage. It’s kind of like something from a sweet folk tale or Beatrix Potter – Goldilocks poking round the three bears’ stuff, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, that kind of nice cosy lovely thing that childhoods ought to be made up of.

 

Honey stoned and blue doored, in the middle of a row of four, roses round the door and pansies outside in the terracotta pots. Fields and fields of bloody green space out the back; a terrifying amount of space.

 

And what really gets to me now, what brings the f*cking lump to my throat, is how there’s only one of everything in the meticulous kitchen. She was always so tidy, where I am such a messy cow. The little one, the baby, I got used to her picking up my pants, cooking for me, sorting stuff – you know the score. I got used to Jeanie being there. Jeanie’s always been bloody there.

 

I’m not sure why it’s her little pot of raspberry jam laid out by her single plate, alongside her single knife – why it’s that that makes me cry. Why is it that? After all, there’s only one of everything in my place too. We are the original singletons: just not à la Bridget Jones.

 

Indelible, the damage our parents did to us, etched into us, marking us forever. Why would we ever want to place our hearts in others’ hands? I can’t do it; I never have.

 

Jeanie is the only person I really trust – and now look what she’s bloody gone and done.

 

Don’t. Don’t even say it. I know now, too late, how remiss I’ve been.

 

Except… She did do it, didn’t she? That’s been the whole problem. She dared to put her heart in his hands – that tosser, Matthew – and Jesus, now look. Just look at this mess.

 

I kick the washing machine. I kick it and I kick it.

 

Her neighbour, Ruth, found the note in the early hours, alerted by the constantly banging front door, seemingly left ajar.

 

It’s just Jeanie that’s missing. Just the body that’s not here.

 

I kick the washing machine some more until there’s a huge f*cking dent in it.

 

And then the officer at the door coughs gently, and I turn towards her.

 

We get in the police car, and we continue the search for my sister.

 

One, a special constable it seems, mutters to the other, ‘Twice up here in two days. There was that biker last night…’

 

The other frowns.

 

The first one says, ‘Did you see the blood in the bathroom?’ and then the other casts a furtive look at me in the mirror, hushing her colleague.

 

We drive on in silence, only the crackling police radio for company.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The day is drawing in, just a thin line of light left across the horizon, when the call comes.

 

Apparently a sheep farmer from Castern saw a woman walking near the bridge over the river Dove late last night as he drove back up to his farm. He thought she looked a bit unsteady on her feet, but he was on his way to check his sheep after a call about a savage dog roaming the fields. In the ensuing drama the woman slipped his mind. But this evening he found a rucksack in another one of his fields, below Thorpe Cloud, near a shepherd’s hut. And a pair of broken glasses.

 

They might be Jeanie’s.

 

As we drive down the ploddingly windy roads, the radio crackles to say they’ve found someone.

 

‘Is she alive?’ I keep asking frantically. ‘Please – is she alive?’

 

‘Please, Miss Randall,’ the WPC repeats, ashen faced as her colleague drives faster. ‘Let’s just wait till we get there, all right?’

 

Then she turns the radio off so I can’t hear anything more.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

By the time we get out there, the bewildered farmer is being led off for questioning. Halfway up the track, an ambulance is parked as near to the stone hut as it can get, and as I scramble up the hill, I see them carry a stretcher to the door.

 

‘Jeanie, I’m coming!’ I’m screaming, falling and righting myself and falling again. ‘Jeanie! I’m here. It’s all right!’

 

But of course it’s not all right, is it? It really, really isn’t all right.

 

They give me the broken glasses later, and the twisted frame breaks my heart. They are so pathetic. They are Jeanie.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Later.

 

When I can catch my breath.

 

When I’ve gone in the ambulance to Derby and they’ve taken her off and she’s not moved a hair, an inch, a muscle, a nerve ending.