Where the Missing Go(9)

There were things we didn’t talk about: the distance between us.

I’d met him at a bar in the City, birthday drinks a friend had brought me along to – he was at the centre of a big laughing crowd, as always. He was a golden retriever in human form, Charlotte had said to me, when I brought him home, rolling her eyes. She’d been with Phil, even more sensible than my sister, since sixth form and through her tough first years as a teacher. But in the end she was charmed too. When I’d got pregnant, early among our group of friends, there was no doubt about what to do. We’d married that summer, me fooling no one by slowly draining half a glass of champagne.

And if sometimes I wondered privately how much we really had in common, if I was sometimes surprised to find myself with a husband, a house, a baby, even a dog, I can’t really say it worried me much. Even when it became clear there wouldn’t be any more to follow Sophie – after we both realised the other was ready to stop trying, too – we were OK, I think.

So we decided. We’d leave. There were tears from Sophie, an upsetting amount – she didn’t want to leave her friends – but it would be good for her, surely. They grew up so fast in London.

And we’d been excited to find this place so quickly: leafy Cheshire, near enough to the city that Mark could drive in but still, to a couple of London transplants, all so shockingly green and quiet. Out here where the village turns to countryside, the houses sit far apart, most of them stately Victorian mansions built by the cotton merchants behind low stone walls. If you keep driving along Park Road, away from the village, you end up at the entrance to the deer park, once the grand estate that gave Vale Dean its name.

I took voluntary redundancy. I’d loved my job, fund-raising for an arts organisation, but it didn’t pay like Mark’s, in the law, and I was sick of the endless cuts. I didn’t need to worry about working for a while, Mark told me, I could focus on doing up the house. I squashed down the thought that he’d prefer me not to work.

Looking out at the shadow of Parklands now, I can almost hear his voice: ‘It’s an eyesore, letting a good house get like that. Weren’t you going to ring the council?’

I suppress a shiver. Enough of the past. I know where I have to go tonight.

On the threshold, I stop, and touch the pink wooden heart hanging from the doorknob. She’d got into decorating her room a bit, starting to take an interest in having a more grown-up space around her, and I’d let her. Privately I’d smiled to see her taste: flowered cushions in soft blues and violets, the walls ‘apple white’. My sweet little girl was still there, I’d thought, even as she’d disappear to her room for hours, or rush out of the house – ‘out’, the only answer flung at me as I watched her retreating back.

‘She’s a teenager, Kate,’ Mark would tell me, bored of the discussion. ‘That’s what they’re like.’

I push the door open, slowly. I never keep it closed, just ajar. There’s a tang of furniture polish the air – Silvia, our cleaner, was good about that, she just carried on as if Sophie hadn’t gone, until I said she could stop coming. There wasn’t any need, any more.

Walking over to the bed, I curl up against her wrought iron headboard – she’d paid half, promising she wouldn’t complain it was uncomfortable – and let out a breath I didn’t realise I was holding in.

My eyes wander around the room, over the school scarf flung carelessly over the cheval mirror; on the wall, the smiling faces of the boy band that’s since split up; a dried rose, a gift from Danny; the stuffed animals sitting on her wardrobe, faded souvenirs of childhood. Everything’s the same as it always is. I can’t bear it – and at the same time I feel closer to her here. I can almost pretend that she’s just stepped out, that she’s taken the dog for a walk, maybe, and that at any moment might be back again.

But tonight I don’t feel the usual sense of comfort. I’m antsy, even my skin itching, so I get up again. Maybe it’s because I can’t pretend now that she’s just gone for a moment – I know she’s out there, somewhere. I take one long look at the room, my hand on the door handle, and then go to bed.

I wake up suddenly, my heart thudding in my chest, my nightie sticking to my body with cold sweat. My mouth’s dry.

I turn my head to the alarm clock: the green figures tell me it’s still the early hours. Damn. I should have taken a pill. I’ve been trying to do without them, just as an experiment: to see if I could.

My dream … something niggles at my brain. Sophie …

It comes to me in a sudden rush. I was walking around my house, looking for her. Another one of those. Nightmares sounds so childish. Night terrors, they used to call them.

I had so many in the months just after. They’re always much the same. I come home and push open the door, unlocked. ‘Sophie,’ I call. ‘I’m home.’ Inside, it’s like she’d just passed through: a discarded school bag, books spilling out; her coat slung over the banister; hockey stick and tennis racket strewn on the floor, all the detritus of her school life. In the kitchen, I find a half-drunk cup of tea, the cupboard doors open, drawers pulled out haphazardly, like she’d been looking for something. I’d head upstairs, knowing, as you do in dreams, that I am only a step behind – that I’ll find her if I’m quick enough.

And so it unfolds, like clockwork: I go into the blue bedroom, find the wardrobe doors open, our winter clothes pulled onto the bed and shoes scattered everywhere, like a whirlwind’s passed through. It’s the same in the next bedroom, the sheets and the pillows heaped on the floor. In the bathroom, the towels are hanging off the rails, all the taps running.