‘You know this is illegal. You shouldn’t have this. And Sam, if someone’s going to break into your house, chances are you’d be better off hiding the pepper spray from them. And what if your daughter found it?’
My mouth was so dry it clicked when I swallowed. Finally I said, ‘It makes me feel safe.’
‘Jesus. Who’d be a woman?’ he said, and slid it back into the drawer. But he was still looking at me strangely. Like he knew.
Edie got violent sometimes, I thought of telling him, but I didn’t. Instead I said, ‘That woman. The psychic. She said Edie was still alive. She said she knew where she was.’
Tony looked at me sympathetically. ‘They all say that, sweetheart. We’ll find her. We’ll find your daughter. Girls like Edie will always find their way home.’
Frances – Now
There’s something different about Mimi when I return from town. She is clear-eyed and lucid, sitting in her high-necked dressing gown watching the afternoon news.
She turns her head to me and smiles as I come into the sitting room. Through the fine gauze of her hair the gash on her scalp is still visible, clotted with dried blood as dark as ink.
‘How are you feeling?’ I ask her.
She brushes crumbs from her chest and smiles. ‘A bit foggy. Better than yesterday, at any rate. Did you manage to get the paper?’
‘Yes, I did.’ I pull it out of my bag and her smile broadens. She was a great beauty in her younger days, according to William and Alex. It was a mystery to so many that she married Edward, a plain-thinking bureaucrat nine years her senior who liked to garden and play cribbage. There is a framed photo of the two of them on their wedding day on the mantelpiece, standing outside the town hall and smiling in a shower of confetti. Mimi was twenty-seven years old, her ash-blonde hair thrown over one shoulder like Brigitte Bardot. Edward, tall and thin beside her, unassuming, almost blends into the brickwork. He is the invisible man, dwarfed by his wife’s brightness.
‘You didn’t have babies outside of marriage then,’ she said once, slightly tipsy, her long fingers folding and unfolding a napkin on her lap. ‘You just got married and got on with it.’
‘Very romantic,’ Alex said wryly, to which she replied, ‘Darling, your father was one of the most romantic men I knew, in his own way. Here was a man who planted climbing roses outside all the windows so I could have flowers every day. Even without him, they still bloom, as he knew they would.’
Edward Thorn died one late November afternoon in 1997 when the car he was driving veered off a bank and into the chill waters of the River Ouse. It was three days before they managed to pull it out again, covered in pondweed and rushes and full of rusty-coloured water. His body was found still strapped into the front seat. He hadn’t even tried to undo the seat belt. William said that was typical of his father, to not unbuckle even as the car filled with water. Safety first.
Now Mimi picks up the paper, reads the headline and drops it in disgust. ‘Oh, how I hate politics. Bunch of bloody schoolchildren. I wish it would all go away.’
‘I got your medicines, too. I think I’ll need to talk to William about them, though, to make sure the dosage is accurate.’
‘He’s not here.’ She lifts the remote control and changes the channel. Outside, the leaves flutter against the window, making the light flicker.
‘Did he say where he was going?’
She thinks for a moment. ‘Just into town, I think. Maybe we needed some milk?’
My heart is beating so fast I feel dizzy with it. It’s her I’m thinking about, of course. Kim. Kim, with her thick glossy hair and sucked-in stomach; the tattoo, loaded with meaning, on her thigh. What’s he paying off for her now? Student loan? Month’s rent? What would that get him? I clench my fists. Anger furs my throat. I have to get out of here.
I stand up to leave, and Mimi looks up at me, surprised. ‘Everything all right?’
‘Yes, I just – I’m going to take this through to the kitchen. Can I get you anything? Have you eaten?’
‘You’re such a good girl.’ She smiles again, reaching out for my hand. Hers is soft and warm, the bones there as fragile as a bird’s. ‘I wish we could get Alex to settle down with someone like you. He needs a good woman in his life.’
I smile tightly. Her youngest son’s sexuality, while not a secret, has never been explicitly discussed in front of her. Alex explained it to William and me in a hushed voice in the kitchen one Christmas Eve. ‘It’s not that she’s a homophobe,’ he told us. ‘I just can’t bear to watch her try and hide her disappointment.’
‘I’m sure Alex will find the right person in his own time,’ I say carefully.
Mimi rearranges the cover over her legs. ‘He never gave me any trouble when he was younger. Not like that husband of yours. Alex was always the apple of my eye.’
She’s teasing, of course, smiling a little as she says it. It’s a well-rehearsed script I’ve come to know by heart. I am the straight man in this particular routine.
‘So what does that make William?’
‘I suppose you’d call him a little plum!’ she says, and claps her hands, delighted. Every time. Every single time.
I smile as I leave, taking the bag of medicines into the kitchen and spreading them on the counter there. Sedatives. Anticonvulsants. Painkillers; may cause drowsiness.
No wonder you’re having funny turns, Mimi dear, I think as I pour myself a glass of water from the tap. If we shook you, you’d rattle.
A movement outside catches my eye. Through the kitchen window I can make out the old greenhouse towards the end of the garden where the high stone wall separates the house from the allotments on the other side. Through the windows of the greenhouse, filmy with grime and condensation, I can see someone inside, moving slowly and deliberately. My mind turns back to William telling his mother that Edward was out in the greenhouse and a shiver crawls up me as I put the glass down and head out the back door.
The greenhouse is old, the whole structure slightly rickety-looking, as if a breath of wind could knock it askew. Leaves press up against the panes, making it difficult to see inside. The effect is almost like camouflage. I knock on the door.
‘Hello?’ I say, pushing against it. It’s stiff, the rusted hinges squealing agonisingly. I am sure it will be William, his phone in one hand with his trousers around his ankles, breathless and red in the face. I almost hope it is. I want to catch him, want to see the look on his face as all his deception falls away.
‘Frances?’
Not William.
‘Alex?’ A shard of disappointment.
He straightens up and looks at me. ‘Everything all right? Is Mum okay?’
‘She’s fine.’
I squeeze into the crowded space and notice immediately the smell. It’s bright and green like cut grass, almost sweet. It’s hot, too, pressing against you like folds of velvet, slightly damp. Everywhere there is foliage: serrated leaves of deep, mossy emerald, slightly bristly to the touch. The tomato plants swarm into one another, tangling together like drunks, spilling out of pots and clambering up bamboo-screen trellises, drooping beneath the weight of ripe, glossy fruit. There are also tomato plants hanging from the ceiling in baskets, and young plants, their leaves slightly curled at the edges, pale green, crawling out of old ceramic chamber pots balanced on a trestle table. I pick a small cherry tomato, bright red and shiny as a button, and look over at Alex.