They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. How stupid, I’ve always thought. Knowledge is power. I get it now, though. As I put my fingers under the lid of the large freezer and lean in to lift it, I get it. Behind me, Samantha is breathing fast, almost panting. She has retreated to the foot of the stairs, where she stands hunched over herself, just the flat sheen of her eyes visible in the darkness. Just as I heave the lid open I’m almost sure that what I will find in here is not Edie but Quiet Mary, her bones rattling like dice.
I shine the phone in. The beam of light trembles. What I see makes me weak with relief. I almost laugh.
I turn to Samantha. ‘It’s empty,’ I say.
She begins to laugh and then it abruptly changes to harsh, choking sobs, so sudden I don’t know how to respond. I see her buckle, sliding down the damp wall to sit on the bottom stair, clutching herself, hair worked free of her bun and hanging in her face. I cross the room quickly, trying not to cry out when I connect with something soft and yielding underfoot, and kneel in front of her. For a little while she is crying so hard I can’t make her words out. I shush her ineffectively, patting her shoulder, stroking her hair. ‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘It’s okay, Samantha. Edie wasn’t in there.’
By the time she catches her breath the violent shaking has stopped and her face no longer has that dead, slack look that so unnerved me. She wipes her eyes with the heels of her hands and just as I am about to ask her if she is all right, she snaps, ‘Let’s get out of here.’
We find a nearby pub. We must look a sight, the two of us, staggering into the Queen’s Arms with dirt-streaked faces and cuts all over our hands from scrambling out through rusty metal boards. As I order a couple of pints – ‘and two whisky chasers,’ Samantha adds, ‘doubles’ – she flexes her hands and says drily, ‘I hope you’ve had your tetanus shots.’
We take a seat in a booth with high-backed wooden pews and sit and stare at each other, draining our glasses quickly and ordering another round. The music is loud but the pub is quiet, with only a few old boys playing darts in the furthest corner. Samantha is spinning a bar mat on its corner, flipping it, sliding it around the table. She doesn’t meet my eye.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says evenly, when she comes back inside from smoking her third cigarette. ‘I went to pieces a bit. That hasn’t happened for a long time. Took me by surprise.’
‘Sam—’
She holds up her hand. ‘I’m happy the freezer was empty. Of course I am. I want you to understand that, okay? If Edie had been in there I don’t know what I would have done. Screamed the place down, probably. Set fire to it. I don’t know. But at least—’ She searches for the words, fiddling with her necklace, and even though I know what she’s going to say, even though I can see her discomfort, I let her because she has to be able to say it. ‘At least if she’d been in that freezer I would have known. Edie was fifteen years old the day she disappeared. I’ve thought about her every day since. You know how hard that is?’
I shake my head.
‘When she was born I nearly handed her back to the midwife. “You take her, I don’t want her. She frightens me. I made a mistake. I don’t want her.” God. When I think of it now—’
‘But how could you have known?’
‘I’m a fucking monster. No, really.’ She laughs, shaking her head as I start to refute her. ‘I am and it’s okay. It is. That’s what I think about every day. Her, a newborn, unknowing and innocent, and me, saying over and over, “I don’t want her.”’
She gulps for air, teary-eyed. I look at her, feeling my own tears burning in my throat. I think of the empty box room at home, the one I’ve been hopefully calling the ‘nursery’ for nearly four years. I turn thirty-four next year, just a year older than Edie would be now if she hadn’t spirited herself away. I’m running out of time. I don’t think of myself as maternal but sometimes I see a woman with a baby strapped to her chest or pushing a pram and something clenches inside me, a pain so great it is almost a bereavement. I see Samantha’s pain reflected in my own, that feeling of loss and separation, and I realise that this is the root of my rage, the one that burns red-hot, scorching through my insides. It’s not William’s betrayal. It’s the loss. The baby. Our baby. The one he’s never had any intention of giving me.
I reach across the table and take Samantha’s hands in mine, cocooning them. We sit that way a long time, and the sky begins to darken outside.
By the time I get back to Thorn House it is gone seven, and William has left increasingly agitated messages on my phone. Where are you? What time will you be home? I’m getting worried, Frances, call me. I walk calmly into the kitchen, my head a little clouded with booze, and see William sitting at the dining table. The smell of rosemary and garlic sweetens the air. I put my bag on the chair, rubbing the back of my neck.
‘Smells good.’
William looks up at me, dark-eyed and serious. ‘I was worried about you. You should have called.’
‘I just lost track of time. Is this food left for me?’
‘You’ve been gone for hours,’ he snaps, before adding, ‘Yes. Doubt it’ll still be warm.’
‘How’s your mum?’
‘Alex is in there with her now. It’s been difficult today. She thinks she’s back in Blackpool in 1963. Keeps asking for a go on the Ferris wheel.’
I uncover the plate left for me on the counter. It’s pasta with a tomato sauce, rich and thick and glossy, but my appetite curdles at the sight of it. I don’t think I could eat another of those greenhouse tomatoes, fat and red, nurtured by black dirt and bonemeal, the scraps of living things. I put the plate back over it and pour myself a glass of water instead.
‘Where have you been? You stink of booze.’
He comes up behind me and clatters his dirty plate into the sink. The problem with William and Alex is that they were brought up like tiny kings, who never needed to do anything as menial as housework. When William first moved in with me I had to teach him how to hoover and iron his own clothes. Mimi still thought of them as her little boys, even after they developed chest hair and their voices dropped. I watch him do it, and say nothing. I’ve told him before I’m not his cleaner.
‘I was in the pub.’
‘You should have said. I could’ve done with a drink myself.’ He lifts my hands, turning them over to study my palms. They are scratched and blotchy, cold to the touch. ‘What have you been doing, Frances? Who were you with?’
‘I need to go and have a shower, William.’
Too late. He spots the rip in the collar of my coat and lifts it with the tip of his finger. His eyes travel down my body and rest on the small bloodstain on my T-shirt.
‘You’re hurt,’ he says flatly, lifting the material to reveal the small, star-shaped puncture wound clotted over with dried blood. ‘And you’re shaking.’
I’m angry. Inside, I’m a blizzard of cold, hard rage. It buckles me, twisting my organs into hard, calcified objects like crystals found under the earth. I am slowly turning to stone.