The Art of Forgetting (20 page)

“You know, pregnant. A bun in the oven. She didn’t say anything, but you know what it’s like, when there are a bunch of girls together. They talk about periods and things like that and they get into a kind of cycle, when everyone comes on at the same time. I read about it in Cosmo. Anyway, that’s what happened and Dawn would always know when Linda was due, partly because they nearly always came on together, but also because Linda would be so pale and grumpy the day before and then she would have awful cramps and have to take painkillers – strong ones, not just aspirin. Sometimes she’d even have to go home.”

I nodded. I knew this was all true, as Linda had told me about the pains that gripped her on the first day of her period and had apologised for being short with me, more than once. I hadn’t thought much about it, probably just congratulated myself for being lucky in that respect. Kristal wasn’t inventing any of this, however much I wished that to be the case.

“Dawn reckons she had missed at least one period when she disappeared, possibly two. She was also looking pretty rough some mornings and although she put it down to having had a heavy night, it didn’t make much sense. Why would she suddenly start going out and getting drunk every night of the week when she had never done that before? Whatever else you might say about her, she wasn’t a slacker at work and it just doesn’t ring true. That’s what Dawn says anyway, and I believe her.”

I wondered how many other people Kristal had regaled with this story, and whether it had got back to her mother or the police, but I didn’t ask those questions. Time was getting on and Kristal had to get back. We ran through the new work procedure one more time and she left, obviously quite satisfied with her afternoon’s work and the unexpected opportunity for gossip and character assassination.

Mr Jones returned shortly afterwards, so then I had to explain the procedure to him. “Put it in a document, my dear,” he said, shaking his head sadly that I hadn’t somehow done this already. “If we don’t write it down, how are we going to remember what we said?”

Although those words have more than a little resonance now, at that time I was perfectly capable of remembering what had been agreed. But I complied, obviously. I can imagine Kelly or Laura questioning a decision like that, but it would not have occurred to me. If Mr Jones had asked me to type the same thing out dozens of times and paper the office walls with it, I probably would have done so, however stupid it may have seemed. Maybe that’s why I was so passive when it came to the Linda issue. Here was information that could have been material to the case, but I didn’t do anything other than tell Vic and he said to keep out of it.

“If she’s told you, she’s probably told loads of other people already, to say nothing of this Dawn. It’s probably just gossip, but even if it’s true I’m sure the police already know. It might look odd, you getting involved after such a long time. Stop worrying, none of this is your fault, and you can’t bring her back, really you can’t.”

It was one of the things Vic was more and more certain about at the time, and so I was too. Sometimes it still seems that way to me now. He said that there was no such thing as free will, that every action we took, even every thought we had, was determined by the actions and thoughts of people who had gone before us. Our futures were all laid out. There was nothing we could do to change them, things would happen if they were going to and even if we knew the future and tried to alter it, it wouldn’t work. Whatever was going to happen would happen because we had tried to stop it happening, that was all part of the train of events. So if Linda was supposed to be found, she would be found and if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be. It was as simple as that.

He kissed me and stroked my hair, gently, like he always did. I cut it all off when he died. It was like no-one else should ever be able to do that. Although I’d been proud of my hair, the way it fell in long waves down my back, it was for him and him only. I’ve never thought about that before, why I always kept it short, but I’m sure that’s why. In fact, it was a long time before I paid any attention to my appearance at all. What was the point? I didn’t want another boyfriend, so why bother looking nice? We didn’t think about things like self-esteem and all that in those days; it was absolutely clear why we dressed the way we did, why we worried about our skin, our weight, our split ends. If you didn’t have a boyfriend you needed to get one, and if you had a boyfriend you needed to keep him. All this was inextricably bound up with how you looked.

I must remember to ask Laura and Kelly when I see them. Was it the same for them, really, when you strip it all away, or did all that women’s lib stuff actually change things? Did they honestly spend hours up in their rooms getting ready to please themselves, or was it the same old drives behind it all? I remember the first time after Vic died that I found myself wondering what someone might think as I got ready to go out. I can remember that room, the one in Franklin Road. I can’t remember where I was going, but I can remember standing in front of that funny old dressing table, with its three mirrors so you could see what you looked like from any angle, and thinking about Barry and the way he had looked at me in the bar. I knew that look and I wanted him to look at me like that again. And then I had this terrible wave of guilt as I thought of Vic and how he used to look at me. I got a tissue and scrubbed all the make-up off again, the tears smudging everything until I looked a mess, my face blotchy and black rings around my eyes.

It took several attempts before I let myself feel any normal emotions, but I suppose it helped that Barry was so different. If he’d been long-haired and arty, or if he’d been into philosophy or poetry, he would never have been anything but a pale imitation of Vic and it would never have got off the ground. But he was a fairly straight northern lad, not given to saying more words than were absolutely necessary to make a point, and his hair was short by the standards of the time, hardly below his collar. He had different colour eyes, a different shaped face and was broader and more muscular than Vic had been. So, when we finally kissed, it was nothing remotely like holding onto a ghost as it had been with the others. Barry was solid and real. What you saw was what you got, as they say. He was kind and patient with me, pulling back if I got scared but always there to pick up the strings again. Dear Barry, he was just what I needed and, as I couldn’t have Vic, he became what I wanted too.

Paul never liked Vic. Once, I came into the room and it was obvious they’d been arguing as their faces were red and the tension crackled in the air like static, but they stopped when they saw me. I asked Vic about it later, but he brushed it off.

“Oh, nothing. Your brother’s a bit of an idiot, but I expect you knew that!” he said, with a little laugh. Well, I didn’t, not really. Paul had been my hero as I grew up and, with that one exception when he was ill, he had remained so. My big brother. The girls at school used to go on about him no end, how good looking he was and was he going out with anyone? How fantastic, to have an older brother, bringing all his friends round, a constant supply of potential dates. But it was never really like that. Paul’s social life was always conducted strictly away from the house. We never really knew what he was getting up to or who his friends were. My parents gave up asking, it caused so many rows, and as long as he came back at a reasonable time and wasn’t obviously drunk there wasn’t much they could say.

Laura has just been round and I had to hide this under the papers, but I got it straight out again when she left in case I couldn’t find it. I have to put things in the same place now or I spend all my time looking for them. She brought food round and it was all, oh, I’ve just been to Sainsbury’s so I picked up a few things for you, and then she insisted on putting the chilled things in the fridge. I don’t know why there were so many bowls and containers in there, I must have thought they’d be useful. And her face, when she took them out.

“Mum, this one’s mouldy, and this one’s got something disgusting growing on it. You’ll give yourself food poisoning, if you go on like this!”

I know she’s right, that I’m not entirely on top of the food, the cooking and all that. But it made me angry, her telling me off as if she were the parent and I were the child. I didn’t mean to shout at her, and I apologised afterwards, but she looked shaken and she didn’t stay long afterwards. I made myself a note, and now I’ve taped it to the front of the fridge. CHECK FOR MOULDY FOOD it says. I think it will help, as well as showing her that I do listen. If I’m going to be cooking for people I have to get organised, so maybe I’m spending too much time writing. That could very well be part of the problem.

This morning, I had to look up the recipe for shortbread. I knew what I needed, and I knew the method, but I couldn’t remember the amounts. Was it half the fat to flour or a quarter? It turned out OK, although I think it maybe had a few minutes too long in the oven, but I’ve forgotten again already. I’ve made shortbread hundreds of times, maybe even thousands over the years, and I could rustle it up without even thinking about it, but not now. That means this thing is eating away at my long-term memory as well and that is awful, terrible. I cried and cried, but then Jip started barking for his walk so I put on my coat and went out. The wind dried my tears, but that woman from the house on the corner looked at me strangely, so maybe it showed in my face.

Laura was very pleased with the shortbread, although I had to persuade her to take it, at first. She said she’d been shopping and they had plenty of biscuits, but she’d obviously forgotten that I always bake for her on a Tuesday, and when she remembered she was all flustered and I’m sure there were tears in her eyes. Seems I’m not the only one to forget things! But anyway it will keep her going for a while and I told her not to let the others eat it all.

Now that’s over, I can spend a few minutes on my story, but I don’t know what to write. The thing is that my life continued and I got older, had more experiences, developed in many ways, but the Linda thing didn’t change. It was suspended, frozen in time, so pretty soon I was the same age as she had been when she disappeared. I was really doing quite well at work and Vic and I were steady, steady as a rock. We had a social life that was contented without being boring and everything at home was fine, so just how much time could I spend thinking about something that was receding further and further into the past? I know a year isn’t very long, or eighteen months, but it seemed a long time then. That Judy who had decided to say nothing, that Judy who had lied to the police, to her parents, to Linda’s mother – she seemed like a different version of myself. She was young; she was silly. She had done those things then but she couldn’t undo them, as she didn’t really exist any more. This doesn’t make a lot of sense when I read it back, but it was as if I had divorced myself from those events in the past in order to allow myself happiness in the present. I don’t know if that’s what happened, but that is what it looks like now.

Maybe if Vic hadn’t died so young, everything would have been different. I never would have found out anything else and I may have forgotten all about Linda by now. Maybe he’d be alive still and he’d look after me. But then everything else would be different, and I’d never have had Robin and Laura and Kelly and I’d never have met Barry. Poor Barry, he knew he was second best but he never complained and maybe he believed me in the end, that I did truly love him. When we found out, or at least when it became clear what was going to happen, I made a promise, a silent promise. I promised myself that I would make every last minute we had together as special as it could be, so he would know that it had all been worth it. There were times when I wanted to tell him about Andy, but actually that would have been selfish. That would have been me getting it off my conscience, not doing it for him, so I never did. He died thinking his only rival had been snuffed out before we met, even if his memory had lingered for a long time afterwards, and I’m sure that was for the best. Andy wasn’t a rival anyway, he was a little bit of the past who popped up in the present, but he was never going to stay.

So, as far as I was concerned, nothing much happened for a while. I’m sure that wasn’t the case for Linda’s poor mother, but she never came back to see me again and I guess she ran out of leads to follow. But then it happened. I can remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday and that is nothing to do with my condition. Those minutes, those days, are engraved, branded on my memory and rarely have more than a few weeks passed without them coming back to me in some way or another, for all these years. Or maybe it was months, as time went by, but never long enough for it to fade. Whatever happens to my brain in the future, however much I forget, I know I will never forget this.

I was at home when I got the call. I was actually a bit irritated, as he had said he’d probably be back in time to pop down to the pub and I had got changed. It was one of our routines, to meet up with Sally and Bob, Maggie and Den, anyone else who might be there. It was different to Saturdays, when we tended to do something less laid back, more organised, but it was like washing away the week at work. The weekend starts here, somebody used to say, and that was right. So, I was sitting in the lounge not watching whatever was on the TV. I hadn’t spent ages getting ready, but I had changed into jeans and repaired my make-up and I was in ‘going out mode’, so when 8 o’clock came and went, then half past, I was silently muttering to myself. It would have been better not to have said we’d go out, especially as it was so wet. Then I would have known I was staying in and it wouldn’t matter. Something like that.

My mum got up to answer the phone, so I never got to talk to Vic’s dad then. I don’t know when I spoke to him at all after that, to be honest, apart from maybe at the funeral and that is all a blur. He was a funny old stick, from a different generation and class to my own parents. I’d never got to know him, even though I was round at their house much more than Vic was at ours. He had a very formal way of talking to me and although Vic assured me that he liked me – they both did, he said – I had no direct evidence of that.