The Girl in the Red Coat (8 page)

My clothes feel mucky I’ve been wearing them so long. I sit on the big steps by the door and cry into my hands. But after a while of crying I tell myself that I’m turning into a cry baby, like the girl at school called Tara who I feel sorry for because she’s special needs and drips tears onto her desk all day so her desk’s wet by home time. I go quiet and listen to the birds singing. And then – even though I know it’s not possible, not possible at all – there’s something speaking in the air, and it’s my mum’s voice. And I know it’s only in my head but I hear it muttering round in the tops of the trees. At first, I can’t make out what the tree-voice is saying but then it sighs and I hear clear as a bell: ‘
Courage, Carmel. Courage.
’

And it calms me down and I know all of a sudden whatever’s going to happen I have to have hard bits of courage inside me to help. If I carry on crying every five minutes I’m going to get weaker and weaker until I turn into a lump of soggy tissues scrunched up with snot and tears.

I make a decision. I know workhouses are places no one ever wants to go so I decide I’m only going to think of it as a castle from now on.

I ask about Mum and they say: not long now.

DAY 3

When the policewoman said, ‘I’m so sorry, I have a problem with childcare,’ I could see she instantly regretted her words by the way her incisor bit into her full bottom lip, staining it deep pink. Two policewomen – family liaison officers – shared looking after me in shifts. I felt more at ease with Sophie – she was clever and sweet-faced. I never felt under investigation with her, like I did with the other one.

‘I’m so sorry. I should never have said that, of course I shouldn’t.’ Sophie bit her pretty lip again. ‘It’s the childminder – something about her husband being taken to hospital. I don’t know what to do …’

She had the anxious, intent look of a parent needing to be in another place.

‘It’s fine. Please, don’t worry about talking about your family, it feels normal – nice. Go, you go. I’ll be fine for five minutes.’

I was exhausted and quiet for the moment. The next shift were a little late – the police car would be nosing through the country lanes as we spoke, pollen softly falling on its bonnet from the plants in the hedgerow. A television appeal was being organised for that day. It made me feel better when I had something practical to think about.

Then I was alone. I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of
coffee. The house became very still and soft and I felt it was holding its breath, watching me, waiting to see what would happen next. I tried to drink my coffee. ‘You must drink,’ Sophie had said yesterday. ‘You must eat. You have to keep yourself
alive
.’

While I drank I made wild plans of what I’d do on her return – I’d seal up every crack in the house. I’d bring in workmen to build a gate that locked with a golden chain as thick as my wrist. I’d mix mortar in a bucket and drag stones back from the fields to lay on top of the garden wall until it reached the rooftop. Never again, I’d declare, as I worked through the night, never again will that be allowed to happen.

I’d been looking for a patch of bright red since the day she’d gone so when in my side vision a sudden flash of it slid through these crazy imaginings and past the fence outside my teeth started chattering on the cup.

As I flew to the window I spilled my coffee on the table and it splashed across the newspapers onto Carmel’s black-and-white face.

But when I looked out it was just Paul coming up the path. Through the front picket fence I could see his car parked on the road – the red through the window as he’d driven past. We hadn’t spoken since Carmel had vanished. Once, my heart would have leapt at the sight of him, even after he’d left me. Now, it throbbed painfully with adrenaline and disappointment.

His walk, everything was different about him – strangely both stumbling and purposeful. From a distance I don’t think I would have recognised him. I answered his hammering on the door and he stood there – arms hanging by
his sides. He pushed past me and we stood for a second, looking wordlessly at each other.

He went and sat on the sofa. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said, not looking at me. ‘I need to know from beginning to end. Exactly. What. Happened.’

So I did, as best I could.

‘You lost her.’

‘Yes, yes I did, Paul. It was foggy and – yes, Paul, yes, I lost her. And now, now I don’t know where she is.’

Again, like on The Day It Happened I got the sense of the ground opening up and releasing something that should have stayed compressed: the smell of mud; a deadly mustard gas seeping about the room. Our pain had a colour and a smell, it shimmered dark yellow in the morning light around our feet.

‘I’ve been questioned. They thought it might be me.’ He was angry now, like men are when there’s no action to be taken.

‘Paul, they have to do that. It’s just procedure. You must understand. I’ve been questioned too. Oh God, I’m glad to see you.’

He cut across me. ‘You lost her.’ Then: ‘It’s your fault. It’s all your fault.’ That cold chaotic stare again.

‘Paul, how can you say that? How can you be so cruel? When you haven’t even been near us for an age.’

He stood up. ‘How could I come here? It wasn’t good for her.’ He was shouting now. ‘Not with you, you looking at me so tight-lipped and hating. Children pick up on things you know – she did. She always got these marks under her eyes when I came round, dark circles. It was the stress of it. Oh, what’s the point?’ He made for the door.

‘Are you going already? Paul, please don’t leave.’ I was whimpering almost. ‘Please don’t leave me with this. She belongs to both of us.’

‘I have to.’ He pulled his palm across his eyes like he was trying to rub it all away. ‘I just … just can’t stand this. You don’t realise.’

‘But Paul, we have to stick together.’

‘No, you don’t understand.’

‘Forget about before, everything. None of it matters. Let’s concentrate on getting her back, Paul.’

‘No,’ he shouted. ‘I just can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.’ He spoke one word at a time again. ‘I. Just. Can’t. Stand. This.’

Then, without warning, he pushed me against the wall. He pushed me so hard I was pinned, my feet lifted off the ground. I looked over his shoulder through the window and saw the police car had arrived. They hadn’t got out – maybe they were talking into their mobile phones or had seen Paul’s car and decided to give us a moment alone.

‘Paul, what are you doing?’ I was having trouble breathing, his body was pressing on me so hard.

He didn’t answer. I closed my eyes and hung there. In some funny way I felt that’s how I wanted to stay – suspended forever, my feet pointing into nothingness. His head turned and for a moment I thought he was about to kiss me, but he pushed harder so his hips ground into me and his shoulder stuck into my collarbone. His breath felt hot on my neck and I could hear him making little strange noises, groaning.

When he released me I fell forwards onto my knees on the floor. Without looking back he strode across the room, and in a second he was gone, the door slamming behind him in the wind.

Then I was alone, on my hands and knees, the sound of the slam echoing around the room. I heard the noise of Paul’s car starting up and roaring away and I realised what he’d been doing. He’d been pushing as much of his grief into me as possible, to see if he could try and drive away without it – I could feel it, rooting inside and making itself at home.

But I could only feel sorry for him. Because I knew how it’d be chasing, speeding along behind until it caught him up, flying in through the window and surrounding him, like a swarm of bees. I sent my missive winging after him too, from there on the floor: ‘Don’t blame me, Paul. If nothing else, please don’t blame me.’

DAY 3

I sat hunched in front of the TV watching me and Paul making the appeal on the evening news, bright lights shining in our faces.

‘You both did well.’ Maria – the other police liaison officer – was with me.

‘Did we?’ To me, we looked like a pair of broken birds, folded into ourselves, our voices faltering and tiny. Paul had said under his breath, ‘Sorry about this morning,’ to me before we began. ‘Don’t worry,’ I’d whispered back, ‘I’m just glad we’re doing this together.’

Now it was over I was becoming pent up, desperate. Maria seemed harder, spikier than Sophie. Her presence was acute and watchful and I felt like she was studying me for clues. Even though she wore plain clothes, the smell of uniform hung about her neat black suit and white shirt. She was reading notes, quietly. Her hair, cut in a businesslike brown bob, fell in two curves across her cheeks and the ends pointed their sharp tips to each corner of her mouth.

It was unfair, really, she’d done nothing wrong, but that evening she was becoming the target of my fear and wild anger: something in the professionalism of her manner, the sense that this was a job for her. I imagined her steadily climbing the career ladder: being involved in such a case
would be a bright feather in her cap to put on her CV.

I switched off the television and paced and then dropped on a kitchen chair, another attack of the shaking that I seemed incapable of stopping rocking the chair beneath me.

‘I can’t sit here,’ I said to her at last. ‘Let’s go out in the police car and look.’

She put down her notes neatly on her lap. ‘Honestly, Beth, hard work is being done right now. All we can do is wait.’

‘Wait for what?’ I started pacing up and down the kitchen again.

‘They’re having a meeting now, as we speak. Be assured, Beth, everything is being done that can be. You’d be better off having a bath, or something to eat. What have you eaten today?’

Her retreat into platitudes felt learned and I ignored her question. ‘What kind of meeting?’

‘A strategy meeting. To plan out the way ahead.’ I could tell she was picking her words carefully.

‘Then why the fuck am I not there to hear about it?’ I shouted, the words exploding out of my body.

She drew the ends of her hair back with her fingers and tucked them behind each ear.

‘It wouldn’t be the right thing, really, Beth. It would complicate things to have the family involved. It makes things … harder. You have to trust me on this, Beth.’ I knew instinctively she’d learnt to intone my first name like this on some course or other.

‘I’m her mother. What does that mean? Does that mean nothing?’ I was yelling now, the words flaming from my mouth – a dragon mother.

But she only sighed and my anger fizzled away so I went
to the front door and wrenched it open. From my cardigan pocket I took out the pouch of tobacco that I’d asked Sophie to bring and started rolling a cigarette. Around the front door were littered the flat butts of rollies I’d smoked and then extinguished with my heel. I’d gone back to tobacco with one swift and easy motion and it had welcomed me, through its smoky lips:
where have you been, away so long? I’ve missed you.

Was the weather mocking me that week? What I wanted was hailstones burning the ground, gales that tore down trees, lightning that cracked open the sky. A sign from who knows what that something unnatural had been done. Instead it was the most perfect evening. The fields rolled away from me, shining in the light. The air was the colour of a golden peach. The leaves had opened their tiny fists on the beech tree. The lowering sun arched through the branches of the trees and new life seemed to lie just beneath the skin of the earth, impatient and muttering.

Soft footfalls behind me and I could hear Maria’s breath.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, quietly. ‘I don’t have children of my own. I had to have my bits taken away years ago. So you see, I can’t imagine how hard this is for you. I don’t want to pretend to.’ It occurred to me that she must be going against the grain telling me such personal things and they probably weren’t supposed to divulge private details.

‘No, I’m sorry … I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘Sorry for swearing at you. I know you’re only here to help and I swore at you. That’s awful.’

‘Oh, fuck that,’ she said. And I smiled at that.

Everything was quiet and still. The smoke from my cigarette curled upwards and filtered through the branches of
the tree, rising up and dancing away into the air. I imagined it flying as spirit matter across the fields. Carrying cells from my lungs: tiny curled, coded messages intended to strike fear into whoever had taken her –
war. You’ve started a war.

I could feel Maria’s breath on my shoulder. ‘I want you to know when you have certain thoughts, thoughts you must be having …’ She trailed off.

I didn’t turn round. The sun slipped down a fraction and I stayed unmoving.

‘Thoughts you can’t bear,’ she continued. ‘Then, this is what you have to do.’ Her voice was soft and low behind me.

‘This is important. You have to see it in your mind as a place that you can’t go. A path you can’t go up, or a door you can’t enter – are you listening, Beth? Can you hear me?’

Without looking round I nodded and her quiet voice went on – an urgent tone behind me. ‘You must see it in your mind with a big No Entry sign. Or with a gate you won’t climb over. You must think of every detail.’

I pictured it. I saw a gravel path edged with weeds. It curved a little. At the end was a tiny house with ivy covering the windows. The door was bolted and a plank of wood was crudely nailed across it. Halfway up the path a snake lay, the rope of its body blocking my way. The creature was lightly dozing but had one primitive eye cocked at me beneath its lid, ready to wake if I took another step.

‘Can you see it now, Beth? You see that place in your head, and you must promise never, never to go there. It’s not for you, it’s not a place you’re allowed. Do you have it now?’

And I said, ‘Yes. Yes, I can see it.’

I stayed there for a long time, smoking one cigarette after another. I could hear Maria behind me, folding up the newspapers on the table, clearing space. Then quietly laying out plates and cutlery.

I turned and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. This is how life must be from now on, I thought. I decide on the next action I need to perform and do it. Step, step, step to the kitchen sink. Bend down, open the cupboard door, take out the dustpan and brush. Back to the front door. Crouch down. Sweep, sweep, sweep. The front step, be careful not to miss under the stone lip. Sweep, sweep, sweep until it’s clear.