The Missing Person's Guide to Love (13 page)

‘I only need to stay one night. Just a day to say goodbye to my friend, and then a night to get used to it all.’

‘Are you sure this isn’t because of Bernadette?’

‘What do you mean?’

Mete watched the hat man for a few seconds, then flicked his eyes back to me. ‘You’ve seen Bernadette and you’re homesick. You want to visit your town, maybe live there again.
I understand it, if it’s true. You don’t have to make up a story about someone dying. We just have to talk about it.’

‘Mete, I’m not lying.’ I must have shouted this for other diners looked across. Mete blushed. ‘It has nothing to do with Bernadette and I wouldn’t make up something like that. For God’s sake.’

I was astonished that Mete had invented such a sophisticated scenario, so quickly, and yet it was so far from the truth.

‘All right. All right. I’m sorry. Don’t get angry. How’s your food?’

‘It’s fine.’ The bread was hardening around the edges. I could never eat it fast enough. I frowned and drank a mouthful of salty
ayran
.

He has never been here, to the moors. Though we have had holidays in London together, he has never been north, hardly met anyone from my life before I knew him, just Maggie and a few London friends. He doesn’t know much about me and he doesn’t seem to mind, though he doesn’t know how little he knows.

On the way home, he apologized.

‘I feel bad, Isabel, because you’ve met everyone in my family. You’ve done so much to help us, looking after the shop with me when you could be doing something more exciting. I wish I could know your family, see where you were born.’

‘We can go for a week or two later in the year, maybe even at Christmas.’

I said this knowing that, even by Christmas, it was unlikely that I could stand to take Mete back there.

‘What about your parents? Why don’t you even know where they are?’

‘I lost them.’

‘What does that mean? You always say it but I don’t under?stand. Did they die?’

‘No, I’m sure they’re alive. They moved somewhere and didn’t tell me where.’

‘But why not? That’s terrible.’

‘We’ve been through it before, Mete. I get tired of talking about it. They just forgot and that’s all there is to it.’

‘I’d like to meet them and tell them what I think. Anyway, you’re right. We don’t have the money right now. I’ll miss you, though, when you’re there. Even one night.’

‘Just one night. We’ll sleep through it.’

‘I won’t.’

Mete sometimes says things like that, as if to tell me that he is determined to love me more than I love him, or that he doesn’t believe that I can love him quite as much as he loves me. He commented once that I didn’t carry photographs of him around in my wallet. I put a picture in to please him and then he complained that I had only one while he had several of me. There was Isabel on the beach, Isabel smiling in front of the Blue Mosque, Isabel holding a baby, a cat, a bag of apples, an ice-cream. Isabel and Mete dancing together at a party. I understand why Mete likes them but I have never bothered much with photographs. I know what Mete looks like but I
have never found a picture that shows the face I love and keep safe in my mind.

‘Was he a good friend once?’

I tried to think of Owen as a good friend, as I try now. It wasn’t right. It was the word ‘friend’ that rang out of tune. Owen was more an estranged brother to me.

‘I hadn’t seen him since about 1985 but we were quite close before then.’

‘I’m sorry.’

I put my hand on Mete’s face, his cheek, and then his chin. I pressed it hard and kissed him. A passing car tooted its horn and young men’s voices called out. The words were lost in the wind.

‘Fuck off them,’ Mete mumbled, into my mouth.

‘Yeah. Fuck off them all.’

I’m still not sure how he will react when I tell him everything. He is a generous person, open-minded and warm. At the same time, he can be quick to judge and is worried by anything that might not be respectable. He reads the newspaper aloud, speak?ing harshly of all criminals. Once he told me to keep away from a certain customer who, Mete claimed, had been held in a military prison. We did not know what the man’s crime was – even that there had been a crime – but the mere fact that he might once have been in prison made him too dangerous for me to speak to.

And now my visit is not only for one night, after all. I
wonder what he thought when my message appeared. He knows that there is no danger of my staying here, but he will be confused. It occurs to me that perhaps Bernadette is not there at all and he has mentioned her simply to make me feel insecure too. I remind myself that he said Leila and not Bernadette. Leila does not exist so either he is wrong or he is making the whole thing up. Mete has heard me say Leila’s name in the past when I tried to explain my life at Maggie’s house and the strange, imaginary friend I had acquired. He may have thought she was real. If he is lonely and wants to make me miss him more, I can forgive him that.

So we agreed that he would stay in Istanbul. We left the main road and walked through the park. The dark had lost its sharpness and now seemed blurred. We held each other tight as we passed under vague shapes of trees and along a stretch of grass we could not see but where stray cats prowled and sometimes screeched. We hardly breathed until we stepped out onto the pavement at the other side. Apartment blocks, cars, road signs slipped into place, clear and solid.

We went to Emine and Ahmet’s place to collect Elif. They live in a small apartment on the edge of Yesilköy. It’s a narrow street where cars seldom go and children play late into the evenings. There are usually a few, boys and girls together, kicking a ball around. The apartment is on the fifth floor and that evening the lift was broken. We climbed the stairs in silence, apart from our breathing, which grew louder with each
flight. The light in the stairwell didn’t work properly. It would stay on for a couple of seconds but not long enough to reach the switch on the next floor so we were in and out of darkness all the way up to the top.

Mete called through the letterbox and Emine came to greet us. Lights were on in every room and the place seemed cheerful. We slipped off our shoes in the hall and stepped from the mat into the thick carpet. Mete kissed Emine’s hand, pressed it to his forehead, then I did the same.

‘How is Ahmet?’ I asked.

‘He’s sleeping now. He’s not in pain today. Tomorrow the doctor will come and tell us if he needs to go back to hospital.’

We followed her into the living room. Elif was on the floor, building a tower with red blocks. Emine offered us tea and sweets, but we both saw how tired she was, the watery pinkness of her eyes and the loose wrinkled skin around them. We exchanged glances, never sure whether it was better to stay and keep her company or leave her to rest. Elif hurtled at me like a rolling ball, shrieking about an
aaba
she had seen in the street. An
aaba
was a car, her pronunciation of the Turkish
araba
. I picked her up to cuddle her.

Emine laughed and explained that a car had got trapped in the street by a lorry that couldn’t turn round. They had watched from the window, then Elif decided she wanted to go down to see so they had sat on the step of the apartment building until the problem was solved. Emine chuckled to herself, but I knew that Elif had worn her out and we should leave. Mete and I exchanged a glance. I sat Elif on my hip. Mete leaned in heavily
to kiss her and the three of us stumbled and bumped against the wall. Elif laughed and Mete did a clown fall, backwards onto the sofa. I squeezed his toe and joked about his clumsiness. Behind us somewhere, Emine fussed around, making sure we had all Elif’s bits and pieces, the stuffed blue horse she will not sleep without.

‘
Iyi geceler
,’ we said to Emine as she kissed us. Goodnight.

‘
Iyi geceler
.
Güle güle
.’ Go with a smile.

I climbed naked into bed. The white sheets were cold and I shivered. Mete took off his shirt, then leaned over, pushed back my hair and gently removed my earrings with his index finger and thumb. He stroked my neck at each side as he did so, kissed the skin beneath my ears. My head tilted into his hand. He ran his fingers through my hair to straighten it, placed the earrings together on the bedside table. Beads of pink quartz glinted in the weak street light. I unbuckled his belt and undid his jeans. He slipped them down and stepped out of them.

‘Tell me about this boy who died. Was he your boyfriend?’

I sat behind him, began to massage his spine. I placed my fingertips on the sore part of his back, so light that he could hardly feel my touch. I thought of Owen and how he was not my boyfriend. I didn’t have boyfriends then. The intensity of my friendship with Owen might have made it impossible. I don’t remember caring much about boys, unless they were in films or magazines, certainly not the ones I knew. Until at least the age of fifteen I had thought that real boys were dirty and
should not come too close. Perhaps at the back of my mind I had a sense of what Julia might have suffered but I cannot be sure of this.

I pressed my chin into Mete’s shoulder, wrapped my legs around his. He scratched his leg then rested his hand on my thigh. ‘No. No. Just a boy in my class. We stayed friends after school because a lot of other people left the town. We were bored for a while and used to hang around together. We both thought we would get away one day, see the world, whatever we thought the world was. We just weren’t quite ready at the time. I thought we had lots in common but we didn’t really, hardly anything.’

I gave his shoulders gentle squeezes, moved my fingers and thumbs down towards his elbows pinching skin and muscle all the way. Tiny pimples turned pink, then brown.

‘But you must have been close. You’re going to his funeral.’

‘It’s not him so much, Mete, as the time he comes from. I want to say goodbye to him but to all of that as well. I just want to touch it again, then let go. Is that better?’

‘Much. Thank you. Shall I do you now?’

‘No. Lie beside me.’

‘Mm.’ Mete pulled the sheet up under his arms and wriggled to get comfortable. ‘He was lucky to have you as a friend. I didn’t know any girls as nice as you when I was at school.’

I laughed. ‘I don’t know that I was very nice.’

‘I think you were. What was your friend’s name again?’

‘Owen.’

‘Owen. I’ve never heard it before. Owen was in love with you even if you didn’t love him. I’m sure of it.’

‘How can you possibly know that?’

‘Of course he was. Of course he loved you.’

Mete was trying to hide the wobble in his voice by smiling as he spoke but he was not succeeding. He was jealous.

‘Come on, pilot. We’re wasting time. Elif s asleep.’ I turned onto my side facing Mete, put one knee over his leg and tucked the other one under. I kissed the delicate skin just outside his eye. A few tiny black hairs straggled away from his eyebrow. I smoothed them with my finger and kissed him again.

‘Is there a mosquito in the bed?’ He opened one eye, wide and round. A comedy expression.

‘Mm-hm.’

The words of Maggie’s email flickered behind my eyes.
Owen was killed in an accident on Wednesday. Were you still in touch with him?
I sat up, kicked the covers from the bed to the floor. Mete stared at me.

My feet are icy. I pull the coat and bedclothes tighter around my body. My phone drops to the floor and I notice that I have a new message. I didn’t hear it arrive.

She just wanted to meet you. It’s no problem.

She can stay another night if OK with you.

I try to see what time the message came but, by mistake, I erase it. I massage my toes for a while and listen to the leftover rain dripping outside, from trees and the roof of the garage.
Fine. If Bernadette wants to stay another night, why should she not? It makes no difference to me. The sofa in our flat is comfortable enough, even for someone of her size, and there won’t be a queue for the bathroom. Elif will have to sleep in the bedroom with Mete but he has probably put her there already since I am away. Bernadette is welcome to make herself at home.

I draw small spirals on the page with my pen. They turn into snail shells, then hats on the heads of sinister-looking old ladies who grow dresses and walking-sticks. I cover a whole page with these stupid pictures. Oh, for fuck’s sake, Isabel.
Write
it.

Owen and I had arranged to meet at three o’clock in the morning. I knew that the action about to unfold had been precipitated by me and that what happened would change everything. I did not understand how but I knew that I was about to bring the world down from its suspended state and get it moving again. When we had taken the boat back, we both went home. I watched television, a gardening programme about roses, with my parents. I tried to read and picked up several novels but could not concentrate so went to my room, sat on the bed with the window ajar and watched the sky darken. My parents went to bed at ten or eleven. I usually listened to music and went later. That night I put my headphones on and played music until about one. Then I fell asleep. I woke with a start at half past two and got dressed in old clothes that I knew I would
have to throw away, jeans and a cotton jumper, worn-out trainers. It was like getting ready to go on a trip or holiday. I wasn’t scared, not at all.

It was a fifteen-minute walk from my house to the super?market but I passed no one. It had been a mild day but now I could see my breath in front of my face. I could smell trees and soil exhaling softly in the darkness. Owen was already there, a crouching figure in the corner of the car park, knees hunched, almost out of sight but for the firefly glow of his cigarette. We didn’t speak but I padded over in my trainers and joined him. He gave me a Silk Cut and a lighter. We sat in the delivery bay with our backs against the door and smoked in silence. There were bread crates in a tower in front of us. The sky was clear. There were few streetlights and the stars were bright.

‘You can see all the constellations tonight,’ Owen said, and stretched out his legs. His voice was deep and muffled, as though his mouth and throat were stuffed with cotton wool. ‘Look at them.’