The Missing Person's Guide to Love (18 page)

Maggie sniffed and ran a damp hand over my cheek. ‘Why didn’t you come to me? I would have taken care of you. I didn’t know that you were in trouble. I would never have judged you.’

I was so tired I could hardly speak. I shook my head and tried to find my voice. ‘I didn’t have your address.’ I rubbed my nose like a small child. ‘I couldn’t ask anyone. I tried to find your house but I didn’t remember it clearly. I could see bits and pieces but only like a dream. I didn’t know where it was.’

‘Well. Well. You’re here now. Whatever you do, Isabel, don’t go back up north to your home. Were you going to?’

‘I thought about it. I wasn’t sure what to do.’

‘Well, don’t. I can’t tell you how important that is. You must stay here with me.’

Then Maggie turned and began to pace down the street. Her feet moved quickly and I was afraid she would run off to the horizon and disappear again. I scuttled to keep up but there was no energy in my legs and I wanted to fall flat on my face and sleep. She noticed and slowed down but seemed to find it hard to walk at my speed. The pavement was crowded but
somehow we steamed ahead, somehow missing the people coming towards us. As Maggie slowed, her speech became rapid to compensate and she hardly stopped for breath.

‘That bloody sister of mine told me you were travelling in Europe. France, she said, the liar. George and I were going to Paris and thought it would be fun to meet up with you so I asked for your phone number. You’ll meet George later. He’s my boyfriend and a wonderful man. But by then, apparently, you had moved to Spain. Spain, I ask you, and I believed it. She made up some daft story that you were picking fruit and studying the language. I never knew she had such an imagination. I never knew she
had
an imagination.’ Maggie tapped my arm. ‘I mean, that’s elaborate, isn’t it, for her?’

I could see her quite clearly, this other version of me, travelling around Europe, climbing ladders to pluck scarlet apples from trees and dropping them into wicker baskets. Or bunches of purple grapes from vines. And it might have been possible. It was so much likelier than what did happen that I wanted to believe it. I still do, and sometimes tell people that I spent a year picking fruit and travelling in France and Spain. I’m not lying exactly. It has been part of me for so long now that it has almost become true. It is one of my pasts, if not the one I know best.

‘How did you find out I hadn’t gone anywhere? I mean, I hadn’t gone—’

‘No postcards.’ Maggie began to go fast again. I hurried along, just a pace behind. ‘I went up to see your parents for the weekend and to catch up on the village gossip. Not a single
postcard on the walls or mantelpiece. I asked for your whereabouts but they wouldn’t tell me. Not that I could have guessed the truth in a million years. I was afraid you had a fatal illness and your mother was keeping you hidden in the attic. You know what she’s like.’

I didn’t know what Maggie meant by this but it was true that my mother liked to get her hands on invalids. She was a retired staff nurse and now, or at least the last time I’d seen her, did voluntary work with the sick and elderly. They tended to fear her. She liked to pray for them, they said. She prayed for them a bit too hard.

‘But I winkled it out of the neighbours, piece by piece. I put all the bits together and bingo. There you were, locked away in the dark. Sheila came clean and told me the whole thing, and about Owen going to prison too. We’ll get a cab straight to Hounslow, if that suits you.’

Maggie hailed a taxi. I climbed in after her and sank into the corner, looking out at the road, feeling safe and distant from the people and buildings I was leaving. The allotment shed was already part of another story. A couple of hours earlier I had been stuck in that life. Now I was in a new one.

‘Maggie, is it all right for me to stay with you for a little while?’

‘Yes, love. It’s not all right for you to stay anywhere else. I haven’t had time to get your room ready but I think it’s in a reasonable state.’

‘Thank you. It doesn’t matter what state it’s in.’

‘Perhaps at the weekend we could get some green paint and
decorate it for you. I know green is your favourite colour. The walls are white with a hint of apricot at the moment.’ Maggie looked at me in apology and patted my arm. ‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘That’s all right. I don’t mind white with a hint of apricot. It’s fine by me.’

For the rest of the journey it bothered me. I didn’t know that green was my favourite colour, or that I even had a favourite colour. I didn’t see how I could. It depended on what the thing was. I was as sure that it was as impossible to have a favourite colour as Maggie was certain that my favourite colour was green. Perhaps someone else liked green and Maggie had confused me with that person. No wonder she still loved me.

The taxi pulled up outside a terrace of Victorian houses, just like the one I had searched for. There was the parade of shops I remembered – still a hairdresser’s at the end – and there was the park. Someone had returned them to their places while my back was turned. I thought I saw a curtain twitch in the front bedroom of the house next door.

‘You won’t tell people, I mean the neighbours, about me, will you? I don’t want anyone to know what’s happened.’

‘You’re my niece who has come down from the north to try life in London for a little while. What could be wrong with that? Oh, by the way, I have a lodger. Don’t worry about her. You’ll get on fine.’

I stood behind Maggie on the step as she unlocked the door. I could hardly wait to get inside. She told me about her shop. It was a second-hand-book shop in Richmond. She always used
to say, ‘Rare and antiquarian, no tatty paperbacks. We sell to very reputable collectors, as well as ordinary readers on the street.’ She ran the shop with George. She said that I could work there for as long as I wanted. This would cover my rent and give me some spending money.

I climbed the stairs. The house smelled of perfume and polish and cinnamon. It smelled of people, of women. I stepped into my new bedroom. I had slept here before when I had visited with my parents. I was about fifteen then. Maggie had just moved in and it was exciting. My parents kept looking out of the windows to see the bright lights of London. They didn’t mind that it was Hounslow and not the West End.

The room was neat and tidy. Beside the bed were two books. I sat on the bed and looked at them.
Jane Eyre
and
Little Women.
I had read parts of
Jane Eyre
as a child but usually stopped when Jane left Lowood. After that Jane became an adult and, though I sometimes tried to read on, I found her love for Mr Rochester boring and couldn’t understand the point of it. Now I held the book in my hands and believed that perhaps I was ready to read the rest of the story. Perhaps I should like to read about love.

There was a washbasin in the corner with a round mirror above it and a vase of dried flowers on the window-sill. I slipped out of my shoes and put them in the corner. The cream carpet was soft under my socks. All this for me? I walked around the small room, one corner to the next, letting my feet sink into the carpet. Maggie knocked on the door. I waited for a moment, then realized I was supposed to open it. I had to force
my hand to turn the handle and I was still afraid as I pulled the door back.

Maggie beamed. On her arm was a pile of neatly folded pea-green towels. ‘Do you like it? You might want a bookcase, I suppose, or a desk, but I can get them if you need them. Have you looked out of the window? You’ve got a view of the park. See?’

Maggie drew back the curtains, gazed out with an expression of wonder, as if she had never seen the park before. My father and I had strolled through the horse-chestnut leaves on our way to the station at the other side, talking of autumn and cold weather. The memory came to me for the first time. I’d picked up a conker and put it into my pocket. I liked the feel of it and kept it there for the rest of the trip. I couldn’t see the park clearly now, just a gap where there was nothing else. I saw the string of lights along the road, the tops of houses, traffic-lights. I felt as if I ought to be able to walk into the park and find my younger self with my father, crunching through the leaves.

‘It’s lovely.’ I turned to the books. ‘Were you reading these?’

‘No, they’re Leila’s.’

I assumed Leila to be the lodger.

‘Will she want them back?’

Maggie seemed confused for a moment. Then she laughed. ‘Leila isn’t real. You must excuse me. I have a few imaginary friends.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Leila’s a character I’m writing about in my new novel. I
gave her this room and put some things inside so that I could get to know her better. She was very distant for a long time but eventually she came in. I know it sounds batty and it probably is, but it’s just like having a doll’s house, only life-sized. That’s why I chose a pale colour for the walls in here, even though it’s not to my taste. I thought it would suit Leila.’ Maggie fingered the doorframe thoughtfully. ‘A brighter colour would have frightened her.’

‘Has she gone now? I mean, is it all right for me to have this room?’ I’d had a few imaginary friends before I started primary school. My parents put it down to the fact that I was an only child and I always believed them. Now I wondered if the tendency might be hereditary.

‘Certainly. She just came here as a refugee – a bit like Bernadette and you – but soon grew tired of it so a few months ago I packed her off to New York. She became a journalist. She’s really blossomed and will soon be on her way to other countries. The room is all yours and you can do anything you like with it. Of course,’ Maggie nudged me with her elbow, ‘I’m not mad. You could have had the room even if she was still here.’

I imagined the spirit-like Leila sleeping in this pale room, twisting under the white sheet, in fear of bright colours.

‘My lodger is real, though. Her name’s Bernadette. You’ll meet her later on. She comes and goes but she won’t bother you. She’s homeless – well, she was until I persuaded her to move in for a little while. She was sleeping in the doorway of our shop for months. George or I would bring her breakfast or
a coffee but she didn’t have much to say for herself. Then we had a cold snap in winter and she got the most terrible cough. I’m not a soft touch. I wouldn’t let in anyone I found on the streets but I felt I already knew Bernadette quite well by then. Her story is very sad and, to tell the truth, Isabel, I can’t see it getting any happier.’

‘Does she have any friends or family?’

‘I suspect she does but she doesn’t want to talk about them. She has very specific problems that she can’t solve. No one can. I’d help her if I could but I can’t – not beyond giving her a room with a bed. She doesn’t stay every night, just two or three times a week. I have no idea where she goes on the other nights. To be honest, I’d never ask her, in case she told me. I’d rather remain in the dark. At least I know you’ll be no trouble.’

I sat on the bed, dizzy from Maggie and all these people coming and going. Maggie’s house was beginning to seem like an institution, like the places I had come from. Bernadette and Leila sounded like the Ugly Sisters. I was frightened of them both.

I smiled at her. ‘I really won’t be any trouble.’

On the mantelpiece in the front room there was an old photograph of my mother and Aunt Maggie as children, sitting on a wall eating ice-cream cones. Next to it was a picture of Maggie when she was about eighteen, tall and beautiful in a black ballgown. There were also postcards of cities, Venice, New York, and others I didn’t know, of domes and towers.

‘I’m going to have words with my sister about the way they’ve turned their backs on you. I shall call her now and tell her I’ve got you in my house.’

I grabbed Maggie’s arm. ‘Please don’t tell them I’m here. Did you tell them I was coming?’

‘Not yet. It was going to be a surprise. I thought I’d invite them down, and when they saw you again, they’d realize how stupid they’ve been. They’d be able to see you again but I’d be here to keep things safe.’

‘But they don’t want to see me. I don’t want to see them.’

‘Isabel, it’s not as simple as that. You don’t have to like them any more but we need to make sure your future is secure. You know, your parents have got quite a bit stashed away, in premium bonds and savings, and probably other pots of money I don’t know about. The house won’t be worth much but it will be something, and it’s your entitlement. I’ll be damned if you don’t get that when they go.’

Maggie clamped her jaw shut and her nostrils flared.

‘I don’t think I want their money. I’d rather find a job and earn my own. I can look after myself, or I will be able to when I’ve decided what I’m doing.’

‘You say that now but you won’t in a few years’ time when it turns out they’ve left it all to the donkeys on Bridlington beach. You might go to university one day, or have kids of your own, and they’ve got the money to pay for it, damn them.’

‘Please don’t invite them.’

I don’t know why I felt this so strongly, only that I did.
One day I might want to see them again, but not now. I was empty. I had nothing to show, nothing to give them. I didn’t want to go back to the town again or have anything to do with the people who lived there. If that included my own parents, it was too bad.

‘All right, Isabel. I’ve kept secrets before and I’ll do it again. You can always change your mind later. Why ever did you drop out of school and go on that slave-labour YOP scheme thing? You didn’t really want to work in a supermarket, did you?’

‘It’s YTS now. It’s a bit different.’ I didn’t know what the difference was. ‘I didn’t want to go to college. I didn’t pass many exams, anyway. The supermarket seemed like a safe place to be. A girl in my class had disappeared – you remember Julia – and things seemed very dangerous. I just wanted to be somewhere normal and safe.’

‘You can do better than that now. Wouldn’t you like to go to university and become a teacher?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What about some kind of catering course? You could end up with your own restaurant or hotel.’