The Missing Person's Guide to Love (26 page)

I think of my parents in a village in Scotland, for some reason in a brick bungalow. I see them playing bridge with friends of the same age. My father is laughing gently at a bad joke of my mother’s. She likes to pun, to play with words, and remarks that she is even better at Scrabble than she is at bridge. They pour drinks for their friends and offer snacks – nuts and chocolate – eager to please. A standard lamp casts a pool of white around the table. The bulb shines through a fringed, faded lampshade. I am filled with sadness. It ebbs and flows around my bones. Sometimes it rises up to my eyes and a little spills out. Then it passes.

I chopped tomatoes while Kath measured fistfuls of spaghetti into a pan of boiling water. ‘Things have changed round here, you know,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to go to the foreign-food section of the shop to buy spaghetti any more. We even have a Mexican restaurant.’

I said nothing but tipped the chunks of tomato into the frying-pan and stepped back as oil spat up at me.

Kath continued, ‘I couldn’t live anywhere else now. It’s a small place and I don’t know why I like being here, but I do. It’s having the house, I suppose.’

‘Your parents left it to you?’

‘And that’s why I love it. It’s completely mine. I don’t have to remember my memories, you see, because I’m among them. It’s only when I go away that I’m aware of what’s past and what’s present. Except for tonight, though. I never expected this. When an old friend you heard was dead walks through the door, glowing with health and youth, well—’

I dropped the knife into the sink. ‘Not again. Who told you I was dead?’ I turned on the tap and rinsed pink tomato juice from my fingers. ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘How did I die? It’s a bloody lie anyway.’

‘I can’t remember where I heard it. It was a rumour that went around years ago. It wasn’t very consistent. Once I heard that you died in prison and another time that it happened afterwards.’

‘You’re the third person who’s said that to me today. I don’t feel very good now. And, to be pedantic, it wasn’t prison.’

I leaned against the sink, unable to think what to say next. Kath stopped too. She perched on the back of a chair, reached out and rubbed my arm.

‘Sorry. I was never sure about anything I heard. Your parents left the village and that seemed to fit with the story, in a way. I didn’t like to say anything before. I thought I’d just assume that you were real and not a ghost or
doppelg
ä
nger.
It’s a bit eerie, though. The power ofgossip that it can make someone alive or dead.’

‘But where did it come from?’

‘I don’t remember, and I didn’t necessarily believe it at the time but it stayed in the back of my mind. Somehow it ended up as the truth.’

‘I suppose I spooked a few people at the funeral, then.’

‘Never mind that. People round here need shaking up once in a while.’ Kath opened a bottle of ruby-red wine, filled two glasses almost to the brim. ‘Cheers. To old friends.’ She held her glass up high.

‘Old friends.’ We clinked glasses. The wine was sweet and heavy. I savoured it. ‘So what did I die of?’

‘Oh. I can hardly remember what nonsense it was. It doesn’t matter.’

‘No, please. What was it?’

‘It was terribly vague. I – um . . .’

I could see that Kath was trying to come up with something acceptable, not too gruesome, nothing that would upset me. ‘What was it? I can take it. I’m not superstitious or oversensitive. Just curious.’

‘They said you committed suicide. The story was that you cut your wrists in prison – sorry, detention centre, whatever it was – and bled to death.’

‘Oh.’ The story must have come from Owen. Why would he have said that? What kind of revenge would it be?

‘But the other version was that you came out of prison and had nowhere to go because your family didn’t want you, and you took an overdose somewhere. In a field, I think. A field of flowers by a lake.’

‘That’s nice. No, that’s sweet, isn’t it? A field of poppies, maybe. I could have drifted off to sleep. Of the two I certainly prefer that one. Jesus Christ.’

‘Sorry, Izzie. Have I upset you? I shouldn’t have said anything. ’

‘No, no.’ I tried to laugh it off. ‘I almost believed it for a second there. It was like waking from a nightmare. What a relief that I’m alive. I suppose those things could have happened to me. They will have happened to someone, after all. If you look at it objectively, perhaps there’s no difference. I wonder if I’ll show up in the funeral photographs.’ I giggled.

‘Blimey, who took photographs? That’s a strange thing to do. Anyway, you’re here now.’ Kath sat down at the kitchen table. She nudged the other chair from under the table with her foot.

‘Yes, so it seems.’

‘And I’m so glad. I’m so glad to see you again. I can tell that life has been good to you in the end, after everything. Owen was never going to do as well as you. I tell you what, shall we do something together tomorrow? If you haven’t arranged to meet anyone else, we could go for a walk in the country, then find a pub for lunch. I’d like to spend a bit more time with you. When do you have to go back to Istanbul?’

‘I’m supposed to leave in the morning but do you know what? I applied for a job here today.’ I laughed again. ‘You won’t believe what came over me when I saw the new supermarket. I don’t know what I was thinking.’ I told her of my ten minutes in the supermarket and we laughed until our knees buckled, our sides hurt and we couldn’t breathe.

‘Do you really have to go back to Istanbul so soon?’ Kath wiped her eyes. ‘I can see lots of reasons why working at CostRight wouldn’t be the best thing for you to do – that beige uniform for one thing – but there are other jobs.’

‘I do, really.’ I realized we were not quite laughing at the same situation as I had neglected to tell Kath about John, Annie and our attempt to dig up the remains of Julia Smith. Should I explain? Not yet, but perhaps in the morning. ‘I suppose I could look into changing my ticket. I miss Mete and Elif so much, though. Oh, I don’t know. Let me think about it.’

We moved back into the living room to eat. We sat on the floor at the coffee-table and opened a second bottle of wine. Kath talked about her children, asked questions about my life in Istanbul. She wanted to know how I had ended up there but I couldn’t explain it well. It was late, I was tired, and I had forgotten the exact story.

‘I’d love to see more of you, Isabel. You haven’t changed, you know. You’re just the same. In fact, I have photographs somewhere. Shall we have a look at them?’

Kath opened a small cupboard in the corner of the room. Letters and loose photographs fell onto the floor. She flicked them to one side with her fingertips and rummaged around. Eventually she pulled out three or four thick albums, red and blue. We sat next to each other on the floor to see what was inside. The pictures lay under sticky plastic. Many pages had lost their stickiness and the photographs went lopsided as we flicked through.

‘Here’s the school trip to London. That’s the
Cutty Sark
.’

‘Oh, yes.’

A group of girls, familiar faces and hairstyles, stood in front of the ship. It was a flat, grey day. The water looked cold and the girls were drab in jeans and raincoats but they were trying to make the best of it, pulling faces at the camera.

‘Is that you there?’ Kath pointed to a girl at the end of the row whose face was not in focus.

‘I think it is, yes. I remember seeing the
Cutty Sark
but only vaguely. I don’t remember this picture being taken. The evidence says I was there, though.’

‘I don’t think Owen will be in any of these. I don’t seem to have been interested enough in the boys to have taken any pictures of them. But look, there s you and me on the bus.’

‘Is that Julia behind us?’

The back row of the bus was filled with boys, a whole heap of them, but in the centre was a girl. Her head was turned away and, again, Kath s camera shake had blurred the picture. The boys were just a lump of dark heads and blue legs. The girl was no more than a dark pony-tail, over a featureless face, and a white shirt.

‘It might be. I tend to forget about Julia. She comes back to me in the middle of the night sometimes, when I m feeling worried or depressed, or when I read bad stories in the newspapers. I always think of her in the science lab that time.’

‘Which time?’

‘Don’t you remember the day she tried to pierce her own ears? In chemistry with Mr Pilkington. It was hilarious. I fainted and there wasn’t even any blood.’ Kath shuddered. ‘Anyway, let me clear away the plates.’

She bumped her hip on the back of a chair as she left the room. I offered to help but she waved me away. She giggled again.

I did remember that day. It had been a disaster.

Julia showed up in the science lab one afternoon with a needle, a small silver stud earring, and an orange ice lolly wrapped up in a small towel. The classroom contained eight large square tables, each with gas taps, a big square sink, strange pockmarks and burns in the wood. Kath, Julia and I sat at a table in the back corner.

‘What are you doing with that?’ I asked. ‘You’re not going to eat it now? It’s going to melt.’

‘I know. That’s why I’ve got to do this quickly, when Mr Pilkington’s over with the boys.’

The boys in our class were riotous in all lessons but a particular pain in chemistry. Lab coats, safety goggles and Bunsen burners created a thrill they rarely found in other classes. Mr Pilkington would move from table to table trying to prevent fire, singed hair, broken test tubes, would try to stay on their good side by humouring their silliness and taking an interest in their jokes. The girls' side of the classroom was usually left to take care of itself, apart from the occasional perfunctory visit to see how our experiments were coming along.

‘Do what?’

Julia had heard that if you froze your ear-lobes with an ice cube, then stuck a needle in a flame for a few seconds, you could pierce your ears without pain or injury. There were no ice cubes to hand so she had been to the corner shop and bought the lolly. She wanted Kath or me to do the job. We winced and squealed at the very idea. Julia got angry. It was unfair, she snapped, because the rest of us had pierced ears but she couldn’t afford it. She called us cowards and said that we were pathetic and not her friends. She didn’t want to look like some virgin who had unpierced ears and still wore white knee socks. She was bare-legged that day, as always in the summer, but I understood what she meant. The ice lolly was beginning to drip from its paper packet so we had to hurry. I said I thought it would hurt and I couldn’t pierce her ears, but I agreed to hold up a hand mirror so that she could do it herself. Julia gave me a sarcastic ‘Oh, thank you so much.’ She grimaced and pressed the lolly against her right ear-lobe. A trickle of orange juice ran down her ear and neck onto the white collar of her school shirt. Kath and I watched, fascinated by Julia s stoicism, the unmoving scowl on her face. The ice turned slushy and crumbled over her fingers as she pressed it hard against her skin. Kath screwed up her face in horror and held the Bunsen burner forward so that Julia could put the needle into the flame with her free hand. When Julia thought her ear was cold enough and the needle hot enough, she took a deep breath and pushed the needle into her skin. It went through and stuck. She gasped in pain and fell forward to the table. Kath saw the needle sticking out, groaned, and fainted. She clonked her head on the table, then crumpled to the floor. Julia wouldn’t lift her head. Her dark hair spilled over the gas taps. She cradled her arms around her face and continued to gasp.

The rest of the class dropped their experiments to see what was happening. Stools crashed to the floor and a crowd formed. Mr Pilkington pushed through. Amid the fuss and chatter, his lab coat caught fire in the flame of our Bunsen burner. One of the boys put out the flame by banging it with a textbook until Mr Pilkington was shouting, ‘Yes, yes, you’ve put it out now, that’s quite enough thank you,’ and the boy moved away in a huff. ‘Sorry for saving your life.’ I stood beside Julia and tried to prise her hands and face from the table while Kath lay on the floor, a heavy white lump.

The school nurse removed the needle and disinfected Julia’s ear. Smelling-salts brought Kath round. Julia was embarrassed, afterwards, and threatened to punch the gob of anyone who mentioned the incident. I knew that she was furious with herself, not for trying it but for failing. A few weeks later she had her ears pierced by the local jeweller. She had the biggest gold hoops in the school. I think Owen paid for them.

Kath returned with coffee. When she had wriggled into position on the floor, we opened another album.

‘Here’s one of your aunt Maggie.’

Maggie, Kath, Julia and I were sitting on a large rock on the hills. Maggie had her arms around Kath and me. Julia was holding on to Kath. She was smiling but her knuckles were tight on Kath’s sleeve. Our hair blew to the right in coarse lumps. We looked like mermaids under water.

‘I don’t remember this. Who took it?’

‘Your mum did.’

‘Did she? I suppose it was one of those Sunday-afternoon walks when we all got together.’

‘I think it was. I remember your mum and Maggie arguing a lot. They didn’t get on very well, did they?’

‘Chalk and cheese. I think there was some love underneath it all – maybe still is – but Maggie was too wild and unconventional for my family. The funny thing is, I’m not sure she ever did anything particularly daring or outrageous. It was an image she cultivated. My parents were much more eccentric in their attempts to be the most normal people in the village. In fact, Maggie’s life has been steady. Her books are a bit spicy but not shocking. Quite sweet, if anything. You should see the bookshop in Richmond. It’s like going back in time fifty years or more.’

‘She had a special kind of charm, though. I remember looking up to her and thinking she was wonderful. Her house always smelled amazing. Did she burn incense or something? Whatever it was, it seemed exotic back then. And Maggie was a good listener too. I remember pouring out my troubles to her when I thought I was overweight. She listened, then gave me a box of some kind of herbal tea to take home. She also told me something I didn’t really understand, that I should look around, choose myself a thin girl and pretend I was her, do all the things that girl would do. It was probably good advice but I didn’t follow it. I just wanted someone to moan to. Maggie was a sort of village elder for girls.’