The Missing Person's Guide to Love (3 page)

I hadn’t been inside the church since my childhood. Soon Owen’s body would be lying just a couple of metres away from where he had stood, and knelt, more than two decades ago. I swallowed hard, took big breaths of cold air and let them out slowly. I could not afford to be squeamish now. I had to keep a clear head so that I could observe and understand. When I felt steady, I forced myself to picture both the coffin and the choir stalls again. I needed to measure and understand the space in between.

Then I closed the window and pulled back the bedcovers to check for spiders, mice or monsters, a tic from childhood that I have never shaken off There was just a sheet, blue and bobbled. Its roughness under my fingertips made me wince. A key went into the lock of the room next door and the wall shook. Voices came through, both male.
If we’d come up the M1 we wouldn’t have got stuck and had to take the M6. It probably added half an hour to the journey, if not a whole hour, and we wouldn’t have had to eat at that place. I’ll choose the bloody route tomorrow.
The walls were just flimsy partitions. Strangers would be opening and closing doors to the other rooms and I would miss Mete all night. Doreen Fatebene was moving around downstairs, clattering crockery in the kitchen. I listened to her, feeling both irritated and ashamed that I was staying in a strange hotel in my own hometown. Surely, I thought, there should be a friend’s house, some old haunt where I am one of the family and there is a bed or sofa that is as good as mine. There should be a place where I slip through the back gate and tap on the kitchen window to be welcomed in, where someone knows me and we share a meal together, at least. There should be something better than this.

If this were the house I’d grown up in, I would be in a corner of the spare bedroom now. The wall between this room and the next was more or less where their bed started. I wondered who would be living in my parents' old house now. They may both have had their own funerals, for all I know. They left the area some years ago and gave no forwarding address. I suppose that if they had died, someone would have had to tell me, but I can imagine Aunt Maggie not quite getting round to the job, not wanting me to know if she thought it would upset me, or interfere with some plan she had of how I ought to be feeling. Maggie would say,
Goodness, Isabel. Surely I told you that. You must be in denial.
But I am sure they are alive, somewhere, and one day we may even see each other again.

I put the kettle on and dropped a teabag into a mug on the floor. I kicked my shoes into a corner and spread out my clothes on the bed. I had brought a couple of black tops, black trousers and a black skirt, but I didn’t know which to choose. I hadn’t been to a funeral since I was a child. Did people still wear black to funerals, these days, or were you supposed to wear what you felt comfortable in, or what the deceased would have liked? I had no idea what Owen would have thought about this. My only aim was to be inconspicuous.

The kettle boiled and clicked. I made the tea and sat on the floor by the bed. When I let Owen’s face into my mind, his deep, narrow eyes and shy, freckly frown, I didn’t have any sense that he was dead. I believed he was still somewhere in the world, living his life with people I didn’t know and couldn’t see. ‘Sorry, Owen,’ I said aloud. ‘I’m thinking of you. I’m trying to think of you.’ I had a letter in my rucksack, one that Owen had sent to me fourteen or fifteen years ago. Most of the letters made no sense. They were strange expressions of rage directed at no one except, possibly, himself and sometimes me. I threw them away, half knowing, even then, that I would want to see them again. But there was a letter that referred, briefly, to Julia and I had kept that one. I had brought it with me in case it helped. I did not need to unfold the soft, yellowing scrap to remind myself of what Owen had written.

You accused Mr McCreadie of hurting Julia but that was wrong. He never did it. Julia did it to herself and made her body disappear, maybe with somebody’s help. Maybe with God’s help. It was what she wanted. I’ve thought about it and I understand. She didn’t want to be alive any more. No one could have murdered her because she wanted to die.

I fell onto the bed, lay on my back and thought, in spite of the swirling blue butterflies on the bedspread and the breeze through the window, how it resembled a cell. The walls and ceiling were just a little too close to me. The thought was followed by dark clouds gathering, a sick sense of travelling backwards and downwards, a weight on my chest. I had to stop myself falling so far that I would never come up again. I shut my eyes tight and let the clouds move around above a picture of the reservoir. I rose up, as if to the water’s surface, and there, around me, were the boats, bobbing in the sun. I dreamed myself into the nearest one, lay in the warmth and let the water’s ripples rock me.

I thought I might clear my head by working for twenty minutes or so on an article I was writing for an English magazine in Istanbul. I took out my laptop and began to type. It is part of a series called ‘Millennium People’. Every month I’ve been writing a profile of a foreigner who lives in Istanbul and will be there in December for the millennial celebrations. The editor of the magazine is Turkish and his original idea was that I should write pieces in which foreigners told of their great happiness since giving up their lives in other countries for the sun, the friendliness and the good food of Turkey. To the editor, it was obvious. In practice I have found that it is never quite so simple: though these elements may be relevant, there are often secrets and darker stories underneath.

Accordingly, I have moved away from the brief somewhat, and he has not complained. This month I interviewed a cosmetic surgeon from New York who came to Istanbul to take up painting. She had made a fortune from her work so had an income to finance her new studio. She talked for a while of downsizing, of taking a break in life, but soon I asked her about the deep scars across her face. They were the result of a car crash, she told me, and would be so easy to fix with cosmetic surgery that she couldn’t be bothered to get it done. She had come to like them. ‘I lost my appetite for chopping up human faces. I want to see them as they are. I wish I could have my old skin back, the sagging one, but since I can’t, I’m fortunate to have these scars.’ She lived in a large apartment looking out over the Bosphorus and painted nothing but the faces of strangers, mostly women. I tapped this into my computer. I had taken photos of some of her paintings but had left them in Istanbul. I forgot where I was and, for a second, thought I could stand up, go into the next room and find them.

Just on the other side of the partition, a man began to cough. I switched on the television to disguise the noise. There was some interference and then an attractive young woman’s head appeared on the screen, talking with great enthusiasm about a broken-down bus near Wakefield. I liked the sound of her voice and left it on in the background, but found I couldn’t concentrate on the article. I saved what I had written and switched off the computer.

But what was I supposed to do? How should I go about solving the mystery of Julia’s disappearance? How does one investigate secrets when one is neither invisible nor anonymous? Talking, I guessed, as always. I had not brought my tape-recorder or my camera. I didn’t know whom I should approach. I had to make a list. There must be people who could help me and some of them would still live here.

The first was Kath. I knew from Maggie that Kath lived in her parents' old house, passed on to her when her father died and her mother moved into a nursing-home. She was my best friend but I never saw her after I was taken away from the village. I had no idea whether she would want to talk to me now. If she was not at the funeral I would knock on her door later, see if she would let me in. What could she help me with? We would talk together of the days around Julia’s disappearance. We’d put it together one more time. We both saw her at school. We knew about her love letters to the soldier in the Falklands, and we had watched as she dropped her dull boyfriend, Owen Carr. I had never had time to tell Kath of my suspicions about Mr McCreadie, my boss, I went away too soon afterwards, but I could tell her now and perhaps it would jog something in her memory.

The next was Mr McCreadie himself, manager of the supermarket. He must have retired by now. I had no idea if he still lived in the area but he had been a public figure so someone would know. He might have died, of course. If he was still alive, he would be old. Apart from Owen, he was my only suspect.

There was Aunt Maggie – if she showed up – for, though she hardly knew Julia, she knew Owen’s mother well and may have picked up pieces of information about Owen.

Who else? Owen’s immediate family would be able to tell me things, though they might not want to. I would have to tease very carefully to find out what kind of life he had lived since I last saw him. I knew that he had an older sister. He must also have had other relatives and friends.

There was Julia’s family, but her parents had moved away a few years after Julia disappeared. Maggie told me that after staying at home every day, not having a holiday in case Julia turned up looking for them, they had decided to set themselves free and start afresh in another town, I forget where.

It was not much of a list but this did not bother me. At the funeral I would see a lot of people from the old days, friends from school, people who lived locally, worked in the shops, taught at one of the schools. It is a small community and someone would be able to help. Julia would not have been forgotten. If the older generation had never wanted to talk about it, mine would be different.

I sat up on the bedspread, drew my knees to my chest, sipped hot tea and pulled apart a soft custard cream from a complimentary packet of two. I scraped the filling from the biscuit with my teeth and savoured the synthetic sweetness. I rocked slightly, side to side, as I often find myself doing when I’m in the foetal position. I hadn’t eaten all day. I had almost missed my flight from Istanbul and then the bus from Victoria coach station, so there was no time to change money. There would be food after the funeral, of course, if only I had the courage to attend. What would Owen’s mother say if she saw me? The last time we had met was in a crowded market-place. She was screaming at me. Her son’s funeral was hardly the occasion for reconciliation, not that I wanted to be her friend. If I could just sneak into the back of the church and not be recognized, it would be all right.

A knock on my door. I opened it to find Doreen Fatebene with an armful of dark brown towels. ‘Not sure I remembered to put towels on your bed before.’ She gave them to me.

‘Thanks very much.’

‘Funeral at St Peter’s, is it?’

The woman on television was still talking. I picked up the remote control and turned it off. ‘Yes, it’s later this afternoon.’ Then I realized she wanted more. ‘His name was Owen Carr. I was at school with him.’

‘Didn’t know him. He’ll have been young, then.’

‘Yeah. It was a road accident.’

‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?’

‘I’ve just had one, thanks.’ Did I look upset?

‘You just say if you want one.’

For a moment she reminded me of my mother.

‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘Is there a wake as well?’

‘I think everyone’s invited back to his parents' house. After that I might go to the pub with old friends, depending on who I bump into.’

‘Well, if you’re going to be late, get a taxi. Don’t walk home on your own.’

My mother again. I picked up my sponge-bag and one of the towels to show that I was about to have a shower and perhaps encourage Ms Fatebene to go back downstairs. She took the towel from my hand and gave me the other. ‘This is the bathsheet, if you’re having a shower. That one’s just a hand towel.’

‘Oh, thanks.’

‘And if you wash your hair, come to me for a hair-dryer you can borrow. Don’t go out with damp hair. You’ll catch a chill.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Right, then.’ And off she went downstairs.

The shower was an attachment in the bath that did not stretch quite high enough to reach my head unless I knelt or crouched. The bath was stained and the water pressure low. I had to rub the water over my skin with my hands to get completely wet. There was no soap and I hadn’t brought any. I dried myself on the bathsheet feeling dirtier than before and a bit cold. I wrapped the towel around me and carried my things back across the landing to my room.

My clothes were crumpled lumps of black on the bed. I tried on each combination, watched myself change from a student to a woman dressed up for a party to something androgynous in trousers and a black polo-neck. I decided to wear the skirt and the less fussy top. I would go to the church and see. I could always turn back if it looked as though it was going to be bad. I hummed a few scales, up and down, then arpeggios. My voice was stuck somewhere under my ribs but gradually I teased it out and progressed from humming to singing. The song that came to mind was ‘Sunday Girl’. On the flight I’d been thinking about Kath and Julia and me singing along with Debbie Harry in Kath’s bedroom. As I sang, I slipped into the black clothes again, tried to conceal my green bra straps under the sleeves, and brushed my hair back into a demure knot. I checked myself in the mirror, smeared a touch of blusher on my cheeks. I looked all right. Black suits me, though I am pale. I put on the pointy-toed shoes I’d bought in a hurry from a fancy shop near Taksim Square. They pinched my feet and I wasn’t used to wearing heels but I looked better than all right. I looked quite good. I added lipstick, then changed my mind and rubbed it off again. I checked my profile from each side. Yes, yes, but it didn’t matter what I looked like.

My handbag was empty. I filled it with pens and notebooks from my rucksack, a handkerchief. I put my black raincoat over my funeral outfit and left Lake View. I still had a couple of hours to spare and I would begin with a visit to the police station. I had painful memories of that old-fashioned little building, with its lamp on the outside wall, but there were likely to be new people now and they would help me. Was the case of Julia Smith ever solved? I would ask them, certain that it was not and tell them that, perhaps, I had the answer. A voice in my head began to pray.
Lord, please help me know what to do and give me the strength to find out
— No, no. It was not my voice that I could hear and this work was all down to me.