“Come with you. Get clothes.”
“No, you’ll break your promise.”
“I won’t. I’ll come. But tell me.”
“All right.” Their eyes locked: Anna thought, I’ll tell you something you don’t know. “I had another child once,” she said. “A boy. A baby. He was taken from my house and murdered.”
The girl nodded. Her eyes slid away. Stayed on the floor: on the heap of crumpled bedding. “That was hard,” she whispered.
And it was that—the very poverty of her response, the laughable poverty of her vocabulary—that made Anna speak again. “Hard. Yes. Extremely hard. You ask me what I was thinking about—I’ll tell you, Melanie, why not? I was thinking about the man who did it. About how I would kill him, if I had him.”
Melanie watched her. “And how would you?”
“I don’t know. I think about it, but I can’t choose. You see, there are so many ways.”
The girl dropped her head again, and for the first time Anna saw it as a frail, living thing; half destroyed, bruised, but a blossom on the stem of her thin neck. Her skin was white and fine, her hair, no doubt, had a color of its own, and only parts of her body were cut and marked. She is retrievable, she thought: possibly, in some small way. But I should not have said what I did, I should have found some way to lie; I should have tried to retrieve her, but not by that method.
She moved to the door. “You made a promise,” she said. She held the door open. “Come on now, Melanie, you drove a bargain and you got more than you asked for. You made a promise that you’d come and buy some clothes.”
Melanie nodded. Again, there was no expression on her face now: no reaction to what she had been told. She will suppose it is a dream, Anna thought; she lives from moment to moment, perhaps, her memory constantly erased. Behind her, the big boots descended the stairs. In the strong sunlight that shone through the kitchen window, she observed the girl’s flawed, bluish face, and put up her hand to touch her jaw. “Do you not sleep, Melanie?”
“No. Cough keeps waking me.”
“Keep off the glue, and your cough will clear up,” Anna said briskly.
Anna lapsed into silence as she drove; Melanie was silent anyway. When they arrived in Cromer she lifted her feet in the big black boots and locked her arms around her knees, wrapping herself into a knot in the backseat. She didn’t want to see the sunlight on the cold North Sea, or hear the ice-cream van chimes and the gulls’ cries. Kit saw the birds’ bodies floating and skimming, mirrored in the high windows of the old seafront hotels: skimming the turrets and dormers and gables of the red-brick houses, wheeling inland to swoop and cry among the pines. The gulls leave an afterimage, on the ear and eye, and the waves have the sound of a labored breath; trippers tramp over mastodon bones, and plaice is fried in cafes with plastic tables.
Melanie shut her eyes tight; she wasn’t getting out of the car. Anna seemed to have run out of energy to coax her.
“You know you need clothes,” she said feebly.
“I’ve got clothes,” Melanie said. “I told you.”
Kit said, “You’ve got what you stand up in, and some of that stolen. Come on, you silly bitch! What you’re wearing has to be washed, for our sake if not for yours.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Kit said mildly, “if you start to smell any more we’ll make you go and live in one of the bike sheds.”
Surprisingly, this seemed to have an effect on Melanie. She unwrapped her body like a stiff uncurling fist, and tumbled from the car. Kit, having warned her about the sea breezes, had brought along a spare jacket of her own. She tried to put it around the child’s shoulders. Melanie bellowed, “Get off me. Murdering pig.”
“Not quite,” Kit said. “Not yet, but don’t try me, honeybunch, I’m bigger than you and if I wallop you round the head you’ll know about it.”
Anna shivered. She had abdicated to Kit now, lost control: she was terrified by the thought of what she had said to Melanie, the ease with which it might seep from that pale inarticulate mouth.
Kit took Melanie by the arm. What a formidable wardress she would be, Anna thought; very strong and very sure, with that hand that sinks into the tender female flesh above the elbow joint. She felt that bruises might blossom out again, on her own flesh. She asked herself, have I something for which I must forgive Kit? Have I forgiven her for living?
They headed off into the town. Kit released her prisoner, and strode out smiling equably. Melanie slouched, sullen and furious, her green-twig arms whipped by the wind. Anna had made a move to pick up the coat, for use when Melanie changed her mind; but Kit, almost imperceptibly, shook her head at her, and Anna let it lie on the front seat of the car.
An hour later they had managed, after a fashion, to get Melanie equipped. They had to apologize for her rudeness to the people in the shops, and received commiserating smiles. “They think she’s my retarded little sister,” Kit whispered.
Melanie at least was willing to carry her own parcels. The day darkened, there was drizzle on the wind; now, while the trippers turned blue and rubbed their hands, the local women leaned into the squall in their quilted jackets and wool scarves. Anna swept her collar up to her throat, and glanced at Melanie’s white arms. Norfolk may teach forethought, in a way London never does.
“Look!” Kit put a hand on her shoulder. “Mum, look at that washing machine!” She arrested her before the electricity showroom. “Sixteen cycles! Just think!”
Anna said, “Yes … but you know, with the twin-tub still going strong—”
“Going strong?” Kit was outraged. She glanced over her shoulder, to ask Melanie—their relationship had flourished in the last half hour—if she’d ever heard of such a thing as a twin-tub washing machine, where you hauled the sodden shirts with tongs and rubber gloves from … but Melanie wasn’t there. Kit spun around. Her long hair flew out in the wind. “Run,” she said. “It’s thirty seconds since I saw her, so how far can she have got?”
They gaped up and down the street. No trace, no sign. “In a shop,” Kit said. “Quick.”
They put their heads into the neighboring shops, gabbling questions, apologies: “Have you seen a young girl, short reddish hair, jeans, pink T-shirt? The queue turning: what, your daughter is she, how old would she be? A woman behind a counter stood with her hand poised, ready to drop Norfolk shortbread into a paper bag. Blank faces. “Sorry, my dears,” the woman said.
“We’re wasting our time. Where would she go?”
“Anywhere,” Kit said. “She doesn’t know her way about, so she’d go anywhere.”
They looked into each other’s faces. “I don’t want to sound like a silly film,” Kit said, “but why don’t you go that way and I’ll go this way? And if you see her, grab her, don’t hesitate, just hold on to her, okay?”
“Where will I meet you?”
“Here,” Kit said. “By the washing machine. Give it ten minutes, then start walking back. I’ll see you in fifteen, twenty. If we don’t find her by that time we may as well give up, she’ll probably have got on a bus and gone somewhere. Has she any money?”
“A fiver,” Anna said.
“Oh, right, a fiver.” Kit pounded off down the street, her head turning from side to side. Anna watched her for a moment and then skittered awkwardly in the opposite direction, high heels uncertain over the paving stones. She hadn’t known it would come to this, or she’d have dressed for it.
A few minutes, and her efforts were over. She leaned against a wall. I can’t run, she thought; never could. Still, she had done what her heart allowed, her ribs heaving and her chest sore, her head swivel-ing from side to side to see if she could catch a glimpse of Melanie’s orange hair. Surely, she thought, if she tries to hitch a lift out of town, no one will give her one? She’s too peculiar, she looks deranged. Unless, perhaps, they take pity on her. For people do, of course. They do the most amazing things; prisoners escape, and people give them lifts, and every runaway gets money and
shelter somehow.
Fifteen minutes later, distressed, her lips almost blue, she was back with Kit before the washing machine shop. Kit put her hands on her mother’s shoulders, then under her elbows to hold her upright. “Are you all right? I didn’t say kill yourself.”
“Fine,” Anna said. “I’m fine.” She pulled back and held her midriff, one thin hand folded protectively over the opposite wrist.
“We’ve lost her. I questioned bus queues, in a melodramatic fashion. Ought we to go to the police?”
“No. She’s not done anything wrong.”
“But she might. Or something might happen to her.”
Anna straightened up. Breath was coming back. “Nobody’s obliged to take their holidays with us,” she snapped.
“No, but—”
“Kit, if we get the police involved it is almost sure to land her in some sort of trouble. And what would your father say? She’d never trust us again. We should give her—I don’t know—we should just stand here for a quarter of an hour. She might come back.”
“She won’t be able to find her way back.” Kit rubbed her hands together, to warm them. “Okay, but we should let someone know—I don’t suppose you’ve got Dad’s number in Norwich?”
“No.”
“We can call Directory Enquiries. Get him back home. Listen, you stand here. There’s a phone box over there—Red Cross, isn’t it? What’s the name of the person he’s meeting?”
“I don’t know.”
“Never mind. I’ll tell them to turn him round and send him home.”
“No, Kit.” Anna tore at her daughter’s arm. She thought, if my daughter phones Pat Appleyard asking for him, that’ll be twice in a day, so she’ll know there’s something wrong, she’ll be asking questions, starting gossip … “Kit, he’s not in Norwich.”
“Where is he then?”
“I don’t know.”
“But he said he was going to Norwich! This morning!” Kit swept her hair back, then flung out her hands, exasperated. “Robin said, bring me a Wisden Cricket Monthly and he said, all right, but if I can’t see one, will anything else do, and Robin said no. Rebecca said, bring me something. He said, what? She said, a surprise. Dad said, Okay. Robin said, you spoiled brat.”
Anna drew herself gently from her daughter’s grasp and leaned back against the plate-glass window of the washing machine shop. She covered her mouth with her hand, and a little, bitter bleat came from her; laughter?
Kit tried to pull her hand from her mouth, to claw it away, as if her mother were a baby that had eaten something it shouldn’t: earth or soil or a stone. On and on it went, the little noise: the heave of the narrow ribs, the out-breath like a moan, the breath sucked in as if air were poison. Anna’s ribs drew up, into a panic-stricken arch, and for a moment she was frozen, paralyzed, eyes closed. Then she let out her breath—with more than a gasp, with a muffled scream heaved up from her stomach. She sucked in the air, the raw salty Norfolk air. “I knew I should lose everything,” she said. “I knew I should lose everything, one of these days.”
Late afternoon, someone came to the door. Anna let Kit answer it. She noticed that Kit had changed out of her jeans into a neat skirt, and had tied her hair back, as if she anticipated a sudden transition into adult affairs.
Anna sat in Ralph’s study, in the old wooden swivel chair he used at his desk. It had come from Emma’s surgery, this chair: given to him when it was too disreputable for the patients to see. In better times, they had joked that it was impossible to sit in it without the urge to swing around, to say, “That sounds a very nasty cough.”
But these are worse times. Anna was exhausted by the effort of imagination chasing its own tail. I can formulate no sensible ideas about Ralph, she thought, and my head aches; Kit will never trust me again, never trust me not to break down and start screaming in the street. And the girl has gone, Melanie, and somehow I will be held responsible; screaming doesn’t get me out of that one. Now with each little breath she took, the chair swayed under her, sedately. Each movement brought forth its ponderous, broken, familiar complaint.
Kit came in: two policemen followed her. She looked grave, pale, very correct. “They’ve found Melanie. She made it as far as Norwich. She’s in hospital, I’m afraid.”
Anna stood up. “What’s happened?”
“Mrs. Eldred?” one of the policemen said.
“Yes. What’s happened to her?”
“She gave us your name,” the policemen said. “Mr. Eldred’s name, I should say.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Anna said. “Answer my question.”
“She’s taken something, swallowed something maybe, that’s what we’ve been told. Would you have any idea what it might be?”
“I told him,” Kit said. “I’ve already explained how she ran off.” She turned to the policemen. “She was fine then. I told you.”
“How is she?”
“She’s comfortable.”
“Comfortable?” Anna stared at the man. “How can she be?”
The other policemen spoke. “The hospital won’t let us interview her. She’s drowsy, you understand.”
“Is she in any danger?”
“That’s not for us to say.”
“We understand,” the first man said, “that Mr. Eldred would be in loco parentis.”
Anna nodded. The other policemen said, “Mr. Eldred not home from work yet?”
“He doesn’t work. That is, he doesn’t go out to work.”
The men looked confused. “He’s an invalid?” one suggested.
“My husband is an officer of a charitable trust. He works from home.”
“That’s why we have Melanie,” Kit said. “I tried to explain.”
“Would it be all right if we looked round, Mrs. Eldred? Around your house?”
“No, I’m afraid I can’t allow that.”
“They want to look in Melanie’s room,” Kit said. “In case there’s something there that she might have taken, a bottle of pills or something.”
“Yes,” Anna said. “I know what they want to do.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Kit said uneasily, to the men.
Already, Anna thought, she is treating me as if I were of unsound mind, unable to speak up for myself. I must expect it, I suppose. “Go and get the proper warrants,” she said. “The papers. Then come back. And then you can search.”
At once the atmosphere changed; the men changed, their natural obstructiveness and obtuseness giving way to a sneering hostility. “Why do you want to make it difficult?” the first man said.
“I don’t want to make it difficult. I just want things done properly.”
“If the young girl dies,” the second said, “you’ll be to blame.”
“I thought there was no question of her dying. I thought she was comfortable.”
“Mum—” Kit said. Her face was shocked; she thinks I’m a new woman, Anna thought. “Mum, look. It’s just to help Melanie.”
“There’s a principle,” Anna said to her daughter. “There’s a correct way. Once you depart from it, you leave yourself open.”
“It’s not South Africa,” Kit said.
“Not yet,” Anna snapped.
Her daughter was silent. A policeman said, “Well, madam, perhaps it would be better if we talked to your husband. What time are you expecting him?”
“No particular time.”
“Doesn’t he keep regular hours?”
“By no means.”
Kit said, “We usually know where to contact him, but today there seems to be some mix-up with his diary.”
“Oh yes?”
“So we don’t know how to get hold of him, you see.”
“That’s unlucky,” the second man said. “We’ll have to radio in. Say he can’t be found.”
“I can come to the hospital,” Anna said.
“Yes, madam, but it’s not you that’s in loco parentis, is it? Well now, we have got a problem.”
None
of their language, Anna thought, means what it says. It is a special dialect, charged with implication. One of the men was looking over her shoulder. He seemed to be staring at the wall. She turned to see what he was looking at. “That picture there,” the policeman said. “That photo. That wouldn’t be Mr. Eldred, would it?”
“Yes.” She picked up the photograph, defensive, startled: Ralph on the stoep at Flower Street. “If you’re thinking of putting out a wanted poster, I’m afraid it won’t be much use to you. It’s twenty years old, this picture—more.”
“Is it, now? It’s not a bad likeness, not bad at all.” He turned to his colleague. “Brancaster way? Down the track? The market-trader?” He turned back to Anna. “We’ve had a few dealings with Mr. Eldred. We’ve seen him coming and going from a smallholding, just off that loop of road before you get to Burnham Deepdale. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where we’ll find him, madam.”
Each time he said this—“madam”—it was like a kick or a blow with his fist. He meant it so; he was watching her face, waiting for her to flinch. “Would you know a woman over that way, involved in market-trading?”
“A Mrs. Glasse?” Anna’s face seemed frozen. She nodded. “Will you go over there now?”
“It might be worth a try.”
“Kit,” Anna said, “when Rebecca comes home from her friend’s, will you see that she has something to eat? Then take her over to Foulsham and ask Emma to put you both up for the night.”
“What for?”
“Because I don’t want her here. Okay?”
“Can I take your car?”
“No. I need it.” She turned to the men. “I’ll follow you,” Anna said to the men.
“We can’t stop you, madam.”
Anna said to Kit, “You can bike over, can’t you? Just take your toothbrushes.”
“I’ll leave Becky with Emma, and I’ll come back.”
“No. Stay with your sister. Kit, look—do this one thing for me, please?”
Anna was brittle, exasperated; Kit knew the tone, it was familiar. But she saw how Anna’s nerves were stretched—tight, tight. “What shall I say to Emma?”
“I don’t know. Must I think of everything? Aren’t you old enough to help me?”