The Missing One (51 page)

I walk slowly back into the room, testing each board before I put my foot down. The photo of Jonas lies where it landed, half propped up against the wall, shattered glass around it, the frame half off. His features are very definite: a strong nose, a big chin. For a moment, I feel as if he's looking right at me, across time; as if he wants to communicate something important. I shiver.

‘Let's go and warm up next to the stove, because it's nice and warm to sit by, isn't it? We just won't touch it.' I carry Finn, gingerly, across to the stove. Suddenly, I really am exhausted. My legs are stringy. I wonder what all this is doing to the baby inside me – tranquillizers, whisky, stress, panic. It's not exactly what the pregnancy books recommend for the first trimester. If it is the first trimester. Who knows? Rain lashes against the window and the wind roars over the thudding sea. The house sways. I want Doug. Badly.
I need to get a message to him that I have Finn, and he's safe. But there is no way to do this. He will be out of his mind with worry.

Muffled sounds – odd, growling noises – come through the ceiling. I just have to leave her up there. Maybe she will calm down without me to shout at.

Feeling the warmth of the stove ease through my legs, I look across at the rest of the photos on the wall behind the sofa. There is a pale rectangle where Jonas's picture has been. In one of the other photos, an orca launches itself out of the waves, droplets flying off its belly. I move closer. It looks like the same picture that was in Susannah's house – the one Finn broke. Suddenly, out of the blue, I think of Harry Halmstrom's torqued face, his talk of big fish and murder.

I seem to be spending a lot of time with lunatics these days.

I just want to go home to Doug. Finn and I are going on the first flight we can get to and I don't care how much it will cost. I just need to see Doug. I realize that I'm no longer afraid of the truth. Nothing he could ever say or do to me could rival the terror I felt today, when I thought I'd lost Finn for ever.

Next to the whale photo is a smaller one. I lean forwards, squinting through the candlelight. Finn lays his head on my shoulder. The glass is murky, but I know my mother, even though she is so incredibly young.

She is bright-faced and smiling, in a headscarf and flares and a small T-shirt, square on to the camera. She is holding
a baby. I lean further forwards. There is no way to see the baby's face, just a tiny hat and a white blanket. But I know I am looking at myself.

I really was here, once, on this godforsaken chip of land. Then I notice a shadowy man in the background of the picture, blurry – and a toddler at his knees, half-hidden between my mother and the house. I peer at them. The man's face is turned away, but one hand rests on the toddler's head. The little boy is squinting at the camera. He has pudding-bowl hair, and red wellies. His face is blurry. I'm sure I've seen him before somewhere, but I can't think where.

Perhaps my mother brought me here for a final farewell, to shut the place up before going to England, to say goodbye to her colleagues. But she looks happy. She doesn't look like someone who is leaving. She looks like someone who has just arrived.

Who was holding the camera? My father? Or maybe that's my father in the background. Impossible to tell. But of course – this couldn't be a farewell picture because she couldn't have framed it and put it on the wall if that was her last visit.

Then I remember where I saw the little boy in the red wellies: this is the boy in the picture in Susannah's bedroom – the one I thought, just for a second, was Finn. Maybe Susannah had another son long ago – born before me – and something happened to him – up here. Finn is about the age now that the boy was in the photos. He even has similar red wellies. If something awful happened to Susannah's first
child, then maybe Finn's similarity to him has brought it all back to her. Maybe her own memories have unhinged her.

Finn is getting sleepy in my arms. I can't stand here all night so I kick the sofa hard, bracing myself for rats to shoot out. Nothing happens. I perch on the sofa cushion and stroke Finn's head, humming to him. I can feel a thought crouching somewhere in the back of my mind, but I can't quite get to it.

Careful not to wake Finn, I gently slide the parka off my body one arm at a time, then ease it from under me and pull it over the top of us, like a duvet. The outside of the coat is damp, but inside the down is still warm and dry. I just have to get through the night. That's all.

I squint up at the shadowy garlands that hang above us and as I gaze at them I realize what I'm actually looking at. They are not yogic flower garlands. They are spiders' webs and creeping weeds.

My jeans are stiffening in the warmth from the stove. Finn settles into me and sighs. I wonder if he can smell his dad, deep in the wool of the jumper I am wearing. I stroke his hair gently. His head still fits my hand. Outside, the storm batters the rocks and gusts of rain rattle the windows of my mother's house.

I remember how I said to Susannah that it isn't possible to miss someone you never had. Well, I was wrong: I miss the mother I had, but I also miss the one I didn't have; the mother she should have been. I have always missed her – my whole life. But now I miss the missing itself, and the hope around which it was folded.

I look down at Finn's tousled head and I rein in the despair because I have to, for him, and for the baby that's floating inside me like a tiny boat weathering this massive storm.

There is a wicker chair on the other side of the stove. It is so old that its sticks poke out at odd angles like sharp knitting needles. This is a lunatic place to bring a toddler, with all these candles that he could knock over, a hot metal stove, the damp and stink, the deep sea all around, sharp wicker, broken floorboards. This is a death-trap.

Rain lashes the house. This is going to be a long night. I rest my chin on Finn's head. He is safe. I have him. Nothing else matters but keeping him safe and taking him home to Doug.

I must have dozed off. Finn is still heavy on my chest, but I wake with a thudding heart, knowing that something has changed. I snap my eyes open.

She is standing above us, lit from behind by the faint red glow of the stove. Her hair is loose on her shoulders, wild, foaming grey.

‘Shit!' I struggle upright, trying not to wake Finn, pulling the parka back over him. ‘Susannah!' I hiss. ‘What are you doing? What do you want?'

My right arm, where Finn's head is leaning, is completely dead. I have pins and needles in both legs. My bruised coccyx feels as if it has seized up.

It is bitterly cold in the room, not quite pitch dark, but definitely not light either. The wood stove is almost out. I can still hear the thud of waves but the wind has died down. Susannah takes a step closer. She is holding something but I can't see what it is. I press Finn against my chest and jam my spine against the sofa, shielding him with both arms,
my heart pummelling at my ribs. She squats, very slowly. Her eyes never leave my face. But she doesn't seem to be seeing me.

It is as if she's sleeping with her eyes open. I can't see what she's doing with her hands. I wait for them to grab my legs – or worse, my neck. But then she gets up. I hear the cartilage in her knees click. She turns and walks away across the room, straight-backed as a water carrier, and through the doorway, placing her bare feet on the stairs, deliberately, one after the other. Then nothing. No pacing. No mutterings. Silence.

My heart is still bouncing off my ribcage. Finn lies, oblivious, on top of me. The room is saturated in dark grey. It's almost dawn. I can feel daylight coming. I can almost hear it. The storm must have passed and there is just the rhythmic bash and suck of waves on the rocks and smaller gusts, rattling the windows. It's OK. Nothing happened. It's OK.

I feel around by the sofa with my foot until it knocks against something. I slide my hand down and my fingers close over a cardboard folder. I pull it up and tip the contents onto the cushion closest to the fading glow from the fire.

I am looking at a sea of old newspaper cuttings, envelopes and photos. I pluck out a photo of my mother and hold it up towards the stove. She is young and windswept and freckled, with a strand of hair across her mouth. There is another photo of her, out at sea in a yellow oilskin suit, hair flying out behind her, binoculars round her neck. An orca is coming out of the water so close to the boat that she could
almost reach out and touch its giant fluke. My mother is looking directly at the whale, and you can see the whale's eye, looking right back at her.

There's a white envelope close to my hand. I tip it up and a single dark curl, tied with white thread, drops into my hand. There is something creepily Victorian about this little love token. I tip it back into the envelope and pick up another one, bigger, manila. It feels empty but I tip it up anyway, braced for what I might find, half expecting fingernails, or flakes of my mother's skin.

A fragment of white blanket slides out into my palm. It is exactly like the fragment that my mother had in her jewellery box, only without the embroidered
K
. I feel the blood pulse against my temples. Finn shifts against me. I make soothing sounds and slip the fragment of blanket into the pocket of the parka.

Next to my hand is a leaflet for the Killer Whale Research Institute. There is information about orca pods, types, sightings and research studies. One section, called ‘Threats', talks about noise pollution, whales mangled by boat engines or trapped in fishing nets, chemical spills, toxins, harassment. The threats, plainly, are all human. Fifty years ago, an orca would have heard its kin all the way across the ocean. Now it's lucky if it can hear calls from fifty miles away. On the back is a small section, ‘About us'.

So, this is what she started. Did this make it all worthwhile? I wonder if my mother even knew about the institute. I toss the leaflet back into the file and pick up a manila envelope. The contents seem to relate to the purchase of land in my mother's name, Elena Halmstrom. This land, this house, really was hers. However, it is clear that this place belongs to nobody now but the sea and the forest and the winds, the wolves and black bears and coyotes and rats and spiders that are slowly reclaiming it.

There is another, yellowing document, folded in three. I unfold it. I am looking at a damp birth certificate. Not daring even to move my fingers in case it disintegrates, I begin to read:

I read the name Kalypso again and again. The first two syllables are mine. It makes no sense. I look at the dates again. My mother's dates. This is nonsensical – a false certificate? A forgery? I slip it back into the envelope. The feeling that there's something on the periphery of my vision that I can't quite see is stronger than ever.

I notice an old, light blue airmail envelope addressed to my mother – at our house in Sussex. Across the front, in my father's neat printing:
Return to sender
.

But it has been opened. I fumble and pull out the letter, holding the thin blue paper towards the stove to read the tight handwriting.