When they went over and over that evening they could not help but wonder what would have happened if they had done it differently. If they’d not drunk so much; if the next day had been one of the ones Laura worked at the school and so was up early, waiting for the kettle in the chilly kitchen; if Roger had gone down to check the doors were locked the way he normally did.

  Forgiveness, Laura said, was not something she could give. Forgiveness didn’t come until a person was so tired they couldn’t do anything else.

  Roger had walked around the town, searching; come back with his fingers blue from the cold, his mouth a purple smear. Laura went through Margot’s room looking for some kind of sign, a message or secret code which meant she had not wanted to go, she would be back soon. Fiona sat at the table drinking coffee without milk. She had her boots and coat on but she had not got up to help or spoken to the police on the phone. She was still wearing the lipstick from the night before.

  Did you see her? Roger asked her. Did you hear her leaving?

  I knew something, Fiona said after a moment. I knew something. It was, she said, the same as rising too fast and becoming dizzy.

  She had known something and she had told Margot.

  What? Laura said, what did you tell her?

  Fiona closed her eyes. She was, Roger saw, crying, and he was so frightened he could barely speak. I told her she had to leave, Fiona said. I told her to go.

  They posted photos on lamp posts, the windows of shops, the windscreens of cars. Went on the local news. Roger walked and walked, looking for something that no one but he would be able to see. Laura drove the roads, pulling into service stations, showing Margot’s photo around, waiting to see a figure out by the rushing cars, thumbing a lift. When she got home she went into Fiona’s room and searched it. She was tidy: the bed made, a small shelf of books on one wall, neat rows of toiletries. Laura pushed her hands beneath the mattress, upended it, knocked the books onto the floor and shook them out, went through the clothes in the wardrobe. They had spent all morning trying to force Fiona to tell them what she had told Margot but she’d refused and now there was nothing there in her bedroom either. There was nothing there that meant anything. Laura put everything into bags, left them out by the kerb. In the morning Fiona was gone.

  They went to group meetings for people whose children had chosen to leave them. A few times Roger went to meetings for people whose children had died, but it was not the same and he’d known it. He was a fraud there. His child had not wanted to stay with them. His child had never really even belonged to them.

  Laura worked instead of thinking: ran after-school clubs, got a PGCE so she could teach full time, went to cafes after work and sat in the windows marking.

  Roger drank. Mostly, to begin with, he drank beer. He did not drink in pubs or when other people were around; he drank in the bathroom or took cans out in the pockets of his coat when he went walking. Later he worked his way through everything a person could work their way through. The days were not days but blanks in between sleeping. He remembered the way when she was younger Margot had spoken with such certainty about a lack of choice, a determinism. And he’d imagined – this perhaps the worst thing – her going thinking she had no choice, that all along she had been bound to leave them. He could not stand that. He would rather drink his days empty of thought than spend a moment thinking like that.

  Fiona had come back eventually. The intervening years had been long, initially fraught with Roger’s drinking and with trying to have children that would not come. There had been a miscarriage and a car accident in which Roger was drunk. There had been six months when Laura had lived somewhere else. There had been, also, peace, a slow return of just enough happiness they knew not to give up on one another. By the time Fiona turned up again, perhaps seven years later, they had adopted two of the four children they would later have. Roger had gone through unstable periods of sobriety but he was drinking again. In the evenings or the very early mornings he would bury the cans or bottles in the flower beds, sober up with his face in the cold grass. He’d seen things before while drinking – watched Margot clamber out of the disturbed ground, heard voices he knew weren’t there. That night he’d seen lights through the window of the shed, looked for a weapon, had only the bottle he was drinking from, hefted it up, jerked the door open. They had never used the shed much and it had been, for years, filled with broken garden chairs, an old lawnmower and boxes of Christmas decorations. All of this had been tidied into piles and one of the deckchairs from the garden had been dragged in there, covered with a blanket. In the middle of the shed Fiona was crouched. He held onto the doorframe and moved the bottle higher. Fiona had looked – he said – worse than any of the times before. At moments she would catch his eye but mostly she looked over his shoulder or up at the ceiling. She was too thin, and when she ran a distracted hand through her hair it came out in clumps. There had been a moment – he admitted it – when he’d considered swinging the bottle down. Except then she would never tell them where Margot had gone.

  He kept her secret for nearly a month, sneaked out dry toast and bowls of pasta, watched her swallowing the food without breathing. She hadn’t spoken at all for a while, only watched him, eaten what he gave her, slept on the deckchair. Occasionally he questioned her, demanded, shouted. Occasionally he begged. She gave nothing away. He thought often about those postcards she used to write them when she went away. The weather here is bad. The whisper of them landing on the mat, the way he’d read them when he drank the first coffee of the day. When he eventually told Laura he thought she would throw them both out, change the locks. Except they both understood that there was only one person who might know where Margot had gone and that person was living in the shed at the bottom of their garden.

  The River

  Low stone bridges over the water, houses tucked together, crumbling banks. Margot ducked into the shade of a bush and watched a gaggle of overweight police officers standing on the path talking to walkers. There were mud splatters on the ironed creases of their trousers. She imagined them gathered around the boat, pressing their pale faces to the windows. She waited for them to come along the path towards her, lift her beneath the arms, tell her that they’d found a body and knew she was to blame. She had taken the book of riddles from the boat and they would find it in her bag and then there would be no doubt. She untied and retied the laces on her left shoe. One of the officers kicked some pebbles into the river and watched them sink. She closed her eyes. She thought of the way Charlie had called her boy or son, the certainty with which he’d decided she wasn’t a girl. She thought about the people on the other boats, who must have seen her going down the steps or sitting with Charlie on the roof. She thought about how they would pull the body – heavy with water and weed – out of the river, the cords they would attach around him, the pulleys. When she opened her eyes the police had moved off the towpath and into cars on the road; the walkers were gone. She stood up and went on.

  A memory. When Fiona had lived in the house next door Margot would go to her for breakfast and – after they’d eaten banana and peanut butter on toast – would watch her shaving. The razor moving slickly across the skin, the rasp and the hair darkening the sink, Fiona’s face looking at her from the mirror. Darker and darker each time, she would say. Thicker and thicker.

  She came to a boatyard with old tugs pulled out of the water for painting and rental barges stored for the winter. There was a small waterside shop that she stood outside. She was so hungry. She went into the shop. It sold great barrels of boat oil, dirty potatoes in sacks, folded paper maps of the river.

  On the noticeboard she saw a poster of a missing cat, went closer to look. There were seven or eight similar posters pinned up around it, mostly for dogs and cats that had gone missing from the boats or the flats that over-looked them, but also one, she saw, for a goat that had been living in a field nearby. She took a basket and shopped sparingly, putting back half of what she first picked up.

  As well as some bread and jam and bottled water, she bought a roll of cling film and a packet of razors, a pair of scissors. On the way out of the shop she looked again at the posters for the missing animals. Where were they? They had gone, she thought, missing in the night the way she had, the way Charlie had. On the path she ate four slices of bread in ravenous panic and kept walking.

  When she slept that night the man she had killed was in her dreams and she could not get him out. He was there all through the next day too, behind her eyelids, his face flashing up and then receding like the afterburn of a dying bulb. When she saw him he was no longer blind or dead. He was also younger, the lines wiped from his face, a hand raised towards her.

  She had decided what she would do and there was no going back. It was easier for a boy. She had known this without being told. There was no mirror so she bent towards the water and used her reflection. There was blonde hair above her lip, on her chin. It came away, left her face smooth, red. Her hair was long the way her father had liked, past her shoulders, straggled. She cut the flot-sam of it; what was left was short and ragged. The problem was, that even with the loose shirt it was clear what she had underneath. Not big or round but there all the same. Unavoidably so. She took the shirt off in a panic. The air was so cold it sucked into her belly, broke the breath out of her. She wrapped the cling film around her chest and then did it a second and a third time.

  She walked on. A mooring rope stretched taut into the water and held on to a half-drowned boat. If she thought hard enough she would think herself away. She was four years old and spinning in the garden, arms out, the slices of world passing. She was ten, burying messages from next door in the soil. She was fourteen, picking the chillis out of the cake mix as Fiona dropped them in. She was sixteen and not the person she’d been before. She was sixteen and she needed a new name.

  The Hunt

  In the morning they all put their shoes on in a row at the door. Roger told me that they were going to the park and that I should help myself to anything I wanted from the fridge. Laura asked if I could do the washing-up. It was very quiet when they were all gone. I looked out the window. The garden was long and thin and the shed was at the end of it. I cut small slices of cheese from a block and fed them to Otto. I thought that I could hear you talking calmly from behind me. We need to catch it, you said We’re going to catch it.

  We’re going to catch what? I asked, but there was no answer.

  I hunted for and found the phone. It was one of the old-fashioned ones with dials rather than buttons. I rang the number for the office.

  Gretel? It was the woman who ran the dictionary floor. Her name was Jennifer and there had always been an air of panic to her.

  I’m sorry I’ve not called, I said. I’ve had an emergency and am going to need to take a couple more days off.

  Down the other end of the phone there was silence.

  Is that OK? I could hear her breathing. Jennifer? It’ll only be a few more days.

  There was a message for you, she said. I emailed you about it. Someone rang in the middle of the night when no one was here and left a voicemail.

  Who left a voicemail?

  I don’t know. I rang the number but it was a phone booth. I thought that’s why you were ringing.

  Can you play it for me?

  OK. I’m sure it’s a prank. A joke. You know. I’ll play it now.

  There was a bang as she brought the ear of the phone against the speaker and then the sound of the automated voice counting the messages, the beeps as she moved through to the right one, the crackle as it began.

  To start there was mostly quiet, background noise from outside the booth: a car or truck going past, footsteps on pavement, a clatter like rain or gravel beneath wheels. Then there was silence for so long I thought Jennifer must have made a mistake, turned the machine off or moved the earpiece away. I opened my mouth to say her name and then your voice spoke into my ear.

  Gretel, you said. Gretel. I’m lost.

  Otto was in the garden digging holes, but when he saw me he unearthed himself and flopped over. Beneath the scorched grass the ground was hard. There were posters for water rationing all over the neighbourhood but I could hear sprinklers coming from more than one direction. Inside I’d packed my bag, found the keys, ran as far as the car before I realised I still did not know where you were. Even you, it seemed, did not know that. I went to the shed and knocked both fists against the door, shouted and shouted until it was flung open. Even then I shouted for a moment longer, arms raised, head back. When I opened my eyes and saw her I realised that she was frightened of me. Good, I thought, I’m glad you are, I’m glad you’re scared.

  Fiona wouldn’t let me go further than the threshold, bringing me back a cloudy glass of water which I pretended to drink. She had tiny wrists. There was a single bed with blankets and a gas stove with a pan. There was a stack of washed-out bean tins in the corner. Nothing else. She looked as if she’d been crawling through a mine, scrabbling to get out, starved of light. Not tall but hunched forward. She looked like one of the old women who bet on the horses in the shop around the corner from the office. I couldn’t have pulled her eyes from her head if I’d hooked my fingers and tried to drag them out. There was thick, dark hair above her lip, between her eyes and from the tip of her chin. There was the smell of her living in there, barely leaving. Not unclean but overdone. I wondered if she showered at night using the outside hose – the way we used to on the river – the children peering at her through the window, the cold water falling over her upturned face. Or whether, perhaps, she sneaked in when everyone was asleep, bare-footed, mud prints left behind her, washing at the sink, raiding the fridge for anything out of date. She didn’t look hungry, only as if she’d take what she could get. I knew the feeling.

  Looking at her I understood, suddenly, why Marcus had been so obsessed with you. The way he’d follow you around or watch you carefully to see what you’d do, the way he listened so intently when you spoke. Roger and Laura had been right when they’d talked about that teacher; Marcus had been drawn to strong, older women. Marcus had loved Fiona and later he’d loved you, and there was never any other possibility for him than that.

  I knew Marcus, I said.

  I don’t know any Marcuses.

  The skin was wasting off her. I thought of the phone call, of what the woman at the stables had said about you turning up, disappearing. I was running out of time; I wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her until everything she knew fell out.

  When you knew her she was called Margot and you told her to leave, I said. Not long after that she appeared at the place where I lived on the river with my mother.

  I moved further into the shed. She put the bed between us, her teeth clamped. I was beginning to understand that saying Margot’s name to them was the same as saying yours to me: that ghost at my table, sitting there, eating all the food. The hair had thinned on top of her head and the scalp showed through.

  I just want to know what happened. I realised that I had my hands up in the air. I brought them down slowly.

  Why? she said.

  Because it might help me find Marcus, Margot. I need to find her.

  Why?

  I looked at her. There was something about her face similar to a brick wall, smoothed over, gapless. She’d held on to her secrets for a long time.

  Because, I said, I think my mother might be in trouble. I haven’t seen her for sixteen years but I need to find her now and maybe Marcus will know where she is. Just tell me what you said that night.

  You won’t tell them? Her voice was wispy, underused. She turned both fingers so they were pointing at me and I understood that it was a threat.

  You won’t tell them, she said again.

  I won’t tell them.

  She gazed at me. What do I get? she said.

  What?

  I’ve never told anyone. I’ve kept my secret. Why would I tell you? I need something in return.

  I took out the money I had in my pocket, a couple of folded twenties, held them out to her.

  She shook her head. What would I do with that?

  I don’t know what I can give you.

  The same as I’m giving you. I want to know what happened. She was shaking a little.

  What happened?

  When you met her, when she stayed with you, what happened to her?

  I don’t remember much. I made myself forget most of it. I’m sorry.

  She didn’t say anything. I took a breath and told her about the river and the boat where I lived with you; about Marcus appearing one day with his tent and staying for a month. Talking, I realised that I remembered more than I thought; that the memories had been seeping back without my noticing them. I told her about playing Scrabble and reading the encyclopedia and making wind chimes and traps. About falling in love with Marcus in a childlike way, devoted, uncaring. I told her about you, your lessons from the encyclopedia, your sharp temper and long, wintery affection. We were afraid of something but I can’t remember what it was, I said.

  When I stopped I felt wrung-out, almost ashamed. Look at how the shape of you moved through anything of significance, eclipsing Marcus, even, nearly, me. Anyway, Fiona shook her head, dissatisfied.

  What?

  It’s not enough, she said.

  The River

  New truths. Her name was Ben or Jake or Matthew. Her name was Leonard and she was a boy. Her name was Pierce or Johnny or Moses. Her name was Joe or David or Peter. She was not running away from home. She had not met a man called Charlie and killed him. Her name was Aaron or Brad or Martin or Richard. Her name was Alastair or Jack or Harry.

  The river cut into the land. It was no good. She walked and walked until she slept. She saw the people on passing or moored boats looking at her and understood she did not look like a boy. She looked like something in between, uncertain, only half made. She looked like a girl who had killed a man and would carry it with her – in her pockets, in the corners of her mouth – for ever. She dropped her head to her chest, trudged on. At times the path grew so wild she had to force her way through, arms patterned with bramble cuts, the blood berry red against the brown bushes.

 

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