Losing You Page 6

  ‘Is anything missing?’

  I gazed around in despair. I opened the wardrobe and peered inside. Charlie’s clothes are a mixture of exotic and grungy: black jeans, a flounced purple skirt, an old leather jacket, an embroidered gypsy blouse, a tiny red dress, stompy boots, slouchy trainers, camisoles and strappy tops, grey and black hoodies, T-shirts with incomprehensible slogans stretched across the breast. Most things lay scattered around the floor. I closed the door. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said cautiously.

  ‘Nothing she would have taken with her if she was thinking of staying somewhere else?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I glanced round again, searching for absences in the frenetic jumble, spaces.

  ‘Her mobile, for instance.’

  ‘She had that with her last night, so of course it’s not here.’ I looked at the desk. Her computer was turned off. I picked up a shoebox. Inside, there was a pair of long, jangly earrings, a bath bomb, a snarled-up bead necklace, a strip of four passport photographs of her and Ashleigh squashed into the booth, making silly faces for the camera, a folded square of lined paper, which, when I opened it, read, ‘Remember dinner money’, an inky rubber, a stick of glue, a bottle of hardened clear nail varnish, two pen lids and several hairbands. I put the box down and stared at the surface in concentration. Clearasil, deodorant, CDs, her pencil case. Suddenly I saw it. Saw what wasn’t there.

  ‘Her washbag,’ I said. ‘It’s blue with lighter blue patterns on it, I think. I can’t see it.’ I picked up the towels and threw them to one side. ‘It’s not here. Or her makeup bag. It’s pink. Maybe it’s in one of her bags. That’s odd.’

  I started picking up all the garments on the floor and putting them in a pile to make sure nothing was hidden beneath. I held the pyjama bottoms and frowned at them, suddenly breathless.

  ‘What?’ asked PC Mahoney.

  ‘She wears these with a nightshirt. Where’s the nightshirt?’

  ‘There’s a simple explanation, Ms Landry.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘These are all items she would have taken to a sleepover.’

  ‘She didn’t.’

  ‘She didn’t take them, you mean? You’re sure?’

  ‘Absolutely sure. She wasn’t going to stay over. She just went round there for a party. Tam suggested she stay over. She called me to say she wasn’t coming home but she’d be back the following morning. I know she didn’t have her things because we talked about it. I even offered to bring them round to her, but she laughed and said she’d clean her teeth with her finger and have a shower and change her clothes when she got back. I don’t know if she had her purse with her. Just her phone.’

  ‘There you are, then.’

  I sat on the bed and rubbed my eyes. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘When did she take them? I mean, they were here last night, so when did she take them? Why? We were going on holiday.’

  ‘Ms Landry, I know it must be very distressing but we see things like this all the time.’

  ‘Like what? What are you saying?’

  ‘For some reason Charlotte has gone to stay somewhere else for a while. I’m sure she’ll be back soon.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She’s taken her makeup bag, her night things, her wash-bag, her mobile and maybe her purse.’

  ‘She was happy. It’s not right, it can’t be. There’s some other explanation. Not this. She wouldn’t.’

  ‘Your daughter is fifteen years old, two months off sixteen. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what a difficult age that can be. It sounds as if she’s got a lot on her plate at the moment. Her father has left, you have a new boyfriend, she’s had problems at school.’

  I closed my eyes and tried to think rationally. The evidence was there, incontrovertible. At some point, Charlie had come home, taken her things and gone again. I couldn’t argue with that, yet at the same time I remembered that yesterday, before she’d gone out, she had seemed – had been, I was sure – carefree and affectionate with me. We had talked eagerly about Florida. We’d even discussed what clothes she would pack. She’d said she’d have to wax her bikini line. She had even been nice about Christian, kissing my cheek and saying that she supposed he was all right, really. ‘She would have told me if something was wrong. I know she would.’

  ‘Teenagers have secrets, Ms Landry. My wife often says that –’

  ‘So what’s going to happen now?’

  ‘As soon as you hear from her, get in touch with us.’

  ‘No, I mean what are you going to do?’

  ‘We’ll put her on our lists, keep an eye out – you can come down to the police station later and make a statement.’

  ‘That’s it? That’s all?’

  ‘She’s probably quite all right, just needs a bit of time to think things through.’

  I looked at his pleasant, unconcerned face. ‘I’m afraid I don’t agree with you. If she’s run away, that’s because something happened to make her do so. You may well be correct – she could simply walk in through the door at any moment. But presumably it’s the job of the police to think about the bad scenarios as well as the good ones. That’s why I called you in the first place. We can’t just wait and see. We have to find her now.’

  ‘I understand your concern, but your daughter is nearly sixteen.’

  ‘She’s fifteen. She’s a child,’ I said. ‘Please help me find my daughter.’

  The phone rang loudly and I started up off the bed.

  ‘That’s probably her right now,’ said PC Mahoney.

  I ran down the stairs two at a time and picked up the receiver, my heart thudding with hope. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nina, it’s Rick.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I wanted to apologize for the rumpus we caused earlier.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I hope Karen’s all right.’

  ‘Has Charlie turned up?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘She hasn’t.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. And your holiday… I wish there was something I could do, Nina, but I’m stuck at the hospital. Have you thought of calling the police?’

  ‘They’re here now. And they think –’ I broke off.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They think she’s run away,’ I continued reluctantly. ‘It doesn’t make sense, Rick. I don’t think Charlie would do that. She seemed absolutely fine yesterday.’

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t be much help,’ he said. ‘I’m in the middle of things here. All I’d say, as a teacher – as Charlie’s teacher – is that teenagers often don’t behave in the ways you’d expect.’

  ‘That’s what I’d say, in your position. That’s what the police officer says, too. He doesn’t think there’s anything to worry about.’

  ‘I’m sure there isn’t.’

  ‘Thanks, Rick. I’ve got to go now. She might ring and I’ve got to keep the line clear.’ I remembered where he was calling from. ‘I’m sorry, Rick. How is Karen?’

  ‘The doctor’s seeing her now.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’d better go. Let me know when Charlie gets back. She will, you know.’

  I put the phone down and turned to PC Mahoney as he came down the stairs.

  ‘Not her?’

  ‘No. You’re going?’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll come walking in through that door right as rain…’

  ‘And if she doesn’t?’ I said dully.

  ‘I’ll send a patrol car round the island now, to look out for her. Perhaps you could give me a recent photograph of her.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course. Look, here.’

  I pulled the photograph they had sent me for my birthday off the fridge – Charlie and Jackson, smiling at me, their eyes bright in their young and lovely faces. ‘This was taken a few days ago,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you.’ He studied it for a few seconds. ‘Pretty girl.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, as I said…’


  I opened the door for him. I could hear the sea and the wind in the masts of the boats in the yard. A few drops of rain splattered against my burning face. I closed the door after him and leaned against it, dizzy with the unreality of what was happening. My daughter – my beloved, tempestuous, impulsive, honourable Charlie – had run away from home. From me. I took deep, steady breaths through the heaviness in my chest, then went into the kitchen and splashed water on my face. ‘Right,’ I said.

  I dialled Christian’s mobile.

  ‘I’m on the M25. Where are you?’ he said.

  ‘Charlie’s run away.’

  ‘What? Charlie has? But why?’

  ‘I can’t talk now. We’re not coming.’ There was silence on the line. I thought we’d been cut off. ‘Hello? Are you there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here. What’s happening?’

  ‘What do you think’s happening? Go without us. I’ll be in touch. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Nina, listen. I’m sure it’ll be all right, but I’ll come back and help you look. It’s going to be all right.’

  ‘You’re breaking up,’ I said, and ended the call.

  I hadn’t eaten anything all day and suddenly felt terribly hungry. I was trembling violently and even thought I might faint. I went to the kitchen, found some breakfast cereal in a cupboard and ate it as it was, in handfuls, without milk. I filled the electric kettle with water. I rinsed out the cafetière. I had to dismantle it and hold the pieces under the running tap to rid it of the last of the coffee grounds, cleaning them away with my fingers in the fiercely cold water. I took a pack of coffee beans from the fridge, ground them and tipped some into the cafetière. The water boiled and I poured it on to the coffee. I also made a piece of toast and marmalade. I sat at the kitchen table and gulped the hot, black, strong coffee and ate the toast in slow, deliberate bites. After all, what did it matter now? I had lots and lots of time.

  I had woken into a new world, a world that was cold and harsh and entirely different from anything I had ever imagined for myself, and I had to think about it carefully and with clarity. I had got up this morning and been one person and now I was another. I was a woman whose daughter, aged fifteen, had run away from home. I had a daughter who had secretly gathered together a few pathetic possessions and some money and had gone out into a biting December day rather than be in this home with me. There was somewhere else she would rather be, perhaps someone else she would rather be with. Anywhere but here.

  There was something I found hard to confess even to myself. It was the single most shameful thing I had ever felt in my entire life. I felt embarrassed. Gradually, the people around me, family, friends, acquaintances, neighbours, would hear that Nina Landry was a mother whose daughter had run away from home. Parents having terrible rows with their children would comfort themselves by saying, ‘At least I’m a better parent than Nina Landry. Relations with my children may be bad, but they haven’t run away, not like that daughter of Nina Landry’s.’ I imagined the next few days, bumping into people in the street. A look of surprise. ‘I thought you were on holiday.’ ‘We had to cancel – unfortunately my daughter…’

  Gradually, as word spread, I would be met not by a look of surprise but of awkwardness, followed by a murmured word of sympathy delivered with the glint of excitement we feel about the disasters of other people.

  It was awful and contemptible, but it was what went through my mind and I made myself think about it as if I were plunging my hand into boiling water and holding it there.

  I poured myself another cup of coffee and sipped it. If I included the nine months of pregnancy, with its nausea, apprehension and lurching anticipation, this was the first moment for about sixteen and a half years that I hadn’t known where my daughter was. I had to decide what to do. I picked up the phone and called Renata’s mobile.

  ‘Nobody’s seen anything of her,’ she said, ‘but –’

  ‘I know,’ I said, interrupting her. ‘You can come back now. I’ll tell you about it.’

  ‘Don’t you want us to –’

  ‘No,’ I said, and hung up.

  What were my possibilities? The policeman had made Charlie’s departure seem like just another of those things that happen as children grow up, like birthday parties and Brownies. According to that view, I could get on with my life, with a few regrets and sniffles, and wait for my daughter to be in touch. I only had to articulate that to myself to realize how impossible it was. I had to find Charlie and talk to her, even if the only result of it was that she told me things I didn’t want to know. I tried to think what other mothers would do and it just wouldn’t compute. I was stuck with myself and there was nothing I could do about it. Charlie was fifteen years old, she was my child and I had to find her. Everything else could wait. So, where did I start?

  My first impulse was to jump into the car, drive, stop strangers in the street and just do anything and everything until she was found. Hysteria and instant action might have made me feel better, or stopped me dwelling on things that were painful, but I needed to be effective. I reached for the pad that I kept on the kitchen table for shopping lists. It had a pen attached to it by a Velcro strip. I ripped it off and doodled as I tried to order my thoughts.

  Charlie had taken a few possessions with her so she must have run away from someone or with someone or to someone. She could have gone to stay at a friend’s. The worst possibility was that, whatever Rick had said, she had up and gone alone, hitched a lift, left with no plans and no destination, just heading away. I thought of Charlie standing by a road, thumbing a lift, getting into a stranger’s car, leaving us all behind, and felt a stinging in my eyes. For the first time in my life I thought of killing myself and then I thought of Jackson and Charlie and put that idea away for ever.

  What was most likely was that she would be with a friend, or that a friend would know of her plans. If I could find someone to put me in touch with Charlie, I could talk to her and she could tell me what had gone wrong between us. Where to start? At some point before the party had begun, while I was out having my car fixed, Charlie had returned to the house, retrieved what she needed and gone. Her decision to leave, or at least her decision to leave today, before going on holiday, must have been sudden or she would have taken her purse and washbag to Ashleigh’s. One guest after another at the party had told me how Charlie had organized it. I knew my daughter was a wonderfully strange and chaotic girl, but would even she organize a surprise party for her mother on the day she was going to run away from home?

  Now a thought occurred to me. Could it have been that something had happened at the sleepover to provoke this crisis? I wondered what could have made her run away instead of coming to me. I couldn’t think of a scenario that made sense but it was clear I had to start with the sleepover. I reached for the phone book, then remembered I didn’t need to: Joel’s home number was on my mobile. Another life, another story. I clicked on it and rang the number but it was engaged. A voice asked me to leave a message but I couldn’t say to a machine anything of what was needed. Rather than wait, I decided to drive over – his house was only a couple of minutes away. I left a scrawled note to Renata on the kitchen table and got into the car. I drove along the front and turned right into Flat Lane, which led inland. I pulled up outside Alix and Joel’s whitewashed thatched cottage, a tasteful anomaly in a road of terraced houses that could have been in the suburbs of any large English city.

  I rang the doorbell, then rapped hard with a heavy wrought-iron knocker. Alix opened the door with the phone at her ear, gave me a look of puzzlement and gestured me inside. I hovered on the threshold while she continued with her conversation. She turned away from me, as if to keep her privacy, but I could hear she was having a professional conversation with someone at her practice. It sounded like a routine discussion about a rota because someone was ill. This was ridiculous. I took a deep breath and tapped her shoulder. She looked round, frowning. Was I really telling her to get off the phone, as if she wer
e a garrulous teenager? Yes, I was.

  ‘It’s urgent,’ I mouthed at her.

  ‘Sorry, Ros,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to call you back. There seems to be some sort of emergency.’

  Alix put a sarcastic emphasis on the word ‘seems’ but she hung up. ‘Karen’s not too bad,’ she said. ‘I just got back from the hospital. She was seen at once because of the bleeding. She’s had some stitches and the break in the arm was quite nasty. She’ll have to stay for the night at least. Rick’s stuck there with her, poor man. It’s a greenstick fracture. Do you know what that is? It’s like when you get a twig and snap and it doesn’t break off –’

  ‘It’s not about that,’ I said. ‘Charlie’s missing.’

  Alix looked at me quizzically. ‘Missing?’

  I gave her a rundown of the events of the morning. I saw a familiar expression of disbelief appear on her face. ‘But it’s only been a couple of hours.’

  ‘Not a normal couple of hours. We were about to leave for the airport. I know it’s shocking and inexplicable but Charlie has taken her stuff and run off and… I don’t know…’

  There was a moment when I almost let the tears run from my eyes. I had the temptation to let go, to howl, put my arms round Alix and ask for comfort and help. But a glance at her sceptical, detached expression made me take control again. This wasn’t the right shoulder to cry on. And this wasn’t the time to collapse. I took a deep breath. ‘I’ll need to talk to Tam,’ I said.