Desire Line (7 page)

He wouldn't follow her matted thought-chain. ‘I told you on the phone.'
His
voice and not on the telephone was agitating in itself. His accent had eased to a mere cadence over time, was engaging. Strange that any trace detected in Eurwen's speech could act like wormwood. ‘She's fifteen and a policeman's kid. Every way of finding her, we've got covered. Phone… switched off by the way. Friends she's made, interviewed. Taxi firms. You can rely on it. I've even told lies, you know? She came for the summer. We
allowed
her the last week off school. Had agreed she should have time with me.'

‘Why say that? You've lied to the police. She's here without my permission. I thought you should never lie.'

‘Grow up!'

She knew what was coming.

‘Remember? Have you had a drink recently,
Doctor
Meredith? You say, No officer, nothing to drink, just an evening meet at my college. Worked, didn't it? Look, if we admit how she ran away from you first—'

‘Don't say that. Don't you dare say that!'

‘Christ, Sara!' His ran his knuckles along a chair back, keeping away. ‘I said she's here on an
arranged
holiday. My daughter or not, if they get an inkling she's a regular runaway, mother drinks, father a no-show most of the time, it will matter to people looking for her. They'll tell you it doesn't and they might not admit it to themselves. Even so what they feel about her, whether she's worth being found'll make all the difference…' but unusually, Josh's
I know my own world
sense of assurance seemed to be eroding. ‘It'll make all the… well, you get it.' He became a man wandered across a border without benefit of map or papers.

Close to tears again, she said, ‘Her note, can I see, please?'

‘I read it you last night.' But he fetched the folded sheet, pointing out the provenance: torn from the pad next to the phone.

Sorry Dad. Tell Mum sorry. I'm fine just need to be away for a bit and – I KNOW you'll be REALLY mad at me. See you both soon and everything will get sorted. Promise. Just in case you're thinking it I'm not off with some perv I met in a chatroom. As if! Please don't start looking for me or anything. Everything's good. And if poss don't tell Gramps and Fleur. I'll keep in touch. Home soon Love E

‘Can you be certain she wrote this?'

‘Aren't you?'

‘Someone could have forced her to—'

‘Read it again.' He closed his eyes as though the text were written on the inside of the lids. ‘And if poss don't tell Gramps and Fleur? Nobody could get that right. How many times have you heard? Since she could talk!'

‘But four days, Josh! And she hasn't been in touch, has she? Nor come home.'

Chapter 5

To try and get Eurwen back Sara was forced to return to the husband who'd left her— in a place she couldn't bear to think about.
It was where my Daddy was born in,
says one child
.
Another I remember screamed so loud put on a donkey it attracted an audience. I'll bet all families love their stories. But some families have legends and the Severings', not in order of merit, go like this:

1. Detective Constable Josh Meredith had been a perverse choice for the professor's daughter.

2. Absent or present, from an early age nobody could ever quite pin Eurwen down.

3. Sara's early genius was dimmed by Josh, by marriage, by Josh's profession, by Josh's cruelty, by despair over Josh, by Josh. And by Rhyl.

Like a town can be your enemy. I was born here with my façade I usually feel the need to add. And of course, Sara hated it. How do I know? I'm trustworthy, aren't I? – or was it dutiful? – and I have resources.

September 24
th
2008

‘Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednesday's child is full
of woe…' The rhyme was throbbing through her brain next morning as she lay in the tiny second bedroom Eurwen had used, in Eurwen's sheets with the Coconut Ice scent still on them. Born on a Tuesday,
Grace
had been chosen for a baby that had been a perfect house guest for nine months but had almost demolished the edifice as she left. Grace was generally approved of. Charming, according to Fleur. And as a virtue name it would always maintain its resonance: this was from her atheist father. Until Josh took one look and said, ‘Eurwen— means white gold,' and in the feebleness that followed a prolonged unproductive labour followed by blessed oblivion, she was conquered. She had read that the giving of a name is the recipient's futurity, should never be done thoughtlessly… but precious as gold or full of grace, neither were contested for over a decade.

Was Eurwen eleven or twelve when the first tremors were felt? As her mother, she should remember. But somewhere deep inside Eurwen, a shutter slammed down that could never be prised free, so Sara thought in her blackest hours. The new school was an easy and obvious target: a fine school, the best, that she took against. But
her own choice
. Progression post-Bradwardine ought to have been smooth; schools competed for girls like Eurwen. ‘Say where you want to go and you can go there.' Geoffrey Severing, holder of the Cunningham Chair in Economic History, would naturally be involved with the education of his only grandchild and, by then, Josh and she were in dangerous waters, therefore it was easier to… yet Eurwen had seemed happy. Until without warning school became a hated place.

‘We'll find you another.'

‘Not this school, Mum.
School
.' The cool-eyed, heavy-lidded stare's first outing: more chilling than the sentiment.

Next came reading. A scholar-grandfather, his wife the archivist and a writer for a mother all acted in concert to furnish a home atmosphere in which books held sacred primacy… but were now reclassified as instruments of torture. In ‘Bookends‘, one poem amongst many Eurwen was studying, was
meant
to be studying, an unlettered father and poet son are forced apart by ‘books, books, books,' the poet using the term as a malediction. And could have been written for Eurwen and herself. Sara reverted to it again and again, Tony Harrison's fourteen lines more often than not blurring before their faultless finale; how she had begun to love this merciless probing of the parent and child rift.

‘Have you finished your Dickens?'

‘Er…' No guilt in the eyes nor the uplifted corners of the mouth.

‘Have you begun it? Opened it, even? Make a start. Please. You can't get much shorter than
A Christmas Carol
.'

‘Yes you can. Nothing. That's shorter.'

‘Eurwen!'

‘It's rubbish. I don't believe in ghosts. Nor in all these stupid
men
. Who wants to read about them? I look at the page and I just see white rivers or snakes. No writing at all!' she finished as though claiming an achievement.

After books, speech itself offended and silence stood in. It was a year during which Sara asked what else is there to lose? Kept asking Fleur, what else can go wrong between us, what will she decide to take against next? And seeing Fleur's hopeless shake of the head. Time not Fleur answered her question: living at Tackley Close, the state of being home. Some imp had got inside her daughter's skin, was controlling her. It liked their house no more than did Josh, who had vacated it by now…

‘You've my mobile number on your phone. Work number's next to the landline in the hall,' Josh called up the stairs.

The flimsy Avonside front door slammed and complete stillness followed. She was alone. In her husband's house. They were still married.

(
Why?
Geoffrey demanded, as did Fleur on occasion though without an accusatory tinge.) And positions reversed, would she have left Josh to spend a day in the present disordered Tackley Close? To find a letter on the desk, opening ‘Since the final deadline for delivery of this revision
is exactly two years ago, would it be helpful if we could arrange…?
'
and the bin beneath holding nothing but ashes. Upstairs would be a Smirnoff cap nestled beneath the French sleigh bed, whereas two rings
he
had once given lay safe inside her best kidskin gloves.

The thought propelled her from under-bedding warmth to check the room for any vestige of Eurwen. Why had she not done it last night? But she was in a box with few hiding places: she could afford to be thorough now. She felt into the furthest corners of the wardrobe's melamine shelves and shoe compartments and found a single blue cotton thread. From a garment she did not recognise… then into a sort of tallboy affair, even less of a challenge and empty save for her own things. Not so much as a hair-band or button; Eurwen had arrived ‘with the clothes on her back‘, he said, as though a mother would not have known, and ‘bought, well, the usual gear' with money he provided, jeans, T-shirts… underclothes, he presumed from the laundry hung around. Now ‘the gear' had been efficiently removed. Or so she thought until,
ouch!
In the last corner of the last drawer something was sharp enough to pierce her fingertip. Out it came, a milky-pale stone the size of a pea in a spot of scarlet, its wrenched claw setting become a barb… She dropped back onto her haunches, wincing not at this feeble assault but because she knew it as her own, from a moonstone necklace. Much-treasured, she had passed it to Eurwen last Christmas after everything else suggested was greeted with eye rolling. And seeing her wear it had seemed more than adequate recompense when they dined with Geoffrey and Fleur. Melancholy threatened the small gathering in Pryorsfield's morning room but in the vast dining room it would have overwhelmed them. Yet Eurwen, conventionally clothed for once in satin, seemed to be in the mood to give herself as a gift. From the other side of Fleur's festive table Eurwen's square neckline and straying ringlets lent her the Regency look of a young lady's first engagement ‘out'. And the moonstones captured the candles' flicker against the absolute whiteness of Eurwen's throat with her every quip or giggle. An enchantment.

Maybe Eurwen had only performed satisfaction though the trinket had seemed to please, shimmering with its own history. Because twenty years before, it was found on Sara's favourite market stall, a present to herself, an immature silly
rejoinder to the ‘good' Severing diamond bracelet and the family pearls, ‘When would I wear them?' she wondered aloud to her housemate Polly, until a burglary solved the dilemma. But a week passed and the young policeman dropped by for the second visit: Josh, out of uniform this time and with her moonstones proffered in plastic. Finding him on the doorstep (and having been drawn to the idea of his reappearance on that exact spot in the days since the theft) still she managed to pass off her excitement as the liveliness that was never lacking in those days… Her necklace was simply there. Thank you! She accepted Josh had retrieved it, dealt with any impedimenta and delivered it to her outstretched palm…

At least there was hot water in his house… and a proper tub taking up most of the monochrome bathroom. Immersed to her shoulders, she whipped up bubbles and felt all angles as her limbs cut through the foam, nothing childlike but a forty-year-old woman who had lost weight again. She washed haphazardly with the fresh bar of soap he had put out till her own bag attracted her, its contents spewed on the slate floor like an accident victim's across tarmac… while the oversized white wall-tiles gave off an aseptic gleam reminiscent of things scientific, of laboratories, of mortuaries even. Against the heat, she shivered… and fingers tracked without being asked a line across her lower belly, the long scoop of a cutlass swipe and Eurwen's portal on the world. Over fifteen years it had changed not only by the good manners of its fading, falling back into the flesh as a redundant facility, but symbolically. An angry red failure slowly became a happy pink badge of achievement until… what? Just a nuisance, a blemish to consider when buying swimwear, alluded to by Eurwen if she forgot it, in their personal litany of, ‘Don't you hate it? Don't you mind, Mum?' ‘I didn't hate having you, so of course I don't mind. It gave me you.' A sing-song response hiding a truth deeper than tissue, deeper than any scalpel ever incised and, since last night, one proven bone-achingly basic. And yet somehow she had taken her eye off it to care about
Books, books, books
…
A Christmas Carol
…
Nothing
for Christmas, Eurwen
…?
Many girls would love to… Why can't you always dress like this? Miss your Friday English class? Absolutely not.

A paltry worry list.

She would go and find her! As a mother what could be more natural or who better? End the drinking, stay here of course… there would need to be an end to drinking here, and Josh, impressed by her sobriety, might fall back into an old habit himself.

Hope: another virtue name, another admission.

Everything was different on foot. On the far side of the river, Rhyl lay calm and mild under cloudless duck-egg blue. Accustomed to Oxford's curtain-walls, gatehouses, steeples and belfries, she was impressed again by this openness: only a spike or mast of some kind, very slim anyway, cut the sky at a distance. Traffic coming toward her was sparse. She crossed to lean on the iron railings: and to scan the dry sand ten feet below expecting activity not this vacancy, undefiled by feet.
Ah, the children were in school
. Suddenly the rails became bars, the sand pocked with pebbles… and she squeezed her lids shut and tried to reach out through her own inner landscape. If in town, where would Eurwen be at this moment? Doing what? A tingle that today she attributed to one particular abdominal area became a cramp, a sensation fired by
Eurwen!
as
her flesh called to a piece of itself that had taken off. This was no conceit: numerous occasions supported the proposition. Eurwen, sickening at school with tonsillitis, had somehow kept her housebound ready for Renate Desmond's call. Further into the past, another instance of the same thing made it irrefutable, Eurwen, chasing an injured mongrel, criss-crossing the city… She had kept this secret from Josh, from her father, from everyone save Fleur, the incident that shamed and disturbed her, of Eurwen adrift. Through Worcester College pursued by and eluding a couple of porters, a seven-year-old had braved Walton Street's murderous traffic and made it to Tackley Close triumphant, with the stray animal in tow. All the while the wretched Frederika Hansen, in whose care she had been, from whose hand she had slipped, was literally wringing that hand with the other. But Sara found she was able to comfort the heap of Baltic self-laceration, ‘Freddie, I'm sure she's on her way home this minute,' as Eurwen marched in, dragging the terrified dog on her little-girl's belt. ‘Look, Mummy, he tried to bite me once on the arm and once on the leg but he doesn't mean it. He wishes he could bite the car what knocked him over.'