Missing Ellen

‘A tense and tender portrayal of friendship and loss.
Missing Ellen
is beautifully written and completely addictive.’
Laura Jane Cassidy, author of
Angel Kiss
and
Eighteen Kisses

‘
Missing Ellen
is a beautifully-crafted novel about love, friendship and everything in between.’
Michelle Gyo, Random House, Germany

‘I really enjoyed
Missing Ellen
! The believable friendship and the compelling mystery at its core are really involving. A lovely,
simply-written
book about a complex subject.’
Deirdre Sullivan, author of
Prim Improper
and
Improper Order

Actually though, I am not really sure when the beginning is, how far back I need to go to make some sort of sense of it all. If that’s even possible. Did it all start with what happened to Ellen’s family last spring, or did it go even further back?

I can still remember the day I first met Ellen, a bouncy five-year-old, red plaits flying as she dashed from one side of the junior infants classroom to the other, wanting to try everything at once – the books, the sand table, the dolls’ corner. I remember being fascinated by her and how utterly fearless she seemed. I was clinging on to my mum’s hand, not wanting her to go, not wanting to be left alone in this strange place. And here was this girl, no bigger than me, who seemed completely happy to be there and eager to explore our new world. I thought she was amazing. And strangely enough, she seemed to like me too. She took me under her wing, bossed the other children around and shouted at a little boy who tried to take my snack. And from that moment on we were friends.

I think even then I knew that wherever Ellen is is always the best, the most exciting place to be. She lights up the room with her energy and passion for life. When she leaves, I feel deflated, like everything that was going to happen has happened and there’s no point in being there any longer.

But that’s too far back, I think. I suppose the best place to start is a dreary Tuesday last spring, Ellen and I in geography with Fuddy Duddy (Mrs Duddy to her face. The nickname
was kind of inevitable if she insisted on having that surname combined with a complete lack of any sense of fashion). Ellen trying to pass the time by scribbling notes to me on her homework notebook. And Ellen’s father, at home,
packing
his bags and getting ready to move out for good.

Her mother didn’t show up to collect her after school. This wasn’t exactly unusual. Mrs Barrett has never been the most reliable of mothers.

‘Do you want to give her a ring?’ Mum asked Ellen, sounding a little anxious. Mum always leaves in plenty of time to collect us. She was late once a few months back because there were road works along the way. I was almost in tears by the time she arrived, and she wasn’t much better. I felt silly afterwards, for panicking like that, but it was just so unlike her.

Ellen shrugged. ‘There’s no point. She couldn’t find her mobile charger this morning, and she never answers the
landline
in case it’s Granny calling for Dad.’

Mum looked kind of shocked at this. I thought she should have been used to Mrs B by now, but I guess she always wants to think the best of people.

‘Come on then, I’ll give you a lift home,’ Mum said.

When we got to the Barretts’ house all the curtains at the front windows were closed, but again, it wasn’t
something
all that unusual. Even before Ellen’s dad left, her mum was kind of inconsistent. Some days she would be up at the
crack of dawn, heading to the gym before coming home to make pancakes from scratch for Ellen and Robert’s breakfast. Other days she wouldn’t even get up to wave them off to school. It never seemed to bother Ellen. I guess she was used to it.

I think Mum must have sensed that something was wrong though, because she didn’t just wait in the car to make sure Ellen had got in OK like she usually does. She got out of the car and went to the door with Ellen, round to the back of the house. I followed them, not sure what else to do.

Robert’s bike was lying on its side outside the back door. My dad would have gone crazy, he is forever nagging Jamie and me to put our bikes away so they won’t get rusty from the rain. Mum just walked past it and asked Ellen if she had her key. Ellen produced it from where it hung from a chain around her neck – she likes to call herself a latch-key kid – and opened the door. I got this increasing sense of doom, I suppose you could call it. I don’t mean to sound
melodramatic
but I think Mum’s nervousness was infecting me or something. Ellen didn’t seem to notice anything wrong. She was just humming to herself and twisting her ponytail around her fingers.

Mrs B was sitting at the kitchen table, still in her nightie, her elbows resting among the breakfast dishes. Her hair was all over the place and she was just staring into space. She didn’t even seem to hear us come in. 

I looked at Mum, not sure how to react. Ellen was already at the table, pulling out a chair and sitting down. ‘Mum, what’s wrong?’ she demanded, shoving aside a bowl of soggy coco pops to take her mum’s hand.

Mrs B finally noticed us. She looked at Ellen and gave this chilling, bitter sort of laugh. ‘Well he’s finally done it, hasn’t he? He’s left us.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Ellen sounded angry, but also a little frightened. ‘He can’t have. He’s just being
dramatic
. He’ll be back later.’

‘No he won’t. Not this time,’ Mrs B said quietly. ‘He’s taken everything with him. Go and see if you don’t believe me.’

There was a crash as Ellen knocked over her chair in her haste to run out of the room. Mum put her arm around Mrs B and patted her awkwardly, saying ‘There, there’, rather as if she were a small child who had bumped her head and not a middle-aged woman whose husband had just left her after twenty years of marriage and two children.

I stood for a moment not quite knowing what to do with my hands, then I went to put on the kettle. That’s what Mum normally does when there’s some sort of a crisis. Is it just so she will have something to do with her hands? I never thought about that before. I opened the cupboard to take out some mugs, but there weren’t any. As quietly as I could I opened the dishwasher – it was full of dirty dishes. I took out
four mugs and rinsed them under the tap. Just as I was
searching
for tea bags Ellen came crashing back into the room.

‘He’s really being a drama queen this time. His wardrobe is empty, all his CDs, everything.’ She started to cry, and I think that must have set Mrs B off, because she started to cry too, and suddenly the two of them were clinging to each other and sobbing. Mum took over the tea-making duties, locating tea bags and milk and even a few broken biscuits from the bottom of the biscuit barrel.

I watched her, feeling selfishly glad that I had a mum who was good at things like making tea in crises, and a nice
predictable
dad whose idea of doing something really wild was the time he tried to hide his grey hairs with Just for Men. I didn’t know what to say to Ellen. I was used to her parents’ rows, but this was something new.

There, that’s a beginning of sorts, isn’t it? David can’t say I didn’t try.

Ellen’s parents have been arguing for as long as I can remember. When we were seven, things were particularly bad. Her house was always filled with tension. You could almost feel it when you walked in the front door. You know how some houses have a warm comforting smell, like
vegetable
stew simmering on the hob, and some are filled with noise, with lots of children running about, a radio blasting in the background, a mum shouting to the kids to keep it down. In Ellen’s house nothing struck me as much as that atmosphere of people disliking each other.

Ellen would keep coming over to my house to escape. She never seemed upset by the way her parents behaved, she just acted crazier than ever. One day she persuaded me that we should turn all my dolls into clowns by painting their faces and have our own three-ring circus (my room, the
landing
and Jamie’s room being the three rings). We got out my paints and set to work decorating our little clowns – orange for the background, purples and reds and blues around the eyes and mouths. We took off all their pretty dresses, put
them in plain white vests belonging to me and then painted those too. They looked absolutely awful by the time we’d finished with them, but we thought they were brilliant – the perfect clowns. Jamie woke up from his nap as we took over his room, but instead of crying he just sat up and watched us. Ellen was delighted to have an audience and started making her clowns turn somersaults and squirt each other with water, making Jamie laugh with delight.

Afterwards, I felt so sorry for my dolls, with their sad little painted faces which were never really the same, even after I’d scrubbed and scrubbed them. They’re in a box in the attic now. Poor little things – most of them still have a distinctly orange hue.

My mum didn’t even get cross with us, I think she knew what was going on in Ellen’s house. She asked her if she wanted to stay for dinner and even rang up her mum to see if she could stay the night. It was our first proper sleepover and we marked the occasion by having a midnight feast (
chocolate
biscuits, crisps and buns smuggled upstairs and hidden in my doll’s pram). We were just getting into the
Malory Towers
books and thought we were just like the girls in those, though it was a pity we didn’t have a swimming pool to have our feast beside, or a mad French teacher to hide from.

We waited and waited for midnight to come around – it wouldn’t have been a proper midnight feast if we’d had it any earlier – and I kept falling asleep, but each time Ellen woke
me up by throwing a teddy at me, until all her teddies were gone. Finally we heard the clock in the hall striking
midnight
and we scrambled out of bed to raid the pram. We’d forgotten to bring anything to drink so I sneaked out to the bathroom and filled two toothbrush glasses with water. That was when Ellen thought of doing the vow. She got me to loop my arm around hers like people do with champagne glasses. I spilled some of the water on my pyjamas but I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want her thinking I was a spoilsport.

‘Repeat after me,’ Ellen said solemnly. ‘I swear that I, Maggie, will be best friends with Ellen now and until the end of time, and that nothing shall come between us.’ I think she’d mixed up the Barbie wedding film with a bedtime prayer. I repeated it just as seriously and we drank the slightly minty-tasting water from our toothbrush glasses.