Picture Me Gone (10 page)

So he’s disappeared, Lynda says thoughtfully and then looks up at Gil, a bit hesitant. He’s done it before, you know.

What?

Gil frowns. No, I didn’t know.

After Owen died. He walked out of the hospital and no one heard from him for two days. I guess under the circumstances you might expect a person to do something crazy.

Gil looks suitably shocked. Well, he says, yes. But it wouldn’t be everyone’s choice. Especially when it meant leaving Suzanne alone.

How horrible, I think. What a cruel thing to do.

At the inquest, he couldn’t account for those days, couldn’t remember where he’d been or what he’d done. We were still in Scotland; it was reported in the local news. Available online to all ex-girlfriends and stalkers.

I look at Gil.
He’s disappeared before and Suzanne didn’t mention it?
Gil’s expression hasn’t changed.

It must have been so terrible for him, Lynda says. I always thought he was the world’s kindest man.

Unless you’re his wife, left alone for two days with a dead son. I refrain from saying this out loud.

Lynda’s tone changes again. When you say disappeared, Gil . . . has he run away
to
somewhere?
With
someone? How do you know he’s not having an affair or—?

Dead, she means.

Oh, says Gil, I’m pretty sure he’s alive. I’m guessing he just needed to be away for a bit. You know what he’s like.

Lynda looks doubtful. Yes, but to walk off like that without a word. Not even a note? She frowns. Making everyone worry. Dragging you over from London and all.

We’d planned the visit some time ago, Gil says.

Lynda stares at him, puts her hand on his arm. But that’s even worse. Surely it’s not just coincidence?

You think he didn’t want to see me? After all this time? Gil shrugs. He sounded pleased when I said we were coming.

It can’t be coincidence, Lynda says. But why wouldn’t he want to see you?

Lynda’s right, I think. It doesn’t strike me as the act of a rational man who just needs a bit of space, which is how Gil interprets it. People who need to get away don’t drop everything and disappear just when their long-lost friend is coming three thousand miles to visit.

Has he been in touch with Oliver? Gil asks.

I don’t think so.

Gil addresses me now. Lynda’s brother, Oliver, he says, pleasantly and for my information (as if we were not just four seconds ago discussing his oldest friend’s strange-possibly-desperate behavior), and Matt were at university together. That’s how they met. Oliver introduced them.

I was living with another woman, Lynda says, also to me.

How fascinating, Lynda, I think. Possibly not entirely pertinent, however. What is it with this woman? All of a sudden she and Gil are talking as if they’re an old married couple and I’m some jolly houseguest.

Do you remember her, Gil?

He nods. Of course.

Lynda turns toward me so as not to make me feel left out, but it’s Gil she’s addressing.

She was one of those old-fashioned, men-are-the-enemy, all-sex-is-rape type of lesbians. Well, what did I know. I was young.

I stare at her, telegraphing that I am entirely uninterested in the details of her sex life, past or present. There is more than enough for me to absorb here without extraneous facts. And by the way, Lynda, do you think you might stop flirting with my dad?

Anyway. Lynda smiles. It took me decades to get it right.

Gil looks at her. But you have now?

I hope so. One of my colleagues at school.

That’s good to hear. Some people never get it right.

You did though.

I was lucky, Gil says.

She laughs. You’ve always been lucky. I am just so glad to lay eyes on you, even for an hour or two. And Mila. I’ve missed you. Really I have.

She beams at us both but I’m sincerely doubting that she’s missed me given that she didn’t even know I existed.

The front door opens.

What now? Matthew? Lynda’s lesbian lover? Marley’s ghost?

Jake! Is it still snowing? Come say hello to Matthew’s old friend—my old friend—this is Gil and his daughter, Mila.

Lynda points to me as a tall, dark-haired boy of about fifteen with brown eyes and a big blue puffa jacket shuffles through the door. This is my son, she says. Get something to eat and come sit, Jake.

Hold on a minute. Why would Matthew send money to his ex-girlfriend and her son? Unless. Is it possible that Jake is also Matthew’s son? Is that why Matthew sends money? Or is he just helping out an old friend? Do people send money to needy ex-girlfriends? I look at Gil and wonder if he’s keeping up with what Lynda’s saying or has utterly failed to absorb the information coming our way.

Quick-wittedness can be very lonely.

Lynda keeps talking like there’s nothing at all weird about a sometimes lesbian, who may or may not be the mother of Gil’s best friend’s secret teenage son, flirting with my father. I feel dizzy.

He sent me an announcement when Gabriel was born, she’s saying, sweeping her hair up off her neck and holding it in a bunch behind her head. I was happy for them. Matt said Suzanne wanted another child even before Owen.

She means before Owen died, but won’t say it. And what about Matt? Did he want another child?

We all fall silent, though I have less falling to do than the others, my contribution consisting mainly of gaping with incomprehension. Honey lies quietly beside me, head on paws, eyes open, watching. I wish she and I could compare notes.

I’m sorry we can’t help you, Lynda says. We would if we could.

Don’t worry, Gil answers. It was a long shot that we’d find him here.

I look at him—as far as I’m concerned it was our shortest and only shot.

Where will you look next?

I’ve no idea, says Gil. We were pretty much gambling on this place.

Lynda looks from Gil to me, her face anxious. Jake has made himself a sandwich and flopped down on the sofa to eat it. I turn round to look at him and he meets my eyes as if noticing for the first time that I’m here. Hi, he says.

Hi.

This is Mila, says Lynda. Gil’s daughter. Gil is an old friend of Matthew’s.

You said that, Jake says.

I’m looking at Jake and wondering what his line is on his maybe-father, whether he dislikes him for being married to someone else and hiding Jake’s existence from his new family. Assuming he has. And Jake is.

But hold on a minute. Let’s say that Jake is actually Matthew’s son and
is
actually around fifteen, then isn’t he pretty much the same age Owen would be? I do the calculations.

So Matthew couldn’t possibly be his father. Unless . . . oh god.

Use a plate, Lynda says to Jake, and picks one up from a shelf behind the table. I take it from her and she thanks me, then turns back to Gil. I really do wish I could help but I don’t have any idea where he might be. I don’t even know who his friends are.

I walk over to the sofa with the plate and look down at Jake. How old are you? I ask him, and he looks a bit nonplussed. It’s a somewhat strange conversation-opener but I have to know.

Fifteen, Lynda says from across the room. Last September.

September? And he’s fifteen? Owen was born in October. My theory must be wrong. It would mean Lynda got pregnant about the same time as Suzanne, by the same man. Do people even
do
things like that?

It would certainly explain why Suzanne doesn’t know they’re staying here. I stare at Jake but he’s taken the plate from me, smiled politely, replaced his earphones, half-closed his eyes and switched his concentration inward.

Across the room, Gil and Lynda are still talking.

I walk back to my chair and sit down. Gil smiles at me. He is probably experiencing regrets for his friend and Lynda and the relationship between them that didn’t work out, and not concentrating on the big story at all. I blink at him in a meaningful way, but he merely looks puzzled.

It’s starting to get dark and Lynda gets up to light oil lamps in glass hurricane shades. Jake has somehow managed to disappear in this tiny house, still stretched out on the sofa, eyes closed, plugged in to his iPod. I need to use the toilet and when I ask if it’s OK, Lynda hands me Jake’s big puffa jacket and a flashlight. Do you want me to come out with you? The snow is quite heavy.

But I know where to go and I’m desperate to be alone for a few minutes to clear my head. The coat feels nice, light and warm and smelling of boy. Honey follows silently as I pick my way across the new snow. The door creaks a little when I open it and it’s cold in here, but I’m cozy in my cocoon and the wooden seat is wide and smooth. Honey squeezes into the tiny room beside me, not wanting to be left out in the snow. She presses up against my legs and I sit down, grateful beyond words to be away from that house full of silent drama.

I do the math once more to be absolutely certain, but it just adds up the same. Barring premature births, if Jake is Matthew’s son, he was conceived the same month as Owen.

Despite the turmoil in my head, sitting in the dark with only the flashlight is quite a nice feeling. Peaceful. I switch it on and make slow circles on the walls, thinking. I’m completely warm inside the jacket with Honey leaning up against my legs. Something about the warm coat and the cold air and the dark and the quiet and the strangeness and all the revelations of the past half hour make me want to sit here forever. I feel almost drowsy staring at the swirls of light I’m making on the wall, turning my brain away by force from the confusion in it and wondering how Lynda and Jake manage in winter when there’s tons of snow. Could you even get to the toilet or would it be buried? I shudder. And who would clear the road? In London when it snows, everything shuts down. Maybe Lynda went back to Scotland in order for Jake to be born as far away from Matthew and Suzanne as possible. Under the circumstances, I can see her point.

I wonder why they came back, and to so primitive a place.

Eventually my feet start to feel cold, so I get up and open the door, then jump back with my heart flipping over in my chest because there’s a dark shape looming near a tree about ten feet away and I’m about to scream and run when I realize that bears don’t wear boots and sweaters, and as bears go, this one looks a lot like Jake.

I’m here to make sure you haven’t got lost in the woods and frozen to death, he says.

What about getting scared to death?

Sorry, he says. What on earth were you doing in there all that time, if you don’t mind my asking? He rubs his hands together and blows on them, watching me.

Well, this is awkward, but at least it’s too dark for him to see. I was just thinking, I tell him, and even in the dark I can see him roll his eyes.

Come on, he says, and grabs a handful of my jacket. No one cares if I freeze to death while you sit around in the cold thinking. But his tone isn’t annoyed; it’s actually quite nice and friendly.

He and Honey and I shuffle back through the snow in single file. White smoke is curling out of the little tin chimney. Back inside, Lynda’s built up the fire. The coziness of the place probably makes up for a lot of inconvenience. It smells of wood smoke. I wonder how the two of them can live here. There’s not exactly a lot of privacy.

Found her, says Jake, flopping down on the sofa once more and slipping his earphones back on. Honey surprises me by padding over to him. She lies down on the floor beside him and he reaches down to stroke her.

She’s an old girl, isn’t she? Lynda says, looking at them. I guess she got left behind too? Honey makes a rumbling noise in her chest and I look at her and Jake.

Once more I wonder: Why would Matthew leave Honey?

I’m afraid we’d better go, Gil says, peering out at the snow.

He’s worried about finding his way back with no visibility and all the road signs covered in snow. What he ought to be worried about is the countless surprising revelations Lynda’s sprung on us.

Will you come again? At least let me make you lunch tomorrow. Lynda has one hand on my arm, though I suspect it’s Gil she’d rather arm-hold.

Even though I know we haven’t got all the time in the world and the roads will be completely covered in snow and we have flights back to London and need to find Matthew, I know before Gil says anything that we’ll be coming back tomorrow for lunch. Though to be fair, where else can we go?

What about the roads? I ask, feeling obscurely resentful.

I guess we just wait and see what it looks like in the morning, says Gil.

We say good-bye to Lynda, who gives me a hug and tells us to drive carefully. I’ll try and contact Matt tonight, she says, though I doubt he’ll answer my calls if he hasn’t answered yours.

Jake doesn’t get up, though his mum grumbles at him for being rude, so he waves at us from the sofa and then shuts his eyes again.

Despite all the strange quasi-revelations, I can’t bring myself to dislike Jake and Lynda. They seem half like displaced people waiting for something to happen and half like woodland creatures who’ve always lived here. I’m guessing that Lynda’s lonely for people who’ve known her a long time, or maybe just someone who doesn’t live plugged in to an iPod. Perhaps Gil isn’t acting in anything more than the friendly manner of a person who was once fond of another person.

Seeing them together, I get a funny feeling that Lynda, Jake and Honey have all been discarded in Matthew’s wake. Once again, I wonder what sort of person Matthew must be to walk out on the people who love him.

I take out the phone to reply to his text.

Matthew

I stare at the single word for a long time, wondering what else I can possibly say. It is impossible to put into a text everything I want to know. What do you mean you’re nowhere? Where are you really? Why did you go? Do Jake and Lynda have anything to do with all this? Why did you leave Honey behind? And perhaps most urgently, What happened to your life?

Instead, I write:
Is Jake your son?

I leave the message as it is and press send, but I can’t help noticing that the people in his orbit are beginning, slowly, to add up. Suzanne, Gabriel, Owen, Jake, Lynda, Honey. All circling some sort of story that only Matthew can see completely.