Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon (8 page)

‘Well, Anna! He seems a really nice chap. I liked him a lot,’ her mother said, in a phone conversation after Anna eventually took Martin to meet them for a restaurant meal. The sub-text was clear:
Here’s the one for you to settle down with. Hang onto him, now that you’ve got rid of that other layabout
. Anna felt a surge of resentment towards Martin and a tug of loyalty to Simon, so gawkily thin that his ribs showed; shabby Simon, dressed always in shapeless T-shirts, sweaters with unravelling cuffs, frayed jeans with packets of weed in the pockets.

Her father was waiting at Sevenoaks station.

‘Thanks for coming, love.’ He was more cheerful than he’d sounded on the phone.

‘Thought I might as well stay.’ Anna indicated her overnight bag. ‘That’s OK, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, yes, any time you like.’ Don led the way to his car; when they were both belted in, Anna asked, ‘How’s Mum today?’

‘Seems a bit more her normal self. You’ll probably think I’m worrying about nothing. But I didn’t tell you about last night – we had dinner with Malcolm and his wife, from golf. She started being funny about names. First she insisted on being called Cassandra, when no one’s called her that for years. And when Kathy asked if we’ve – if we’ve got grandchildren, she called you Rosanna.’

‘Oh,’ Anna said flatly. ‘What else? What did she mean?’

‘I don’t know. Later on she talked about you quite normally.’

‘Did she? What did she say?’

‘Oh – that you’re living in London, happily settled with Martin.’

Silenced by this, wondering where Martin was now and whether he’d seen her note, Anna turned to look out of the side window. It was almost dusk, and the swell of the North Downs rose beyond the town like a grey cloud-bank. She said, ‘Did you say anything to Mum about it?’

‘No. I didn’t want to stir things up.’

‘Sounds like it just slipped out. Rosanna instead of Anna.’

‘Maybe you’re right.’ Her father sounded relieved. ‘I’m making too much of it, I expect.’

Didn’t want to stir things up!
So typical of Mum and Dad, Anna thought, and of me too. Let’s pretend everything’s fine, then maybe it will be. But Rosanna, Rose–Anna. Did that make her two in one? Or only half?

Becoming an only child had been a difficult adjustment, after years spent in Rose’s wake. Faced with the casual enquirer, hairdresser or friend-of-a-friend, Anna found it too complicated to embark on, too painful. Asked if she had brothers or sisters, she learned to answer, ‘No, there’s just me,’ which wasn’t even a lie. At the time, everyone from school knew, of course, and local people – Rose’s disappearance had been all over the front page of the
Sevenoaks Chronicle
, until interest faded and there was nothing more to report. It slipped into the background, no longer requiring comment.

The
just
always echoed in Anna’s ears. Just me. You’ll have to make do with me. I know Rose was always more important, more special. Every time she thought she was grown-up enough to dismiss these feelings, they crept back to nudge at her.

This road, Ashurst Avenue, alongside the recreation ground with woods and fields beyond, had been Anna’s route home from school for years and years; Rose’s, too. For a moment Anna saw Rose running across the grass, long hair flying, tears streaming down her face; Jamie catching up, grabbing her arm, turning her to face him. Whenever Anna returned to Sevenoaks, Rose was everywhere and nowhere; she was used to that. But Jamie Spellman. Where was he now? She didn’t want to think about that.

‘We haven’t talked any more about what she said – you know, wanting to call off the move,’ her father said. ‘Perhaps you’re right, and it’s only a glitch. Best to do nothing – leave her to think it over.’

‘But how do
you
feel about it, Dad?’

‘Me?’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll do whatever makes your mum happy. She was the one who started this off, after refusing even to think about it, all these years. The Cranbrook house would’ve been fine, and it seemed we were on our way. But if she wants to stay put, it’ll save us a lot of bother, that’s for sure. I don’t like letting people down, though. Our vendors and our buyers, both lots.’

‘Perhaps it won’t come to that.’

‘I think, unless she raises it, we won’t mention this. I thought we might talk about the birthday plans. It’ll give a reason for you coming down unexpectedly.’

‘Great, only I haven’t really thought much about it yet,’ Anna said, with slight reproach. ‘Oh well, I can improvise.’

Her mother would be sixty at the end of July – unbelievably, to Anna – and at Christmas Don had proposed throwing a party. For Don’s own sixtieth, he and Sandra had spent four days in Paris, but with Sandra’s birthday so close to the anniversary of Rose’s disappearance, celebrations had always seemed out of place. The approaching birthday and anniversary were both big ones: Sandra’s sixtieth, and twenty years since Rose had gone.

‘That’s another weird thing,’ said Don. ‘When we talked about it on our own, she said, “Oh no, I don’t think we should make a fuss. We didn’t do anything for Roland.” ’

‘
Roland?
’ It took Anna a moment to assimilate this. ‘But Roland’s— What did you say?’

‘I wasn’t sure at first what she meant. It would have been two years ago, Roland’s sixtieth. Did she mean we should have marked it in some way? We never have, before. And then she tried to pass it off, as if she hadn’t meant to come out with it.’

Roland, Rose. The two missing members of the family. But Roland had died years before Anna was born; she and Rose had sometimes talked of him as the uncle they’d never had. They knew him only by his photograph: long-haired and gaunt-faced, stranded in the sixties where his life had ended at the age of eighteen. It was the family curse, Bethan said, visited on them by a bad fairy at a christening. All the more reason, Anna thought now, not to provide a new generation. But Mum – this did sound worrying. She wasn’t nearly old enough, surely, for mental decline of a kind Anna didn’t want to put a name to.

‘I don’t think I told you at the time – you were in Southampton,’ her father said, ‘but she hasn’t mentioned Roland for years, apart from when George Harrison died.’

‘George Harrison?’

‘Yes, this was – what – ten years or so ago. The news-papers were full of it, and your mum – well! You’d have thought it was a personal bereavement. She bought all the papers and spent ages poring over the features and obituaries. She even cried – though she tried to hide it.’

‘Well, I suppose she’s of that generation that got swept up in Beatles hysteria. Perhaps she was one of those girls who screamed themselves silly. I don’t ever remember her talking about it, though.’

‘That’s what I thought. I was pretty gutted myself when John Lennon was shot – it was the end of an era – but she didn’t react in the same way to that. With George, though – she practically went into mourning. And finally I got it out of her that Roland had specially liked George Harrison. He played the guitar.’

‘I know that, Dad!’

‘I mean
Roland
played guitar. He was in a band, but I don’t think it ever came to anything. Well – there wasn’t time.’

‘You never told me any of this,’ Anna said, with an edge of reproach. ‘About Mum acting weird.’

‘No, well – you weren’t at home, and it was so peculiar, but she suddenly snapped out it, and binned all the papers. It was if George Harrison’s death had brought everything else back – Roland, and …’

‘Rose.’ Anna filled the pause.

The final turn into Knole Crescent, and she was back home, as if she’d never been away. There was the house, half-tiled and ivy-clad, behind a low box hedge. Anna – and Rose, even more – had scorned it as hopelessly old-fashioned as a child, envying her friend Melanie, whose house was open-plan with huge windows, but in the local estate agent’s brochure it had been
a substantial Edwardian family house, semi-detached, in a quiet location close to the town centre and its amenities … many original features …
She knew now how desirable this style of house was; prospective buyers had exclaimed, Dad said, over the original tiles in the porch, the fireplaces, the generous proportions and secluded garden. And so they should.

In the warmth of the hallway, Anna and her mother exchanged kisses, while Don put the car away in the garage.

‘Well, this is an honour!’ Sandra greeted her. She was dressed in sharp-creased trousers and a cable sweater, scarf knotted at her neck; flat shoes in patent leather, discreet make-up. She didn’t do scruffy, even for Sundays at home. Her hair, once as thick and richly brown as Anna’s, was now tinted ash-blonde to disguise creeping greyness.

‘Hi, Mum. OK if I stay the night?’

‘Course you can! The bed’s made up.’

Home received Anna, reassuring and cloying. It peeled back the years, telling her that the quality of light in this hallway, the particular smell of the house – some kind of polish or spray mixed with lingering Sunday lunch – would never change. From outside, the sounds of her father closing the garage, one of the doors dragging over the concrete of the hard-standing, then the slam and clunk, the turn of the key; sounds she never thought about for a moment when she wasn’t here: all of them so deeply ingrained in her memory as to capture home in its entirety. Here she was her parents’ daughter, the younger sister, the only child, while the other Anna, the Anna who tried to be grown up, stayed in London.

Stupid. Stupid.

In the kitchen her mother had Classic FM on the radio. She made tea; Anna asked about the evening with Kathy and Malcolm. When her father came in, she tried not to meet his eye, feeling like a conspirator.

Her mother carried the tea on a tray to the sitting room and drew the curtains, shutting out the night. Anna raised the subject of the forthcoming birthday, and her mother laughed ruefully at the idea of having a rail pass, qualifying for concessions. ‘Don’t knock it,’ said Don, two years ahead.

‘Well, what do you think, Mum? About your party? We could find a really nice venue, somewhere unusual.’

Anna expected protests of the
I don’t want a fuss
kind, and sure enough her mother said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t like big parties.’

‘It doesn’t have to be a big party, Mum. It could be for you and Dad and your special friends.’

Sandra thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘No. I don’t think so. I can’t be the centre of attention. Maybe I’ll go off on my own somewhere.’

‘Off on your own?’ Anna pictured her mother running away from a party, abandoning her guests.

‘Yes. On a holiday. I’ve never done that before.’

‘I thought we might go somewhere together.’ Don looked a little hurt. ‘Venice, perhaps. We’ve often talked about it.’

‘We can do that as well.’

‘What sort of holiday have you got in mind, then, Mum?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, yet.’ Sandra might have been shrugging off an irritation. ‘It’s only a thought. There’s plenty of time to decide, now that we’re not moving.’

Anna glanced at her father before saying, ‘Yes, Dad told me you were having doubts.’

‘It’s not doubts. It’s definite. You can go if you like,’ said her mother, with a defiant look at Don as if it was all his idea. ‘I’m staying here.’

Anna was silent, conscious only of a wash of relief. She knew that she ought to back up her father, find reasons and persuasion, but she couldn’t think of anything worth saying. Things would have to change eventually; but not yet. Not yet.

Chapter Five

No one had referred to Rose’s room for years, but that was how they all thought of it. Anna’s bedroom – as it still was to her, though she hadn’t lived here since her sixth-form days and it was now the guest room – was opposite, at the front of the house. Her parents had the big double that overlooked the garden; a former box room had been knocked through and converted into an ensuite bathroom.

Anna dumped her holdall on the bed; paused, and crossed the landing, turning the handle on Rose’s door, careful not to make a sound. She stood on the threshold, looking in.

For the first three years this room had been kept as a kind of shrine. Her mother kept the bed made up, and changed it once a week; pointlessly she washed sheets and duvet covers that were already clean, airing them on the washing line. Rose’s clothes hung in the wardrobe and her shoes were lined up neatly on the rack, apart from the crochet sandals which Anna had hidden under her bed. She never wore them, but was too guilty to sneak them back, knowing Mum would notice. A framed photograph of Rose stood on the chest of drawers, as if it had the power to bring her back; behind it, a vase of flowers, usually roses, breathed their perfume into the air until they became fat and blowsy, dropping petals. Mum cut flowers from the garden, while they lasted; later, when winter came, she bought roses or lilies from the florist. It became such a habit that no one commented.

If anyone came to stay, Anna’s grandparents at Christmas, or friends – she couldn’t remember it happening often – Anna would have to sleep on the sofa downstairs, giving up her own room. No one could sleep in the sanctity of Rose’s room, in Rose’s bed. In the first days, weeks, months, Anna used to go in to stand in awe, or to gaze at Rose’s books and music and wonder what Rose had been reading or thinking or listening to, the last time she slept here. Rose’s absence was so strong that it became a presence, looming, oppressive.