A Kind of Vanishing (36 page)

Alice stared up into his face uncomprehending as he smiled weakly at her. Her last impression was that he was trying to ask her a question but she couldn’t speak. As Doctor Ramsay’s hands closed around her neck, it seemed to Alice that the light bulb in the ceiling went out. 

T
he playroom had become bitterly cold. Wind rustled the trees and bushes in the garden and rattled the window frames. The centre light flickered, in time to these sudden gusts. Far away, downstairs in the hall, the grandfather clock chimed three-quarters of the hour – fifteen minutes to go before midnight.

‘How long have you known?’ Chris cleared her throat.

‘Until tonight, not properly. Or maybe I’ve always known.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My friends never said anything. But they would giggle or blush if he was near, or far worse, I saw their fear. In the end they didn’t come. So there was only Alice. It was the same for Gina, although we never acknowledged it. In those days there was no word for it. Now I’ve come back they don’t mention I was away.’

‘Why didn’t you tell the police?’

‘Report my own father? For doing what? No one would have believed me. I didn’t believe it.’

‘Couldn’t you tell your Mum, or your brother and sister?’

‘They don’t want the truth. They want just to get through life relatively unscathed. I couldn’t destroy my family’s fragile existence on the basis of vague hints and imaginings. His terrible act had threatened to do that. My mother made sure we all got back to normal. She was a great believer in structure and routine.’

‘You lied to me.’

‘I tried to keep you out of it. Stupid. I had relied on you never finding out. When you did, I said what came into my head. I took the blame like I always had. I had to keep my mother safe too. That’s all we’ve ever done. He did too. Until the end when he couldn’t face her. Isabel’s an old woman now. It’s too late for her.’

‘Do you think she knows?’

‘She doesn’t want to know. But it might explain the headaches.’ Eleanor got off the window seat. ‘Besides if the truth had come out imagine what it would’ve done to Kathleen? She worshipped him. She’s a sick woman.’

‘You know nothing about Kath. How could all of you let her suffer all these years? For the sake of the reputation of the Ramsay family, you let another family be destroyed.’

‘I was a child remember?’ Eleanor went across to the doll’s house and stood beside it in the wavering lamplight, dwarfed by its magnitude.

‘So that lets you off?’

‘No. Of course it doesn’t. That’s why I became Alice. It was all I could think to do. Crazy, I know. But none of this bloody mess is sane.’

Suddenly Chris understood her Mum’s bizarre behaviour. After all she hadn’t gone to the police when her Mum had confessed to a murder. It wasn’t that simple.

‘I knew he had taken her. I saw them through the bushes. Then I glimpsed them way off in the distance on the beach. I tried to catch up. If I had, he wouldn’t have been able to say anything. He would’ve had to take us both home. I could have stopped him.’

‘Probably not. He would have pretended to be furious with you about taking Alice to the Tide Mills. He would have said you couldn’t be trusted and sent you packing. In front of Alice you would have had to do as you were told. He was your Dad.’ Chris found she didn’t hate her Mum any more. Not for being trapped in a flat with fake agoraphobia, not for being Alice; for lying to her daughter. Not for protecting a murderer. All of it made sense. She might have done the same.

‘I couldn’t get down to the beach. The tide was coming in. So I rushed back up the path and through the Tide Mills village. Halfway down the street I collided with an old man. The Bobby Charlton tramp. He caught hold of me and dragged me towards the workman’s cottage: my secret den. He was bleeding from the nose and shouting at me, but it was hard to make him out. Something about being attacked by a madman. I screamed and he let me go and staggered off. No one heard. All I thought was that Alice and my Dad had left me to die. Alice had been happy to leave me there by myself.’

‘She had no choice. If he said it was okay, then how could she argue?’

‘I wanted to have one friend who dared stand up to him.’ Eleanor dragged her foot over the rug, kicking out the wrinkles. ‘When I got back to the house, my Mum was asleep. I belted along the passage to my Dad’s study. The door was open but the room was empty. Dad and Alice were nowhere to be seen. I decided I had made the whole thing up. I couldn’t say about the tramp as I wasn’t supposed to be at the Tide Mills. I wanted to. I still hoped that if my Dad knew what had happened he would have felt guilty for leaving me.’ She turned to the doll’s house and slowly eased open the great frontage. It creaked on its hinges. ‘So I showed the police his handkerchief. I said I had got it off the ironing pile. I had used it to wipe the blood from the bramble scratches on my leg. The handkerchief told Dad that I knew.’

‘There’s something I haven’t told you.’ Chris bent down and addressed the bars:

‘That reporter, Jackie Masters, asked to do an interview with Doctor Ramsay last year. She was drinking, she wasn’t getting any work. She needed money. It was going to be an anniversary piece, looking at where people in the case were now. He told her to get lost. Without him, she wouldn’t have been able to get others to co-operate, especially Kath. She decided to have revenge. She found out he’d never been interviewed by the police. At the time, the press had assumed Doctor Ramsay had an alibi. In fact the police had considered him above suspicion because he was a highly respected doctor. People like him wouldn’t kidnap children. She went through the evidence files and the cuttings. It didn’t take her long to find what she needed.’ Chris shut the window and sat down on the window seat, facing Eleanor:

‘Doctor Ramsay had handed in Alice’s cardigan. He claimed to have found it in the lane near to Eleanor’s den. This played a big part in falsely placing Alice there at the time of her disappearance. It backed up your story.’

‘Alice was convinced I had stolen that cardigan.’

‘Jackie checked the accounts of what Alice was wearing that day. There was no mention of a pink cardigan. It was too hot. She had on a yellow dress. She also knew that Kathleen would never have put pink and yellow together. You had said in one of your interviews that Alice had left her cardigan behind in the dining room after drawing one afternoon. She hadn’t worn it since. Richard Hall didn’t pick up on this. He was focusing on you because he found you weird. No one suspected Doctor Ramsay.’ Chris sighed. ‘If only they had.’

She came over to the doll’s house; both women knelt in front of it, like children solemnly preparing to play.

‘Jackie wasn’t thinking of a good story by this time. She had a better plan. She began to blackmail Doctor Ramsay. He was easy. The cardigan stuff wouldn’t have been enough, but he was guilty and scared. It seems all she had to do was lie and say she had a witness who had seen him with Alice and he caved in. So every week she went to that old shed in the garden at the White House and collected a parcel of money hidden under the ivy at the back. He knew it was the one place the family never went. No one saw her. If they had, it wouldn’t have mattered; they had agreed Jackie would say she worked with him. Nothing he did was questioned. Nothing was questioned. He could at least depend on that. Besides it didn’t matter what Isabel thought. She would never do anything. They forgot the CCTV. Or rather that the only person who watched those films was someone who would recognise Jackie Masters and wonder what she was doing there.’

Chris watched her mother’s fingers begin the walk up the carpeted stairs from the hall to the first landing. She continued in a lower voice:

‘It took time for Kathleen to place the woman she saw on the film. Then one day she did. On the Saturday when he came to swap the tapes she plucked up her courage and told Doctor Ramsay. She didn’t like to admit she noticed what went on at the White House. She was so grateful that he gave her the chance to look for Alice by seeing the tapes. When he said he didn’t know anything about Jackie Masters she accepted what he told her. After that Doctor Ramsay changed the meeting place with Jackie, but this didn’t help him. He must have brooded all that last week. It was harder to face Kathleen. He was caught between these two women, one so innocent and the other as corrupt as himself. Isabel always there at home keeping an eye. That Saturday lunchtime he took the coward’s way out.’

‘Why hasn’t this Jackie said anything?’ Eleanor reached past the tiny roll top desk and ran a finger lightly along the cushions on the miniature sofa at the back of the room that was Doctor Ramsay’s study.

‘Kath has said that if she writes anything, she will tell the police Jackie was blackmailing Doctor Ramsay. When the truth comes out, it won’t benefit Jackie Masters. That’s the deal. Jackie was so sure Kathleen would be pleased she had made him suffer and hounded him to death.’ Chris gave a wry smile. ‘Kath’s not like that.’

Eleanor was a small girl again, caught up in the magic of her game. There were no dolls in the replica study. The husband doll was missing. She jogged the desk with her wrist as her hand delved deeper into the book-lined aperture. She felt along the painted panels to the right of the fireplace. Their heads touched as they both leaned closer in towards the tiny room. Eleanor pressed the little carved Tudor rose that formed part of a series ranged along the wall at picture rail height. The partition wall slid to one side.

They could only just see into the cavity they had revealed.

There was someone in there.

Eleanor squeezed her thumb and forefinger into the tiny gap and tenderly lifted out the little doll. She cradled her in her palm. Together they examined her in the lamplight. At the same moment they gave a start. Someone had knotted a strip of cotton around the doll’s head. She had been gagged and blindfolded.

‘He’s been here,’ Chris whispered.

‘Yes.’ Eleanor breathed deeply to stop herself vomiting.‘He must have wanted to be found out. But after that summer no one played up here again.’

Eleanor slipped the thin band of material off the doll’s eyes and held her upright, gently turning her around, showing her the room.

‘You know we have to tell, don’t you?’ Eleanor chose the words Alice would have used. Alice, who always said and did the right thing. ‘We know where she is now. Kathleen is all that matters.’

‘What shall we do?’ Chris longed to be small again with her mother in charge.

‘Let Isabel have one last party.’

Eleanor rearranged the furniture in one of the bedrooms on the right hand side of the house. This had been Gina’s bedroom. Alice loved her room. She hauled the bed over to the window where the sun would shine in on Alice’s pillows first thing in the morning. Then she fetched the counterpane from the master bedroom. The initials E.I.R. were embroidered on one of the small squares.

‘Isabel made these bed spreads for me one afternoon when it was just us in the house. She didn’t often do things with me. At the time it meant a lot.’ She folded the quilt over so that it would fit the small bed in the room she had prepared. Very slowly, because no one likes to be whizzed through the air before they can get their breath, she carried the little doll over and enveloped her in the quilt. They shuffled backwards so that Chris could close the giant frontage.

Eleanor crouched close to the window of the room where Alice was tucked up in her bed. The window was open so she could hear the soft repetitive sound of the waves on the shore as she slept. Eleanor recited from her favourite book in a lullaby voice that Chris could hardly hear:

They paused on the dark landing. Chris drew close to her Mum and, taking hold of her hand, put into it the rounded lump of glass that Kathleen had given her when she moved into Alice’s bedroom.

‘Here, have this. It’s for luck.’

‘Where did you get it?’ Eleanor saw Mrs Jackson’s overheated flat, Jaffa cakes heaped on a plate and she felt the warm weight of Crawford nestling on her lap.

‘Kathleen gave it to me. I don’t need luck. I’m going to be fine.’

‘And you reckon I need every bit I can get!’

‘I imagined you’d like it. It looks precious, although I don’t expect it’s worth anything.’

‘It is worth a lot to me. Thank you,’ Eleanor murmured.

Chris checked the time on her watch in the light from a shaft of moonlight slanting through the window. The fog had cleared. The century was about to end.

She knew that the Ramsays would survive. There would be more parties. She had studied them for weeks. They had given her lots of opportunities to. After all she was a Ramsay too.

The two women interlocked fingers and together they descended the stairs. The countdown for the year 2000 began:

‘… ten… nine… eight… seven… six…’

A novel might start in the privacy of a ‘room of one’s own’ but the final version involves the contribution of others.

I would like to thank the team at Myriad Editions and in particular Candida Lacey, who is a tenacious, risk-taking publisher. Corinne Pearlman’s consistently positive presence, along with Candida’s kindness and generosity, made the whole process of seeing a manuscript through to a book truly enjoyable. My thanks also to Colin Kennedy for his part in this process.

Lisa Holloway’s unwavering belief in this novel encouraged me and her advice and feedback was always spot on.

Sarah Roberts Salon is South London’s premier hairdresser; besides skilfully wielding scissors, Sarah, and her mother Ann, have been great supporters of the book.

Thanks to Katrina Heather for being the best pilates and yoga coach a girl could have.

Jeanette Winterson’s comments and help have been invaluable – thank you.

Melissa Benn has long been an important friend and ‘
writing-companion
’, giving suggestions and much-appreciated support.

My thanks to Melanie Lockett for her considered perception. And for her vocal appreciation of this novel – her ‘word of mouth’ has given it many new readers.

None of this would have happened without the meticulous care of my agent, editor and good friend Philippa Brewster at Capel & Land. I am hugely indebted to Philippa who worked with me tirelessly with her usual skill and insight. She taught me a great deal.

Finally, starting out as a writer, and while working on this book, I would not have had the ‘room’ (mentally and sometimes financially) to write without the support and encouragement of my Mum, May Walker. She died shortly before publication and was not well enough to read the manuscript. However her wisdom and critical understanding, as an inspiring teacher and as a woman of the world, are with me still.