After Anna (12 page)

But Julia didn’t care if people thought her search was pointless. She agreed. She didn’t think she would come across Anna huddled in a bush, but that wasn’t the point. She just didn’t want to be at home, didn’t want to be still. Motion, however pointless, was still motion.

The park sloped down to a shallow river. Some civic-minded person at one point had created a pebble beach by the bank, and she headed for it.

The river water was clear and moved quickly, swirling and eddying in random-seeming patterns. For a second she was lost in them, but then that momentary peace was shattered by a memory of Anna playing by the water when she was first walking. She had wanted to go in and had kept on waddling towards the river bank. Julia and Brian had stopped her, until Brian shrugged and took off his and her shoes.

Go on then
, he said.
If you insist.

Then he and Anna had walked into the river. Julia smiled at the memory of Anna’s expression when she stepped into the cold water – shock, delight, fear and, most of all, wonder at this new sensation, at this new vista the world had to offer.

She had stripped off her shoes and socks and joined them, the three of them kicking the river water into the air.

I’ll read her
Tarka the Otter, Brian said.
When she’s old enough. She can imagine it taking place here,
he said
. We’ll come down and look for Tarka. I’ll buy her some binoculars and we can identify the birds and plants and animals. We can have a family picnic. It’ll be fantastic.

She had loved him at that moment. She could recall the feeling. At that moment she had thought he was the best dad in the world, the only man she ever could have imagined being her husband and the father of her children. She’d pictured Anna and her dad, searching for Tarka.

It wasn’t going to happen now. There’d be no more family picnics. And there’d be no
Tarka the Otter
for Anna.

Julia felt the tears on her cheeks. She wanted, suddenly, to be in the water, to connect with the memory of her daughter in some physical way. She bent down and unlaced her trainers, then pulled off her socks. She didn’t bother to roll up her jeans. They could dry later. Then she stepped into the river.

The water was colder than she remembered; the sensation less pleasant. The rocks were slippery and menacing beneath her feet. She waded out to the middle of the river, the water level rising to her knees. She shifted her feet, and as she did so she felt a sharp pain.

She looked down. She was standing on a broken beer bottle. Blood ballooned darkly around her foot. She watched it swirl away in the river current.

I wonder if fish will eat it
, she thought.

She left her foot there, intrigued by the patterns the blood made, enjoying the sharp pain. It felt real, immediate. She was interrupted by her phone ringing. She pulled it from her back pocket.

‘Hello,’ she said.

It was DI Wynne. ‘Mrs Crowne,’ she said. ‘Do you have a moment?’

I have the rest of my life
, Julia thought.

‘Yes,’ she said. She stared at her foot. More blood was leaking from it. She hoped she wouldn’t need stitches.

‘We might have a lead,’ the detective said. ‘It seems that a former janitor at the school has gone missing.’

Julia looked up. The world sharpened into focus. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Who is it?’

‘He retired last year,’ Wynne said. ‘He’d only been at the school for the two years before that. He moved to the area from Dundee. And now he’s gone.’

‘And you think he took Anna?’

‘We don’t know for sure. But he’s not been seen in his flat for a couple of weeks.’

‘So he left before Anna was taken?’

‘That’s right. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going. We’re treating it as suspicious, at least until we locate him.’

‘Why did he leave Dundee?’

‘We don’t know. We’re looking into it.’

‘Have you been in his flat?’ Julia asked.

‘We have. There’s no trace of Anna, or of where he went.’

‘It’s him,’ Julia said. ‘I know it.’

‘It’s too early to say that. ‘And I don’t want to get your hopes up. But—’

‘It has to be him,’ Julia said. ‘It can’t just be a coincidence. It can’t.’

‘I’ve seen stranger coincidences, Mrs Crowne.’

Julia barely heard her. This was the man who had taken Anna. This was the moment when all this changed, when they started to get somewhere. She imagined him, an old man in a dark flat, scheming, waiting for his chance. Had he selected Anna specifically? Had he been watching her?

Whatever. They were on his trail now.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Call me if there is any news. Any at all.’

‘I will,’ Wynne agreed.

Julia clicked off her phone and lifted up her foot. A thin red line ran from the base of her little toe to the arch of her foot. Blood beaded along it. She was going to have to get home and put something on it.

iv.

As she turned into her street someone stepped in front of her. It took her a few seconds to realize who it was.

It was Miss Gregory, Anna’s teacher. Anna’s favourite teacher.

‘Mrs Crowne,’ she said. Her eyes were glazed with tiredness and she looked like she’d lost weight. ‘I came … ’ she paused, her mouth open, as though she wanted to speak but could not find the right words. ‘I wanted to tell you how sorry I am. About Anna. I didn’t want to call; I didn’t think it was right. I thought I should come in person.’

Julia remembered the last time she’d seen the teacher. It was on the CCTV footage of the day Anna disappeared. Miss Gregory had been escorting the children out, laughing and chatting with the parents.

Laughing and chatting when she should have been looking after Anna.

Julia stared at her. Was this woman to blame for her daughter’s disappearance? Maybe, but she couldn’t summon the energy to be angry at her. She just stared.

The teacher filled the silence. ‘Mrs Crowne,’ Miss Gregory said. ‘You have to know how sorry I am. I can’t think of anything other than Anna. I’d give anything to be able to go back. Anything. The school told me not to say anything, but I have to. I have to tell you how sorry I am.’

So the school did not want her to talk to Julia. The lawyer in her recognized that they were probably scared of admitting liability; probably getting ready for a court case. The mother in her didn’t care, not yet. There would be time for that later. Time for Westwood School and Miss Gregory to come face to face with what they had done.

‘I’m not ready for this,’ Julia said. She was suddenly exhausted. ‘I know how you must feel, but please just leave me alone.’

‘Mrs Crowne, please,’ the teacher said. ‘This is tearing me apart.’

‘What do you want?’ Julia asked her. ‘What do you want me to do? Say I forgive you? Fine, I forgive you. It doesn’t change anything. Anna’s still gone. If you were to blame before, you’re to blame now. As am I.’

‘I don’t want you to forgive me,’ Miss Gregory said, her voice quavering. ‘I don’t know what I want. I … ’ she was crying now, on the verge of breaking down, ‘I just want to see Anna again.’

The last few words were lost in sobs. Julia looked at Miss Gregory, saw how much this was affecting her, saw how it would scar her for life; maybe drive her out of the profession she loved.

But she did not feel sorry for the teacher. She
could
not. There was only one emotion, one thought that had any purchase on her at all. And that was grief at the loss of her daughter.

She walked past Miss Gregory and headed for her house.

When she got home Edna and Brian were sitting at the kitchen table. Edna had made dinner. She was a good cook; she didn’t do it often, but when she did she brought to it the same standards that she applied elsewhere in her life. She wasn’t creative in the kitchen, but she also had no fear. She would take on complicated recipes and follow them to the letter, marinating meats overnight, clarifying consommés, baking soufflés. She also used only the best ingredients, which gave her a good start, but nonetheless there was always something a bit joyless about her meals. They were born of grim intensity, not passion, and Julia thought it came across in the final product. Her mother-in-law’s food was delicious, yes, but it was also soulless, unsatisfying. There was none of the warmth and comfort of food prepared with slapdash love, just the clinical perfection of the surgeon’s knife.

Julia had read once that you could tell how someone would be in the bedroom by the way they danced and the way they cooked. She’d never seen Edna on the dance floor, but her kitchen style made sense: not too often, but do a good job of it when you did.

She’d made a veal stroganoff, soft and easy to eat, and Julia put some on a plate and sat down. She couldn’t eat more than a few mouthfuls. She pushed her plate away and laid her knife and fork on it.

‘Try and eat,’ Edna said. ‘You need it to keep your strength up.’

It was the professional advice of a doctor, not the urging of a mother. Julia shook her head.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Some wine?’ There was a bottle on the table, a strong, blood-red Italian. It was half-empty already, most of it drunk by Brian. Julia shook her head again. Her head felt clouded enough already through lack of sleep, without adding alcohol to the mix. Enough of it might help her fall asleep, but it wouldn’t keep her asleep; wouldn’t chase away the dreams of Anna, and when she woke up in the middle of the night, dry-mouthed and needing a piss, she’d feel even worse.

‘I spoke to DI Wynne just now,’ she said, as much to break the silence as to share information. ‘They have a lead.’

Brian leaned forward, the glass halfway to his mouth. ‘Really?’

‘There was a janitor at the school. He retired last year – he’d only been there a short while – and he disappeared a couple of weeks ago. No one knows where he is.’

‘That seems pretty thin,’ Brian said. ‘Could just be a coincidence.’

‘Could be,’ Julia agreed. ‘But the police are treating it as suspicious. And it fits, right? Lone male, sixties, moves around the country. I hate to rely on stereotypes, but … ’

Brian nodded. He was more alert now, more present. ‘I guess. So what next?’

Julia shrugged. ‘We wait. But I think this might be it, Brian. I really do.’

‘You might be right,’ Edna said. ‘And I hope to God you are, and that Anna is back here soon.’

There was a long silence as the news sank in. After a few minutes, Brian put his knife and fork down beside his plate. It was still full but it was clear he had finished eating. He looked at Edna, then Anna, then back to Edna. ‘I got a phone call today,’ he said. ‘From Simon.’

Simon. The name echoed around the room.

‘Did you?’ Edna said, the forced nonchalance in her tone doing little to disguise the tension that rolled off her. ‘What did he want?’

‘I sent him an email to let him know what happened. He’s flying over. He’ll be here tomorrow.’

Edna’s expression did not change. ‘It’ll be nice for you to see him.’

Brian didn’t reply; he didn’t seem to know what to say. Julia broke the silence.

‘Is Laura coming?’ she asked him.

Brian shook his head. ‘She’s staying home with the kids.’

‘Thank Heaven for small mercies,’ Edna said. ‘The last thing we need now is her showing up.’

‘She’s not that bad,’ Julia said. She’d only met Laura twice – both early on in her relationship with Brian – and she’d quite liked her. She was funny and irreverent and bursting with self-confidence. She was also very honest, and believed in saying what she thought. She had shared with Julia that she did so on the advice of her therapist, who had told her that holding it in was
just stacking the shelves of your closet with problems for the future
.

‘She’s worse,’ Edna said. ‘She’s poison.’

Despite the situation, Julia laughed. ‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘She’s not that bad. You and she didn’t see eye to eye, that’s all.’

‘Julia,’ Edna said. ‘I suggest you refrain from commenting on things about which you know nothing.’

‘So what did she do that was so bad?’ Julia asked.

Edna leaned back in her chair. ‘She convinced my son that he should leave me. That I was a – how did she put it? – a source of
negative energy
in his life. And, even worse, she shared this opinion with others. People outside the family.’

‘She has a right to her opinion,’ Julia said.
And her opinion was probably right
, she thought.

‘Maybe,’ Edna said. ‘But I have a reputation to uphold, and the problem is that shit sticks.’ Edna rarely swore; it was a sign of how angry she was. ‘Especially to clean surfaces,’ she added. ‘Not that you would know too much about that.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Julia said, her own anger rising in opposition to that of her mother-in-law.

‘People think highly of me,’ Edna said. ‘But you hardly have a spotless reputation, do you? At least among those who know you well.’

‘Are you talking about Chris?’ Julia asked. ‘Still? That was before Brian and I got married. Well before. We’d hardly started seeing each other. But you know that already.’

While at university Julia’d had a brief affair – if you could call it that – with an older man, an accountant called Chris. It had taken place about two months after she and Brian had met and she still wasn’t sure why she had done it. He was married, with two children, so it wasn’t going anywhere, and at the time she was falling in love with Brian. Perhaps that was it; she knew that she and Brian were probably in it for the long haul – at least, it had seemed so then – so she had gone looking for one last fling, maybe as a way to test the strength of her feeling for Brian. Anyway, it had all come out when a friend of Chris’s wife saw her and Chris together in a pub. The friend told Chris’s wife, who told everyone she knew, then left her husband a few days later. At first Chris wasn’t too bothered – he thought it meant he was free to carry on his relationship with Julia, with whom he turned out to be deeply in love, much more so than Julia had ever suspected – like many British men of his age, he kept his feelings hidden beneath a carapace of cynicism and constant joking – and was heartbroken when she told him that it really was over.