The Lost Child (24 page)

*

Jack Pearson parked his car and with steely determination pushed his way through the throng of the curious towards Dan’s front door. While he waited for admission he stoically shut out the shouted demands form the crowd beyond the gate. When the door was opened, Jack slipped in through the narrow gap and breathed a sigh of relief.

‘How are things?’ he asked as Dan took his coat. He was given his answer when he looked along the hallway and caught sight of Elaine’s wan, flat expression.

‘To be honest Jack, we are out of our depth,’ Dan said, leading him into the sitting room. ‘I managed to smuggle Tony out the back earlier, but as Elaine says, it’s like a siege out there.’

Jack nodded and took a seat, ‘Is the girl still with you?’

Dan nodded, ‘Yeah, she’s upstairs. Normally she’s following Elaine around like a lost puppy but we’ve managed to fob her off with a DVD and a pizza. It’ll be a brief reprieve,’ he said with a smile.

‘You shouldn’t have had to take her on really,’ Jack stated. He had formed a grudging fondness for Brodie, but it didn’t stretch to wanting to take responsibility for her. He both admired and felt sorry for Dan. How he felt about Elaine right now was a mixed bag, empathy was at the top of it but the rest was pure confusion. He just couldn’t reconcile the little girl who had haunted his career with this grown-up conundrum of a woman. But she was offering him tea, which he accepted.

When she came back in with their drinks he posed a question. ‘Have either of you seen the papers or caught the news?’

Dan shot Elaine a surreptitious glance, ‘No, I’ve been deliberately avoiding it to be honest.’

Jack frowned, avoidance was never a wise move in his book. Forewarned was always forearmed. ‘Well, the media are having a field day in the absence of any concrete statement from you Elaine. As you know, Fern Miller sold her story to the highest bidder and fed the frenzy. Hallow’s End hasn’t seen so much activity in a long, long time because though you have been found, the world still wants to know what happened. Elaine, I’m afraid all your neighbours have had something to say about Jean, and little of it was positive. The press need a statement from you, and they need it soon, otherwise speculation will do more damage than the truth.’

‘But I don’t know the truth, what can I tell them? There’s nothing to tell, it is what it is,’ Elaine said, anguish carving lines on her face where there had been none before.

Jack was a patient man, and he thought he understood how she might feel, but he had to persuade her to come out of hiding and face her future. Burying her head wouldn’t make the storm lessen. ‘Elaine, you have to give them something, if you don’t they will make it up. Look, why don’t I go out there as your spokesperson and tell them that you aren’t able to comment on an on-going investigation, that you are coming to terms with the situation and that we will give a press conference in due course.’

‘Will that get them off my back?’ she asked, hopeful of a reprieve.

‘Temporarily,’ Jack said. ‘But you need to plan out what you do next.’

Elaine covered her face with her hands and groaned. Through the nest of her fingers she mumbled, ‘Do it.’

Dan reached out a hand and stroked her hair, then squeezed her shoulder. From where Jack was sitting it looked like she had flinched away from his touch, just slightly, but the movement had definitely been there. Mary would call him an old romantic, but he’d hoped that his instincts about these two would hold out. Dan seemed like a good man, and Elaine sure as hell needed him. From what he was starting to understand about the mysterious Jean Ellis, he hoped that her influence wasn’t going to ruin things from beyond the grave. According to the papers she had raised Elaine like some hothouse flower, too precious for others and for her own enjoyment only. Only God knew what effect it must have had on Elaine.

The thunder of small feet on bare wood interrupted them as Brodie launched herself down the stairs and into the room. She was clutching her phone, ‘The hospital just rang, she wants to see you Elaine. Mum wants to see you.’

Jack glanced at Elaine, she looked as if she would rather face the throng of press collected on the street outside than face Shirley Miller. Having had past dealings with the woman, he couldn’t entirely blame her. Shirley Miller had far more in common with her sour Aunt Esther than she had with Miriam, her natural mother. Now there was a tale that would jar a few people if it ever came out! Teenage pregnancy and illegitimate babies weren’t a big deal these days, but back then it would have been scandalous. In the absence of anything concrete regarding Mandy’s mysterious abduction, Jack fervently hoped that the press wouldn’t resort to digging too deeply into the past. He had kept Miriam’s secret close to his chest for thirty years, out of respect for her and because it had no bearing on his case, or so he had believed at the time. What worried him now was that it might not have been much of a secret to start with. The people in Hallow’s End who had set him on the path of it were still there, and they were no more discreet for the passage of time. But nonetheless, Shirley Miller was the product of scandal and had been palmed off on a childless, married sister for the sake of decency. Jack had often wondered what had fostered her mental health issues, or, having known Esther, whether it was a family trait? Far be it from him to say, but Esther Davies had been as mad as a fox in a hen house and as jealous as hell of her sister. As he looked at Elaine now, the grown-up Mandy, he prayed that she had not inherited the strain of instability that seemed to run in her family.

*

Getting way from Dan’s house unseen hadn’t been too difficult a task after Jack had made his announcement. Most of the press had packed up their gear and left. Only a few stragglers had remained, and it had been fairly simple to by-pass them by leaving through the garden. Jack had collected his car and met them on the narrow road at the back of the house and had given them a lift to Dan’s yard where Dan’s pride and joy, his Aston Martin, was stored.

Brodie had been immensely impressed with the DB9, even though Dan confessed that it was an old one, and explained, that no, he was not ‘loaded’. She was less impressed with it when she was forced to travel several miles in the rather cramped back seat and consequently was somewhat less effusive when they arrived at Woodlawn Hospital.

Elaine had been amused and distracted by Brodie until they arrived, when her heart began to sink at the prospect of meeting the woman who had given birth to her. Woodlawn itself wasn’t as bad as she had imagined. In her mind’s eye she had constructed a forbidding and oppressive Victorian institution along the lines of ‘abandon all hope’. Instead Woodlawn was a modern, purpose built unit designed to be neutral and uplifting. The neutrality was reassuring, but for Elaine the jury was out as to whether her visit here would prove uplifting. The way she was feeling, she was half tempted to request a bed and book herself in.

Shirley occupied a room on the secure ward, where the nature of the cheery decor and comfy furniture was belied by the presence of the staff, who were all in possession of large bunches of keys and weary expressions. It was not a place of asylum in Elaine’s eyes, but a place where people would be enthusiastically and forcibly rehabilitated by grim determination and budget cuts. She pictured people leaving the place, clutching the raffia tablemat they had made in occupational therapy as compensation for the fact that their sanity was still in tatters.

A member of staff showed Elaine and Brodie into the day room, which stank of cigarettes and unwashed flesh. Dan had opted to stay outside and wait for them, and Elaine envied him the choice. Brodie was clutching a crumpled bag of pear drops, Shirley’s favourite sweets, a gift for her, which Brodie had pressed them to stop and buy on the way. Elaine wondered if she should have brought something herself. Flowers maybe or some other item she could have held before her as a ritualistic offering. After thirty years of pain and suffering caused by her own absence, she couldn’t imagine a single thing that would be up to the task. She doubted that the entire display of the Chelsea flower show could compensate for Shirley’s sense of loss.

The string haired, shuffling, bloated mess that entered the room to be introduced by Brodie as her mum couldn’t have had a less motherly vibe if she’d tried. If Elaine had had to describe this first impression she would have said that Shirley was more akin to a zombie than a living, breathing, functional human being.

Shirley barely gave them a look as she shuffled to a chair, eased her doughy bulk into it and lit up a cigarette. She exhaled a stream of smoke that stung Elaine’s eyes like tear gas, and regarded her long lost daughter with a hollow, hungry stare. She didn’t speak.

Brodie went over to her, ‘Hiya Mum, I brought you these.’ She presented the pudgy woman with the sweets. Elaine winced as Brodie dropped a kiss on the woman’s cheek and was rewarded by a defensive retraction of the said body part. At least they had something in common. Elaine wasn’t comfortable with physical affection either, though that was easing as she got used to Dan. The thought made her wish she had insisted he came in with them, but she had concluded that over-exposure to the darkness in her life couldn’t possibly be a good thing for either of them.

Shirley resumed her staring once Brodie had moved away. Elaine felt like something that had been picked, rolled and held subject to scrutiny – any minute now the woman would lose interest and wipe her somewhere unobtrusive. If she had ever indulged in the imagining of a tearful, loving reunion the concept of it was being rapidly shot down in flames. Elaine was almost relieved by it, this grim indifference felt easier somehow.

Shirley leaned forward and peered more closely. Discomforting though it was, Elaine offered her a weak smile, which was completely ignored. Still Shirley did not deign to speak.

Elaine was used to stubborn silences, Jean had been the master of them, but Brodie was not. ‘How you feeling then Mum, any better?’ she asked. Elaine could see the anxiety etching itself onto the small face.

Shirley treated Brodie to a derisive, low-lidded look that made Elaine’s hackles start to rise. Whatever Shirley had been through, or suffered from, Brodie wasn’t responsible for it. Eventually the woman spoke.

‘So you’re her then,’ she said with what appeared to be dry disinterest.

‘So I’m told,’ Elaine said with another weak smile.

Shirley puffed on her cigarette, the ash dangled several centimetres long and was perilously close to falling. ‘Nope, I don’t buy it. You aren’t my Mandy.’ It was said with languorous certainty.

‘You’re right. I’m not. I’m sure I’m very different from what you imagined she would have grown into,’ Elaine said, her voice a little too bright and high.

Shirley gave her a look of utter contempt, and took a last drag on her dwindling cigarette. She blew out the smoke in a final concentrated stream, stubbed the butt out in a flimsy tin ashtray and leaned forward. ‘You’re missing my point love, I said you ain’t my fucking daughter. I should know. Now fuck off and leave me in peace. I don’t need this shit. I’ve had enough.’ With that, she hauled herself out of the chair and shuffled towards the door, letting it swing shut on an astonished Elaine and a mortified Brodie.

‘She doesn’t mean it, it’s her illness. I’ll go after her,’ Brodie said, rising from her own seat in order to chase after the woman.

Elaine stayed her, ‘It’s OK, don’t worry. It’s fine. This has hit everyone like a ton of bricks, God knows it’s hard enough for me to accept it. Give her some time Brodie.’

Brodie looked from Elaine to the door then back again, her face had crumpled with disappointment and defeat. ‘I thought it might make her better. I thought finding you would make her happy,’ she said, as shiny beads of tears started to form in the corners of her eyes.

Elaine stood, and folded the small, stiff figure into an embrace, ‘It might in time flower. Shall we go? We can come back another time.’

Brodie wiped her tears on the sleeve of her ever-present hoodie and nodded miserably.

Elaine had wanted to say ‘let’s go home’, but it would have been a misnomer. Neither of them had a home. Instead she said, ‘Let’s go and find Dan.’ He was the only North Star either of them had.

*

Dan knew it had all gone wrong when they both emerged from the hospital doors much earlier than he thought they would. He didn’t speak, just opened the car for them and drove home, trying to ignore the bated silence in the car. He felt a frisson of annoyance when Elaine, rummaging in her bag for whatever women rummaged for, managed to release some kind of gritty dust onto the carpet in the car. He noticed that she hadn’t even acknowledged the mess and found that the observation irked him. He hadn’t realised he could be that precious about something that was so trivial, but that dust seemed to be turning up everywhere. Every time he noticed it he felt a worm of irritation niggle in his gut.

*

Dan dropped them in the lane at the back of the garden and took the car back to his yard. As Elaine drew the curtains in his lounge she noticed that a thin straggle of reporters had maintained their vigil beyond the gate. God knows what they hoped to see.

Brodie brooded in her wake, following her about like a lost soul as Elaine prepared the house for the coming night. She had asked Dan if he wanted her to cook, so it was when she was rummaging in the cupboards for ingredients that Brodie asked her question.

‘Was Jean that bad? As bad as Mum I mean.’

Elaine paused, a bag of pasta in her hand, ‘She wasn’t easy if that’s what you mean.’ She was cautious in her response, always wary of bringing Jean back to life even in the smallest of ways.

‘What was she like?’ Brodie asked.

Elaine weighed her options, she could either shut down the topic for her own sake and shut Brodie out of yet another thing, or she could please the girl and hurt herself.

‘Well, she was difficult, full of contradictions. Sometimes she was kind and nice, sometimes she was hard and indifferent. I never knew from one minute to the next how she was going to be, so being her child was quite nerve-racking at times.’