The River House (33 page)

He parks down the other end of the road, where there are residents’ parking bays. I turn off the radio, pick up my bag. I’m
waiting for him to lock up his car; I’ll meet him on the pavement.

He gets out, then turns; he’s looking back into his car. I’m too far away to see his face clearly, but I can tell he’s laughing,
that he’s responding to something that has been said—there’s someone in the car with him. It must be a woman: I know this
from his smile—possessive, intent. I feel foolish. It’s what I should have expected. Of course he would have a woman with
him. He leans down into the car again, but the windows are made of smoky glass and I can’t quite make out his gesture: It’s
as if he’s touching her face or pushing back her hair. Then he straightens again; he’s patting his pockets, perhaps trying
to find his house keys. I know I should drive away now—I can always ring him later. But I wait for a moment, watching, as
his passenger opens her door and stretches her legs and steps out onto the pavement, hitching her battered pink schoolbag
up onto her shoulder; and Max goes to join her and eases his arm around her, his hand resting lightly, proprietorially, on
her hipbone: and she smiles and presses against him, her long red hair hanging down.

S
HE KICKS OFF HER SHOES IN THE HALL
and bangs back the door to the kitchen. It’s somehow a surprise that she’s just the same as ever—her fingers darkly smudged
from her leaky fountain pen, her tie scrunched up in the pocket of her blazer, her eyes like a washed summer sky.

She tries to shake the rain out of her hair. Drops of water fly from her.

“I’m
drowned
,” she says. “I hate it when it runs all down your parting and kind of spills on your nose.”

She’s pink and shiny and too emphatic—I can tell she’s been drinking.

She grabs the towel that’s hanging by the sink and wraps it around her hair and starts to dry it. Her drenched hair has a
blackish sheen, and the rainwater brings out its sweet papaya scent.

“Amber. I saw you with Max.”

She’s suddenly still, tense, her head on one side, her wet hair hanging down.

“Were you following me?” she says.

“No. I just wanted to talk to him. I saw you get out of his car.”

She shrugs, turns away from me, letting her hair drip. She hangs the towel on its peg again, as though she can’t handle what
I’m saying while she’s drying her hair.

“How long has this been going on?” I ask her.

“It’s none of your business,” she says.

Her face is tight, like a shut door.

“Oh, yes it is. Yes, it is my business.” My voice is too loud for the room, but I can’t control it. “How long, Amber? Since
that dinner party? Since you did your placement?”

“Maybe,” she says. Her face is set.

“Amber. He’s forty-seven,” I say.

“So?”

“He’ll use you, Amber. Surely you can see that. A man like Max …” I feel unreal: brittle, cardboard-thin—and so tired it’s
hard to find words for what seems so glaringly clear. “A promiscuous middle-aged man, for God’s sake.”

Her face darkens.

“
Promiscuous
is a stupid word,” she says.

“Anyone could see it’s a total disaster,” I say. “Amber—you’re
sixteen
.”

She shakes her head wearily.

“For Chrissake, Mum. I thought you liked him, I thought he was your friend. Why are you saying these horrible things about
him?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She raises her eyebrows and gives a noisy, melodramatic sigh.

“That’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?”

“You should have told me,” I say.

“I don’t get what you’re so stressed about, quite honestly,” she says. “I mean, which is it? Is it because he’s forty-seven,
or is it because he’s your friend?”

I don’t reply. Perhaps I don’t want to think about this.

“Does Molly know?” I ask her.

She’s hesitant, twisting a strand of hair between her fingers; then she nods a little.

“What does she say?”

“She says it’s up to me. Like anybody would. Anybody remotely reasonable.”

I see then how much of her, of both of them, is unknown to me. That I’m not the mother I thought I was, a friend to them,
someone to share their secrets with, someone they could confide in.

She leans on the table opposite me, bending down toward me. Her drenched hair drips on my hands.

“Mum, I can look after myself.” A little conciliatory now, trying to reach me. “It’s not like we’re majorly in love or anything.
We have a laugh, Mum. What’s the problem exactly?”

As she leans toward me I smell the alcohol on her breath.

“You’ve been drinking.”

“So? I was upset and he took me out for a drink. Is that so terrible? I told him about you and Dad screwing everything up,
and he took me out for a drink. Look, can I go now?”

I stand up, pushing back my chair.

“I want you to stop seeing him,” I say.

Her eyes blaze. I can feel the charge of her anger: It sparks and glimmers on the air.

“You can’t ask me to do that,” she says.

“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.”

“No,” she says. “I’m not going to let you mess up my life. You can mess up your own life if you want to, but you can’t mess
up mine.”

“It’s over, Amber,” I say.

“No, it’s not.” She’s taut as a wire. Her eyes are narrowed, hard. “You can’t stop me. You can’t dictate to me. I’ll do what
I want,” she says. “So how are you going to stop me, exactly? Lock me up or something?”

“I’m going to speak to Max,” I say. “That’s how I’ll stop you.”

Her hands are clenched into fists: You can see the white of the bone.

“No,” she says. Her voice is thin, high, wild. “You have no right to stop me. You have absolutely no right to control my life.
I mean, look at you, for Chrissake. Dad did tell me, you know. He told me all about it. How you’ve been shagging some loser
you picked up. For Chrissake, Mum. Did you forget you were married or something? Did it kind of slip your mind?”

There were things I was going to say to her. I had them all planned, these gentle, soothing things, telling her everything
would be OK: that whatever happened with Greg and me, we would work together to keep her own life safe and happy. But now
I can’t reach the things I was going to say.

I dig my fingernails into my palms.

“Amber, listen. I know you’re angry with me. I know we need to talk. But that’s not what this is about. This is about you
and what you’re doing to yourself.” A sudden dangerous energy flares in me. “Amber, you need to listen to me. I’m going to
stop you seeing Max. I won’t allow it. I’m telling you.”

“Fuck that,” she says. Quietly, but clear. “Fuck you.”

I hit her, hard, on the side of her face. My hand hurting her makes a loud sound. I see the absolute shock in her face, the
widening of her eyes. She puts her hand to her face, turns, and walks out, her hand cupped over the place where I hit her.
The door of her room bangs, so the kitchen dresser shakes: There’s the thump of music turned up far too loud.

I sit weakly at the table. The anger seeps away from me. It’s an instant, total thing, water into dry ground. I can’t remember
why it all seemed to matter so much. I see it, hear it, over and over: the shock in her eyes, the sound of my hand on her
skin. There’s a taste of iron in my mouth, like when you have a tooth out and your mouth fills up with blood.

I’m desperate to say I’m sorry, to hold her. I know this will happen; when we’ve rowed before, we’ve always made up soon.
But I wait there, giving her time. Like when she had tantrums when she was a toddler, and I’d leave her raging on the floor,
and say, Come to me when you feel better; and half an hour later she’d find me, the passion all passed, her face blank and
swollen with crying, her eyelashes clotted together as though with too much mascara, her body hot and heavy in my arms.

I wait for twenty minutes. Then I go to her room.

I knock at her door. She doesn’t respond, but the music is so loud she probably can’t hear me. I open the door a little. The
room shudders with sound.

“Amber …”

She isn’t there.

I turn off the music. She must be in the bathroom—but the bathroom door is open. I call her.

“Amber. I just wanted to say I’m so sorry. …”

There’s no reply.

“
Amber
.” My voice is high now. “Please answer.”

An empty house feels different—the air is flat, dull, there’s a deadness to it. I know there’s no point in shouting—that she
isn’t here.

I ring her cell phone from the phone in the kitchen, willing her to answer. When I’ve dialed I’m startled by a sound that
briefly I can’t make sense of, a shrill phrase of Eminem from her room, her ring tone. Panic surges through me like nausea.
I run upstairs. Her phone is flung down in the middle of her duvet. She must have deliberately left it—Amber, who never goes
out without her phone. Suddenly this becomes something different.

Through the side window on the landing, I see that her bike is missing from the alley. Her helmet and her coat are still in
the hall. I’m trying to think, to work out what to do, but my fear is a labyrinth I can’t find my way through.

I ring Max. It’s his voice mail.

“Max, it’s Ginnie. Amber’s gone missing, and she might be coming to you. I need to speak to you. Please ring.
Now,
Max. Just as soon as you get this.”

I ring Katrine. No, sorry, Amber isn’t there. Then Lauren, then Jamila. They haven’t seen her since school. “She did seem
a bit upset today, though,” says Jamila. Her voice is shaky and unsure. “She said something had happened at home.” She’s embarrassed,
saying this to me; but she says it anyway, and I feel a quick, deep gratitude toward her.

I try Greg, but his phone is switched off.

I ring Greg’s mother. For ages she doesn’t answer. I picture her, in her layers of exquisitely ironed gray linen. I will her
to come to the phone.

“It’s Ginnie. I wondered if Greg was there.”

“Oh.
Ginnie
.” There’s a significant pause. I wonder what Greg has said to her.

“Greg says you’re having a bad patch,” she says then, in a careful, emollient tone. “Everyone has bad patches, Ginnie. The
thing is to work through them.”

“I’m ever so sorry, I can’t talk properly now, I’m looking for Amber,” I tell her.

She pays no attention.

“Nowadays people think they don’t have to work at things,” she says, unhurried but tenacious. “People expect it all to come
so easily. But you have to work at a marriage.”

There’s a scream of impatience inside me.

“That’s what Jack and I did—we really worked at it. The thing is, Ginnie, promises are to be kept, that’s what we all have
to remember. And you’ve got my two lovely granddaughters to think of …”

“That’s why I’m ringing. I’m trying to find Amber. Please, could you get Greg to ring me when he comes in?”

I finish the call, too abruptly.

I grab my coat. I write a note for Amber and fix it under the knocker on the outside of the door, in case she comes back and
doesn’t have her keys. “Gone to find you! Back soon. Lots of love.” But the rain is driving against the door, and the paper
is sodden as soon as I’ve stuck it there: I worry that the words will all be washed away. The wind in the trees in my garden
roars like an animal. The gate clicks behind me. I spin around, with a quick, warm rush of relief, thinking she’s come home,
that she’ll be standing there shrugging, embarrassed, making some self-deprecating comment. I half reach out my arms as I
turn—I’m desperate to hold her. But there’s no one there: It’s just the tug and shuffle of the wind.

I go to my car. I don’t know where to drive to, just that I need to be out there looking for her. I turn the key in the ignition.
Nothing. I try again. Just the strangulated sound of wet spark plugs. I turn the key again and again. The engine screeches
but it doesn’t start.

I
TRY TO MAKE MYSELF THINK
. I sit in the car and flick through the directory on my phone, though my hand is shaking so much I keep on missing the keys.
There’s no one here who could help me. Clem is busy; Eva is ill. I come to Will’s number. I’d intended to delete it, but I
didn’t know how, and I couldn’t ask Amber, who is my usual guide to anything technological. I sit there for a moment with
my finger over the key.

He answers immediately.

“Will, I know I shouldn’t ring you at home—I mean, I know we aren’t seeing each other anymore …”

He cuts me off, responding at once to something in my voice.

“Ginnie, what’s happened?”

“Amber’s run away. And I need to look for her but my car won’t start and Greg’s left and I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you mean—run away?”

“We had a row. Her bike’s gone, but she’s left her coat and her phone. I’m frightened, Will.”

“How long ago was this?” he says.

“About half an hour.”

“You’ve rung her friends? The obvious places?”

“Of course.”

“Where are you?”

“At my house.”

“I don’t know your address,” he says.

I briefly notice how strange this is—that we’ve been so close, yet he doesn’t know the most basic things about me. I tell
him.

“Give me ten minutes,” he says.

I wait in my car, hunting in my head for places where we could look for her. Branches above me heave and lurch in the wind,
and heavy raindrops spatter the windshield like a fistful of stones. He comes when he said he would, though it seems to take
an age. He opens his car door and I get straight in.

I take him in, his keen, unsmiling face, the grace of his hands, his urgent gaze. I’ve lived through this moment so often,
thinking how it would be if I saw him, all the passionate, angry, complicated things I’d want to say. They seem to belong
in another world. Now I’m just grateful he’s here with me.

“Thank you,” I say. “Was it difficult?”