Two Fridays in April (32 page)

She lets it drift away. It’s like a gift she’s offering, a confidence in exchange for the one Mo shared earlier. Mo studies her hands as she feels her way around Daphne’s words, picks at the sense of them, thinks about what they mean.

Finally she nods slowly. ‘I did wonder,’ she says. ‘I thought maybe you didn’t want children.’

Daphne closes her eyes briefly. ‘I did,’ she whispers. ‘I did want children,
his
children, so much—’ She presses a hand to her mouth, and Mo sees a tear make its way out and roll unstopped down her cheek.

Who would have thought it? How wrong had she been to assume that the lack of babies had been Daphne’s decision, all Daphne’s fault? Clearly very wrong indeed.

Daphne hadn’t been denying Finn anything: she’d wanted his child, his children, as much as he surely did. What kind of cock-eyed God decides to give babies willy-nilly to ones who don’t want them, and refuse them to the most deserving?

And to Mo’s dismay, she feels the heat of incipient tears in her own eyes. She blinks rapidly several times until the impulse has passed. No cause for two of them to be bawling.

It’s a lie but a permitted one. It’s a kind lie, born of the need to cause no pain. Maybe less of a lie than a tweaking of the truth. What’s the difference, after all, between ‘it didn’t happen’ and ‘it couldn’t happen’? A hair’s breadth at the most. Mo doesn’t need to know that her son, her dead son, had been incapable of fathering a child. Not with all she’s going through with Leo, with all she went through in the past.

Despite her preoccupation with Una’s disappearance, Mo’s confession floored Daphne. She listened with growing disbelief to the account of the lost babies, the facts made all the more poignant from being delivered in Mo’s trademark no-nonsense way.
It’s not that I don’t feel – I feel everything
. You’d never think it from her.

How did she bear it, though? To lose one baby must be horrendous: how could any woman cope with losing five? And as Daphne listened, she was reminded of her own heartache. They weren’t, she realised, so dissimilar after all. Both with secrets, both denied the thing they most wanted: Mo to have more than one child, Daphne to have any at all.

But Mo had shared her secret, and Daphne owed it to her to
do the same. And now they sit across the table from one another, with nothing left to tell. It’s a relief of sorts, she supposes, to have told Mo: it felt like something she should do – but where do they go from here? What are they to do now with one another’s intimacies? She has no idea.

And just then, as she lifts the cup Mo has pushed towards her – might as well drink it, now that it’s made – the doorbell rings, making her start. Making her remember, with a lurch of fright, what the real business of tonight is.

T
here’s a squad car parked outside the house. Isobel pulls in behind it, praying there’s no bad news. As she hurries up the path the front door opens and two uniformed guards emerge, one of them still in conversation with Daphne.

‘… keep you posted,’ is all Isobel catches, but it’s enough. The story still ongoing, thank the Lord. She nods as the two men pass. ‘I’m Daphne’s mother,’ she tells them, although they haven’t asked.

She steps into the hall and faces her daughter, who regards her silently and unsmilingly.

‘I take it there’s no news,’ Isobel says.

‘No.’

‘I’m later than I said,’ she goes on. ‘It took me longer than I thought it would. I wasn’t at home when Jack phoned,’ she adds, when no response is forthcoming. ‘I was … somewhere else. I forgot it would take me longer.’

Daphne plucks her jacket from the hallstand. ‘Can we go and look for her?’ Her voice trembles, and it becomes apparent to Isobel how frightened she is. ‘Mo is here, she’ll stay. Can we go?’

‘Of course we can, love.’ Isobel aches to put her arms around her daughter, wishes it were possible.

As Daphne pulls on her jacket the kitchen door opens and Mo appears, a somewhat smarter version of the woman Isobel encountered earlier in the day. Her face made up, albeit a little garishly. Better clothes, better shoes. Isobel wonders if she’s told Daphne about their meeting in the café. Such a long time ago it seems now, so much changed since then.

Mo nods at her, as solemn as Daphne. ‘You’re heading out so,’ she says, to no one in particular. ‘I’ll be here if she turns up.’

Daphne moves swiftly towards her and enfolds her in an embrace, over as soon as it’s begun but not so fast that it doesn’t cause a whip of jealousy in Isobel. Mo doesn’t react – she hasn’t time before Daphne is out of the door. Isobel follows, pulling it closed behind her. They walk down the path in silence. At the gate Isobel presses her key fob and the car lights wink an answer.

They get in. Isobel looks at Daphne as she turns on the heater. ‘Where to?’

Daphne frowns. ‘I don’t know – she could be anywhere. I
don’t—’ She breaks off, bites her lip, turns away from Isobel to look out of the window.

Isobel starts the car, executes a three-point turn. She drives quickly to the corner, turns onto the road that leads back to the city centre. Retracing the journey she’s just taken, passing the same houses and shops, crossing the river again.

‘Have you called her friends?’

‘… Yes.’

‘And they’ve no idea where she might have gone? None of them?’

‘No.’

‘And she’s still not answering her phone?’

A not quite concealed sigh. ‘No.’

Isobel drives on, meandering through the dark streets, passing knots of people on their way home, or maybe on their way out. What time is it? She’s lost track. She can still taste the coffee she drank in the hotel bar. She should have taken the refill when the barman offered it; looks like none of them will be getting to bed for a while.

A lone man stumbles against a wall; a pair of women, arms linked, give him a wide berth as they overtake him. A small dog scurries down a street, stopping to cock a leg briefly against a lamppost. A couple embrace – or maybe get up to a bit more – in a doorway.

It all feels removed from Isobel, or her from it. The whole evening has taken on a surreal quality. What are they doing, driving around in the dark? What hope do they have of finding Una, who in all likelihood doesn’t want to be found? But what else can they do, other than sit uselessly at home?

A small breathy sound to her left makes her glance over. Daphne’s face is shiny with tears. Isobel reaches across instinctively to place a hand on her arm – but at her mother’s touch Daphne pulls away to lean against the window.

Isobel withdraws, stung. They drive on, Daphne continuing to weep quietly. After a minute or so Isobel pulls into the kerb, switches off the engine.
Now
, she thinks, with no rehearsal, no prior plan.
Now
, because she’s had about all that she can take today.

Daphne turns, runs the back of a hand across her eyes. ‘Why are we stopped?’ Her voice is clogged with misery.

Isobel turns to face her squarely. ‘Are you ever going to forgive me, Daphne?’ she asks, as calmly as she can manage.

Dead silence for a second, two seconds. Then Daphne shakes her head impatiently. ‘This isn’t about you – this isn’t the time—’

‘It’ll never be the time,’ Isobel says. ‘Will it?’

‘We have to find Una—’

‘Yes, we do. And we also have to sort things out between us. Or at least stop avoiding them. We have to
talk
about them.’

Daphne draws a ragged breath, then scrubs her eyes again, this time with a sleeve. Isobel finds a pack of tissues in the door pocket and hands it over. Daphne accepts it silently, pulls one out.

‘You left me,’ she says, dabbing her eyes. ‘You just
left
me. You didn’t even say you were going.’

Isobel sighs. ‘You think I don’t know that I behaved abominably? I thought it was for the best. I thought you’d be better off with your—’

‘You didn’t want me tagging along. You knew I’d be in the way.’

Isobel opens her mouth – and closes it again. What can she say to that? A car whooshes by, another. What can she say to that?

She looks into her daughter’s blotchy, beautiful face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m very sorry for what I did. I deserted you, and I regretted it almost immediately, and I missed you unbearably. But it’s years ago, it’s decades ago. Just tell me how long you’re going to go on punishing me.’

‘I can’t think about—’

‘Or tell me what I can do to make amends, because I am really, really tired of being punished, Daphne. I’m so tired of it.’

Silence. Story of their lives, silence. Unspoken words, unvoiced sentiments. Not any more.

Isobel studies her hands, realises with a jolt that she’s still wearing her wedding ring. How could she have forgotten it? She slides it off, lays it soundlessly in the little nook by the steering wheel.

‘I’ve left Alex,’ she says then. Why wait until Monday?

Daphne raises her head slowly. ‘What?’

‘I left him, just a few hours ago,’ Isobel says. ‘Our marriage was a mistake, and now it’s over.’

A trio of young people saunter past the car, two females hanging on to the man between them. ‘You
never
!’ one says – and for an instant Isobel thinks she’s been overheard but they walk on, paying no heed to the car or its occupants.

‘I was in a hotel,’ Isobel says, ‘when your father rang. I booked in for the night. I came from there.’

‘What are you going to do now?’ Her voice so low that Isobel barely hears the words.

‘I’ll find a place, I’ll rent somewhere probably. I’ll get by.’

In the ensuing silence Isobel watches a runner coming towards them on the opposite path, striding along effortlessly, arms swinging easily. He could be George – same build, same hair – except that George isn’t a runner.

Daphne’s phone rings suddenly, causing Isobel’s heart to jump. Daphne jabs at the answer key.

‘Is she back?’ Tersely.

Silence, during which Isobel can hear the faint quacking of the other voice, which she assumes to be Mo’s. The subject is closed between them for now – but at least she’s opened it. At least that has happened.

‘
What?
You
what
?’ Pause. ‘Where?’

Another silence, after which Daphne hangs up abruptly. ‘We have to go to the charity shop,’ she says.

‘Which charity shop?’

‘Where she works, where Mo works. Turn around.’

Isobel waits for a car to pass before executing her second three-point turn of the evening. She won’t ask, she’ll wait.

‘She saw her.’ Daphne is nibbling at a nail, something Isobel has never seen her do. ‘Mo saw her this morning. Go left at the end. She thinks it was Una. We have to check.’

‘Well, why didn’t she say so before?’

‘Right at the lights. She didn’t remember till now.’ Daphne leans forward in her seat. ‘Next right. Can’t you go any faster?’

They negotiate the streets, Daphne issuing directions, still hunched forward as if this will propel them sooner to their
destination. Isobel has never set foot inside a charity shop, has no idea which of them Mo volunteers in – and by the look of her, where she picks up most of her wardrobe.

‘Here,’ Daphne says suddenly, and Isobel spots the shop, its window filled with mannequins. She brakes and pulls in – and has barely stopped before Daphne leaps from the car and strides off, turning into what appears to be some kind of alley a little way up the street.

Isobel shoves her bag under her seat and climbs out. She locks the car and glances around at the deserted street, gloomy between its occasional pools of light. Not the most auspicious part of town, not a place she’d choose to be after dark. She walks to where the alley begins, its tarred surface, what she can see of it, pockmarked with holes. ‘Daphne?’ she calls, peering into the darkness.

‘Here.’

Already quite a bit ahead. Isobel advances cautiously, pulling her coat around her as she skirts dustbins, a heap of bricks, tattered scraps of what looks like clothing. Where on earth are they headed?

‘There was a dog.’

Daphne’s disembodied voice startles her. ‘Where
are
you?’

‘Here.’ Isobel makes out a sharp turn ahead where the alley becomes parallel with the street they just left. Daphne stands waiting around the bend.

‘There was a dog,’ she repeats. ‘Mo saw her going into one of the houses, about halfway down’ – a row of them tied together, about a dozen, Isobel guesses, backing onto the far side of the lane. Windows lit here and there.

A dog doesn’t seem like much to go on. They walk slowly along, picking their steps in the near darkness.

‘We should knock on a door,’ Daphne says, but her voice holds little hope. What are they to say to whoever responds? They’re looking for a teenage girl who may have visited one of the houses this morning – it seems a pitifully inadequate reason for disturbing a stranger at this hour.

Suddenly they hear barking up ahead. Isobel instinctively reaches out to clutch Daphne’s arm. ‘Hold on—’

But Daphne isn’t there, she’s moving swiftly towards the noise. And as Isobel follows reluctantly – what if it’s a guard dog, trained to attack? – Daphne’s phone rings again.