The Doll's House

22

They ate in silence, pushing the food around their plates. The leg of lamb, Maris Piper potatoes and posh broccoli had been bought with a celebration in mind – Ruby’s return home. But in her absence, the family Sunday lunch felt more like a wake. Jonathan had wanted to throw the food in the bin and forget the whole thing, but Alison had refused. It wasn’t in her nature to bin expensive food and, besides, she couldn’t give up on Ruby yet.

Did she really think that by cooking the meal she could make Ruby somehow appear? She couldn’t answer that question, couldn’t really explain what she was doing, but she felt compelled to keep the home fires burning nevertheless. As she basted the meat, as she trimmed the broccoli, she kept one eye on the front door, hoping against hope that the key would turn in the lock and Ruby would enter, full of excuses and half-baked apologies.

It’s funny how these things turn out. She had waxed and waned in her attitude to Ruby, one minute castigating her for her unpleasant behaviour, the next trying to understand what she was going through. Now Alison knew she would forgive her anything – never say a word in reproach ever again – if she just walked through the door. Would Jonathan do the same? Alison found it hard to tell. Usually such a ball of energy, he had been oddly quiet since her disappearance.

Was it possible that Ruby had run off? Changed her mind about coming home? Surely it was, as there had been so much fuss and upset recently. Alison cursed herself for ever having supported Ruby in her quest to find her birth mother. It had seemed the right thing to do at the time – it’s what liberal parents should do, isn’t it? – but look where it had got them.

She and Jonathan had fought so hard for their family. They’d always wanted three kids, but Alison couldn’t conceive. When they first found out, Alison feared Jonathan might leave her, in search of a more fertile mate. But oddly it had drawn them closer together. Terrible though the adoption process was, she and Jonathan had been determined not to be beaten by it and over the years they had managed to create a loving, stable home for Ruby, Cassie and Conor. Until Alison – or, more truthfully, Shanelle – had torn it apart.

Conor and Cassie were scared – that much was obvious. They read the news, watched TV – they knew how stories of missing girls sometimes end up. Alison had worked overtime to convince them that this wasn’t the case here, that things would be ok. Sometimes she even believed it herself. In the absence of fact, of certainty, all that was left was hope – and the stupid superstitions of a heartbroken mum.

Which is why the four of them now sat in silence in the dining room, eating food nobody wanted and thinking about the girl that everybody missed.