The Girl in the Red Coat

21

DAY 51

Some days were worse than others. Day 51 I hadn’t managed to get dressed so when Alice came she found me still in my dressing gown.

‘Beth, I’ve been meaning and meaning to come.’

She stood on the doorstep, hesitating, gifts in her arms — home-made blackcurrant jam and a bunch of sweet-smelling hyacinths, the purple petals stiff and bristling like a hairbrush. The daylight seemed to shift behind her and the breeze lifted her fine reddish-brown hair as if an invisible child was hovering above and tugging. The braided bracelets she always wore peeked from under the cuffs of her pink jacket as she handed over her gifts.

‘How kind, how kind,’ I said, juggling with flowers and jam, and asked her in and offered tea even though I felt in such a way that day that it was almost beyond endurance.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been before,’ she said.

I peered at her. What was she doing here? Alice had been more or less tangential to my life, not even really one of my friends. I’d felt sorry for her, I suppose, for her terrible life — put that down as the reason why she came across as a bit of an oddball and tried to include her when I could. Even if she did seem to fancy Paul a bit, I didn’t take it seriously, and after all, he was attractive — lots of women fancied him; I found that out to my cost. I suppose I’d had the thought I should talk her round to doing something about the sporadic domestic violence. Though all she’d ever do was give a smile that slipped around like a fish in water, change the subject or insist she was alright.

But it’s kindness, I chided myself. It’s kindness that she’s here today, and that made me exert myself.

She looked around the kitchen, clean and passable enough except for the empty shell of the egg on the kitchen drainer. ‘I’m glad to see you’re looking after yourself,’ she said, and I didn’t tell her that was from yesterday morning and I hadn’t eaten anything since.

‘Sorry to burst in on you,’ she said as she sat at the kitchen table. She seemed highly anxious, though it didn’t really register. Or if it did I blamed it on the stress of seeing someone whose daughter had vanished.

‘No, that’s OK, it’s fine, please don’t worry.’ The teapot breathed fragrant steam as I lifted the lid and stirred. ‘And I know it’s difficult for people. They don’t always know what to say.’ But it was me having to force myself to speak this time.

She drank in little bobbing sips.

Then out of nowhere — ‘Beth, I’ve been plucking up courage for ages to tell you this. I had to speak with you. I need to tell you something.’

‘About Carmel?’

‘Yes.’

‘What is it? What is it?’ I clutched at the neck of my dressing gown, suddenly excited and alert, imagining how this could be a clue to the puzzle — the one I’d been waiting for, the one I’d missed.

‘Your girl … Carmel.’ She stumbled and started again. ‘Well, I was battered, you know, covered with marks. He’d gone mad two nights before, you know, like he got.’

‘Yes, yes, I remember.’

‘And the night we were here she saw me. Everyone else was talking too much to take any notice but she put her hand on me, and the next day — honestly, Beth, I’m not making this up — the next day they were gone. Not a single mark and the day before I’d been black and blue. You remember, you must remember. Please, don’t be angry, but I think she had a channel with God.’

She stopped with a gasp.

‘A channel with God?’ She didn’t hear it, the sharp disappointment in my voice, burning in my mouth.

‘Yes, it happens, you know, when children are close to Him that way. And I wanted to say … to reassure you that she would be with Him now, I mean …’

‘What?’

‘An angel, one of the angels, Beth.’ Tears were shining in her eyes. ‘Can’t you see it? I think …’

My fury was a white heat building behind my eyes. ‘Are you telling me my daughter is dead?’ A horrible thought occurred to me: that I wanted to hit her too.

‘Please don’t be like this. It’s just … if she is, then … I thought it would give you comfort, to know this …’

‘Stop it.’ I stood and put my hands over my ears. What I’d thought was to be a vital clue was turning into the outpourings of a crazy acquaintance. ‘Please, stop it.’

‘You’ve got to believe it, Beth. You have to.’ As she spoke her wrists in those bracelets turned in front of her and hate rose up in me, thick in my throat.

‘No. Get out of here. I thought you had something real to tell me. Get out of this house and leave me alone, you stupid cow. You crazy stupid cow. Take your God with you and don’t ever come back.’

*

So, those leads, luminous and silver. How was I to know that Alice — of all people — held one in her hands, shining and spilling through her fingertips. And that even as we spoke, it was getting thinner, runnier — its silver lustre falling away into darkness.