The Girl in the Red Coat

53

FIVE YEARS 215 DAYS

So my mystery is to end here. ‘Here’ is a police facility: two hours’ drive from home.

Last night I dreamed of the three of us — Paul, Carmel, me. And for the first time in years she was no longer walking backwards. Instead, she was her eight-year-old self sitting on a swing between us. There was an explosion, nuclear in ferocity. Our figures first bleached white then flashed to black outlines. The ground rocked underneath my feet. I can still feel the sway from the dream as I stand looking through the glass partition down the corridor. Graham, Lucy and the children wait for us at home. We want to keep it simple.

Behind me, Paul sits. He veers between seething with murderous intentions — wanting to get the man and ‘just give us five minutes on our own’ — and a sort of subsumed tearfulness. Strangely, I appear calmer than him.

I dressed this morning with care. My best gold earrings. My nice blue dress. Mary Jane shoes. I want to show her I’m alright.

But I worry that she won’t recognise me. I’ve aged, a lot. Hair short now and grey coming through.

And closer. She must be getting closer. We toy with coffee in plastic cups and sandwiches while we wait. I go to the bathroom and look in the mirror. How can I look more myself? I fluff my hair out to look longer and put on some lipstick.

Back with the empty coffee cups and uneaten sandwiches. Closer still. I have a strange image of the two of us. That all these years we were tiny insects and the world was made of a huge beast — some kind of cattle. That we roamed and roamed across its back and even climbed up, one on the tip of each horn, and from there we tried to wave to each other. But being tiny we could not see, and the chasm was too great, and there wasn’t anything that could bridge that gap. And all the time, on her map on her bedroom wall there she was — in the cradle of that single question mark.

Footsteps come down the corridor and send rumbling noises underneath the closed door at the end. I lick my dry lips and watch the door through the glass. I want to leave this glass room and walk towards the sound but find I can’t move.

And the door opens and a girl — a young woman — walks through, a policewoman by her side.

The girl has short curls. She has beautiful eyes. Too thin. She wears black jeans and a red jacket with brass buttons that makes her look like a girl soldier. The eight-year-old embedded in my memory is gone. I have the sensation of looking down a time telescope and seeing into the future.

She sees me and not meaning to I lift my hand in a kind of greeting and she does the same. And I shouldn’t have worried about her not recognising me, not at all, because we know each other at once.