Things We Have in Common Page 7

  Next to the picture of her it had a box with Key Information in it like Age: 16, Missing For: 141 days, and under that it said Amelia, we would love to hear from you. Call. Text. Anytime. Free. Confidential. 116000.

  When I Googled her name, the Nottingham Post came up. The article said Amelia went missing on 9th November. She was last seen walking to a friend’s house in Mansfield at around 4 p.m., wearing a white top with three-quarter-length lacy sleeves and black leggings. It had a different picture of her, smiling this time, with her arm round someone. It said, It is possible she could have travelled to and be residing in the London Brixton area. Anyone with any information, please call the Nottingham Missing Persons’ Unit. I thought, it’s also possible she’s dead and rotting away somewhere and that the only person that knows where she is, is you.

  Nottingham looked quite far away on the map. When I did directions from Claybourne Road, it said it’d take 2 hours 17 minutes to drive there. I’ve no idea if 2 hours 17 minutes is too far to go to take someone. I suppose it depends if you like driving. I thought if you had some good music to listen to, it’d be OK, but it was probably too far to go just to watch someone. Then I thought how, seeing as it was your mum’s house in Claybourne Road, you probably didn’t live there (which would be pretty weird, living with your mum when you’re forty-something). Maybe you lived in Nottingham.

  When I got home, I typed Murderers into Google Images, just to see what murderers look like – to see if any of them looked like you. I was still looking when Mum came in, knocking as she opened the door. She pretended she wanted to know what kind of salad I’d like for dinner.

  Salad. Yeah, sure, Mum – like I’d like any kind of salad for dinner.

  She took my ‘Are you alright in the mind, Mother?’ face to be an invite into my room and sat on my bed. ‘What’s that?’ she said, looking at my laptop screen.

  I sighed, stating the obvious. ‘Pictures of men.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, wrinkling her nose up and leaning forward to get a better look.

  I closed the lid. ‘What d’you want, Mum?’ I said. ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘So I see,’ she said annoyingly, her eyes going all twinkly like she knew exactly what I was doing when she had absolutely no idea at all.

  I sighed and turned away from her. She could think what she liked. If it made her happy to think I was lusting after men, that was fine by me. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Well, it’s only natural,’ she said. ‘Getting interested, you know . . .’

  I rolled my eyes at Juliet who I’d Blu-Tacked to the wall over my desk. She looked how I felt: indignant – like, Yeah, lady-in-Yaz’s-room, go away already. You’re trespassing.

  Mum didn’t go, though. She said, ‘It’ll be a nice salad. Gary’s—’

  ‘I don’t want salad!’ I said, spinning round to face her. ‘I don’t like salad! Salad’s disgusting!’

  She looked down at her lap, nodding like she was suddenly upset and picking at imaginary bits of dust on her trousers. Then she said, out of nowhere, so I knew Gary had put her up to it, ‘I think we need to talk.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk!’ I said. ‘I’m busy.’

  She looked at me, her eyes all big and pleading. ‘It’s getting out of hand.’

  I threw my hands up. ‘It?’ I said, then ‘Oh, you mean my obsession with Googling pictures of men?’ Of course I knew what it really was. It is our Voldemort. The F-word (the one with the letters ‘at’ after it). The one that cannot be said out loud, that must be tiptoed round at all times.

  She knew I was being deliberately obstructive and sighed. ‘Well, don’t you think we should talk about it?’ she said. ‘I mean, are you OK with being heavier every time we go to the hospital? Don’t you care? Don’t you want to be – attractive?’

  I turned away again and closed my eyes. I wasn’t going to rise to it. I’ve done all the crying and despising myself that it’s possible for a person to do, followed by all the promising and list-making and will-powering, and all any of it does is make me want to eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and EAT. In fact, her just bringing up the subject made me think about chocolate cake coated with thick chocolate butter icing, and before she’d mentioned it I hadn’t even been thinking about food. So I shrugged. ‘Not really,’ I said, ‘no.’

  That stumped her. I could feel her staring at me, lost for words – wondering, probably, why she’d got stuck with such a nightmare of a daughter when all she wanted was to enjoy being in love in her happy new life. Then she got up.

  ‘Well, that’s fine,’ she said, ‘but salad is what Gary and me are having, because even if you don’t care, I do. I care. And we’re going to be eating better things from now on. No more Pizza Hut. No more junk.’

  When she went out I shouted after her, ‘I thought you said it’s what’s on the inside that counts.’

  Of course she didn’t have an answer for that.

  Bloody Gary, I thought, because I knew it’d come from him. I hate bloody Gary! At least Mum wasn’t deluded enough to have said ‘We care’ as in ‘me and your loving stepdad’, because she knows that’s not true. She knows he wishes I didn’t exist. I’m just baggage to him – the extra weighty kind that comes with Mum – like it or lump it.

  That night, I don’t know if I was dreaming about her, but when I woke up, she was there in my head – Little Bea. All alone and sitting by the front door underneath where your blue coat hangs, wondering if Mrs E. Caldwell was ever going to come back.

  ‘She won’t, little Bea,’ I whispered and I sat up clutching myself because I couldn’t stand thinking of her, all alone and sad like that. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought about her before – why I hadn’t thought about what you’d meant when you said ‘She’s not really herself right now’. You’d meant she was grieving, didn’t you? That she was miserable without your mother.

  I stared into the dark of my room and wished I could cuddle her up in my arms like I had in the vets. I thought about how she wouldn’t even know where Mrs Caldwell had gone – not unless she was there when it happened – like if Mrs E. Caldwell had a heart attack or something and died right in front of her. But what if Mrs Caldwell had been taken to hospital? Bea would’ve been left at home, feeling like she never got to say goodbye.

  Like me when Dad died. I never got to say goodbye either. Mum didn’t tell me till after school when we got in the car. I remembered the trees outside lurching across the windscreen, the car tilting so it felt like we were falling through the branches and me whispering ‘When?’ – because I could tell from the way Mum was being that it hadn’t just happened and I couldn’t bear to think he’d been dead for a second without me knowing. She told me his heart had stopped at about 10.30. I wanted to beat her with my fists and shout, What do you mean, about 10.30? But I was falling, and all I could do was cling to the car seat and think, that was this morning, and how since 10.30 I’d stuck shells on my Mother’s Day box and scored a goal in netball and laughed so much with Ella at lunch I’d nearly wet myself . . .

  I couldn’t forgive Mum for that – for those hours when Dad was dead and I didn’t know and was happy. Those hours haunt me. I still have the nightmare where I’m standing over him in his hospice bed, laughing and laughing, while he’s gasping at the air like a fish in a boat, trying to tell me goodbye.

  Bea must feel like that, I thought, only it’s even worse for her because she probably doesn’t know where Mrs Caldwell is. She probably thinks she just walked out the door and chose to never come back. I closed my eyes, whispering, ‘Poor little Bea’ over and over and praying that she was curled up next to you on the bed and not in some cold, dark corner of your house all alone.

  Then I told myself to calm down. I told myself I was obsessing and letting things get out of perspective. I put my bedside lamp on and remembered how you’d held her feet in your fingers and let her lick your face, and thought how actually you’d looked kind and how you were probably really nice to her and I was wor
rying about nothing. But then I thought about who you really were – how you’d looked when you’d been staring at Alice – and I got worried again. I thought, people say it’s the nice ones you’ve got to watch, don’t they? Or is it the quiet ones? I thought, you were nice and quiet. Then I thought how, seeing as she wasn’t even your dog, maybe you didn’t really want her, that you were planning to give her away . . . get rid of her . . . I remembered you saying, ‘Looks like you’ve made a friend’ and I thought, maybe if I go back, you’ll give her to me.

  Gary’s never let me have a dog because he’s allergic (supposedly). I begged and begged when I first moved into his house till he lost his rag and forbade me to mention the word ‘dog’ again – even ‘hypo-allergenic dog’, which proves the allergy thing’s just an excuse. But if I was given a dog – one that would have to be put down or something if I couldn’t take it – I thought maybe Mum could convince him. ’Specially as he’s so keen for me to lose weight (more for his sake than mine, in case you’re wondering, so I won’t be such an embarrassment to him). He hates being anywhere in public with me. He literally squirms when people look at us, because he thinks they’ll assume he’s my real dad. He’d get a T-shirt that says I’m Just the Stepdad if he could. Anyway, I thought if Mum told him I’d be walking Bea every day and out of the house more, he might say yes.

  Then I caught sight of Juliet. She was glaring at me from the wall and she didn’t look like she was very happy at all about the way I was thinking about your dog. I told her sorry and that she was right – the last thing I needed to do was start obsessing about the dog of the man who was going to take Alice. I told myself, get a bloody grip!

  School went so slowly those days, I thought my heart might literally stop beating out of boredom. The only remotely interesting thing that happened was that I found one of Alice’s hairbands when everyone had changed and gone after PE. I was doing the buttons up on my shirt and saw it under the bench where she’d been changing, so I went over and moved it out with my toe. I knew it was hers. It’s that thick elastic threaded with gold that she always has, and loads of her hair was tangled in it.

  But even that wasn’t that interesting – not as interesting as it should’ve been. And that was weird. I stood there looking down at it, thinking, why doesn’t it feel like it normally does? I didn’t get any of the usual tingly feelings in my legs and arms, my mouth going dry, my breath going fast and shallow. But why? Nothing’s changed, I thought. She’s ignored me forever, so just because she’s going out of her way to ignore me now – like I’m the one that chased her up the corridor with a present – what’s the difference?

  I thought I might not even bother to pick it up. Then, when I did, I thought I might just drop it again. I thought, I’ll be late for History if I don’t hurry. I thought, I’m late already – but I didn’t move. I stood there, turning the hairband in my fingers, gently pulling on the strands of Alice’s hair and wondering why it didn’t feel like it should.

  I kept it, though. More out of habit than anything else. I put it in my coat pocket.

  Gary was outside school when I left. I suppose he was finished for the day and driving past when he saw all the kids coming out.

  ‘Hey, Yaz!’ he called when I was heading for the bus stop. I generally walk round keeping my head down, so I hadn’t seen him. He was parked by the side of the road, leaning out the window of his van and drumming a rhythm on the door with his thumb. ‘Want a lift?’

  I never want a lift – not with Gary. I’d rather sit on the bus with everyone from school hurling abuse at me than trapped in Gary’s van, knowing that even though he’s being all jolly-jolly-stepdad, what he’s really thinking about is how, if I was his child, he’d take me in hand – whip me into some kind of a shape he didn’t have to feel so ashamed of.

  After he’d pulled out into the traffic, he turned the radio down and said, ‘Good day?’ and I got the idea this might not just be a lift because he happened to be driving past school. This might be a lift because he wanted a little chat about eating salads and being more respectful to my mother.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, feeling even more uncomfortable than I usually do round him, and adding, ‘Not bad,’ when he glanced across at me. I pulled my skirt down so it was covering as much of my legs as possible and looked out of the window.

  ‘Bit nippy out, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, remembering Alice’s hairband in my pocket and taking it out for something to fiddle with.

  When we pulled away from the lights, he said, ‘Everything OK? Only your mum said she thought you seemed a bit down.’

  I rolled my eyes at my reflection and said I was fine, praying he’d leave it at that, and he did for a bit. Then he said, ‘Well, you’re in luck tonight. It’s going to be veggie curry – made by my own fair hands.’

  One thing I absolutely hate is when people start talking about food when they think I’m unhappy or being too quiet. As if talking about food will cheer me up, like I’m a simple idiot or something.

  I stared out the window and let him blab on about what kind of curry he was going to make and what things he was going to put in it, when I realised I’d done the same thing to Bea in Lower Field when I’d shoved the Maryland Cookie at her. She’d looked pretty upset. Thinking about it, and even though she’s the sweetest dog ever, she’d probably been pretty insulted too, like, Oh that’s right – just abduct me, why don’t you, then make it all a-OK with a cookie? She’d have probably rolled her eyes if she could, which was a funny thing to imagine – Bea rolling her eyes.

  Then Gary pulled over. We were at the top of his road.

  I looked at him. For a moment I thought he’d stopped because he was going to give me a bollocking, but then he said, ‘Come on, then.’

  ‘What?’

  He lifted his hand off the steering wheel and thumped it back down again. ‘Chrissakes,’ he snapped, letting his jolly-mask slip. I realised he’d been saying something about going to the Co-op. He was dropping me off. ‘It wouldn’t kill you, would it?’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, getting my bag and getting out.

  ‘I mean, I’m trying here,’ he called, leaning across my seat.

  I swung the door shut and walked off and didn’t look back.

  When I got in, Mum wasn’t in the kitchen or the sitting room. ‘I’m up here,’ she called.

  She was in my room, standing with her arms folded like she was waiting for me. My drawers and wardrobe were all open and the Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Turkish Delight bars from my suitcase and bedside table were on the bed with half a packet of Maryland Cookies lined up like exhibits.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ I shouted. ‘Get out!’

  She didn’t move, though. She said, ‘Yasmin, someone has to . . .’

  Then I saw Alice’s Box on the bed behind her, lying on its side, Alice’s things tipped out over the duvet.

  I lunged for it, pushing her out of the way, picking up the green foil and holding it up. ‘You ripped it!’

  I felt dizzy suddenly, my stomach like liquid, and I thought I was going to heave. Just the thought of Mum touching them, touching Alice’s things . . .

  I could see the shock on her face – the incomprehension at why I was completely freaking over a biscuit wrapper. I spun away and started putting the things back in the box – the sock, the hair clip, the pencil, the foil – then realised the heart wasn’t there. ‘Where’s the heart?’ I said. ‘Where’s the heart?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . I didn’t move anything . . .’ Mum spluttered, coming to help, but I pushed her away again. I pushed her so hard she hit the wardrobe door.

  ‘Get off,’ I shouted. ‘I hate you!’

  She was looking at me like she was scared of me.

  ‘I hate you!’ I screamed. ‘I wish Dad was here!’

  Then she stepped forward – suddenly, like she was programmed to do it, like that whatever else was happening was instantly wiped the second I mentioned Dad
. Her face was full of sympathy, her arms going out to wrap round me.

  I batted them away. ‘Don’t you get it?’ I said. ‘I mean I wish Dad was here instead of you!’

  She looked like I’d punched her. I felt it too – the force of what I’d said and how horrible it was, but worse than that, how true it was, because I do wish it’d been her that died instead of Dad.

  She put a hand over her mouth and stared at me with hurt eyes, then left.

  I sat on the bed and tipped Alice’s things out of the box again. The heart was there, caught in the bottom. I put everything back in and laid the torn foil carefully on the top. Then I put the box under my bed, took it out and put it in the bottom corner of my wardrobe under a pile of jumpers. Then I grabbed the chocolate bars and went downstairs and out the front door.

  As soon as I’d shut it, of course, I realised I didn’t have my phone or any money, so I couldn’t go to the chip shop and get chips with curry sauce, which was what I really wanted. I thought about going and asking if they’d just give me some, or let me pay later, but they wouldn’t, and anyway I was shaking so much I wouldn’t be able to speak.

  So I went to the park.

  I shoved the chocolate in my mouth row by row as I walked, chewing and swallowing. When I got there, I didn’t stop, though. I carried on right through it till I was on the edge of your estate. Then I was walking down all the roads to you, not knowing if I was going the right way but just going anyway.

  It must’ve been right, because I got to your road and your neighbour’s hedge where I’d stopped when I was with Bea. All four Turkish Delight bars were gone and my jaw was aching like crazy, but I still felt shaky and like I was going to cry. Only now I felt sick too.

  I tried to take deep breaths, whispering to steady myself but my chest was juddering. I knew it was stupid to be going to you – stupid, stupid, stupid – but I wanted to see Bea. I wanted to cuddle her, bury my face in her fur, tell her I knew how she must feel, losing Mrs E. Caldwell.