The Missing Person's Guide to Love Read online

  I smile. He means Bernadette. I send one back.

  I don’t know. Why does she want to see me?

  This bed is soft and white, comfortable. I wriggle around, pulling part of the duvet between my thighs and stretching it out, warm inside from this tiny piece of contact with Mete, beginning to feel aroused. I rest my head on one pillow and cuddle the other, meaning to think of Mete but my mind fumbles instead for a picture of Owen, a photograph I saw today in his parents' house. It was a recent picture so it was of an Owen I never knew. He was in the pub with a couple of friends. There was a pint of dark beer in his hand and his face was red. He was smiling. His hair had receded a centimetre or two since I knew him. The picture was nothing special but the smile has lodged itself behind my eyes and spreads and bulges, like the leering mouth of a clown. I try, but I can’t get Mete back.

  This is not what I want at all. I climb out of bed, put my notebooks on the dressing-table, push aside the pots of cream, coloured jars of makeup and a hairbrush tangled with fine brown hairs. I peer behind the mirror to catch a glimpse of the narrow street. It is empty. The other houses are in darkness. The neighbours are sleeping. I can’t see the reservoir from here. I can’t even make out the shapes of the moors, but I know that they are there, just a mile or two away. I pull the window down until it is almost closed. I am still a little cold, wearing a borrowed T-shirt that hardly covers my thighs. I sit on the purple-cushioned stool and roll my shoulders back. I’m stiff an ex-dancer whose movements have become lazy and rough. If I flex my feet, the bones crackle. A quick gust of wind chills my face. My legs stretch out, blue-white gooseflesh. This is good. I don’t sleep when I’m cold. I shall stay awake.

  This afternoon I arrived at the Lake View guesthouse, hoping for a view.

  The Lake View guesthouse stands at the end of the street, near the beginning of the sycamores. The shadows of the trees darken the garden and the far side of the house. The paint on the window-frames is chipped in places, but the small front lawn is neat and the gate is shiny green. Beyond the houses, the moors slope and curve away to the edges of the sky. There are two or three other small hotels nearby, smart bed-and-breakfasts with signs in the windows advertising vacancies – one even boasts a swimming-pool – but I chose the Lake View for its name.

  I arrived two, nearly three hours before the funeral was due to begin. The sky was a mucky white and the damp moors were blurred out of focus. From the pavement outside the guesthouse there was no sign of the reservoir. I could see terraces of houses, telegraph poles, hedges of privet and leylandii, but no water. I knew that the reservoir was there, at the bottom of the hill behind thick rows of trees, but a stranger would not have guessed. I stood at the gate and wondered what I should do. A red tricycle sat in next door’s garden, its front wheel cocked, looking like a dog awaiting a homecoming. That might be the best welcome I could hope for, and I considered finding another place to stay. But I decided that it would be unwise to change my plans so soon before the funeral. Perhaps, I thought, if I have a room in the attic, the water will be visible after all.

  I stepped up to the door and read the labels on the three bells. There was Lake View Main Bell, Lake View Reception and Lake View Private. There was also a large brass knocker in the middle of the door. I dithered between the top two bells, lifted the knocker, then put it back again. Paint fell away in dandruff flakes. Finally I pressed Lake View Reception and waited. The house was similar in shape and proportion to the one I had grown up in, a few streets away. It made me nervous and I found myself twitching and turning from the door to the street and back again. I had been travelling since early morning and was beginning to feel light-headed. Was I right to have come? I had no idea, but at that moment I wanted only to pull off my shoes and rest. I wanted to lie down for a little while, perhaps take a shower, before dressing for Owen’s funeral. After a few moments' silence, I heard feet stumbling from high up in the house down the stairs to the bottom. A large honey-coloured hairdo appeared at the other side of the glass. I stepped back as the door opened to about thirty degrees of its full swing. A pink, puffy face peered out. Soft bags of skin lapped gently around the woman’s dark green eyes. She wore a loose cardigan and long denim skirt that had slipped too far around her waist, as though she had come down the stairs spinning.

  ‘I have a reservation.’ I cleared my throat. I had hardly spoken all day and a thin film of ice covered my voice. I made a note to do some vocal exercises in my room before my next encounter to prepare myself for the conversations ahead. If I were speaking Turkish, it would be all right. I have developed a personality that operates well in Turkey. My Turkish self is used to haggling over prices and payments, striking up conversations with strangers in lifts and in queues to pay bills. She gets what she wants every time but I don’t think she’s here when I speak English. I wasn’t sure, before I set off, how this would work but now I knew. ‘It’s Isabel Clegg,’ I rasped.

  ‘Oh, right.’ She looked at me, then over my head at the path. ‘Come in, then. Did you drive here? Do you need parking?’

  ‘No. I walked from the bus station. I’m early. Is it all right? It’s just that I’m going to a funeral and I’d like to leave my bag, please.’

  ‘Yes, that’s fine, love. Your room’s ready.’

  Her accent was local. She opened the door wide and stood back, as if there were several of me to let in. I didn’t even have a suitcase, just a small rucksack, and I slipped it off my shoulders, let it trail at my ankles as I walked.

  The hall was square and dark. There was a shelf of ballroom-dance trophies, a payphone, a range of yellowing signs about keeping noise down and check-out time, and a bell for attention at night. The woman asked me to sign the visitors' book and pay in advance, no credit cards. She leaned against the wall, folded her arms under her heavy breasts and watched with narrowed eyes as I wrote a cheque and signed it. It seemed old-fashioned – Who do I make it out to? Doreen Fatebene, please – but somehow in keeping with the era I was travelling back to, the 1980s, my teenage years. She pushed a large key into my hand and told me to head for the top floor, to room nine.

  ‘The bathroom’s opposite. If the light doesn’t work there’s a bulb in the cupboard on the landing. There’s an extra blanket under your bed if you need it.’ She nodded towards the door. ‘It’ll be parky tonight.’

  It was November but feeling wintry rather than autumnal. At least I would be indoors most of the time, except for one or two visits to specific locations. When I was half-way up the stairs Doreen shouted after me to ask what I wanted for breakfast.

  What could I have? I was flummoxed. I don’t live in this country any more. I’m almost a foreigner now and need a little more help. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, of saying cake when the answer should be bread.

  ‘It’s just easier if I know in plenty of time.’ The woman tried to sound relaxed but it was clear that not knowing in advance would trouble her. ‘You can change your mind when tomorrow comes, within reason.’

  ‘Of course.’

  A sign on the wall opposite me boasted English breakfasts so I asked for this.

  ‘Full?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘And would you like a map of the village or have you been here before?’

  ‘Oh, I used to live in this village.’ It sounded like an apology. Perhaps it was. ‘I was born here.’

  And then I didn’t know what to say so I pushed my hair from my face and continued up the stairs to the top floor.

  I lifted the key and unlocked the door. I stepped into a long thin room with a single bed and coffee-coloured walls. It smelled of detergent. A television was mounted high on the wall, like a closed-circuit surveillance screen. The window was open and a little sunlight spilled across the carpet. I hadn’t noticed any sun at all when I was outside and I peered out to see where it had come from. There was a small crack in the clouds, just a graze, and a pale lemon light seeped through. Lake View. Even from up here I couldn’t
see the reservoir. I saw grey rooftops, chimney pots, the paths leading out to the moors, brown and cold behind the village. And there was the tower of St Peter’s, dark grey and shiny. I put my head out of the window to breathe fresh air.

  I had known, without having to read all of Maggie’s message, that the funeral would be held at St Peter’s. It is the main Anglican church in the community. Owen and I sang in the choir there when we were children, along with our friend Kath. We wore purple cassocks, white ruffs and surplices, and in our treble voices we sang through practices twice a week, communion and evensong on Sundays. We did puzzles and read joke books together in the choir stalls and I have no recollection of ever having heard a sermon so we must have been busy daydreaming when we were not singing. We were perfectly at home in that church. If God was present too, we expected Him to fit around us. We had a sense of ownership, popping in and out of the vestry, putting the hymn numbers up on the boards, lighting and snuffing out the candles. The smell comes back to me sometimes, when I am near old wooden furniture, dusty books, the place where a flame has just been extinguished. It reaches me with a poke in the face, as if it’s a memory that must belong to someone else. It doesn’t seem like me and it doesn’t seem like Owen. We weren’t angels. Kath is the only one who fits that memory still.

  I hadn’t been inside the church since my childhood. Soon Owen’s body would be lying just a couple of metres away from where he had stood, and knelt, more than two decades ago. I swallowed hard, took big breaths of cold air and let them out slowly. I could not afford to be squeamish now. I had to keep a clear head so that I could observe and understand. When I felt steady, I forced myself to picture both the coffin and the choir stalls again. I needed to measure and understand the space in between.

  Then I closed the window and pulled back the bedcovers to check for spiders, mice or monsters, a tic from childhood that I have never shaken off There was just a sheet, blue and bobbled. Its roughness under my fingertips made me wince. A key went into the lock of the room next door and the wall shook. Voices came through, both male. If we’d come up the M1 we wouldn’t have got stuck and had to take the M6. It probably added half an hour to the journey, if not a whole hour, and we wouldn’t have had to eat at that place. I’ll choose the bloody route tomorrow. The walls were just flimsy partitions. Strangers would be opening and closing doors to the other rooms and I would miss Mete all night. Doreen Fatebene was moving around downstairs, clattering crockery in the kitchen. I listened to her, feeling both irritated and ashamed that I was staying in a strange hotel in my own hometown. Surely, I thought, there should be a friend’s house, some old haunt where I am one of the family and there is a bed or sofa that is as good as mine. There should be a place where I slip through the back gate and tap on the kitchen window to be welcomed in, where someone knows me and we share a meal together, at least. There should be something better than this.

  If this were the house I’d grown up in, I would be in a corner of the spare bedroom now. The wall between this room and the next was more or less where their bed started. I wondered who would be living in my parents' old house now. They may both have had their own funerals, for all I know. They left the area some years ago and gave no forwarding address. I suppose that if they had died, someone would have had to tell me, but I can imagine Aunt Maggie not quite getting round to the job, not wanting me to know if she thought it would upset me, or interfere with some plan she had of how I ought to be feeling. Maggie would say, Goodness, Isabel. Surely I told you that. You must be in denial. But I am sure they are alive, somewhere, and one day we may even see each other again.

  I put the kettle on and dropped a teabag into a mug on the floor. I kicked my shoes into a corner and spread out my clothes on the bed. I had brought a couple of black tops, black trousers and a black skirt, but I didn’t know which to choose. I hadn’t been to a funeral since I was a child. Did people still wear black to funerals, these days, or were you supposed to wear what you felt comfortable in, or what the deceased would have liked? I had no idea what Owen would have thought about this. My only aim was to be inconspicuous.

  The kettle boiled and clicked. I made the tea and sat on the floor by the bed. When I let Owen’s face into my mind, his deep, narrow eyes and shy, freckly frown, I didn’t have any sense that he was dead. I believed he was still somewhere in the world, living his life with people I didn’t know and couldn’t see. ‘Sorry, Owen,’ I said aloud. ‘I’m thinking of you. I’m trying to think of you.’ I had a letter in my rucksack, one that Owen had sent to me fourteen or fifteen years ago. Most of the letters made no sense. They were strange expressions of rage directed at no one except, possibly, himself and sometimes me. I threw them away, half knowing, even then, that I would want to see them again. But there was a letter that referred, briefly, to Julia and I had kept that one. I had brought it with me in case it helped. I did not need to unfold the soft, yellowing scrap to remind myself of what Owen had written.

  You accused Mr McCreadie of hurting Julia but that was wrong. He never did it. Julia did it to herself and made her body disappear, maybe with somebody’s help. Maybe with God’s help. It was what she wanted. I’ve thought about it and I understand. She didn’t want to be alive any more. No one could have murdered her because she wanted to die.

  I fell onto the bed, lay on my back and thought, in spite of the swirling blue butterflies on the bedspread and the breeze through the window, how it resembled a cell. The walls and ceiling were just a little too close to me. The thought was followed by dark clouds gathering, a sick sense of travelling backwards and downwards, a weight on my chest. I had to stop myself falling so far that I would never come up again. I shut my eyes tight and let the clouds move around above a picture of the reservoir. I rose up, as if to the water’s surface, and there, around me, were the boats, bobbing in the sun. I dreamed myself into the nearest one, lay in the warmth and let the water’s ripples rock me.

  I thought I might clear my head by working for twenty minutes or so on an article I was writing for an English magazine in Istanbul. I took out my laptop and began to type. It is part of a series called ‘Millennium People’. Every month I’ve been writing a profile of a foreigner who lives in Istanbul and will be there in December for the millennial celebrations. The editor of the magazine is Turkish and his original idea was that I should write pieces in which foreigners told of their great happiness since giving up their lives in other countries for the sun, the friendliness and the good food of Turkey. To the editor, it was obvious. In practice I have found that it is never quite so simple: though these elements may be relevant, there are often secrets and darker stories underneath.

  Accordingly, I have moved away from the brief somewhat, and he has not complained. This month I interviewed a cosmetic surgeon from New York who came to Istanbul to take up painting. She had made a fortune from her work so had an income to finance her new studio. She talked for a while of downsizing, of taking a break in life, but soon I asked her about the deep scars across her face. They were the result of a car crash, she told me, and would be so easy to fix with cosmetic surgery that she couldn’t be bothered to get it done. She had come to like them. ‘I lost my appetite for chopping up human faces. I want to see them as they are. I wish I could have my old skin back, the sagging one, but since I can’t, I’m fortunate to have these scars.’ She lived in a large apartment looking out over the Bosphorus and painted nothing but the faces of strangers, mostly women. I tapped this into my computer. I had taken photos of some of her paintings but had left them in Istanbul. I forgot where I was and, for a second, thought I could stand up, go into the next room and find them.

  Just on the other side of the partition, a man began to cough. I switched on the television to disguise the noise. There was some interference and then an attractive young woman’s head appeared on the screen, talking with great enthusiasm about a broken-down bus near Wakefield. I liked the sound of her voice and left it on in the background, but found I couldn’t
concentrate on the article. I saved what I had written and switched off the computer.

  But what was I supposed to do? How should I go about solving the mystery of Julia’s disappearance? How does one investigate secrets when one is neither invisible nor anonymous? Talking, I guessed, as always. I had not brought my tape-recorder or my camera. I didn’t know whom I should approach. I had to make a list. There must be people who could help me and some of them would still live here.

  The first was Kath. I knew from Maggie that Kath lived in her parents' old house, passed on to her when her father died and her mother moved into a nursing-home. She was my best friend but I never saw her after I was taken away from the village. I had no idea whether she would want to talk to me now. If she was not at the funeral I would knock on her door later, see if she would let me in. What could she help me with? We would talk together of the days around Julia’s disappearance. We’d put it together one more time. We both saw her at school. We knew about her love letters to the soldier in the Falklands, and we had watched as she dropped her dull boyfriend, Owen Carr. I had never had time to tell Kath of my suspicions about Mr McCreadie, my boss, I went away too soon afterwards, but I could tell her now and perhaps it would jog something in her memory.

  The next was Mr McCreadie himself, manager of the supermarket. He must have retired by now. I had no idea if he still lived in the area but he had been a public figure so someone would know. He might have died, of course. If he was still alive, he would be old. Apart from Owen, he was my only suspect.

  There was Aunt Maggie – if she showed up – for, though she hardly knew Julia, she knew Owen’s mother well and may have picked up pieces of information about Owen.

  Who else? Owen’s immediate family would be able to tell me things, though they might not want to. I would have to tease very carefully to find out what kind of life he had lived since I last saw him. I knew that he had an older sister. He must also have had other relatives and friends.