The Girl Below(25)
“Won’t Dad be needing those when he gets back from Frankfurt?” I said.
“He isn’t in Frankfurt,” said Mum, pushing the box across the counter.
The way she said Frankfurt—like it was a type of poisonous snake—made me too scared to ask where he was. Besides, I was used to Dad being away for weeks or months at a time, working as some kind of businessman, and he always came back eventually, his arms bulging with last-minute presents still in their airport plastic bags: colored pencils and pens from Switzerland, chocolate blocks the size of my leg. I looked forward to his return for all the wrong reasons, and this time was no exception.
But the box of clothes didn’t add up. Standing by the Oxfam counter, a wobbly sensation spread through my stomach. I’d felt it before, when I left my favorite teddy bear at the newsagent’s and he was gone when we went back to get him. Whatever I was feeling must have been written on my face because Mum asked me if I wanted to get an ice cream. I didn’t really feel like one but didn’t want to miss out on a treat either, so when we went to the newsagent’s, I burrowed in the freezer for a Mini Milk. Out on the street, I pulled the ice cream from its sleeve, and straightaway, the long, thin tube fell off its stick and nose-dived to the pavement, but when Mum came out of the shop, I pretended to her that I’d already eaten it.
“That was quick,” she said as I covered the milky mess with my foot.
We walked home in silence, and the maisonette seemed bigger and emptier when we got there, as if Mum and I were rattling around in our old life, without a husband, without a dad, not enough of us to fill up the space. Dr. Who was on TV, and I watched the opening credits from behind the couch, frightened by the mind-bending music and swirling spiral of doom. When the Daleks bleeped, “Exterminate, exterminate!” I switched off the set and wondered if I’d ever be able to watch shows like that again without Dad’s knee to sit on. He’d let me stay up to watch Jaws with him once, and every time the shark attacked—or there was even a hint of jaggedy music—I had burrowed into the safety of his chest.
A week after Oxfam, Mum still hadn’t told me where Dad was, but by then it seemed too late to ask, so I made do with clues. Mum spent a lot of time on the phone after I’d gone to bed, and I struggled to piece together the missing side of the conversations I heard. There was one, late at night, that was so loud it woke me up. I was wondering if I should get out of bed to see what was wrong, when Mum went very quiet, and then I heard mewling, like a locked-out cat. That got me up, and I hovered in the hallway outside the kitchen without her seeing me.
When she spoke again, she said, “But, Mum, they’ve already left the country.”
She’d said “they.” Which meant Dad wasn’t alone. I guessed Mum was talking to Granny and she sounded exasperated with her. “He’s wanted to leave England for years. We argued about it all the time because I didn’t want to go.” For a while, she didn’t say anything and I thought she’d hung up. Then she hissed, “Because she’s from there.”
I held my breath and waited for her to say more. I waited a long time, imagined Mum winding the cord around her fingers like she did when the person on the other end was waffling. In a feeble voice, she said, “What are you suggesting? That I go all the way to New Zealand just to beg? I don’t even know his address.”
The names of all the capital cities of the world swirled in my head—we’d been learning them at school—but none matched with New Zealand. I was pretty sure we’d skipped it because the country was too small, just an island, like Corsica or the Isle of Wight.
“That’s not going to happen,” was the last thing I heard her say before the kitchen door flew open and she came out holding a ball of colored party napkins to her face. “Suki! Why aren’t you in bed?”
Too late, I leaped to my feet and scrabbled for the door to the bathroom, waiting to be told off. But Mum didn’t say anything, she just stood in the hallway staring at me.
“Sorry, Mum,” I said.
“It’s not your fault.” She sounded waterlogged, upset. “Go to bed.”
I hesitated. The right course of action was to do as I was told but instead I threw myself at her. When I squeezed her round the waist, she seemed to give way, as though her bones had only been made of sand. I squeezed tighter, but that made it worse and I fancied she was disintegrating. I choked back a sob and then she was comforting me, picking me up and putting me to bed, stroking the hair behind my ear until I fell asleep.