A Change of Climate: A Novel

“We can call Directory Enquiries. Get him back home. Listen, you stand here. There’s a phone box over there —Red Cross, isn’t it? What’s the name of the person he’s meeting?”

“I don’t know.”

“Never mind. I’ll tell them to turn him round and send him home.”

“No, Kit.” Anna tore at her daughter’s arm. She thought, if my daughter phones Pat Appleyard asking for him, that’ll be twice in a day, so she’ll know there’s something wrong, she’ll be asking questions, starting gossip … “Kit, he’s not in Norwich.”

“Where is he then?”

“I don’t know.”

“But he said he was going to Norwich! This morning!” Kit swept her hair back, then flung out her hands, exasperated. “Robin said, bring me a Wisden Cricket Monthly and he said, all right, but if I can’t see one, will anything else do, and Robin said no. Rebecca said, bring me something. He said, what? She said, a surprise. Dad said, Okay. Robin said, you spoiled brat.”

Anna drew herself gently from her daughter’s grasp and leaned back against the plate-glass window of the washing machine shop. She covered her mouth with her hand, and a little, bitter bleat came from her; laughter?

Kit tried to pull her hand from her mouth, to claw it away, as if her mother were a baby that had eaten something it shouldn’t: earth or soil or a stone. On and on it went, the little noise: the heave of the narrow ribs, the out-breath like a moan, the breath sucked in as if air were poison. Anna’s ribs drew up, into a panic-stricken arch, and for a moment she was frozen, paralyzed, eyes closed. Then she let out her breath—with more than a gasp, with a muffled scream heaved up from her stomach. She sucked in the air, the raw salty Norfolk air. “I knew I should lose everything,” she said. “I knew I should lose everything, one of these days.”

Late afternoon, someone came to the door. Anna let Kit answer it. She noticed that Kit had changed out of her jeans into a neat skirt, and had tied her hair back, as if she anticipated a sudden transition into adult affairs.

Anna sat in Ralph’s study, in the old wooden swivel chair he used at his desk. It had come from Emma’s surgery, this chair: given to him when it was too disreputable for the patients to see. In better times, they had joked that it was impossible to sit in it without the urge to swing around, to say, “That sounds a very nasty cough.”

But these are worse times. Anna was exhausted by the effort of imagination chasing its own tail. I can formulate no sensible ideas about Ralph, she thought, and my head aches; Kit will never trust me again, never trust me not to break down and start screaming in the street. And the girl has gone, Melanie, and somehow I will be held responsible; screaming doesn’t get me out of that one. Now with each little breath she took, the chair swayed under her, sedately. Each movement brought forth its ponderous, broken, familiar complaint.

Kit came in: two policemen followed her. She looked grave, pale, very correct. “They’ve found Melanie. She made it as far as Norwich. She’s in hospital, I’m afraid.”

Anna stood up. “What’s happened?”

“Mrs. Eldred?” one of the policemen said.

“Yes. What’s happened to her?”

“She gave us your name,” the policemen said. “Mr. Eldred’s name, I should say.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Anna said. “Answer my question.”

“She’s taken something, swallowed something maybe, that’s what we’ve been told. Would you have any idea what it might be?”

“I told him,” Kit said. “I’ve already explained how she ran off.” She turned to the policemen. “She was fine then. I told you.”

“How is she?”

“She’s comfortable.”

“Comfortable?” Anna stared at the man. “How can she be?”

The other policemen spoke. “The hospital won’t let us interview her. She’s drowsy, you understand.”

“Is she in any danger?”

“That’s not for us to say.”

“We understand,” the first man said, “that Mr. Eldred would be in loco parentis.”

Anna nodded. The other policemen said, “Mr. Eldred not home from work yet?”

“He doesn’t work. That is, he doesn’t go out to work.”

The men looked confused. “He’s an invalid?” one suggested.

“My husband is an officer of a charitable trust. He works from home.”

“That’s why we have Melanie,” Kit said. “I tried to explain.”

“Would it be all right if we looked round, Mrs. Eldred? Around your house?”

“No, I’m afraid I can’t allow that.”

“They want to look in Melanie’s room,” Kit said. “In case there’s something there that she might have taken, a bottle of pills or something.”

“Yes,” Anna said. “I know what they want to do.”