‘But you said it was mild. You told Rafiq El’s depression was—’
‘I know what I said. But Rafiq is looking for any excuse to get me off her back. You saw what she was like about the cards. She thinks I’m a pain in the arse.’
‘I’m sure that’s not—’
‘She probably thinks I left you that card myself,’ he says. ‘To keep them interested, keep the investigation active.’
I want to talk to him about the cards, but his slumped shoulders stop me. I long to make him feel better, but how can I? He already knows that I don’t believe El’s dead. Or even truly missing. If I tell him about the email clues, I instinctively know he’ll reject the idea that they’re from El, even though it’s the most logical explanation. And besides, no matter how much I might want to, I can’t forget that DON’T TELL ANYONE. So, I nod, even though I know that I’m doing exactly what El wants me to: keeping Ross and me separate, pushing us to opposite sides of the plate. ‘Yeah, I can believe that. Bet she has every episode of Prime Suspect on her TiVo.’
When Ross doesn’t reply, I look out the window. The grass is turning golden as the sun sinks down behind the garden’s back wall.
‘Why are all the windows nailed shut?’
He blinks. Looks at the windowsill. ‘We assumed the MacDonalds did it for security – I mean, they were ancient.’ His smile lasts little more than a second. ‘I got a restorations guy round after we moved in, who told us we’d have to replace every bottom frame. Would have cost thousands.’ This time his smile is bitter. ‘I didn’t mind them too much, to be honest. Thought they would help keep El safe when I wasn’t here.’
We sit for a long while, neither of us speaking, drinking until the wine is finished. Finally, Ross gets up, puts his glass in the sink. ‘I’m going to try and get some sleep.’
‘Okay.’
He stops at the kitchen door. ‘Tell me why, Cat. Why you’re so sure she’s not dead.’
‘I’d feel it,’ I say. ‘If she died, I would have felt it. I’d know.’
I can see his knuckles go white as he grips the doorknob. ‘You think I wouldn’t feel it? You’re the one who doesn’t know her. You haven’t known her for twelve fucking years, Cat! She wouldn’t fake her own disappearance or death any more than she’d send threatening cards to herself. We were together. We loved each other.’
I don’t know who he’s trying to convince, himself or me, but his words, his quick anger hurt me badly all the same, feel as sharp as a slap. They burn inside my throat and behind my eyes. Because he wants to hurt me, I realise. Even if it’s only because he can’t hurt El. Or because she is all he sees whenever he looks at me.
‘She was different,’ he says. ‘After you left, she changed. She wouldn’t do this. Never.’
‘People don’t change that much,’ I say. Because I can’t help it. Because I believe it.
His lips curve up into a humourless smile. ‘She always said denial was your superpower.’ And then he opens the door and leaves without once looking back at me.
I sit at the kitchen table. Look back out the window. I feel clammy, sweaty. Exhausted and awake. I pull out the first folded piece of paper from my pocket and open it.
JANUARY 10TH 1995 = 8 +A HALF
Mum says at night Bluebeerd hunts for another wife to lock up and hang on a hook when he gets angry. Bluebeerd is A COWARD OF THE TALLEST ORDER.
She says when we are on the Satisfaction looking for Captin Henry and The Ileland we have to BEHAVE and not FIGHT or Blackbeerd will get us. Coz Blackbeerd is the WORST PIRATE OF ALL. Hes sly and mean and all he does is lie. All he wants to do is catch us and trick us and throw us to the sharks. But he never does.
Shes just trying to scare us Ross says.
CHAPTER 7
August 23rd 1995 = 9 +2 months (NEERLY!)
Its good when its just me and Cat but I like it when Ross is there too even tho we have to play the things he wants to like spagetti westerns.
Today we were deputys in Boomtown, holding off the Oklahomebrays (not how you spell it I do’nt think!) We had to defend the town on our own coz Marshal Hank was in Deadwood and we did’nt know when he was coming back. I hid behind the wall of THE THREE-FINGERED-JOE SALOON and had a COLT 45. (Ross banned the Clowns from playing – he’s not scayerd of Clowns like Mum or Cat, but he does’nt like them much.) Belle and Mouse got shot in the CROSSFIRE coz Ross says they ca’nt shoot for shit.
We’re SHARP SHOOTERS like Annie. I’m better than Cat though.
Mum ALLWAYS says theres no such thing as a good PRINCE CHARMING like in Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty.
BUT if theres pirates and princesses and fairys and Clowns and mermaids and poison tasters and MIRRORLAND there MUST be good prince charmings too.
Today Ross held my hand for nearly ten minutes. And smiled at me when he climbed back up out of MIRRORLAND when we had to go in for tea. I did’nt tell Cat.
I remember El’s smile, on the midsummer afternoon when Ross and his mother moved into the old McKenzie house next door. The house had lain empty for months; boarded up with wood and later steel, the FOR SALE sign in the garden slowly strangled by weeds. When El turned back from the window, she was nearly breathless with joy and grinning wide. It’s a boy! We were seven. The first time he stuck his head out of his bedroom window above our garden wall to ask her name, her excitement was so urgent, so contagious, that it instantly infected me, sitting
