‘She bought it online a couple of years ago.’ Another flash of anger. ‘Binding contract, non-refundable deposit. She was making good money from commissions, the occasional art show, but not enough. So I had to pay the balance. And she got what she wanted. Before she even knew how to bloody sail the thing. God, I wish I’d never—’ He draws his hands down his face, dragging at his skin. ‘It’s my fault. All of it.’
I sit down next to him, even though I don’t want to. I want to tell him that she’s not dead, but I can’t. He isn’t ready to hear it yet. ‘How can it be your fault?’
He was away: some last-minute psychopharmacology conference in London. An annual requirement for all practicing clinical psychologists. ‘The efficacy of psychoactive therapies versus safe ratios,’ he says. As if that’s important. As if I have a clue what that is. He blames himself for not being here, for not stopping her going out, even though we both know it wouldn’t have made a difference. But that isn’t all of it. There’s something else, I can tell. Something he isn’t saying.
‘By the time I got back, she’d already been missing for at least five hours, probably more, and that storm had come in from nowhere.’
I think of that Day One photo of him caught in the shadows between two round, flat spotlights.
‘Yesterday, they widened the search to the North Sea. All the fishing boats and tankers out there are looking for her too, but …’ He shakes his head, stands up again. ‘I know they’re going to stop looking for her soon. I know they are. The police are coming round tomorrow morning. No one wants me down at the harbour any more, doing fucking nothing but getting in the way.’ He snorts. ‘The wailing widower.’
He seems so angry, so bitterly resigned.
‘You must be knackered. Why don’t you try to get some sleep?’
He immediately starts to protest.
‘I can’t sleep until tonight anyway,’ I say. ‘If anything happens, I’ll wake you up, okay? I promise.’
His shoulders sag. His smile is so wretched, I have to look away from it. I look out instead at the green windy sway of the orchard beyond the window.
‘Okay,’ he says, reaching out to squeeze my hand once. ‘Thank you.’ At the door, he turns briefly back, his smile more like his own. ‘I meant what I said, you know. I’m really glad you’re back.’
I root about in my suitcase until I find one of the vodka miniatures I bought on the flight. Sit down on the bed in the warm space where Ross was, and drink it. On the bedside table, there’s a framed photo of a very young El and Ross grinning next to the floral clock in Princes Street Gardens. His fingers are inside the waistband of her denim shorts; hers are splayed across his stomach. Had I gone by then? Had I already been forgotten? I look at El’s big happy grin, and know the answer.
I turn away, look around at the room again instead. The Clown Café was solely El’s invention: a richly imagined roadside American diner, with walls of red and white and glass tubes of pink neon. An old record player was a jukebox playing fifties Elvis. The pine sideboard was our table; two high stools, our chairs. The bed was a long serving counter, and the cupboard, the john.
I wasn’t keen on Clowns; back then, we both believed absolutely that they were a species entirely separate from people. I felt as much pity for them as queasy mistrust: it seemed to me that they had few opportunities in life other than those allotted to them, and even at eight years old, I could relate to that. El thought travelling with a circus would be just about the best job in the world, of course.
But the Tooth Fairy was afraid of Clowns. And we were afraid of the Tooth Fairy. So we’d hide out here in the Clown Café – our skin itching under face paints and plastic noses, nylon wigs and jumpsuits – drinking coffee and eating fried doughnuts with two Clown veterans called Dicky Grock and Pogo. Dicky Grock was the Clown Café’s cook: mute and sad-faced, an ex-juggler who’d hated the big top and had retired early. And Pogo was small-boned and large-toothed, king of the short gag, with a particular propensity for sneaking up behind you with a bullhorn. I was as terrified of him as I was the Tooth Fairy.
But it was always worth it. The discomfort, the fear, the queasy unease. Because the Clown Café was ours. It was important. It was one of the best hiding places in the world.
I swallow. I haven’t thought about the Clown Café in years. I haven’t thought about us in years. Suddenly desperate to breathe fresh air, I go to the window, pull up hard on the bottom sash. When it doesn’t budge, I look down. There are maybe a dozen long crooked nails hammered into the sill through the window frame. And there’s no reason for that to scare me, but it does. It scares me as much as that split second in LA when I thought El might actually be dead. Or that part of me that’s glad I’m here. In this place where my first life ended and was never ever supposed to restart.
‘Oh, El,’ I whisper, pressing my fingers against the cold glass. ‘What the fuck have you done?’
CHAPTER 3
The house is both too quiet and too loud.
I stand on the landing at the top of the stairs and take a breath. The carpet is gone from here too, but the glass globe that hangs from the ceiling rose and the gold light from Westeryk Road that floods through the open bathroom door straight ahead
