Debbie declared her love for David Bowie complete. In the window of Mr Yee’s there was a poster asking for information about Bob’s boss.
The New Year’s Eve of 1983 was a quiet affair. Peter Stanning was still missing in the spring of 1984. Debbie was still Lauren’s closest friend and Lauren was impatient to be grown up, to be in love, to be free of the pain in her knee. Since the incident in Cornwall she had been keen to turn the pages on her life rather than dwell in the moment. Only when drawing or sketching or painting did she slow down, enjoy the task at hand, concentrate on the present.
Sixth Form was, really, Dance Form. Led by Debbie, the girls would attend any disco going to be Madonna or Chaka Khan. Lauren, longing to feel love or be loved, wondered if, had she been able to wear heels after her accident, she would have had better luck with boys. She was buoyed enormously to discover that the female students at the art schools she visited all wore pumps or flat boots or trainers and that they looked sexy and cool and desirable. She wondered if her art project, Peter Stanning is Missing, was cool too, or a sixth-form assignment to be binned.
Lauren leaving home was hard for Vera when it came. Bob, too, was emotional. He ran his finger along the tiny windowsill of Lauren’s small halls of residence room and inspected it for dust. Vera sniffed the air not knowing if she was expecting to smell drugs or a blocked drain or Cup-a-Soup. Lauren was impatient to explore but paused to hug them both, to promise to phone the next day, to love them forever.
In the car on the way home Vera and Bob agreed they had raised the sweetest, most talented of daughters and inwardly they both wondered if they loved her too dearly and whether life in The Willows would be too quiet, too dependent on knowing the date of her next trip home. Right now, a sibling for Lauren would have helped enormously. None had come though, thought Vera, none had ever come, and she let the tears, large dramatic tears, plop onto her lap as Bob, blinking, concentrated on the road ahead. He switched on the radio for distraction and although there was emotional discussion about the Hungerford massacre that had taken place a few weeks earlier, an incident which had been of political and human interest and therefore one both he and Vera could discuss with equal insight, he could hear only a jumble of meaningless and boring words.
‘I just, I just… love her too much,’ Vera said out loud and Bob took one hand off the steering wheel to squeeze his wife’s arm.
It could be worse, he thought to himself. Peter Stanning, for example, was still missing and the house-to-house enquiries had long dried up. And the Jeep, the bloody Cornwall Jeep, well, that could have been an unthinkable thing.
Back in Lauren’s first life, it would be her birthday soon. Bob could not find the words to describe how much he was dreading it. His daughter had already had one dead birthday, six weeks after Cornwall, but it been just another grotesque day among many. Now that Vera had stopped drinking and started caring about the house and the garden and cooking and even the boutique, this birthday could be a setback. He was scared to mention it, scared not to mention it.
He was so grateful to Peter Stanning. He had been stoically kind to them, especially when they began to feel isolated. It had been agony in The Willows. What had felt cloistered was now confining but it was impossible to contemplate leaving Lauren’s room behind for another child to inhabit. And they lived opposite Karen and Julian who had not lost either of their children. Debbie was damaged emotionally but neither Debbie nor her brother had suffered more than bumps and bruises when the Jeep had braked.
The resentment and grief from one side of the spoon mingled poisonously with the guilt and indignation from the other. Ten months passed and then a ‘For Sale’ sign was put up in front of No. 17. Eventually, the removal van arrived and Debbie with her pink sheepskin rug left for a new home, a new school and the hope of new friends who would not fall out of the back of a Jeep.
The rage that had been directed towards Karen and Julian altered its trajectory and Vera began to blame herself. She stopped eating properly and began to drink heavily. Peter Stanning limply handed over another pot of jam as Vera poured him a Scotch which he barely touched. Bob tried to talk about the office. He was back at work but leaving early to keep an eye on his wife.
‘Tell me about your kids,’ Vera had slurred at the petrified Peter.
‘They, um, they’re great kids, Vera, thanks.’
‘And would you let them go off in the back of a crappy old truck?’
‘No, Vera, I wouldn’t but I would let them go on holiday without me and the wife. Anyone would have done that.’
Vera glowered. It left Peter speechless. Bob cleared his throat. Peter stood up to leave as Vera scratched at the table top with an old butter knife.
‘I didn’t want her to go but I let her go,’ she said, the mother’s guilt seeping from her lips, her eyes. ‘What if I had put my foot down? She’d be here now. Sat here, right here.’
Vera stared at an empty chair and then put down the knife and slowly pushed her glass to one side.
‘I’ve drunk enough. I’m sorry, Peter. You’re a good man.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ Peter mumbled and there followed a strained, normal conversation about the weather and the deliciousness of Peter’s wife’s fruit preserves.
Vera stood and smiled politely and walked with him to the front door. Peter did not know her well but it seemed to him that Bob should be more worried about this suddenly calm, reserved Vera than the angry one who blamed herself.
‘Any time you like tomorrow, Bob,’ Peter said.
‘You should go in early tomorrow,’ Vera said a week later. ‘I’ll have a lie-in and potter in the garden and fix us some dinner and I’ll be fine.’
Bob was relieved. He felt torn between doing the right thing at home and the right thing at work, and work was so much easier to bear than the quietness of their home. After Peter left, Vera cooked him one of her mild fruity curries, the first she had prepared since the accident and they watched the BBC news still reporting on the fall-out of how Labour, led by Michael Foot, were humiliated in the 1983 General Election, by a Tory party that had to Bob’s surprise elected Margaret Thatcher as its leader. Vera did not say how little any of it mattered and even nodded at the political analysis on offer. It felt like the start of something, a life worth living perhaps and he was sure he had Peter’s gentle interventions to thank for that.
But it was Lauren’s birthday soon and so, as they sat on the sofa in front of the TV, he plucked up some courage.
‘Love, I’ll take the day off next Tuesday. Maybe we can go and see Suki or drive somewhere quiet and go for a long walk. Whatever you want, love.’
There was silence and then Vera turned and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Thank you,’ she said but she did not think ahead to the long walk, she thought back. Back to that moment when, alone in the house, with Bob at work and her daughter on her first holiday without her, Vera had pouted into the mirror. Her complexion was youthful, her skin smooth and unblemished. She had a mole close to the top of her left shoulder and she often wondered how she would feel if that mole had ended up on her chin or her cheek or her forehead. One of her teachers at school had a strange sort of wart on the tip of her nose and Vera had thought it ridiculous that it had never been removed.
She was young enough yet for another baby, she had thought. She was feeling upbeat about life, about miracles. Bob was planning to leave work as promptly as possible so they could walk to The Plough together and find a table outside. It had been a shimmering day of unbroken sunshine, the pub would be packed even on a Wednesday. Afterwards they could try for a baby, she thought as she applied Tweed perfume to her wrists and neck. She had walked past Lauren’s bedroom and wondered if the weather was as lovely in St Ives for her. She resisted the temptation to sit on her daughter’s bed and absorb the scent of her, of her clothes, of her craft box. She’ll be home soon