Luke turns back towards the woods. ‘Did you hear that, Auntie Ella? Like somebody coughed but tried to muffle it? It didn’t sound like our deer.’
I think of the interview I did a few months ago. Mum and Dad and I had always refused until then. But this was for a local newspaper, to publicise the charity. It seemed important to us, as the ten-year anniversary of your disappearance drew near. I talked about everything I do. The personal safety classes, the support group for family members of victims, the home safety visits, the risk assessment clinics.
There was no mention of you, but Mum and Dad were still worried by the caption that appeared beneath the photograph they snapped of me. Ella Brooke – Making a Real Difference for Victims. My arms are crossed and there is no smile on my face. My head is tilted to the side but my eyes are boring straight into the man behind the camera. I look like you, except for the severe ponytail and ready-for-action black T-shirt and leggings.
Could that photograph have set something off? Set someone off? Perhaps I hoped it would, and that was why I agreed to let them take it.
I catch Luke’s hand and pull him back to me. ‘Probably a rambler. It’s morning. It’s broad daylight. We are perfectly safe.’
‘So you don’t think it’s an axe murderer.’ He says this with relish, ever-hopeful.
‘Not today, I’m afraid.’
‘Well if it is, you’d kick their ass.’
‘Don’t let Granny hear you talk like that.’ The sun stabs me in the head – warmth and pain together – and I squeeze my eyes shut on it for a few seconds, trying at the same time to squeeze out the worry that somebody is watching us. I am also trying – and failing yet again – to lock out the images of what you would have suffered if Thorne really did take you.
‘Do you have a headache, Auntie Ella?’
Luke doesn’t know he pronounces it ‘head egg’. I find this charming, but I worry that he may be teased.
Should I correct him? I didn’t imagine I’d be buying up parenting books when I was only twenty, and that they would become my bedtime reading for the next decade. They don’t usually have the answers I need, but I know that you would.
‘No headache. Thank you for asking.’ I smile to show Luke that I mean it.
‘I think Mummy would like me to live with you.’
I love how he calls you Mummy. That’s how Mum and Dad and I speak of you to him. I wonder if we got stuck on Mummy because you never had time to outgrow it. Mummy is the name that people tend to use during the baby stage. You were never allowed to become Mum. Or mother, perhaps, though that always sounds slightly angry and over-formal.
‘If I live with you part of the time, can we get more of her things in my room?’
‘What things do you have in mind?’
‘Granny put her doll’s house up in the attic.’
‘It’s my doll’s house too.’ As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realise that I sound like a little girl, fighting with you over a toy.
Luke smiles when he mimics our father’s reasoned tone. ‘Don’t you share it?’
‘Yes.’ I lift an eyebrow. ‘So you’d like a doll’s house?’
‘No. Of course not. I’m a boy. I don’t like doll’s houses.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with a boy liking doll’s houses.’
‘Well I don’t. But why would Granny put it out of the way like that?’
‘It hurt her to see it, Luke.’
He scowls. ‘It shouldn’t be hidden away in the attic. Get it back from her.’ He sounds like you, issuing a command that must be obeyed.
Three crows lift from a tree, squawking. Luke and I snap our heads to watch them fly off, so glossy and black they appear to have brushed their feathers with oil.
‘Do you think something startled them?’ He takes a fire leaf from his pocket.
‘Probably an animal.’
He is studying the leaf, tracing a finger over its veins. He doesn’t look at me when he says, super casually, ‘Can you make Granny give you that new box of Mummy’s things?’
There’s a funny little clutch in my stomach. I am not sure I heard him right. ‘What things?’
‘Don’t know. Stuff the police returned to Granny a couple weeks ago.’
‘Granny didn’t tell me that. How do you know?’
‘I’m a good spy. Like you. I heard her talking about them with Grandpa.’
‘Did Granny open it? Did she look in it?’
‘Not that she mentioned when I was listening.’
‘Did she say anything about why the police finally returned Mummy’s things?’
‘Nope. Get the box too. Make Granny give it to you.’
Getting that box is exactly what I want to do. Very, very much. ‘Okay,’ I say, though I mumble secretly to myself about the challenge of making our mother do anything. Our mother gives orders. She does not take them.
‘Auntie Ella?’
‘Yes.’
‘She would have come back for me if she could have, wouldn’t she?’
I think of one of the headlines that appeared soon after you vanished, claiming you’d run away. I put my arms around him tightly. We have always tried to protect him from such stories. Since last week’s spate of new headlines about Thorne, we have been monitoring Luke’s Internet use even more carefully. But we can’t know what he might have stumbled on, and I am nervous that a school friend has said something.
I kiss the top of his head and inhale. We have only been out for forty minutes but already he smells like a puppy who has run all the way back from a damp walk. ‘She would have come back for you.’ It is not raining but my cheeks are wet.
Luke wriggles out of my arms. He wipes at his cheeks too. ‘Are you sure?’
‘One hundred per cent. Nothing would have kept her from you if she had a choice.’
He bites his lower lip and looks down, scrunching his fists over his eyes.
Was I right to tell him these two true things, one beautiful and one too terrible to bear? That you were driven by your love for him, and that something unimaginably horrible happened to you?
Another thought creeps in, a guilty one. Is it easier for me to imagine you suffering a terrible death than to contemplate the possibility that you made a new life for yourself somewhere, as the police have sometimes suggested? I think of Thorne and shudder, absolutely clear that the answer is no.
‘She wanted you so much.’ It is extremely difficult to get these words out, but somehow I do, in a kind of croak.
‘It’s okay, Auntie Ella.’ He has so much courage, this boy, as he takes his fists from his eyes and comforts me when I should be comforting him. He waits for me to catch my breath. ‘I found a picture of her holding me,’ he says. ‘It’s one I hadn’t seen before. At first I thought it was you. You look like her.’
‘I think maybe that’s more true now than it used to be.’
‘Because you’re thirty now.’
‘Thanks for reminding me.’
‘I know. It’s really old.’
I stifle a mock-sob.
‘Sorry,’