Mystery Tour Read online

  ‘You’re a strong man, Michael. See if you can carry this.’ Her father was struggling towards them with a large suitcase, his breathing heavy. He was sixty-two now, his hair thinner over his scalp, his stomach straining at his belt, but he was still proud; still protective.

  ‘You’d best treat this one right,’ he’d told Michael the first time they’d met – joking, but not joking. ‘She’s still our little girl.’

  A little girl. At twenty-eight.

  ‘I’d best go and help Mum,’ Alice said, not looking at him. She took a last pull on her cigarette and threw it to the ground, crushing the end beneath her shoe.

  She found her mother in the stone-flagged kitchen, unloading crates of food and wine. ‘How many people are you feeding here, Mum?’

  Her mother smiled, the lines carving deeper into her face – the face Alice knew, but worn by time.

  ‘Got to make sure my children are properly looked after, haven’t I?’

  As her mother unpacked, Alice’s eyes were drawn to her thin arms, papery skin wrinkled over bone.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘No, no. I’m fine, love. You show the children around the house. They’ll like that.’ What she meant was that she would rather not deal with them, her grandchildren. They were too loud. Too vibrant. Too much.

  ‘All right. If you’re sure.’

  From the door, she looked again at her mother, a small figure in a faded print dress. Every time she saw her, she noticed how life had crushed her a little further. Her mother had felt responsible, of course, for Clara had been on holiday with them. And they had lost her.

  Alice’s nieces were six and four – all elbows, arguments and delight. They were already running about between rooms, sizing everything up, working out what was theirs, while Alice’s brother and his wife, travelworn and weary, carried their luggage in from the car.

  ‘There’s a funny smell,’ Ada said, wrinkling her little nose. And there was: the scent of must and dust, and things unwashed.

  ‘It’s just how old houses smell,’ Alice explained. ‘Especially houses by lakes.’

  She showed the children the large, chequer-tiled bathroom, their blue-papered room, the bunk bed in which she herself had slept all those years ago. As they squabbled about whose bunk was whose, Alice remembered the excitement of introducing Clara to the place that summer, pointing out where they kept the fishing nets and the wetsuits, the towels and torches. She remembered them brushing their teeth together in the bathroom, huddling down beneath the blankets in the blue bedroom, Clara in the top bunk, because Alice had let her choose.

  ‘How about we never go back?’ Clara had said as they lay in their bunks that first night. Alice had laughed, thinking it was a joke. But maybe it had been a real question.

  Thank God for Michael, tolerating the defects of others – her own lack of words, her father’s excess. He had become more brazen over the years: more wisecracks, more ‘cockney charm’, almost a caricature of his former self. Perhaps she should have found it amusing, but it was false, cloying. He was making up for something by being someone he was not. She left them in the back garden and went to help her mother prepare the dinner. Through the kitchen window, she could see her father gesticulating, embellishing some story, while Michael quietly sipped his beer. From upstairs came the occasional slam of a door or the shriek of a child being unwillingly bathed.

  ‘Here,’ her mother said, handing her a bowl, ‘you make the salad.’

  They worked then, without speaking, the radio on.

  Just before eight o’clock, Alice ran up to their room to change into a silk shirt and cut-off jeans, to pop little silver studs into her ears. She had caught the sun, she noticed. She looked healthy, even pretty. She would never be beautiful, though. She would never be Clara.

  They sat at the table outside to eat, amid the whine of mosquitoes and the scent of citronella candles. They talked of nothings: their journeys, the weather, Michael’s job, Charlie’s new school. Her mother served quiche, a casserole, cheeses, crusty bread. Her father poured everyone too much wine.

  ‘Is it all booked, then? The venue, the caterers?’

  Michael looked at Alice. ‘Yes, I think so, we’re keeping it pretty simple.’

  Simple and small. A plain white dress. Her brown hair straight and unadorned. Alice wished they could run away – avoid all the fuss and formalities – but it wouldn’t be fair. Their only daughter, their little girl.

  ‘Already preparing my speech,’ her father said, and winked at her.

  She smiled. She could imagine it, and her insides curled.

  Robert’s wife, Caroline, came down sometime later, glared at Robert and drank a glass of white wine almost in one. Did she know, Alice wondered, as she watched her drinking – did she know what happened here? Robert was more open than she was, less of a closed book, but this was different. Alice suspected that Robert, like her, rarely discussed it. Perhaps he never talked of it at all.

  ‘A toast to the chef,’ her father said, raising his beer. ‘Santé!’

  Then came the clink of glasses, the polite laughter, her mother shaking her head.

  And all at once Alice could not bear it – that they were here in this very place where Clara had slid from time, and yet her name had not even been spoken.

  She picked up her glass again and her father smiled. ‘To Clara too. Never forgotten.’

  A silence, her father’s smile froze, and then Michael raised his bottle, met her gaze. ‘To Clara.’

  The others followed then. ‘Yes. Clara.’

  Her father’s eyes were on the tablecloth, her mother’s cheeks were flushed. Caroline did not seem surprised, only uncomfortable. She knew, then. And yet she had brought her children here.

  Coughs, the scraping of cutlery. Robert talked in an overly bright voice about their plans for tomorrow: boats, shops, things to buy. He always wanted to make things right; make them all get on. Alice, however, was not really listening, but remembering. Thinking of Clara sitting across from her at this table for lunch, her freckles already darkened by two days in the sun.

  What’s the point of having a tent and not using it, though? Go on, Alice. Ask your mum.

  She realised then that her mother was staring at her, her expression sharp. After a moment, her mother smiled, but it was too late, Alice had seen it. It was the same look everyone had always given her: watchful. Uncertain. Cold.

  She rose early the following morning, slipped from the bed, in which Michael still slept, gathered a towel and pulled on her swimming costume. She could hear voices from the kitchen – the high whining of a child; Caroline’s hushed tone. In her bare feet, Alice stole down the stairs and crept out of the house through the front door. Outside, the air was crisp with the remnants of the night chill, the light translucent, the sky a bleached blue. Green-winged dragonflies hovered over the lake, and a breeze ruffled the surface as she took her first steps into the cool water, feeling the velvet silt between her toes. Before she could lose her nerve, she submerged herself entirely in the lake, her arms pulling her forward into the water, her legs barely breaking the surface. There was only the sound of the wind on the water, the rustle of reeds, the call of a bird: bubbling, sad.

  She closed her eyes and felt the water caressing her body, the movement of her limbs. Then she stopped kicking and allowed herself to float, the water covering her chin, cloaking her shoulders. And all at once Clara was there, her long hair trailing, the sunlight shining on her narrow shoulders, forming a halo of light about her head.

  ‘They didn’t want me to come, you know.’

  ‘Why?’

  A shrug. ‘You know what my mum’s like.’

  Clara’s mother: tight lips, suspicious eyes. Never wanting Clara to play at hers. Alice wasn’t good enough for her, presumably. Too lumpen and awkward, lacking Clara’s spark. She lived in a terraced house on a mediocre street. Was that it? Or was it something else?

  ‘What did your stepdad say?’

/>   ‘Who cares what he thinks? He’s a prick.’ Clara closed her eyes, held her nose and disappeared beneath the surface in a spray of water, leaving Alice to wonder in what particular way she’d failed.

  Clara was different that summer, harder perhaps, more closed. Maybe it was just to do with being fifteen. They’d known each other since junior school; since they were gap-toothed eight-year-olds in matching check dresses and boater hats. But it was only in senior school that they’d become friends – when Clara, now tall and graceful, had sought Alice out. She was never sure why Clara had wanted her friendship, why someone so special would have wanted anything to do with her. But maybe it was Alice’s very ordinariness that made her attractive – her dull and stable home life, the lack of drama and disaster. Clara’s mother was already on her second marriage and third house – a tall modern building, all glass, chrome and no mess. To Alice, Clara always seemed desperately exciting and superior. This was why, by and large, she let her have what she wanted: stickers, hairbands, the window seat. It was why, that summer, she had agreed to ask her parents about the tent.

  Alice’s mother had been against it. There were two perfectly good beds for them to sleep in, she said. And they’d be bitten to death by mosquitoes – they were rife that year. Alice’s father, though, had laughed. ‘They’ll only be a few minutes from the house. I was off for days by myself at their age. Stop making excuses, Bev.’

  So she had. And they had gone.

  Alice remembered the exhilaration, packing their rucksacks, stocking up on apples and crisps from the kitchen. A flask of tea from Mum. A flask of rum from her father. ‘Just to keep off the cold, eh? Don’t tell your mother.’

  He and Robert came with them to help them pitch the tent in the small camping site that looked onto the lake. Her father was in his element amid the guy ropes and tent poles, finding them a shady spot by the trees. Robert, meanwhile, was sullen and unhelpful, whining about being left out again. He’d been sulky all holiday, with no friend of his own. Thirteen years old, pimple-skinned and lanky, insatiably in love with Clara, of course.

  ‘Couldn’t I stay with you? Until you go to bed?’

  ‘No,’ they both said at once, and Alice had added: ‘Sorry, Bobs. Girls only.’

  But in fact, that was a lie.

  They’d seen them earlier in the week, as they sat on the pontoon, watching the dark, moving shapes of small fish darting below. Three boys, two girls, laughing, talking, taking it in turns to steer a small blue boat.

  ‘Ahoy there!’ one of the boys shouted.

  ‘Ahoy!’ Clara returned, raising her arm.

  ‘Are you English?’ He was tall with dark hair and grey eyes, narrowed into slits against the sun.

  ‘Yes,’ Clara said. ‘From London. Watch – you’ll fall!’

  But he had not fallen. He had climbed out of the boat, sat beside them on the creaking wooden boards and taken out a packet of cigarettes, nonchalant, easy. His name was Max, he told them. He was seventeen.

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  He pointed to a hill just beyond the lake. ‘We’re camping just over there.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘Of course on our own. What, you think we came with our mums and dads?’

  He lit a cigarette, offered them the pack.

  It didn’t take Clara and Alice long that evening to find them. They were sitting on deckchairs outside their tent, smoking cigarettes, drinking small bottles of French beer.

  ‘Hello,’ Max said, pushing his sunglasses up onto the top of his head. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

  Alice felt her sunburned skin grow hotter, but of course it wasn’t her he was really talking to.

  Clara approached the group, ponytail swinging, and took the deckchair one of the boys pushed forward. She turned back to Alice: ‘Come on, then.’

  ‘Yes, come join us,’ another of the boys said. ‘We don’t bite.’ He bared his teeth, and the others laughed.

  Alice hesitated then walked closer, standing awkwardly at the edge of the group.

  ‘How come you’re camping, then?’

  ‘Just fancied it.’

  ‘Really? I’d give anything for a proper bed.’ That was one of the girls, her lips glossy as blood, her hair coiled up on her head like a snake.

  ‘Where’s that rum, Alice?’ Clara’s voice was hard, strange, and all at once it came to Alice that Clara didn’t even like her, was embarrassed about her. Had come on this holiday only to escape her own family, whom she disliked even more.

  Without answering, Alice turned and walked slowly back to their tent by the trees to fetch her father’s flask. When she returned, the others had moved their chairs into more of a circle, Clara closer to Max, their arms almost touching. Alice sat at the entrance to one of the tents, conscious of her pale legs, her too-thick calves and unmanicured nails. Outside the tent opposite, a plastic toy windmill turned in the breeze.

  They passed round the rum, and Alice took a few sips, ignoring the burn in the back of her throat. The boys all looked at Clara, of course, Clara with her dark eyes and nut-brown hair, and Alice shrank into herself, her dejection deepening. She wished herself anywhere but there. More beers were brought out, and the stars grew brighter, the dusk darkening into an ink-blue night. They talked about the usual things – what class they were in, what college, what subject, how long they were staying here, what things they had planned. Clara’s laughter was high and false, and Alice felt her skin crawl with rising resentment, with the realisation that she had been used, once again.

  At around midnight, the girl with the red lips said she was too tired, she was going to bed, and everyone decided to turn in for the night.

  Had that been it? Had there been something else, something that could provide her with a clue, or a reason? An odd look, a strange remark? Alice had gone over it again and again, thinking she could piece together every moment of that evening, but there must have been a fragment missing: a shard or scrap of information that she had missed or forgotten.

  She remembered them brushing their teeth together and spitting the froth into tin cups.

  ‘I think he liked you – the short one.’

  ‘No, Clara. They all liked you. They always do.’

  They had changed into their night things without speaking, and Alice had climbed into her sleeping bag, inhaling the peculiar smell of must and polyester. She heard Clara moving about beside her, then lying still, her breathing soft.

  ‘It isn’t as good as you think.’

  ‘What?

  ‘Being the pretty one.’

  The words were like a sharp slap, leaving her ears ringing: the acknowledgment that Alice was not special, was not pretty – was not, in fact, anything at all.

  ‘Yes, poor you.’ Her throat was tight. ‘The pretty one.’

  ‘You don’t understand what it’s like, Alice. It’s not like I always want the attention.’

  Alice turned away from her, her eyes burning. ‘And what do you think it’s like for me?’

  ‘Oh, forget it, then.’

  ‘I will.’

  Clara turned onto her side too, and Alice could feel the hostility emanating from her, her shoulders tense. Alice lay in the dark, her anger subsiding into sadness, but she could not bring herself to say anything. It was too late. She could hear the wind on the water, the rustling of the trees and – from somewhere across the lake – laughter. She nestled down inside her sleeping bag and listened to Clara’s breath: even, slow, slower. If she could sleep, she could not be that angry. By tomorrow, maybe it would be OK.

  Alice woke early in the morning to the patter of light rain on the outside of the tent and to the smell of canvas. Clara was gone.

  Her mother’s panic was immediate. Her father’s took longer to set in. Clara must have wandered off around the lake, he reasoned. Maybe she couldn’t sleep. Perhaps she’d had a bad dream. Girls did silly things at that age.

  ‘But why on earth would she go walking before six o’
clock in the morning, Paul? Clara’s a sensible girl.’

  Sensible. Was she? Alice thought of Clara, ponytail swinging; the false laughter. She thought of the argument, their final words. But she didn’t say anything, even later. She could not bear the thought that she might be to blame.

  They asked other families first, couples camping with young children who were up early, eating breakfast; older people in camper vans or caravans. At around eight o’clock, the girl from the previous night emerged from her tent, the red lipstick gone. She regarded Alice strangely while her mother asked questions, as though she thought the whole thing a hoax or a terrible joke. She woke Max and the others then, and they emerged from their tents, groggy, grumpy, hair disarranged. They squinted at Alice, shook their heads. No, they hadn’t heard anything at all.

  The plastic windmill still turned in the breeze, but the tent opposite had gone, leaving a patch of flattened grass.

  They went then to people in holiday houses, people who might have seen something from a window, heard a shout or a scream in the night. Alice remembered her mother’s voice growing shriller, her father quieter, more angry. She remembered Robert crying, all of his thirteen-year-old bravado gone. Mostly she remembered the panic spiralling within her like a sickness and the looks of those other people: part pity, part curiosity, part suspicion. It was the way people always looked at her, even many years later.

  By the time the police came, her mother had grown silent and afraid. And that was far, far worse.

  On the second day, they began to trawl the lake: teams of masked men in black-and-blue wetsuits, emerging from the surface like strange water beasts. Clara’s mother and stepfather had arrived by that stage – tearful, hostile, pale. They wouldn’t stay in the same house as Alice’s parents. They would barely even talk to them. This seemed grossly unfair to Alice. It had, after all, been Clara’s idea to camp, Clara’s insistence that had led to them being in the tent that night, alone.