neither Anna nor Lily could miss it. She would be up before either of us, and she had a memory like an elephant. Then, as promised, I switched on the light in the porch. The road outside was still and silent, the houses opposite dark.
I gave up for the night and put myself to bed.
I had to climb in over a pile of books and papers (this part of the jungle Patricia wouldnât touch). I went through them, just in case. The news went back weeks, left and right, tabloid and broadsheet; the theory being that if you write for newspapers, you should know what the rivals are saying. In practice there are too many words. Most of the papers hadnât even been opened. Mixed in with the news were well-thumbed childrenâs books, a clutch of magazines, and a draft of something with pencil marks all over it. An article she was writing. I scanned it in the hope that it might explain everything: some major exposé of a Mafia ring set in Florence selling Italian choirboys into pedophile rings. But it was years since Annaâs bylines had been so juicy, and it turned out to be a piece on the failure of nursery schools to comply with new government literacy targets for five-year-olds.
Yet another article she hadnât talked about. There had been a time before Lily when Annaâs career had been on the fast track, but in the last few years she seemed to have lost the hunger for it. Single mothers canât be one of the boys, she had once explained to me. It only hurts if you fight it.
In the bedside drawers I found some pens, an old book of Auden poems, a chewed-up dummyâa relic from the era of sleepless nights and last resortsâand tucked away at the back a compilation of erotic stories. I flicked through them, but they were too literary for my taste, too many euphemisms and soft focus, not enough balls. Not quite Annaâs taste either, from what I remembered. In the early days when I first moved to Amsterdam it used to be one of our regular Saturday-evening pastimes, watching the men watching the prostitutes in their rose-tinted shop windows, trying to work out who was exploiting whom, the different ways that power and pleasure plait together in peopleâs sexual fantasies. We went there, I remember, one summerâs night soon after Lily had been born. Anna had been carrying her strapped to her chest, Lilyâs eyes wide open and surprised in the way that babies often are, blinking in the sights.
I lay looking up at the ceiling. Anna had been missing for one day and almost two nights. It was unthinkable that she should simply have decided to stay away without getting in touch. Which meant that for some reason she couldnât. From one bed I imagined another: a room in an Italian hospital where a pale woman lay under a sheet, her nose and mouth filled with tubes, her body attached to a monitor, across which a wavy green curve was flattening out into a line, the bleep turning to a high whine as it registered the change. I blinked and the image changed: the same woman but without the screen this time, waking up into a profound silence, in her mind as well as in the room. The next time I looked she was sitting in a chair, her ankles and wrists tied to the legs and armrests, her face bled white by fear, the shadow of another figure projected across her body.
I sat up in the bed and shook the pictures away. Was Paul lying upstairs with his own slide show in progress or was I somehow more prone to this because of my own past? How soon after my mother went missing was she also dead? Two, three days? I couldnât remember anymore. Iâm not sure I ever knew.
Impressive how the cancer cells of your imagination multiply even faster than the ones in the body. But if this is not about accident or crime, then what on earth is it, Anna? Donât you understand that people are going crazy with worry here?
AwayâThursday P.M.
H ER BODY WAS like a balloon blown up with helium gas. Each time she tried
I gave up for the night and put myself to bed.
I had to climb in over a pile of books and papers (this part of the jungle Patricia wouldnât touch). I went through them, just in case. The news went back weeks, left and right, tabloid and broadsheet; the theory being that if you write for newspapers, you should know what the rivals are saying. In practice there are too many words. Most of the papers hadnât even been opened. Mixed in with the news were well-thumbed childrenâs books, a clutch of magazines, and a draft of something with pencil marks all over it. An article she was writing. I scanned it in the hope that it might explain everything: some major exposé of a Mafia ring set in Florence selling Italian choirboys into pedophile rings. But it was years since Annaâs bylines had been so juicy, and it turned out to be a piece on the failure of nursery schools to comply with new government literacy targets for five-year-olds.
Yet another article she hadnât talked about. There had been a time before Lily when Annaâs career had been on the fast track, but in the last few years she seemed to have lost the hunger for it. Single mothers canât be one of the boys, she had once explained to me. It only hurts if you fight it.
In the bedside drawers I found some pens, an old book of Auden poems, a chewed-up dummyâa relic from the era of sleepless nights and last resortsâand tucked away at the back a compilation of erotic stories. I flicked through them, but they were too literary for my taste, too many euphemisms and soft focus, not enough balls. Not quite Annaâs taste either, from what I remembered. In the early days when I first moved to Amsterdam it used to be one of our regular Saturday-evening pastimes, watching the men watching the prostitutes in their rose-tinted shop windows, trying to work out who was exploiting whom, the different ways that power and pleasure plait together in peopleâs sexual fantasies. We went there, I remember, one summerâs night soon after Lily had been born. Anna had been carrying her strapped to her chest, Lilyâs eyes wide open and surprised in the way that babies often are, blinking in the sights.
I lay looking up at the ceiling. Anna had been missing for one day and almost two nights. It was unthinkable that she should simply have decided to stay away without getting in touch. Which meant that for some reason she couldnât. From one bed I imagined another: a room in an Italian hospital where a pale woman lay under a sheet, her nose and mouth filled with tubes, her body attached to a monitor, across which a wavy green curve was flattening out into a line, the bleep turning to a high whine as it registered the change. I blinked and the image changed: the same woman but without the screen this time, waking up into a profound silence, in her mind as well as in the room. The next time I looked she was sitting in a chair, her ankles and wrists tied to the legs and armrests, her face bled white by fear, the shadow of another figure projected across her body.
I sat up in the bed and shook the pictures away. Was Paul lying upstairs with his own slide show in progress or was I somehow more prone to this because of my own past? How soon after my mother went missing was she also dead? Two, three days? I couldnât remember anymore. Iâm not sure I ever knew.
Impressive how the cancer cells of your imagination multiply even faster than the ones in the body. But if this is not about accident or crime, then what on earth is it, Anna? Donât you understand that people are going crazy with worry here?
AwayâThursday P.M.
H ER BODY WAS like a balloon blown up with helium gas. Each time she tried
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