The Missing One by Lucy Atkins

this?’
    â€˜Why not? We haven’t talked about you and your mother for years,’ he said. ‘And there’s Finn now and that’s changed things. She bought that high chair, for God’s sake. She’s really not uninterested.’
    His hands on the wheel were broad, strong and clean – hands to hold, hands to be held by, hands to keep things safe. I swallowed hard. I was not going to open all this up again. I turned and looked back at Finn in his car seat, gnawing on a teething ring. Seeing me, he let it drop and his face cracked into a great big grin. For a few seconds, my beautiful baby and I just smiled at each other, and the world was simple.
    â€˜All I’m saying is I think she’s sad that you two aren’t closer.’ He really wouldn’t let it go. ‘I actually think she wants things to be better between you, but she doesn’t know how. She might not want to hold Finn and coo at him, but she’s totally aware of him. I saw her today, watching you while you were feeding him and talking to your father, and I think she was almost in tears. She really isn’t uninterested, Kal. Whatever this is for her, it’s definitely not lack of interest. Can’t you just try talking to her?’
    â€˜Doug. Stop. Just leave it. My mother and I are totally fine.’
    â€˜But this is surely a chance to put things behind you and … ’
    I looked out the window, silently daring him to say ‘make a fresh start’. But he knew me better than that. ‘The two of you are complicated,’ he said. ‘I get that.’
    I stared at the expanses of ploughed clay, the bare oaks flicking by, then the chalk quarry looming above us like a giant’s tooth. We turned onto the London road.
    â€˜But don’t leave it too late,’ he said. ‘Or you might regret it one day.’
    *
    I should clean up breakfast – the cafetière, the mangle of Marmite and milk. I can’t sit here thinking about my mother and Doug. I can’t. While we had that Boxing Day lunch, her tumour was there already, growing in her breast, a deadly secret that she was hiding from us all.
    It is also possible that Doug was keeping his horrible secret too, even then. Maybe he was already lying to me as he ate honey-glazed ham at my parents’ table. A vivid image rises in my brain of a curtain of strawberry-blonde hair and Doug’s broad hands pressing on pale flanks. All I want is to erase myself from this nightmare, completely.
    A surge of nausea brings saliva into my mouth. I have to decide what to do next. But I can’t think. These images are too much to hold in my head. I just want to get away.
    I wonder what my father is doing outside with Finn. I imagine him leaning down and trying to explain the Victorian architectural features of the house to his small grandson. I pick up my mother’s notebook. Holding it in my hands brings a sudden and unexpected comfort. Her handwriting, though younger, rounder, more girlish, is definitively hers. And it’sstill here – still physically present. This small part of her is here and that must mean that she hasn’t really gone.
    *
    Alice leaves, but I don’t. After I have given Finn his bath, and read him three storybooks, and tucked him up in his sleeping bag, in the travel cot, then sung ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ until, finally, he really is asleep, I creep back downstairs.
    My father is in his study; I can see the crease of light under his door. I walk through to the kitchen and flick the kettle on. Her old notebook is lying on the kitchen table, where I left it, next to the jewellery box. I take it, make myself a cup of peppermint tea, then go through to the living room. I curl up on the old Habitat sofa.
    It is chilly in this room, and the floor lamp gives off a yellowish light, casting long shadows up the bookcases. I pull a scratchy tartan blanket around my shoulders. The