Grace Is Gone Read online

  “Dad? Dad? You there?”

  “Hi, mate! I’m here, how you doing?”

  “Dad, Mum says I’m not allowed to play World of Warcraft anymore, which is really unfair because everyone, everyone at school is on it and I’d just started chatting to this kid who lives in Hong Kong and he’s going to tell me this secret about how to get past—”

  “Woah woah woah, hold on, Jakey.”

  Whatever had Cara’s attention outside has lost it now. She’s turned back, her head pressed against the headrest, staring straight ahead, the faintest smile on her lips. I turn to her, mouth “Sorry.” She shakes her head to show she doesn’t mind. She’s listening, how could she not? I’ve already had a £250 fine and three points for talking to Jakey on the phone while driving but there’s no way I’m hanging up on him. It’s the best part of my day.

  “Jakey, mate, if your mum doesn’t like you playing the game she must have her reasons. How was school today?”

  But Jakey ignores my question. “No, Dad, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, she just got ragey and changed the Wi-Fi so I can’t log on to it anymore without her putting in a password.”

  I could listen to him all day, even when he’s moaning.

  “Your mum has a point, Jakey. I mean, you know that you have to be careful of strangers on the internet, we’ve talked about that before. She’s just looking out for you.”

  “Yeah, but he’s twelve and he lives in Hong Kong!” He punctuates the words like I’m still learning what they mean.

  “You don’t know that for sure. Besides, your mum will be more nervous than usual. You heard what happened?”

  “Yeah.” His tone drops, his voice softens. “You mean that girl. She’s sick, right?”

  “Yes, Jakey, yes she is.” Although now in remission, Jakey hates hearing about other sick children. He knows better than anyone how sickness, real sickness, strikes at random.

  “You knew her, the missing girl, didn’t you, Dad? Are you helping the police find her?” I feel Cara shift beside me but don’t look at her.

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  In the background Ruth calls my son’s name. I picture her at the bottom of the stairs, one foot resting on the penultimate step, her short, wavy hair pinned behind her ears. I dress her in jeans and a simple white T-shirt, always my favorite outfit on Ruth. She calls again.

  “Well, she’s lucky she’s got you helping her, Dad. Gotta go, speak tomorrow, yeah?”

  “OK, Jakey.” Ruth doesn’t know he calls me every day. “I love you,” I add, but he’s already hung up. My phone clatters as I drop it into the pocket in my car door.

  In the passenger seat, Cara’s turned fully towards me. She’s staring at me, studying me as though I’ve suddenly grown a snout or wings out of my ears.

  “What?” I ask, darting my gaze from her to the road and back again. She doesn’t flinch. Have I got a sandwich crumb on my face or something? I strain to look in the rearview mirror but it’s hard to see with my beard and I don’t want to creep into the car in front.

  “What?” I ask again.

  But she just shakes her head and stares out of the windshield. I recognize this silence, how she shifts around in her seat. It’s like she’s had an idea. Ruth always told me I go quiet and stare when I have a realization that I’m not ready to share. It’s odd, but I see parts of myself in Cara. She has a determination for the truth, and a willingness to take risks, both of which I’ve always had in spades. As we drive to see Grace’s granddad I realize I’m glad Cara’s next to me and for the first time in a long while I feel a little less alone.

  7

  Cara

  It was Jakey, talking about his computer game and the creep in Hong Kong that made my memory crack, slotting together again like a jigsaw. I stare at the rain streaking against the window and remember Mum’s last birthday. It was February and the plan was to have cake and tea at Mum’s but Meg said Grace was having a bad day. She’d started on some new medication and had been up with diarrhea and vomiting all night. I always found it strange how Grace’s body had its own set of rules, like the sensitivity used for others didn’t apply—it was always “diarrhea” for Grace, never “upset stomach” like it is for the rest of us.

  “Well, if you two can’t come to the cake, then we’ll bring the cake to you,” Mum told Meg in a sparkly voice. So over we went, Mum carrying the elaborately iced cake Zara had made with the same reverence as a sculpture on a plinth, Zara and Sylvia chatting behind her. Number 52 smelled ripe, the air stale and queasy, but none of us said anything. Meg hugged us all in turn.

  “Am I glad to see this one!” she said, pulling me towards her. I’ve got you, her strong muscles seemed to tell my weaker ones. No matter what, I’ve got you.

  “Hi, Meg,” I said over her shoulder, but I don’t think she heard.

  “Mouse was saying just earlier how much she hoped you’d be coming.” Meg grinned at me, her pretty round face soft and sweet as cake mix. She cupped my cheeks briefly between her warm palms, still smiling. I could never help but smile back at her.

  “I’ve just got Mouse out of bed. Will you go and find where she’s hiding, Car?” I nodded, before Meg added, “And tell her off if her nose is back in that computer, will you?”

  Grace’s bedroom was like a kid’s room—Harry Potter posters, an army of stuffed toys on the duvet—and simultaneously like how I remember my granddad’s: the oxygen canister, the pills by the bed, the fixed-arm supports, the commode tucked discreetly beside a bookcase. I felt nervous suddenly. I always felt nervous seeing her those days. I felt like a bad person around her. Grace was in her chair, wearing a blue knitted bobble hat, her back towards me, absorbed in her computer which sat on a little desk against the wall. She didn’t turn straightaway, but I saw her back flex and knew she’d sensed me standing in the doorway. Her computer screen flashed as she closed the page she was looking at, but she wasn’t quick enough for me. I saw a message board and a cartoon avatar, a lanky, long-limbed, shaggy-haired kid called GoodSam. Whatever they were saying to each other, Grace didn’t want anyone else to see.

  “Mum, OK, OK, I know, I’m turning it off,” she said before she spun her chair around to the left, to face me.

  “Cara!” she said, her eyes light, surprised behind her round glasses.

  She was wearing a pair of my old pajamas I hadn’t seen in years, a snowman stitched to the front. At seventeen, she still didn’t have any boobs, her body strangely ageless, suspended in sickness. She reminded me of a school trip my class went on years ago to a medical museum, where our biology teacher showed us a baby preserved by a Victorian surgeon in a jar. Like that baby, Grace always seemed to me both ancient and impossibly young.

  “I thought you were Mum!” she said, spinning her chair to the right and then to the left, her version of moving nervously from one foot to the other. I walked towards her. Since we stopped seeing each other much, I didn’t know how to greet her anymore. If I bent down to kiss her I felt like I was kissing a granny. Hugging her was just way too awkward, but touching her shoulder felt too formal, weird in a different way. So I did what I always did: I left it up to Grace. My old pajamas sagged around her thin arms, usually covered in tiny bruises from all the injections. She lifted her hand up to find mine, light and delicate as an eggshell. I let her hold my hand for a moment and, through her touch, I felt the whole world between us.

  “Your mum said I had to tell you off if you had your nose in the computer.”

  Behind her glasses, Grace’s eyes rolled like marbles.

  “She’s got this theory that it’s bad for my headaches to look at a screen, so she only lets me go on the Wishmakers forum, says I should support other sick kids. She says it’s a way we can give back to the charity for helping us so much.” Grace shrugged as she spoke, resigned to the fact that screens were just another thing she had to avoid, which was basically everything from horse hair to the internet.

  “Oh,” I said,
because I didn’t know what else to say and I couldn’t imagine Grace’s life. I decided to change the subject.

  “Sooo . . . who is GoodSam?” I said in the same tone I used when I was younger, talking with my mates about boys we liked. I knew the longer I stayed in Grace’s room, the longer I could avoid the questions about boyfriends and university applications that were sure to be waiting for me in the sitting room. Grace colored and looked away. I knew that feeling, knew how it was to panic that secrets you didn’t want to share were about to be exposed. Grace was embarrassed.

  “Cara, please don’t say anything, he’s just a boy is all, a boy I’ve been talking to on the forum.”

  “You fancy him, don’t you, Grace?”

  Her cheeks went red and I realized, appalled, that her eyes had become watery with tears.

  “Please, Cara, please don’t say anything. It’s nothing. He’s sick like me. I’m just trying to help him.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder, felt her bones and thin muscles jump away from my touch.

  “Grace, I fancied loads of boys when I was seventeen. It’s OK, I won’t tell anyone.”

  Her eyes widened with relief. “You won’t say anything?”

  “Promise,” I said, perching on the edge of her bed. “But you’re sure he’s not some internet freak?”

  “No! He’s lovely, he wants to meet up, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Look at me, Cara.” Grace lifted her skinny arms to show me her deadened legs in the chair, as though I’d never seen them. “He’d never fancy me.”

  I tried, I tried desperately to think of the right thing to say, to tell Grace that was superficial bullshit, that she was the kindest, sweetest person I knew, but I wasn’t quick enough and Meg’s voice traveled down the hall. “Grace, Cara!”

  And Grace pushed herself past me, towards the door, to call back to her: “Coming, Mum!”

  In the sitting room, Grace sang “Happy Birthday” louder than any of us and then sat silent as we ate Mum’s cake, heavy with chocolate icing. She kept looking at the cake, following it as fat slices were raised to open mouths. Meg kept a slice back in case Grace’s diarrhea was better later and she could swallow a few bites. I wanted to talk to her about GoodSam, tell her that if he was a decent guy he wouldn’t care about her chair, about her epilepsy, about any of it. But even if I had found the right words, we were never alone together again, so she never knew.

  Jon’s quiet next to me. I’m glad he doesn’t try to chat. It gives me the chance to take my phone out, go on the Wishmakers website. The same photo of Meg and Grace that Mum’s got up in the salon window fills the screen. I click on the button for the forum, but the car slows and next to me Jon says, “Here we are,” and a large sign by the side of the road tells me we’re pulling into Resthaven Nursing Home. It is a low, squat building covered in stucco. The parking lot is practically empty; not many visitors, then. Jon stops the car but doesn’t move to open his door. Instead, turning to me, he says, “You know what, Cara, if it’s all the same to you I think I’ll sit this one out. My dad was in one of these places for a while. I’m not a huge fan of them I’m afraid.”

  I shrug, I don’t mind. Besides, now all I can think about is getting home to my laptop and trying to find GoodSam. Suddenly I feel as though I don’t have time for the long, cozy chat I had pictured having with Grace’s granddad.

  The door buzzes to let me in before I’ve even pressed the bell and a thin nurse in her sixties says, “Hello, can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Mr. Nichols, please.”

  “Do you mean Charlie?”

  “Yes, Charlie Nichols. I am, or was, a friend of his daughter, and his granddaughter. I was passing and wanted to say hello.”

  The nurse lifts a hand to her mouth.

  “You knew that poor woman? We’ve all been watching it on the news, it’s a horrible, horrible . . .” She stops, looks at me, tilts her head, a wrinkle forming in the middle of her brow. “You’re not the next-door neighbor, the girl who found her, are you?”

  I look away, nod, and before I know it she’s patting my back as I sign my name in the visitors’ book, then walking me down the long corridor.

  “Charlie doesn’t know what happened, of course. He doesn’t come out of his room much now to be honest—he’s not one to socialize. Yes, hello, Cynthia,” she says to an old woman with no teeth. The old people we pass gawk at me like kids who have forgotten it’s rude to stare.

  “He’s harmless enough, but he does get very confused with his illness. If he starts getting rowdy you just pull his alarm bell and leave the room, OK?” The nurse stops outside a beige door, identical to all the other doors we’ve passed. “I’ll come and check on you in a couple of minutes anyway, OK?” She knocks once, but doesn’t wait before slowly opening the door.

  “Charlie, you’ve got a visitor!” she calls in a loud voice.

  His room is small, boxlike—it looks like a hospital room, not a bedroom. It’s like he’s just moved in; the walls are blank. Everything—from the sheets on the bed to the chair he’s sitting in—looks standard NHS.

  He’s facing the window but his chin is slumped to his chest so he can’t be looking out. His hair is a white cloud above his head and his skin has a silvery quality, like wood left outside too long. He opens his eyes a crack, chews on his mouth, like he’s waking it up to say something after a long time. His brow is fixed in a scowl. Suddenly I have no idea why I’m here.

  “Well? Who is it?” His voice sounds corroded from lack of use. “Come here so I can see you if you won’t bloody talk.”

  I feel like I’m walking towards an old dog, one who could nip me without warning. I try to smile as his watery eyes slip over me.

  “I’m Cara.” I make my voice warm.

  “Are we related?” More scowling.

  “No, no we’re not. I’m here because I know . . . because I lived next door to your daughter, to Megan and Grace.”

  A corner of his mouth turns up involuntarily, he chews it again.

  “I don’t have a daughter.” His words are clearer now. I don’t want to challenge him, I’m afraid of upsetting him. Maybe the nurse showed me to the wrong room? But this man is the man from the photo, so he must be Charlie.

  “Y’hear me? I said I don’t have a daughter and I don’t know any ‘Grace.’”

  I find the second envelope I put in my bag this morning and take out the photo of Charlie, Meg, and Grace as a toddler.

  “Look, this is her, Megan, your daughter.” I step closer to him. His old flesh shakes, the corner of the photo curls as he stares at his younger self. His scowl deepens, but he doesn’t say anything, so I point to the image and say again, “This is Megan and this is Grace, Meg’s daughter, your granddaughter.”

  Both Meg and Grace are beaming at the camera like their lives depend on it. It seems impossible those two smiling faces could be related to this man who, though small and shaking, is hard as a knot. His rheumy eyes wince down at the photo and he raises one shaky finger, twisted and gnarled as ancient oak, and holds it over the photo; it shakes like he’s casting a spell.

  “That’s not Grace.” He hisses something then; it sounds like a name but I can’t make it out, and before I can say “Pardon?” he lurches forward in his chair. Spit gathers at the corner of his mouth and he lifts his clouded eyes to me.

  “She’s sick!” he shouts. “Don’t you people understand? She should never have been born! She’s sick!” His mouth curls and quivers around his ugly words.

  I pull the photo away. I don’t want him to see them anymore. I want to shake him, kick him for saying this shit about Grace, but his whole body is already rattling as he keeps shouting, spitting and hateful. I can’t be near him, this hard ball of bitterness, so I turn and run out of his room, past a nurse who’s walking fast towards us, her mouth a grim, resigned line.

  “What happened?” she asks but I don’t stop, I can’t because he’s still shouting, his wo
rds chasing me down the corridor. “She’s sick! She should never have been born!”

  Jon’s staring out of the windshield into space when I run back to the car. I’m too upset to be embarrassed about crying in front of him. He hands me tissues and tells me his dad had dementia, that towards the end Jon tried to stop his mum from visiting him because she’d always leave in tears after he’d called her by the wrong name or said something hurtful. He says it’s the cruelty of the disease, not Charlie himself, that I shouldn’t take anything he said seriously.

  He’s right. I raise a small smile and a damp “Thanks,” and I’m relieved Charlie and his rattling words don’t follow us as we drive back to Ashford in silence.

  Mum must still be at the salon because the house is empty when I get home. I go into my room and try to smooth out the photo and the thank-you card as best I can, prop them up against the water glass on my bedside table. I was stupid to think Dr. Rossi and Charlie would be glad to have them. Jon must think I’m a child, crying when my naive plan didn’t work out. I’m surprised he didn’t laugh in my face.

  I sit on my bed and balance my laptop on my knees to log on to the Wishmakers forum again. I’m curious to know more about GoodSam. Was he just a kid Grace helped, or was there something more going on between them?

  I make a profile to access the forum. I choose the name StillSearching because it’s exactly the sort of name my tortured seventeen-year-old self would have been pleased with. In order to find GoodSam I need to behave as much like Grace as possible and hope the website treats me like it treated her, with the same pop-ups, the same suggestions for other users to connect with. StillSearching is a seventeen-year-old disabled girl from Cornwall whose interests include painting, the beach, and movies. She’s on the forum to make new friends and talk about life as a teen living with disabilities. I find a picture of a pretty but not too memorable teenage girl from the internet.