It stops me in my tracks. He hasn’t called her Auntie. I wonder if it’s the first step on the path to calling her Mum. The air between us crackles.
‘I hope so, darling. But it’s difficult.’
There’s a silence between us.
‘Dad says she was a nice person who fell in with a bad crowd.’
I press some bread down into the toaster and look up. I smile. That’s exactly what Hugh used to think of me. A nice person, over-influenced by those around me. He would tell me, while I was in Berlin, ‘Look after yourself,’ he’d say, ‘We all miss you…’, and I knew he meant, Those people aren’t your friends. He was trying to save me, even then; I just wasn’t ready to be saved.
‘She was a really lovely person. Full stop.’
He hesitates.
‘So, why didn’t she want me?’
‘Connor,’ I begin. ‘It’s complicated—’
‘Dad says I shouldn’t worry about it. He says that Auntie Kate loved me very much but she wasn’t coping, that she couldn’t afford a baby, but you could, so it made sense.’
‘Well, that’s really a very simplistic way of looking at it…’
I wonder when Hugh’s been telling Connor all this. I didn’t even know they’d talked. I tell myself we need to make more of an effort, to be upfront with Connor, to be united. Like we’d decided years ago.
‘If you wanted children, why didn’t you have one?’
‘We couldn’t.’ I’m trying to keep my voice even; I don’t want it to crack, to betray how much loss I contain. ‘We’d been trying. For several years. But one of us…’ I stop. He doesn’t need the details. ‘We just couldn’t.’ It comes to me, then. The clinic: white walls and rubber floors, boxes spilling blue gloves, posters advertising helplines and charities that I knew I’d never call. I remember the stirrups, the cold metal between my legs. It felt like a punishment.
I realize I’ve still never told anyone about that, certainly not Hugh. He doesn’t know anything about that baby I could have had but didn’t.
‘Who couldn’t?’
I look at my son. At Kate’s son. ‘I don’t know.’ The familiar sense of shame comes, then. I thought I’d conquered it, years ago. I was mistaken. ‘We don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. It makes no difference. We love you, Connor. You’re our son.’
The toaster pings, the bread pops up. I’m startled, briefly, then I begin to butter his toast.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ he says, and I’m not sure what he’s thanking me for.
I take the key from my bag and unlock the padlock. The shed door swings inwards with a creak and I wait for a few moments to let some of the heat out before stepping in. Even though the walls are lined and painted and I light scented candles in here when I work, it still smells vaguely of wood. Yet it’s comforting; my own space, a refuge.
I close the door behind me and sit at the desk. I put the biscuit tin in front of me, the one Anna gave me. I feel calmer, now. I know what I have to do.
I take Kate’s Filofax out of the tin and put it on the desk, next to my laptop. The light that streams into my studio through the window behind me reflects off its surface and I adjust my chair and change the angle of the screen. Finally I press a key.
My background picture is an old photo of me, sitting on a bench on the Heath with Connor on my lap. In the photo he’s four, maybe five. A decade ago, and I look so happy, so excited finally to be a parent, yet now it feels as if it belongs to a different time completely. I realize once again how Kate’s death has sliced my life in two.
I press another key and the picture of Connor disappears, replaced by the last window I’d had open. It’s a video.
I press play. It’s a film of the two of us, me and Connor, on a beach. Hugh took it, years ago, back when he still used his camcorder. Connor is about five, dressed in red trunks and slathered in sunblock, and the two of us are running away from the camera, into the sea, laughing as we do.
It was a glorious summer; we’d hired a villa in Portugal. We spent the days by the pool, or on the beach. We had lunch in a restaurant in the village, or we’d take a drive into the hills. We sat on the terrace and watched the sun go down after we’d put Connor to bed. We’d sit, and talk, and then we’d go to bed ourselves, where, quietly, carefully, we made love. We were happy. So very, very happy.
The video is almost over when I get a call; it’s Anna, on Skype. I don’t want to talk to her now. I click ignore. I’ll call her back later. What I have to do won’t take long.
The video finishes; Connor is frozen in the distance.
I’m ready.
I open my browser and begin to type the web address: encountrz. I only have to type the first few letters; the rest autofills from the night before last, the time I hadn’t got as far as pressing enter.
I press it now. I have a sense of weightlessness; it’s inexplicable, but real. My body has become unmoored. I’m floating. The window loads. A photo appears, a couple, walking along a beach, laughing. It looks somehow banal, but what had I expected?
At the top of the screen is a box marked ‘Username’, and another headed ‘Password’. I type in ‘KatieB’, then ‘Jasper1234’. I select enter.
I’m not sure what will happen. The machine seems to hang, to take an age, but then the screen changes and a message appears across its centre.
‘Welcome back, Katie. It’s been a while!’
It feels as if something has struck me, slammed me back to earth. I’m winded, I can’t breathe, but then I realize the message is automated. I breathe deeply, try to calm down. Next to it there’s a button marked ‘Enter’. I press it.
I’m not ready for what I see; there’s a picture of my sister, in the top-left corner of the screen beneath the website’s logo. It jolts me again. It’s like she’s there, sitting at her computer. It’s as if all I have to do is type a message and press send – just like I can with Anna, and Adrienne, and Dee and Fatima – and then I’ll be able to talk to her again, tell her I’m sorry, that Connor is safe. That I miss her.
But I can’t. She’s gone. I focus on why I’ve logged on here, I make myself look at the photo she used. It looks like it was taken on a holiday. It’s a close-up. She’s lying on a beach towel, on her front, reading a book. Her sunglasses are pushed back on her head, her skin is tanned. She’s wearing a bikini and has hoisted herself up on her elbows. Her breasts push up against the fabric of the towel, yet it looks unposed, natural.
She’s smiling. Happy. I stare at the picture. I wonder when it was taken, and by whom. She looks so relaxed. I can’t believe the little girl I’d once held, once bathed, once read to, is gone. I can’t believe I’ll never speak to her again.
I begin to cry. I’m sliding, backwards, towards pain. I can’t do this, I think. Not alone.
I call Anna back.
‘There should be a tab at the top for recent activity. You could look there. It lists the last few people who have looked at her profile.’
She’s already asked me if I’m all right, what I’m up to. She’s already questioned whether this is a good idea and I told her the half-lie that Adrienne had suggested it. ‘I just want to see if there’s anything the police might’ve missed.’
‘Right. Got it.’
‘Then you should see the rooms. On the right?’
I minimize the chat window and Anna’s face disappears. Behind it is the dating site, the list of chatrooms. Looking for Love? Something Extra. A Bit on the Side. Couples and Groups. I wonder which one Kate would have gravitated towards.
‘Okay.’
‘Kate and I used to go to Casual Chat,’ says Anna. ‘But there should be a tab, at the top. Friends and Favourites.’