I should have had more sense though, because outside the house the journalists were gathering in greater numbers than before, drawn there since the press conference.
Inside, we’d had to take the phone off the hook, and seal the letter flap with masking tape. I stayed in the back of the house, as far away from them as possible.
Nicky went out for supplies and bustled back into the house within minutes, holding bags from the local corner shop. ‘I couldn’t get any further,’ she said. ‘They followed me. And they’ve dropped rubbish everywhere.’
She found a black bin liner under my sink and took it back out to the front of the house, where, in tones strident enough for me to hear, she ordered the journalists to clear up what they’d dropped in the street and in my postage-stamp sized front garden.
Back inside, still bristling, she started to unpack a selection of canned food. ‘They’re lovely in the shop,’ she said, ‘aren’t they? They locked the door so I could shop without the journalists and then they gave me this to give to you.’
It was an envelope. On the front was handwritten ‘To Benedict and his Mother’.
‘They said they can order in anything you want,’ Nicky went on, shoving the cans into cupboards. ‘Or if we can’t get to the supermarket they said they can get stuff for us that we can pick up, which might be nice because we can’t live off this.’ She held up a loaf of white sliced bread.
I opened the envelope. Inside was a small card. An elegant pair of hands was drawn on the front, with tapered fingers and palms together, in prayer. Beaded bracelets hung around the wrists.
‘What religion are they?’ Nicky asked, looking over my shoulder.
‘Hindu,’ I said. ‘I think.’
Inside the card was a handwritten message, in careful, formal lettering. ‘We have shed tears for you and we wish you and Benedict every strength and we pray that he will be home soon. Ravi and Aasha and family.’
‘I barely even know them,’ I said. I thought of my frequent visits to the shop, the small talk with the owners, a lovely couple, but strangers really, and I felt deeply moved by the card.
‘You’ve had other messages,’ Nicky said. ‘I just wasn’t sure you were up to them.’
‘Show me.’
Nicky had commandeered my mobile phone, in order to field calls and messages from friends, and other families that we knew well and not so well.
They were mostly texts from people I knew, an outpouring of reaction to the story appearing on the news. The texts ranged from the predictable:
Devastated to hear about Ben please let us know if there’s anything we can do. Clarke Family xxx
Can’t imagine what you’re going through. We’re thinking of you and Ben. Sacha x
To the insultingly practicaclass="underline"
Don’t worry about returning Jack’s coat with what’s happening we understand completely. Thinking of you. Love Juliet xx
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I said. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
Nicky read it. ‘It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter. They’re trying to be nice.’
‘As if I care about a stupid coat.’
‘They don’t expect you to. Don’t think the worst. It’s supposed to be a nice message.’
There were emails too, but I tired of reading them. The messages made me feel either sad or angry or resentful and I was feeling all of those things enough already. Needling at me, too, were the messages that weren’t there, from friends who I would have expected to support us. ‘Have there been voicemails?’ I asked Nicky. ‘Don’t you think people should leave a proper message?’
‘There’ve been one or two,’ she said. ‘I wrote them down. People probably don’t want to tie up the phone line.’
I looked over the messages she’d carefully recorded. There were still at least two friends conspicuous by their absence from these lists. Were they being kind by not contacting me? Was that a thoughtful response? Or had they backed off now that I was tainted by misfortune, now that I was the person to whom the worst had happened, the one at the sharp end of the statistical wedge, where nobody else wants to be.
I sat there, the card in my hands, while Nicky trawled the web again, searching deeper and deeper for advice and information, for anything that might help us, as if it were a sort of addiction.
I had an impulse to phone John. I wanted to tell him I was sorry about the press conference, and that I was sorry I let Ben run ahead in the woods. I increasingly felt a desperate need for him to absolve me of the things I’d done wrong. It felt like the only way I could lessen my pain. But he didn’t answer his mobile, and Katrina answered their landline.
‘He’s not here,’ she said. ‘He’s out driving the streets, looking for Ben. He hasn’t been home since the press conference.’
‘You’ve seen it?’
‘Yes.’
I didn’t want her to say anything about it. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said quickly.
Laura went home. She had cats to feed. I marvelled at how the mundane activities that life demanded still needed to be done, even while the worst was happening.
I even felt resentful towards my body, towards its demands for sleep, for food, for drink, for bodily functions. I thought that life should stop until Ben was found. Clocks should no longer tick, oxygen should no longer be exchanged for carbon dioxide in our lungs, and our hearts should not pump. Only when he was back should normal service resume.
Anything else was an insult to him, to what he might be suffering.
Nicky continued to work, propelled by some kind of manic internal engine, as if an internet search might yield a vital clue, or trigger a revelation. Once she’d finished looking online, she began to design a flyer, and to come up with plans for distributing it.
I tired of being in her orbit, and I went upstairs, my fingers running along the dado rail. Just above it, visible against the white paint, were Ben’s finger marks. He always ran, never walked, whether he was going up or down the stairs. Ignoring my shouts to slow down, he would have one hand on the banister and one hand on the wall to steady himself, and I would hear rapid footfall. Usually I only noticed the marks made by his grubby fingers when they exasperated me, but now they seemed unbearably precious. I traced over them with my own fingers as I went up.
The house had been in a total state when we moved in. John, who’d viewed it because he was paying for some of it, advised me not to buy it. Horrible dark colours and tacky plastic cupboards had put off many people, but I could see that underneath the tat and the tack there were some pretty, original features and I’d been excited by their potential. I’d tackled Ben’s bedroom first. Ben and I had spent a brilliant day putting the first coat of paint over the horrible dark maroon colour left by the previous owners.
‘Go on,’ I’d said to Ben, ‘just slap the paint on.’
‘What, anywhere?’ he’d asked, hardly believing his luck, a wide smile dimpling his cheeks.
‘Anywhere,’ I’d said, and to prove my point I’d dipped my brush in the tub of pristine white undercoat and written ‘BEN’ in huge capital letters on the wall. He’d loved the forbidden thrill of painting all over the walls, and he’d quickly got into it. We’d drawn pictures, written silly words and had much fun until the room was covered in a patchy layer of undercoat.
It had felt good for both of us: we were taking possession of the house. The plan had backfired a bit because we never quite managed to smooth the wall out afterwards, and even now that there were two coats of pale blue covering the undercoat it was possible to make out raised areas where some of our pictures and words had been. Neither of us minded that though. In fact we liked it.
Remembering, I eased my body down into the dent in his mattress that had taken on my shape now, obliterating his, and I touched the wall, feeling for those raised areas of paint.