The Missing One by Lucy Atkins Read Free Book Online Page B

she even turned sixty. She always seemed younger and more intrepid than other people’s mothers. She was fit and strong. She had odd, adventurous skills that did not fit a life of supermarket shops, dog-walking and painting. She could not only make a fish spear, but actually skewer a carp with it in the shallows of the River Ouse. She once taught me to start a fire like a Boy Scout,using only twigs and a mirror. She had a witchy attitude to the countryside, gathering fungi and picking herbs for medicinal teas; she could name constellations and understood things about the moon and tides. She could tie nautical knots too. I’d forgotten that. A buried memory surfaces: summertime on the beach at Birling Gap, a brusque wind, me sitting in a towelling robe as she showed me different knots. As she manipulated the rope, she gave their names: the cleat hitch, the clove hitch, the bowline, the sheet bend, the square knot. The skin on her hands was weathered and hard – more farmer than artist. There was always a line of soil or oil paint under her nails.
    She was just so physically robust. She never got sick, never made a fuss over cuts or bruises – ours, or hers. I remember one night she slashed into her palm, trying to cut wax out of a candleholder, and I came into the kitchen to find her twisting a pair of knickers into a tourniquet with one hand. There was blood everywhere, like a slasher movie. She hadn’t thought to call for help even though I was next door watching TV, and Alice was upstairs doing homework. I called 999 and an ambulance came. She needed ten stitches.
    She was supposed to be invincible but it all happened so fast – for us at least: diagnosis, decline, death. I never thought I’d have such a short while to make things right.
    This is exactly what Doug warned me about on our Boxing Day visit, a year ago, before her diagnosis. As we drove out of the village, I remember him saying that he thought she was scared of me.
    â€˜You’re kidding.’ I gave a dry laugh.
    â€˜No,’ he said. ‘Honestly. She sometimes watches you when you aren’t looking, and she has this sort of anguished look, like she’s desperate to get through to you, but too scared that you’ll brush her off or something.’
    â€˜She’s the one keeping her distance, not me.’ I felt the resentment rising again and I was surprised by how near the surface it still was. I had successfully protected myself against my mother for years, but now, with Finn, I was wide open again. I hadn’t considered this when I was pregnant. I didn’t realize that a baby shoots up the generations and ruches them together, like a strong thread. Having Finn had crushed me up against my mother again, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
    â€˜She isn’t scared of me, Doug.’ I tried to sound reasonable. ‘It’s not fear that keeps her distant, it’s a total lack of interest. Haven’t you noticed what she’s like with Finn? She hardly even looks at him. It’s like he isn’t there.’
    â€˜Come on, that’s just not true.’
    â€˜Why are you defending her? I don’t think she held him once today, not one single time. Even my dad held him for a bit and he has never liked babies. And they’ve never even been up to Oxford to see him, have they? I tell you what, Doug, she can come to us next time. I’m not going to keep driving down here like this.’
    â€˜Kal … ’
    â€˜I expect she was like this with me as a baby too – uninterested. It explains a lot.’
    â€˜I actually don’t believe that, Kal. I mean, look how you are with Finn – she must have done something right withyou because all that love and patience you have with him – and your goodness and kindness –
you
 – all that doesn’t just come out of nowhere.’
    â€˜Do we have to do