The hallway is warm and homey. There are dozens of
photographs of Rachel on the walls, ranging over the nineteen years she spent in this world. There are pictures of her as a baby, her mother holding her tightly. The years have taken their toll on Mrs Tyler. There are shots of Rachel next to a tricycle, in a sandpit, going down a slide. There is a man in some of them, holding Rachel’s hand, or swinging her at the park, or helping her blow out a cake with eight candles on it. Rachel gets older.
So do her parents. Fashions change and the three grow older, but the smiles are always there, keeping the parents young. One of these photos should have been with her Missing Persons report, but probably Mrs Tyler couldn’t part with any of them. I’m sure Rachel’s bedroom will be just as she left it, the same posters on the walls, her favourite stuffed toys waiting for her on her bed, maybe even a stockpile of Christmas and birthday presents from missed chances. It’ll be like a time capsule.
Patricia Tyler leads me through to the lounge.
‘Is your husband home?’ I ask, praying she isn’t going to tell me they are separated or, worse, that her husband has died from the pain of losing his daughter to a mystery, that he has spent the last six or eight or ten months in the ground.
‘He’s at work. He sometimes works late. Mostly, actually, these days. I should phone him, I guess. Should I?’
‘If you’d like.’
‘What am I going to tell him?’
‘Perhaps we should sit down for a few minutes first.’
‘Sure, okay, sure, I don’t know where my manners are. Can I get you a drink? Tea? Coffee?’ She starts to stand back up. ‘Anything, just name it.’ She’s halfway out of the lounge when she pulls up short; then, fidgeting her hands, she slowly turns back to look at me. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ she says, and starts to cry.
She’s not the only one who doesn’t know what they’re doing, and I suddenly wish I hadn’t come. I feel the urge to hold her while she cries and an equally strong urge to turn and run back down the hallway and get the hell out of this street. I end up standing still.
‘Please, just tell me why you’re here,’ she asks.
I can no more easily tell this woman her child is dead than I could show her pictures of the corpse. I cannot tell her about Cemetery Lake, about a woman whose decayed remains look like they belong to Rachel. I can’t mention the exhumation, can’t detail my swim with the corpses, can’t mention it’s the same cemetery I almost buried my wife in two years ago after the accident. I reach into my pocket and produce the small plastic bag with Rachel’s ring. She takes it without a word, then slowly sinks down into a chair opposite me. For a long time she says nothing.
‘It turned up today in an investigation,’ I say, and she finally manages to pull her eyes away from it and look back up at me.
“Do you recognise it? Does it belong to Rachel?’
‘Where did you find it?’ she asks. ‘Who had it?’
“Nobody had it on them,’ I lied.
‘But how, then?’
“Please, I need to ask you a few questions. The inscription, it says Rachel & David for ever.’
‘Was it David? Did he give you the ring?’
‘No. Nobody had it. I found it.’
‘Where?’
“Please, Mrs Tyler, can you tell me about David?’
‘How did you know to come here?’
‘The inscription,’ I say, but then suddenly realise my mistake.
The only reason I’d check Missing Persons would be if I believed the ring belonged to somebody who was dead. Mrs Tyler, thank God, doesn’t make the connection.
“David gave it to her for her birthday.’
“Is David her boyfriend?’ I ask, careful not to say ‘was’.
“I’ve already told the police all I know’
‘But I’m not the police,’ I say, ‘and that means I can approach things differently.’
‘You think she’s dead, don’t you.’
I think of the flowers in the passenger seat of my car, and I regret not driving out to see my wife first. I could have talked to her. Told her about my day. Told her how much I missed her.
Could have held her hand and told her everything.
“I don’t know,’ I say.
Then what makes you think you can help her?’
It’s interesting she has asked how I can help Rachel, and not her and her husband. Interesting isn’t the word. It’s devastating.
This woman isn’t just holding out for the possibility that her daughter is alive; she’s holding on to the reality of it. But the question is more than that. It makes me think of exactly what I can do to help Rachel: nothing. Not now. I can’t even help the others who have followed.