She was about to be shown something. A piece of bone, maybe, a shred of bloodied fabric, a photo of a swollen corpse floating in dense hidden waters. She was about to know something after ten years of knowing nothing. She might be shown evidence that her daughter was alive. Or evidence that she was dead. The weight on her soul betrayed a belief that it would be the latter.
Her heart beat hard and heavy beneath her ribs as she drove towards Finsbury Park.
Seven
Then
Noelle Donnelly began to grow on Ellie a little over those weekly winter visits. Not a lot. But a little. Mainly because she was a really good teacher and Ellie was now at the top of the top stream in her class with a predicted A/A* result. But in other ways too: she often brought Ellie a little something: a packet of earrings from Claire’s Accessories, a fruit-flavoured lip balm, a really nice pen. ‘For my best student,’ she’d say. And if Ellie protested she’d brush it away with a ‘well, I was in Brent Cross, y’know. It’s a little bit of nothing, really.’
She’d always ask after Theo as well, whom she’d met briefly on her second or third session at the house. ‘And how’s that handsome fella of yours?’ she’d ask in a way that should have been mortifying but wasn’t, mainly because of her lovely Irish accent which made most things she said sound funnier and more interesting than they actually were.
‘He’s fine,’ Ellie would say, and Noelle would smile her slightly chilly smile and say, ‘Well, he’s a keeper.’
GCSEs were now looming large on the horizon. It was March and Ellie had started to count down to her exams in weeks rather than months. Her Tuesday-afternoon sessions with Noelle had been building in momentum as her brain stretched and tautened and absorbed facts and formulae more easily. There was a snappy pace to their lessons now, a high-octane rhythm. So Ellie noticed it immediately, the shift in Noelle’s mood that first Tuesday in March.
‘Good afternoon, young lady,’ she said, putting her bag on to the table and unzipping it. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Well, that’s good. I’m glad. And how did you get on with your homework?’
Ellie slid the completed work across the table towards Noelle. Normally Noelle would put on her reading glasses and start marking it immediately but today she just laid her fingertips on top of it and drummed them absent-mindedly. ‘Good girl,’ she said. ‘You are such a good girl.’
Ellie watched her questioningly from the corner of her eye, waiting for a signal that their lesson was about to begin. But none came. Instead Noelle stared blindly at the homework.
‘Tell me, Ellie,’ she said eventually, turning her unblinking gaze to Ellie. ‘What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?’
Ellie shrugged.
‘What?’ Noelle continued. ‘Like a hamster dying, something like that?’
‘I haven’t had a hamster.’
‘Ha, well then, maybe that. Maybe not having a hamster is the worst thing that ever happened to you?’
Ellie shrugged again. ‘I never really wanted one.’
‘Well, then, what did you want? What did you really want that you weren’t allowed to have?’
In the background, Ellie could hear the TV in the kitchen, the sound of her mother hoovering overhead, her sister chatting to someone on the phone. Her family just getting on with their lives and not having to have weird conversations about hamsters with their maths tutor.
‘Nothing, really. Just the usual things: money, clothes.’
‘You never wanted a dog?’
‘Not really.’
Noelle sighed and pulled Ellie’s homework towards her. ‘Well, then, you are a very lucky girl indeed. You really are. And I hope you appreciate how lucky you are?’
Ellie nodded.
‘Good. Because when you get to my age there’ll be loads of things you want and you’ll see everyone else getting them and you’ll think, well, it must be my turn now. Surely. And then you’ll watch it disappear into the sunset. And there’ll be nothing you can do about it. Nothing whatsoever.’
There was a moment of ponderous silence before finally, slowly, Noelle slid her glasses on to her nose, pulled back the first page of Ellie’s homework and said, ‘Right then, let’s see how my best student got on this week.’
‘Tell me, Ellie, what are your hopes and dreams?’
Ellie groaned inwardly. Noelle Donnelly was in one of those moods again.
‘Just to do really well in my GCSEs. And my A Levels. And then go to a really good university.’
Noelle tutted and rolled her eyes. ‘What is it with you young people and your obsession with university? Oh, the fanfare when I got into Trinity! Such a big deal! My mother couldn’t stop telling the world. Her only girl! At Trinity! And look at me now. One of the poorest people I know.’
Ellie smiled and wondered what to say.
‘No, there’s more to life than university, Miss Smarty Pants. There’s more than just certificates and qualifications. I have them coming out of my ears. And look at me, sitting here with you in your lovely warm house, drinking your lovely Earl Grey tea, getting paid a pittance to fill your brain with my knowledge. Then going home to nothing.’ She turned sharply and fixed Ellie with a look. ‘To nothing. I swear.’ Then she sighed and smiled and the glasses came up her nose and her gaze left Ellie and the lesson commenced.
Afterwards Ellie found her mother in the kitchen and said, ‘Mum. I want to stop my tutoring.’
Her mum turned and looked at her questioningly. ‘Oh?’ she said. ‘Why?’
Ellie thought about telling her the truth. She thought about saying she’s freaking me out and saying really weird things and I really don’t want to be alone with her for an hour every week any more. How she wished she had told her the truth. Maybe if she’d told her the truth, her mother might have been able to work it all out and then everything would have been different. But for some reason she didn’t. Maybe she thought her mother would say that it was a silly reason to want to stop having the lessons so close to her exams. Or maybe she didn’t want to get Noelle into trouble, didn’t want a situation to develop. But for whatever misguided reason she said, ‘I just honestly think I’ve gone as far as I can go with Noelle. I’ve got all the practice papers she gave me. I can just keep doing those. And it will save you some money.’ She smiled, winningly, and waited for her mother’s response.
‘Well, it does seem a bit strange, so close to your exams.’
‘Exactly. I think there are other things I could be using the time for now. Geography, for example. I could really do with some extra study time for geography.’
This was a 100-per-cent untruth. Ellie was totally on top of all her studies. The extra hour a week would make no difference to anything. But still she smiled that mum-pleasing smile, left the request hanging in the air between them, waited.
‘Well, darling, it’s up to you, of course.’
Ellie nodded encouragingly, the echo of Noelle’s loaded words, the tired aroma of old cooking and unwashed hair, the mood swings and the tangential, slightly inappropriate questions pulsing through her consciousness.
‘If you’re sure? It would be nice not to have the extra expense,’ her mother said.