'Clive and Min' Gets Sad

I don't know whether you, stoic and patient readers, will enjoy this episode. I enjoyed writing it. It's a bit out of my normal way, although it is reminiscent in style to a novel I wrote a few years ago that no-one but me has ever read, called 'Indigo Anscombe, Violet and Blue.' I have a fondness for the piece. It might be released into the wild one day.

Anyway, here we go. It’s a long one, but I expect you’ll see why I couldn’t split it up...

Midnight. The witching hour, thought Connie. She was in her rented room at Satis House, alone now and reflecting on the drama that had unfolded earlier that evening. Florence fainting clean away, pulling the table runner and candles with her as she collapsed to the floor. Min throwing the remains of the tea pot contents and the milk jug over the embryonic flames that had started to lick at Florence’s pashmina. Clive demanding to know of his father, Hector, what the bloody hell he was doing there, sticking his bloody oar in. Again. Min demanding to know from Willow if she could hear her father talking as well as her brother, and Willow snapping at Min to please not shout at her, she hadn’t asked to be a spirit conduit for this dysfunctional family, you know, before exiting, stage right, into the clean evening air. Amazing trying to gather up the chaos in the room into a metaphorical hug of calm vibes, whilst she, Connie, had sat at the table trying desperately to hold back the tears that were pricking determinedly at the backs of her eyes. It was all too much.

 

Years ago, you see, Connie had paid a visit to a medium herself, a few weeks after her young daughter had gone missing and all the usual lines of enquiry had dried up and the case consigned to that of being an unexplained missing person. ‘Children go missing more often than you think,’ said the police. ‘Most of them turn up eventually,’ said the police. ‘But some don’t,’ said the police. Connie felt like no-one cared. She could not understand why the search was called off, why the papers’ interest had waned, why no-one seemed bothered that HER daughter was not where she should have been, which was safe at home with her. Her daughter, her own precious child, had not ‘turned up’. She was vanished, gone, inexplicably, soul-breakingly,  aged barely three years old.

 

They - Connie, her husband and their baby girl - were spending the day at the local County Show. Connie remembered the day clearly and without confusion, like a freshly opened wound of yesterday, and not the twenty plus years ago it was now. The crowds had been heaving, writhing like a gathering of spawning mackerel, the weather the hottest of the year. They had just emerged from the Domestic Pet Show tent and her little girl was chatting excitedly about the long-haired guinea pigs that had entranced her into squeals of delight. One moment the child was there, skipping happily alongside her pushchair, describing in her own naïve vocabulary the ‘flopsy straw fluff’ of the guinea pigs’ hair, the next she had vanished, sucked into the crowds. It was that quick. 

 

And despite the police questioning Connie over and over again like she was some sort of forgetful muppet, yet always getting the same responses, this distraught mother could not remember the day more clearly. She could still smell the onions cooking - hot, caramelised, oily - drifting across from the nearby burger van, and the cloying sweetness from the candyfloss machine standing next to the carousel at the edge of the fairground. The public address system announcing the next demonstration in Show Ring B – Little Kestrels Motorbike Display Team – and the buzz of their miniature motorbikes as they road in formation to the ring like excitable wasps. She remembered her husband emerging from the Local Produce Tent across the way, juggling three ice-creams in an attempt to minimise the dribbling down the sides of the cones. ‘Where’s little ‘un?’ he said.

 

And she remembered the surge of panicked heat rushing through her body and the primal scream made by her own voice as she cried out at the absence of her first born child.

 

Connie shook herself and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. She mopped the smear of salty wetness on the duvet cover and took a sip of the gin and tonic she’d poured herself from the old fashioned drinks cabinet in the room that was morphing into Amazing’s new tea shop. This is too much, girl, she told herself. But the story was playing in her mind now and she knew she would have to see it through to its end for her to get any semblance of peace that night. She took another deep sip of the gin.

 

It hadn’t taken long – a few months- for her to feel that she had been abandoned by the police, the media, social services, even her friends. The missing child, mysteriously vanished from the County Show, had become old news by Christmas of that year. Everyone had their theories, of course. Maybe she was stolen away by the traveller community who ran the funfair? Or perhaps she was snatched by a barren, mad woman, desperate for a child of her own? Some fingers pointed at the parents, too. That had been the hardest to bear, that people would even consider she would cause harm to her own child. Connie could not understand how everyone could give up and move on so easily. How could they? Didn’t they realise that no one must stop until the little girl had been found? Didn’t they? Oh, the case would stay open, said the police. Of course it would. We’ll follow up any new lines of enquiry, said the police. Immediately. But there is nothing more we can do for now, said the police.

 

The mother never stopped hoping. She even went to consult a psychic medium - highly regarded, highly recommended - in the hope of finding more clues, the ones that were hidden from the police but obvious to the eyes of angels. The medium had been kind, gentle and accurate. He had reassured Connie – ‘Your daughter is still alive,’ he said. ‘She has been taken, but she is well and she is being looked after. She is surrounded by kindness.’ But he could not identify specific places or name specific people. He could not say when, or even if, she would be returned. He kept talking about a magic roundabout. He predicted a happy and fulfilled life, where the girl would grow into a strong, independent woman who knew her own mind and lived her own plans. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, softly, ‘she is where she is supposed to be?’

 

Connie had shouted, ‘She is supposed to be with me!’ before slamming a £20 note on the table and storming away. A few days later, the £20 was returned to her in the post, along with a simple note - ‘I’m so sorry’.

 

Just over a year later, Connie had a second daughter, born of grief and desperation. Little Niamh, a carbon copy of her older sister in looks if not in temperament, which helped to ease the embedded pain in some ways, but in other ways did not. Connie’s husband, tied up with his own quiet and inexpressible grief, eventually stopped talking about their first child, and ploughed all his energy into doting on Niamh. And Connie had tried to do the same because the new baby needed her as much as the first baby, but the hypervigilance that sat within, causing her to be on constant look out for that familiar little lost face, never left her. She always hoped that one day, the missing child would return.

 

When Connie applied for, and got the job in the hospital, an auxiliary whose main responsibilities lay with the hospital mortuary, her marriage began to fail. Her husband accused her of fostering an unhealthy morbid curiosity but to Connie, her actions made perfect sense. What if her daughter was found dead after all these years? What better place to be situated than in the place where all dead bodies find their way? She would know then, wouldn’t she, once and for all what had happened? She could find peace in herself. That was her hope.

 

‘What if she isn’t local anymore?’ said her husband. ‘What if she is miles and miles away? There’s more than one hospital mortuary you know…’ But he sounded more weary than angry, and he knew that Connie would not be swayed away from the only sense life was making in her.   

 

Anyway, the marriage was almost ended now, thought Connie. And Niamh was at university, unaware of the existence of an older sister and accepting of her parents’ up and down ways. Connie sighed and stretched, before downing the last of the gin and hooking her feet over the edge of the bed and beneath the safety of the covers. Tomorrow was a new day.