Cath Staincliffe - Half the World Away

‘Oh, God,’ I say, ‘you should have told me.’

She throws me a look. Don’t be daft. ‘On a brighter note, I’m going to be a grandma. Patsy’s pregnant.’

‘Really! Brilliant.’

‘Twins, actually.’

‘No! Grace, how amazing. When are they due?’ Suddenly I feel like crying, so I force myself to drink more coffee and concentrate on that.

‘November, but they’ll probably induce her a few weeks early – it reduces the risks apparently.’

‘We didn’t make parents’ evening,’ I say.

‘You got their reports?’

‘Yes, Finn’s was fine but Isaac’s…’

‘Not found his niche yet,’ Grace says. ‘Give him time.’

‘But the biting, the tantrums.’

‘We’ve a strategy, and I’ve told Sunita to come to me if she needs more backup. We’ve dealt with much, much worse,’ she says darkly, making me laugh.

It’s true. There have been some seriously disturbed children in school over the years, children with challenging behaviour, needing one-to-one care to cope with the school environment.

‘Me being away won’t make things any easier for him,’ I say.

‘Maybe not, but kids are resilient. He’s in a loving home, well cared for. You can’t not go.’

We embrace again as I leave and she wishes me luck, adding, ‘Please ask Nick to let us know when there’s any news.’

‘Of course,’ I say.

‘Lori’s a great girl,’ Grace says. ‘I do hope everything’s OK.’

I’m glad she hasn’t told me everything will be OK and pretended false hope. I wake each morning and there’s a new number in my head, so many days. Today it’s twenty-four. I’d be a total idiot to imagine everything is all right.

So we have to fly to China but perhaps, if we’re lucky, it will all come right again.

The nurse at the travel clinic checks my destination on the computer and tells me I need hepatitis A and a booster for diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus.

‘Is it a holiday?’ she says, as she cleans my skin with a special wipe. ‘That’s where they have pandas, isn’t it? My neighbours went there.’

I swallow. ‘No, my daughter’s gone missing out there.’ It sounds so blunt in the small, neat room.

‘Oh, God,’ she says. ‘I am sorry.’

At this moment all I want is for her to give me the jabs so I can escape. But I have already learned to talk about Lori at each and every opportunity. Word of mouth, the best publicity. So while she prepares the vials and administers the injections, I go through it all and ask her, please, to tell people about it. She gives me the travel medical card, which lists what I’ve had done, and wishes me luck, her manner subdued.

It’s something I’ve read online, my eyes skimming over the columns of advice, what to do next, the bullet-pointed lists of What We Can Do, What We Are Not Able to Do but I must barely have registered it because when Peter Dunne, from the consulate in Chongqing, speaks to me on the phone, when he says it near to the close of our conversation, adding, ‘Just in case,’ I feel as though I’ve been electrocuted. A jolt that sears my heart and sends currents fizzing through my veins to the tips of my fingers and the backs of my thighs.

I grit my teeth and agree I will do as he suggests. After that I put the phone down and rest for a few seconds, arms braced on the table, eyes shut. I stir, pick up a pen and add to the growing list of things we need for our trip to China: bring something with Lori’s DNA on.

It is macabre, sorting through the boxes that came out of Lori’s room for something that will carry strands of her hair or skin cells or whatever else they might use. I’m looking through scarves and belts, bags and necklaces. I stop and say to Nick, ‘Does that mean her toothbrush isn’t there? At the flat?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says.

‘If it were there, we wouldn’t need to take anything. But if it’s not, that would fit with her going on holiday, wouldn’t it? She’d take her toothbrush and her hairbrush.’

‘Yes,’ he agrees, ‘but maybe they’re just covering all the bases.’ He holds up a joke tiara, black and silver with feathers attached and pointy black ears. Part of a Hallowe’en outfit Lori wore a couple of times. I’ve a picture of her in my head, like some punk imp, rowdy with her friends, drinking cocktails before setting off to a party.

‘That,’ I say, ‘and this.’ I lift up her black beret. ‘She’s worn this for ever, there must be… well…’ I don’t need to spell it out.

Isaac comes in asking for a drink and sees the jumble. He picks up a scarf and Nick tells him to leave it alone.

‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘You can have a play as long as they all go back in these boxes after.’

‘And them?’ He points to the things I’m holding.

‘No, I need them,’ I say.

‘Why?’ he says.

‘I just do. Where’s Finn?’

He shrugs.

‘Isaac?’

‘On the trampoline. Why?’

‘He might like to dress up, too,’ I say.

Isaac drapes Lori’s scarf around his head and goes to peer in the hall mirror. I put the beret and the tiara in freezer bags and take them upstairs.

Nick follows me. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Undermine me. I just told Isaac to leave stuff alone and you say the opposite.’

‘But why should he leave it alone? What harm can it do?’

‘That’s not the point,’ he says.

‘So if you say something stupid and illogical I’ve got to agree to it?’ I sound like a bitch so I start to back-pedal. ‘Sorry, I just think we have to pick our battles.’

‘Don’t bother,’ he says, and walks away.

I stare at the suitcase I’ve started to pack and hear Finn’s voice drifting up from the garden, some little chant, and realize my hands are aching because I’m gripping the freezer bags so very tightly.

I have the address of the visa office. Tom and I walk up and down Mosley Street among the office buildings trying to find it. I check the street number again and we retrace our steps. The only sign that this building is the right one is the scrap of paper stuck next to the intercom button with Chinese Visa scribbled on it. When Tom presses the buzzer, a voice tells us to come to the first floor.

Through the double doors a receptionist is poised at a high desk. She asks our business, then gives us a ticket and tells us to wait our turn. All the twenty or so seats are full, and more people stand around the edges of the room. At the far end there is a row of booths behind glass screens. The room is stuffy, smells of too many people, and I feel queasy as we find a place to stand.

It’s a functional space: grey carpeting and chairs, white walls, flashes of red from the large Chinese good-luck charms of knotted string suspended by the booths.

After half an hour we get seats. Tom occupies himself with his phone, answering emails, but I can’t shake off the sense of unreality: any minute now I’ll get a text from Lori – So sorry Mum, just bin havin the most awesome time w no internet Lxxx

Conversation from the brief interviews up at the front washes over me. Two-thirds of the people waiting are European, mostly English. There’s a man whose passport has been lost in the post and he’s panicking about getting the visa in time to start his job in Beijing, then a young couple, who are sent away because they’ve not brought proof of their return flights. There’s an old woman, who is going to visit her newborn grandson, and a student, who has a place on a master’s degree course in Shanghai.

Penny messages me. Anything I can do? When u go? Thinking of u. Px I know she means well but I hate that last phrase. Trotted out for bereavement and terminal illness, whenever it’s hard to know what to say. It makes Lori’s absence and our plans feel more sinister.