Alyson Rudd - The First Time Lauren Pailing Died

Lauren nodded. She wanted to say that any cartoon strip would have a narrative but held her tongue.

‘Is he still missing?’

‘What? Oh, yes, he is. It’s the biggest news to hit my village,’ she said.

‘Good,’ OTB said. ‘Relevant. You should try to find him.’

‘I should?’ Lauren was struggling now, wondering if OTB was winding her up, if this was a sort of initiation.

‘Jeez, I don’t expect you to actually find him but you should try to and then put the adventure into your work. Cartoon strips, abstracts, portraiture; anything that feels right.’

‘Is that my first-year project?’

OTB smirked.

‘That’s your first-year project.’

Lauren left his studio bewildered. She had not come to London only to have to trek back home to Cheshire. She almost stamped her foot in frustration. London had been dizzying for the first week but now she felt addicted to the noise and the light, the fact you could buy a hot meal at any time of day or night. There was art everywhere, and theatre, and cinema and live music. Men would kiss while standing in front of posters that told them not to die of ignorance. In the student bar the chat would veer from AIDS to condoms to whether anyone would dare travel through a Channel Tunnel, or to snog Neil Kinnock, the Prime Minister so beloved of most of the students, or shake hands with Jeffrey Archer. Being in London was to be at the centre of the universe. Nothing was taboo. Her fellow students could believe in any god they chose to or believe in nothing at all. The only heated exchange she had witnessed was about the role of photography in a degree portfolio. The art the students produced ranged from overtly sleekly commercial to angry and minimalist and in between there was room for those who used oils and captured light as beautifully as Vermeer.

By contrast, Peter Stanning’s absence had become boring, even the police seemed bored when they embarked on one of their shopping-centre blitzes, asking passers-by if they recalled anything unusual, had they seen this man behaving strangely? Had they seen this man? But perhaps that was the point: to be honest about an event that everyone was supposed to be worried or sad about. Or maybe she could jazz it all up, put Peter Stanning into all kinds of outcomes? Hiding in the Australian bush, living with another woman in Wales or dead in the boot of an abandoned car, the victim of mistaken identity.

Vera and Bob were as excitable as toddlers that Lauren came home for a long weekend before the end of her first term.

‘I’ve come home for inspiration,’ she said, ‘and to see you, of course.’

Lauren made sure she pronounced the word ‘inspiration’ in a mock-Home Counties voice. She did not want her parents thinking art school had turned her head, given her ideas above her station, as Aunt Suki might say.

It was more difficult than she had imagined, explaining to her parents that OTB had made the disappearance of Peter Stanning her first-year project. It made her feel tacky and insensitive.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

Bob patted her arm. ‘No, I think maybe your tutor chap might have a point. Anyway, you don’t have to go around upsetting anyone, do you?’

‘No, but you’re probably tired of it all now, Dad; the last thing you want is me asking you questions about him.’

Bob beamed. ‘But you can ask them over a meal at Mr Yee. It’ll be a treat for us, really it will.’

Mr Yee had a fresh poster featuring Peter Stanning in his window, which seemed to Lauren to be a sign that her project was current affairs, not old news.

‘Fire away, love,’ Bob said as he stirred his wonton soup.

‘Well, I’d like to know what you really truly think happened.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I keep changing my mind about that.’

‘Right now then, what’s your best theory?’

Lauren was aware that Mr Yee was listening, above them, at the raised counter where he prepared the bills. She could already envisage Mr Yee making a cameo appearance in her next cartoon strip.

Bob nodded and Vera, sitting across the table, tilted her head. Mr Yee held his breath.

‘I think he had a secret, not necessarily a terrible secret, but something that took him away from where he could have been expected to be so the police have not looked anywhere relevant yet.’

Bob raised his hand. ‘And. And, I think he was probably hit by a car and rolled down a bank to a place that can’t be seen easily. He’ll be found one day but it might take years. And. And, I don’t want that to be what happened. I’d rather he ran away to a remote paradise and was happy but I don’t think that was his style.’

Vera nodded, Lauren frowned and Mr Yee exhaled.

‘Do you see his wife ever?’ Lauren asked after the silence that followed. She knew Peter had been her dad’s boss and not his friend but, still, it was strange that his wife was invisible to them all.

Bob swallowed a wonton. ‘Never – and never did really. She was always busy with her horses as far as I could tell.’

Vera did not like horses, so it seemed to her perfectly likely that Peter had been having an affair with a woman who did not wear jodhpurs while smelling of manure. Otherwise, she agreed with Bob’s scenario.

So did Mr Yee – with a slight variation. Mr Yee was convinced that Peter Stanning had been on his way to his establishment, keen for some Peking Duck pancakes and plum sauce, before being diverted to an ugly fate.

Lauren decided there and then that her theme would be about the ‘not knowing’ and the empty space Peter Stanning’s absence represented in the lives of those left behind. OTB surely did not expect her to speak to the police or to Mrs Stanning. Before they left, however, she smiled at Mr Yee and asked him if Peter had been a regular customer.

‘Best customer. Many Fridays,’ he said. ‘Such a nice man.’

‘Did you speak to the police about him,’ she asked.

‘No, not police, not ever,’ Mr Yee said which left Lauren feeling she had uncovered a clue; a tiny one, but enough to work with artistically.

When back in London she began to sketch Mrs Stanning, a woman she had never met and yet whose face she knew. A face which, for reasons Lauren couldn’t understand, she pictured illuminated by April sunshine, smiling as she watched a horde of children aged from three to sixteen hunt for chocolates eggs and ribbon-wrapped five-pound notes. And Lauren framed the drawings with tiny bicycle wheels which she found time-consuming yet oddly soothing. The more wheels she drew the deeper she fell into a reminiscence of something that had never happened. Something to do with sunshine and bicycles that were not in use, and which were now just there as a giant art installation.

Ski did not live like other students. He knew people outside of college, he had money and he rented a basement flat that boasted a central living space big enough for parties. He preferred to lie on giant cushions with selected friends, smoking dope. Tentatively, Lauren joined in. She liked Ski and she did not want to be the one labelled as his prudish pal. She coughed, she spluttered, she laughed and finally she relaxed. Ski recited poetry and his accent became increasingly hysterical. Lauren recited a recipe for coq au vin and Ski giggled uncontrollably. Nina recited a list of all the boys she could bear to sleep with and Lauren began to feel fretful. There was someone else in the flat, watching them.

‘Who is it?’ she whispered to Ski.

‘It’s me,’ he said, spluttering with laughter as a thin metal rod pierced his neck.

He did not flinch. Lauren crawled closer, confused, and as she reached out to touch it something made her stop. Something made her tilt her head and peer into the strange piece of taught shiny string. Nina screeched.