Alyson Rudd - The First Time Lauren Pailing Died

Lauren watched him closely. Was he bored? Vera always asked him how he was when he returned home and he would give an economical reply, exhale and then, brightly, ask what had been happening at home. It was one of the puzzles of adult interaction but just as Lauren thought she was close to solving it, everything changed.

Bob arrived home later than normal one December evening, his shirt rumpled, his hair ruffled. Peter Stanning, his boss, had gone missing. Lauren had, for no reason she could fathom, looked at her advent calendar while she digested this exciting but troubling news. Just two windows were open. She felt she had, right there and then, started a countdown; that Peter Stanning had to be found by Christmas Day.

The police had interviewed all the staff at Bob’s office, the rumours had grown more intense and more upsetting by the hour, and suddenly all they spoke about at home was Bob’s work, Bob’s day, Bob’s world. As they decorated the Christmas tree, her mother winding cheap tinsel around the branches in what was, to Lauren’s mind, an annoyingly gaudy manner, she thought about the tree in the Stannings’ house. If your father was missing did you even want a Christmas tree?

Bob became the celebrity of The Willows simply because he was the only person in the cul-de-sac who knew Peter Stanning. Bob was an accountant. Peter was an accountant. Such dramas did not usually unfold in the world of spreadsheets and tax breaks but there was no disputing the fact. Peter had gone missing. Peter had two sons, Peter had a wife who liked horses and growing strawberries, Peter had a sharp brain and a weakness for slapstick comedy. Bob was slightly worried that he could not be sure if he liked Peter all that much or even knew him properly but it felt right to speak of what a great boss he was. Great chap, very smart, very reliable.

There was so much chit-chat about the missing Peter Stanning that Bob felt reality begin to slip. Christmas Day came and went and still he was not found. The anecdote about the sandwiches Peter forgot and left in a drawer to rot and to stink; was that his story or one he was regurgitating? Bob thought he could smell the rotting chicken as he related the tale but this was Miranda the receptionist’s reminiscence, not his, wasn’t it?

Lauren turned it all into her school project. She produced a cartoon strip that began with Bob and Peter staring at a large graph on a wall, then incorporated the first visit of the police and then the imagined home life of the distraught Stannings. She painted a parcel wrapped in gold-and-red Christmas paper with a gift tag that read, ‘for Dad, Merry Christmas.’ She had to blink away tears as she wrote the message in a delicate but not trembling hand. She hoped he would be found in time for the start of the new school year so that her storyboard could be completed with a happy ending but Peter Stanning remained missing.

For her fifteenth birthday Debbie took Lauren and her other, less important friends to the cinema to see Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence because they thought it sounded mature. Lauren had bought Debbie a pair of cream leg warmers which the others fawned over as if they were all suddenly living in 1944 and Debbie had been given silk stockings. Julian paid for them all to have a Chinese banquet at the upmarket Mr Yee where Debbie declared her love for David Bowie complete. In the window of Mr Yee’s there was a poster asking for information about Bob’s boss.

The New Year’s Eve of 1983 was a quiet affair. Peter Stanning was still missing in the spring of 1984. Debbie was still Lauren’s closest friend and Lauren was impatient to be grown up, to be in love, to be free of the pain in her knee. Since the incident in Cornwall she had been keen to turn the pages on her life rather than dwell in the moment. Only when drawing or sketching or painting did she slow down, enjoy the task at hand, concentrate on the present.

Sixth Form was, really, Dance Form. Led by Debbie, the girls would attend any disco going to be Madonna or Chaka Khan. Lauren, longing to feel love or be loved, wondered if, had she been able to wear heels after her accident, she would have had better luck with boys. She was buoyed enormously to discover that the female students at the art schools she visited all wore pumps or flat boots or trainers and that they looked sexy and cool and desirable. She wondered if her art project, Peter Stanning is Missing, was cool too, or a sixth-form assignment to be binned.

Lauren leaving home was hard for Vera when it came. Bob, too, was emotional. He ran his finger along the tiny windowsill of Lauren’s small halls of residence room and inspected it for dust. Vera sniffed the air not knowing if she was expecting to smell drugs or a blocked drain or Cup-a-Soup. Lauren was impatient to explore but paused to hug them both, to promise to phone the next day, to love them forever.

In the car on the way home Vera and Bob agreed they had raised the sweetest, most talented of daughters and inwardly they both wondered if they loved her too dearly and whether life in The Willows would be too quiet, too dependent on knowing the date of her next trip home. Right now, a sibling for Lauren would have helped enormously. None had come though, thought Vera, none had ever come, and she let the tears, large dramatic tears, plop onto her lap as Bob, blinking, concentrated on the road ahead. He switched on the radio for distraction and although there was emotional discussion about the Hungerford massacre that had taken place a few weeks earlier, an incident which had been of political and human interest and therefore one both he and Vera could discuss with equal insight, he could hear only a jumble of meaningless and boring words.

‘I just, I just… love her too much,’ Vera said out loud and Bob took one hand off the steering wheel to squeeze his wife’s arm.

It could be worse, he thought to himself. Peter Stanning, for example, was still missing and the house-to-house enquiries had long dried up. And the Jeep, the bloody Cornwall Jeep, well, that could have been an unthinkable thing.

Back in Lauren’s first life, it would be her birthday soon. Bob could not find the words to describe how much he was dreading it. His daughter had already had one dead birthday, six weeks after Cornwall, but it been just another grotesque day among many. Now that Vera had stopped drinking and started caring about the house and the garden and cooking and even the boutique, this birthday could be a setback. He was scared to mention it, scared not to mention it.

He was so grateful to Peter Stanning. He had been stoically kind to them, especially when they began to feel isolated. It had been agony in The Willows. What had felt cloistered was now confining but it was impossible to contemplate leaving Lauren’s room behind for another child to inhabit. And they lived opposite Karen and Julian who had not lost either of their children. Debbie was damaged emotionally but neither Debbie nor her brother had suffered more than bumps and bruises when the Jeep had braked.

The resentment and grief from one side of the spoon mingled poisonously with the guilt and indignation from the other. Ten months passed and then a ‘For Sale’ sign was put up in front of No. 17. Eventually, the removal van arrived and Debbie with her pink sheepskin rug left for a new home, a new school and the hope of new friends who would not fall out of the back of a Jeep.

The rage that had been directed towards Karen and Julian altered its trajectory and Vera began to blame herself. She stopped eating properly and began to drink heavily. Peter Stanning limply handed over another pot of jam as Vera poured him a Scotch which he barely touched. Bob tried to talk about the office. He was back at work but leaving early to keep an eye on his wife.