Sara MacDonald - The Hour Before Dawn

Could it be she had gone looking for some piece of architecture and got lost or gone further than she’d meant to? Or maybe her phone had been stolen and she couldn’t contact us. Maybe she had met an acquaintance or colleague and was staying with them. I was clutching at straws.

I lay very still with a terrible sense of prescience. More than that, fear lay under my skin as if something dark was crawling my way. Jack breathed beside me and the night stretched on and on and the dawn came, surprising me with its suddenness.

The phone went and I leapt upright. It was a Detective Sergeant James Mohktar who spoke perfect English. He was ringing from the Singapore Hilton. He asked me if I was Mrs Campbell’s next of kin. Her luggage was still in her room and her disappearance was worrying. Had she contacted me? Was there any place I could think of that she might have gone to?

No, I told him. She had not contacted me and I had no idea where she could possibly have gone. ‘She once lived in Singapore a long time ago, but she doesn’t know anyone there now. I’m very worried, this is not like her, or the fact that she hasn’t been in touch…’

There was a pause and then the detective said, ‘You are advising me that Mrs Campbell is definitely missing and that you have no explanation whatsoever for her disappearance?’

‘Yes, I am. My mother was flying out to us in New Zealand via Singapore. She caught the plane from Heathrow to Singapore, but did not catch the second leg of her journey to Auckland. She was then due to fly from Auckland to Kerikeri where she knew we were waiting to meet her. If she’d missed her flight or was ill she would have let us know.’

‘OK, Mrs Montrose. We are going to make a search of the hotel now. My men will make inquiries to try to ascertain her whereabouts and safety and which member of staff may have had a conversation with her and who saw her last. Then I will ring you again…’ He paused. ‘If we do not find your mother, I am afraid you must fly to Singapore to register her officially missing and identify her belongings. She did always carry her passport about her person?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t have left her passport in a hotel room. She would have kept it with her.’

‘We will’ the detective sergeant said, ‘maintain hope, Mrs Montrose, that there is a rational explanation. I will ring you this evening. Try not to worry. Good day.’

I crumpled on the edge of the bed, Jack’s anxious eyes on me. Was God or fate visiting some sick and terrible retribution on me? Was my mother too going to disappear without trace? Her body never found, so that I would never know what happened or where she had gone, who took her or why?

Just like Saffie. Snatched from under our noses; disappearing from us without trace twenty-eight years ago.

It was time to leave for the airport. Fleur walked round the army quarter which would soon be empty of all their personal things. She moved slowly, touching the heavy mahogany furniture, staring past the small Malay house that chimed in the window of the twins’ room, the sound as familiar as breathing in the easy, somnolent days spent there.

Far below her came the dull thud of the naval base and the hot morning breeze brought to her a vague smell of sea mixed with frangipani blossom from the garden. Fleur stood looking out, invoking the image of David moving through the house with her.

Surely if she closed her eyes for a moment she could shift time back, change by sheer will the sequence of events. Make it all a bad dream. A small tragedy you spot suddenly in a paper, the abrupt end of someone else’s life.

The sun flowed across the polished floor and touched one arm, making the other instantly cold. She shivered and moved to the front of the house. There it was, the black car moving sleekly up the road towards her, small pennant flying. Fergus would get out, immaculate in his starched uniform, looking as pale and stunned as Fleur; a familiar presence to take them to the airport and the long journey home to bury David.

Fleur turned and walked through the house and down the steps from the kitchen, and stood watching the twins and Ah Heng crouched outside the amah’s room. Ah Heng was filling little bags for their journey and the three of them squatted outside her door on the concrete, heads bent together, chatting in Cantonese like noisy sparrows. From her open doorway Chinese pinkle-ponkle music issued softly.

Two fair heads, one dark smooth one. Ah Heng, feeling Fleur’s stillness, looked up and in that fleeting unguarded moment Fleur saw the bleakness in the amah’s flat, impassive face. The two women stared at each other, accepting an ending where nothing in either of their lives could ever be the same again. No contentment so taken for granted; no happiness so whole.

In lives at each end of a cultural divide, they would, Fleur knew, remember in quiet moments their innocent rivalry for the twins’ love. Here in a house that had been filled with the cheerful life of Master and husband; a place the three of them had experienced together the thrill and joy of the twins, the flourishing of small lives.

‘Time, Missie?’ Ah Heng broke the silence.

‘Yes, Ah Heng. The car’s coming up the road. Saffie, Nikki, come on, time to go.’

The twins looked up but hung on to Ah Heng. Their mother had an unnerving listlessness, a restless preoccupation with something that lay beyond them. It was as if she could no longer see them, as if they had suddenly become frighteningly invisible.

Ah Heng gathered their bags and led them firmly up the steps past Fleur, through the kitchen to their bathroom where she made them use the loo and washed their hands and faces one last time. She checked that the small jumpers she had bought them were still in their cases. Missie had a habit of changing over the clothes she bought the twins from Chinatown. She led them down the front stairs to the open front door where the black official car was crouched, waiting for them.

Mohammed, the driver, had stowed their luggage in the boot. Fergus stood beside Fleur. He was watching the twins with Ah Heng. The children seemed passive, too devoid of emotion. Had Fleur given them something?

Ah Heng let go of the children’s hands and moved towards Fleur. ‘Missie take care. Missie have chil’ren think about. If Missie no come back to hand house over to army men, Missie write me all news of babies, please.’

She held out both hands and Fleur took them, clasping them tight, and tears sprang up between the two women.

‘I have to come back, Ah Heng. There is an army memorial service for Master…’ She hesitated. ‘I will leave the babies in England…I think it is best…I don’t want them to have to say goodbye to you twice…and…’

Ah Heng nodded. ‘Yes, Missie. I stay here. I clean house. I wait till you return. I help you hand over to army men…’ She pulled her hands gently from Fleur’s.

Fleur whispered, ‘Ah Heng, you must look after yourself. I know the High Commission want you back. You must leave when they need you…’ Her voice broke. ‘Ah Heng, thank you, thank you for everything…’

‘Missie go…’ Ah Heng turned away in misery and bent to the twins and held them hard as Fergus gently pushed Fleur into the back of the car. Ah Heng hugged them tight to her and closed her eyes to breathe in their skin. She placed her small, flat nose to their cheeks, took a huge breath, so that they were with her always, clear as their laughter, the childish smell of them. Her babies captured forever, not only in the photographs she would display in her next job, but hidden inside her always.

Fergus went round the car, picked the twins up quickly and placed them in the back of the car with Fleur. Then he went to sit by the driver. ‘Drive, Mohammed. Drive away quickly.’