Sarah May - The Missing Marriage

‘Come and look,’ Laura called out.

The sun was bouncing frantically off whatever it was she was holding in her hand – a penknife – then the next minute she leant into the tree and carved something into the trunk.

Anna started to climb again with renewed determination until a shadow – a large, loud, moving shadow – cut through the sunshine, and the branches at the top of the tree began to shake aggressively as if they’d suddenly woken up to the fact that two trespassers were among them. She heard shouting from below and, looking down, saw that Erwin was no longer in the river but on the grass, running towards the tree, his trousers rolled up at the knee still. Mary’s book lay open on the rug and she was standing staring helplessly up at the sky.

There was a helicopter hovering above them – it had come to take Laura away only Laura was too busy carving her initials into the trunk of the tree to notice.

Anna tried to call out, but the helicopter was too loud, getting louder . . .

She woke up suddenly, and thought at first that the sound was the wind turbines on the north harbour wall – then she remembered. The sound she could hear – the sound that had cut through her dream – was the sound of helicopters. It was Easter Sunday and they were searching for Bryan Deane because Bryan Deane had gone missing.

The light in the bedroom was dull, which made her think it was still early when in fact – grabbing at the pile of clothes by the side of the bed and shaking them until her watch and phone fell out – it was almost half ten.

Putting on the watch, she lay back on the pillow for a while, staring at the ceiling, then got out of bed, her legs heavy.

She walked to the window through the pile of clothes she’d dropped back on the floor and pulled up the blind. Pressing her forehead and the palm of one hand against the cold glass, she took in the rolling grey sky and sea, a fair part of which was taken up by one of the endless succession of super tankers either bringing coal from Poland or Norwegian wood pulp across the North Sea for the British press to turn into newspapers. Her mother, Bettina, used to work in the offices at South Harbour and Erwin, drunk, once told Anna that her father was a Norwegian from one of the ships.

It was dirty weather – squalid; nothing like yesterday – and the sea had an inhospitable rolling swell of about six feet.

A hard sea to survive in, Anna thought.

Through the glass she could hear the cabling on the trawlers moored to the quayside down below, ringing. The third trawler, Flora’s Fancy , was making its way between the pierheads and out into open sea past the wind turbines, which were turning today – all except the one second from the end on the left by the old coal staithes. There was always one that stood still and silent no matter how hard the others turned.

Just then a red Coastguard helicopter flew over the trawler and turbines, heading straight out to sea before turning and looping southwards back inland.

Anna went into the kitchen and poured herself a bowl of muesli – making a mental note to shop at some point – as another helicopter went overhead.

It wasn’t the Coastguard this time, but an RAF Rescue helicopter that would have come from the base at Kinross.

Then her phone started ringing.

She went into the bedroom where she’d left it – it was Laviolette, sooner than she’d expected. Forgetting what he’d said to her before slamming the door of the Vauxhall shut in the early hours of the morning, she asked quickly, ‘Has anything come in yet?’

‘Nothing. We’ve launched a full scale open search with MCA collaboration this morning. Conditions aren’t great, but they’re meant to be getting better. Boats have gone out from Tynemouth, Cullercoats and Blyth, and a couple of private fishing vessels have volunteered to assist.’ He hesitated as if about to ask her something then changed his mind. ‘But nothing’s come in yet.’

In the silence that followed there was the sound of furniture moving, a child whining and Laviolette’s voice, talking to the child, making an effort to soften itself.

‘I can hear helicopters – down the line. Where are you?’ he asked abruptly.

Caught off guard, she said, ‘My flat. I just saw the Coastguard and RAF helicopters go out to sea.’

‘You’ve got a sea view? South Harbour or Quayside?’

‘Quayside,’ she said, wondering how he knew she was in Blyth.

He paused, but didn’t comment on this. ‘I’ve got a feeling Martha Deane might try to contact you. If she does that I want you to let me know.’ Without giving her time to respond to this, he carried on, ‘Did you call Laura Deane yet?’

‘No.’ Anna wasn’t sure she was going to call Laura Deane.

‘Did she call you?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, well – we’ll speak, and don’t forget to call me if you get any visitors.’

Laviolette ended the call, and Anna, forgetting the half eaten bowl of muesli in the other room, decided to go for a run. She was about to leave the apartment when the phone started ringing again. This time it was Mary – Erwin had had a bad night, and wasn’t any better this morning.

‘Have you phoned the hospital?’

‘They say to come in, but he says he doesn’t want to. It’s his breathing, Anna.’

‘I’m phoning the hospital. I’ll see if they can send someone to you and if they can’t he’s going to have to go in. Does he have a patient number – reference number – anything I need to quote when I phone?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mary said, close to tears. ‘I don’t know any more. Don and Doreen have gone over to be with Laura – she still hasn’t had any news. It’s hard to believe –’ Mary broke off. The improbability of Bryan Deane’s disappearance had fractured her resolve with regards to Erwin’s cancer, and right now she wasn’t coping.

‘Smoker’s cancer’ was how her grandmother, Mary, had referred to the small cell lung cancer Erwin had been diagnosed with. After nearly forty years underground on twenty to thirty cigarettes a day, Mary wasn’t surprised, and implied that Anna shouldn’t be either. It was how women of Mary’s generation were used to losing their men. They hadn’t wanted to tell her, but –

‘But it might only be weeks, pet.’ Mary’s voice cracking ever so slightly.

It was the ‘pet’ that did it – not the news of Erwin’s imminent death, but the ‘pet’. Anna was crying; something she rarely did. Or at least, the tears were running, but she wasn’t making any sound.

‘I’m sorry, pet, but I thought you should know.’

Then came the hours of phone calls to the specialist and primary care team.

Erwin’s cancer was ‘metastatic’, the medical term for ‘hopeless’. There was no hope for Erwin. There was no point his having surgery or even radiotherapy because the cancer was no longer confined, but spreading. He’d been given the course of chemotherapy not as a potential cure, but to ease the pain of his ending.

According to the specialist, Erwin didn’t want any more chemotherapy so they were putting him on morphine tablets instead.

That was when Anna had left London and headed north for the first time in just over a year. She’d had extensive conversations with various cancer specialists and had driven up the M1 feeling vaguely determined and prepared. Mary’s phone call had enabled her to unplug herself from her London life in a way she’d been attempting but failing to for some months now, she realised.

As she pushed on at eighty miles an hour past Northampton, Nottingham, Leeds, York, Durham she wondered if this was what she’d been waiting for . . . an excuse to come back. But, come back to what?

When she pulled up in the late afternoon outside the council house that was her childhood home – number nineteen Parkview – Mary seemed confused, distant, and almost embarrassed.