Jubilee
One
Rachel
Silver Jubilee day, 1977, and June 2002
By the time the kitchen clock struck seven I knew that my cousin wouldn’t be coming back. I abandoned my rehearsal of the cool response I’d planned for her return: I always knew you were just mucking about, Jess . . .
While we waited for the men to finish searching the hedgerows and the white snaky curve of the Ridgeway path above us, I watched my aunt. Evie sat at the kitchen table twisting the fabric belt of her new dress as though she was trying to wring the anxiety out of herself. She caught me staring at her and managed to twist her features into something halfway to a smile. This attempt to reassure me made me feel even more frightened. ‘Come back!’ I shouted silently at my cousin. ‘It’s not a game any more.’
I was still clutching my Silver Jubilee mug with its Queen’s head and coat of arms. I wished I could go upstairs and put the mug away but I felt bound to stay here at the table with my aunt, as though any movement could jinx the search for Jessamy. We sat in silence, listening to the kitchen clock ticktocking until the noise seemed to drill itself into my chest.
‘I’m going out,’ I blurted out after five more minutes had passed. ‘I’m going to check the stables again.’ I put down the mug and rose.
Evie gave a start. ‘No.’ She reached across and grabbed my wrist. ‘Stay there.’
I wriggled my wrist free. ‘Let me. Please.’ She ran her hands over her face. ‘Rachel, we’ve looked a dozen times. We’ve been all over the farm.’
‘There are places we hide . . .’
‘I know them all. The elm the lightning hollowed out.’ She sounded almost fierce. ‘The little hollows in the sheep field. Your father and I used to hide in them, too.’ She gave another of the strained smiles. ‘We’ve combed this place, every inch. And you and I need to stay here, in case she comes back. Imagine if she returned, cold, tired, scared . . .’ Her voice cracked a little on the last word. ‘And there was nobody here.’
I stared hard at the kitchen table. Jessamy and I had been making Union Jacks out of red, white and blue Plasticine and they still sat at the end of the table. I reached across for one of them and squashed it in my hand. Some of the blue Plasticine squelched into the white strips. I clenched my fist again. The red ran into the white and now it didn’t look like a flag at all. I kept on squeezing it until I held a dirty grey ball in my palm.
‘We need to check on the ponies,’ I said. She put a hand to her mouth. In the field outside the house stood a new chestnut, a surprise for Jessamy. Evie had arranged for him to arrive while we were at the Jubilee party. Eventually I must have fallen asleep, the spoiled Plasticine still in my hand, because I came to with my head resting on the oak table.
‘. . . Again in daylight,’ a man was saying.
‘Thank you.’ Evie’s voice sounded like a stranger’s: polite, detached. But in the morning they found only half a dozen deflated Jubilee balloons and some crumpled Union Jack paper napkins, blown into ditches and hedges.
I returned to Winter’s Copse six weeks after the Silver Jubilee party, when my summer holidays began. My father, Evie’s twin brother, Charlie, had done what he could to protect me from the newspaper and television coverage of the disappearance but I’d caught a few glimpses of myself, huddled behind Evie as she stood in the kitchen doorway, before Dad could switch off the television. ‘Craven villagers are still perplexed by the disappearance of Jessamy Winter,’ the reporter started.
Whenever I could escape the insistent tones of a school teacher I let my cousin’s image drift back into my mind. This evening Evie was making me tea: scrambled eggs on toast, and I was laying the table. I set three places. Evie turned from the range with the saucepan of eggs, and her eyes widened at the sight of the three table mats and sets of cutlery. She let out a quiet moan. The saucepan in her hand dipped so that the yellow contents slopped on to the table. ‘Sorry,’ she said, raising her other hand to her mouth. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, Rachel. It’s just . . .’ The words seemed to jam in her throat. She rocked herself backwards and forwards; more of the scrambled egg spilled out of the pan, pattering to the scrubbed kitchen floor. It was then that the fact of Jessamy’s disappearance hit me with an almost physical violence. I stared at the stupid, wretched, third place I’d set and knew that she would never lift the knife and fork, never drink from the water glass again. She’d never ride that new pony still waiting for her. It was my birthday next week and I was going to be ten. Jess wouldn’t be there when I cut my cake. If there was a cake. Perhaps there would never be cakes again.
These days, in my job as a freelance marketing consultant I write copy and do a bit of simple design work. I work with sophisticated photo enhancement programs on the computer. It’s possible to excise an image and replace it with something else: an unwanted wedding guest can become a tree or bush. But before you carry out the replacement you’re left with a cut-out of the missing person’s body, filled only with an amorphous grey vacuum. As Evie’s scrambled eggs splattered out of the saucepan I saw my cousin’s outline at the third table setting, with a vacuum where her body – that vital, energetic mass – had been. And that outline followed me round my life as I progressed to all the places where Jessamy should also have been: university matriculations and graduations, weddings and funerals. But eventually life filled in the vacuum so that I started to look through it. But nothing could fill in the vacuum for Jessamy’s mother.
The Golden Jubilee was approaching; only weeks away now. Evie had already sent me the invitation to the village party, with its official Jubilee logo on the top. Twenty-five years since my cousin had disappeared. Everyone watched old film coverage of the Coronation and the Silver Jubilee on television. Parties were planned; bunting was ordered. But for Evie the anniversary could only ever be that of the last time she’d seen her daughter.
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