Small Explosions

      I am driving away from Bath, where I now live and you used to live. I am driving away from the city that you and I love, to the house in the countryside that our parents brought both of us home to as babies. They will never leave it. They want you to be able to find them. We all want this.

      It is only midday, but the dense branches of the trees on either side of this rural lane meet and tangle overhead, plunging me into near darkness for what seems to be an endless stretch. For many miles, I do not pass another car. There are still no cameras along this winding lane. There are still no mobile phone masts. This is the road you made your last known journey on, and it would be all too easy to intercept somebody along it.

      He could have moved you under cover of woods, or over one of the many tracks, or through fields on some sort of farm vehicle. He could have got you into a building and hidden you. He could have wound along this narrow lane, then accessed the large road that circles this land before speeding you into another county.

      I am working so hard to imagine the different possibilities I nearly overshoot the turning to our parents’ village. It is a turning you and I have made countless times, and one I normally navigate on autopilot. I force myself to look around me more carefully, though I know this landscape so well it is the place I must always go to in my dreams. The old church and graveyard. The pub. The closed-down schoolhouse Dad converted several decades ago, now occupied by our parents’ closest neighbours.

      Five minutes after the nearly missed turn, I am sitting with Dad at the same scrubbed kitchen table you and I used to do our homework on. Your son uses it the same way these days, though not right now, because he is in school eating the sandwiches Mum packed for him. She and Dad and I are about to have some private bonding time over the lunch she has cooked for us, and is currently putting the finishing touches to.

      I start with the easier thing. ‘Luke wants me to take the doll’s house,’ I say. ‘He wants to have something Miranda loved when he’s with me.’

      ‘I’m not sure Miranda loved it as much as you did,’ our father says. ‘Though she knew how much it meant to you.’

      ‘Really?’ I am seriously surprised.

      ‘Miranda loves it.’ It is our mother’s usual correction of tense. ‘She knows how much it meant … But your father is right.’ She puts a bowl of broccoli on the table. ‘Cancer cells hate broccoli,’ she says.

      ‘They do,’ I say. ‘Can I take the doll’s house, then?’ I say. ‘Seeing as you both agree that I love it most.’

      ‘I suppose so.’ She touches our father’s bristly orange head, flitting away from the subject as she does. ‘Only your father has a full head of hair at his age. And not a speck of grey. Look at him and then at his friends. Your father is still handsome. It’s because I take such good care of him.’

      Dad laughs. ‘You certainly take good care of me, Rosamund.’

      Our father’s head still looks as if it is topped by a scouring pad that has rusted to dull copper. When Luke was six he drew a picture of Dad as one of the creatures from Where the Wild Things Are, snaggle-toothed and goggle-eyed. He drew another picture around that time, of you and me, in imitation of Outside Over There. How can I have forgotten this? I file the memory away, so I can remind Luke that there is a story of a sister searching for her lost sister. And finding her. He made me read him those exquisite books so many times I still know them both by heart.

      ‘I’m with Mum,’ I say.

      ‘It’s your mother who hasn’t changed a bit since the very first time I saw her.’

      ‘Yeah. Dancing that poor man to death during the Giselle rehearsal. Don’t say you weren’t warned, Dad.’

      ‘Very funny, Ella.’ But she is smiling. ‘Your sister tells the same joke.’

      ‘I was supposed to be working,’ Dad says. ‘Building something last-minute for the set. But the only thing I could see was your mother. She stood out from all those other Wilis. I nearly fell off my ladder, twisting around to watch her.’

      How many times has our father told us this romantic tale? One of his tricks for pleasing Mum, who never tires of it. You used to circle your throat with your thumb and index finger and pretend to mock-choke yourself whenever he did.

      ‘I love this story,’ I say. ‘And ten months later, Miranda was here.’

      ‘Yes,’ Mum says. ‘Yes she was.’ She closes her eyes and reaches out a hand. Dad grabs it.

      ‘Your mother was an enchantress, Ella, from the first time I saw her,’ Dad says.

      Mum brushes the compliment away. ‘Your father was the real enchanter,’ she says. ‘The three of us lived among the dust and rubble as he turned a crumbling old wreck of a house into the beautiful thing it is now.’ She gestures her arms slowly out, a ballerina on the stage showing us the world. ‘He made all of this for his family.’

      ‘You are both magical,’ I say, imagining you closing your eyes, yawning widely, and fainting your head sideways into your cupped hand with a slapping noise.

      ‘What could the police have been doing with Miranda’s things for the best part of a decade?’ I try to sound casual, despite my abrupt change of subject. I pick up my water glass and lift it towards my lips before realising it is empty.

      ‘Letting them gather dust in a store cupboard somewhere,’ our mother says. She gives me her sharp look as she sits down. She knows where I am headed. She scoops fish pie from the casserole dish and onto our plates with studied grace and care. ‘Eat your lunch,’ she says.

      ‘But why finally give them back now?’ I say.

      Dad fills my glass from the jug Mum has already put on the table.

      ‘They probably wanted the space for more recent cases.’ Mum can’t stifle a laugh when Dad signals with a wordless frown that she hasn’t given him enough fish pie, though he has four-times the bird-like quantity she took for herself.

      ‘They made a big show of victim’s rights when they returned the box, saying it was important that families had their loved ones’ belongings returned as soon as was practicable,’ Dad says.

      ‘A decade is hardly soon,’ I say. ‘Do you think the timing means anything? So close to the ten-year anniversary, and the new stories about Jason Thorne?’

      ‘I don’t want you thinking about Thorne, Ella. It simply means that they’d forgotten about Miranda’s things until now.’ Our mother puts more food on Dad’s plate. ‘It’s a mistake to credit them with any plan. It’s all coincidence.’

      Dad’s eyes bulge. ‘It’s a confirmation that she no longer matters to them. They put the data into their fancy predictive analytics and the computer tells them where to focus their energy and funds, where the future dangers and risks are. Finding Miranda at this point in time isn’t likely to save someone else. She will be at the bottom of their list.’

      ‘Where did you get that term, Dad? Predictive analytics?’

      ‘Ted. He doesn’t like it much either.’

      ‘It’s just that – I wondered if one of you asked for her things?’ I am searching for any flicker of a reaction