Father Emanuel stands to one side, smiling at the purple-and-gold-robed choir as they sing. Their voices fill the space; each word of the Latin version of ‘Ave Maria’ is perfectly delivered. I close my eyes as they reach for the second verse, unwrap it and offer it to the congregation, to the church, to the priest, to God.
With my eyes open again, I briefly cast my gaze around the church, searching for familiar faces. Nika might even be here. My eyes search a little harder, scanning the faces of those seated in the pews I can see from here. She may look different now. She probably will look different now. And maybe she is in here, has been in here since I arrived home all those weeks ago, and I missed her.
Fifth pew from the front on the opposite side of the church to me, I spot Gail Frost, my gentle nemesis from Chiselwick High. All the time I have worked there so far she has found ingenious ways to make digs at me about religion and God and my former life as a nun, all so quiet and understated that it is hard to get annoyed with her. I had to remind myself to tell her off, to threaten her with sanctions, to send her to the headteacher every time she crossed the line from funny to rude or nasty. It is difficult because she is so likeable.
She sits beside a woman who is the living image of her as a grown-up. Gail is a chameleon. On a night out, she is skimpily dressed with her swathes of black, natural hair, slicked into a side bun while she aims for the older-than-her-years sophistication. At school she is smartly dressed in full uniform with her tie worn low and top button open, while her hair is worn in large, childish Afro twists with coloured ties at the tops and ends. In church she is sober, almost sombre in a plain, navy-blue dress and her hair pulled back into a low ponytail. There are large hoops on nights out, tiny studs at school, pearl earrings at church.
I stare at her for too long, of course, and she moves her head in my direction to find the source of scrutiny. I offer her a smile of hello and in return she subtly rolls her eyes and turns back to the front, refocuses on the beautiful, ethereal sound the choir make.
London, 1997
I was searching for silence.
The noise in my head was raging all the time, I couldn’t ever find peace. What I needed was silence so I could disappear from who I was meant to be for a while. Nika hadn’t turned up for school five months ago, and the rumour was that she’d disappeared. Some (stupid) people were talking alien abduction. Other people said it was a kidnapping. Someone said they’d seen her walking towards the bus stop that went towards West Chiselwick Tube station with a bag and a suitcase.
I’d listened to them talking, speculating about how she’d gone, why she’d gone, where she’d gone, and I knew the why. It was because of me. Because of what I had done to her.
Everything had changed that day Nika simply didn’t show up for school: my sleep, always erratic and broken, like the lines in a cracked ceramic plate, had fallen apart altogether and was full of jagged hours of nightmare-filled slumber while the loudness in my head got worse. I’d stopped the ballet lessons. Dad had wanted to know why, Mum hadn’t wanted a fuss and they’d both told me I should go back after a rest. When Mr Daneaux had turned up at our house – like he had at Nika’s – they’d piled on the pressure. He’d offered free lessons, the lead role in every show, anything I wanted if I’d reconsider. He had told them he’d never had pupils as gifted as Nika and me, and it would be a crime for me to give up. I’d heard it all from them, many, many times, but Nika’s disappearance had given me courage. I’d kept saying no, even when Mum had lost her cool for the first time ever, and had screamed that this was why she had never wanted a girl. Girls caused a fuss, they caused drama, and they didn’t know a good thing when it was offered to them. Dad had stepped in then and said it was enough, to never speak to me like that again, and that while he was disappointed, if I didn’t want to go they couldn’t make me.
I’d thought the noise would stop, after that. That once I didn’t see him every week, the silence would come and I would be free.
I wanted Nika back so desperately. I felt hideously sick, a very real pain in the middle of my stomach, whenever I thought about life without her. But those were childish wishes, a young mind’s fancy. I couldn’t have her back, that was the long and the short of it, the truth writ large in my mind. She was gone because of me and there was nothing I could do about it.
In the park, where we would sometimes walk on our convoluted route home from school, I sat on a bench. I did not know what to do. I’d silenced her with what I’d done and I’d basically silenced myself as well. Now she was gone, inside, in those tiny quiet cracks inside my mind, I knew she wouldn’t ever come back. Under all the noise in my head, the raging in my chest, there was one voice, whispering. It spoke to me constantly, promised me all sorts of pain. I had taken to walking around at night – the noise in my head was particularly bad in night-time hours – and I would often find myself in the park, sitting on different benches for hours until I was too exhausted to do anything but sleep when I got home.
Sitting on this particular bench, in the middle of this particular night, I held in my hand a bottle of my mother’s sleeping pills and I had beside me a screw-top bottle of wine. I knew I would find the silence at the bottom of those bottles. There was so much confusion, so little sleep, nothing that could make it stop. I didn’t want to do it, not really, but it seemed the only way to make it all – the pain of missing Nika, the agony of being me who had done this terrible thing, the constant loudness in my head – stop.
‘I don’t know what to do.’ I said those words out loud. They echoed in my ears. They danced around my heart. Nika had found her exit, her silence, and this was probably the only way to find mine. Wherever I went, the noise would follow me and I couldn’t take it any more.
‘You look so lost,’ she said.
She was pretty, from what I could see of her. Most of her was draped in black robes, a strip of white across her forehead. She smiled at me and I stared at her, wondering if she was real and why she was there.
‘I don’t usually speak to people who don’t speak to me first. But I was out ministering with some of the men who live in the park and you looked lost and I wanted to help.’
I was not lost. For the first time since I was eight years old I knew where I would find perfect silence.
‘How about we swap?’ she said. She held her hand out for the bottle in my hands; she wanted to replace it with a book.
No. I shook my head. I didn’t want to swap. I wanted silence. I wanted escape. I wanted out but I wasn’t like Nika, I couldn’t simply walk away to try to start again somewhere else. It would be like this wherever I went. This was the only way to make it stop.
She smiled at me again. ‘Please. Let’s swap.’ Her dark eyes never left their quiet vigil of my face. She was so still, quiet, sure. Silence. She was the silence. ‘Please.’
I gave the silence, the bottle of tablets, and she handed me the book. ‘I always read this when I feel like you do.’
‘You feel like I do?’ I asked her. How could she know what I felt like? Surely the only person who had any idea what it was like to be me had walked away and I was probably never going to see her again.
‘Yes, I sometimes feel like you do. That’s why I read this. Every word feels like a blessing. If you read it, you’ll understand why I wanted you to make this swap. I will keep these and you, please, keep that.’
With one last smile, she got to her feet and walked into the night. I saw her heading towards a group of people who looked homeless, who hung about the swings in the park, with bottles and cigarettes, and the stench of people who lived on the street. She stood and talked to them, laughing and joking as though she knew them all by name. Once she was gone, I looked at the book properly, its pages browned by age, the edges curled from being frequently turned. Its cover had missing patches of colour, the ink having cracked and peeled off. She had given me her silence, her escape. I observed the book, wondering what its pages would hold for me.
‘Wi
ll you be my silence?’ I asked the book.
Now she had taken my small-bottle-shaped exit, I had no choice but to try it.
Carefully, I opened the book. There were too many words, the lettering too small. Even under this street lighting, it was too dark for me to read. I strained my eyes, trying to make them out, trying to find the blessings. I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t understand what she’d meant. I had given my silence for this book I could not read straight away. I’d have to go home. Was that her plan all along? To get me to go home, to get me to rethink what I was going to do?
Two days later, when I finally finished the book, I had found the blessings she spoke of and I knew what I had to do: I had to become a nun and see if I could find the silence in God.
London, 2016
After the service, I stand outside the church, waiting to speak to Father Emanuel. He is saying goodbye to his congregation, shaking their hands and speaking warmly to them. He is a well-liked priest, always has been. A couple who are waiting to speak to him look familiar. My heart leaps in my chest as I realise where I know them from: they are Nika’s parents.
They are both dressed for a special church service, both look like the respectable parents who would bring up a person as vibrant and caring as my beautiful friend. I remember them from all our ballet performances, how they would sit up front, near my parents, looking so proud and receiving congratulations on Nika’s behalf. All the while I knew that they hadn’t believed her when she’d told them what Mr Daneaux was doing to her, that they had listened to him when he’d said she was overreacting and misunderstanding his touches, that the day after he’d come to her house, he … he turned the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ up really, really loud during the session he had with Nika.
But they may have changed after all these years. Maybe now she’s an adult, on an equal footing with them, and they don’t expect unquestioning obedience at all times, they have fixed things with Nika. Maybe, after she left her celebrity footballer boyfriend, she came back and sorted things out with them and she is now living in another part of the country, with a new – married – name, maybe a couple of children, and that is why I can’t find her. Maybe Nika is doing just fine and they are doting grandparents and she doesn’t need me to come storming into her life, dragging up pieces of her past.
I shall speak to them. If they have fixed things, and they know where she is, then that will be no problem. They will tell me she is happy and I will not need to contact her. I will, but I’ll have no need. If they have fixed things, I won’t have to worry about speaking to them, reminding them of that time, imagining which one of them told her that if she wanted to keep on living in their house she would carry on with her ballet lessons and stop complaining.
The palms of my hands are damp, sticky at the thought of speaking to them. But I have to, if I want to find Nika.
While I wait for them to finish talking to Father Emanuel, I look around. Gail and her mother are standing a little way away, and Gail’s mother is fussing over her, adjusting the collar on her dress, picking imaginary fluff out of her perfect hair. I would love to speak to them, to ingratiate myself into their world, but for what reason? They don’t know me, and I would only be doing so because she reminds me of myself. After a few minutes, one of the choir members, still in his robes, approaches them. He slips an arm around Gail’s mother’s shoulders and kisses her lightly on the lips. Clearly he is Gail’s stepfather since he is an attractive, slightly older white man with a mixture of blond and silver hair. Gail rolls her eyes at her parents kissing and the eye roll lands her line of sight in my direction.
I offer another smile, another chance to connect. She glares at me this time and then slowly, very deliberately, turns her back on me.
Well, I think, that’s me told.
‘Hello,’ I say politely to the other Mr and Mrs Harper as they reach the end of the path out of the churchyard. We are away from the main throng of Easter Sunday churchgoers and from where we stand, we can see out all over Chiselwick and the neighbouring towns. ‘Are you Mr and Mrs Harper?’
They stop and look at me, sizing me up. Nika’s mother frowns slightly, as though trying to place my face at some past point in her life. She is incredibly stylish: her hair is perfectly straightened under her black hat, and her make-up has been so carefully applied you wouldn’t think she was wearing any. She has an expensive-looking black coat and a designer handbag. Beside her, Nika’s father is also very well put together. He doesn’t seem to recognise me, he simply looks at me with a pleasant, inquisitive expression on his face. ‘Yes, we are,’ Mr Harper says.
‘I don’t know if you’ll remember me? My name is Veronica Harper. I was your daughter’s friend at school.’
Their dual reaction, to hold themselves a little more rigidly, their faces a little more reserved, hints that they haven’t resolved things with their youngest child.
‘I’ve just moved back to Chiselwick, and I saw you and thought I’d ask you how Nika was doing? Does she still live around here?’
Mrs Harper swallows, slightly distressed at what I am asking. Mr Harper has softened a little, but not too much. For several seconds it seems neither of them are going to speak to me, and we’ll have to stand here in front of this view of our home town, not speaking about the other Veronika Harper.
‘No, she doesn’t,’ Mr Harper eventually says. ‘Our daughter chose to estrange herself from us many years ago. She was a very troubled young woman.’
I shouldn’t be surprised that this is the party line – that she chose to give up on them, that she was the one with the problems. I wonder, if I hadn’t become a nun, what my story would have become. Would I have gone to university, got a job, got a husband, made babies? Or would my story have ended that night in the park, with a bottle of pills and a bottle of wine? I wonder what they would have said then? Would I have been exposed as a troubled young woman, who got drunk every weekend, had sex with older men in alleyways and cars, and who broke her parents’ hearts by taking her own life?
‘I see,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Mrs Harper suddenly grabs on to her husband and needs him to steady her, comfort her by putting his arm around her. If I didn’t live with my mother, if I didn’t know what they said to Nika, I would probably be completely taken in by this. I would be thinking Nika was a selfish child, that they were loving parents and I would be better off without her in my life.
‘You haven’t heard from her at all, then? Not since she left?’
‘No,’ her father replies sternly. ‘As I told you, she chose to estrange herself from us many years ago.’
‘She didn’t even send a postcard or a change-of-address card?’ I’m pushing my luck, I know that, but I won’t speak to them again. ‘I mean, you don’t know even vaguely where she might be?’
Mrs Harper has a small sob that escapes from the back of her throat, and uncharitably, I think that she’s a better actress than my mother. Mum can pull off a great performance of being a caring, involved mother whenever she needs to – but Nika’s mum would beat mine hands down.
‘Please, you are upsetting my wife. We haven’t heard from our daughter in nearly twenty years. Do you have any idea how devastating that is to us? We gave her everything, all of the very best opportunities in life, and she threw them back in our faces. Our other daughter, Sasha, has been such a source of support and she has spent many years trying to make up for what Veronika did to us. She is also devastated by her behaviour. Thankfully our son had left home before Veronika’s behaviour became out of control, but we have all been hurt and damaged by Veronika’s actions. Now, please, we would like to stop talking about this.’
I lower my head. ‘Of course,’ I say quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’ Nika. My poor, poor friend. I didn’t realise how cold they were. That all of her family had turned against her. That when she went to the police station she really had nothing else to lose because everyone in her family believed she was the problem, the o
ne making a mountain out of a molehill. ‘I won’t bother you any longer.’
My poor Nika. No wonder what I did was the final straw. I was the only person she could rely upon and I …
The other Mr and Mrs Harper walk away and I feel it again: the swell of noise in my head, the crushing agony of knowing I have added to the pain of someone I so desperately loved.
I have to find her. I have to make things right.
Nika
Brighton, 2016
Nika, Have been trying to catch you but you’ve engaged that superpower of yours again and I didn’t want to knock on your door in case you shut it in my face. I’m sorry about the other night. That I didn’t believe you. I confronted Eliza about it and you were right. She’s known for a while that she’s developing a problem with the drugs she does and she wants to get help. It’s a really good thing you brought it up. Thank you. I’m going to do all I can to support her in getting the right help, and she’s going to pay me back for the things she’s taken. If you ever want to try dinner again, let me know. My number’s below. I live in number 207 if you ever fancy dropping by to try that kissing thing again. :)
Marshall
I know every word of Marshall’s note, I’ve read it several times a day since he pushed it through my letterbox two days ago. Today, though, it’s been playing on my mind a lot. I’ve been tempted to ring him, text him. Get in touch.
By the time I get halfway through my first floor at work, I am no wiser about what to do. It’s an odd feeling to be believed after the initial anger, but he is in serious denial about Eliza. I’m not sure how much in denial Eliza is about herself and how much she admitted it in a desperate need to say whatever is necessary to keep Marshall in her life.