A Mother’s Vigil

by Zelda C. Thorne

Disjointed and removed, my daughter’s voice echoes in my mind as I approach Little Waltham train station: such is the nature of 3am telephone calls. I’m safe, Mum. Long flight. Train tomorrow. I love you. My handwritten note of Anna’s garbled message is semi-illegible so it’s possible I’m too early — the Victorian clock suspended above the platform states 11:03 — but no matter. I hunch my shoulders against an icy wind, side-stepping the mottled bruise-brown leaves and empty crisp packets on my way to the café. The tannoid crackles, announcing that the next train will not stop here.

#

The café dominates the inside of the station building with fake potted ferns marking the boundary between wooden passenger benches and the café’s superior customer seating. Discarded paper takeaway cups fill the see-through plastic bin bags whilst small crumb-strewn plates litter the tables: evidence of the London commuter rush.

“Christine! How are you?”

Graham, a fixture far older than the Costa coffee sign behind the counter, stops clearing the tables, the corners of his mouth disappearing behind a gigantic snow-white handlebar moustache.

“Good, thank you.” I order a cappuccino and a croissant, watching him for signs of discomfort, but his expression remains content; he doesn’t know. “Just waiting for my daughter. I may be here a while.”

“Ah! Your little firecracker.” He turns his back to me, preparing my order. “Where’s she been this time?”

I open my mouth and close it again, shifting my weight as an insidious crawling sensation floods my arms and legs. I scratch the back of my neck and flex my fingers. Graham looks over his shoulder, wondering if I’ve heard him. The feeling ebbs just below the surface. 

I flash a smile. “Just travelling.”

#

For days — how many I can’t say — I endured the sympathetic sidelong glances and hushed conversations at work before my boss sent me home on enforced sick leave. Clients wittering on as I applied foils to their faded hair and snipped split ends, transforming them into someone else or someone closer to who they imagined themselves to be.

It was a busy Saturday when I found out. My client — a semi-permanent colour, cut and blow-dry — was under the heater, flicking through Good Housekeeping, and I was scrolling my fake Instagram for clues (the account filled with stock photos of a male model whom my daughter and all her travel buddies had accepted as a friend). I inspected a shot of Anna in a string bikini on a pristine white beach, crossing my fingers that she had applied sufficient sunscreen, when a breaking news alert popped up: Magnitude 7.1 earthquake strikes Indonesia.

Heart hammering, I clicked through and forced myself to read.

Indonesia’s geophysics agency (BMKG) reported that the quake, at a depth of 78 kilometres, struck at approximately 10am local time (2am GMT), triggering a devastating tsunami. In Padang, the capital of West Sumatra, people were instructed to evacuate to higher ground.

I glossed over the staggering numbers of fatalities and injured and missing persons, unable to process the figures. Videos poured in. Juddering clips revealed the horror as enormous black-green waves obliterated matchstick buildings, flung toy boats in the air, and swept aside ant-like people. I realised I wasn’t breathing. My sweaty palm pressed against my chest, fingernails clawing up, up, up my cheek, over my face, to the hair, gripped a handful, tighter, harder. I gasped, dragging the air in.

#

“Indonesia is a big place,” Jonathan, my estranged husband, said when I called. We separated two years ago but neither of us has asked for a divorce. “She said she was going to Bali, which wasn’t hit. I left her a message just now and she always gets back to me within a day or so. You know, I bet she’s at some party, having the time of her life”

My fist trembled at my side, nails drawing blood. How could he be so positive? So hopeful? It was beyond me.

“So many people…”

“God, you always do this.” He sighed, and I knew he would be dragging one hand over his face, rubbing the eyes. “This earthquake… it’s awful, horrendous, but Anna wasn’t there—”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do. And even if she was, she’s a survivor.”

My throat swelled shut: he didn’t understand how insignificant we are, how deluded to think special providence would befall our child.

They’ll never find her body — a thought I hate myself for having but cannot undo.

That night, I found myself ensnared in a vicious nightmare, agonising over what music to play at Anna’s funeral. Should it be “Dancing Queen” by Abba, something she liked as a child, or “Enter Sandman” by Metallica, by far the most obsessively-played song of her teens? In the end, I used both and everyone agreed it summed her up perfectly. 

The following night, I didn’t bother trying to sleep.

#

I’m outside now, on the platform. The sun is a glowing disc in an overcast sky. A middle-aged man, clean-shaven with an impeccable number two buzz cut, is poised at the entrance to the car park with a bunch of plastic-wrapped chrysanthemums in his hand. His gaze unfathomable yet tender all at once. I believe he would stand there for hours. Jonathan did that for me, whenever he returned at the end or midway through a tour. Unawares, I would descend the train after a long day at work, turn my head, and spy his gorgeous, thick, shoulder-length mane. Cheeks flushed, my brain would short-circuit, crescendoing, as I flew towards him.

Now, his favourite socks, multicoloured and adorned with treble clefs, quavers and piano keys, are still in his top drawer, some matched up in balls, others loose and alone. I once read that if someone leaves something at your house it’s because subconsciously, they intend to come back. But by now, chances are Jonathan has bought himself some new socks.

#

Next to the disabled toilets, there is a door marked “Private” and inside is the station guard’s back office. When Anna was sixteen, the British Transport Police summoned me to collect her from that room at nine o’clock at night when I thought she was having a makeover at a friend’s house.

“Trespassing on the live rails,” the officer informed me in the tone of a judge passing sentence. “A suicidal game of dare. We’ve had trouble at this station before but they always get away.” He gestured at Anna’s swollen ankle, propped up on a cushion. “The guard didn’t recognise her as one of the usual suspects, which is why I’m not booking her. This time.”

“That’s very kind of you.” I glared at Anna. “Isn’t it? Say thank you to—”

“Whatever. Can we go now?”

I’ll never forget the feral look of her, that black-eyed stare like a hardened criminal. The whiff of cigarettes and grime that clung to her figure. And it was my fault. Jonathan’s extended absences with the orchestra meant she was left with me, the neurotic, overbearing control freak — her words, not mine. So what if I have a cleaning rota on the fridge and alphabetise the spice rack? Or that I made her memorise my mobile phone number from the age of seven, testing her now and again just to be sure? We did that with her times tables, didn’t we?

She huffed and rolled her eyes skywards, making me want to lunge, tip her upside-down and shake her until my real daughter fell out. The one who snuggled into my side three weeks beforehand to watch Bridget Jones’ Diary, soap-fresh, head to toe in pink unicorn pyjamas.

“Anna, what the hell were you thinking?” 

“It’s not—”

“You could have been killed!”

My voice broke, spiking too high like a snapped piano wire. The chords of my neck strained against the skin. Anna’s chin quivered and the granite exterior crumbled to dust. “I’m sorry, Mum,” she said. “Can we go home? Please?”

#

I stand on the bridge overlooking the railway lines, facing east. The brick wall is so high I have to lift my arms to shoulder-height to lean on them. A train stops at this station every forty-five minutes but so far, no Anna. My phone vibrates in my pocket and I fish it out: Jonathan.

“Where are you?”

“At the train station, obviously.”

“How long have you been there? Do you want me to pick you up?”

“No.” I start pacing along the bridge. “Why would I want that?”

“I think you should go home.”

A train slithers into view and I wait until it has passed underneath and the blustery screech of rails has subsided before speaking again.

“Anna, our daughter, is alive and on her way. I called you this morning, don’t you remember?”

“Yeah. You said she was arriving at five in the afternoon, but it’s midday and you’re already there. Why?”

I bring my free hand up and run a fingertip along the curve of my eyebrow. “Just in case. The message was…”

“Hazy?”

I grit my teeth and wonder what it might feel like to hurl my phone onto the tracks. “I didn’t dream it, Jonathan. It happened. She call—”

“She did not call you!”

I freeze; a muscle in my cheek spasms. Jonathan does not shout. Ever. Not even when we were separating. It’s not in him. “I know it’s been a long time but—”

“Six weeks. Three days. And this makes it five times that you’ve claimed she’s contacted you, only to discover later on that you’ve no record on your phone of any such call.” He exhales. “I don’t think you understand what that does to me.”

“This time it’s different.”

He’s right: the memory is hazy, but not like a dream. It’s nebulous in the way life is when you don’t sleep. Days slide into each other, creating an indistinct continuum; shadows flutter and sound muffles as if underwater. Ironic how if you remove sleep, reality takes on a dreamlike quality.

“If she really was still out there,” he says, and I can tell by the timbre of his voice how hard he’s trying not to break apart, “we would know by now.”

Tears sting my eyes. “You’ve lost hope?”

He doesn’t answer.

Another train rumbles past, and another. Eventually, one of us hangs up.

#

“Mum, I’m eighteen. I’m going to Indonesia and you can’t stop me.”

She dropped this bomb one Saturday as we stepped off the train after a day out in Colchester. I struggled to keep up with her as she mounted the overpass stairs, myriad shopping bags banging against her legs.

“I know that…”

At first, I blamed Jonathan for Anna’s tenacity, for her bulldozer attitude to life. Whenever she did something reckless, such as the makeshift dirt bike long jump which I had to hear about from the school headmistress, I would lock myself in the spare room, fingertips tracing concentric circles on my temples as my interstitial chest muscles gradually relaxed. And then I blamed myself, because hadn’t I found that trait enticing?

“What are you going to do?” She pivoted on the bridge, standing firm. “Tie me up? Burn my passport?”

Petition the government to raise the age of majority? I wished for the days when I could scoop her up with one arm and march off, impervious to those little rubbery legs thrashing at my side. What if I had attempted it? Would I have been strong enough? Perhaps we would have collapsed into fits of giggles. However, looking at her pinched expression, I doubted she would have seen the funny side.

“Please, Anna, I only want to protect you. I’m your mum!” I smiled imploringly. “It’s my job.”

Anna gazed back with an almost imperceptible lift of her chin, and broke my heart. “Not anymore.”

Bone-weary, I sighed. The powerlessness was maddening. “I just want you to be safe.”

Other disembarked passengers flowed past us like water around two rocks in a stream. Then Anna smiled and the self-possessed woman she had become shone through. “Don’t worry,” she said, clearing the space between us in two strides and squeezing my shoulders in an iron-like one-armed bear hug. The shopping bags bounced and rustled. “I’ll be fine.”

I walk to the exact spot on the overpass where this occurred, not so long ago, and close my eyes, remembering how it felt as I sank into my daughter’s embrace and breathed in her vanilla-sweet scent. The swish of her buttery hair against my skin. I had ignored the twist in my gut and the invisible spiders creeping up my oesophagus and said, “I know you will.”

#

Back in the café, in my corner seat, I warm my fingers on a new cappuccino. It’s almost five o’clock; in less than thirty minutes, I’ll have Anna back. Opposite the counter, the muted TV fixed in the centre of the wall plays clips of the earthquake. Jonathan calls again and I answer.

“Christine, listen to me, why would she ask you to meet her at the train station? Why not the airport?”

I tap my fingernails against the ceramic cup. “I told you. It was a very quick call.”

“Have you checked your phone records? Caller ID?”

“Unknown number.”

“And she called in the middle of the night.”

“Well, it was probably daytime there.”

“And where was that?”

“She didn’t say, it was—”

“Quick. Right.”

Moments flash in my mind’s eye: Jonathan cradling a newborn Anna, their gazes locked, enrapt in each other’s essence; lullabies sung in his rich baritone vibrating through the house; Anna taking her first steps, arms outstretched, squealing, “Daddy, Daddy!”

“You have to believe me. I wrote it down.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“Jonathan. Please—”

“When was the last time you actually slept? Because I can tell it’s bad.”

I flinch. Coffee splashes the table. I soak it up with a napkin. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re slurring. Missing out words. Repeating yourself and losing your thread… Have you been hallucinating again?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to come get you?”

I drain the remnants of my coffee before it gets too cold. “No. No, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Well, if you change your mind, I’m here. Just a phone call away.”

“Thanks, but I won’t.” Recalling the euphoric sparkle of his eyes when Anna picked up his ukulele of her own accord and plucked at the strings, I try one more time. “She’s coming, Jonathan. I’m not imagining it. This time it’s real.”

His voice is a minor note, holding on, as at the end of a song. “Look after yourself, Christine.” 

I return my phone to my pocket and pull out Anna’s message, smoothing it on the table in front of me. It’s on a lined page from the notebook I keep on the kitchen counter. I’ve written: Train from Stansted Airport. Tomorrow. 17:17. Hastily scrawled, the sevens could also be ones.

Jonathan has a point. Why didn’t I ask any questions? Why here and not the airport? I would have gone, and how is she paying for the train fare if she has no money for a phone call? How is she paying for the flight? As I read my handwriting for the millionth time, the ink blurs, darkens, becomes liquid once more and runs, streaking towards me, dribbling off the edge of the table into my lap. My hands are stained blue-black—

“You alright, Christine?”

I’m holding my palms right in front of my face. They’re shaking. I lower them. “Oh yes. Just a bit out of sorts. Thank you, Graham.”

#

I’m standing sentry at the platform exit where no one can pass without me seeing them. But my back is to the car park, so when Jonathan materialises at my side, I jump and let out a tiny scream. 

“Christine?”

“He’s come to take me home. I accept his hand on the small of my back but resist the gentle pressure. The 17:17 train is due in three minutes. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Christine—”

“Stop saying my name like that.” I turn slightly into his body and place my palm on his chest. “Just wait.”

#

The train comes into view, snake-sleek, sunlight gleaming on its metallic hide. A rustle of leaves as those waiting to board edge forward; paperbacks snap shut; phones slip into pockets; the cafe door swings open.

Hissing, the train glides to a halt. Four seconds pass before the doors open. The circular buttons lighting up, eager fingers already upon them. More people disembark than I expected. I scan the bobbing heads for Anna’s long, wavy chestnut hair. In all likelihood, she has lost every possession, and yet I can’t help searching for the torn rock-chick leather jacket, her favourite Papa Roach t-shirt, and the steel-stilettoed white boots festooned with chains that clink as she struts. No one fits her description. A swathe of sensible shoes and waterproof macks surge towards me and funnel right, into the car park, into the encroaching night.

We spot her at exactly the same time. The once dark hair now swings in perfect sun-bleached braids, the pixie face, the chocolate-brown eyes which catch us and draw us in like magnetic fields of vision. She speeds up, darting around commuters, and we run. Headlong. The seas part before us and there is our little girl. A woman. A survivor.

“Oh Anna.”

A whistle blows, pistons sound, and the train eases away from the station. As I bury my face in her neck and breathe deep, Jonathan’s arms overlap mine, forming an interwoven safety net. 

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers.

I open my eyes and find I’m staring straight into his.