Page 24 of The Missing Page
“Rose was a year older. She was twenty-one when she disappeared.”
Every time the door to the tea shop opened, a bell rang, and every time the bell rang, Leo casually looked up to catch a glimpse of the newcomer. Now the chime rang, and Leo leaned back so his face would be obscured by shadows.
“Don’t turn around,” Leo murmured. About half the people in the universe immediately turned when given such an order, but James only calmly buttered a scone.
“Oh?” he asked. “Who is it?”
“Madame Fournier. She’s wearing quite a sensible coat. Dark blue,” he said approvingly. “And a matching hat.”
“What does her coat have to do with it?” James asked.
“I would have thought her the type to wear a cape or maybe something trimmed with cheap fur. Not a dark blue wool single-breasted coat and matching hat. Very smart.”
“Leo,” laughed James.
The bell chimed again and another woman entered, this time a stranger. She looked around the room once, then again, and seemed on the verge of leaving when she went still, then proceeded across the floor to sit with Madame Fournier. This woman was plump, with rosy cheeks and fair hair that was fading into gray. She wore a brown tweed skirt and coat, a pair of sensible brogues, and worn but respectable fawn gloves.
Leo thought of the little girls in that photograph with James’s parents. They both had dark hair, and few people became fairer with age. Unless, of course, they employed peroxide. But the gray at the woman’s temples argued against that.
“What are you thinking?” asked James.
“I’m weighing the probability that your cousin ran off and married…a traveling salesman? A grocer?” He eyed the sensible brogues more closely. “A prosperous grocer, at any rate.”
“What can you possibly be talking about?” James asked, nudging Leo’s foot with his own.
“Madame Fournier is talking to a mysterious stranger. And that, I’ll bet, is the first time anyone ever referred to that lady as mysterious. Could Madame Fournier be your cousin? All that makeup and henna could be a disguise.”
“I think Camilla and Martha would have recognized her. Besides, I don’t think she’s tall enough. The Bellamys were always very tall. You’ve seen Camilla.”
“Lilah’s rather petite. And so is Martha. Let’s see. Who else could be your cousin in disguise?”
“But whyshouldanyone be Rose in disguise? Why would she run off and come back twenty years later in disguise? People don’t simply run off. People don’t disappear.”
Leo paused with his cup halfway to his mouth and then gently set it back in the saucer. “People run off all the time. People disappear all the time.Idisappear. I disappeared yesterday morning, in fact, as far as any of my associates in—in that city will be concerned.” The dead Soviet had disappeared too—there probably wasn’t a trace of the kid left. Twenty years from now, her family would probably talk about her in much the same way that James spoke of his cousin.
“Your circumstances are different,” James protested.
“I ran away from home when I was a good deal younger than your cousin and I never went back. It was years before I dared to go within ten miles of Bristol.” He held up his hand to forestall whatever James was going to say. “And peoplegetdisappeared all the time. But because they’re poor, nobody pays attention. Everybody’susedto poor people disappearing. Maybe they ran off, maybe they went to prison, maybe they got involved with the wrong kind of man. Maybe home was dangerous. Maybe they were—” He lowered his voice. “Maybe they were like us and needed to go someplace new, someplace safe, and knew nobody at home would want to hear about it. We disappearall the time.” By the time he finished, he didn’t know whether he was talking about poor people or queer people or what. He just knew that the idea of everyone kicking up a fuss about a girl who ran off twenty years earlier was something that only happened when the girl was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
“I apologize,” James said, even though Leo would have bet five quid that he had no idea what he was apologizing for. How could he? For all the horrors he had seen, he was innocent when it came to some things. There was a gulf between them that Leo didn’t know how to bridge, or whether James would even want him to.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not—” Leo shook his head. “I just want you to understand that whatever happened to your cousin, the only reason it’s noteworthy is that she was rich. People don’t usually walk away from a rich father without good reason. In any event, I think we can dismiss the idea that she ran off with a man. If she had, she would have turned up before now.” Well, unless something had happened to her after running away, but that wasn’t worth pointing out.
“It’s a pity,” James said, “because that’s the happiest outcome.”
Leo wasn’t sure he agreed. There were any number of good reasons to run away. But he understood that James, who had spent his entire childhood being sent away, might not understand this. “We’re assuming that your uncle didn’t know what happened to Rose. For all we know, the pair of them were in constant communication and he’s set you all on this goose chase for one last laugh.” He pushed his sandwich crusts around his plate. “So, this afternoon let’s visit the Plymouth library to get a look at some moldy old newspapers, then go back to Blackthorn so I can pick up the car.”
James furrowed his brow. “Martha will let you stay another night.”
“I’m certain she would. But I don’t want anyone to look too closely at us.” This wasn’t the entire truth. Something about this conversation had left him feeling unmoored.
“Leo, we live together.” He peered into his teacup. “Don’t we?”
Leo swallowed. Denying it would be untrue as well as upsetting to James, but he couldn’t agree without feeling like he had committed James to more than he could possibly understand. The fact was that he stayed with James when he was in England. What little he possessed, he kept at James’s house. But the idea of sharing a home with James seemed so grossly improbable that he felt like a charlatan saying it aloud.
“All the more reason for us not to be in one another’s pockets when we’re away from home,” he managed. “We don’t want anyone to think that I’m anything more than a bachelor friend who stays in your spare room when I’m not traveling for business.” Under the table, he pressed his leg against James’s.
“All right,” James conceded. He looked so disappointed that Leo wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him.
