Where Everything Seems Double

mystery; I will go because I have missed Eve; I will go because I might heal the rift with Eve; I will go because her message is a cry of desperation; I will go because absorbing myself in this just might detach me from the endless non-news cycle as my country bickers and blusters and badgers its way towards a chaotic break with its European partners. Some of these reasons are more creditable than others and some more powerful, but I am not allocating points to them. You can, if you like.
Brexit pervades everything these days – as the October 31st deadline looms I live with grinning Hallowe’en masks, laughably terrifying, dancing before my inner eye – and so my terms for going to Cumbria reveal themselves as the phantom conditions they are: I am going, and Eve knows that I will go. What is the point of blustering?
I delete everything and start again, a different person now, calm and forgiving, above the fray:
 
‘Lovely to hear from you though sorry about the circumstances. Not sure how I can help but always glad of an excuse to spend time in the Lakes. I can rearrange a few things and be with you soon. Let me have details about where you are.
Gina x’
 
Well, you can’t fault it as an answer to a very rude message, can you? But I think it will freak Eve out. Bland is the last thing she’ll be expecting. She won’t know what to make of it. I start with the upper hand. I read it again. You couldn’t call it passive aggressive; it’s better than that. It says that I am the grown-up here, that I haven’t been fretting for ten years about her rejection, that I am busy but flexible, that I am happy to see an old friend. If she thinks that there is any kind of implied apology here, let her. In her heart she knows the truth. I press Send.
To ‘rearrange a few things’ is not simple, though. In two days’ time, Freda is due to arrive at my Bloomsbury flat for a week of London delights – shopping, theatre, museums, restaurants. Her mother, stepfather and brother will be in Italy and she is joining them later, but for the coming week she is my responsibility. Would she like a week in the Lakes instead of in London? To tell the truth, I am a bit scared of Freda at the moment. We have always had a happy rapport: she is independent, outspoken and funny, with good taste in books and an interest in almost everything, and we have always enjoyed ourselves together. But last week she had her thirteenth birthday, and my experience, not only of my own daughters but generations of pupils in my teaching career, is that, in the summer holiday, that small gap of time between Year Eight and Year Nine, ninety-five percent of thirteen-year-olds are infected by some kind of communal disease: they leave school in July still smiling, bright-eyed, eager children and they return, barely six weeks later, slouching, scowling, slothful neo-adolescents. Some catch a milder version of the infection, but even they have to take on protective colouring and follow the new rules: treat all adults as the enemy; display no enthusiasm for anything; adopt resentment as your go-to emotion. A year later, most of them will emerge from this pupa-like state, as suddenly as they went into it, and will stretch their wings as flighty teenagers – restless, sex-fuelled, funny, competitive, given to crazes and hates, insecure and invulnerable, fearful and assertive, often exhausting, sometimes exhilarating. But they have to get through being thirteen first.
Freda was showing symptoms of Year Nine Syndrome last week, I thought, when I went down to Marlbury to celebrate her birthday: snappiness with her mother, sarcasm to her brother, a compulsive commitment to silent texting – and, I felt, a slippery avoidance of me, a reluctance to engage, despite the fact that my birthday present had been an expensive session at a hairdressers, where her blonde curls had been straightened into a smooth sheet which she tossed self-consciously as she left the house with her friends for a celebration supper at a new pizza place. I was not too worried about how we would get on for a week in London because there I am the source of grown-up delights, but how will it be in the Lakes, off my home turf and with the psychodrama of Eve, Colin and a missing child to deal with? I am, as I said, scared.
I hesitate before I call her, but she sounds like her old, usual, bright self.
‘Hello, Gran. How are you?’
(‘Gran’ is new – ‘Granny’ is too babyish, I surmise.)
‘I’m fine,’ I say, ‘and I’m looking forward to seeing you…’
‘But?’ she says. ‘You’re going to say, but, aren’t you?’
‘Why are you so clever?’ I say. ‘The thing is, I wonder if I could ask for your help with something.’
‘What sort of something?’ She is suspicious, with good reason.
‘A mystery,’ I say.
‘Like before? When you found out who killed that friend of Auntie Annie’s?’
‘You remember that?’
‘I certainly do. You were a legend.’
‘Well you were pretty much of a legend too, finding out what had happened to the dog. And that’s why I think you might be able to help. Only this time it’s not a dog that’s missing.’
‘A person?’
‘You’ve heard about Ruby Buxton?’
‘Of course, I – you don’t mean you’re looking for her?’
‘I think I’m going to be. I’ve got a friend who lives near where Ruby disappeared and she thinks I could help. But actually, I think you could help too. Maybe help more. You might be able to talk to the local kids, Ruby’s friends, and—’
‘Kids?’ she asks coldly. ‘Ruby is thirteen, you know.’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Teenagers, I mean. Sorry.’
‘And that would be instead of shopping and Evita and galleries and…’
‘We’ll do that later, I promise. I’ll swap the Evita tickets for when you come back from Italy, and we’ll