“She’s lovely,” I said. “I can’t wait for you to meet her.”
“Oh,” she said.
“What?”
She paused. “I hadn’t realized you meant a girl.”
I laughed and pushed her arm, Come on. I mean, honestly. It was always going to be a girl. “As soon as we’ve found a place, you’ll have to come over.”
***
The flat we found was in a tower block near Lewisham: reasonable transport links into Central London, big enough for the two of us, cheap enough to allow us to save. I told my mother the area was lively. I told my father it was liberal. I told my brother it was good enough for the time being.
And I kept my word, inviting Willa to come and meet Cat almost just as soon as we’d moved in. The August air was still warm at seven, and we’d thrown open all our windows. Laughter, shouting and snatches of music freewheeled into the flat from the street below, together with the heady scent of street food, mixed in with bus fumes and weed. In our kitchen, an area of the living room portioned off by a narrow worktop that doubled as our dining table, Cat was stirring a big pot of callaloo while I pretended to tidy the living space.
“Robyn?” Cat said, looking up. “You’ve been plumping those bloody cushions for about five minutes. Are you—”
“Door,” I said, “hang on.”
And then there was Willa, standing on our little welcome mat, holding a small plant in both hands and blinking rapidly.
“I’m here,” she said, her voice containing a small note of panic; then, in a whisper as the words Just fuck off bounced up the concrete stairwell from the floor below, she added, “I don’t think they mean me.”
I ushered her inside, and there was a moment when time seemed almost to stop. Cat walked forward. Here was Cat, this brilliant, amazing woman whom I loved, I really did. And here was Willa, whose presence filled me with such complicated feelings I didn’t know how to turn them into words. And here they both were, in the same room, at the same time. As planned. For some baffling reason I’d engineered this, and now it was happening.
“Willa,” I said, “this is Cat. Cat is—” I stopped. They both looked at me. “Making us her grandmother’s totally amazing saltfish patties for supper. And, Cat, this is Willa, who—” I stopped again, thinking I should really have thought through the introductions prior to Willa’s arrival at our place. Cat narrowed her eyes.
“Robyn, are you intentionally trying to make this as weird as possible?” To Willa she said, “It’s lovely to meet you.”
Willa laughed. She held the plant out to Cat.
“It’s a succulent,” she said, “apparently they’re almost impossible to kill.”
We showed her around the flat, our bedroom, the little bathroom and the very small second bedroom which now housed Cat’s drawing table, explaining how the lime-green and egg-yellow walls would be painted over just as soon as we found the time. Then we ate, and after, as the air finally began to cool, the three of us collapsed together on the brown corduroy sofa Cat and I had rescued from a skip.
I knew Cat felt odd about meeting Willa. She hadn’t come straight out and said anything directly, but I knew. Nonetheless, she did everything to make her feel welcome, even getting her laptop to show Willa the plans she was drawing up for her very first commission.
“It’s going to be the best toilet block ever,” I said.
“It is,” Cat said, grinning. “It really is.”
“While you’ve got that open,” Willa said, “would you mind if I showed Robyn my new website?”
“Sure,” Cat said, “go ahead.”
Willa took the computer and balanced it half on her knees, and half on mine. Obviously she hadn’t purposely meant to exclude Cat, but still, I could see how it might have looked like that. Cat glanced at me then, after a moment, hauled herself up off the sofa and walked stiffly toward the kitchen. Meanwhile Willa had opened a site called findlaika.com.
“Oh, wow,” I said.
At the top of the first page there were two photographs. One was familiar to me: it was the one the press still used sometimes, showing a startled-looking teenage girl half hidden behind a thick fringe. The other was a slightly fuzzy image of two much younger girls, the taller of whom, smiling and dressed in a yellow frock with a Peter Pan collar, was instantly recognizable as Willa. She had her arm around the shoulders of a younger dark-haired girl who was squinting into the sun, one arm held across her forehead and half her face in shadow.
“It’s a bit amateur, I know, but it’s the best I could manage. It’s for Laika more than anything. I just hope, you know, if she ever googled her name…or somebody might recognize her—she could have amnesia, right? It’s got a mailbox too, so people can contact me directly. Actually, could I make you an admin? That way we can talk about anything that comes in. And also look at this.”
She scrolled down until a further image filled the screen, an e-fit impression of a serious-looking young woman with large brown eyes and closely cropped hair.
“It’s an age-progression image of what she might look like now, at twenty. What d’you think?”
“I thought she had long hair.”
I began reading the post below the e-fit. Dated just a few days before, it was addressed directly to Laika herself.
“My beloved Laika,” it read.
Not a day goes by when I don’t think of you. This week I came across a new word: syzygy. Even before I looked it up I knew it was going to mean something amazing: I mean, you can tell that just by looking at the word. Syzygy. How fabulous is that? So you don’t need to go to the trouble of finding a dictionary, I’ll tell you right now what it means: it’s an alignment of planets. And, ever since I read that, I keep thinking that someday the planets will align and you will appear. And then we’ll spend our entire time laughing and talking and everything will be wonderful. What I really mean is, everything will be normal, and that’s honestly all I want. For things to be normal. I know you are out there, somewhere. I hope you know how much I miss you and how much I wish you were here. And I hope that, wherever you are, you are surrounded by animals and the sound of the ocean.
My beloved sister, I miss you so much.
All my love,
Willa xxx
Willa looked at me with eyes full of such feeling that for a moment I felt speechless and lost. I took her hand and held it, touch closing the years between us. I was filled with an almost unbearable sadness for her. How hard it must be, I thought, to keep believing, with so very little to go on, when the whole world thinks she’s dead. We sat like that for a while, both of us lost in thought, until I felt that strange sensation of being watched. When I looked up, Cat was staring at the two of us from across the room, her face unsmiling and tense. I gave Cat a brief awkward smile, then squeezed Willa’s hand, patted it and let it go.
13 Vapor Trails Robyn
That September, Cat and I each took a week’s holiday so we could freshen up the flat. We started on the Friday night and were shoving the furniture about when somebody banged on our door. Cat opened it, and Willa was there, her face witchy-wild. She came straight over to me.
“I’ve got a hit on findlaika. Just now.”
