Read Online A Kind of Vanishing by Lesley Thomson - Free Book Online

headaches.’
    ‘Oh, Doctor Ramsay!’
    Eleanor had known, by the way her Dad fiddled with his watch, that he sniffed a criticism. Good doctors should be able to stop headaches. Her mother had been well enough to go out for a meal that night. As The Narrator, Eleanor sat next to her and was allowed to choose her own pudding.
    In the photograph, Alice was in school uniform. Her hair was bunched in pigtails with bows neatly tied. The crisp newspaper without tears and creases made Eleanor forget that Alice couldn’t have posed for her picture after going missing. Alice gave a big smile for the camera, showing off clean white teeth that Eleanor knew she brushed every morning and every night. Up down, up down, not too hard so they are pearly white . Her own face was above the words ‘The tomboy who courted danger and excitement’.
    Alice had said Eleanor looked like a boy in the photo they had found in a packet at the back of a drawer in the games cupboard, and left out on the sideboard in the dining room. This was the clumsy snapshot that Mark Ramsay snatched up when the police asked for one of his daughter. Lucian had only taken it to finish the film. Few pictures of Eleanor were taken on purpose. She was a liability, likely to squirm and be smeared with dirt as well as pink and sweaty from getting over-excited. She had cut the crooked fringe herself with unwieldy kitchen scissors, and tufts peeped out of the sides of her beloved denim sailor cap, pushed jauntily back. People examining her over their breakfasts assumed the sun-dazzled scowl was evidence of ill temper and waywardness, and formed the toast-crunching opinion that she was not the kind of girl they would let loose on their own children.
    Eleanor’s boisterous presence was in stark opposition to Alice’s angelic absence. Eleanor was placed in a different species category to Alice.
    The previous night, after the police had been, Eleanor had overheard her mother telling her father off. Isabel Ramsay had an acute sensitivity to the importance of public perception. She was adept at constructing a potent and plausible story with little scenery and scant characterisation. As she berated her husband for his careless choice of picture, Isabel knew exactly the damage he had done to her family.
    Alice had flipped through the photographs and made a gurgling sound at one of Gina leaning against a stable door with Prince, her horse. Eleanor clutched her stomach for the giggles they would share, for it appeared that Gina had a horse’s head growing out of her neck. Instead, Alice had said Gina was beautiful in a strangled voice. When she saw the snap of Eleanor she had sniffled into church-steepled hands, saying her cap was too big and she looked like a boy.
    So, Alice wasn’t laughing now.
    Eleanor remained on the chequered tiles in the hallway, hidden by the coat stand, her skin tinted red by the dawning sun coming through the stained glass fanlight. Blurred back to front sentences like a crudely coded message were imprinted on her bare arms from the newsprint where she had leaned on the paper, but she was too engrossed to notice. She turned back to the front page and read the thick black words about Senator Kennedy. ‘Kennedy Clings To Life After Brain Operation.’ She didn’t know what a Senator was, but now discovered that apart from having ten children he had another on the way.
    He might die without ever seeing his baby.
    She peered closely at the picture of the man lying on the floor with his hands resting on his chest. He looked asleep in the sun like her Dad except he had on a suit and tie and wore polished black shoes. His jacket was twisted and crumpled. His eyes were like the Judge’s and stared at something frightening on the ceiling. Eleanor ran a finger along the words: ‘They rested his head on a plastic boater hat, with a band that said: “Kennedy Will Win”. The blood from his wound ran down over the hat, and mixed with the pool on the floor.’ He