The Naked Room Read Online Free PDF

the animals and look after the house.
    We made the bus in plenty of time. A gibbering wreck had nothing on me as I stuffed my handbag, with its cargo of precious documents, into the back pocket of the seat in front of me, then turned my mobile phone onto vibrate. I could not entertain the notion that Ally would, or could not, ring back.
    Determined to retain my composure, I switched off the overhead light and pulled my travel rug up to cover my shoulders. My fellow passengers settled at odd angles, like abandoned puppets. The driver hunched over the wheel, occasionally glancing into the rear vision mirror as though to check we were all on our best behaviour.
    Ally disappearing the night before a major concert performance? No way. She’d never do something as irresponsible. But what if a pervert had taken her? What if.
    Images of parents in television dramas viewing a sheet-draped body rammed into my mind. ‘Yes, that’s my daughter.’ ‘Yes, that’s my daughter…’ ‘Yes, that’s my daughter.’ Sometimes, the mother just—screamed.
    No. No. I refused to believe it would happen to us, only someone else. Ally’s mobile was her diary, her office. I groped my phone out of its pouch, shielded the glowing screen and hit speed dial. Again, Ally’s sweet voice asked me to leave a message. ‘Ring me. Mum.’
    I slumped down in my seat, willing myself not to keep phoning. I’d fill the thing up at this rate and then I wouldn’t be able to hear her voice at all. When she was a teenager, Ally never neglected to call me or send a message if she thought she would be late home or wanted to sleep over at a friend’s place. Even when we rowed, she always rang and snapped where she would be. She uses Skype at least once a week. ‘Mum, I’m off to Italy tomorrow, staying at… ‘or ‘Mum, guess what? I’ll be in Moscow next Thursday!’ But not this time. Dear God, please, please, keep her safe.
    The bus stopped and started countless times to pick up and set down travellers. Each time I jerked awake, disoriented and exhausted, to hear the driver stowing luggage under the bus, the slam of the locker door and the hiss of the main door closing. Boarding passengers scuffled past, bumping me with their wanted-on-voyage bags. I wanted to scream, ‘Hurry up, for God’s sake. Stop stuffing around!’
    I turned on my reading light and peered at my watch. 4.00 a.m. Two hours to go. The temptation to try Ally’s mobile again was overwhelming, but I restrained myself.
    Images of the past slid into my brain, like old newsreels looped to repeat themselves for an ever-changing audience. Ally, looking angelic at church with a pet rat peering through her waterfall of hair, scaring the living daylights out of the uptight Women’s Guild. That prank cost me a couple of sponge cakes for their next morning tea. Ally going to school for the first time, lip wobbling, eyes filling, the uniform so long that the hem sagged past her knees because I needed her to grow into the larger size. Georgie scolded me and I shortened it pretty quickly.
    My newborn, squashed, red and screaming under a tuft of red Mohawk, her delicate infant neck warm and talcumed, snuffling like a baby hedgehog as she burrowed for my breast. What if the worst… no, don’t go there. Get yourself together, Eloise. Years of what might have been fell away, my determination to put my past behind me crumbled by terrifying images of my missing daughter. The past might be about to rise up and beat me about the head with an emotional bullwhip.
    In my shy way I’d craved adventure and hoped to find some in England in1983. Flush with money inherited from my father, I headed overseas in search of self-confidence and romance. After a few months and a couple of false starts, I settled into digs with two other girls, and obtained a job at Cambridge University in England. My flatmates were noisy and outgoing in sharp contrast to my tongue-tied demeanour when meeting people for the first