Dark Place to Hide (4 page)

I pick up the phone again to start making more calls.

I’ve never been unfaithful to you, Dee, or even considered it. Even now in the mornings, I prop myself up on one elbow and quietly watch your face with the sublime satisfaction of
knowing you’re in my bed, inches away from me, breathing the same air. You continue to light up the room whenever you enter, even after our three years as Dr and Mrs Penn.

Nothing about your behaviour has changed in the last few months. We’re so close I know I would have spotted something. A slight hesitation, perhaps, when I reached over to kiss you, excuses when I initiated sex, a dropping off in the number of times you made flirtatious remarks or sexual advances towards me, a distractedness about you, less available. None of that has happened.

It’s nearly dark. I throw open the window in the kitchen and rest my elbows on the ledge taking in the grassy, dewy air, trying to slow down my breathing. I stare at the fading grey shape made by the fountain in the centre and the bird feeders idly swinging under the lilac tree. Right now, this doesn’t feel like mine. Ours. It doesn’t feel like home. Everything’s changed.

We nearly had a baby. Just a few days ago, we were on our way to being three. And we didn’t know. Neither of us. It has totally floored me.

I don’t want to feel like this.

I catch my reflection in the glass, unable to recognise the person I see. In fact, everything around me seems unfamiliar as if I’m in the wrong house. I’m suddenly cold. I shut the window and scan the details of the room to make my eyes remember where I am and how I got here.

I take myself back to October 2011. It’s all I can think of to ground myself. We bought this detached cottage in the small Hampshire village in Nettledon weeks after we married. We were both done with the hectic city and were already thinking ahead, wanting clean air and space for our children, instead of pollution and chaos.

‘We both need to slow down,’ you’d told me once, when I sank onto the bottom stair, frazzled, drained and fractious, after another arduous commute home. ‘London’s got too manic for us. Let’s leave.’ It was all the encouragement I needed.

Rosamund Cottage is certainly what you’d call a ‘bijou’ property – we’d both been renting in London and knew we wouldn’t get a palace for our savings anywhere. But it’s terribly cute and cosy with low beams, small chunky windows and sunlight that slices across the sitting room. The scattering of cottages at our end of the village are separated by trees and large magnolias and rhododendrons – so we are not overlooked and have plenty of privacy. We both fell in love with the place at first sight.

You’ve always wanted to live by water, Dee, and there’s a river running past the end of our garden. Sometimes I find you down there sitting on the bank gazing into the ripples. You also wanted to learn to ride a horse and last summer we adopted Rupert from the local stables.

‘You can come home from University to a real fire in the hearth,’ you’d suggested, ‘and try your hand at keeping bees. Or chickens – there’s a ready-made coop at the far end of the garden.’ I remember being touched that you’d listened and had held onto my dreams for me.

As it happens, my plans are as yet unrealised; other basic jobs have had to come first, like sorting out the guttering and the ongoing problems with the chimney.

It’s late. The kettle boils without me realising I’d even switched it on. I must get a grip. You’re going to need me to be robust and supportive when you return. You’ll be home any minute with a heartfelt apology, no doubt, about meeting someone while you were out.
I’m so sorry I made you worry, Dibs. I tried to get away, but she needed to talk.

I leave the hot water – I don’t want a drink. I reach into the packet of biscuits for a digestive, then put it back. I won’t go to bed; I’ll lie on the sofa and wait for you.

The baby has gone. Cremated by now. The DNA results come through at the end of the week. Then I’ll know for certain.

13 July – 8am

‘We’ve found her!’ comes a voice from the far side of the castle grounds. ‘She’s in the pit.’

‘Thank God,’ Marion cries, squeezing the damp tissue in her hand into a pulp. She allows the police constable to guide her along the narrow path in the grass towards the woman in a high-visibility waistcoat who is waving. Rose, she thinks her name is. They stop at a low collapsed wall and Marion gets down on her knees, even though the ground is knobbly with stones. ‘You okay, honey?’ she shouts down into the hollow below.

Clara stares up through the railings of the pit, her fingers in her mouth, looking bemused, but unhurt.

‘Mummy’s here, darling. They’re going to get you out.’

Marion fights back the urge to break into relief-driven tears. How did she get down there?

The official from Portchester Castle wipes a bead of sweat from his lip. He’s holding the keys and has told us twice that he’s made a special trip from Bournemouth on a Sunday to open up.

‘It’s not a pit, PC Felton,’ he calls out unnecessarily. ‘It’s an oubliette. It means “place of forgetting”; a dungeon where prisoners were left abandoned, never to be released.’

Marion doesn’t want to know that. She turns to the constable by her side. ‘Thank you – thank you
so
much.’ She hangs onto his sleeve. ‘I was really panicking. We were here yesterday and when we got back home I felt so rough, I had to go straight to bed, but I was certain my mother had arranged to collect Clara for the night, so I knew she’d be looked after.’ Her mother
had started popping in with her own spare key and didn’t disturb her if she was asleep. ‘Staying over with people is second nature to Clara. She’s so smart and independent for her age – she’s only seven.’

Marion is worried about what the constable will think of her and is speaking too fast. She knows she should have called her mother that evening to check she’d collected Clara, but the pain in her back had been so bad, she’d been forced to take morphine and was out for the count. As it happened, Marion had got her days mixed up and her mother wasn’t expecting Clara after all. It wasn’t until her mother rang the following morning to ask if Clara might want to stay over
that
night, that Marion knew her daughter wasn’t with her.

‘She must have come back to the castle before it closed and sneaked back in,’ Marion tells the officer. ‘I called the police straight away.’

‘At least the temperature didn’t drop too low last night,’ says the constable. He’s trying to make her feel better. He’s given her his name twice, but in her frenzy, she hasn’t hung on to it. She’s been thinking how terrifying it must have been for her daughter, no matter what the temperature was, to have spent all night trapped down there in the damp with no pillow, no blanket, no food or water. She thinks of the word oubliette and shivers. She tries to imagine Clara finding her way inside then being unable to get out. She thinks of a wasp trapped in a jam jar; the frantic buzzing as it bats against the glass. She presses a palm against her chest to ward off a spasm of nausea. What a dreadful mother she is for letting this happen.

Rose appears through a gap in the rubble below and squats down in front of Clara. ‘There are a lot of loose rocks down here,’ she calls out. ‘Part of the wall must have disintegrated after Clara got inside.’ The seven year old looks up again to check if it’s the right thing to do, to go with her.

‘It’s okay, sweetheart. The lady will bring you out to me. Take her hand. Be careful.’

‘We’ll disappear for a while,’ Rose calls up from the pit. ‘The only way to get out is over that way.’ She points towards the other side of the site, where the remains of a tower stand at ground level.

Clara gives her mother a jolly wave as the pair scramble through a hole and vanish.

Marion had been promising Clara they’d go to Portchester’s medieval castle for weeks and days when she felt well enough to go out were getting few and far between. She turns again to the constable by her side. ‘She’s such a daredevil. Always crawling into small spaces. She sleeps under her bed, she clambers under cars, climbs into trees. She thinks a “Keep Out” sign means “Come right in and make yourself at home.” One of these days she going to do herself serious harm. I can’t watch her all the time.’

Marion knows she’s rattling on again. Her mouth keeps opening, her words filling in the hollow where fear and dread have been lurking.

The constable flicks away a fly that has landed on his thumb. ‘It must be hard…especially with…’ Marion sees the way he pretends not to notice the headscarf that covers every inch of her scalp, her missing eyebrows, her fragile white skin.

‘I have good days and bad days,’ she tells him, the emotional release making her reveal things she wouldn’t normally tell strangers. ‘I used to work part-time in the post office, but I can’t even do that anymore. I often have to spend the day in bed with the pain and fatigue. Then there’s the side effects from the chemo; the nausea and vomiting, the diarrhoea. The sore throat and the hair loss.’ She laughs and fiddles with the knot on her headscarf. ‘Sorry…’

‘Don’t apologise, Mrs Delderfield. You have a lot to cope with – that’s for certain.’ He rubs his chin and stares at the grass. ‘I knew Morris. He did some training for us once. Remarkable chap. Very professional.’

Marion’s husband was a skydiving instructor with over a thousand jumps under his belt when she waved him goodbye four years ago as he set out for a routine stunt display in France. He was coupled with a cameraman, Henri Clem, who claimed he was experienced, but had, in fact, only done four jumps in his life. On the way down, Henri’s chute got tangled up with his camera. Morris tried to save him, but they both ran out of time.

Marion fingers her wedding band. ‘The company who hired Morris that day should never have let the other guy jump,’ she told the officer. ‘I’m still fighting for compensation. During the periods of remission, I write letters and get on the phone – but it never seems to go anywhere.’

They watch as Clara and the female officer approach from the far end of the ruins, hand in hand.

‘Do you get help with Clara?’ the constable asks as they stride towards them. Marion is always on high alert about this kind of question, convinced others have got social services in mind.

‘We had to move to a smaller place last year, so I had to leave a lot of good friends behind, but I have a solid network of helpers. Plenty of reliable babysitters and neighbours. My mother helps when she can.’ She doesn’t add that her mother hasn’t been well herself and is fast becoming unreliable.

The constable is kind and doesn’t look as though he’s about to turn her in. There’s a lame silence between them before Clara breaks away from PC Felton and comes running round the
side of the moat. She buries her face in her mother’s skirt and Marion wishes she had the strength to pick her up. She crouches down instead and takes a good look at her.

‘Did you hurt yourself?’ Marion takes in the milky smell of Clara’s long mousy-brown hair and pulls her close to see if she’s been crying. Clara shakes her head. She’s a pretty, smiley child and looks remarkably unshaken. ‘Are you hungry?’

Her daughter nods with a frown. Marion hands her a chewy raisin bar from her handbag and she takes it politely.

Wafts of the rescuing officer’s floral perfume temporarily mask the stale dank air reaching her from another dungeon below. ‘There was a small gap under the stone stairwell – you can’t see it from here,’ Rose explains. ‘A few stones have toppled down from the floor above.’ She pats Clara on the head. ‘Once she got inside, more of the rubble must have come down and sealed off the opening.’ She brushes white dust from her sleeves. ‘She looks fine, but we’ll need to get Clara to the hospital for a check-up, just to be sure.’

‘Of course,’ Marion replies. ‘I have to go home first. In the panic, I didn’t bring my medication—’

‘And we need to feed the fish,’ chips in Clara, swinging on her mother’s hand.

‘No problem – we’ll take you.’

PC Felton addresses the warden, who’s wearing a T-shirt bearing the castle logo, that looks two sizes too small. ‘You’ll need to cordon the area off and make it safe,’ she says. ‘It’s dangerous to the public as it is.’ He reaches for his phone with a sullen nod.

Marion turns to thank the man with the cluster of keys and he nods, but is already speaking to someone on his mobile. The officers walk with the two of them towards the exit.

‘Will the car have blue lights on and make the whoop sound?’ Clara asks on the way.

Rose answers with a smile. ‘I’m afraid not. We’ll take it nice and slow getting you back to Nettledon.’

Clara looks disappointed and scrunches up her mouth so her top lip brushes her nose.

Marion doesn’t want a lift; she’d rather walk for a while first, she needs the air, but the police insist. They can see she isn’t well and her daughter has had a nasty scare.

As they reach the main road, Clara starts to skip.

‘Shall I tell you a secret, Mummy?’ she whispers, pulling on her arm.

‘Go on, then.’

‘Being down in that mangy pit was the bestest fun
ever
…’

31 July – First day missing

I’m surprised to wake, because I didn’t think I’d been asleep. I’ve been waiting to hear your key in the front door, but it didn’t come. Frank jumps on the sofa dropping the squelchy tennis ball between my knees. I toss it away half-heartedly and he flings himself after it, skidding on the polished wooden floors that are everywhere.

I’m at a loss. All my calls last night ended up getting nowhere. Tara suggested you might need space, Sally said you’d seemed distracted lately, other colleagues from school haven’t heard from you since the end of term. I dreaded calling your mother, adding another thing for her to worry about when she’s already preoccupied with your father, but it had to be done. She was an unlikely source of information, but I’m hanging onto the possibility of finding any clues as to your whereabouts.

The conversation with your mother took an inevitable turn after about twenty seconds. It sounds like Lucinda has gone overboard with post-it notes everywhere, leaving instructions about where Ted should hang his coat, which rooms are upstairs, where to find the toilet. She has stuck notes saying
don’t drink this
on the Domestos and cleaning fluid under the sink, others saying
don’t use – cracked
(on a chipped milk jug) or
cat only
(on pouches of rabbit meat). All the photographs on the fridge have stickers with names attached. His Alzheimer’s has become her round-the-clock project.