Dark Place to Hide (9 page)

Tara looks worried all of a sudden. She jerks upright. ‘God, Dee – Harper’s not rough with you, is he? He’s not…abusive?’

Diane laughs, flapping her hands. ‘Oh no, nothing like that.’ It comes out rather flat.

‘What then?’ Tara waits, her mouth open.

‘It’s, er…look, I don’t want to…you know…it’s between Harper and me. It’s no big deal.’

Tara’s voice softens. ‘You don’t want to talk about it?’

Diane doesn’t answer straight away. She’s cursing the fact that Tara has found the book – she meant to find a proper hiding place for it – with the others. ‘Harper is incredibly balanced and rational, but he has a slightly…troubled edge…’ she says, trailing her fingers across the bodice of the dress.

‘Are you frightened of him?’

‘No! It’s not like that. He adores me.’ Diane tries to find the right words. She knows Tara means well, but she’s not ready to tell her the full story. ‘I’ve discovered…there’s a darker side to him – that’s all.’

Tara doesn’t seem to like the sound of it. ‘Darker – how?’

Diane stands up. ‘Do you like the dress or not?’

‘It’s gorgeous,’ Tara says, dismissively, glancing again at the book.

Diane hugs the dress. ‘He never hurts me.’

Tara’s frown folds into mock disapproval, but she stays quiet.

‘Don’t say anything will you?’ Diane pleads.

Tara looks coy, twisting her pout to one side. ‘Your secret is safe with me.’

2 August – Third day missing

In the morning, I wake and in those first fuddled moments forget you’re not here. I must have been dreaming about you – a tense, erotic dream. I reach out in bed to the place your body should be. It’s cold and there is no hollow. Even the bed is forgetting you.

I pick up my phone from the bedside cabinet and ring your number. I’ve been ringing at regular intervals every day, but no longer with any hope – it’s just to hear your recorded message. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I ring your sister; I have a specific question for her.

‘Have you ever heard her use those words?’ I ask after my opening attempt at pleasantries.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Diane’s message said:
Sorry – a bit stressed. Taking time out.
Then two kisses. Have you ever heard her use those words?’

‘What –
taking time out
?’

‘Yeah.’

There’s a gap while she thinks about it. ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. I don’t see why not.’

Alexa doesn’t see the significance like I do. I know they’re not
your
words.

I end the call and stare blankly out of the bedroom window. I have to do something.

I ring Tara and we arrange to meet at St Mary’s. I cycle over – it’s less than five miles – and leave my bike locked to a drainpipe by the main entrance. The glass front is locked. It’s the
summer holidays, but I know teachers regularly pop in to clear their classrooms and prepare for the September intake. I walk round to the side of the building and look for lights. Meeting at the school is a good idea – it feels better than a bar. Even so, I feel a shiver of awkwardness when I see Tara through the window – you’d know why. We laughed about it afterwards; it’s not easy to forget.

Tara waves at me from her classroom and sends me back to the main door.

‘There’s no one else here,’ she explains, clicking the key in the lock. ‘Total bliss without the kids or any teachers – although the caretaker is around.’ She catches my eye as she says the last few words, as if she wants to make sure I realise we’re not alone, before turning on her heel for me to follow. I consider whether I might have said something to upset her recently – or whether during one of your tête-à-têtes, Dee, you’ve told her something about me she doesn’t like the sound of. I put it out of my mind – my focus has to be on filling in the gaps surrounding your disappearance.

When we reach her classroom, she invites me to sit on a desk at the front while she tips two curled-up spider plants into the bin. Tara is undeniably beautiful with a cute dark bob and green eyes elongated with thick black liner. She looks exotic and alluring. During our conversation she doesn’t stop moving: busying herself stripping posters from the walls, clearing old books into boxes, putting out fresh exercise books for the new faces in September.

‘How was Dee when you last saw her?’ I ask.

‘It was the last day of term, but to be honest all the staff were on auto-pilot just trying to get to the finishing post. I didn’t see her to talk to. Not properly.’

‘And the day before the miscarriage – your Thursday yoga class? Dee said it was cancelled.’

‘Yeah – that’s right.’ Tara picks up the board rubber, reaches up and starts sweeping smooth arcs into the chalky remains on the old-style blackboard. ‘The tutor sent round a text to say she had a stomach bug.’

Tara tells me you’d made plans to meet up for yoga, as usual, the day after you didn’t come home. ‘Was she vague or definite about that?’ I ask.

Tara continues to caress the board with the felt rubber even though it’s now clean. ‘She said she’d be there, but there was something about needing a new yoga mat – I think the dog had got to hers.’

I remember now. For some reason Frank took an instant dislike to it when you rolled it out one evening. He’d started chewing it and had ripped off one of the corners.

‘So, she was intending to turn up?’

‘Certainly sounded like it.’

‘And before the end of term, had she still been doing contact sports – hockey at lunchtime with the kids and so on?’

‘Oh, yeah. No change there.’ She knows why I’m asking. ‘She wasn’t avoiding exercise. She didn’t know she was pregnant, I’m certain. We’ve talked about having kids a lot – she would have told me.’

What I really want to ask is,
What about an affair – would she have told you about that?
Did
she tell you about that?
But I can’t bring myself to ask. I don’t feel ready to hear the reply.

Tara’s phone rings and she looks at the screen. ‘Listen, I’ll be back in tick – I just need to take this.’

For a second my heart leaps and I get to my feet, but she shakes her head when she sees my expectant stare. She leaves me in silence. Not even the clock on the wall makes a sound. It
feels unnerving for a schoolroom to be this quiet. I feel surrounded by the spirits of past pupils. I take my mind back to that Christmas party, purely to distract myself.

You were late and I was being chatty and friendly, largely killing time before you turned up. Tara had been working the room with a plate of vol-au-vents, but stalled when she got to me. She offered me a glass of wine.

‘You’re tapping your foot,’ she observed. ‘Do you like the track?’ It was Lady Gaga,
Born this Way.

‘Too disco for me,’ I said. ‘Her videos are amazing, though.’

‘I know – I love her,’ she exclaimed. ‘I
made
them put it on.’ She turned to the ancient hi-fi in the corner. She’d had a bit to drink and wobbled on her high heels. ‘I did a show once with one of her dancers.’ She handed me her glass and instantly broke into a series of dance moves. My mouth fell open as I marvelled at the way her body melted into the rhythm.

‘I’m never dancing with you,’ I said.

‘Aw – spoil sport.’

She reclaimed her glass and went on to tell me about her life before teaching. How her father was a theatre director in Copenhagen, but she’d been born in Epsom – how she’d been a pole dancer in Soho before finding her true vocation in the classroom.

‘It’s a big step from nightclubs to this,’ I said.

She sighed. ‘It’s true. Sometimes I wonder if it’s really me.’

I didn’t know you’d arrived, but Tara must have spotted you and left me for a moment. You told me afterwards that Tara had pulled you to one side and whispered a few words in your ear.

‘I’m going to be terribly mean and ignore you most of the night,’ she’d told you. ‘You don’t mind do you? Only I’ve been chatting to this gorgeous guy in the corner and there’s a real spark. He doesn’t seem to be with anyone. I don’t want to miss the chance – if there is one.’

You’d patted her on the arm and sent her on her way, not looking my way.

It was highly embarrassing after that.

Tara made a beeline back to me to carry on the conversation we’d started. Time went by. I checked my phone thinking you’d call about being delayed. I didn’t know you were at the far side of the room, chatting to your colleagues, waiting for me. At one point, I made Tara laugh and she spun on her glossy red stilettos and dragged me across the room by the wrist. It was something she said at that point that made me realise she hadn’t heard my name correctly. It was too late to put her straight; she was already tapping you on the shoulder from behind.

‘Here’s the charming man I was telling you about, Dee,’ she said unable to disguise her eagerness. She must have decided I was a new teacher starting the following term.

‘Harper, isn’t it?’ you said lifting an eyebrow. ‘You’re my husband, I believe.’

Tara barely batted an eyelid – she’s resilient and quick, like that. ‘Ah – the confirmed bachelor you married?’

‘A few things have changed since then,’ I said.

The three of us had linked arms and put the misunderstanding behind us, but you and I referred to it now and again. I thought you might be put out, but you said you liked the fact that other women found me attractive. You said it made you feel ‘even luckier’ that you managed to snap me up. I’ll never get tired of that sense of awe in you, Dee – it’s entirely misplaced, because I’m really nothing special at all, but I can’t help being secretly buoyed up by it.

Tara has come back into the room. I realise she’s waiting for me to ask another question.

I clear my throat. ‘When did you last have a proper chat with her?’

‘That would have been the Saturday before the…’ she looks at me, but doesn’t say the word. ‘We went shopping.’

‘Did she seem different at all?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. Actually, I’d say she was worried about something.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘You know Diane, she’s never late – and she nearly stood me up that day. I had to ring her – she’d forgotten we were supposed to be meeting. She never does that.’

‘You’re right – it is unusual. Anything else?’

‘She seemed distracted the whole time, if I’m honest. Not fully present, checking her phone a lot.’

‘Did she speak to anyone? Get any calls?’

‘Not when she was with me. I asked if she was okay and she shrugged me off and didn’t open up. I didn’t want to pry. She left about four o’clock; she said she wanted to get some ironing done.’ I throw my mind back to that weekend. I don’t recall any ironing.

‘And she hasn’t been in touch with you in the last couple of days?’

‘No.’

I walk right up to her to make it hard for her to look away. ‘You’re not protecting her?’

‘No. Honestly. I haven’t heard a peep from her.’ Tara steps from side to side; I can see she’s worried about you. ‘I’ve been trying her phone. It’s not like Dee at all.’

‘Did anything happen at school at the end of term – anything strange?’

‘Not really…just…’ She is holding up a dustpan looking like she is caught in a freeze-frame.

‘Go on.’

‘She’ll kill me if I say anything…although she might have told you…’ She backs away towards the cupboard behind the blackboard. I follow her.

‘It’s important, Tara.’

She stops. ‘Well – it’s the baby thing. About how fired up she’s been about being a mum.’

I nod. ‘Yeah – it’s been a big subject for us both. I know she’s keen.’

‘Not just keen, Harper – I mean…the photographs…’

‘What photographs?’

‘Okay – this is where she’ll kill me. She’s been taking photos of little kids, babies, pregnant mothers – she’s got about thirty of them on her phone.’

No doubt Tara can tell from my eyes that I didn’t know. ‘I see.’

‘She’s not just keen, Harper – she’s
desperate
.’

I had no idea you were this obsessed, Dee. ‘Okay.’ I turn away from her, go back to the edge of the table. ‘I haven’t recognised the depth of this. It’s my fault.’

She’s standing in front of me, about two feet away. You’ve known Tara for only two years or so, but she’s quickly become your best friend. You can confide in her in a way you never can with your sister. You’ve explained how well Tara listens, but above all you say you can both be ‘real’ with each other. There’s a straightforward quality to Tara that makes me see how that’s possible. She takes a step towards me and speaks again.

‘Don’t. I’m sure it’s not you.’ She touches my arm to make me look at her. ‘She probably didn’t want to keep going on about it…she said she didn’t want to put you under pressure.’

‘She said that?’

‘Yes,’ Tara assures me. I squeeze my eyes shut. Is this the reason you’ve gone? You were so desperate for a child that you turned to another man? I shake my head. It still seems too far-fetched.

‘Is there anything else? Anything at all? I’ve been backtracking over the last few weeks and, hand on heart, I can’t find anything to indicate she was unhappy or different in any way. Maybe she’s been trying to tell me something and I haven’t been listening?’

Was it because my performance in bed has gone off the boil? You never seemed disappointed.

‘No – I don’t think so. What about her sister?’ Tara says. ‘Does she know anything?’

‘Alexa is not very forthcoming.’ I shake my hands in the air, trying to grasp at something. ‘I keep wondering, looking back, to see if there have been a string of clues I’ve missed. A steady stream of hints I didn’t see because I didn’t…
want
to see them.’

‘Don’t you think her taking off like this is simply her way of dealing with the miscarriage? I mean it’s a massive thing for her. Everyone knew she was looking forward to having a family. It must have been awful finding out like that – the first sign she had of her pregnancy was losing the baby…and it was already all over.’

I press my palm against my head. I don’t know what to say.

Tara goes on, ‘One thing is certain – she adores you. Absolutely. She’s always going on about you – every day at school. I’m sure you’re not the reason. Even on that Saturday, she was talking about getting you something special for your anniversary.’