First One Missing (20 page)

He nodded as if unable to speak, taking the opportunity to discreetly reposition his head so that his nose was turned away.

He’d given Suzy the whole sob story the first time they’d gone out together. How his ex-wife had cheated on him and then thrown him out so she could have a shag-fest with her toy boy, but still expected him to pay for everything for her and Keira, even though she’d stopped him seeing his daughter, making up all sorts of lies so that he couldn’t get access.

‘I don’t like to bad-mouth anyone, and us single mums ought to stick together, but your ex sounds like she’s being a complete bitch,’ said Suzy now. ‘If she’d only let you have her for just one day. She and Bethany would have such a laugh together, I know they would.’

‘Your go, Jase.’ Bethany was bouncing up and down in her seat and looking at him coquettishly with her head to one side. Next to Emily, she looked almost clownish with her blonde curls and plump pink cheeks. She’d grow up exactly like her mother, he could see that now. Steadily gaining weight as she got older, a few pounds every year, because she couldn’t resist her little treats, stubbornly clinging to her ‘little girl’ mannerisms long after she’d outgrown them, putting her head to one side and looking up through her lashes as if she was still a cute child rather than an adult woman. Emily, on the other hand – she was different. Her body was still like a boy’s. No curves or lumps and bumps. Though she wasn’t pretty, with her parchment skin and her deep-set brown eyes and the wide mouth with the thin lips she kept pressed close together to cover the tombstone front teeth, there was something other-worldly about her that made his breath catch in his throat every time he looked at her.

‘Go on, babe, show them how it’s done.’

Suzy gave him a playful shove. Already she was acting in that proprietorial way women did, sending out silent ‘he’s taken’ messages, like they were spraying their territory.

Jason got to his feet and perused the bowling balls stacked up on the rails, eventually selecting the black which was the heaviest. He picked it up with a casual gesture as if it weighed nothing and flexed his elbow, enjoying how the muscles of his arm strained against his white T-shirt. As he moved towards their bowling lane, he could feel the others’ eyes on his back and he allowed himself a slight swagger before stopping and bringing his arm back, then lunging forward in a fluid, easy motion.

‘Strike! Strike! Strike!’ called the electronic voice.

‘Yes!’ shrieked Suzy, leaping up to plant a kiss right on his mouth with her own sticky glossed lips. As she pulled away, it was all he could do not to wipe a hand across his face. Over Suzy’s bare shoulder, he could see Emily smiling her shy smile at him. He puffed out his chest.

An hour later, he was in his car sitting opposite a terraced house in a rundown street near Turnpike Lane. People were always going on about the place being up and coming, whatever that meant, but as far as Jason was concerned it was still as much of a shithole as when he’d lived here. He wanted better for Keira, but what could he do with his bitch of an ex refusing to let him near her?

The front door had a heavy, metal frame and grubby dimpled glass. He could picture the cramped communal hallway that lay behind it with its lino perpetually covered by a carpet of flyers and takeaway pizza menus, and the pushchair belonging to the selfish cow who lived upstairs always blocking the way. Through the narrow bay window to the left of the door, Jason could just make out the framed print of a beach scene Donna had insisted on putting up on the wall. Said it cheered her up. Not as if anyone would notice – with that sour expression she wore 24/7. Though he hadn’t been inside the flat for months, he knew there was a black leather sofa under that print, far too big for the cramped room. Donna had insisted on it when they’d seen it in the furniture showroom, and like a mug he’d signed up for the monthly repayments. She’d always been grasping. Take, take, take. That’s all Donna had ever done. And now she’d taken his daughter too.

When he’d first met her, her neediness hadn’t been an issue. In fact it had been a bit of a turn-on. He’d liked doing things for her, giving things to her. She was just a scrawny, underdeveloped kid addicted to vodka and prescription pills. He’d helped her get clean, forced her to eat proper food, stared down the pushers when they came sniffing around. And in return she’d been grateful, eager to please. For the first time in his life someone relied on him and it made him feel good. For a while he’d thought this was it. The disturbing thoughts he’d had ever since he was thirteen, the urges, the images – all those would disappear now he had a proper girlfriend. Then they got married, and almost instantly the novelty wore off. Whereas before when she’d ask for things, it would make him feel powerful, now it just felt like she was constantly nagging. But even that wasn’t as bad as the look of disappointment he’d catch on her face sometimes. That junkie bitch? Disappointed in
him
?

After Keira was born there was a brief honeymoon period where things seemed to go back to how they were. For a while they’d almost been a team – he working all the overtime he could to support his family, she staying at home to look after the baby. For the first time in his life, he’d felt like he belonged somewhere. But after a couple of years it had fallen apart again. Donna didn’t have the first clue about being a mum. She was inconsistent, veering wildly between over-indulging Keira one minute and yelling at her the next. And that made him lose his temper in turn. He was only protecting his daughter, like any father would. The atmosphere in the flat had gone from shit to poisonous. There’d been a few incidents. Nothing major, but it was before the anger-management stuff so he hadn’t had the self-control he had now.

Donna grew hard and bitter, half scared of him, and half openly goading. She said things about him and how he was with Keira, just to wind him up. Now he realized she’d been waiting for the opportunity to shaft him. If the nosy bitch hadn’t come in to Keira’s room at that precise moment, none of this would have happened. He wouldn’t be sitting in a car outside his own flat that was filled with stuff that he’d paid for, not even allowed to set foot through the door. He wouldn’t be reduced to loitering around to get a glimpse of his own daughter, taking orders from social workers in shapeless cardigans, their briefcases bulging with files about so-called problem families.

Just in time, he glanced in his wing mirror and saw Donna and Keira approaching on the other side of the road, leaning close together, hunched over something. He slid down in his seat but the two of them were too engrossed in whatever they were carrying to notice him. Anyway he doubted they’d recognize the car. It was the second time he’d changed motors since he’d had to get rid of that Golf.

As they passed, Donna yelled, ‘Oi, hands off, you little thief!’ and then gave that awful smoker’s laugh of hers that sounded more like a dog’s bark. Jason saw now that she was carrying a cardboard box from a fast-food place and they were stuffing themselves with chips and he had to clench his fingers around the steering wheel to stop himself from flinging the car door open. This was the woman the courts had decided was more fit to be a parent than him? This slag who couldn’t even be bothered to cook their daughter a decent meal?

No wonder Keira looked so pale and unhealthy. Keeping his head low, Jason observed his daughter carefully, frowning at the cropped T-shirt and skimpy shorts. Only eight years old and Donna had her dressing like a whore. The two made their way up the overgrown path, Donna’s harsh, grating voice rabbiting on all the while, and Jason felt the red mist building in front of his eyes. He slammed his fist down on the steering wheel, enjoying how the sharp jolt of pain cut across the searing loneliness he felt watching his wife and daughter at the front door –
his
front door,
his
daughter – arm in arm. Briefly, as Donna pushed inside, he had a glimpse of the junk mail littering the hall and the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. He watched Keira’s narrow back following her mother into the building before the door slammed shut, leaving him in his car, poleaxed with anger and grief.

All through the drive to work, through the bumper-to-bumper traffic, he kept thinking about Keira in those shorts and getting himself worked up all over again. He tried to remember the anger-management techniques he’d been taught, but his mind wouldn’t focus. What the fuck was Donna doing letting her go around looking like that? Didn’t she realize what kind of sick perverts were out there?

Even when he arrived at the club in a part of Old Street where City traders still just about outnumbered the poncy hipsters with their stupid beards, and headed inside to take up his usual position guarding the cordoned-off VIP area, standing feet planted firmly apart, hands clasped in front of him, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Donna needed her head examining.

On the main stage straight ahead of him, the new girl launched into her routine, slowly gyrating in her skin-tight catsuit, edging the zip down as she did so. The smattering of early punters gazed on, largely impassive. A couple of them had their hands buried in their laps. Pigs, the lot of them. Filthy
pigs
. His thoughts swung back to Emily, the slight girl with her shy smile and curtain of dark hair. There was something about her that had reminded him of that other girl. He allowed himself a quick flashback – the silkiness of soft skin, a smell of apple shampoo, the rustling of the plastic bags he’d tied over his shoes as he carried his load through the still, dark trees …

‘You gonna let us through or what?’

The man in front of him was wearing a suit and clasping the hand of one of the younger girls. Tanya. That was her name. Pretty. Soft. Not like some of the hard bitches around here. The man had been in a few times before, flashing his cash, making a show of ordering two bottles at a time of the £450 champagne or shots of whisky at £90 a pop. The punters weren’t supposed to touch the girls but often they tried to cop a feel on the way to one of the small rooms at the back of the VIP area reserved for a private dance. As he wordlessly unhooked the gold-braid cordon, he watched the man’s hand carefully, as it came to rest on the small of Tanya’s back before working its way lower.

Pigs
. All of them.

24

‘I mean, when are we ever going to need this stuff? Like, how often in your daily life do you think, oh thank God I learned quadratic equations when I was thirteen?’

Jemima was glaring at her as if Emma were solely to blame for the national curriculum. Normally Emma might have attempted to explain how the principles of maths impact on daily life or the importance of getting as wide an education as possible at an age where one was still open enough to absorb it, but today she had no energy for appeasement. She kept glancing at the retro Bakelite clock on the wall. Quarter to five. An hour and a quarter since she’d realized she could use Guy’s FindMyPhone app synced with the family computer to track the whereabouts of his phone, and therefore of Guy himself.

St John’s Wood.

Nowhere near his office in the City. Not on the way home.

So that’s where she lived. This woman who’d given her husband something to get up for, to live for, to breathe for. It figured. St John’s Wood was where all the serious money was. Guy had always been drawn to wealth. Well, let her have him. She was welcome to him. But for now Emma needed to find him. She needed him, just this once, to be
her
husband again. Emma was still reeling from the casual way with which Leanne had knocked back her revelation about the odd elastic bands the previous day. She’d been so sure she’d leap on it as a new clue, that it would unlock a whole unexplored avenue of investigation, but her own bubbling excitement had died in her throat at Leanne’s flat reception of the news, and barely suppressed sighs. And now she found herself reexamining it, this detail that had seemed so crucial at the time. What did it mean, after all? A different band. So she swapped one with a friend. Would that be so strange?

Yes, said the voice in her head. Yes, yes,
yes
.

The night before, she’d kept it to herself, not wanting to risk her own husband looking at her as if she’d lost her mind, but all day it had been eating away at her until now she couldn’t keep it in any longer. She needed to know she wasn’t crazy.

‘Mum!’ Jemima’s face was scrunched into that dangerous scowl Emma knew only too well.

‘Sorry, sweetheart. You know, you’re quite right. I can’t recall one single occasion in my whole adult life where I’ve been called on to use my knowledge of quadratic equations.’

Sitting at the kitchen table, her school books spread out in front of her, Emma’s oldest daughter gazed at her mother, momentarily nonplussed. Emma’s heart hiccuped as she noticed how young Jemima suddenly looked when divested of the confrontational attitude she wore like armour.

‘Yeah, well, it’s just stupid,’ said Jemima, recovering. ‘School is stupid. It’s a big stupid waste of time. They’re making us do Shakespeare next year. He doesn’t even write in proper English.’

Emma smiled but her attention was distracted by the sound coming down the hallway of a car pulling up in front of the house. Suddenly her mouth felt dry, her chest tight. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so nervous about seeing her own husband.

Footsteps crunched on the gravel outside and she waited for the sound of his key in the door. It was a long wait and it occurred to her now that he might be deliberately dawdling, drawing out the seconds till he had to come in and face her. Is this what he did every day, she wondered. Loitering outside his own house to delay going in?

When Guy finally appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, Caitlin, who’d been quietly drawing in front of the television in the next room, came pelting out to hurl herself at him, arms clasped around his waist, face buried in his shirt.

‘Hello, squirt,’ he said, leaning down to plant a kiss on the top of her head. Emma noticed how he took a deep breath in as he did so, as if trying to inhale his daughter whole.