Lemonade and Lies (20 page)

Arrival Time. Ten a.m. Nothing short of a miracle, considering the state of Jemima. She’d limped the final few miles and that was only after I’d stopped at a garage to give her a long drink of oil.

It was a relief to finally park up outside my parents’ house, like an oasis after a hard trip through a hostile desert. And Jemima wasn’t the only one exhausted. A hot bath. A cup of tea (I was all coffee’d out). Maybe even several. Their teacups were small. And I wouldn’t refuse a large cooked breakfast, not if somebody really insisted.

I rang the doorbell. Waited for at least a minute and rang again. Nothing, not a sound came from inside, not a single household noise. Surely they’d be back from the school run by now. And they knew I was coming. You’d think at least one of them would be at home to meet me.

There was no key. The small, flat rock was still there outside the front door but there was no key underneath it. In panic, I did a circuit of the building, going to the back door that led into the scullery. I banged loudly with my fists. Listened when the noise subsided. Heard nothing.

I ran round to the front again. Searched everywhere I could think of for the key. But it was nowhere. Could my father have forgotten to put it out? He was a meticulous man. He didn’t forget things like that.

I tried to start the car, but Jemima had given her all. So I set off on my normal walk to the small village school. It used to take me fifteen minutes to walk Millie and Tom there. I did it in ten.

When I arrived, kids were being disgorged onto the playground. Anxiously I searched the excited faces for my children, but couldn’t find them milling around with the others. I went inside. Though they’d hardly be inside at break time for they both loved the outdoors. Hated being penned in. Still, there must be some explanation.

The Headmistress remembered me, although there was something in her manner that was different from the last time we’d met. She was polite enough, but there was a reluctance to connect on anything other than a professional level.

What was it with people? Maybe I should go around ringing a bell and string a sign round my neck warning others to keep clear. The way lepers used to. Unfit for normal human consumption.
Just me going off on one again. Ignore it. Tired and all that. Disappointed my family wasn’t there to greet me with the fatted calf.

“So, what can I do for you?” The enquiry was short, businesslike.

“Just wanted to speak to Millie and Tom for a few minutes, if that’s okay. I didn’t see them out in the playground.”

“Neither of them came to school today,” she said, a faint note of censure in her voice.

“You’re sure?”

The woman bristled slightly like I’d brought her competence into question.

“No. Neither of the children is on the register for their classes this morning. If you insist I’ll check once again, but my staff are good at their jobs Mrs Webster.”

“Ms.”

“Oh.”

“I’m divorced.”

“Ah.” She said it like it cleared up a point in her mind. As if she could understand why someone would want to divorce me.

How dare she? She had no idea what was going on in my life. Perhaps she thought I was irresponsible and had abandoned my kids to go off and enjoy some champagne-swilling, jet-setting highlife. But then again, maybe I was just looking for stuff. She might be a perfectly reasonable woman just having a bad day – like me. I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

“I can’t understand why they’re not at school,” I said. “Millie and Tom love it here.”

The woman’s face lightened. “They’re fine children,” she said. “They’ve made the transition well. Taking part in lots of after school activities as well.”

“I know. That’s why this is strange.”

“Oh I wouldn’t be too concerned, Ms Webster. It’s Friday, almost Christmas. And we break up on Tuesday. Maybe their grandparents kept them off school because you were coming.”

“No, they wouldn’t do that. My father – he’s strict – has conservative ideas about parenting.”

But was that right? Was he still like that? He seemed different with Millie and Tom than he’d been with me – his regime less rigid.

I don’t know if she sensed my panic, but Mrs Ecclestone’s face creased into concern and she reached across the desk and touched my hand. “Don’t you worry. I bet when you get back home they’ll all be there waiting for you.”

It was as much as I could do not to cry. Indifference, I could deal with. Sympathy, for some complex reason, was harder to take.

We shook hands, and this time the Headmistress was a lot less distant. She said she hoped I’d have a happy Christmas. I said thank you, I was looking forward to it. She asked if I was staying for Hogmanay. I said I hadn’t thought that far ahead. She seemed puzzled by that. Maybe she was a long-term planner. But right now all I could think about was one day at a time.

I smiled and left. Walked back slowly. Not that I didn’t want to get there fast, but someone had poured lead into my legs, and I could hardly move them. Reaction had finally kicked in and I couldn’t do a thing about it. Alice would have told me to go with the flow. She was born into the wrong generation. She should have been a hippy.

When I arrived back at the house, everything seemed exactly the same as when I left. Still no one answered the bell, or reacted to my banging on the door. I tried to think clearly. To do some planning. I should at least try to get inside the house, but would my father thank me if I forced a door or broke one of his windows? The old version wouldn’t. But the new one seemed different. And I was getting more anxious about Millie and Tom as the minutes went by. I had to do something.

I returned to the car for my phone. Decided to phone Sergeant Patterson. Shit. I’d forgotten the battery had run out of charge and my charger was in the case, in the boot. I lugged the thing out and left it at the front door. Went around the place one final time, looking in the windows again. Everything looked neat and pristine. Well, it would do. This was my mother’s house. Not mine. She was on first name terms with her vacuum cleaner.

I tried to prise the doors open. But these things were heavy duty, made in a time when people made doors properly. So I obeyed the voice in my head and picked up a large pebble from the path, wound my woollen jumper around my hand and whacked a small pane of glass in the back door as hard as I could. The whole thing shattered and I jumped quickly out of the way. I’d had enough of A and E departments. I cleared the remains of broken glass, careful to keep my hand covered - the way they do it in TV cop shows - only this wasn’t nearly so dramatic, but then it was real life.

I felt the thrill of achievement once I’d managed to get my hand through and open the back door. And all the memories rushed at me at once. Sitting at the huge table playing Monopoly with my kids. Rupert shaking mud all over the scullery floor. My precious soup, wasted. Tom looking worried and then smiling when he realised I was going to relent and give the mutt a warm bath instead of turning the hose on him. The cheery warmth of the Aga.

Except the place was cold. The Aga was beginning to cool down. It must have been some time since my father had replenished the wood. For as I remember the thing stayed hot for a long time. I went through the house looking for signs of life, but there were none. And there was no note. Wherever they’d all gone, there’d been no time to leave me a note. That’s the first thing my father would have done if he’d been able. So something bad had happened. I had no doubt about that.

I shook myself and went to the telephone in the parlour to call Andy Patterson.

“He’s there with you,” said a confused, female voice at the station.

“No, he’s not,” I said. And I could hear my voice rising, the beginnings of hysteria taking hold of it.

“Maybe he got held up. He’s a community police officer,” the woman said, as if this was knowledge I would benefit from, “he has other things to do. Just wait at the house for him, that’s what I’d do.” She spoke very calmly and it made me feel even angrier.

Maybe that’s what she would do. But had her children been threatened? Her house broken into? Her face punched? Her father knifed? No! So perhaps it wasn’t so hard for her to stand on the sidelines and give advice.

“Hello. Anybody in there?”

“It’s okay,” I said into the phone, “he’s here now.” I tried to be civil. Said ‘thank you.’

“No problem,” she said (like she’d actually done something). “There you are. No need to panic was there?”

I hung up without saying goodbye, slumped into one of the Chesterfield Queen Anne chairs that my father was so proud of and cried.

*

“They’re not here,” I said, still sniffling. And the first thing Andy Patterson did was make us both a cup of tea.

He pottered about in the scullery like someone comfortable with such small, domestic chores. I guessed he lived alone. His presence was reassuring and his bluff, no-nonsense manner pulled me out of the misery that threatened to engulf me. If I’d been alone, I think I’d have let it. Wallowed in the grief. Because I had no idea where to start. What to think. He gave me a few minutes to recover. To eat my oatcake and drink the tea. The man should have been a shrink.

“Right. Far as you know, Harry would have been waiting for you. Is that right?”

“That’s the impression he gave me. And if I got here after they’d gone to bed, he would leave the key under the flat rock.”

“I’ve warned him about that. First place people look. That and flowerpots.”

“Well, somebody obviously took it,” I said. “And you know what that means.”

He took a measured breath. And his response wasn’t the quickest. But that was good (wasn’t it?) I mean he was probably one of those people who weighed up their words before they left their mouths.

“Maybe not. Something important might have come up and he didn’t have time to leave the key.”

“You think so?”

“It’s a possibility,” he said.

But was it? Could it really be something harmless? What would make him evacuate the house, leaving no note, no key – taking the kids with him? It made no sense. And maybe Andy Patterson had said that to keep me from blubbing again.

“Right.” He rubbed his hands together, a signal that some kind of action was imminent. “We should go and get those wee bairns of yours from school. No harm in taking a few precautions.”

“They never went.”

That shook him. And by default, me. For I’d seen him as a stoic character, someone with a solid core whose imagination would not run away with his good sense. He grappled with the new information. Readjusted his line of reasoning, took out his notebook and began jotting stuff down in it.

“Okay. Harry’s a resilient man. I’d say resourceful as well, wouldn’t you?”

“I guess,” I said. “He’s been in the army.” What did I know? I was only just beginning to find out stuff about him.

“Exactly.” He seemed pleased that I’d hit some sort of nail on its head. “Knows how to act in an emergency.”

“So?”

“So, I’d be surprised if he hadn’t managed to do something. Leave you some kind of message. Even if it was an emergency.”

“But I’ve been all over the house. There’s nothing.”

“What about the phone,” he said. “Maybe somebody phoned. There’ll be a record.” He made a note on his pad.

Now we were getting somewhere. “Pity he doesn’t have an answer-phone.” I said it mostly to myself, but the thought jogged my memory. My own phone. I’d need to put it on charge.

Andy Patterson saw what I was up to and dragged my suitcase in from outside and then set off to do his own search of the rooms. I found the charger and connected up my mobile.

The shrill sound of the ring was so unexpected that I felt my nerve ends rear up. I made a lunge for the telephone in the corner of the parlour but Sergeant Patterson had beaten me to it and already picked up in the hall. It was only the Headmistress from the village school wondering if the kids and my parents had turned up yet.

“We’re still working on it,” he told her.

But was that true
? So far we hadn’t turned up a thing, and it seemed to me that both Andy Patterson and I were like a couple of blind men without a single white stick between us. I put the phone down. Didn’t listen to the rest of the conversation. We were wasting time.

My mobile went off ping. It wasn’t a text, but a reminder that it had picked up a call when the battery went and the thing had gone straight over to Voicemail. My hands trembled as I scrolled through the menu and saw the number come up on my screen. It was a long one. Not one I recognised. And of course I couldn’t get a bloody signal to listen to it!

I ran outside and felt, rather than saw, Sergeant Patterson come flying out the front door in my wake. I eventually ended up on a small hillock behind the back of the house before my mobile would allow me to connect to the familiar Voicemail preamble.

“Jilly! Hope you get this.” It was my father. “But I’ve tried to phone you and that contraption of yours won’t let me. Keeps asking me to leave a message after the tone.” (He’d never liked the idea of mobiles. Didn’t have one of his own. In many ways he was a Luddite). “I don’t want you getting upset now, for I’m sure everything will be fine, but we’ve had to take Millie to the hospital. We’re in Ayr. You know where it is, you’ve been here before. Got to go. If we’re not back home when you arrive, come straight to the hospital. Gone now.”