The Cornish Guest House (36 page)

She gave a wry smile and Rosie couldn’t help smiling back.

‘Tim’s really nice, you’ll like him, Mum.’

‘I’m sure I will.’

‘Can I show you the website later? I think it looks really good, quite professional.’

‘I’d like that very much,’ Liz replied.

Robert revealed the news at around nine thirty on Sunday morning when he returned from the grocery shop: ‘Jesse’s been released on bail.’

‘What?’ Liz had just sat down to catch up on RosieCraft, having sorely neglected the business this past week. Many of her orders were late and she needed to email clients to apologise. If they didn’t understand, tough; they’d simply have to cancel.

The search was still under way. Andy and Sarah were up there now and Robert was planning to go along shortly, but Liz’s back was aching and she needed a break. Some locals had already decided to stop due to sheer exhaustion, as well as work and other commitments; you couldn’t suspend your life indefinitely.

‘How do you know?’ Liz asked, anxious to be sure that her husband had his facts right.

‘I saw Luke. Apparently Jesse’s just left the station.’

‘Thank God.’ Liz bent down to stroke Mitzi the cat, who was coiling round her ankles. ‘I can’t imagine what he must have gone through – and his mum. She must be so relieved.’

Robert made a low growling sound, like a caged animal. ‘They’ve searched his house, his computer, his clothing, the bins, everything, and he’s been told not to leave the area. Luke thinks they’re convinced they’ve got their man, but there’s not enough evidence.’

Liz shot her husband a look. ‘Evidence of what? That he’s a murderer? Oh, for goodness sake, Robert, Jesse’s innocent, you know that as well as I do.’

Robert shook his head. ‘I’m just not sure. The argument, his lies, that toy, the blood…’

Liz wasn’t listening. ‘Besides, why are you assuming Loveday’s dead? There’s no body, thank God, and I still think we’ll find her. We have to believe it.’

Robert cleared his throat. ‘She hasn’t touched her bank account and Luke says—’

‘Luke seems to know everything.’

She glared at her husband, who plonked the carton of milk and loaf of bread that he’d just bought on the kitchen table. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

The cat snaked round and round Liz’s legs a few more times before settling at her feet. ‘Haven’t you noticed how he’s always first to volunteer for things, he’s always got the latest information? Don’t you think it’s odd?’

Robert ran a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. ‘Not this again. Loveday was working for him, no wonder he feels responsible. We’d be exactly the same if one of the lads went missing from the restaurant. Or the girls. We’d do everything we could.

‘I feel sorry for Luke,’ he went on. ‘He looks exhausted and he’s on his own now. You’d think his wife would give him more support.’

Liz raised her eyebrows. ‘Where’s Tabitha, then?’ It was the first she’d heard of it.

Robert made a face. ‘Manchester, apparently. Gone to see a friend. Left first thing this morning and taken Oscar with her. Extraordinary.’

Liz shrugged. It
was
peculiar, but she was reluctant to show any sympathy for Luke. In fact, unlike most of the village, she was more inclined to feel sorry for his wife, though she wasn’t at all sure why.

She glanced at Robert and couldn’t help noticing that the deep lines around his eyes and mouth had become a permanent feature. He seemed to have aged in the past few days; they all had. In fact, she could hardly believe it was only a week today that they’d discovered Loveday’s note; it felt more like ten years. She wanted to reach out and touch her husband’s hand, to hold him in her arms and bury her face against his warm chest, but she couldn’t. He was wrong about Jesse, and she was disappointed in him for losing the faith.

‘I don’t blame Tabitha,’ she said suddenly. ‘I’m not sure I could stand being in the same room as Luke for more than five minutes, let alone live with him. I don’t trust him an inch.’

She watched Robert’s gentle face harden, his hazel eyes turn cold, and realised that she’d gone too far. He considered Luke a friend after all, and despite everything she should have been more careful. He was at his wits’ end, just like her, a pressure cooker waiting to explode.

She opened her mouth to apologise, but he jumped in first. ‘For crying out loud, Liz, I don’t know what’s the matter with you. Are you jealous or something, because they’re richer and more glamorous than us? Because their house is bigger and they’ve got expensive cars? Is that it? I never had you down as a jealous person.’

Liz’s mouth dropped open; it was so unfair. She would have defended herself, she would have said he surely knew her better than that. But before she could speak he’d turned on his heel and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

*

Jesse felt quite dazed as he stumbled up the street towards the bus stop, and he blinked several times, his eyes not yet accustomed to the light. It had been gloomy at the station and he felt as if he’d been in there far longer than seventy-two hours.

The town was usually bustling with people and cars, folk wandering in and out of shops, young mums with pushchairs chatting on the pavement, elderly men and women shuffling up the street on their way to the supermarket, bank or post office. Today, though, he saw only a handful of children loitering round the closed toyshop, and a couple of smartly dressed pensioners on their way to church, perhaps, or to see friends.

It seemed bizarre that normal life could continue when for him nothing was the same or ever would be again. As the pensioners passed by, he imagined them whispering to each other, ‘That’s the one, that’s him!’ Everyone, it seemed, had found him guilty without trial, and there was nothing he could do but clutch pitifully onto the smallest branch, waiting to crash and fall.

He was physically and mentally shot, permanently exhausted and the slightest noise made him jump. Even the skin on his hands and arms felt different, as if the merest prick would draw blood. Did the bus driver refuse to meet his gaze when he took Jesse’s money? It certainly seemed so. And the woman he sat next to, with a baby on her knee, shuffled away so that there was no chance their bodies might touch. Perhaps she thought he’d contaminate her.

He alighted from the bus before the Methodist church, thinking it was just as well that his mum lived away from the village centre, as it was less likely that he’d see anyone. As luck would have it, however, Nathan was pushing his bike up the hill towards him.

He wasn’t in uniform today, but was wearing jeans and a pale blue T-shirt, no coat; he didn’t seem to feel the cold like other people. There was nowhere to hide, so Jesse pretended to look at his phone, noticing out of the corner of an eye how Nathan clocked him and crossed to the other side of the road, pausing just a moment to wait for a car to pass.

Nathan had once dated Loveday and for a time relations between him and Jesse had been frosty, but they’d since made up and become friends. Jesse swallowed. Friendship didn’t seem to count for much these days. Other than his mum and brother, no one seemed to believe in him, not even Robert. Alex was all right, but you could tell he wasn’t sure, and Liz was very kind, but it was difficult for her because of Robert.

Nathan was almost parallel with him now, just a few yards away, and when he started whistling, fake-nonchalant, Jesse cracked. It was as if all the anger, hurt and injustice that had been bubbling for days burst to the surface, and he found himself running across the street, fists clenched, scarcely aware of what he was doing, unable to stop anyway.

‘Say it to my face,’ he snarled, shoving the other man roughly on the shoulder.

Nathan staggered slightly before righting himself. ‘What the—?’

‘Say I murdered Loveday. Go on. I know that’s what you think.’

Nathan shook his head and tried to continue pushing, but Jesse blocked the way.

‘Don’t fuck with me. It’s all right when you’re in the gym, flexing your stupid muscles, but where’s your strength now, eh? Too scared to fight?’

Again, Nathan tried to proceed. ‘Look I don’t want—’

‘Come on.’ Jesse pointed to his left cheek and hopped, fists raised, from one foot to another like a boxer, ‘show us what you’re made of. You can tell the girls you laid one on Jesse the murderer. They’ll love you for it.’ He laughed nastily. ‘You’ll be a fucking hero.’

‘What’s going on?’

Jesse looked over Nathan’s shoulder to see Tom walking towards them, followed by Jean. Tom was older than his wife and grey now, not as fit as he used to be. Even so, he was doing a good job of trying to look manly, his shoulders pulled back and head held high. Jean, meanwhile, in beige slacks and a green cardigan, was several steps behind, gazing on anxiously.

Jesse was fond of Tom and Jean; he’d known them all his life. They were like everyone’s aunt and uncle and used to give him money for sweets. Tom had occasionally fixed his bike when he’d been a boy and Jean had come out of her house once and put a plaster on his knee when he’d fallen and grazed it.

She looked afraid and he felt ashamed and his anger melted as quickly as it had arrived. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, before scooting down the side of the church out of view. He waited, crouching by the wall and hidden by some bushes, while he heard the others talking, and didn’t come out until he was certain that they’d gone. He couldn’t risk bumping into anyone else so he crept, like a fugitive, across the cemetery and round the backs of houses, until he reached the safety of his mum’s front door.

She and Finn were out; he hadn’t rung to tell them that he’d been released, hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone. He wandered from room to room, feeling the silence pressing down on him so that he could hardly breathe. He would have thumped Nathan if Tom hadn’t appeared, split his lip, broken his nose – or worse. He fancied he could hear the muttering if he’d done it, from people he’d grown up with, that he’d loved and had felt so safe among – big hairy Rick, loud, cocky Tony, even sweet old Pat, recovering in hospital. ‘What do you expect,’ they’d have said, ‘from someone like him? He’s a bad sort, a wrong ’un, best keep well away until they get him under lock and key.’ Would he go to jail for something he hadn’t done? For all he knew, the police were simply biding their time, waiting for him to crack.

He drew the curtains in his little bedroom, climbed under the duvet and closed his eyes, praying for sleep. If he were in prison, he couldn’t feel less like a free man than he did now. It seemed, to him, as if there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Only the thought that Loveday might still be out there somewhere, waiting, hoping to be found, stopped him from getting up and searching the house for the means to end it right there and then.

*

Robert had gone out – who knew where? – and Liz had no idea what to do with herself. She could ring, of course, and apologise, but he’d said a terrible thing to her and she wasn’t at all sure that she could forgive him, never mind the other way round.

She sat for a while in their sitting room, which had once seemed cosy and welcoming and now felt stark and cold. They’d spent so many hours in here, curled up in front of the open fire, when she’d truly thought that they couldn’t be any happier. Yet now she wondered if that contentment had been an illusion and even as he’d stroked her hair and told her how much he loved her, ugly reality had been pushing on the door, determined to force its way in.

Tears trickled down her cheeks and splashed on to her chest before dripping on her round bump. Poor baby, she thought, running a hand over the swelling. Was he or she destined to grow up with an absent father, as Rosie had? Right now, Liz couldn’t see how they could row back from this; it seemed, to her, like the end.

She felt butterfly wings beating softly in her womb, the baby stirring, and was reminded of how she’d felt when Greg had left. Somehow, heartbroken as she’d been, she’d managed to pick herself up and keep going, and if she’d done it once, she could do it again. She was a survivor and must go on, for Rosie’s sake as well as for this new child cradled deep within her.

Sighing, she forced herself up and went to the downstairs cloakroom to wash her face with cold water and brush her hair. The little mirror above the basin showed a pale, blotchy woman with red-rimmed eyes, but if anyone noticed they’d think that she’d been crying about Loveday. She hesitated in the hallway for a moment after putting on her coat, thinking that she should leave Robert a note to say where she was, then she remembered, opened the door quickly and stepped into the fresh air.

It was her mother, Katharine, who’d always said that the best cure for the blues was to get out and do something. It had irritated Liz when, as a grumpy teenager, all she’d wanted was to wallow in self-indulgent gloom, but over the years she’d come to realise that it wasn’t such bad advice.

She hadn’t visited Pat since Loveday had vanished, and the old woman seemed delighted when her friend appeared at the door of the hospital ward, clutching a bunch of yellow roses that she’d picked up at a service station.

‘Oh, my!’ Pat cried, her pale, lined face lighting up in a brave smile. ‘What a wonderful surprise!’

She was propped up in bed against a pile of white pillows with a pink shawl round her shoulders, her right arm in plaster almost up to the shoulder. Although Liz had seen her like this before, it was still a shock because she looked desperately frail, so unlike the doughty old woman of before.

The mobile stylist was doing her rounds – Liz had spotted her in the corridor outside – and Pat’s snowy hair had been beautifully curled, but it wouldn’t fool anyone. She’d lost weight, you could see, her cheeks had hollowed out and her blue eyes no longer sparkled.

As Liz drew nearer, the brave smile faded, too. ‘Whatever have you done to yourself? Sit down. You look half-dead!’

Liz instantly felt her shoulders sag and the corners of her mouth start to droop. It was no good, she was a hopeless deceiver.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, kissing Pat’s prickly cheek as she handed her the flowers and perched beside her on the bed. The old woman took a sniff – ‘Gorgeous, thank you’ – before fixing Liz with a fretful stare.