The Missing Hours (34 page)

I look out the window, squint like that will help. ‘Where the hell is she?’

‘Is it possible she turns into a bat or some other small mammal?’ Finn asks through gritted teeth.

I look back, trying to make out shapes through the cloud. ‘We must have missed her.’

‘How? It’s us and four thousand sheep. Wouldn’t we have noticed a Range Rover in amongst them?’

I look at the road behind, turn, look ahead, then glance at Finn.

‘No.’

‘We’ve missed her.’

‘No, we haven’t.’

I give him a moment to pull himself together, feel the car creaking to a painful vertiginous stop. ‘Remember you said you’d listen to me next time? Welcome to the next time. We need to go back.’

Finn doesn’t look at me. I’m pretty sure he’s counting to a high number. Then, grinding his teeth, he steers the car carefully into a lay-by.

‘If we die doing this ninety-eight-point turn, I’m blaming you.’

‘Yeah, well,’ I mutter. ‘Maybe try not to drive us off the edge of the mountain.’

He is sweating by the time he is done, the car now facing uphill, into the cloud, the driving rain. He looks at me, smiles brightly. ‘Let’s try that one again, shall we?’

We inch forward, slower now. I kid myself that it is because we are searching, but in truth I know that any speed and we will drive right off the precipitous mountain road into the crevasse below. The world is opaque, cloud thick enough that the mountain beyond has vanished.

‘There.’

Finn slams on the brakes, sending us ricocheting against our seat belts. ‘What? Where?’

‘There’s a road.’

In truth, it is little like a road. More a track, uneven and winding, that dips down the mountainside, vanishing into a clump of trees.

‘You are shitting me.’

‘Finn.’

‘Leah, we don’t know where that leads. If we can’t turn round down there, we are stuck. With no signal. No radio.’

I lean forward, peer through the rain. ‘There are tyre tracks. There in the mud. Someone has gone down there.’

‘God, now she’s Poirot.’

‘Finn!’

‘Fine. Fine. I’m going. But if we die, I’m not just blaming you, I’m suing you.’

I grin.

The track is narrow, rough enough that I begin to doubt my own assertions. It judders us through a copse of trees, snaking round and out the other side.

‘There’s a house down there,’ I say.

It is, of course, a house in theory only. A stone-built cottage, so small that it would be a wonder if it has ever housed anyone. I open the window in spite of the rain, and catch a glimpse of metal. ‘There’s a car too.’

‘Marvellous,’ grumbles Finn.

We inch closer, the cottage vanishing behind a rise, only to reappear again minutes later. ‘Surely no one lives there?’ I say.

‘We may have to live there,’ mutters Finn. ‘I think the back axle just went.’

Further down the slope, a glint of metal again. ‘There’s the Range Rover,’ says Finn, voice grim. ‘At the side of the house.’

‘She’s here,’ I say, redundantly.

It feels strangely redemptive, this sense of having found her. That at last I have solved a mystery rather than having it handed to me.

‘There’s someone else …’ I lean forward, try to understand what I’m seeing. ‘There’s another car. Just behind hers.’ I glance at Finn.

He steers the car to a stop, pulling it to the side of the cottage, easing the engine off. Checks the airwave for signal, shakes his head. ‘Nothing.’

‘Got your ASP?’ I ask.

He nods, jaw set. ‘Let’s go.’

The rain hits us as we push open the doors, drowning all other sound. I duck pointlessly as it beats against my head, resist the urge to run to the half-open door of the cottage. Because I cannot fool myself that safety lies behind it. I am coming to realise that I have no idea what is waiting for me. I push my hair back from my eyes. Share a glance with Finn, rack my ASP. Begin to walk quietly towards the open door, holding the metal baton to my thigh.

We step softly into the narrow hallway, the smell of damp almost overwhelming. The rain is softer now, muffled by the aged roof, the thick stone. Now another sound creeps in, separating itself out from that of the rain. A woman crying.

I freeze. It is a sound of anguish, of someone being ripped apart. I feel Finn’s hand on my arm, counselling caution. Breathe. Nod. Soft steps, steady, ASP ready.

The hallway gives on to a living room, small and dark. A sixties tiled fireplace, a bowed sofa. And Selena Cole slumped to the floor, weeping. A figure holds her, and in the dim light I cannot see if it is an embrace or an attack. But as my eyes adjust, I realise that she is weeping against him, her head resting on his chest, his hand stroking her hair. They have not heard us, are wrapped up in this moment of theirs.

Then I hear the scrape of metal against stone behind me, Finn brushing awkwardly against the cottage wall. I see the man jump up, shoving Selena behind him.

Then I know him.

I hold my hands up, school my face to neutral. ‘Beck. It’s Leah Mackay. It’s okay.’

I want to look to Selena, but something about Beck holds my attention. His size maybe, but something else too, the excruciating awareness that he has sensed danger, and that that in turn has made him dangerous. I watch him look from me to Finn, back. Then it is like he folds in on himself, growing smaller before us. He glances back at Selena, where she sits on the floor, her knees tucked up before her.

‘It’s okay, Beck,’ she says.

He nods briefly, then turns his back on us, hunkering down before her. ‘It’s all going to be all right.’

Selena shakes her head, burying it in her knees. ‘No.’ Her voice bursts, a cloud that carries endless rain. ‘I was too late.’

‘No. We’ll fix this. I promise you, Selena. We’ll fix it.’

I fold my ASP up, slip it into a pocket, and move past Beck, sinking to the floor in front of Selena. She stares at me, what was hidden clear now, waits for me to speak.

‘Your husband, Ed. He’s alive, isn’t he?’

The disappearance of Selena Cole

Dr Selena Cole: Tuesday, 7.45 a.m.

I CAN’T BREATHE.
No, that can’t be right. Because my chest is climbing and sinking, climbing and sinking, just like it always has. But still, it feels like there is no air left on the earth. I watch Tara, her baby face creased into laughter, the swing sailing up into the blackening sky. I reach out, but I cannot touch her, even when my fingers are right there on her pudgy thighs.

What have I done?

She is talking to me, garbled words that make sense to no one but her mother. And I stare at her, at a loss. She looks at me, expectant, waiting for a reply. But I have nothing. So I smile, a cheap facsimile of a smile, and although she is not utterly convinced, it seems that will be enough. She giggles. ‘Higher.’ I push the swing so that it sails backwards, her stunted ponytail touching the sky.

I should have known. I should have seen this. How could I have not?

The ground is unsafe beneath me, the quaking movement brought about by lack of sleep. Or maybe by the sudden awareness that the world I stand in is not the world I thought it was at all.

The phone rang at 6.02. Who was I at 6.01? A mother, a grieving widow, no space in my loss for me to be anything but these fundamentals. I was a woman placing one foot in front of the other, because life demanded it of me. Then came 6.02 p.m.

I almost didn’t answer.

I watch Tara flying backwards in the swing, my hands outstretched to catch her, to fling her away again, and my heart stops beating at the thought of that. I almost didn’t answer.

The children were winding down, exhausted after a day of school and playing and whatever else used to fill up our days before the phone rang at 6.02 p.m. I was folding laundry, standing beneath the oversize clock that hangs in the utility room, marking the passage of my days from one useless moment to another. I could hear the girls, Heather shouting at her sister for yet another catastrophic misdemeanour, Tara beginning to cry. The blouse I was holding was once vibrant yellow, now dulled with age, a grease stain on its upper sleeve. I stared at the stain, listened to the tumult in the living room and felt the tears coming, darkness creeping in. Brushed them away. Because it was only 6.02 p.m. In fifty-eight minutes, both girls would be in bed. In fifty-eight minutes, I could flip on the shower, let the water run over me, and my heart could break again, just like it did every night at 7 p.m. precisely. But not now. Not at 6.02.

Then the phone began to ring.

I stood in the laundry room, let the irreparably damaged blouse drop to the basket on the floor, raised my eyes to the ceiling. Who? What? Why?

I wouldn’t answer.

I had the girls to get ready for bed, the laundry to finish, the darkness beckoning.

I wouldn’t answer.

But my feet moved anyway. I don’t know why. Maybe they knew what I did not.

I turn, a gust of chill wind hitting me full in the face, look for Heather. She is angry with me. Some little fury about shoes that I was too tired to fight. But it isn’t about shoes, is it? It never is. She is angry with me that her father never came home. I get that. I’m angry with me too. She is trudging around the limits of the playground, kicking at the gravelled surface with the shoes she shouldn’t be wearing, every now and again glancing over to me, a test: what will I do? I turn away. I am too tired for this particular battle.

‘Dr Cole?’ The voice on the phone was entirely unknown.

‘Yes?’

‘My name is Dominic Newell. I’m, ah, I’m Beck Chambers’ solicitor.’

I closed my eyes, suppressed a sigh. Why had I picked up the phone? Why hadn’t I just let it ring out? It is always this way, the world carrying on as it always has, expecting me to carry right along with it, like anything matters any more. I forced my face into a smile. ‘Of course. What can I do for you, Mr Newell?’ It is this way. It is always this way. You force your heart to keep beating, your lungs to keep taking in air, even though all you want to do is die.

‘Dr Cole, Selena …’ He was walking. I heard it in the unevenness of his breath, the sounds of the traffic that filled the spaces where the words should be. ‘There’s something I need to tell you …’

I pull my wool coat tighter around myself, the creak of the swing breathtakingly loud, and watch Heather. She has turned her back on me now, resolute, unforgiving. Is clambering up the incline that leads to a bank, down to a stream. She is not allowed to go beyond the limits of my sight. She knows this. She stops halfway up the incline, stands up tall, and for a moment I think she will turn, concede defeat, that we will be able to settle once more into a tremulous detente. But then her hands fly to her hips and she carries on, a difficult walk in a defiant stance.

I watch her go.

I should call her back.

But there is something in those shoulders, those triangles of her hands on her hips, that makes me peculiarly proud. She is both of us. She is me. She is Ed. She is tough and defiant and often a giant pain in the arse. And yet she keeps moving onwards. I let her go. Those traits may one day prove critical to her.

I don’t know how I got the children into bed. It was done, though, because one moment they were there, the next they were tucked under their various duvets, doors closed with a quarter-inch gap as prescribed. But I have no recollection of doing it. Because of Dominic Newell and that phone call and who I was vanishing, who I was to become still struggling to be born.

It was horror and grief and elation and fear.

I spent the night in the office, pulling up files, opening e-mails that were not mine to open. It was right there, right under my nose. How had I not seen? What had I done?

At 1.53 a.m., I sent an e-mail of my own.

Then I waited.

You would think that I would have dozed, at some point during that painfully long night, but no. I sat before the computer and I waited.

I look up to the sky. The rain is coming. I can feel it hanging in the air. I close my eyes briefly, feel myself sway. Wish that the storm would simply break. Better always to be in the storm than to be anticipating it.

There was no reply.

I finger the mobile phone in my pocket, imagining the ting of an incoming email. But there is nothing, just the creak of the swing. I feel tears building again and I pull in a breath. No. You will not cry. But the thoughts circle me, so that I am trapped by them: you were too late.

Then I hear something.

I open my eyes, turn so that my back is to the park, so I am looking down the shallow incline to the road below.

As soon as I see her, I know.

She stands beside a car, an equivocal silver Mondeo. Watching me.

I turn, look for Heather, but she has vanished over the bank, is likely sticking her new shoes in the narrow stream beyond, in overt defiance of my rules. I take a breath, pray, kiss Tara on the forehead. ‘You stay here, okay? Mummy will be right back.’

I want to run. I want to grab hold of her, this woman who has stolen my life, and shake her and demand that she give it back, but I don’t. I force myself to walk, calm. This is a negotiation. Appearances count. It is, after all, all about perception, what they think you are, rather than what you are.

She studies me as I cross the road towards her.

‘Mrs Cole.’

‘Yes.’

‘You want to do a deal?’ She is my age, maybe a little younger, would be attractive in any circumstances but these. The accent is soft but there. I don’t bother to ask how she found me. I don’t bother to ask why she did. All that matters is that she is here and I am here and my future is in flux.

I force myself to breathe. It is a dance, this. Calm.

‘I will need proof of life.’ I wonder how many times I have said those words before, how little they have meant until now.

‘Get in.’

I open my mouth, am momentarily wrong-footed.

‘There has been enough delay. Let’s do this deal, yes? Get in.’

I look up the bank to the park, to where my girls play, alone. ‘I …’

‘Mrs Cole, our patience has been sorely tested. What has come so far has been less than satisfactory, and frankly, we have other deals that need to be handled. If you are unable to work with us, then we must move on.’ She holds open the passenger door. ‘It is, of course, your choice.’