The Story of Us (40 page)

Jack. I suddenly turned back to the house. I hadn't even said goodbye, I'd just walked out. I hesitated, as Richard looked back at me impatiently. He was already beside his car, the door open. I looked back at the house and felt something tearing me clean down the middle. And then Jack was suddenly at the door, pulling it closed behind him. He had put on a sweatshirt and boots and his car keys were in his hand.

‘You're coming?' I asked, not realising my voice would come out on a note of such disbelief.

‘Of course, I'm coming,' he responded, giving me a ghost of a smile which I couldn't return.

‘Emma!' Richard's summons was imperative and urgent.

‘Go,' urged Jack, as I turned and began to run to my car, ‘I'll be right behind you.'

I've never been involved in a search party before, so I've no idea if this was par for the course, but the sheer number of police cars, sniffer dogs and volunteers filled me with despair. Not to mention the helicopter which was already circling overhead. I parked my car haphazardly on a gravelled area with about twenty other vehicles and ran to where Richard was waiting.

‘They're just beyond the brook,' he advised, not bothering to slow his speed walk, not that it mattered, I was already running.

‘And Dad?'

‘He's there too.' I nodded, trying to pull myself together before I saw him. He would be in pieces and the last thing he needed was for me to be the same.

‘How did you know where to find me?' I gasped out as we rounded a small copse and the brook came into view.

‘I phoned Caroline. She told me where you'd be. I guess it was inevitable that I'd be the last to know.'

There was nothing I could say, and it wasn't the time to think about Richard's shock or his bruised ego. This wasn't about anything except finding my missing parent, safe and well.

Several makeshift tables had been erected, upon which they'd laid out large ordnance survey maps of the area, held down at the edges by stones to stop them blowing in the wind. Although the sun was out, there was still a sharp coolness to the air from last night's storm. What had Mum been wearing when she'd walked from her bedroom, down the stairs and out of the front door? Was she out in these conditions in just her nightwear? Had she pulled on a coat, or was she wandering somewhere lost, barefoot and freezing? How long does it take a person to get hypothermia? Wordlessly I shook my head in denial and raced towards an adjacent police car, from which my father shakily emerged, a bright red blanket draped around his shoulders.

I could see he was crying even before I flung myself into his outstretched arms.

‘Oh Daddy,' I cried as I fell against him, somehow reverting to the name I hadn't called him by in over a decade.

‘Emma, Emma, Emma,' my dad replied, his voice as shaky as the hand which smoothed down my hair as he held me against him. ‘Where is she? Where has she gone? Where's my Frannie?' I gently pulled back from his hold and looked at him worriedly. He looked like he'd aged about twenty years since the day before. I glanced over at a kindly-looking uniformed woman waiting beside the police car, who I assumed must be the liaison officer.

‘Now don't you worry, Bill. I told you, we're going to find her for you. You just have to trust us. We know what we're doing here.'

I didn't doubt her words. I glanced around me and back at the tables and a group of officers, who were listening intently to instructions being delivered by a tall grey-haired man, who I guessed must be the detective in charge. As well as the uniformed officers there were four policemen with sniffer dogs, who were each being passed my mother's pink cardigan. It was what she'd been wearing the last time I'd seen her. I gave a small helpless gasp as each dog in turn inhaled deeply of her scent and then began to pull vigorously on their leads, anxious for the search to commence.

‘I'm just going to go over and talk to the officer in charge,' I said to my dad, squeezing his hand.

‘The volunteers are all gathered over there,' informed the liaison officer, pointing to a large crowd of people gathered some distance away from the tabled area.

My jaw fell open in surprise. ‘Who
are
all those people? Where did they come from?'

‘They're our neighbours, and friends,' said Dad sadly, receiving a comforting hand on his shoulder from the liaison officer, who I suddenly decided I liked very much indeed. She was just what he needed right then.

‘I should go and join them,' he said, taking a few shaky steps away from the car. My look of horror was mirrored by Richard, who had been standing to one side while I spoke to my father.

‘No, Bill,' said the policewoman gently. ‘Remember, we agreed that wasn't such a good idea. You need to stay here at the car with me, then when we find Frances I'll be able to drive you straight to her, rather than having to track you down from somewhere out in the field.'

My dad gave an answering nod. Thank God he was willing to listen to the officer, because he scarcely looked strong enough to support himself right now, much less go hiking over the fields searching for his missing wife. He looked over at Richard. ‘Thank you for bringing Emma to me, lad. I knew she'd be all right if she was with you.'

I looked across at Richard, waiting for him to lash into me with his words and the truth. Wasn't it exactly what I deserved?

‘Yes. She was with me all along, Bill. I told you I'd bring her back.'

‘Why don't you two go and join the volunteers?' suggested my dad's new police companion. ‘They're going to be assigning search areas and you'll need to hear what you have to do.'

We nodded our agreement and walked swiftly across the rough grass to the accumulated crowd in silence.

‘Thank you for saying that,' I said gratefully, as I scanned the crowd looking for, and finding, a tall solitary figure who was standing a small distance apart from the others. I began to turn towards him.

‘Yeah, whatever,' Richard replied bitterly, moving to join the opposite side of the crowd.

Before addressing the group at large, the officer in charge took me to one side and quickly ran through the progress of the search so far and how they proposed to proceed. I hoped that Jack, who was standing beside me, with his arm comfortingly around my shoulders, was listening, because I struggled to decipher anything that was being said from the depths of the panic which was threatening to consume me. From the officer's words I did manage to work out that while the group of gathered volunteers tackled the vast rural and wooded area close to our home, numerous policemen were conducting door-to-door enquiries and searching gardens. He informed me that no road accident victims had been brought into any of the local hospitals in the last six hours, which I supposed was meant to comfort me, but just made me worry that Mum might still have been struck by a vehicle in the dark, and be lying injured beside the road. I suddenly saw an image of Amy in my mind, and glanced up at Jack. From the way he gripped my hand in comfort, I knew he was thinking exactly the same thing.

I realised pretty early on that the police didn't really expect any of the volunteers to actually find my mother. The dogs and handlers already had a head-start on the long snaking chain of volunteers. Nevertheless, we followed instructions and fell into place behind the small group of officers who remained some fifty metres or so ahead of us. In a slow-moving procession we crossed the rough open grassland, which was still sodden from the rainfall of the previous night, every pair of eyes staring fixedly at the ground.

The tracker dogs were haring forward at considerable speed, so I guessed they'd not managed to pick up a trail. Or did that mean the exact opposite? I suddenly wished I'd paid closer attention to all those forensic crime shows on television, because I really had no idea what any of us were looking for as we scoured the ground for some nameless clue, which I probably wouldn't recognise even if I saw it. Perhaps Jack, given the nature of his writing, had a better grasp of what was going on, but despite the fact that he was walking beside me, his hand firmly gripping mine, it felt as though there was a deep chasm opening up between us.

With each stumbling step I took over the long wet grass, I could feel the heavy weight of guilt prising me from him like a crowbar. If I hadn't stayed at his house, would Mum still have gone missing? Had she found my bed empty and left the safety of our home to go looking for me? Or, going back to the very beginning, if I'd just stayed with Richard, if I'd never broken off our engagement, would that have changed the events of today? They were impossible questions, and I was so afraid that if I opened my mouth to speak, I was going to ask them out loud; it seemed safer to remain silent.

‘It's going to be all right. We're going to find her,' said Jack eventually, bringing my hand up to his lips and kissing my knuckles as though to seal his promise. But even his touch, which I'd always been helpless to resist, failed to comfort or reach me this time. This was the flip side of the happiness I had felt last night. This was the price tag, and suddenly the cost felt far too steep.

‘You don't know that. You
can't
know that. She could be anywhere. She could be lying unconscious in a ditch… she could be hurt… someone could have taken her…' Each possibility was more horrible than the last, and a look of concern crossed Jack's face at my torment and his inability to ease it.

‘Emma! Emma!'

I spun around at the familiar voice, calling me from some distance away. It wasn't what I'd been praying for; it wasn't someone telling me that Mum had been found, safe and well, but it was the next best thing. I broke free from Jack's hand and ran back over the grass to Caroline and Nick who were making their way towards the group of volunteers, both carrying large flat objects which were impossible to identify from so far away. Whatever it was she was carrying, Caroline laid it down on the grass and ran to me.

I fell into her outstretched arms with enough speed to knock the air from both of our lungs. She let me cry for a minute into the quilted material of her jacket before delving into her pocket and producing a folded tissue which she passed to me.

‘How are you holding up?' she asked, scrutinising me carefully when I'd finished noisily blowing my nose.

‘I'm okay. Or I will be, when we find her.'

Caroline nodded, but there was a small worried expression on her face. She looked over my shoulder, as her attention turned to the figure who had followed me.

‘Hi, Jack.'

I turned, and saw that his fleeting smile of greeting was tempered by a look of anxiety at my distress.

‘Don't you worry about me, I'll manage both trays,' interrupted Nick, bringing some much-needed normality to the moment with his gentle sarcasm. He had picked up whatever Caroline had been holding, and was now manfully struggling to carry two enormous trays of take away beverages, bearing the familiar logo of our local coffee shop.

‘Here, let me,' said Jack, stepping over and relieving him of one of the trays.

‘Thanks,' said Nick gratefully. ‘I'm Nick, by the way, Caroline's partner,' he added by way of introduction. ‘I'd shake your hand, but…' He nodded toward the loaded tray in explanation.

‘That's okay. I'm Jack.'

‘He knows who you are,' a voice cut in sharply. I jumped. I hadn't seen Richard leave his place in the line of volunteers and join us. There was an ugly moment, which fortunately Caroline rescued by going over and hugging Richard in greeting. I saw her whisper something furiously into his ear before she stepped out of his arms, and his lips tightened stiffly in reaction to her words.

Surprisingly, it was Nick once again who brought the awkward moment to a close. ‘Shall we pass out these drinks to the volunteers then, before they get cold?'

‘Yes, of course, why don't you two guys do that?' suggested Caroline, effectively dispatching Nick and Jack off on a mission. There was a long uncomfortable moment when only the three of us remained, staring at each other.

‘Do you two want to have a word in private—' Caroline began, only to be cut off by Richard and me crying out, ‘
No!
' in complete unison. It was the first time we'd been in agreement about anything for weeks.

Richard took one last look at me, his face giving away none of his emotions, before announcing sharply, ‘I'm going back to the line.' I could tell from the set of his shoulders as he stomped away that he was lividly angry and desperately hurt in equal measure.

‘Richard found you at Jack's then?'

‘Oh yes,' I said bitterly, as we briskly walked back to rejoin the volunteers.

Caroline took my hand and squeezed it. ‘I'm sorry. He was absolutely desperate trying to find you, and your dad was going crazy. I had
to tell him.'

‘No, it's okay. I understand,' I replied.

‘It wasn't awkward, or anything?' she asked.

In a few terse sentences I recounted the moment when Richard had come perilously close to catching a private porno of his ex-fiancée having sex in the kitchen with another man.

‘Shiiit!' exclaimed Caroline on a low drawn-out exclamation. She was quiet for a moment, considering. ‘Still,
Project-Make-Richard-Jealous
certainly appears to have worked,' she concluded.

I raised my head from my study of the grassland, to refute her words and tell her the reality had been nothing like that, only to find that Jack had silently joined us, empty coffee tray in hand. It took just a single glance at his frozen shocked face to know he had clearly heard everything Caroline had just said.

Fortunately, our attention was diverted at that moment by a helicopter circling overhead. It hovered for a moment or two above the assembled crowd before swooping off in the direction of the forest.

‘It has to be bad if they've brought in a helicopter,' I said grimly.