When Good Friends Go Bad (26 page)

'Dog?
You
have a
dog?'
She made it sound like Jen had tattooed her forehead. 'Since when?'

'Since yesterday.' Jen smiled weakly as Helen's friends came up to them.

Helen shook her head. 'You know what, Jen, I think I'm beginning to get a glimpse of Ollie's perspective.'

'I spy with my little eye something beginning with M.'

'Motorway?' Jen moved into the fast lane. Friday night and they were heading down the M4 on their way to Devon.

'No.' Georgina shook her head.

'Mutt?' Meg pushed Feo from her lap, where he'd climbed up to get a better view out of the window. 'What is this hairball doing with us anyway?'

' I couldn't find anyone to look after him. Mat?' Jen niftily overtook a lumbering articulated lorry.

'Nup.'

'Mummy?' Meg pointed at Jen.

'No.'

'Moron?' Jen jerked her thumb back at Meg.

'No,' Georgina said again.

'Mr Dugan?' Meg's attempt.

'He's not in the car,' Jen protested.

'No, but you've got a photo of him in your purse. She sleeps with it under her pillow, Georgie.'

'Ha, ha. Map?'

'Correct.'

'But Georgina, we already had that one.'

'Oh did we? Pardon me, I wasn't listening,' Georgina said absently. She'd been attached to her BlackBerry the whole trip, emailing last-minute instructions to the office.

It had been a long journey and it had reminded Jen of their old geography field trips, particularly after the first hour had been spent in full singsong, led by Meg's rendition of 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain' and rounded off by Jen's finale of 'There's a Worm at the Bottom of the Garden and His Name Is Wiggly Woo' in silly accents.

Jen felt liberated, suddenly reconnected in spirit with the carefree girl she'd once been. They'd laughed till their sides ached, sung till they were hoarse and conversation hadn't once run dry.

Before Meg and Georgina erupted back into her middle-aged, middle-class routine, she'd lost herself in conformist, conservative Huntsleigh hell. But no more. She'd buy herself a pair of tangerine flares, perhaps even dye her hair a vibrant red. From now on she intended to enjoy her life seeking out glorious silliness. To think she used to reproach Ollie for acting the fool. How could she have forgotten how much fun it was?

Life was a marathon, she decided. Equal start as innocent babies, every tiny step garnering applause. Then school begins, the clapping fades and the race gets tougher. You hit the wild ups and downs of your hormone-fuelled teens and race in and out of love and jobs in your twenties, cruising along with energy to spare. Life develops a steady rhythm until one day you've passed the landmarks of adulthood – marriage, kids – tiring but slogging on. Then, about the forty mark, desperation sets in. Divorce. Redundancy. Friends dropping off. Middle-aged spread. Menopause. Parents falter. Deaths occur. You look awful, feel worse, you've hit the wall and you're afraid you'll reach your limit long before you can call it quits.

But if you push through, Jen thought gleefully, you might just get a second wind. Find new running buddies, regain enthusiasm, and with encouragement and sustenance from your cheering squad actually have fun on the way to the finish. Where, with luck, you could get a great send-off like Isobel Benjamin. A big party. Admiring speeches. And at least a hundred and fifty people raving about how wonderful you'd been.

'Which way? Which way?'

'Right. Go right. Follow that Range Rover.' Jen was directing Meg around the Totnes one-way system.

'And then where? Tell me quickly, because I need notice. Listen, they're honking. They think my driving sucks.'

'Because it does.' Georgina turned to survey the queue of traffic behind.

'Why are they up my butt and flashing wildly?'

'They want you to move faster?' suggested Jen. 'You're going awfully slowly.'

'Look, I can handle five lanes of LA rush-hour traffic any day. It's this dumb stick shift where the door should be that has me freaked. At least I didn't claim a freeway phobia like you, Georgie.'

'We all have our weaknesses,' Georgina countered. 'Motorways are mine.'

True to her word Jen and Meg had shared the wheel of Jen's BMW, one hundred and ten miles each. But the second they left the M5, Meg's confidence had evaporated, everyone screaming as she headed the wrong direction round her first roundabout, crunching gears, the car lurching spasmodically.

'Right here.' Jen leaned over from the back seat, chin close to Meg's shoulder, a printed email clutched in her hand. 'It looks like we're getting near the centre. Now start looking for parking. Georgina's secretary says here that it can be rarer than hen's teeth.'

It was. They circled for ever before seeing a Mini pull out of a Mini-sized space just one street from the B & B. Meg pulled in, reversed out, pulled in again, reversed out and eventually turned the engine off, with one tyre on the pavement and the boot sticking at an angle into the road. As they dragged their wheeled suitcases uphill to their lodging, Georgina complained with every step that she'd have strong words with her assistant when she got back about her choice of accommodation.

Feo was straining on his lead, eyes bugging, red tongue sticking out, in an apparent attempt at self-strangulation.

'I need to walk him,' Jen said. 'As soon as we've got settled. Wouldn't want Meg to step on anything nasty in the night. What about you two?'

'Bed,' Georgina groaned, ringing the bell. 'I'm exhausted.'

When Jen got back, Georgina was sequestered in her room, presumably asleep, and Meg was on the phone to Zeb, clucking away, while the final of
I'm A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!
played noisily on a small TV.

She thought of calling Chloe at Ollie's, but it was long past her bedtime. They'd dilly-dallied for ages over dinner at the Moto service station. When Meg finally hung up, Jen was already under the covers.

'We really should get Chloe and Zeb together,' she said sleepily, turning off the light. 'What about next week?'

'Maybe.' Meg's words were muffled by her pillow. 'But Mace has Zeb's time pretty much tied up what with this private tutor, and now he's got him taking violin and swimming lessons too. I'm beat. Goodnight.'

'Goodnight,' Jen responded, her eyes closing even as her brain wrestled wearily with questions and the realisation that it was odd they'd still not met Zeb.

When Meg and Jen knocked on Georgina's door next morning, they found her sitting at the foot of the queen-sized bed, eyes glued to a repeat of some old TV game show fronted by Dale Winton.

'Is this piffle really on every Saturday morning?' she called to Jen as she nosily opened a door to check out the en-suite facilities. Georgina's room was quite a bit larger and nicer than her and Meg's, no surprise. 'Two families against each other. It's hardly even-stevens, one's a van driver and the other's a podiatrist.'

'So what's wrong with van drivers?' Jen closed the door again.

'Nothing. I didn't mean . . . I just meant . . .'

'That they were thicker than foot doctors?' Jen suggested, walking to the window.

On the bed beside Georgina, Meg was paying them no attention. She was flopped, face down, looking through a sea of leaflets she'd found in the entrance hall last night.

'Well, clearly doctors have to be clever. Look, I like van drivers, I have friends who are van drivers.'

'Yes, my dad . . .'

Georgina winced. 'Oh yes, I forgot.'

'Thought you might have.' Jen stared into the street below, listening to the seagulls screaming. 'Did you know we're only thirty minutes from a load of beaches here? If you don't mind sitting on them in all your winter woollies.'

'Shall we watch a film?' Georgina was flicking through the channels. 'This is so decadent, I never get a chance to laze like this.'

'No way, dudes.' Meg rolled over on to her side, waving a fistful of brochures like a winning poker hand. 'We've no time to waste. Look at all these groovy events. There's a veggie festival, wisdom scrolls, Henry Helminger's open healing weekend . . . oh, but you had to book for that. How about this, Wild Food Forage and Feast?'

'Perhaps we should forage in the breakfast room,' Jen said. 'What wild food could they possibly find in winter? Slugs and beetles?'

'And excuse my ignorance,' Georgina lay back on her elbows, remote in hand, 'but how is foraging for slugs and beetles going to help us find Rowan?'

'Forget it anyway, it was over in October.' Meg scanned another leaflet. 'Hey, what about Touching the Energy of the Bone? Now that does sound interesting.'

'You would want to do the bone thing, Nutmeg.' Georgina reluctantly switched off the TV. 'It's probably some dirty-haired sackcloth-attired yobbo wanting you to manipulate his extremities.'

'Georgina! How
very
dare you!' Jen chuckled in a bad imitation of Catherine Tate.

'Sounds good to me,' Meg tittered. 'Come on you old knuckleheads, time for a quick bite of brekkie and then let's find the castle.'

Before Jen could say 'Let's storm the battlements' she'd headed out the door and was halfway down the stairs.

Totnes was charming, quaint and, being an Elizabethan town, jammed with olde worlde pubs, antique dealers and quirky gift shops.

'Now this is my kind of scene,' Meg said, as they threaded their way through cobbled streets cluttered with organic bakeries, craft studios and New Age cafés. 'I could set up a store doing my healing and angel readings. It's got that vibe.'

'What vibe?' Jen said, pulling Feo away from a lamppost.

'Good energy, dude. Can't you feel it?'

'Can you actually make money from that kind of thing?' Georgina asked.

'Enough to get by on.'

It did look a cool place to live, Jen supposed, positively heaving with history but trendy and alive at the same time. Eat your heart out, horrible old Huntsleigh. All manner of people were lounging around enjoying the pale sunshine, tourists and locals, young and old. Asian monks wandered past in dark red robes, a couple of young hippy guys with shabby clothes were idly strumming guitars on a park bench, watched by three girls with crushed-velvet dresses and long hennaed hair.

They paused to watch a middle-aged black woman with an Afro weave brightly coloured string into a blond child's hair. Even in midwinter the town was lively, eclectic, buzzing.

'Too many bohos,' Georgina sniffed. 'Half look like they could use a good bath. And I've never seen so many white people with dreadlocks. How do they comb their hair?'

'They don't, Georgie,' Meg said as they started up the short but steep castle path. 'You of all people should know, being the famous fashion icon.'

She said the words with a grin and a little show-off twirl. Last night, as she'd clambered into the car, Georgina had surprised them both with bulging paper carriers stamped Giordani. 'Samples,' she had said deprecatingly to their effusive thanks, as they rummaged through their bags in delight. 'We always have oodles lying around.' But to Jen and Meg, both wearing their brand-new clobber today, Christmas had come early this year.

'Far out!' Meg panted, as they stopped to admire the view. They were inside the thirteenth-century Norman motte and bailey castle ruins, on the second tier, having ascended the treacherous narrow spiral steps, and were now looking down at the River Dart and a view of the town. 'If I ever get married a second time, it'll be in a place like this. That or on a beach in Hawaii. So romantic.' She clasped her hands together and held them to her breast.

'Where did you and Ollie marry?' Georgina asked Jen. She had pulled off one of her high-heeled ankle boots and was sitting on cold stone, rubbing her feet. Not the most practical sightseeing shoes, Jen thought.

'Local registry office. Just his parents, my dad, Helen, a couple of other friends. I was eight months pregnant so wasn't anything special.' She grinned at Meg. 'Not an Elvis in sight.'

'Wasn't much of an Elvis,' Meg said. 'Bad wig, didn't look anything like him. Or much of a marriage. The asshole.' She launched a pebble off the parapet.

Jen swallowed. If Meg didn't ask, she had to.

'What about you and Aiden, Georgie?' It felt odd calling him by his real name.

'Dinky little church. It was very beautiful, very old, traditional.'

'You always said you were going to float down the aisle, the virgin bride, all in white with little freesias in your hair.'

'I did have freesias in my hair, but my gown was ivory. I didn't do the white bit.' Georgina slid her boot on again and did up the zip.

'Or the virgin bit?' suggested Meg.

Georgina quirked her brows but didn't comment.

'Right, girls,' Meg said. 'That's the whole of Totnes spread before you. How many houses do you think there are? How long to systematically search each one?'

'Hundreds. And years,' Jen said, dismally surveying the surrounding area. 'It's a needle in a bloody haystack.'

'So what's our plan?' Meg asked cheerily, looking from one to the other. 'We do have a plan, don't we?'

'Perhaps we could ask around the pubs?' Jen ventured, wishing they'd thought this through sooner, now the enormity of their task was apparent. Why hadn't they discussed what they were actually going to do?

'That's a start, I guess.' Meg tucked her cold hands in the sleeves of her jacket and shivered. 'Because if we came all the way down here without a clue where to begin our search, I for one intend to break out the Martinis and get very heavily slammed.'

'You don't have to.' Georgina produced three cardboard folders from her giant handbag. 'I've got it covered. I had a copy of the Totnes phone book couriered to me at the office and my assistant Lucy called every Howard in it, looking for Rowan's mum or anyone who might know her. No luck yet, but we've eliminated all but five. No answer when Lucy called. My thought is to drive round to those addresses and see what we can find out. Anyone we can't talk to today we'll pencil in for tomorrow. Then we'll split up. Jen can try all the art galleries and art-supply shops for leads to Rowan. I'll look for places that sell wool and yarn – remember Mrs Howard used to knit all Rowan's sweaters, those big awful clunky things? And Meg can ask in the health-food shops and check out the churches.'

She handed a folder each to her stunned companions.