Why Don’t You Come for Me (9 page)

She greeted him normally when he came into the house, received the usual grunt in reply, then positioned herself just inside the kitchen doorway, listening as his dragging footsteps mounted the stairs, fully expecting him to come pounding down again seconds later, but to her surprise, there was no immediate outburst of adolescent fury. Instead he stayed in his room until she called him down for dinner.

‘Now for it,’ she thought, but Sean was quiet throughout the meal, almost subdued. Even when his stepmother offered him an opportunity to unleash invective, asking him if there was anything the matter, he only said, ‘No, nothing,’ if anything in a marginally more polite tone than usual.

There was no accounting for teenage boys, she thought. Sean was normally red hot on the issue of his privacy, and this was the first occasion he had genuine cause for complaint. After he left for school the next morning, she slipped up to his room, where she found the vandalized cupboard and its contents just as she had left them the day before. He had not even bothered to push the broken part of the door back into place. It was as if he was pretending not to have noticed.

It began to rain again at about nine o’clock in the morning, which precluded any possibility of an escape with her sketch book, so she washed the kitchen floor, then tidied up in the office for a while, although there was not much for her to do.

It had been so different in the early days of M. H. Tours, when she and Marcus had done almost everything themselves. It had been her first real job since being forced to give up work when Lauren went missing. She had been on a fortnight’s holiday when it happened, and this had extended into compassionate leave, then sick leave and finally they had to let her go. The company had made her redundant on health grounds – nervous exhaustion, the doctor had written on the certificate, or something like that.

Eventually, when her financial situation had become pretty desperate, when there seemed nothing else she could actively do to look for Lauren, and when she no longer cried every day, she had tried to go back to work, but it had been impossible to get another job. All the application forms asked ‘Reason for leaving last employment’, so an explanation was unavoidable. Employers did not like the idea of nervous illness, although quite a lot of people invited her for interview, probably just to get a look at her – see what she was like in the flesh – since none of them offered her a post. One or two had actively probed into areas which seemed unconnected with the job. Never mind her qualifications, or how up to date her IT skills were; what did she think had happened to her daughter? Their curiosity was always wrapped up in affected concern. ‘That must have been a terrible time for you … I wonder, did they ever find anything …?’

Intrusive questions. The things everyone wanted to know. She and Dominic had achieved a horrible form of celebrity, which drew false friends like wasps to a jam pot. People they had hardly known before it happened now appeared in the newspapers, talking about them, making things up. Complete strangers approached them in the street and hundreds of people wrote letters – all of which they opened in the hope that, sooner or later, one of them might contain news of their daughter. But the communications which were not completely mad either said terrible things about herself and Dom, or else came from would-be hangers-on, people who wanted to be your ‘friend’, just so that they could satisfy their curiosity about you. It was just the same with people you met. They wanted to talk to you and weigh you up, so that they could tell their friends all about you, what they had made of you and how it affected their take on the case.

Marcus had not been like that. Although he undoubtedly knew from the very first exactly who she was, and even if he hadn’t realized straight away, someone would have been quick to tell him. By the time she met Marcus, her confidence was at rock bottom. If Nerys had not dragged her along to an open meeting of the local history society called ‘Who
Really
  Killed the Princes in the Tower?’ they might never have met at all.

Even her marriage to Marcus had attracted adverse attention. The local paper got hold of the story, described Marcus as ‘a businessman’ and made a point of mentioning that Jo had previously been claiming benefits. They made her sound like a gold-digger. An old anger surged at the thought of it. She must stop dwelling on the past. Why not pop some of the books she had finished looking at back to Shelley? And while she was down at the gallery, she could sound Shelley out about becoming a guide when her new tour got off the ground.

Jo double-wrapped the books against the rain, encasing half a dozen volumes inside one tightly folded plastic carrier bag, which she then placed inside another before setting out. The lights inside the gallery were on, but when she looked through the glass panels in the top half of the door, there was no one sitting at the desk-cum-table. She pushed the door open and stepped inside, calling out, ‘Anyone at home?’

Brian stepped out from behind one of the display panels, his face darkening to a frown at the sight of her. Brian was a big man, not quite as tall as Marcus, but much broader. He had wavy black hair which was going grey at the sides and matching bushy eyebrows, which made him look fearsome when he glowered.

‘Oh … hi.’ Jo hovered just inside the door, trying not to drip anywhere except the rope-weave door mat. ‘I’ve brought back some of the books Shelley lent me.’

‘Just drop them by the door.’

Brian was often curt to the point of rudeness. Jo did as she was told, noticing the way the rain ran off the yellow and white plastic bag on to the pine floor. ‘Is Shelley around?’ she ventured. ‘Only there was something I wanted to have a chat with her about.’

‘She’s not here.’

‘Is she in the house? I could come back later if she’s busy.’

‘When I said she is not here,’ Brian appeared to be on the edge of losing his temper, although Jo could not see what possible reason she had given him for doing so, ‘it means she is not here, full stop. Not in the house, not in the gallery, not hiding in the garden shed, not here
at all
.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Something made her pursue the issue. That faint sense of unease she had experienced on overhearing noises through the front door of Ingledene had returned with a vengeance. ‘What time do you think she will be back?’

Brian hesitated. He half turned away, as if his attention had just been caught by a bold abstract piece in green and red oils. ‘She won’t be back. She’s gone for good.’ He turned his back and stalked down to the far end of the gallery, where he was hidden from her by a couple of display panels.

Jo stood dripping on to the mat for a minute or two longer, but when Brian failed to reappear – he must have known she was still there; there was a little bell above the gallery door which tinkled when anyone let themselves in or out – she stepped back into the rain. It seemed unaccountable that Shelley would just leave. They might not have been bosom pals, but Jo knew enough of her neighbour to know how much she cared about the gallery and, indeed, how loyal she was to Brian, in spite of his difficult nature. As she walked home a jumble of ideas competed in her mind. How long had it been between her hearing Shelley in the house and seeing Brian drive away? And if Brian had been using the car alone, how could Shelley – and presumably most of her belongings – have been spirited away? Unless Brian had driven her somewhere, then driven back again, the car could not have returned by itself. She suddenly remembered the afternoon when Shelley had originally loaned her the books: Shelley had said the bruise on the side of her face had been caused by a book falling on her. Brian was a great bear of a man, whereas Shelley looked as if a puff of wind could knock her flat.
Let me go, you bastard!
Then that awful crash, like a piece of furniture going over.

CHAPTER SIX

Marcus had barely been home from Border Raids and Battles for eighteen hours before he waved Jo off to lead an Arthur Ransome tour. The success of every trip was hugely dependent on what each individual guide brought to it, and in a business which relied heavily on personal recommendations and repeat bookings, it was vital that standards never slipped. He would never know how well the tour had actually gone unless she made such a hash of it that there were letters of complaint – but something in her demeanour made him uneasy. Once you lost confidence in a member of the team, you were walking on quicksand. He experienced a sinking feeling as he watched her drive away.

Last night, tired from the journey, he had almost lost patience with her over some nonsense about the gallery people; another little incident which had contributed to the unspoken tension which existed between them lately. He knew that a lot of it related to his son’s arrival in the household, and on the one hand he did feel guilty that she had to spend so much time at home taking care of Sean. He would gladly have done the same for her if the situation had been reversed, but that did not alter the feeling that he owed her, whereas in the past it had always been the other way around. Even so, he thought most people would have classified him as a more than normally considerate spouse. Taking on a woman like Jo would have been too much for a lot of men – in fact, there had been times in their five-and-a-half-year marriage when he had found it pretty taxing himself. There were so many minefields to avoid – tiptoeing around all the things he must never say. Familiar patterns of speech were denied him, everyday expressions completely out of bounds. No ‘You must be mad to say a thing like that’; not even in the face of the latest fantasy – that one of their neighbours might have done away with his wife.

It was crazy, of course. Only Jo would imagine the worst, having merely overheard a domestic argument, following which one of the parties had walked out. But of course ‘crazy’, like ‘bonkers’, ‘barmy’ and ‘doolally’, was also among the words he must not use, all as verboten as implying that Lauren might be dead – although privately Marcus was more than ninety per cent convinced that this was so. He could understand – of course he could – why Jo could never bring herself to accept this, even if in her heart of hearts she must know that abducted children almost never come home.

He had never imagined that marriage to someone as traumatized as Jo would be plain sailing. They had been through some bumpy patches before, and the arrival of a ‘Lauren postcard’, bearing the usual cruel message, was often a trigger. Jo inevitably erred towards the belief that they were genuine, although there was nothing about the cards to specifically indicate that. On the contrary, they always featured the same old photograph, which had been in the public domain since Lauren’s disappearance. The picture had clearly been obtained from a newspaper, whereas a genuine kidnapper might have given them something more – a photograph of Lauren which had been taken after she was abducted, a lock of hair, or a voice recording perhaps.

‘Not if they were clever,’ Jo argued. ‘Not if they didn’t want us to track them down.’

He had not disputed the point, although he couldn’t see anything particularly clever in sending the cards. If the kidnapper didn’t want to be found out, why draw attention to himself in any way at all?

Missing children always attracted the loony brigade. Just weeks ago there had been something in the papers about a case in the USA. A man had come forward claiming to be one and the same person as a two-year-old boy who had been kidnapped back in 1955, but DNA tests had disproved the theory.

Marcus could well imagine the agony of the family involved. Could you resurrect a familial relationship after more than half a century – or even after a decade? Suppose Lauren were to be miraculously found? She would be a stranger now. It would be horribly complicated, much more so than Sean’s coming to live with them had been. At least he had always maintained regular contact with Sean; even when they lived in different parts of the country, they had enjoyed a regular relationship which gave them something to build on now. He had been surprised when Sean expressed the desire to live with him; he’d told himself that the odd feeling of victory in being chosen over his ex-wife had scarcely come into it. Not that Sean’s arrival had made for an easy situation, involving as it did a complete rethink on both work and domestic fronts. A few teething troubles were inevitable.

Marcus’s ruminations were abruptly interrupted by his son appearing in the doorway.

‘Has she gone?’

Marcus was about to remonstrate that Jo had a name, but Sean’s anxious expression stopped him in his tracks and he nodded instead.

‘Can you come upstairs, Dad? I’ve got something to show you.’

Confronted with the broken cupboard door, Marcus forced himself to stifle his anger. Flying off the handle would not help things now.

‘I just came home from school and found it.’

‘And she didn’t mention anything about it? Say it was an accident, or tell you how it happened?’

‘No. She just seemed a bit weirder than usual. Anyway, I don’t think it was an accident, do you?’

‘Look, Sean …’ Marcus paused, momentarily at a loss for words. ‘I’m really sorry about this. I … we’ll buy you another cupboard, one you can lock. It’s only fair. And of course I’ll talk to Jo about it when she gets home.’ He was going to tack on a platitude to the effect that it could have been an accident, but he knew that was ridiculous. He felt as if Jo had humiliated him – left him with no recourse but to admit that the woman he had taken for his wife was capable of such irrational behaviour.

In the meantime, Jo had driven to Kendal for her rendezvous with the coach. All the drivers who worked for M. H. Tours were good, but Clive was one of the best: calm, resolutely cheerful and adept at turning the coach in seemingly impossible places. They left the garage spot on time. When there were no passengers on board, Clive liked listening to the radio, so after a brief chat about the health of his wife and his cat, on whom he doted in almost equal measure, he tuned in to Radio 2 while Jo watched the familiar landmarks go by.