Desire Line (9 page)

Josh snapped, ‘Yeah, right.'

‘It's what I'd like, please.'

Back with beer in a lettered goblet for himself: ‘So what's the game now, Sara?' He was positioned directly across from her, interrogation style. ‘How much have you had already?'

‘Nothing.' She was recompensed by actual doubt in his eyes.

He leaned over and pinged her glass with a thumbnail. ‘Good for you.'

‘I am stopping, Josh. I've practically stopped. Don't— don't say anything.' She'd have put a finger to his lip but he seemed in a mood to slap it away. ‘I must. Eurwen… for when she does return. It's what I have to do.' Music blared out from the back of the building causing her to jump, but the refrain was one she recognised from everywhere and throughout the summer,
You're the girl! You're the girl!
Eurwen's lips miming then, a third above, Eurwen's sweet harmonies…

Josh had no startle-reflex nor ever had had. He pushed a laminated menu in her direction. ‘I'm for the steak sandwich.'

‘Anything.'

To expect more from him was unrealistic though nothing prevented the desire for it: so this was what she had been looking forward to all the endless hours. Could it be only her second day? While they waited they discussed money: how much might Eurwen have hoarded. ‘Credit cards, banks accounts— that's how you find adults, normally,' he instructed. ‘She'll have cash. Thank you Geoffrey, thank you Fleur.'

There was no defence to this. Food arrived as did other diners who placed themselves annoyingly close. She murmured, ‘I walked around, just hoping. I found the library. It isn't only money, is it? Once she'd have had to go there, if only to get access to… things. Now it's all on her Blackberry. I could have prevented that. I could have stopped Daddy and Fleur buying the wretched—' she broke off, hearing her own disloyalty.

‘Don't beat yourself up. Like I said
that's
switched off. First thing we tried. She'll have got herself a cheap and cheerful replacement, a throwaway we can't trace.' Josh chewed. At each bite, shreds of bloody beef dropped back onto his plate.

In the next booth further meaty orders were being delivered; she could envisage an Eurwen melodrama concerning carnivorousness. How irritated she would have been. Once. ‘She'll be amongst people we've never even heard of. That's frightening in itself. If you had some idea whom she might be with. At home I'd know her clique.'

‘Would you?'

‘I'd know her best friends are still the Fortuns. The Canadian girls? I've contacted their parents and Fleur has been to talk to them.'

A flicker of expectation in his leaning forward was extinguished as quickly: but it only heightened her desire to touch and comfort him. She shook her head. ‘She hasn't answered their texts. Nothing dramatic; she's been slower to respond apparently and then… then, at the end of August, she stopped altogether.'

‘Fleur should've checked their damn phones!'

‘Oh, I'm sure that would have helped.' But secretly she agreed. ‘If there were anything—'

‘You're kidding yourself you know what she's up to in Oxford. We've neither of us got a direct line to Eurwen.' Even his extra Welsh pronunciation of her name, rolling the r to an unnecessary degree increased the toxicity of the words. ‘So I'm doing what I can with what I got. Today I—' he broke off just as she heard someone walk across the bar behind her back, someone he recognised, plainly, from the look followed by a quick glance in her own direction. This was
the
woman whose shadow fell between them. Confident, she ignored him, and smiled at Sara with a pretty, tanned, unmade-up face that didn't keep laughter lines yet. Her T-shirt informed the world that its wearer Loves Loves Loves Miami
and
showed off large, high breasts whereas the faded jeans simply contoured muscular thighs. Taller than herself, Sara estimated, she was also broader but in a fit, strapping way. If dropped she might bounce.

‘This is Meg Upton, Sara.' He glanced to the side, then away. ‘Eurwen's mother.'

She said, ‘Hello Megan,' just as Meg said, ‘Oh, Mrs Meredith I'm—' and Josh said, ‘Are you with somebody?'

All three were silent. Meg Upton broke the impasse. ‘Just thought a couple of the girls might be in. I'm very sorry about what's happening with Eurwen, Mrs Meredith. I'm sure it'll be all right.'

‘Are you? I wish I were.'

It was sufficiently hostile to get Josh involved. ‘We've just got these. Are you eating?'

She shook her thick shoulder-length hair, acorn brown and very shiny, and released its herbal scent. One much-pierced ear was covered by the action and she re-exposed it.

‘Please, join us for a drink,' Sara said. How much Meg didn't want to was in her fleeting expression but she sat, as far from Sara as the booth allowed. ‘If there's anything you can tell me, I'd like to hear it.' Satisfied that her intentions were as stated Josh strolled over to the bar to order ‘a glass of white and 'nother of them,' with Meg Upton's eyes fixed on him. ‘You have been taking Eurwen riding?'

‘Yes. She's very good.' The voice was as beautiful an alto as the expansive chest promised. How easy Josh must have found it to listen to: pitch perfect
and
indigenous.

‘And who does she know here? I have to believe she's with people. But—?'

Another head-shake, a hankering look at the stalled Josh and then: ‘Your husband's asked me that. I've no idea. She's been to our house a few times when we've had a crowd round… Josh's already gone into everything. He's spoken to the girls working for us. But if you want you can come over any time. Do it all again.'

‘Perhaps I should.'
You're the girl! You're the girl/ behind the blinds.
Such a facile-seeming song at first…
You're the girl! You're the girl/ all out of dimes—

Meg swallowed. ‘That meal's getting cold,' she said. And then Josh was back.

She was running, past the chalets, then the drawn up caravans, past the shacks around the harbour and onto a road before she allowed herself time to think.

Completely dark now, what illumination there was came from the moon above speeding high cloud, disorientating to focus on for more than a moment. But at her level the breeze was just sufficient to make boats at their moorings restless as chained beasts. Surprisingly she found a trio of names came to her, though obscured: Olivia Jeanne, Merlin and of course, the Sarah II, all previously noticed. Presumably. Extraordinary the snippets the mind remembered and those it chose to forget… A distant blaze of neon denoted Rhyl proper with just a single car coming almost silently away from it. The footsteps suddenly behind her were much more significant. She didn't turn but speeded up. Even so the man's breathing became audible and then— ‘Sara!' Josh's voice, of course. ‘Sara for God's sake wait!'

She stopped.

‘Who d'you think it was?' he demanded.

‘I don't know,' she lied. ‘Not you obviously. You and your friend seemed settled for the night.' She had stolen away on a pretend lavatory trip. ‘Do go back.'

For answer he grasped her arm with a familiar nuance of action, that sliding of his palm over the elbow joint and reaching down and round to clamp onto the inner wrist. His intention was clear: to hustle her in the direction of his house. But first he must phone
her
. ‘Megs, it's Josh. Yeah. Sara's not feeling too good. I'm taking her— Yeah. I will. I'll do that. Bye.' (Who is this stagecraft for? she wanted to ask. But speaking to the absent Meg seemed to calm him. Perhaps she was answered.) ‘It's my fault, this. Let's get home. I'll tell you a few things about today.'

‘No.'

‘
Oh, for fucksake
!'

‘I mean I don't want to go back to that place. That horrible house,' she added for good measure.

‘Right! Come on then.' He swivelled them and halted though they had almost attained Avonside's entrance. They were opposite the first houses but stalled next to a wooden fence, its purpose apparently to keep back assorted weeds and a bit of Rhyl street art, stark black shapes unrecognisable in the poor illumination; in daylight they were a rotten rowing boat and a pair of oversized rusty metal spheres.

‘I meant to ask you,' she said, ‘why are these here? What are they exactly? Simply dumped… or emblematic in some way?'

He glanced at them as though installed in his absence. ‘
Fine!
' he said and marched her at the bridge, which now had a stream of cars crossing and none of them with drivers who gave a woman being dragged along by a much larger man a second glance. ‘Marine Lake! That'd be nice wouldn't it?'

Sara found herself hurried over a waste area where she had turned the car, that first day in Rhyl. The only way to combat Josh's momentum would be to let herself sink to the ground. Undignified, it might also make him… too late! A shaggy hedge loomed up and they were through a gap: immediately the turf fell sharply away and she would have plunged headlong over an invisible impediment if not for his grip.

‘What was that?'

‘Train track.'

‘We're on the tracks?'

‘Miniature railway. Not in operation now.'

His feet knew the lie of the land. Ahead lay the lake, completely still and burnished pewter, very different from its normal face, nearly lovely in fact as the gloom transformed it into a natural feature. A golden beam leapt across the water from the far bank and was extinguished as quickly: a cry came from the same spot, harsh as a crow's. The hair on the back of her neck actually stood up. This was an abandoned place. The ‘lake' she needed no reminding was a twenty-acre concrete construct, with an island bordered by kerbstones. She'd walked past it at noon… observed no one along its perimeter, bar a grotesque red-billed goose which seemed to prefer dry land, while the only floating objects were polystyrene cups. Now Josh almost towed her onto her face, so eager was he to get down to the edge and its well-trodden path. ‘No!' she said. ‘No. A man in a shop, yesterday… was talking…' her breath came painfully dry. ‘He said to keep away. Especially at night.'

She may as well not have spoken. ‘Here we are,' he said. Down by the water now: another brief flaring of light, directly opposite and in the direction Josh proposed, was like a warning.

‘Stop it. I don't want to walk here. We could be attacked!'

‘Oh Sara! D'you think so?'

They stumbled on. Her open sandals had soles thin enough to feel every sharp pebble of the path as though she had come here barefoot. ‘How far is it around?'

‘Far enough.'

It seemed they were to do the march in silence, all the time his pressure on her arm increasing. But as the lake shore curved away from the river they arrived at the trio of metal seats he had obviously been making for. Josh sat, changing his hold, turning it into an arm around her shoulder as though they were a courting couple, keeping her squeezed up against his furious heat and aware of his rapid respiration and the stored energy in his rigid frame. The gulls were still active… did they never rest? Dozens of them wheeling around the roof of some construct on the far side of the road where there should still be carousels and candyfloss sellers. ‘Eurwen loved the funfair,' she said. The building blurred against sky dull as a blanket. ‘You brought her here for your mother's birthday. She talked about the ride on the little train. How old would she have been?'

‘Seventy. It was the year before she died.'

She felt the change in him.

‘
Eurwen!
Nine… no, ten. Eleven?'

‘You couldn't have expected me to come.' She tried to squirm around but he wouldn't allow it, nor could she free the trapped arm. ‘
We
were barely speaking. Can you imagine the four of us squeezed into Nora's house for a whole weekend? Don't make it my fault. You didn't want me to come.'

‘No,' he said and pulled away and leaned forward, his head in his hands, giving her to understand she could get up and leave now and wouldn't be prevented.

But she didn't. ‘These girls Meg Upton mentioned, you've checked on them?'

‘Don't take anything from Megs calling them the girls. One's nearly thirty— she lives with a Neil Rix. He's older again. An ugly mug. And yes, of course I've bloody checked them out. First thing I did. He's gotta record.'

‘For?'

‘Relax. Criminal damage. Long time, now, student days. He smashed Boots the chemist's window. That's it. A protest. He got the conviction because he wouldn't accept a caution would be my guess. He's not had a mention since.'

‘And what was this protest against?'

‘Animals. You know, experimenting on animals.'

‘
Eurwen
. Yes.' She experienced an overwhelming hatred for these strangers Josh described. They had formed part of Eurwen's world, might be with her at this moment and as if on cue, a siren sprang to life, on a mission to some
typical Rhyl
scenario. The official keening grew before being abruptly cut off. That they both connected the sound with their lost child was left unshared, a crime in itself, a father and mother split and Eurwen falling through the crack. So we ache and sit here, specimens of
Homo dolens
squirming under our separate glass domes. After five minutes or so she whispered, ‘Josh. There's someone in the bushes.'