Just What Kind of Mother Are You? (21 page)

‘I’m sorry I ruined it.’

‘You’ve not ruined it. You almost ruined it. Maybe if you’d done it last week, or last month or, I don’t know, last year. But we’ve had a long time being happy since you did it. You just did a fucking stupid thing, a really fucking brainless thing. But can this be end of them now? Kate, Guy, Alexa, all of them.’

‘Not exactly a great time for me to break away from them, though, is it?’

‘No,’ he admits, ‘but you’re doing all you can to fix this thing. And it’s possible you might have to come to terms with the fact that you
can’t
fix it. It might not be fixable. She might never come back. Lucinda might never come home.’

‘And what if they blame me for ever?’

‘They will. And you won’t be able to do anything about it.’ He pauses. ‘It might be better if you start backing off them a bit, just in case.’

‘But how can that be the right thing to do?’

He shrugs. ‘Just a thought. Let’s see what today brings.’

I look down at Joe, and my whole being aches with how much
I need him. How I can’t get through anything without him. ‘Have another five minutes in bed,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll bring the coffee up.’

He manages a smile of thanks. He still looks exhausted. Looks worse, if it’s possible, than he did last night. When all this is done with, we’ll go away. Find a cheap package to the Canaries and get a bit of winter sun.

I go downstairs and busy myself with the dogs’ kibble and the children’s Weetabix. I flick on Radio 2 and hear the pips signalling the start of the seven o’clock news. The lead item is the missing girls of Cumbria.

I stop what I’m doing and listen.

And that’s when Guy’s behaviour of last night makes more sense. Because another girl has gone. This one is from the private school in Windermere. Not far from here.

He must have known. Guy must have already known about it when I called.

Again, the girl is thirteen and, again, she’s young-looking for her age.

An eyewitness claims she saw this girl speaking to a man before walking away with him; they’re advising us to be extra vigilant. They think he may have lured her away with a dog.

A tall man with an old, grey dog.

I hold on to the kitchen worktop to steady myself. My hands start to shake. It’s difficult to breathe.

Bluey.

I phone DC Joanne Aspinall and get directed straight to her voicemail, so I leave a frantic message. ‘Please call me,’ I tell her. ‘As soon as you can. I think I know who the man is, I think I met him yesterday … please ring me … please.’

I’m breathing hard as I hear Joe come down the stairs. ‘What’s going on?’ He’s standing in just his boxers and is rubbing the
back of his head where he whacked it when he slipped on the ice yesterday.

My words pour out in a gush. ‘Another girl is missing. They think she went off with a man with a dog. A dog like Bluey. It’s him, Joe. I told you there was something odd about him.
I told you
. It’s him, it’s definitely him. It’s got to be.’

‘It might not be,’ is all he says, and turns to let the dogs out.

‘Joe
—?’

‘What?’ he replies. ‘Don’t get in a state, is all I’m saying. The chance of it being the same guy is slim.’

I stare at him. ‘You’re wrong.’

I leap up the stairs, thinking I know what I have to do. I’m going to get dressed and get round to Kate’s and tell her. I don’t care if Guy yells at me, I don’t care. Kate needs to know this. I can tell her what the man looks like. Jesus, she might even know him! She might be familiar with him, and
that’s why
Lucinda went off with him so readily, that’s why she was able to take off without anyone suspecting anything.

I look at my watch.

I send Kate a text:
Need to see you, be round at 8 xx

The bedroom door opens. Joe. ‘What are you doing?’ he asks.

‘Getting dressed.’

‘Why the hurry?’

‘I’m going to Kate’s.’

‘Now? At this hour?’

‘This is important. It doesn’t matter what time it is.’

His face goes sullen; he can’t believe what he’s seeing. He spreads his palms wide in a gesture of ‘Oh, what’s the point?’

‘Lisa, did you hear nothing of what I just said? You can’t go tearing round there at this time. And what about your own children? You’re getting to the stage where you’re neglecting them. This is still all about—’

‘I’m not neglecting my own kids.’

‘No?’

‘Why are you saying that? You’re the one who’s always telling me to stop feeling guilty about them, to chill out and leave them alone.’

‘Lisa, stop. Look at yourself. It’s still
all
about
them
. It’s still
all
about
Kate
. You can’t stand the fact that she’s disappointed in you, so you—’

‘Disappointed? Her daughter is gone, Joe! And it’s my fault. I’m not worried that she’s disappointed in me, I’m scared to fucking death. What the hell am I supposed to do? I need to tell her about this guy from yesterday, it could be the missing link to finding—’

‘You’d better be careful then,’ he cuts in, his tone self-righteous.

‘What’s that supposed to mean? Careful about what?’

‘You take your eye off the ball again, Lise, and it might be
your
daughter next time.’

Forty minutes later and after scraping my car clean of ice I’m driving along Kate’s side of the valley.

My tyres crunch on the gravel as I make my way up the hill. I skid twice but recover and, to be honest, I’m in so much of a hurry I don’t care if my bumper slams into somebody’s carefully built wall or takes out their hedge. I’m feeling skittish and desperate to get to Kate’s to tell her what I know. I have a strong feeling that she is going to recognize the description of the guy who took Bluey and, not trying to get my hopes up or anything, I think there is more than a good chance of bringing Lucinda home.

I don’t let myself consider the option of her not being alive. For now, I truly believe she is, and Kate is going to need me to be strong. I have to be positive for her sake.

I get to the top of the hill where the road splits and, as I turn
slowly left, I think that I might just be able to right my wrong. If
I
could be the one to lead the police to Lucinda, then perhaps, in time, Kate and Guy will be able to forgive me, and—

I’m driving past the spot where the Rivertys park their cars. Guy’s Audi is not there.

Just a little along the road from the house itself is their detached double garage. Like most families’, it’s so full of junk there is no room for the cars, so Guy and Kate park their 4×4s in front of it. Kate’s Mitsubishi is there, but Guy’s car isn’t.

Where is he at this hour? Why is he not at home?

I dip the clutch and press the brake simultaneously, slowly, slowly, bringing my car to a stop on the roadside by Kate’s front pathway. She didn’t reply to my earlier text but I know she’s awake because all the downstairs windows are illuminated.

Anyway, of course she’s up.

What mother sleeps in when her kid is missing?

I stay where I am for a moment and watch. There’s no movement from within the house, but I notice Kate has taken to switching her Christmas lights on again now – probably trying to keep things as normal as possible for Fergus.

The tree looks pretty in the front bay. They do that thing families do at the beginning of December and go and choose it together. Make a day out of it and stop at a country pub for lunch on the way home.

Our artificial one is still in the high cupboard above my wardrobe.

Throughout the year the cupboard has a habit of bursting open by itself, and I’ll glance up to see a lone branch dangling down, taunting me, filling me with a sense of foreboding about Christmas – even if it’s only June.

My whole childhood seemed to be spent waiting for Christmas to come around, and now I spend half the year dreading its arrival. Too much to do and not enough time
to do it in. I’m always left feeling like a Christmas failure.

I look back again at Kate’s car. Perhaps Guy has managed to park his in the garage after all, so he doesn’t have to defrost it this morning. It took me for ever to do mine.

I get out and take tentative steps up the path. I remember reading once that the cartilage in human joints is three times more slippery than ice. But not this ice. This ice is like nothing I have ever experienced. I’m wearing some old ski pants I bought to go to Andorra with before I realized I was pregnant with Sally. We never did get there; so they’ve been used as winter dog-walking trousers ever since, and I’m grateful for them now. If I slip, at least my backside will have a little padding.

I press the doorbell and wait.

There’s no sound. Usually, you hear someone thundering down the stairs or you hear Kate’s quick, short steps along the hallway.

I press again, then start slapping my hands together to keep the blood flowing.

It’s as if there is no one home at all.

Perhaps Kate is in the shower.

I decide to ring the house phone on my mobile; she might hear that if she’s upstairs.

Two minutes later, and I give up because it goes unanswered. Then I have a brainwave. I bet they’ve gone to the police station. I bet they got the call about the new missing girl and they’ve gone to see if there is any more information. Yes. They must have taken Guy’s car.

But why leave the house lights on?

I’m about to head home when at the last moment I give the front-door handle a turn, just to see. When the door opens I jerk backwards with surprise and almost lose my footing.

Stepping in, I hear music coming from the kitchen, so that’s where I head. ‘Kate?’ I call out. ‘Kate, are you here?’

It’s Jona Lewie’s ‘Stop the Cavalry’ playing, and it’s coming from the sky-blue retro transistor radio, the one that matches Kate’s other blue retro appliances.

Then my mouth drops open.

Kate is on the floor next to the kitchen table. She’s in her Cath Kidston tea rose pyjamas and she’s vomited all over herself.

On the table there are three empty pill bottles and a half-drunk bottle of sambuca.

Trembling, I squat down next to her. I don’t think she’s breathing.

27

J
OANNE
’
S BRAIN IS
fully alert but her body is still asleep.

She didn’t make it back home until after eleven last night, when she had to abandon her car in Windermere village. Some idiot had abandoned
their
car outside the Co-op, blocking the road, and there was no way down. So Joanne had to make her way along, clinging on to parked cars like Velcro Woman, at one point thinking it would be easier just to give up and slide along on her arse. But even though there was no one else around, she couldn’t quite bring herself to do that.

Of all the times for freezing rain, it couldn’t have been worse. Two teenage girls missing and nine out of ten roads in Cumbria impassable.

The police have warned people to make essential journeys only – which of course is interpreted differently by everyone.

Joanne remembers seeing an American family being interviewed on TV once after a particularly bad ice storm in Minnesota. They were telling the reporter that they had
no choice
but to drive in the deadly conditions, because they had to eat – as in go to a restaurant – because, like a lot of Americans, they never cooked at home.

Life-and-death situations mean different things for different people.

Joanne untangles the covers and makes her first attempt at getting out of bed. She sleeps cocoon-like with the duvet pulled
around her and tucked between her legs. That way she stays warm but her legs don’t get sticky.

She shifts on to her back and runs her fingers underneath the lower rim of her sleeping bra. She’s slept in a bra since she was fifteen years old and can’t wait until she’ll no longer need it.

There’s banging coming from downstairs. Jackie’s usually gone by now, showering at six, out of the door for six thirty, tending to the clients who need help getting up. Today she must be stranded also.

Jackie was already asleep when Joanne returned home last night. Joanne had popped her head around the bedroom door, but the sounds of Jackie snoring and grunting told her she was flat out, helped on her way by a bottle of Mateus Rosé. Joanne had found the empty in the bin.

Joanne pads down the stairs and finds Jackie eating toast and marmalade and watching breakfast news in the lounge. Her short blonde hair is wet and has that orangey hue that comes from home bleaching. ‘Car’s stuck,’ she says, her mouth full. ‘It’ll need a man to get it movin’.’ Joanne tells her that they’re thin on the ground this time of year.

She’s not told Jackie about her breast reduction because – well, she doesn’t know why she hasn’t, but she’s just not. So when Jackie says, ‘There’s a letter come for you,’ nodding her head towards the coffee table, ‘says it’s private and confidential,’ Joanne doesn’t have a suitable answer ready and tells her it’s probably a bank statement.

‘It’s postmarked Lancaster,’ Jackie says, eyeing her suspiciously. ‘Bank statements don’t come from Lancaster.’

Joanne taps the side of her nose with her finger, an action guaranteed to stir Jackie up into a frenzy, so she goes out to make some tea.

‘I know you’re up to something,’ Jackie shouts from her chair.

As the kettle boils, she picks up her phone and curses as it’s
been set to go straight to voicemail. She listens to her messages, expecting something from the DI reprimanding her for not being within reach, but there’s just one garbled message from that woman at Troutbeck. Lisa Kallisto.

Something about a dog and the rapist.

It’s hard to hear properly, because Lisa’s message is bordering on hysterical and Jackie’s turned up the volume on the telly. Joanne has to plug her other ear to decipher what Lisa Kallisto is going on about. She’ll call her in a moment, after she’s had a mouthful of tea and at least woken up enough to hold a conversation.

‘Another girl has gone, then?’ Jackie’s shouting from the lounge.