Why Don’t You Come for Me (19 page)

In reality, she shepherded them inside, saying all the right things like a well-programmed mechanical doll, pretending, always pretending. Why do we care about the past, she wondered – not our own past, but other people’s? She had first discovered Mary Queen of Scots via some faded Pan paperbacks which sat on Ma Allisson’s bookshelves. The cover illustrations had caught her eye: velvet-clad heroines, complete with eye shadow and mascara and knowing, twentieth-century faces. The stories had been an escape route from reality, and even if Jean Plaidy’s version of history had been highly romanticized, the books had still served as a first step on the road to a real interest in the Tudor period and beyond.

Other people’s lives, however terrible they happened to be, could still provide a good antidote to the bad things which were happening in our own. At least, she had thought so until now. Today in chilly, dour Edinburgh, it was as if the spell had been broken; maybe it was the wreckage of her own life which required attention. Did Mary Queen of Scots matter? Did M. H. Tours? Surely what really mattered was finding Lauren.

At this point another voice – it sounded very like Marcus – intruded to ask just how she proposed to pay the mortgage or settle up for the groceries, without the steady income generated by the business. Moreover, it asked, what did she think she could actually do to find Lauren? Searches, the police, media appeals, none of it had worked.

She was so tired. Once they got to the hotel, she would have to lie down, snatch a nap, try to shake off her headache. Mrs Van Halsen loomed up beside her. ‘I thought I should tell you that I intend to lodge a formal complaint. Thanks to your mismanagement, we will not have a full opportunity to enjoy the retail experience that is Edinburgh.’ She pronounced it
opportoonity
and
Edinburrow
. Mrs Van Halsen stalked away again without giving Jo time to respond. From somewhere behind her she could hear the familiar voice of a miniature-railway engineer assuring another unseen person that you should never set off without making sure everyone was on board the coach. ‘Beginner’s mistake,’ he said.

Jo was so preoccupied that she almost fell over the child’s buggy. A small blonde girl, muffled up in a pale pink jacket, with imitation pink fur around the hood. ‘Why didn’t you come for me?’

Jo stepped back abruptly and burst into tears. Various members of the party surrounded her at once, faces anxious, voices asking her what was wrong. She had to excuse herself as swiftly as possible, promising to meet them at the exit. As she hurried away, she caught sight of Mrs Van Halsen’s contemptuous expression. She had given way to emotion – marked herself down as an amateur. It was the final loss of face.

It was cold in the ladies’ toilets, and the floor tiles looked damp and dirty after being repeatedly traversed by wet footwear. The expression of the woman who looked out at her from the mirror had a familiar, haunted look: a look which might always be there if it were not carefully hidden behind a mask. She would have given anything not to return and face the party, but she regained her self-possession and forced herself back into part. She would make a success of this bloody tour if it killed her.

When she rejoined the group she apologized profusely, inventing a lie about some news of family illness; thinking all the time how furious Marcus would have been.
I had to tell them something
, she responded angrily to the voice in her head.

It was considerably less simple to deal with the man in person.

We felt deeply sorry for your guide, who did very well, when having to cope with a family tragedy.

‘Family tragedy? What bloody family tragedy?’ Marcus waved the customer satisfaction form at her, much as an irate householder might wave his torn
Daily Mail
at the paper boy.

‘I got a bit upset. I had to tell them something. You know what people are like – you hint at something and they invent the rest for themselves.’

‘Why did you have to tell them anything?’

‘I told you.’ Jo’s tone was defensive. ‘I got a bit upset.’

‘Why? What do you mean, upset?’

‘If you would just stop shouting at me for one minute … I started to cry.’

Marcus stared at her. ‘You started to cry,’ he repeated. ‘Just like that? Out of the blue?’

‘I couldn’t help it. So I just said I’d had some upsetting news. I never said tragedy, I’m sure I didn’t.’

‘Golden Rule Number One,’ said Marcus. ‘Nothing gets in the way of the subject matter, unless the clients themselves introduce it. If you’re on an MQS tour, the topic is MQS, later medieval architecture, Scottish society in the sixteenth century, maybe even the suppression of Catholicism. It is not our private lives: yours, mine, or anyone else’s. You know that.’

‘But it didn’t spoil the tour for them,’ Jo interrupted. ‘The form says “your guide did very well …”’

‘No, she did not,’ Marcus shouted. ‘You gave a below-par performance, which these people forgave because they thought you’d suffered a bereavement. And it wasn’t just one adverse comment. There were problems mentioned across the board – hold-ups, itinerary issues, food at the hotel …’

‘There was nothing wrong with the food. You know some people are professional complainers.’

‘It’s your job to smooth things over.’

‘Don’t tell me my job, please. I know my job.’ She was overcome by the absurd sensation that she was in the midst of an interview with her head teacher, or had been transformed into a very junior member of staff, carpeted by the MD.

‘And at Tantallon, you managed to leave someone behind. There were only eighteen of them, for goodness’ sake. Checking the numbers is a basic, an absolute given.’

‘It was a fluke. I had checked, but …’

‘Satisfied customers are our bread and butter. We can’t afford to have a bunch of people telling their friends we didn’t measure up to the company promise. You must have known you’d messed up because you never said a word about any of this stuff when you got home.’

Jo stayed silent, knowing only too well that this was true. There was a long pause while Marcus appeared to be wrestling with his own thoughts and inclinations. Eventually he took a deep breath and said, ‘You’ll have to hand your tours over to other guides. We’ll reschedule –’

‘No,’ Jo cried. ‘That’s unfair. You can’t punish me for something one old crone has written on her comment form!’

‘Old crone? Is that how you think of our clients? How many other things have gone wrong lately that you have forgotten to mention?’

‘None of what happened was my fault.’

‘Leaving people behind? Bursting into tears? How is that anyone’s fault but yours?’

‘Hang on a minute. I’m a partner in the firm. You can’t just order me off the tours, as if I was some inexperienced nobody. Surely there has to be a proper discussion about this, with me getting a chance to have my say.’

‘You mean a partners’ meeting? You, me and Melissa?’

One look at his face was enough. ‘Oh my God! You’ve discussed it with her already – you have, haven’t you?’

 ‘She was the first person to read the forms. She drew it to my attention.’

‘And the two of you made a decision without even consulting me.’

‘Melissa knows you haven’t had a recent bereavement. What on earth did you expect me to say?’

‘I expect you to take my side.’

‘It isn’t a question of taking sides. We have to do what is right for the business. Times are tough economically. We can’t afford dissatisfied customers – not even slightly dissatisfied customers. If it had been Melissa, you would have been the first to say that she had to be replaced – temporarily.’

‘Temporarily?’

‘Until you sort your problems out.’

‘My biggest problem is that my daughter went missing ten years, nine months and two days ago. How do you and Melissa propose I solve that?’

‘That’s not the problem I’m referring to. I think you need to see a doctor.’

Jo shook her head, so that the tears which had welled up in her eyes zigzagged wildly across her cheeks.

‘Maybe some counselling might help,’ Marcus continued. ‘But you can’t go on like this – we can’t go on like this.’

‘Like what?’ She struggled with her tears, making a monumental effort to steady her voice as she asked, ‘Marcus, are you having an affair with Melissa?’

‘Like that,’ said Marcus, as he turned to leave the room.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Are you having an affair with Melissa?
Whatever had possessed her to say such a thing? Why had she even allowed herself to think it? ‘I was angry and upset,’ she told Marcus. ‘Imagine how you would feel if someone told you that you were off the tours, just like that.’ Although he had forgiven – or at least appeared to forgive – the implication that she thought he was having an affair (‘It’s insulting, Jo, to both me and Melissa’), he was unmoving on the question of the tours. ‘It was one slip-up,’ she pleaded, although in her heart she knew it was more than that. Somehow she had to get back on to the tours, had to persuade Marcus that she was fine. If they forced her to stay at home with Sean the whole time, she really would go crazy.

Persuading Marcus that ‘her problems were being sorted out’ meant at the very least meeting him halfway, so she agreed to make an appointment to see their family doctor, taking care that it fell on a day when Marcus could not possibly attend. To Dr Hillier she presented her problem as occasional migraine-type headaches, and destroyed the prescription he issued instead of cashing it in.

‘How did it go?’ Marcus asked, when he returned home next day. ‘Did he suggest a referral?’

‘A referral for what?’

‘For anything? Did you ask him about counselling?’

‘I’ve already told you’, said Jo wearily, ‘that I don’t want counselling. Talking things through with some fat ex-social worker is about as much good as a chocolate teapot. I’m up to my eyeballs in counselling, and going over and over things can only help so much.’

‘So what did he suggest?’

‘He said a bit of a break from work might be a good thing – just for a while. Rest and recuperate, that sort of idea …’ She waved an arm, as if encompassing a whole variety of restorative activity to which she couldn’t quite put a name.

‘I wish you had let me go with you.’

‘Marcus, I am perfectly capable of going to see the doctor by myself, and I don’t see what difference your being there would have made.’ It was such a big fib that she had to look down and flick an imaginary crumb from her lap, in order to avoid his eyes.

‘So he didn’t prescribe anything?’

‘No. Not least because, unlike you and Melissa, he didn’t think there was anything wrong with me! Quite honestly, I think he only said the stuff about rest and recuperation to humour me. I think if I’d been in a job which called for him to write a sick note, he might have thought twice about issuing one and asked me if I wasn’t swinging the lead.’

‘So what exactly did you tell him? Did he examine you?’

‘Physically, you mean? Blood pressure?’

‘That sort of thing.’

‘Yes – he did all the usual sort of things.’

‘And what did you tell him – about why you were there?’

‘For goodness’ sake, Marcus! Must you subject me to the third degree? Can’t we just drop this? You’ve got your way. You and Melissa have rescheduled everything for the next three months even though, according to Dr Hillier, there’s nothing much wrong that a couple of weeks off work won’t put right. In the meantime you get to travel all over the country doing the job you love, while I stay here, keeping house and looking after your son.’

‘You could think of it more positively,’ Marcus said. ‘Think how much reading you’ll be able to catch up on. And maybe you could do a bit more work on those new tours – so you still feel involved.’ His tone was conciliatory, ignoring the jibe about Sean. Recently he had started asking to speak to Sean, as well as to her, whenever he called home. Sean always pointedly carried the phone off into another room, so that Jo could not hear what was being said. She had half begun to wonder if Marcus was not using Sean to keep an eye on her: ‘How does she seem today?’ ‘Well, Dad, she’s not done anything weird so far.’

Fortunately neither Sean nor Marcus had been there to see a little scene played out on Booths’ car park, the day before her appointment with Dr Hillier. Walking back to her car with a trolley-load of shopping, she had almost cannoned into Brian coming the other way. Neither had been paying proper attention to their surroundings, and each had seen the other too late to take evasive action.

Brian had greeted her gruffly, made the inevitable remark ‘we must stop meeting like this’, and asked how she was, although Jo suspected this was less out of friendliness than because the position of her trolley made it almost impossible to ignore her. Last time she’d had him pinned against the dips and boxed salads; this time his route was blocked by parked cars, a concrete bollard and a flowering cherry tree.

‘I’m very well, thank you.’ She made a point of looking him directly in the eyes, so that he could see she was not going to be intimidated. Several times since returning from Scotland she had again experienced the strong sensation that the house was being watched. She had half suspected Brian, and briefly considered suggesting to Marcus that they install a security camera, but that would surely lead to accusations of paranoia, so she had not pursued the idea.

‘I was wondering what you were doing that day, when I saw you up at High Gilpin,’ she said. He could not fail to pick up the note of accusation in her tone. She would show him that she was not afraid to ask awkward questions.

For a moment Brian looked so puzzled that anyone who had not known better might have thought he had no idea to what occasion she referred. Then he said: ‘I was moving some pieces of sculpture. I rent some storage space up there from the Tunnocks. Anything else you’d like to know?’

Jo refused to be deflected by his sarcasm. ‘Yes, actually. I would like to know where Shelley is. There’s something I want to ask her.’

‘Then I suggest you drop in at the gallery – she was there when I left.’ Now it was his turn to hold her in remorseless eye contact.