Why Don’t You Come for Me (2 page)

Marcus had helped, of course. To love and to be loved, that was the nearest thing to a cure for everything. So first had come the tonic of Marcus’s love, and then the idea of turning their mutual interests into a business – the all-encompassing project that had become M. H. Tours. The irony was that when she and Marcus had begun M. H. Tours, it had been with the idea of working together. In the early days, they had jointly accompanied nearly all the tours, only working separately as the business expanded and they offered more itineraries to cater for increasing demand. People tended to assume that the name M. H. Tours had been chosen because of Marcus’s initials, but in reality it started as a private joke – Magical History as opposed to Magical Mystery – a company which provided holidays in various parts of the UK for groups and individuals with a passion for history. It was squarely aimed at the top end of the market, with some tours themed to specific periods or events – Battlefields of the Wars of the Roses, or Monastic Life in Medieval England. Some were based around the lives of famous people: there was a Mary Queen of Scots tour, one featuring Richard III and another which majored on Brunel. The company had their own luxury midi-coaches, which transported guests between carefully chosen accommodations. As well as British travellers, there was a big market among the Americans and Japanese, and the business had blossomed even further since M. H. Tours had gone into partnership with Flights of Fantasy Ltd, a similar company to their own, specializing in holidays themed to Lake Country writers such as Beatrix Potter, Arthur Ransome and William Wordsworth. The timing of their amalgamation with Flights of Fantasy had proved unexpectedly opportune, not only in its potential for further expansion, but also in that it provided a fresh source of experienced specialist guides at the very time when Sean’s arrival necessitated Marcus and Jo taking turns to stay at home.

In spite of the difficulties child care presented to a couple whose working life had hitherto been spent largely on the road, she fully accepted that Marcus had a duty to his son and that she in turn had a duty to Marcus. Unfortunately, these new arrangements not only contrived to leave her alone with the boy for days at a stretch, but also ensured that periods at home with Marcus were invariably shared by Sean. She soon realized that unless she set aside a great many Sean-related grievances, a lot of their time together as a couple would be dominated by her problems with Marcus’s son.

Being away with M. H. Tours had been a way to immerse herself and to forget – the surest anaesthetic for a pain which was otherwise too great to bear. The waves of guilt that followed each period of forgetfulness were a terrible side-effect, but like a cancer sufferer enduring chemotherapy, Jo had come to realize that without recourse to the antidote, she simply could not go on living. Like a painful amputation, the agony became less acute; one adapted, got used to living with a part of oneself gone. Sometimes she wondered if her new life had helped her to forget too well, so that as time went by she almost welcomed the return of the pain. Sometimes the harder it hurt the better she felt, because remembrance was payment. And she must never forget – not that there was much chance she or the world at large ever would – that it was she who was to blame. It had been she who had left their sleeping child unguarded.

Such a
nice
day. A sunny day, holidaymakers strolling around in summer clothes, everything gaudy and bright, like a scene in a child’s picture book: the sort which has a happy ending. It had not begun like a story where some devil steals away the golden-haired child. The village street was busy with people (so busy with people, and yet no one saw a thing), just ordinary people having a day out (were they all blind?). Dom had slipped into the little chemist’s shop to replace his forgotten razor. He had come away on holiday without it, left it sitting on the bathroom windowsill at home. ‘I’ll catch you up,’ he said.

She had only walked on a matter of yards, drawn to take a closer look at The Shell Shop. She had scarcely expected such an old-fashioned seaside emporium would still exist. The proprietors had expanded their operation on to the pavement, setting up tables out front which were covered in shells for sale, tables placed too close together to allow for the passage of a pushchair. She had only slipped inside for a moment. For a long time afterwards she could not even remember why. ‘Did you want to look at something?’ the policewoman kept on asking. ‘Was there something you wanted to buy?’ As if she would want to buy some piece of old tat made from shells, for heaven’s sake. But if not, then why – why – had she left Lauren alone?

The shop had a coloured awning which extended right out over the pavement with ‘The Shell Shop’ spelled out in huge letters across the blue and white stripes, the words faded by five seasons of sunshine. Hooks had been driven into the outer edge of the awning, and from these were suspended strings of shells, ropes of shells, shells fashioned into wind chimes, shells made into dangling objects reminiscent of an Australian bushman’s hat. There were shells which shifted in the breeze, clattering uneasily against one another like unwieldy strings of giant worry beads. Every spare inch of window space was filled with objects adorned with shells. Useless, tacky souvenirs which screened anyone inside the shop from what was happening on the pavement outside, where Lauren was sleeping in her pushchair.

She remembered fingering a mouse on skis – the whole thing made from shells – contemplating it as a joke present for some friends (remembering this only much, much later – far too late to convince the police that this had been her original motive for entering the shop). She didn’t buy anything. Mere minutes had passed between her entering and emerging from the shop. On her way out she had to wait while a fat woman momentarily blocked the doorway, then threaded her way between a table stacked with sea urchins and another covered with the polished vacated homes of a hundred queen scallops, before she could get back to Lauren. The empty space on the pavement stopped her dead. A pair of feet had moved into the space where Lauren’s buggy should have been. A pair of feet in open-toed sandals, which belonged to a man wearing a pair of brown shorts. He was picking up items from the display, showing them to a disinterested teenage daughter. Jo stared at him, all but shoved him away, as if by removing him she could recapture what she ought to be seeing there.

A solution presented itself in a rush of anger. Dom must have pushed Lauren further up the street, not thinking of the fright he would give her when she emerged from the shop and found Lauren was gone. Then she saw him approaching. The smile as he caught sight of her died in an instant. Her expression and the absence of the pushchair told him everything. It was then that she began to scream.

CHAPTER TWO

Jo made sure that Sean set out for the school bus in good time on Monday morning. A little cloud of guilt descended on her as she watched him slouching away from the house. Did all parents’ hearts gladden to see the back of their offspring at the resumption of each new term? She called a goodbye from the doorstep, but when he did not turn she let the arm she had lifted in farewell fall back to her side.

Was this the answer to all those prayers, all that yearning to have a child in the house? She had often imagined how life would be when Lauren was restored to her. She had even tried to kid herself that if she took proper care of Sean, maybe the Fates would see what a good mother she could be – given the opportunity – and then Lauren could come home. Of course, life did not work like that, but at least if she lavished enough love on Sean and was seen to take good care of him, then maybe people would stop thinking …

She was rinsing a bottle at the sink when she caught sight of the Phantom Jogger. That was what Marcus had nicknamed him, because when he first started to pass the house on a daily basis, a grey shadow in his faded jogging bottoms and pale t-shirt, they could not imagine where he had come from. Although their house, aptly named The Hideaway, was partly screened by trees, from the kitchen window it was just possible to see a short stretch of the lane where it began its descent to the little stone bridge from which the hamlet took its name. Jo watched the Phantom Jogger as he steadily covered the ground, striding out easily, looking neither to right nor left, until he went out of sight where the lane bent sharply to avoid an outcrop of rock. Although his identity had initially been a mystery, within a week of his first appearance, Maisie Perry, who passed for the next best thing to a town crier in Easter Bridge, had informed them that the daily jogger was the latest tenant of High Gilpin.

High Gilpin belonged to a family called Tunnock, but was often let on short leases to people who were working on temporary contracts, or needed a base while looking for a permanent home in the area. It was generally considered that if any place was calculated to put you off country living, it was High Gilpin, a one-time working farm, which stood in an isolated spot at the end of an unmade track, a good half-mile or so from the next nearest habitation. After heavy rain, ice or snow the track was impassable to any but four-wheel drives, and the house was completely off the radar of delivery vans or taxi firms. Easter Bridge might be the best part of ten miles from the nearest shop, but at least you had a handful of neighbours to whom you could turn
in extremis
. When the power line blew down and the lights went out at High Gilpin, you were on your own.

When Jo had finished with the milk bottle and dealt with the rest of the recycling, she crossed the hall and went into the room they called the office, in order to check emails. There was a new message in from Nerys, sent from an internet café on the other side of the world – a couple of chatty paragraphs in which Jo could hear her friend’s voice outlining her latest adventures in New Zealand.

She missed having Nerys readily available at the end of the phone. Not that she begrudged the trip for a moment. If anyone had earned their midlife gap year it was Nerys, who had survived redundancy, divorce and a brush with cancer. ‘There’s a million and one reasons why every woman knows all the words to “I Will Survive”,’ Nerys once said.

Resolute, grounded Nerys, whose friendship had stood the test of time, someone with whom she had managed to stay in close touch, even after moving north with Marcus. When Nerys fell ill, Jo had made frequent trips down to visit her, both in hospital and at home. It had been during one of these that Nerys had announced, ‘I’ve decided when this is all over, I’m going travelling. I’m going to see the world.’

At the time the prognosis had seemed so dire, Jo could only wonder at Nerys’s determination – no ifs, or buts, she
was
going to go travelling. That conversation had been four years ago, but it had taken time for Nerys to get well again, and almost as long to formulate her plans and put them into action. ‘I’ve been taking lessons from my nephews and nieces,’ she told Jo. ‘The thing to do is bum a bed from anyone you can claim the slightest link with: third cousins once removed, long-lost colleagues, friends of friends. All the kids do it – they’re quite shameless, and I’m getting good myself. I’ve even managed to trace a girl I used to know at school whose family emigrated to New Zealand. Turns out she lives near Snells Beach, which isn’t far from Auckland, and she’s offered to put me up for a couple of nights.’

About a week before she left, Nerys held a going-away party. Marcus had been tied up with work, but Jo travelled down to be there. It was great to be part of the send-off, yet at the same time she had experienced a faint sense of misgiving. There was something so final about a going-away party. It made you feel as if you might never see the person again. Nerys must have picked up on this, because when she gave Jo a farewell embrace, she said with attempted gravity: ‘You do know that I might not be coming back?’

‘What do you mean? Of course you’ll be coming back.’

‘Not if I meet a millionaire and he takes a fancy to me. An oil tycoon would do nicely. And, of course, if I’m discovered on some beach in California and they want to put me in the movies …’

‘Well, don’t forget that if you do land the lead in a remake of
Gone with the Wind
, I want to be the first to hear about it.’

‘Absolutely. I expect Spielberg has got broadband in his mansion – and if not, there’s sure to be an internet café just down the road.’

To date, Nerys’s emails had made no mention of millionaires or film directors, but she had been swimming with dolphins, hiking on the Tereziana Trail and photographed in front of the Taj Mahal …
Maybe not as slim as Diana, but much funnier … you should get some tours organized in India. Can’t you come up with a Kipling link?
Without a set itinerary, she had overstayed her time everywhere and arrived in New Zealand at least six weeks later than originally anticipated, so it was no surprise to read this morning:
I’m hoping to extend the trip. It sounds as if my tenants would be happy to stay at least another six months, and my money is lasting really well. Everyone is so hospitable, and won’t let me pay for anything.

‘I miss you,’ Jo said aloud. ‘Don’t stay away too long.’ She hit the reply key and began to type.
That would be fantastic. It’s so great that everyone is giving you such a lovely welcome.

She did not have much news to offer in return for Nerys’s lively description of the Takapu gannet colony. Spats with Sean and what she thought of Sebastian Faulks’s latest novel were rather small beer by comparison, and seemed to emphasize an increasingly large gap in her life. Before the amalgamation with Flights of Fantasy, she had been much more involved with the day-to-day running of the business. At the inception of M. H. Tours they had employed an extremely capable woman called Moira, who had driven out from Ulverston four days a week to work in the little office at The Hideaway, but Moira eventually decided that her elderly mother needed her more than Jo and Marcus did, and after Moira there had been a succession of short-term staff, some better than others, until the company eventually acquired proper offices in Kirkby Lonsdale, with two full-time women, both of whom seemed more than adequate to the task. The location of the company’s offices had been chosen for its proximity to the home of Melissa Timpson, one-time proprietor of Flights of Fantasy and now their business partner, which meant that when Melissa was not guiding tours herself, she was nicely placed to keep an eye on things.