Why Don’t You Come for Me (5 page)

In his heart of hearts he knew it wasn’t the same thing. Walking into a police station and confessing meant a lot of detectives dancing attendance and maybe your name in the papers. The thrill factor in sending anonymous letters about something currently in the news was harder to fathom, but maybe it gave you a sense of involvement, when you saw the story in the headlines: someone who continued to send things, years after the initial press furore was over … well, that was possibly unprecedented.

That was the trouble; it had gone on for years and years. He realized now that this was something he had not properly anticipated when he and Jo first got together. He had been drawn by her very vulnerability, fired with a genuine desire to take that fractured life and rebuild it. While he had recognized this as a long-term commitment, perhaps he had not fully understood its open-ended nature, that it could never be over until Jo knew one way or the other what had happened to Lauren – and maybe not even then. Between them they had found the means to accommodate this void in her life. She had thrown herself into the business with a single-minded enthusiasm second only to his own, and with no new leads and nothing further that could be done, the tragedy of Lauren’s disappearance had sometimes lain dormant for months at a time; but then something would happen to provoke the memories. It often began with the arrival of one of these wretched cards. Always the same thing – a scanned photograph of Lauren – the one which had appeared on every front page; the smiling blonde toddler in a sundress, with a glimpse of the sea sparkling behind her. Always the same message on the back, printed in Times New Roman, those same four words:
I still have her
.

At the conclusion of the Brontë trip Marcus drove straight to Manchester, where he found his mother much the same. His sister Sandra was much the same too, resentful and monosyllabic, not understanding – or maybe not wanting to understand – how difficult it was for him to get down to visit his mother on a regular basis, with a business to run and responsibilities at home. He usually managed to drive from the hospital to Easter Bridge without a break, but the traffic was so bad that he stopped at the services for an indifferent cup of tea and an overpriced sandwich. The knowledge that when he got home he would have to unpack and repack, in readiness to leave again the following day, did not encourage him to linger. He had often done tours back to back when the schedule demanded it, but he was feeling particularly tired tonight. At least he would have some back-up over the next few days. He and Melissa were managing the next one together – it was a one-off package, tailored to a group of English Civil War enthusiasts and their wives. While he led the men around various battlefields, Melissa would be taking their spouses on a round of galleries, antiques shops and various other upmarket retail opportunities, with visits to a chocolate maker and a stately home thrown in.

It had been raining all the way from Manchester, but when he turned off the M6 it became torrential. As he negotiated the winding lanes, great sheets of water flew up every time the car encountered one of the miniature lakes which had spread themselves across the tarmac. He was dog-tired, but the knowledge that he was nearly home lifted his spirits.

He had spoken to Jo the night before from the privacy of his Scarborough hotel room, by which time she had seemed much calmer, the initial upset of the card’s arrival behind her – touchingly contrite, in fact, about the interruption she had forced upon him in Haworth, and appearing to agree when he said that the card was just another cruel hoax like all the others.

As he rounded the bend above the bridge, the lights of the house became visible through the trees. Another few seconds and he was turning into the drive. When he switched the engine off the rain seemed to pour onto the car roof with renewed vigour, water cascading down the windscreen unchecked, obscuring the lighted house, turning everything into a watery blur. No one appeared to open the front door for him, so he had to juggle his bags and keys, fumbling for the lock as the rain plastered down his hair.

‘Anyone home?’ he called from the hall.

‘In here.’ It was a tone which made his heart sink. In spite of their relatively upbeat conversation the night before, things were obviously worse than he had thought. He felt an intense weariness pressing him down.

The voice had come from the sitting room. Marcus entered and attempted to muster a cheerful expression. ‘What’s up?’, adding as he caught sight of Jo’s look of acute distress, ‘Has there been a call from the hospital?’

She stared up at him. ‘It would have been – is – Lauren’s birthday.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘You’d forgotten.’ She slumped back into the chair, absently twisting her wedding ring between her right thumb and forefinger, while tears began a parallel descent down each cheek.

Although exasperated, Marcus was invariably moved by her beauty. The newly shed tears made her look impossibly young and vulnerable. ‘I’m sorry.’ He advanced to embrace her, but when she stayed wooden in his arms he withdrew, repeating his apology but this time adding with a hint of reproof, ‘I’ve just driven all the way back from Manchester. Sometimes the living have to take precedence over the dead.’

An arctic chill instantly enveloped him. It had slipped out so easily – the great unsayable. Even so, he felt she could have offered him something, at least asked after his mother, but she resorted instead to noisy sobs, between which she gasped out, ‘She’s not dead. She’s not dead.’ It reminded him of when he was a little boy, sitting between his sister and his mother in the theatre at a performance of
Peter Pan
, with the whole audience shouting out, ‘I do believe in fairies’, and Tinkerbell miraculously restored to life.

‘My darling Jo.’ He put a hand on her shoulder, which seemed to calm her.

‘I’ve been in touch with the local police about the card, and they’re going to contact Devon and Cornwall,’ she said. ‘The policeman was so nice – I explained it all to him and he seemed quite hopeful. He said they’ll probably analyse it. There are so many new tests now … DNA …’

He gave her shoulder another squeeze before withdrawing his hand, saying nothing. She had clearly spoken with an officer who was unfamiliar with the case, unaware that the cards had never afforded any forensic clues whatsoever. By the time the police got hold of them, they had always been handled by too many other people, while the cards themselves could have been produced by anyone who had a computer equipped with a couple of standard programmes and a colour printer.

‘They might even find Lauren’s DNA on it – if he still has her somewhere – if she’s still alive …’

‘Jo, I do understand that this has hit you hard, especially coming so close to today of all days, but you know we’ve been through all this before, and nothing has ever come of it. I realize it’s easy for me to say, but you have to try to put it out of your mind.’

For a second she appeared to be on the point of arguing, but she sighed instead and reached for a tissue from the box on the table, wiping her face while he nodded encouragement. Aiming for a return to normality, he asked, ‘What time are we going to eat?’

She looked startled, as if eating was an alien concept which had never entered her head. ‘I haven’t got anything planned. Sean had a pizza.’

Marcus tried to stifle his annoyance. Useless to shout at her, ask her if she realized how tired and hungry he was, after being on the road for hours, with an interval sitting beside his mother’s bed. Better to come up with a practical solution. Dredging deep, he forced himself to be patient. ‘Would you like me to cook something?’

‘No, of course not,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll cook. I’ll do anything you like. Just say – whatever you want.’

Marcus considered this. What he wanted was to come home to a welcoming smile and the smell of a hearty casserole simmering in the kitchen. To a laid table and the offer of a gin and tonic. To a woman who asked after his mother and made an overt gesture of affection. Eventually he said, ‘Anything that’s quick.’

Her attempt to make amends took the form of a hearty pasta dish involving mushrooms, bacon and a generous slug of red wine. To his relief, there was no further mention of Lauren or the card while they were eating. Instead, Jo made an effort to bring him up to date on various items of interest.

‘I’ve had another email from Nerys – she’s loving New Zealand. Oh, and I met Maisie in the lane yesterday. She says The Old Forge is definitely sold. To a woman, apparently. According to Maisie, she’s a widow with a teenage daughter, and she plans to live there all the time.’

‘How on earth does Maisie know all that?’

‘You know Maisie – she’s the
News of the World
.’

‘Whoever has bought it will have their work cut out. Nothing has been done to that place for years.’

‘Oh yes, and I nearly forgot to tell you: Melissa rang. She wants you to ring her.’

He couldn’t keep the impatience out of his voice. ‘Why didn’t you tell me as soon as I got in? It might be something important.’

‘I’m sure it can’t be,’ she snapped back. ‘If it was anything important, it would surely have been something she could share with me. I am a partner in the business too, you know.’

‘Oh, don’t be so silly, Jo. It’s probably something she wants to discuss with me about tomorrow’s run.’ He abandoned the last few twists of fusilli on his plate and scraped back his chair. ‘I’ll ring her from the office. I might need to check on something in there.’

She watched him go in silence, then stood up to collect the plates, muttering as she carried them across to scrape into the waste, ‘Obviously
I
couldn’t be trusted to give you a message.’

The part-full bag of fusilli was still standing open on the work surface and she caught it a glancing blow with her elbow as she reached across for the pan. The pasta spilled out of the bag, streaming across the slate floor of the kitchen, pattering against her feet, with some of the green and orange spirals rolling right across the room until they were brought up short by the bases of the kitchen units.

Sean chose this moment to enter the kitchen. He scrunched through the scattered pasta, ignoring it as effectively as he ignored his stepmother. It would never have been like this with Lauren. Lauren would have loved her. Sean would never love her, not least because he had a mother of his own. Marcus loved her, or at least … she wondered about the conversation he was having with Melissa. They should never have gone into partnership with Melissa – smooth, smart Melissa, so full of charm and wit and cleverness. Then she remembered Lauren again, and the two trains of thought collided. Did Melissa know about Lauren? Not unless Marcus had told her. People up here didn’t know. Of course, they would probably remember the story of little Lauren Ashton, who had disappeared in the summer of 1998 – you could hardly fail to know about it, it had been all over the newspapers and television for weeks after it happened – but although people round here might remember the case, they did not know that she was Lauren’s mother.

It was a long time ago now, so people didn’t whisper any more or point her out in the street, but she knew how easily that could change. The local police would be discreet. Nothing had ever been said publicly about the postcards. If the press got wind of them, someone would make a story out of it and her life would become public property again in an instant.

The very thought of it made her recoil, as if already assailed by the flashbulbs. She shuddered at a particular memory of a woman who had confronted herself and Dominic, as they walked through a shopping precinct. ‘Everyone knows you did it.’ Those were the words: loud, so that other passers-by could hear. Then a forceful launch of spittle; the humiliation of wiping it off, gripping Dom’s arm as they walked on, pretending not to notice the stares which burned them, hot as branding irons. They might as well have had the words
Child Killer
stamped across their foreheads, the way people looked.

Sean slammed a drawer, making her jump. Pulling herself back to the here and now, she attempted contact. ‘Your dad’s home.’

‘I know.’

‘What’s that you’re making?’

‘Nothing.’

They could both see that it was a peanut-butter sandwich. ‘Take no notice,’ that was inevitably Marcus’s advice. ‘All fourteen-year-old boys are impossible.’

But surely that couldn’t be true. And what did that mean, exactly – impossible? Where did the weird posters on his wall and the locked cupboard in the boy’s room fit in to ‘impossible’? Was the cupboard full of drugs? Porn? It wasn’t really big enough to hold much drink.

Sean recrossed the kitchen to get a plate, crunching some more fusilli underfoot as he went by.

‘Sean!’ she remonstrated.

‘What?’ He didn’t bother to play innocent, didn’t even turn to look at her.

There are a thousand and one reasons why women know all the words to ‘I Will Survive’ – and one of them was in the room with her right now. I am a strong person. I have rebuilt my life more than once, and I am not going to be intimidated by a child. She took a deep breath. ‘Don’t make any more mess. Get a dustpan and clean this up, please.’

‘I didn’t spill it.’

‘No, but you’ve made it worse by walking through it twice on purpose, so you can jolly well clean it up.’

There was a long pause, during which she wondered if he was about to tread the route of outright defiance, but after making an elaborate show of putting away the peanut butter, he took the pan and brush from the cupboard, not meeting her eye. She wondered if this small victory would make things better or worse in the long run.

Marcus left the house again at just after six the next morning. Jo got up to see him off, but their parting hug was lukewarm. It was still dark outside, but she waited at the front door, shivering in her dressing gown, until the car turned into the lane. The bulb must have been in the hall fitting for a long time, because its stale glow seemed to deepen the shadows around her eyes when she glanced in the mirror. ‘Eyes like a startled fawn,’ Marcus had once described them. She wasn’t sure if it was meant as a compliment or not.