‘He knows I saw Sally,’ she answered defensively.
‘Well, go on, tell me the rest.’
Carol’s modern bungalow was some way out of Marazion. It had a small garden and was surrounded by countryside but with no view of the sea. ‘Obviously she wasn’t expecting us, but she asked us in. The whole time we were there she seemed a bit flustered. She doesn’t work because she can’t find anything to fit in with her children’s school hours and there aren’t any neighbours to look after them until she gets home.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
Rose shrugged. ‘Beats me, but she seemed keen that we should know. She said if she did find something she’d have to pay a childminder, which would defeat the whole object.’
‘But why did you go there in the first place?’
‘I just felt there was something not quite right, and Norma had the same impression. We thought she might let something slip. People do, without meaning to.’
‘Especially when you’re around.’
Rose smiled, she knew this was true but had never understood the reason for it. ‘Anyway, the place was spotless and there weren’t any signs of children around; no toys or anything.’
‘Some people aren’t sluts like me, you know.’
‘You’re hardly that. Untidy, I’ll grant you. No, this was almost obsessively clean, no ornaments, no photographs, nothing.’
‘So what?’
‘It felt wrong. When we got there Norma asked if there was anything she could do, babysit, maybe, if she wanted to go and see Sally, but Carol refused and said she was quite capable of coping and that her husband was due back as soon as a flight was available.’
‘Look, Rose, if there is something strange about Carol, you definitely ought to keep out of it. You know you’ll end up in trouble. Get Jack to take you out, he’ll soon put you right.’ Fat chance of that, Laura thought, but he might be able to warn her off.
It was quiet without the children. Tamsin and Lucy were staying with John’s parents in Penzance. They had been more than willing to have them for a night or two, not only because it was fun and they loved them, they also made them feel young. They could not have guessed what would happen to Beth but it now gave their daughter-in-law a chance to be with her sister who would need her more than ever.
That, at least, was what Carol had told them. She stood in the recess of the lounge window and watched as the increasing darkness altered the shape of the landscape. Fields and hedges merged into one and the bare branches of the trees, to which a few leaves still clung, were silhouetted against the skyline. It was not Beth of whom she was thinking, nor was it John. She did not know how she felt about him. It was Marcus, the man with whom she was having an affair, who held her attention.
She turned and walked across the room, flicking on the light switch as she passed it. Twice she entered all the rooms of the ranch style bungalow and checked the surfaces for dust even though she cleaned the place thoroughly every morning. It was a home in which no one was allowed to wear the same clothes for more than a day. John’s working clothes went through two cycles in the washing machine, the sheets were changed twice a week, yet, to Carol, nothing ever seemed really clean.
In the kitchen she noticed a small splash of something on the tiles between the worktop and the overhead cupboards. She wetted a cloth with disinfectant and wiped it away. The cloth was rinsed thoroughly before being folded and placed over the rim of the washing up bowl beneath the sink.
She would be seeing Marcus tonight, but only briefly. It seemed a waste when John was away, but it had to be that way. However, Carol knew the affair was about to end. It could not continue any longer. What she would do afterwards she had yet to decide.
Her eye caught the kitchen telephone extension. She must ring Sally. She didn’t really want to but knew that she had to. How callous it would seem not to make the call. It was her mother who answered.
With a tearful voice she said, ‘Oh, Carol, I feel so helpless. Sally’s almost out of her mind. I called the doctor but she refuses to take the tablets he’s given her. I just wish they would find her. Who could possibly do such a thing to an innocent child?’
‘Don’t take on, Mum, it won’t help. Does Sally want me to come over?’ There was time for a quick visit.
There was a mumbled conversation. ‘No, love, leave it until tomorrow. She’s had enough for one day.’
‘Well, ring me if you need me.’
‘We will.’
Carol paced the bungalow once more. She had some decisions to make and she had to make them quickly.
Outside, somewhere beneath the moon which was just beginning to wane, an owl hooted. Moonlight and owls went together. That night they seemed more eerie than romantic. They echoed her melancholy mood.
Jack and his team had no idea where to turn next. The searches were still continuing and requests had gone out via the media asking people, especially farmers, to search their sheds and outhouses. On the afternoon of Beth’s disappearance roadblocks had been set up at the Tamar Bridge and the only alternative route out of the county, the small bridge at Gunnislake. The mainline station in Penzance had been alerted; the staff asked to watch out for a man with a child of Beth’s description. Her abductor would not have had time to make it as far as the roadblocks even though over an hour had elapsed by the time the police had responded to the call and questioned the people on the beach. Time enough, though, for the man to have driven to Penzance or Camborne station and caught the 15.12 train from the former or the same train when it arrived at the latter at 16.14. This was a Paddington train. Jack had had the foresight to make sure all fourteen stations after Penzance were aware of the situation. No sightings had been reported. He had known that this was unlikely, that if you had a car you did not catch a train, but he could not afford to take any risks. There was no other feasible way out of Cornwall; flights from Land’s End and Newquay airports had to be booked in advance and getting away by boat suggested drastic planning. The scene Rose had described seemed more of a spur of the moment thing.
Jack sat in his ground floor flat in Morrab Road. It was spacious, with high ceilings, one of a pair into which the solidly built property had been converted and was situated between other flats and the offices of solicitors, dentists and alternative health practitioners.
It was past midnight but he was no longer tired; his mind was too active for sleep. All the people on the beach had been interviewed again, as had all of Beth’s relatives, and, of course, Rose. He wished she were there with him. He could have lain down beside her even if sleep still eluded him.
What next? he thought. What the bloody hell can we do next?
Katy was undressed ready for bed. She had hardly touched her tea again. Her six-year-old face, which should have been smiling, was white and pinched. Susan had tried everything she could think of to get her daughter to talk.
‘There’s nothing wrong, Mummy,’ was all she would say.
But Susan knew her daughter well. No longer was she that happy, outgoing child she had been. Something was terribly wrong. She had her suspicions, but how could she voice them? Who on earth could she turn to if what she thought turned out to be correct? And if she did voice them and she turned out to be wrong it would cause nothing but trouble for everyone. But she had to know. The doctor had found nothing physically wrong with Katy, which was some sort of relief; it was her mental state which bothered Susan. ‘Would you like to watch some television?’
‘No, Mummy. I’m tired. I want to go to bed.’
It was only six o’clock but Katy did look washed out. That was how Doreen Clarke had put it. ‘You want to take her to the doctor, maid. And if you ask me, there’d be no harm in him taking a look at you as well,’ she had said. Susan had taken Doreen’s advice but it hadn’t solved the problem. ‘Come on then. I’ll read you a story.’
Together they went up the stairs. Susan had almost finished reading when she heard the front door open. Simon
was home. He commuted to Truro where he ran a financial advisory service. She heard him drop his briefcase by the table on the woodblock floor of the hall. He would hang up his coat in the downstairs cloakroom then seek her out. She had always been grateful for his tidiness. She kissed Katy, pulled the duvet around her shoulders, and then went downstairs to greet her husband.
‘Hello, there,’ he said as she entered the kitchen. There was no welcoming aroma of cooking, no sign, in fact, that there was going to be any food. He took a deep breath. Neither his wife nor his child had much to say to him these days. ‘We need to talk, love.’ He pulled out a stool from beneath the breakfast counter. ‘Sit down, I’ll pour us a drink.’
Susan hoped that the alcohol would help quell, rather than increase, the nausea she constantly felt. It had to come out; she had to tell Simon about her suspicions. What it would do to him she couldn’t begin to guess.
‘Is Katy in bed?’ She nodded as Simon handed her her drink. ‘So early?’ He joined her at the breakfast counter.
Susan’s stomach churned. ‘She said she was tired.’
‘Susan, what have I done? Why are you shutting me out like this?’ He assumed Katy’s attitude towards him was a reflection of her mother’s.
‘Nothing, you haven’t done anything, Simon. It’s just that I’m worried sick about Katy. You must’ve seen how she’s changed.’
‘You’ve both changed. I really thought it was something I’d done. I know I’ve been late home a few times lately but I’m trying to keep ahead of the game by ringing people at home when they get in from work.’ He reached for her hand and squeezed it. ‘You do know that there’s never been anyone else but you, don’t you?’ He stood. ‘I’ll just kiss Katy goodnight and then you can tell me all about it.’
Dazed, Susan knew she would have to do so, that she would have to tell Simon that Katy had only changed since his younger brother had been to stay.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘Morale is lousy here,’ Jack told Rose when he rang from his office the following morning. ‘Whatever happens today I’m having a few hours off. I can’t keep going at this rate for much longer. I don’t think any of us can. Anyway, the reason I’m calling is to see if you’re free for dinner tonight. Arthur as well, if he’s up to it.’
‘That sounds great, Jack. I’ll speak to Dad right away. Shall I book somewhere?’
‘Yes, wherever you like. Make it for around seven if you can, I need a fairly early night.’
Rose could picture his handsome face, probably now grey with fatigue, and realised how much she felt for him. Until they argued, of course. But she still wasn’t ready to commit herself and wondered whether she ever would be. She said goodbye, hung up and dialled her father’s number. He took a long time to answer. It worried her. He could be out or in the bath but since her mother’s death she frequently feared the worst.
‘I’d really love to join you, as long as you don’t mind me playing gooseberry,’ Arthur said when he finally answered the phone. He had responded in the affirmative so quickly that Rose wondered just how lonely he was. He tried not to show it, nor to make any demands upon her time, but she knew exactly what he must be going through, and he had lived with her mother twice as long as she had done with David. At least he was no longer hundreds of miles away. And thankfully, through his previous visits, he already knew quite a lot of people in the area. ‘We’ll call for you about half six. There’s no need to dress up.’ Rose had decided upon Chinese. They all enjoyed it and Jack would be too exhausted to appreciate a more formalised meal. Several new restaurants had opened in Penzance over the past year or so, including one owned by the hotelier and sixties ex-supermodel, Jean Shrimpton, and her husband.
Although it was still very early she tried ringing the restaurant and left a message and her number on their answering service. As she hung up, Rose realised that it was Friday and that time was running out for Bethany Jones. She tried not to think about it.
There was work to be done; some general housework, which she loathed, washing to go into the machine and then the choice of sketching some more wild flowers, planning the next oil painting or taking some photographs. Few people realised that the quality of the light in Cornwall could be as clear in the winter as in the summer. But how else could the postcards of St Ives or Hayle Towans, for instance, show a blue sky, a turquoise sea fringed with white spume, cliffs adorned by palm trees above the fine, pale gold of the sand whilst the beaches were devoid of people? That day was such a day. Rose decided not to waste it. She would work outside somewhere. When the light altered she would continue in the attic.
It was so mild it might have been May. Throughout the month there had been rain and a few days of gale force winds but the real storms would come later, probably in January.
Rose programmed the washing machine, hoovered and dusted each room and cleaned the bathroom. Once the clothes and linen were flapping on the line strung between the shed and the branch of a tree, she collected her gear from the larder leading off the kitchen. With a fridge and a freezer installed, the old marble shelves had long since become redundant. The room now served as storage space.
She had mistimed her departure. The roads were busy; not that there were any traffic jams – they only occurred in the height of the summer. She drove to Hayle and parked on the wasteland by the old harbour. She took out her satchel, locked the car and walked to the top of the Towans. From where she stood, her feet slipping in the powdery sand which was held in place by the gently waving marram grass, she saw only the sparkle of the sea, now aquamarine, the greenness of the land on the opposite bank of the mouth of the River Hayle and the whiteness of the beach. The colours of nature defied description. Not a solitary person was in sight, not a single bird could be seen. The only sounds were the gentle lapping of the incoming tide against the shore and the whisper of the grasses as an unfelt breeze stirred them.
Rose adjusted her camera and looked through the viewfinder. ‘Oh, perfect,’ she said after her second shot when a small fishing vessel entered the mouth of the river, its sole crewman at the tiller. She took several more shots in quick succession, not wishing the boat to be in the centre of the photograph. It would draw the eye and thus detract from the beauty of the scenery and it would also appear too contrived. Already the morning had produced satisfying results.
There was plenty of time to drive to the other side of St Ives Bay and, hopefully, achieve similar results.
At Carbis Bay the breeze was more noticeable and there were small waves breaking. The surf was nowhere near strong enough for actual surfing, which usually took place on one of the other beaches even during the winter now that wetsuits were freely available.
The few walkers on the beach, wearing jackets or jumpers, gave a surreal quality to the scene when contrasted against the blue sky and golden sand. A dog ran in and out of the white froth running up the sand, barking ecstatically as it did so. A small child ran to join it. Rose stood very still and only realised she had been holding her breath when a woman ran after her, scolding her for getting her shoes wet. For a split second she had imagined the child was alone. It was then she recalled what Doreen had mentioned.
Doreen knew Susan Overton who was the daughter of Ann Pascoe, the lady who gave Rose’s hair its twice yearly trim. Rose and Ann were not friends in the conventional manner but after fifteen years they knew as much about one another factually as it was possible to know. It was over two months since Rose’s last visit to the hairdresser’s, so whatever was troubling Ann’s daughter had occurred since then because, otherwise, Ann would have mentioned it. Doreen had expressed concern about Ann’s granddaughter, Katy, who would, Rose calculated, be about six now. ‘She’s gone awful quiet lately, an’ she’s white as a sheet. Susan don’t know what to do with her,’ Doreen had said before going on to mention something about a doctor. Rose, her mind on something else at the time, had imagined that Katy had probably been suffering from one of the various childhood illnesses. But on re
flection she realised that Doreen, who had brought up her own children, would not have expressed such concern if it had been as simple as that. Children’s personalities changed in that way when something bad had happened to them. Rose could not imagine that the parents were involved. She had met them only once, which was not time enough to make a judgment, but Doreen knew them intimately and babysat for them on occasions. She trusted and liked them and always said that Katy was a ‘treat’ to look after; that she was a happy, friendly and obedient little girl. That was until recently. And Beth had gone missing. Could there possibly be a connection, she wondered. Adults were capable of doing terrible things to children, for their own gratuitous pleasure or for profit. However ridiculous he might think her suspicions to be, Rose wondered whether she ought to mention them to Jack.
She barely noticed the drive home because there were so many things to think about. Apart from Beth and Katy there was the problem of Christmas. Dad and I could have a quiet time alone, or I could invite Jack to liven us up a bit, she told herself. On the other hand, it might be painful for Arthur to see them together when he was so recently bereaved. The obvious answer was to ask him. And there was the usual dilemma of what to paint next. She had once vowed never to depict St Michael’s Mount in any medium. It was the most drawn, painted and photographed scene in Cornwall, possibly in the whole of the West Country. Yet she had been on Marazion beach actually contemplating doing such a thing. She wondered if the mysteries of Cornwall had been at work, if something other than a desire to sketch the crashing seas had drawn here there on Tuesday, if some sort of premonition had motivated her. Myths and legends abounded and things happened which were seemingly inexplicable. That could have been one of them. Rose had developed the innate curiosity of the Cornish, the need to know everything about a person, but until that moment she had believed she had not picked up their superstitions. Driving along the A30 in the winter sunshine, she suddenly recalled one other winter afternoon. She had been sketching the Merry Maidens which lay just west of Lamorna in the hamlet of Boleigh; the name meaning a place of slaughter. There, so Laura had told her, Athelstan finally vanquished the Cornish in 936. Nearby, in a field, exists a circle of nineteen stones, said to be maidens who dared to dance on a Sunday to the tune of two pipers who were also turned to stone. The pipers stood some distance away. One of its attractions to Rose was that there was nothing else there at all. People could come and go as they chose. There was no entrance fee, no hut selling guidebooks or souvenirs, no refreshment van, not even a car park. It was simply those nineteen stones in a circle in a field. Nothing had altered in hundreds, possibly thousands of years.
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