‘No, I suppose. I’m obviously reading too much into it.’ She almost conceded, then remembered what he’d said. ‘But he said something that set my nerves on edge; the way he spoke it had an air of menace to it. A threat even.’
‘Oh, Lou, I’m sure you must have read him wrong.’ Her voice rose in pitch. ‘What did he say exactly?’
Louisa tried to ignore the slightly condescending tone. Tiff obviously thought she was over-reacting. ‘He was asking for my help – wanting me to go with him to the police to report Melissa missing, and when I said no, he said: You can help me, like I once helped you. And it was the way he said it. Like I owed him. And he had the gall to say he’d left for me. When I challenged him, he made out that I’d been lying to myself about the reasons he left me. He didn’t make any sense. But I did go to the police with him, and now I feel he manipulated me into it.’
Tiff looked thoughtful for a moment and Louisa was hoping she’d have to agree with her that Oliver’s behaviour had been odd.
‘What did the police say?’ she finally said. Louisa’s shoulders slumped. Tiff had chosen to only pick up on the last part.
‘Oliver said they asked loads of questions, about the party, who Melissa’d been with, about her friends and family, places she might go to – she’s apparently gone AWOL a few times in the past.’
‘They aren’t treating her as a vulnerable person, then, otherwise we would’ve heard more. Did they ask you about the party?’
‘Yes! And I felt such a fool. Kept having to say I couldn’t remember. I really wish I hadn’t drunk so much.’
Tiff screwed her eyes up, giving Louisa what appeared to be a silent apology for her part in that. ‘They might want a list of people who were there. We’d best go through your friends list, the one I used to invite everyone. If I’m honest though, I have no clue which of them were there, and which ones weren’t. Obviously I knew some of our mutual friends, but not the other randoms.’
‘Do you think it’ll come to that? To the police asking for names?’
‘If Melissa doesn’t show, and the police can’t find any evidence of her using her phone, her bank accounts or anything, then yes, they’ll scale up the investigation.’
‘How come you know so much?’
‘I went through it once. A long time ago now, but it still sticks in my mind.’
‘Oh? You never told me that. Who went missing?’
‘My friend – someone I’d met through my charity work when I was in my early twenties, so a long time before I met you. It was so sad – they never did find her.’
‘How awful. I’m sorry, Tiff. God, I do hope Melissa is found quickly. And safe and well.’
Darkness.
Blood.
A body – crumpled and still, lying on the ground.
A figure looming above it.
The image popped into her head, the words You can help me, like I once helped you echoing in her ears.
Louisa wished these images would stop. They had been coming more frequently since her party.
Since Oliver.
She hoped he would hurry up and return her text message.
16
THE PAST
Tuesday p.m.
Tiff had left once Noah’s screams reached an intensity she could no longer bear, and Louisa didn’t blame her. She put a tick next to 3 p.m. – it’d only been two hours since his last feed, but she hoped that was a good sign, not one that meant her milk wasn’t enough for him. At any rate, she was pleased the chart system was working well.
Sitting in the feeding chair, eyes fixed on the TV, Louisa tried to concentrate. But despite looking at the screen, it was the vision from earlier that she was seeing. She’d always assumed the flashes of images that came to her were from her past, tiny fragments of memory she was unable to piece together and didn’t even try to, believing they’d do more harm than good. If her brain was preventing the memories from returning, there was a very good reason for it. Up until now she’d coped with the random images because they’d been far too quick, too blurry and nonsensical to take them seriously. Now though, they had a form to them. Although they were still quick, they were not blurry. They were not nonsensical.
They were scary.
They were of a figure standing over a body. A bloody body. And a figure that she knew was her.
Louisa’s heavy eyelids closed. The pulling on her nipple had ceased and Noah was quiet.
She drifted.
‘Get away from me!’ Louisa’s eyes flew open, her muscles primed to leap from her chair to confront her attacker.
‘It’s just me, sorry, love. It’s okay.’ Brian’s hushed tones brought her rush of adrenaline back down again. It was only him taking Noah from her arms. Not a stranger; not someone wishing to harm him as her first thought had been. She’d been dreaming.
‘What time is it?’ Louisa rubbed her eyes with the palms of both hands. She felt as though she’d been shocked out of a long, deep sleep.
‘Just after six. You were sound asleep and I was hoping I could lift Noah off without waking you.’ Noah nuzzled in to Brian’s neck, his mouth open and searching. ‘Although, I think he’s hungry, so …’
Louisa sighed. Because she’d slept, hardly any time seemed to have passed since she’d fed him at three. The thought of him pulling at her nipples again made her feel physically sick. ‘Can you do it? Give him a bottle. Please? I can’t face another feed right now.’
‘Yeah, sure. Can you sort a bag of milk then?’
Louisa got up and headed for the freezer. It wouldn’t take long to defrost one of the milk packets she’d made up for Noah. Letting Brian have some time with his son would be good for them anyway, she thought as she pushed aside a pang of guilt at not feeding him herself. She’d done well during the day – breastfeeding regularly, even if not for long – she shouldn’t have anything to feel guilty for.
Her fingers stung with cold as she rummaged in the freezer drawers for one of the bags of milk.
‘Brian,’ she called from her bent position in front of the freezer, ‘have you moved the milk?’
She pulled some boxes of potato waffles forward, checking behind, but no see-through bags with the blue strip were visible. ‘Brian!’
‘Stop shouting, Louisa.’ Brian came into the kitchen, Noah doing his ‘start-up’ cry – the one that would continue to rise in pitch and decibel until his appetite was satiated. ‘No, I haven’t moved them. There were stacks in here last time I looked. Here, take him; I’ll check.’
‘I’m not missing them, Brian,’ Louisa said as she straightened and took Noah from him. The second he landed in her arms his cries increased in severity. ‘They are simply not there. You must’ve used up the supply when I was away on Friday.’
‘I didn’t.’ Brian was shaking his head, but whether it was out of confusion, or annoyance with Louisa, she couldn’t tell. ‘Are you sure you haven’t supplemented him today?’
‘I’m sure. I’ve been keeping a log of each feed since yesterday. Look.’ Louisa walked into the lounge, Noah still in one arm, and grabbed the paper with her list of ticks, then marched back to Brian, holding it out as proof she’d been breastfeeding all day.
Louisa watched his face as she waited for an apology. What she saw instead was his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed hard, his brow furrowing. He looked up from the paper at Louisa, his eyes intense.
‘So?’ she asked.
‘How much have you slept today?’
Louisa’s stomach knotted. ‘Only that short time before you came home. Tiff was here before that. Why? What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘I just wondered if you’d been … dreaming, or if—’
‘Christ’s sake, Brian. No, why?’
He held out the paper towards her. ‘I’m not sure what you’ve done,’ he said.
Louisa snatched it from him. He flinched.
She stared at it. All the times were written down the side, as she’d marked them firs
t thing this morning, just as she had yesterday. The tick for his first feed at 7 a.m. was there in pen.
Every other time since was blank.
No ticks.
‘That doesn’t … well, that’s wrong. It doesn’t make sense. I remember marking ticks alongside the times. I did. I remember doing it.’ Her own voice now took on a higher pitch, the shrillness almost matching that of Noah’s cries. She paced the kitchen, bouncing Noah vigorously as she strode back and forth.
‘Louisa. Stop.’ Brian stepped in front of her, preventing further movement. He pulled Noah from her arms. ‘Go and sit down.’
Louisa was light-headed, from the pacing and from over-breathing. She did as instructed. She felt faint. With her head hung low between her legs, Louisa tried to regain control. What was going on? If she remembered ticking the sheet of paper each time she’d fed the baby, then why weren’t they visible now? It was the same paper; no one else had touched it. She was losing her mind. That was the only conceivable explanation. The only thing Brian would believe too. And she couldn’t blame him for that.
The cries had ceased in the kitchen.
‘What are you doing?’ she shouted, her voice muffled because of her position. Brian didn’t answer. Then she heard a car start. Despite feeling woozy, Louisa leapt from the chair and ran to the window just in time to see the back of Brian’s car disappear down the road. Louisa grabbed her mobile and dialled him. It rang six times before the voicemail cut in. She dialled again. And again. Each time, her anxiety level increased a notch. When he still didn’t answer, Louisa rang Tiff.
‘He’s probably driving Noah around to stop him crying, Lou – you know he likes the movement.’ Tiff’s calm tone began to ease Louisa’s anxiety.
‘That’s true, but why didn’t he tell me he was leaving? He literally left without even saying anything. Surely he’d know that would panic me?’
‘No doubt as soon as Noah stops crying, he’ll call you. Try not to worry. What exactly went on? You sound really upset.’
Louisa reluctantly explained. Saying it out loud – telling Tiff about the lack of ticks – made her feel stupid.
‘You’re exhausted – we all know that. One night away, getting a single night of good sleep was nowhere near enough. Maybe you need some help, Lou? You know, like an au pair or something. That way, they can take care of Noah so you can catch up on sleep.’
Louisa immediately opened her mouth to dismiss that idea out of hand. But she couldn’t. As much as she hated even the thought of someone else taking over the care of her baby, a niggling feeling deep in her gut was telling her there might well be a need for just that. For Noah’s sake.
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Good. I really think it would help, Lou.’
The front door opened. ‘He’s here. Thanks, Tiff, gotta go.’ And she hung up.
‘Where the hell have you been and why did you do that?’ She launched herself towards Brian, hot tears tracking down her face.
‘Calm down, Louisa,’ Brian said. ‘I took him for a ride and I went and got this.’ He handed Louisa a Mothercare carrier bag. There were two tins of formula milk inside. ‘I checked with the woman which was the best. She said they were all similar. I remembered seeing SMA on the telly the other night though, so plumped for that.’ He placed the car seat, with a sleeping Noah inside it, on the sofa in the lounge and then headed into the kitchen. ‘Come on,’ he called to Louisa, ‘let’s make up some bottles now. And when we’re done, you’re going to call the health visitor to make an appointment for her to come and visit.’
He didn’t trust her to look after Noah properly – to feed him. Didn’t believe she was nourishing their baby – that’s why he’d got the formula. He thought she was forgetting to feed him, or was forgetting when she had fed him. She wanted to be mad at him, angry that he didn’t trust her. But she couldn’t be, not when she wasn’t sure enough herself.
As much as Louisa wanted to blame her forgetfulness and confusion on sleep deprivation, there was something else too. A hidden reason – one that had lain dormant for a long time. The timing of the memories, or visions – whatever they were – and seeing Oliver again were no coincidence. The way she was reacting now was linked to all of it, she felt sure.
Louisa’s party had set off a chain of events and now they were in motion, she felt powerless to prevent the direction they were heading in. With Oliver back in her life, however much uninvited, Louisa was going to have to face her past.
17
THE VISIT
Wednesday a.m. – Day 5 post-party
Thanks to Brian bottle-feeding Noah during the night, Louisa had managed to sleep solidly for four hours. Annoyingly, the other hours she could’ve spent asleep were wasted because her mind wouldn’t switch off – thoughts of Oliver, Melissa, the visions and half-formed memories all preventing it.
Emily had darted out the door this morning not long after Brian left for work, leaving in a state of annoyance because she didn’t have a clean school shirt. It was Louisa’s fault, of course. And the argument that ensued did nothing to allay Louisa’s fear that she was ‘losing it’. She had picked up Emily’s dirty laundry yesterday, and she had a clear memory of putting it in the washing machine. But when Louisa stormed upstairs, shouting about the fact Emily didn’t ever look properly – she found the pile in the same place on the bedroom floor where she’d first encountered it. Emily had rolled her eyes, hastily putting on yesterday’s shirt and leaving before getting into a conversation about it.
It was the exasperation on Emily’s face that’d hurt. Like she was fed up with having to put up with her mother’s inability to remember things. It was more than that, though. Louisa felt sure Emily was avoiding being left alone with her. She couldn’t get away quick enough in the mornings and she’d come home later than she’d promised last night. Her assertion it was because the project took longer to complete didn’t ring true. Louisa got the distinct impression Emily wanted to spend as much time out of the house as she possibly could. It was conceivable that was part of being a normal teenager, but it was equally possible it was because she thought her mum was going mad.
After she fed Noah and cradled him in her arms until his eyes fluttered closed, she placed him in his Moses basket. The guilt at giving him formula milk rather than her own was all-consuming. She was letting Noah down. Taking her mobile, Louisa scrolled through her list of numbers until she reached Sandy’s. She pressed the button to make the call to her health visitor. The answer machine kicked in after only a few rings. In a forced upbeat tone, Louisa left a message requesting that Sandy give her a ring to arrange a home visit as soon as she was able. Hopefully Louisa hadn’t come across as desperate. She didn’t want Sandy coming over today; she had to clean the house first.
With that job done, Louisa checked her Messenger app to see if Oliver had bothered to reply yet. Nothing – even though a tick beside her message informed her that it’d been ‘seen’ at 13.45 on Tuesday. She paced the room, her mind frantically considering what reasons he’d have for not replying once he’d seen it. The resulting conclusion was that something else must’ve happened: like Melissa had been found and he simply didn’t need Louisa anymore.
Louisa huffed and got up to make another coffee. So, if Melissa had been found and he no longer required Louisa’s help and wasn’t going to contact her again, why had he gone to such lengths to look her up in the first place? That had happened before Melissa went missing; he hadn’t needed her then. Unless …
Louisa’s mind raced. No one remembered seeing Melissa at the party. Or at least, no one she’d spoken to. That in itself was odd. But even the notion of Oliver concocting a story to make it seem like Melissa had been there when in fact she hadn’t made Louisa uncomfortable.
You can help me, like I once helped you. Those words. How he’d spoken them. They turned her insides to liquid.
The ring of the doorbell pierced through the quiet house.
‘Good morning
, Mrs Cullen.’ The uniformed police officer who spoke was standing back from the threshold of her door with a stern-looking woman by her side who didn’t make eye contact – she was busy giving the house a once-over, her dark eyes travelling to the pathway that separated Louisa’s house from her neighbour’s and that led to the rear of the property.
‘Morning. What can I help you with?’ Louisa’s insides quivered. There was only one reason they would be at her door.
‘I’m DS Farley, and this is my colleague, DC Patel. We were hoping to have a chat with you today about the night of Friday, fifteenth of March. You informed us at the station on Monday it was your birthday party that evening?’
Her earlier assumption about Oliver not being in contact because Melissa had turned up was clearly misplaced. Louisa did not want to invite these officers into her house. Didn’t want to be a part of this investigation. But she had little choice, and so she ushered them in.
‘Did you know Melissa Dunmore well?’ DS Farley asked. She’d seated herself opposite Louisa at the wooden dining table; her steel-grey eyes stared directly into Louisa’s as she spoke. DC Patel was hovering near the table, having declined the offer of a seat.
Louisa swallowed before she replied, but her throat was so dry, she coughed.
‘Sorry. Er … actually I didn’t know her at all. I didn’t even see her at the party.’
‘But you knew her husband, Oliver. It was you who came to the station with him to report her missing.’
‘Yes, that’s right. He asked me to go with him. Moral support, I think.’ Already Louisa felt as though she’d said things she shouldn’t have. Having police in her house was an uncomfortable experience – one that put her on edge and made her feel guilty even though she had nothing to feel guilty for.
Or have you?
Her own thought shocked her, momentarily causing her to freeze.
Cool grass.
Bare feet.
Blood.
A woman’s face.
Louisa scrunched her eyes up, attempting to force the images away. She took some slow, deep breaths, hopefully discreetly enough for the officers not to notice.
The Missing Wife Page 7