Missing Joseph

by Elizabeth George

  Her heart was slamming into her chest. She had a folding and pulling pain in her side. She skidded on a patch of slick pavement and wobbled, but she caught herself against a lamppost and ran on.

  “Watch yourself, luv,” warned a farmer who was getting out of his Escort next to the kerb.

  “Maggie!” shouted someone else.

  She heard herself sob. She saw the street blur. She kept rushing forwards.

  She passed the bank, the post office, some shops, a tea room. She dodged a young woman pushing a pram. She heard the thud of footsteps behind her, and then another shout of her name. She gulped away tears and plunged on.

  Fear pumped energy and speed through her body. They were following her, she thought. They were laughing and pointing. They were only waiting for the opportunity to encircle her and begin the whispers all over again: What her mum did…do you know, do you know…Maggie and the vicar…a vicar?…that bloke?…Cor, he was old enough to be…

  No! Drop the thought, trample it, bury it, shove it away. Maggie hurtled down the pavement. She didn’t stop until a blue sign hanging from a squat brick building brought her up short. She wouldn’t have seen it at all had she not lifted her head to make her eyes stop watering. And even then the word swam, but she could still make it out. Police. She stumbled to a halt against a rubbish bin. The sign seemed to grow larger. The word glittered and throbbed.

  She shrank away from it, half crouched on the pavement, trying to breathe and trying not to cry. Her hands were numb. Her fingers were tangled in the straps of her rucksack. Her ears felt so cold that steel spikes of pain were shooting down her neck. It was the end of the day, the temperature was dropping, and never in her life had she felt so alone.

  She didn’t, she didn’t, she didn’t, Maggie thought.

  But somewhere shouted a chorus: She did.

  “Maggie!”

  She cried out. She tried to make herself small, like a mouse. She hid her face in her arms and slid down the side of the rubbish bin until she was sitting on the pavement, balling herself up as if reducing her size somehow served as a form of protection.

  “Maggie, what’s going on? Why’d you run off? Didn’t you hear me calling?” A body joined her on the pavement. An arm went round her.

  She smelled the old leather of his jacket before she processed the fact that the voice was Nick’s. She thought in nonsensical but nonetheless rapid succession how he always kept the jacket crumpled up in his rucksack during school hours when he had to be in uniform, how he always took it out during lunch to “give it a breather,” how he always wore it the minute he was able, before and after school. It was odd to think she would know the smell of him before she’d recognise the sound of his voice. She gripped his knee.

  “You went off. You and Josie.”

  “Went off? Where?”

  “They said you’d gone. You were with…You and Josie. They said.”

  “We were on the bus like always. We saw you run off. You looked dead cut up about something, so I came after you.”

  She lifted her head. She’d lost her barrette somewhere in the flight from the school, so her hair hung round her face and partially screened him from her.

  He smiled. “You look done in, Mag.” He thrust his hand inside his jacket and brought out his cigarettes. “You look like a ghost was chasing you.”

  “I won’t go back,” she said.

  He bent his head to shelter cigarette and flame, and he flipped the used match into the street. “No point to that.” He inhaled with the deep satisfaction of someone for whom a change in circumstances has allowed a smoke sooner rather than later. “Bus is gone anyway.”

  “I mean back to school. Tomorrow. To lessons. I won’t go. Ever.”

  He eyed her, brushing his hair back from his cheeks. “This about that bloke from London, Mag? The one with the big motor that got all the chappies in a fuss today?”

  “You’ll say forget it. You’ll say ignore them. But they won’t let up. I’m never going back.”

  “Why? What’s it to you what those twits think?”

  She twisted the strap of her rucksack round her fingers until she saw that her nails were turning blue.

  “Who cares what they say?” he asked. “You know what’s what. That’s all that matters.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut against the truth and pressed her lips together to keep from saying it. She felt more tears leak out from beneath her eyelids, and she hated herself for the sob which she tried to disguise with a cough.

  “Mag?” he said. “You know the truth, right? So what those loobies say in the schoolyard don’t amount to nothing but twaddle, right? What they say’s not important. What you know is.”

  “I don’t know.” The admission burst from her like a sickness she could no longer contain. “The truth. What she…I don’t know. I don’t know.” Even more tears spilled out. She hid her face on her knees.

  Nick whistled low, between his teeth. “You never said before now.”

  “We always move. Every two years. Only this time I wanted to stay. I said I’d be good, I’d make her proud, I’d do good in school. If we could just stay. This once. Just stay. And she said yes. And then I met the vicar after you and I…after what we did and how hateful Mummy was and how bad I felt. And he made me feel better and…She was in a rage about that.” She sobbed.

  Nick flung his cigarette into the street and held her with the other arm as well.

  “He found me. That’s what it is, Nick. He finally found me. She didn’t want that. It’s why we always ran. But this time we didn’t and he had enough time. He came. He came like I always knew he would.”

  Nick was silent for a moment. She could hear him draw a breath. “Maggie, you’re thinking the vicar was your dad?”

  “She didn’t want me to see him and I saw him anyway.” She raised her head and grabbed onto his jacket. “And now she doesn’t want me to see you. So I won’t go back there. I won’t. You can’t make me. No one can. If you try—”

  “Is there a problem here, kids?”

  They both drew back from the sound of a voice. They turned to see the speaker. A rail-thin policewoman stood above them, heavily cloaked for the weather and wearing her hat at a rakish angle. She carried a notebook in one hand and a plastic cup of something steaming in the other. She sipped from this as she waited for response.

  “A blow-up at school,” Nick said. “It’s nothing much.”

  “Needing some help?”

  “Nah. It’s girl stuff. She’ll be okay.”

  The policewoman studied Maggie with what looked more like curiosity than empathy. She shifted her attention to Nick. She made a show out of watching them over the rim of her cup—its lazy cat’s-tail of steam fogging up her spectacles—as she took another sip of whatever was in it. Then she nodded and said, “You’d best be off home then,” and held her ground.

  “Yeah, right,” Nick said. He urged Maggie to her feet. “C’mon then. We’re off.”

  “Live round here?” the policewoman asked.

  “Just a ways from the high.”

  “I’ve not seen you before.”

  “No? I’ve seen you lots. You have a dog, right?”

  “A Corgi, yes.”

  “See. I knew. Seen you out for your walk.” Nick tapped his index finger out from his temple in a form of salute. “Afternoon,” he said. Arm round Maggie, he shepherded her back in the direction of the high street. Neither of them looked to see if the policewoman was watching.

  At the first corner, they ducked right. A short distance down the street and another right led through a walkway that lay between the back of the public buildings and the overgrown rear gardens of a line of council cottages. Then they were heading down the slope once more. They emerged in less than five minutes into Clitheroe’s car park. It was largely empty of vehicles at this time of day.

  “How’d you know about her dog?” Maggie asked.

  “I just went with the odds. A lucky break for us.”
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  “You’re clever. And good. I love you, Nick. You take care of me.”

  They stopped in the shelter of the public lavatory. Nick blew on his hands and tucked them underneath his arms. “Going to be cold tonight,” he said. He looked in the direction of the town where smoke feathered up from chimneys, becoming lost against the sky. “You hungry, Mag?”

  Maggie read the desire beneath the words. “You c’n go on home.”

  “I won’t. Not ’less you—”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Then neither am I.”

  They were at an impasse. The evening wind was starting to blow, and it had an easy time of finding them. It gusted across the car park, unimpeded, and scattered bits of trash about their feet. A Moment’s bag glittered greenly against Maggie’s leg. She used her foot to brush it away, leaving a streak of brown against the navy of her tights.

  Nick brought out a handful of coins from his pocket. He counted.

  “Two pounds sixty-seven,” he said. “What about you?”

  She dropped her eyes, said, “Nothing,” then raised them in a hurry. She tried to make her voice sound proud. “So you don’t have to stay. Go on. I can manage.”

  “I already said—”

  “If she finds me with you, it’ll go that much worse on us both. Go home.”

  “Won’t happen. I’m staying. I said.”

  “No. I don’t want to be at fault. I’m already…because of Mr. Sage…” She wiped her face on her coat sleeve. She was tired to the bone and longing for sleep. She wondered about trying the lavatory door. She did so. It was locked. She sighed. “Go on,” she said again. “You know what c’n happen if you don’t.”

  Nick joined her in the doorway of the ladies’. It was recessed about six inches so they gained some ground against the cold. “You believe that, Mag?”

  She hung her head. She felt the misery of the knowledge lie across her shoulders, heavy and cumbersome, like sacks of sand.

  “You think she killed him because he came for you? Because he was your dad?”

  “She never talked about my dad. She wouldn’t ever say.”

  Nick’s hand touched her head. His fingers made an attempt at caressing, but they were thwarted by the snarls in her hair. “I don’t think he was, Mag. Your dad, that is.”

  “Sure, because—”

  “No. Listen.” He took a step closer. He put his arms round her. He spoke into her hair. “His eyes were brown, Mag. So’s your mum’s.”

  “So?”

  “So he can’t be your dad, can he? Because of the odds.” She stirred to speak but he continued. “Look, it’s like sheep. My dad explained it. They’re all white, right? Well, sort of white. But every once in a while out pops a black one. Didn’t you ever wonder how? It’s a recessive gene, see? It’s something inherited. The lamb’s mum and dad both had a black gene somewhere inside them, and when they mated out came a black lamb instead of a white one, even though they were white themselves. But the odds are against it happening. Which is why most sheep are white.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You’re like the black sheep because your eyes are blue. Mag, what d’you think the odds are of two brown-eyed people having a kid with blue eyes?”

  “What?”

  “Must be a million to one. Maybe more. Maybe a billion to one.”

  “You think?”

  “I know. The vicar wasn’t your dad. And if he wasn’t your dad, then your mum didn’t kill him. And if she didn’t kill him, she won’t be trying to kill anyone else.”

  There was a that’s that quality to his voice that urged her to accept his words. Maggie wanted to believe him. It would make everything so much easier to live with if she knew that his theory comprised the truth. She would be able to go home. She would be able to face Mummy. She wouldn’t think about the shape of her nose and her hands—were they like the vicar’s, were they?—nor would she wonder about why he had held her out at arm’s length and studied her so. It would be a relief to know something for certain, even if it didn’t answer her prayers. So she wanted to believe. And she would have believed if Nick’s stomach hadn’t rumbled noisily, if he hadn’t shivered, if she hadn’t seen in her mind’s eye his father’s enormous flock of sheep, drifting like slightly soiled clouds against a green Lancashire hillside sky. She pushed him away.

  “What?” he said.

  “There’s more’n one black sheep born in a flock, Nick Ware.”

  “So?”

  “So those aren’t any billion to one odds.”

  “It isn’t like sheep. Not exactly. We’re people.”

  “You want to go home. Go on. Go home. You’re lying to me, and I don’t want to see you.”

  “Mag, I’m not. I’m trying to explain.”

  “You don’t love me.”

  “I do.”

  “You just want your tea.”

  “I was only saying—”

  “And your scones and your jam. Well, go ahead. Get them. I can take care of myself.”

  “With no money?”

  “I don’t need money. I’ll get a job.”

  “Tonight?”

  “I’ll do something. See if I won’t. But I’m not going home and I’m not going back to school and you can’t talk about sheep like I was so dim I couldn’t figure it out. Because if two white sheep could have a black one then two brown-eyed people could have me and you know it. Isn’t that right? Well, isn’t that right?”

  He drove his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t say it wasn’t possible. I just said the odds—”

  “I don’t care about the odds. This isn’t like some horse race. This is me. We’re talking about my mum and dad. And she killed him. You know it. You’re just lording it over me and trying to make me go back.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “I said I wouldn’t leave you and I won’t. Okay?” He looked about. He squinted against the cold. He stamped his feet to warm them. “Look, we need something to eat. You wait here.”

  “Where’re you going? We don’t have even three pounds. What kind of—”

  “We can get some crisps. Some biscuits and stuff. You’re not hungry now but you will be later and we won’t be near any shop by then.”

  “We?” She made him look at her. “You don’t have to go,” she said a last time.

  “Do you want me?”

  “To go?”

  “And other stuff.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you love me? Trust me?”

  She tried to read his face. He was anxious to be off. But perhaps he was only hungry after all. And once they started walking, he would be warm enough. They could even run.

  “Mag?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He smiled, brushed his mouth against hers. His lips were dry. It didn’t feel like a kiss. “Then wait here,” he said. “I’ll be right back. If we’re gonna bunk off, it’s best that no one see us together in town and remember for when your mum phones the police.”

  “Mummy won’t. She won’t dare.”

  “I wouldn’t take odds on that.” He turned up the collar of his jacket. He looked at her earnestly. “You okay here, then?”

  She felt her heart warm. “Okay.”

  “Don’t mind sleeping rough tonight?”

  “Not so long as I’m sleeping with you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  COLIN ATE HIS TEA AT THE KITCHEN sink. Sardines on toast, with the oil slipping through his fingers and splatting onto the potscarred porcelain. He didn’t feel hungry in the least, but he’d been light-headed and weak in the limbs for the past thirty minutes. Food seemed the obvious solution.

  He’d made his walk back to the village along the Clitheroe Road, which was closer to the lodge than was the Cotes Fell footpath. His pace was brisk. He told himself that a need to avenge was what drove him so rapidly onwards. He kept repeating her name in his head as he walked: Annie, Annie, Annie my girl. It was a way to avoi
d hearing the words love and death three times pulse with the blood in his skull. By the time he reached his house, he was hot in the chest but ice to the bone in his hands and feet. He could hear his heart’s erratic thumping inside his eardrums, and his lungs couldn’t seem to get enough air. He ignored the symptoms for a good three hours but when there was no improvement, he decided to eat. Teatime, he thought in irrational response to his body’s behaviour, that’ll take care of it, must have a bite to eat.

  He washed down the fish with three bottles of Watney’s, drinking the first one while the bread was toasting. He pitched the bottle into the rubbish and opened another as he rooted in the cupboard for the sardines. The tin gave him trouble. Curling the metal lid round the key required a steadiness that he wasn’t able to muster. He got it halfway unrolled when his fingers slipped and the sharp edge of the top sliced into his hand. Blood spurted out. It mixed with the fish oil, started to sink, then formed perfect small beads that floated like scarlet lures for the fish. He felt no pain. He wrapped his hand in a tea towel, used the end of it to sop the blood off the surface of the oil, and tilted the beer bottle up to his mouth with the hand that was free.

  When the toast was ready, he dug the fish from the tin with his fingers. He lined them up on the bread. He added salt and pepper and a thick slice of onion. He began to eat.

  There was no particular taste or smell to it, which he found rather odd because he could distinctly remember how his wife once complained about the scent of sardines. Makes my eyes water, she would say, that fish smell in the air, Col, it makes my stomach go peculiar.

  Her cat clock ticked on the wall above the AGA, wagging its tail and moving its eyes. It seemed to be repeating her name with the sound of its clicking wheels and gears: No longer tick-tock but An-nie, An-nie, Annie, it said. Colin concentrated intently on this. Just like the rhythm of his earlier footsteps, the repetition of her name drove other thoughts away.

  He used the third beer to clear his mouth of the fish that he couldn’t taste. Then he poured a small whisky and drank that down in two swallows to try to bring back feeling to his limbs. But still he couldn’t quite vanquish the cold. This caused him confusion because the furnace was on, he still wore his heavy jacket, and by all rights he should have been soaking in sweat.