by C. L. Taylor
I smile nervously. ‘Yeah.’
‘Well, last week he texted me to say that he’d been having a bit of chest pain. I thought he was just being Dad and texted back that he should take an antacid. That it was probably indigestion or something.’
I tense. I know what’s coming next.
‘Well, about an hour ago he had a heart attack. He’s in intensive care. Mum doesn’t know if he’s going to pull through.’
‘Oh Ben.’ I reach for his hand but he’s too far away for me to touch him and he doesn’t move to close the gap between us. ‘I’m so sorry. That’s really scary. Are you going to go and see him?’
‘Yeah. He’s in the Royal Infirmary in Manchester. If I leave now I can get there in about three and a half hours.’
‘Go. He needs you. Your mum needs you.’
‘But …’ He rubs his hands over his anguished face. ‘But we didn’t … we haven’t been to the police station yet and I’m worried that …’
‘I’ll be fine. Honestly. Whoever it was that sent those messages they didn’t threaten me, did they? It was someone having a sick joke. Honestly, Ben. I’ll be fine. Please, don’t worry about me. You need to go.’
He perches on the edge of my bed and pulls my hand onto his lap as his eyes search mine. ‘Are you sure? How will you get back? We brought my car.’
‘I’ve got friends. I’ll ask one of them to give me a lift.’ I pause. Unless I ask Alice to drive all the way up from London I’m going to have to get a taxi to get back to Dad’s. ‘Honestly, Ben,’ I add. ‘It’s not me you should be worrying about. My arm will heal, that drip will sort out my blood pressure and I’ll be out of here before I know it.’
‘If you’re sure?’ He’s so desperate for me to reassure him it hurts. There’s absolutely no way I can ask him to check on Mike now and I wouldn’t anyway. For all Ben’s jokes about his dad’s hypochondria I can tell that he means the world to him, to their whole family, and they’d be broken if they lost him. This is my fuck-up and I need to sort it out alone.
‘I’m absolutely sure,’ I say. ‘Now, stop wasting time with me and get going. But drive carefully. One of us needs to stay fit and well.’
Some of the tightness and strain in Ben’s face eases and his lips curl into the smallest of smiles. ‘I knew there was a reason I came up to see you.’
There is a softness in his eyes that wasn’t there before; an intensity to his gaze that makes my stomach clench and my chest tighten. He looks like a man who’s falling in love. At any other time, in any other situation, I’d reach up and kiss him, but not now.
‘You only came up to see me,’ I say, ‘because you thought I was half dead.’
The effect of my words is immediate. Ben laughs and the intimacy of the last couple of seconds vanishes.
‘Totally not true. Although I was kind of hoping you’d left me your Mini Cooper in your will.’
‘It’s being buried with me.’
He laughs softly, leans towards me and kisses me softly on the lips. ‘I’m going to go. With any luck I’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe the day after.’
I shake my head. ‘No. Stay with your family. We can text.’
‘Not if you’re back in the arse end of nowhere we can’t.’
‘Call then. I’ll text you my landline number. Seriously, Ben, no more surprise visits.’
He recoils, as though physically stung by my words and there it is again, the hurt and confusion in his eyes. But what else can I say? I won’t be at Dad’s tomorrow. I’ll be in a police cell. If Mike’s still alive when I get back to the barn, I’ll be on a kidnap charge. And if he’s dead … No, I can’t think about that.
‘Please give my love to your family,’ I say. ‘And look after yourself.’
‘Yeah.’ He nods curtly and stands up. ‘Look after yourself too.’
I watch him go, his body stooped forward as though he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, as he crosses the ward and disappears into the corridor. Only when I’m sure he’s gone do I let myself cry.
Chapter 35
Wendy
If there’s one thing Wendy hates more than husband-stealing bitches it’s husband-stealing bitches who don’t turn up when they say they will. It’s Saturday evening and she still hasn’t heard from Lou. She waited in for hours on Friday, even denying Monty his afternoon walk because Louise bloody Wandsworth didn’t deign to visit her house. When Lou was ten minutes late, Wendy had to steal herself not to ring her because she didn’t want to appear too desperate. When she was thirty minutes late, Wendy pressed one of her favourite Laura Ashley sofa cushions to her mouth and screamed as loudly as she could. She snapped and rang when Lou was a whole hour late. That wasn’t desperate. That was the behaviour of a sane, rational person whose time was being wasted. Only Lou didn’t reply, did she? By eight o’clock Wendy had had enough. She stormed into the kitchen, flung open her crockery cupboard and threw her least favourite mug at the floor. Poor Monty was terrified. He hightailed it out of the kitchen, exiting the dog flap at a speed Wendy had never witnessed before, and he wouldn’t come back in until she’d swept up all the broken shards of porcelain and produced a whole handful of his favourite treats.
Wendy stares at her phone and sighs. It’s 5.35 p.m. and she has already checked Facebook five times. On Friday evening she was this close to going round to Lou’s house before she realised Lou hadn’t actually ever given her her address and it would look unhinged. But why ignore her after Lou was the one who requested a chat? It’s as though she’s disappeared off the face of the earth. Wendy reaches down and rubs Monty behind his ears. Now that’s an interesting thought. Lou and Mike, both pulling missing persons acts within days of each other. It’s like history repeating itself. It’s a ridiculous thought, that the two of them would reconnect almost eighteen years to the day after their little sojourn to France. Lou has Ben for one. Although Ben still hasn’t replied to Wendy’s invitation to visit Lou with her. He’d seemed so shocked and concerned when she’d broken the news about his girlfriend’s prognosis but maybe she’d read that wrong.
She taps on the Facebook app and re-reads their conversation. Yes, there it is, the bit where he wrote I was hoping it was a wind-up. He’d ended the conversation saying I need to think about this. I’ll get back to you. Maybe he was convinced it was a wind-up. Or maybe he and Lou weren’t as close as she’d assumed. It would explain why their statuses didn’t say they were in a relationship with each other and why they didn’t seem to interact much online.
Wendy breathes out heavily through her nose as the truth hits her. She’s been focussing in on the wrong man. Of course Lou’s disappearance is connected to Mike’s. She didn’t return because she’d got a job in Malvern, she returned for him. Maybe they’d talked online and reignited a spark. They met up, experienced a resurgence of feelings and decided to go away together. It would certainly explain why Mike had disappeared without telling anyone where he was going. He’d spent nearly two decades trying to rebuild his reputation. There was no way he’d advertise the fact that he was back together with the girl who’d destroyed it.
But why did Lou ring Wendy? That’s what she can’t explain. Why arrange to meet her and then not show up? There was a part of her that had hoped that the girl was planning to apologise. It was certainly about time. A joke then? A twisted wind-up suggested by Mike? Payback for what she’d done to him?
Fire burns in the pit of Wendy’s stomach as she gets up from her armchair, crosses the small living room and unhooks her coat from the peg in the hallway. Unhinged or not, they mocked her once but she won’t let them do it again.
It’s dusk and pouring with rain as Wendy pulls into the sprawling, gravelled driveway that surrounds the large farmhouse. All the lights are off in the house but the Volvo and Lou’s red Mini are parked outside the garage. Wendy parks her car, throws open her door, pulls her hood over her head and stomps towards the house and hammers on the door with closed fists. She doesn’t w
ait for a response. Instead she stalks around the house, staring in at the windows and smacking on the glass with the flat of her palms as the wind whips her jacket around her. Are they upstairs – Mike and Louise, snuggled together under the duvet, laughing at her? Has he shown her the tiny wound in his thigh and told her what a psycho his ex-wife is?
Psycho. She clenches her teeth as she rounds the house. It’s a ridiculous word, thrown at anyone who retaliates rather than plays the victim. How dare he throw her loyalty back in her face and ask for a divorce? How dare he strip her of everything she loved? She had every right to be angry, the way he’d treated her. The judge must have agreed too or she wouldn’t have given her a non-custodial sentence. The restraining order was a joke. As if she wanted to go anywhere near Mike after what he’d done to her.
Wendy returns to the driveway, her circuit of the house complete.
‘Louise!’ she shouts, staring up at the master bedroom. ‘I know you’re in there. Open the door!’
She crosses her arms over her chest and waits, but no one appears at the window. There’s no movement at all in the room.
‘Lou!’ She stoops down, grabs a handful of gravel and throws it at the glass. ‘Open the door!’
Without waiting for a response, she stalks up to the side door and pulls the letter box open.
‘I need to talk to you!’
But no one responds.
Frustrated, she returns to her car, reaches for her handbag and pulls out her phone. She jabs at the screen as she walks back to the side door and opens the letter box, then presses her left ear against the slit. Wendy holds her breath. If she hears Lou’s phone ring out from inside the house she will … well, she’s not quite sure what she’ll do yet, but she won’t leave until she sees Louise Wandsworth. She’s not going to let her slip away again.
But nothing happens. There’s no sound from the house and no dialling tone in Wendy’s right ear. She moves her phone away from her ear and peers at the screen. No reception. God damn it.
She stares up at the window above the kitchen, her foot tap-tap-tapping on the gravel for one minute, two, three, then, unable to keep still a second longer, she slips between the garage and the house and walks into the garden. Her heels sink into the soggy grass as she walks backwards, keeping her gaze fixed on the house, then, as a rose bush scratches at her calves, she turns and walks up to the gate.
She shakes her head in irritation as she steps into the yard. Does all this belong to Louise too? If it was hers she wouldn’t let the fields grow wild and unkempt. She’d graze sheep, grow crops, maybe buy a horse or two and she’d definitely keep ducks on the lake in the field behind the barn. Sighing with frustration, she heads for the barn with its patchy roof and broken walls. It looms over her in the half-light as she approaches. It probably housed lambs once, Wendy thinks as she pulls on the heavy metal ring on the door. She can imagine them now, bleating and crying for milk under the light of orange heat lamps and—
Scrabbling. That’s the only word she can think of to describe the sound that makes her blood run cold. An animal, hurriedly getting to its feet, knocking against something metal and groaning. It sounds scared, or in pain. She backs out of the barn and slams the door shut, her heart pounding in her throat. Is it a fox? Ever since she read that story about a fox mauling a baby in its bed she’s been terrified of them. If it has somehow got itself trapped in the barn, or if it’s made a nest in there to have its babies, it’ll feel cornered if she walks in. And it might attack.
But what if it’s not a fox? What if it’s a hurt sheep, lost and alone? Wendy’s always had a soft spot for sheep with their stupid faces and their ridiculous running style. A sheep wouldn’t hurt her. She opens the door an inch and peers inside but it’s so dark she can’t see a thing.
‘Hello,’ she whispers, braced to run. ‘Hello, I just want to help.’
And there it is again, the low groan, barely feet from where she’s standing.
‘Hello?’ she says again, opening the door a little more. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
‘Help,’ says a deep, rasping voice.
A scream catches in Wendy’s throat as she darts back into the yard and slams the barn door shut. She leans her weight into the door to keep it closed. It was a man’s voice. But why is there a man in the barn? Is he homeless? Sleeping rough for the night? An image flies into her mind, of a film she saw as a child. Some children discover a man, that they mistake for Jesus, sleeping rough in a barn. They take care of him, not knowing he’s actually a criminal on the run. Wendy shivers at the thought. She could be in danger. The man in the barn could be a murderer who’s already killed Lou and Wendy could be his next victim.
No, no. She forces her frantic brain to slow down. He said ‘help’. And he groaned. Unless it’s all part of an elaborate plan to lure unsuspecting middle-aged women into the barn, he’s unlikely to be a serial killer. It’s more likely that a local farmer had an accident and couldn’t raise the alarm. He could be trapped under a piece of machinery, crying out for help.
Wendy glances at her phone – no signal – then pulls at the door and peers into the darkness.
‘Hello? Is there someone in there?’
‘Help.’ A single word floats towards her, then another. ‘Water.’
‘You need water?’
‘Yes.’ The word is little more than a whisper, as though it’s taking all the man’s strength to say a single syllable.
‘I’ll be back,’ Wendy barks into the gloom. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’
She hears the low groan of the man’s despair as she turns and heads back to the gate. The sound disappears as she sprints through the garden and between the gap between the house and the garage. She pauses at the side door and hammers on it with both fists.
‘Help!’ she shouts. ‘Someone needs our help.’
She doesn’t wait for a response. Instead she darts into her car. She grabs her handbag first, then scrabbles around in the glovebox. There’s no water but she does have a warm can of Diet Coke. It’s better than nothing.
Panting and out of breath, Wendy yanks at her handbag strap as it slips from her shoulder. There’s nothing in her bag that would come in useful if the man has impaled himself, or pinned himself beneath a piece of farming equipment, but it does contain hand sanitiser, a handful of plasters and a few other bits and bobs that might help with any minor injuries. And she could always unclip the strap to use as a tourniquet if necessary. Turning on the torch function on her phone, she pushes at the barn door.
‘I’m back,’ she says, sweeping the light from left to right. She sees the straw first, piled up in the back of the barn, then the bars of the cage glint back at her, then she sees what looks like a pile of clothes in the nearest cage. But it’s not, it’s a man, lying on his side with his back to her.
Her breath catches in her throat and panic rises in her chest. He’s locked in the cage. She can see the padlock on the door. Why? She searches for a rational explanation but her mind is still fixated on the trapped farmworker theory and she can’t make sense of what she’s seeing. Some kind of mistake? He accidentally locked himself in? A stag do joke that went wrong? Her mind darts back to the film she saw as a child. Is the man a criminal who’s been locked in by some locals? She glances behind her, fully expecting to see huge, burly farmers looming out from the fields.
‘I …’ her voice comes out as a small squeak. ‘I couldn’t find water but I’ve got a can of Diet Coke.’
The man groans and, with what seems like Herculean effort, rolls over to look at her. Wendy angles her phone so the light sweeps across his body. And then she sees his face.
‘Mike?’
She takes a step forward, gripping her phone tightly. A battle is raging in her mind. One part is telling her that this wan-faced man with grey hair, stubble and dark circles under his eyes is her ex-husband Michael Hughes. The other part is telling her that’s not possible.
‘Mike, is that you?’
The
man opens his eyes slowly. He squints, then winces as though he’s in pain and slowly, slowly raises a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the glare of her phone.
‘Dee?’ he breathes.
‘Mike!’ She throws herself at the cage, then drops to her knees. ‘Mike?’ She pulls at the bars with both hands, her phone still wedged under her right thumb, but they don’t so much as quiver. ‘Mike, what happened?’
‘Water,’ he croaks. ‘Water.’
‘God, yes. Of course.’ She takes the can from her bag, opens it, then reaches an arm through the bars.
Mike, still lying on his side, holds out a hand, but there’s a good six inches between his quivering fingers and the can.
‘You’re going to have to sit up,’ Wendy says. ‘Can you do that?’
She watches, half horrified, half mesmerised, as her ex-husband tries to push himself into a sitting position. He’s as weak as a kitten and he collapses back onto the cold, hard floor of his cell several times, before, finally, he’s in a sitting position. He takes all his weight on one arm and reaches for the can of drink, but they’re still too far apart.
Wendy presses herself so tightly up against the bars that the metal bites into her armpit but it’s enough and Mike grabs at the can. His arm wavers as his fingers close around it and, for one horrible second, he seems like he’s going to drop it, but he manages to regain his balance and raises the drink to his lips. He drinks without stopping, gulping and gulping and gulping, then slumps back onto the ground, the empty can in his outstretched hand.
Wendy scrabbles to her feet, rounds the cage and pulls at the padlock. It’s hefty and well made, the sort her dad used on his shed, and despite its rusty appearance, it holds firm.
‘Where’s the key?’ she says, looking desperately around the barn. ‘Mike, where’s the key?’
He shakes his head.
‘Who did this to you?’ Wendy glances back at the door of the barn. Whoever locked Mike in could return at any second and lock her in too.