by Lauren North
“Tess, this is my friend Mel. We met at a baby group when Indra crawled over and stole the train Dylan was playing with.” She laughs, and her eyes are bright and dancing. “Mel, this is Tess.” Shelley doesn’t expand on how we know each other, and I’m grateful for that.
“Hi,” I say to Mel, pulling my cheeks up wide into what I hope is a happy face rather than the awkward grimace that it feels like. There’s something familiar about Mel and I wonder if or when we might’ve met before.
“Hi, Tess. Nice to meet you. This is my daughter, Indra.” She turns to Indra. “Say hi to Tess.”
Indra is a younger version of Mel, with the same O-shaped eyes and sharp features. She’s wearing a faux fur jacket over a black T-shirt which skims her belly button. Her long, dark hair is twisted into two plaits that dangle down her shoulders.
Indra looks up at me and lifts her hand in a brief wave. “Hi,” she says, showing a large gap in the center of her mouth where her two front baby teeth used to be.
My smile softens. “Hello.”
I turn to introduce Jamie but he’s already stepped out from behind me and is whispering something in Indra’s ear.
Jamie looks up with cheeks flushed red and gives a sheepish wave to Mel. Mel must sense his shyness because she plays it casual and doesn’t say anything. Instead she smiles at Jamie and then at me as Jamie and Indra set off into the hordes of shoppers.
Only when we’re moving do I glance at Mel out of the corner of my eye. It takes a long second for recognition to hit me, and now it’s my face burning crimson thinking of the afternoon a few weeks ago when I perched on the redbrick wall waiting for Jamie to finish school. The receptionist who came out to talk to me with concern drawn on her face was Mel.
“I think we’ve met, actually,” I say, hoping to make light of my embarrassment.
Mel nods, her black hair bobbing up and down. “I was just thinking that myself.”
“It was outside the school the other week. I was early.” I shake my head. “Sorry for dashing off. I was so embarrassed. My timekeeping has been dreadful recently.” My throat tightens and I change the subject before Mel can ask why. I wonder if Shelley has told her about Mark. “I didn’t realize you worked at the school. Are you a teacher?”
“I’m a receptionist.” Mel flicks a glance to Shelley. There’s a look on Mel’s face that I can’t read, and I wonder if I’m talking too much. “But I don’t actually—”
“Mum,” Indra cuts in, making the one syllable word into three. “Can we go to Claire’s?” Indra and Jamie are already inching closer to the shop.
“Debenhams first, OK?” Mel nods. “You need some new clothes before we spend any money on accessories in Claire’s.” Mel tugs at Indra’s top, pulling it down and receiving a scowl from her daughter.
Indra tucks her hands into her pockets, one arm looped with Jamie’s as the pair walk ahead once more. I’ve never seen Jamie with a girl before, and the sight of them together makes me smile. He’s always gravitated toward boys his own age, but he seems so content arm in arm with Indra.
“I sometimes feel like I’ve kept that bloody shop afloat over the last decade, the amount I’ve spent in there.” Mel smirks, jabbing a finger at Claire’s as we pass.
I fall into step with Mel and Shelley and try to keep up with the rapid-fire conversation they’re having about a mutual friend. Every few steps one or the other glances over to me, trying to include me, I guess, but it doesn’t work. I just feel watched. Jealousy grates my insides. Not just for Mel and Shelley, but for Indra and Jamie too.
You were my person, Mark. The one I always wanted to talk to first. I let my old friends slip away after we met. I didn’t need them anymore. I had you, and now I have no one.
There’s a blast of heat from above our heads as we step through the doors of Debenhams. Red banners are hanging down from the high ceilings and the staff are wearing red T-shirts. Both have the word SALE across them in large white writing.
The shop floor is busier than the street outside and people are budging me left and right on their way in and out of the doors. Shelley and Mel are drawn as if by magnets to the perfume counter, and I follow them.
It’s too busy.
Too noisy.
I can feel the panic return, swooping through me.
Something is about to happen, like I’m hurtling toward danger without the first clue what it is or how I can stop it. My eyes are glued to Jamie and Indra as they weave around a pushchair to the makeup stands.
Shelley turns toward me. “Here, smell this?” She thrusts her wrist to my nose. The overbearing musky sweetness of the scent stings my eyes.
“It’s the new Chanel. I might get some.” Shelley is talking in a wistful sort of way. “You know, make a change.”
Mel leans in and says something and they both laugh, but I don’t listen, I don’t hear. Someone is tapping my shoulder and when I turn around, it’s Ian.
“Tess, hi.” Ian looks beyond me to Mel and Shelley.
“Hi,” I reply, my mind spinning. It’s no coincidence that he is here, surely? Is he following me?
“Hi,” Shelley says, moving closer. I catch the perfume on her wrist again. Sweat tickles my upper lip. The heat of the store and the caustic scent of the perfume counter are scratching at my lungs.
“Hello.” Ian nods at Mel, then Shelley.
“This is Mark’s brother, Ian. Ian, Shelley and Mel,” I say, waving a hand between them.
“We’ve met,” Shelley says, without any hint of her trademark grin.
“Thanks for your call the other day, Tess,” Ian says, sounding strangely formal. “Can we talk privately for a few minutes, please?”
No is what I think, but Ian’s eyes—your eyes—are imploring, and I find myself nodding.
“Do you want me to come, Tess?” Shelley asks, holding my arm as I try to move. She shoots a look at Ian.
“It’s fine. Can you keep an eye?” I nod to Jamie and Indra. Indra is dabbing purple glitter gloss on her lips, making Jamie giggle.
Confusion crosses Shelley’s face for a moment but she nods before shimmying through the people until she reaches the makeup counter and Jamie.
I follow Ian toward a space by the windows, but my eyes keep drawing back to Jamie. He’s looking up at Shelley with such adoration, such love, that my chest pulls tight and I gasp.
“Tess?” Ian’s voice is sharp, swiping at my thoughts, and they’re gone. “Tess,” he says again, “are you all right? You seem distracted.”
“I’m fine.” I hug my arms to my body and try to focus on Ian. “What are you doing here?”
“I was worried about you,” he says, stepping closer. “I came by the house the other night to check on you. I was worried you might’ve . . .” His voice trails off.
“Killed myself?” I pull a face.
“Well.” He shrugs. “But you weren’t in.”
Yes I was.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” Ian shuffles his feet and finds a spot on the floor to focus on.
He’s nervous.
A young couple bustles past us, their hands loaded with bags. I catch the glint of a diamond on the girl’s ring finger.
“Can we go somewhere quiet? Please, Tess. I really need to talk to you. It’s about the money.”
Part of me wants to go, wants answers, whatever they might be. But I hate how Ian has turned up like this. I might not have answered the door the other night, but it doesn’t mean we couldn’t have spoken another time. He didn’t need to track me down while I’m on a shopping trip with Jamie.
“I do want to talk about the money,” I reply. “But now isn’t the right time. Let’s meet next week. We’ll go for coffee.” Somewhere neutral, I think. “Or I’ll come to the offices. I need to meet with Jacob anyway.”
“Oh,” Ian says. “I
thought I—”
“I’m Mark’s executor. I’m going to sort it out. I told you, I just needed a bit more time.”
Ian says something, but my focus has moved back to the crowded shop.
“Are you listening to me?” I hear Ian ask.
I can’t see Jamie. Shelley has disappeared too.
I dart forward and it’s me now pushing through the shoppers, knocking people’s bags with my shoulders, ignoring the tuts as I fight to reach Indra.
“Hey, where’s Jamie?” I ask, stepping up alongside Indra.
She jumps and looks up at me. Gloss shimmers on her lips, but her eyes are blank as if she doesn’t know me, as if we didn’t meet twenty minutes ago, as if she hasn’t been walking arm in arm with my son.
“Indra, where is Jamie?” I ask, slowing down my words. My fists bunch together and I have to fight the urge not to shake her.
Indra looks around before taking a long shuffle back and around me. I’m scaring her, I realize, straightening up and spinning around and around, my eyes scouring the shop for Jamie.
He’s nowhere.
“Is everything OK, Tess?” Mel asks, appearing beside her daughter.
“Have you seen Shelley?” I keep turning, faces and bodies blurring. None of them are Shelley or Jamie.
“Er . . .” Mel looks casually around the store. There’s no urgency to her glances, none of the panic I feel building inside me.
Shelley has disappeared. So has Jamie.
Stop, Tessie.
I can’t, Mark. I can’t let anything happen to Jamie.
Then it clicks—the pieces falling into place, the answer to the final cryptic clue—the thought I was trying to reach before Ian started talking to me. Shelley doesn’t want to help me, she wants a son to replace Dylan. She wants Jamie. All of a sudden my head is filled with Shelley’s voice. “I miss being a mother almost as much as I miss Dylan . . . I want a child so badly, Tess.”
The shop spins before my eyes, or maybe it’s me spinning. Where are you, Shelley? What have you done with Jamie?
“There she is,” Indra shouts, flinging a finger toward the bag section.
I weave and push through people to get to Shelley.
“Oh, hey,” she says. “What do you think?” She holds up a brown handbag, with a shiny gold buckle.
“Jamie.” My voice is a strangled hiss. “Where’s Jamie? You were supposed to be watching him.”
“I . . .” Her eyes dart around the shop floor, her expression the mirror of my own panic. She hasn’t taken Jamie, but she has lost him.
Suddenly they crowd around me—Mel, with Indra hugging her side, and Shelley and Ian. They are a wall blocking my view of the shop and the front doors.
What if Jamie is back on the street? What if someone takes him?
Stop, Tessie.
“Tess?” Ian raises his eyebrows and frowns. I can’t tell if it’s concern or irritation furrowing his brow but I don’t care. Go away, I want to scream at him. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
My legs feel suddenly weak. “I can’t find Jamie,” I whisper, staring unblinking at the faces of the shoppers who’ve stopped to stare, then looking back at Mel and Ian again. They stare back with pitiful confusion as if I’m speaking in a different language. Sweat dampens my skin beneath my clothes, and my breathing becomes short and gasping. Why is no one helping me?
“JAMIE?” I spin around. More shoppers stop and stare but I don’t care. “I’ve lost my son,” I shout out.
Shelley moves first, pushing her way to the front of the shop to check the street.
“JAMIE,” I shout again.
A woman with a tight perm places a hand on her chest and backs away as if I’ve just told her I’m wearing a bomb under my coat. What is wrong with these people? “He’s seven,” I shout. “He’s wearing a . . . a blue jacket and jeans and he has blond, curly hair.”
My heart is pounding so fast I can’t breathe through the force of it.
People start to move and look around the floor as if he might be sitting by their feet, as if I’ve dropped an earring.
“Tess?” Ian’s voice is low and firm and I know he’s going to tell me to calm down. How can I?
It’s an effort to speak. A lightness floats across my eyes but I push it away. “Stay here,” I shout to them as I move deeper into the shop. “I’ll go look upstairs.”
“Jamie?” I call out, running up the escalator. My foot slips and my left knee smashes into the metal grille of the step in front. Pain sears across my leg and there’s a trickle of wet seeping through my tights.
Shelley is shouting my name and I glance back, willing Jamie to be by her side, but he isn’t. She’s near the front doors talking to a security guard with a walkie-talkie.
Jamie has to be somewhere.
When the escalator nears the top, I strain to see through the glass barriers, praying I’ll catch a flash of Jamie’s blond curls or hear him shout. “Jamie,” I call again, pushing past a couple ahead of me to reach the second floor.
CHAPTER 55
The upstairs is quieter. Piano music is playing softly and in complete contrast to the urgency gripping my body. I have to find Jamie.
“Have you seen a boy up here?” I ask a man wearing a red T-shirt. He’s carrying a box, which he drops to the floor when I stop him.
He shakes his head and starts to say something, but I don’t have time to listen.
I turn a corner from bedding into household and there he is, right at the back of the shop, running a hand over a long black telescope. Our beautiful boy with his head of blond curls that need a trim.
I burst into tears, and when Jamie turns I see the tears on his cheeks too.
“I thought I’d lost you.”
Jamie smiles and gives an apologetic shrug. He wandered off and got distracted by the telescope that looks up at the stars. He doesn’t need to tell me why. I understand. He’s thinking of heaven or wherever you are.
We stand in silence for a few seconds, staring at the telescope together. It costs almost five hundred pounds, but for a moment I’m so relieved I almost scoop it up to buy. But my hands, my whole body in fact, are shaking, and one thought overwhelms the rest—I have to get us out of here.
“It’s OK.” I give a weak smile and hold Jamie’s hand as the escalator descends and Ian, Shelley, and Mel come into view. With a stab of guilt I see Indra crying too, but none of them are looking my way.
Ian has his back to me, gesticulating wildly at Shelley, but I can see Shelley’s face clearly. It’s stony and cold and she’s snapping at Ian. “Don’t tell me what I need to do. I’m handling it. I told you.”
“Are you though? How exactly?” I hear Ian growl as we step from the escalator.
“These things take time. You can’t just rush in,” Shelley hisses.
“Either you do something or I will,” he says as we reach them.
Mel elbows Shelley and the three turn toward us.
“Hey,” I say, biting my lip as fresh tears swim before my eyes. My face flushes thinking of my outburst. “I found him.”
They stare—Mel, Shelley, Ian—openmouthed, their faces almost sheepish, as if I’ve caught them out.
Then it hits me, punching the air from my lungs. They know each other. Shelley and Ian. I stagger back, stepping on the foot of a passing shopper.
What other reason can there be for a heated argument? Strangers don’t argue like that—venomous and angry. It was not a “you stole my parking space” kind of bickering between strangers.
What exactly is Shelley handling? The question sends a queasiness turning in my stomach.
“Tess,” Shelley says. “Let’s go somewhere quiet.”
I shake my head and step away. “No. Leave us alone. All of you.” I wave a finger between them.
I throw my arm ar
ound Jamie and guide him from the shop.
* * *
—
We catch the bus home. The number 93. A rickety double-decker with its heater on too high and the stink of petrol fumes wafting in through the open windows. We sit upstairs right at the front and watch the world go by together, Jamie lost in his thoughts, and me in mine. Later I pull out my notebook and flick through the pages, reading every word, touching my fingers against the bobbled pen marks like it’s braille, like I can feel the answer I cannot see.
Ian and Shelley know each other. What does that mean?
I try to remember the conversation between them that I overheard on the doorstep when I thought Shelley was protecting me. And the argument I overheard after our trip to Tesco together. Could Shelley have been talking to Ian?
It’s funny how someone came into the house then. As if they were waiting for me to be out of the way for long enough. Other than the ten minutes to school and back twice a day, I hardly leave the house. It was Shelley’s idea to go shopping. She picked me up too, when I could easily have driven myself. We were out for hours, dawdling around Tesco.
Have I got this whole thing upside down? I thought Shelley was being kind to me that day, but maybe she was just killing time, keeping me away so Ian could look through our things.
If I take Richard out of the equation, what is left? The threats from a voice on the answerphone, Ian and his money, things missing from the house.
Are Shelley and Ian working together? What do they really want, Mark?
CHAPTER 56
Transcript BETWEEN ELLIOT SADLER (ES) AND TERESA CLARKE (TC) (INPATIENT AT OAKLANDS HOSPITAL, HARTFIELD WARD), WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11. SESSION 2 (Cont.)
TC: Have you spoken to Shelley’s friend Mel? Maybe she’s helping Shelley. Maybe she has Jamie.
ES: How well do you know Mel?
TC: We met once—well, twice actually, but only once properly. Shelley took Jamie and me into Ipswich for a shopping trip on Saturday. So much has happened. It feels like a long time ago. There was something off about the whole thing. It was like Mel was watching me, assessing me—they both were. Then Ian turned up out of the blue and it was like the three of them knew each other.