by Camilla Way
“Oh, Oliver,” she said as she hugged him, “it’s good to see you.”
Releasing her, Oliver smiled faintly and shook Mac’s hand. “Mac, come in,” he said quietly. “Glad to have you here.”
Silently they followed him through to the kitchen. But as soon as she walked into the room, Clara was struck by its strange, taut atmosphere. She froze inside the door, confusedly taking in the sight of Rose seated at the table, her head bowed, her face in her hands, while Tom stood over her with an expression of such anger on his face that Clara’s first instinct was to rush to stand between them, to shield Rose from her son.
Before she could move, however, Tom turned and, his eyes briefly meeting hers, abruptly moved away, crossing the room to the window, where he stood looking out at the garden.
“Rose?” Clara asked in bewilderment. “Are you all right? What on earth’s happened?”
For a moment, when Rose raised her head and looked at her, Clara hardly recognized Luke’s mother; her expression was so tortured, so desperate, it seemed to contort her face into someone else’s entirely. But seconds later it had passed, the old Rose returning once more. She wiped her eyes, a shaky smile on her lips as she said, “Nothing! Nothing’s happened, darling. Or, you know . . . everything.” She looked at Mac. “Goodness, Mac,” she said weakly. “How lovely it is to see you too.” She didn’t move, though; it was as if she were pinned to her seat, and the four of them stood looking at one another, while Tom remained at the window with his back to them, radiating hostility.
Finally, Clara threw Mac a beseeching look and he grimaced, crossing the room to Tom and putting a tentative hand on his shoulder. “Hello there, pal,” he said. “Long time.”
It was three silent seconds before Tom turned to him and, clearing his throat, said, “Yes. Good to see you, Mac.” They shook hands. “How are you?” he added, at last managing a thin smile. The strange, taut atmosphere lifted a fraction. Rose jumped up, saying briskly, “Well then! Who would like some tea?”
“Let me do that,” Clara begged. “Please, don’t get up.”
But Rose waved her away. “No, no, don’t be silly. I’m fine!” She began bustling about, patting her husband on the arm while she went to fill the kettle. “So,” she said, a little more brightly, “tell me what brings you here!” Suddenly she paused, her hand flying to her mouth as she asked, “Oh! You don’t have any news, do you?”
Clara saw the half hope, half dread in her eyes and said quickly, “No, no news.”
And in that instant Rose seemed so desolate that Clara could hardly bear to look at her. Instead she gazed around the room, which she now noticed was in an uncharacteristic state of disarray. The usually pristine surfaces were covered in piles of junk and dirty plates; the air, which was once full of the scent of fresh flowers or cooking smells, now had a stale, sour whiff. A kind of panic rose in her. No, she wanted to say, please don’t do this, don’t fall apart. You’re Rose and Oliver! You can’t give up on him, not yet. To cover her dismay, she said weakly, nodding at the window, “Garden’s looking lovely, Rose.”
To this she gave a wan smile. “Oh, I’ve not been out there in a while, I’m afraid. Usually by this time, I’d be gearing up for our annual spring garden party, sorting out the invites for the village and so on. . . .” Her smile faltered. “It doesn’t seem so important anymore.”
At this, Tom made a strange, bitter little sound and strode abruptly from the room. The four of them stared after him, until seconds later they heard the front door slam shut. Clara and Mac glanced at each other in amazement.
“So,” Rose said as though nothing had happened. “What brings you here?”
Haltingly, Clara and Mac explained their plan. “We might not find anything, of course,” she told them, “but at least we’d be doing something. . . .”
There was a silence, until Oliver finally nodded and, not meeting their eyes, said quietly, “Well, yes . . . if there’s anything we can do to help . . .”
Clara looked anxiously at Rose, who said, “Whatever you think’s best, darling, of course.” She got up. “I’m very sorry. I hope you don’t mind, but I think I need to go and lie down now.”
They watched her go, Oliver sinking into a chair, staring after her with such a look of helplessness that it made Clara’s heart hurt. She thought about Emily’s e-mail, wishing she could tell them about it, praying that one day soon she’d be able to give them the news they’d waited for so long.
* * *
—
Tom was outside when they left the house, leaning against his car and staring out across the fields. A thin veil of drizzle hung in the tepid air, and crows cawed and circled overhead. He turned when he heard them crunching across the wet gravel toward him and, leveling his gaze at Clara, said, “I’m sorry about that.”
She felt a rush of indignation on Rose’s behalf and was relieved when Mac answered for them. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s a difficult time. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. You know . . .”
She was conscious of his eyes on her still and busied herself with fiddling with her phone.
“What are you both doing here?” he asked then, and listened while Mac quickly ran through their plan.
“We’re starting with Luke’s first girlfriend,” he told him, “Amy Lowe. Did you know her?”
Tom shook his head. “Not well. I’d left for university by the time they started going out. Are you off there now?”
“Yeah, she lives outside Framlingham now, apparently.” Mac checked his phone and read out the name of Amy’s street.
“I know it,” said Tom. “I’m heading in that direction myself, actually. I’ll show you the way if you want to follow me.” He paused, and finally Clara looked up and met his gaze. “Actually, there’s a pub nearby called the Kestrel,” he said. “I could do with a drink, if you . . . ?”
“Sure.” Mac shrugged before she could make up an excuse. “We’ll follow you there.”
* * *
—
As they pulled out of the Willows’ driveway and began to follow the black Audi, Clara expelled a long breath. “God, that was weird,” she said. “What the hell was going on between Tom and Rose?”
“Christ knows.”
“As if she hasn’t got enough on her plate without him laying into her too,” she said angrily. “He’s so bloody strange.”
“I know,” he murmured. “I guess they’re all just very upset.” After a while he said, “They looked awful, didn’t they, Rose and Oliver?” He flicked his indicator and followed Tom as he turned left, away from the village. “Poor bastards. I can’t believe this has happened to them again.”
Clara watched the countryside slip past her window, the hedgerows and verges just beginning to burgeon into spring, and thought about Rose. When they’d first met a few years before, Rose had been in her mid-sixties and newly retired, enjoying a “life of leisure,” as she’d laughingly put it. Gardening, cooking, taking long holidays in Europe with Oliver, relishing her newfound freedom after such a long and distinguished career in medicine. Clara had seen pictures of her taken in her forties and fifties—a good-looking, impeccably dressed woman whose eyes had shone with intelligence and purpose and responsibility—but now, though she was still all those things, there was a softness, an ease and comfort, about her too that Clara thought made her even more attractive.
She recalled now a time a year or so earlier when she’d first caught a glimpse of that other Rose, the coolly capable doctor she’d once been. It was a weekend in November and they’d all taken a walk together through the frost-covered fields. Rose and Clara, slightly ahead of the others, had come across a hare caught in a barbed wire fence. It was bleeding, its face contorted in fear and pain. While Clara had cringed and fretted uselessly at its suffering, Rose had knelt and carefully freed it, but rather than hopping away, the a
nimal had lain there, eyes bulging, still bleeding profusely. “Poor thing,” Rose had murmured. “It’s dying. I think it’ll be kinder if I just . . . don’t look, darling, if you’d rather”—and then she’d picked the animal up and deftly wrung its neck. And though Clara had felt a little sick, she had been filled with admiration for Rose’s unflappable efficiency, her ability to get on with what was necessary, no matter how unpleasant or bloody.
“I wonder what Rose and Oliver were like,” she said now, “before Emily left, I mean. I met them so many years afterward, I can’t imagine how it must have changed them.”
“They were quite a big deal by the sound of things,” Mac replied. “Rose was head of pediatric surgery at the hospital, and Oliver had written his first book, which had got a lot of attention—TV appearances and so on. They were pretty well-known in the area, very active in the village, fund-raising and all that—then there were all the huge parties they used to throw. Luke told me their house was always full of people.” He glanced at Clara. “So, yeah. I’d say they had it pretty good.” He shook his head sadly. “It’s just so fucking tragic the way things turned out. They don’t deserve it, they really don’t.”
* * *
—
Tom was waiting for them in the pub when they arrived. It was a beautiful Tudor building with low black beams and wide oak floorboards, roaring fires and battered leather sofas. “They’ve got quite a decent menu here if you feel like eating something,” he said, his manner markedly more relaxed now that he was away from the Willows.
Mac glanced at her. “I am pretty hungry, actually. What do you think?”
She shrugged, suddenly realizing that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten a proper meal. “All right.” She nodded and forced herself to return Tom’s smile.
For the first ten minutes or so after they’d ordered, she listened to them discuss their old school and the local people they knew. She watched as Tom slowly became more at ease and talkative, the way people generally did in Mac’s company. He had a self-deprecating humility that even the chilliest of people tended to warm to, a willingness to listen and let the other person lead. It occurred to her that she and Mac were pretty similar in that sense. Was that what had drawn Luke to them both? she wondered. And was it that same lack of ego, her readiness to take a backseat and let him shine, that had allowed him to cheat on her with Sadie, to treat her with such little respect? She remembered a girl she’d once lived in halls with who’d said with a mixture of pity and scorn, “You’re such a people pleaser, aren’t you, Clara? Doesn’t it get dull?” She felt a rush of contempt for herself now and with effort pushed the thought away, forcing herself to turn her attention back to Mac and Tom.
They were talking now about the area of Norwich where Tom lived, but though he was chatting quite easily, there still persisted the sense that he was keeping something of himself back, allowing them to see only a fraction of his true self; the same guardedness that had always made her feel instinctively wary of him. She remembered the scene between Rose and him earlier and shook her head in silent frustration: he was impossible to work out.
“Cash only,” the waitress said when their bill arrived and they’d each got their cards out. “Machine’s broke. There was a sign at the bar,” she added wearily.
The three of them exchanged glances. “Shit, I don’t have any, do you?”
“Nope, was going to card it.”
“There’s a cash machine at the post office down the road,” Tom said, getting up. “I’ll go; it won’t take a minute.”
But Mac stopped him. “No, you stay, pal. I need to return a work call anyway,” he said, waving his mobile at him.
As she watched Mac leave, Clara glanced at Tom. “It was good to see your mum and dad before,” she said coolly, adding pointedly, “I like them very much.”
After a pause he returned her gaze and smiled, saying with no hint of rancor, “Yes. Everybody does.”
At that moment a different waitress arrived and began wiping down their table, and they lapsed back into silence. She noticed after a while that the girl was taking an inordinately long time at her task, and realized she was distracted by Tom, staring at him with open admiration as she wiped the same spot over and over on their table. It was true, she thought without much interest, that he was very good-looking, but there was something supercilious about his face that prevented him from being truly attractive. She looked at him then and froze in surprise to find his eyes fastened on hers. A little flustered, she said quickly, “I was just trying to remember something Luke told me once, about Emily.” Immediately she wanted to kick herself for bringing up his sister so clumsily. She saw Tom’s eyes darken and silently wished she’d found a more gentle way to broach the subject.
“Oh yes?” he said, once the waitress had moved away.
She fiddled with a beer mat. “He was telling me about a game he used to play with your sister when you were all kids, but I can’t remember what it was. Do you have any idea?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I’m afraid not.”
“Right,” she said, trying to hide her disappointment.
“Oh, except, it wasn’t a game, as such . . . but there was a song they used to sing before Luke went to bed—she used to like reading to him, then tucking him in at night. ‘Five Little Monkeys,’ it was called. You know that rhyme, ‘Five little monkeys jumping on the bed, one fell off and bumped his head . . .’? Luke used to bounce around on the bed while they sang it. It was a kind of ritual between them. . . . Is that what you meant?”
She nodded. “Yes,” she said, “yes, that was it, thank you.” For a moment she pictured Luke as a little boy, and felt a wave of sadness. When she next looked up, it was to see such wretchedness on Tom’s face that she felt a stab of guilt. “Oh, Tom, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you, I—”
He shook his head. “It’s not your fault. It was just, when she went, it was . . . a bloody awful time, you know?”
“I can’t even begin to imagine.”
“Listen, Clara,” Tom said, leaning forward suddenly, the intensity of his gaze returning. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
She looked at him in surprise. “What is it?”
At that moment, the door opened and Mac appeared, brandishing their cards and cash. “Sorry, that machine was broken,” he said. “I had to go to the one at the petrol station.” He looked from one to the other of them. “Everything all right, is it?”
Tom dropped his gaze from Clara’s. “Everything’s fine,” he said, abruptly getting to his feet. “Let’s pay at the bar, shall we?”
* * *
—
Amy Lowe lived in a small house down a cul-de-sac of 1930s semis. Clara and Mac paused in the front garden for a moment, taking in the broken swing set and the stack of roof tiles piled high among the weeds. On the chipped front door was a peeling sticker with the words BEWARE OF THE DOG, illustrated by a toothy Doberman. From inside they could hear the sound of a TV at top volume, a girl’s voice wailing, “Mummy, he hit me! Jakey hit me, he did! Mummeeeeee!” They glanced at each other and shrugged, before Mac pressed the bell.
A boy of about six answered. He was dressed in a Superman onesie, and the small round face below his buzz cut was covered in freckles. He glared at them suspiciously. “You selling stuff?” he asked. “Mum says she don’t want any.”
Mac laughed. “No. We just want a word with—”
Suddenly Amy came up behind him. “Yes?” she said, a little sharply. “Can I help you?”
She’d changed little since her teenage years, Clara thought. A fraction heavier, a few lines here and there, but still the same doll-like eyes, the tousled blond curls, the careless, unassuming attractiveness. Suddenly her face cleared. “Oh my God!” she said in a thick Suffolk accent. “Mac!” She smiled then, and for a moment she looked sixteen again, exactly as sh
e had in Luke’s pictures. “Haven’t seen you for years! What the bloody hell are you doing here? I thought you lived in London these days.”
“Hi, Amy. Good to see you,” Mac said. “This is Clara, Luke Lawson’s girlfriend.”
At this, Amy gave a start of recognition. “Yeah.” She nodded. “I saw you on the news. It’s all anyone’s talking about around here.”
“I’m sorry to turn up out of the blue like this,” Clara said. “I . . . we just wondered if we could have a word with you?”
She frowned in surprise. “If you want. Come in.”
They traipsed after her down the narrow hallway, its walls covered in pictures of Amy in a wedding dress next to a chubby, grinning groom, the living room they passed on the way to the kitchen seemingly full of kids crowded around the telly, where some kind of Wii tournament was going on. “’Scuse the mess,” Amy muttered. The kitchen was a pleasant, cozy room with lilac walls and a round pine table around which were crammed several chairs. “You want a cuppa?” she asked, removing a pile of washing from the table.
Once they were all sitting down with mugs of tea, she raised her eyebrows questioningly. “So, what’s all this about, then? I told the police when they came before that I hadn’t really spoken to Luke for years. Occasionally I’ll bump into him in the village at Christmas or whatever, but it’s never more than ‘Hello, how’s it going’ or what have you.”
Clara glanced at Mac. “We’re trying to build a picture of what Luke was like when he was younger,” she said cautiously.
Amy blinked at her, nonplussed. “Yeah, that’s what the police said, and like I told them—”
“We’re just trying to find out anything we can, to see if we can work out what happened to him,” Mac said.
“Right,” Amy said, still looking mystified. “Well, he’s not here, is he?”
There was a silence. This, thought Clara, had been a really bad idea. They must look completely barking mad. Suddenly Mac got up and went over to a photo stuck on the fridge. “Shit,” he laughed. “Is this you and Mandy Coombs?”