11 Missed Calls

by Elisabeth Carpenter

  The theme to Thomas the Tank Engine blares into the living room. All the talk of useful engines reminds me that I can’t just sit around being lazy. I go into the hall and grab Bobby’s shoes. The letterbox rattles as something’s pushed through it. I glance over, but it’s just a folded leaflet – not another pink envelope, and I breathe again.

  I pick it up from the mat and it drops open.

  It’s a flyer for Weight Watchers.

  Bloody charming.

  I look at the top and it has my name written on it in blue ink – the writing’s loopy and slanted.

  ‘The cheek of it!’ I say aloud.

  I open the front door and run to the gate. I look to my right and there’s a boy at the end of the street, running away from me. I look to the left. No one else is posting leaflets – why would he just post it into our letterbox?

  Dean and Trisha’s door is pulled ajar.

  God, I hope it’s not Dean again.

  My feet are stuck to the path. I need to get inside before it opens fully.

  ‘All right, Debs?’

  It’s Trisha. Looking immaculate as ever. She must’ve got up at five o’clock in the morning for that make-up job.

  ‘Yes, yes. Just getting the milk in.’

  She looks at my hand, which is still holding the scrunched-up leaflet.

  ‘Milkman ignored the note for one more today,’ I say.

  ‘Oh right.’ She raises her eyebrows, not even pretending to be interested in my boring life. She bends to pick her milk up. ‘Have a nice day!’

  She’s in her own world, that one. Bet she doesn’t even know who the Prime Minister is. Though if she does, I bet she loves Thatcher – people who own their own houses always do.

  I look at our empty crate. We must be behind on the milk payments again – they build up too quickly. I slam the front door shut behind me and slump to the hall floor. Trisha must be in on it too. I’m sure she used to be nice to me. Didn’t she? Or was it fake?

  ‘You’ve got to make yourself useful.’

  That voice, again.

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘Who’s that?’

  I crawl into the living room. Bobby’s already turned the telly off. How did he get so useful? He’s standing in the middle of the living room, already wearing his shoes.

  ‘Who put them on for you?’

  ‘Me. Monica taught me.’

  ‘Is she here? I think I heard her.’

  ‘Are you all right, Mummy?’ He walks over to me. I’m still on all fours. He puts his hand on my forehead. ‘You look sad.’

  ‘I’m fine, fine. I think I might’ve heard the telly.’

  I slowly get up, looking behind Bobby, but there’s no one there.

  ‘Let’s go a bit early,’ I say, grabbing my jacket off the settee.

  I help him into his coat, and place Annie in the pram.

  As we walk down the street, I sense someone watching me. Everyone’s watching me. People stare at me as I walk past them.

  What’s happening to me?

  I feel a little calmer on the walk home from school. Claire, one of the nice mums, talked to me at the gates. She’s pregnant with her third child, God help her.

  ‘What do you do all day?’ I asked her.

  ‘This one’s a bit of a handful,’ she said, tugging on the hand of her three-year-old daughter. ‘I just aim to get through the day, keeping them alive until bedtime.’ She smiled. ‘If you’re getting a bit …’ she leant closer, ‘bored or lonely, feel free to pop round for a brew. Think I’m only around the corner from you. I’d suggest one of the mother-and-baby groups, but they’re all run by Princess Diana over there.’ She nodded to one of the clan, and straightened back up, rubbing her back. ‘Nine months seems to take longer and longer each time.’

  A new friend is just what I need. Monica’s working full-time now, and I can’t share my problems with my mother – it’d make her worry even more. The trouble is, though, how much do you confide to someone you hardly know?

  I turn the corner onto our road. Trisha’s car’s back again. Dean’s polishing the bonnet. Why isn’t he using his own car? I grab the pram handles, intending to turn around, but I’m too slow. He’s already seen me.

  He stands and watches as I walk the last thirty yards to our gate.

  Please don’t talk to me, please don’t—

  ‘I’m surprised you’re up and about so early,’ he says, ‘after your late-night shenanigans.’

  I turn the pram ninety degrees so my back faces our front gate.

  ‘You not speaking today?’ he shouts. ‘Peter in the doghouse?’

  ‘Trisha not working today?’ I say.

  ‘Course. She’s always working, isn’t she?’

  I shrug.

  ‘I’ve got the day off,’ he says.

  He’s walking towards me. He always has the day off.

  I reach behind for the gate, but it’s jammed. Come on, you stupid thing.

  He’s standing just a foot away from me. He leans his upper body towards me. I can smell stale beer on his breath. I close my eyes.

  ‘Please don’t hurt me.’

  The gate swings into life and bangs against the fence.

  I open my eyes as Dean pulls back his hand.

  ‘Hurt you? I’m not gonna hurt you.’ He’s laughing at me again. ‘Tell you something, Debs. When you women have babies, it turns you cuckoo.’ He taps the side of his head as he walks backwards into the road.

  The stupid, chauvinist bastard. Where’s a speeding car when you need one?

  He turns his head back and looks at me.

  ‘Boo!’

  I wish I hadn’t jumped.

  He laughs, and mutters something under his breath.

  I wrestle the pram through the gate and walk backwards to the door. I’m going too slow.

  I pick Annie out of the pram and open the front door, leaving the pram in the garden. I run into the kitchen and get a glass of water one-handed as I hold Annie tight.

  I down it in one, but it doesn’t help.

  I walk into the lounge. There are toys everywhere … open video cases and at least three empty bowls of cereal, and four – five – cups, one of which has curdled tea inside, litter the living-room floor. Have they been there long? How have I missed them?

  I pack a bag for Annie, grabbing her bottles from the fridge.

  I need to get out of this house.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Anna

  I’m on my own in the bookshop today, which is just as well as I have a headache from the two glasses of wine I drank last night. When had I become such a lightweight? Jack and I used to drink a bottle of wine each when we started going out. Before marriage, before Sophie.

  Jack put on a rubbish action film last night and we sat in silence. There was a time we would have thought the film ridiculous, laughing at the ham-fisted fighting, before putting on something else.

  I had glanced at him sideways. He didn’t look much different from when we met – perhaps his hair was greyer at the sides, and he had dark circles under his eyes, but he wasn’t sleeping properly. That’s what he said, anyway.

  I kept practising sentences in my head: I know about you and Francesca, and the letter in your wallet. But I couldn’t get the words out – he would say I was losing my mind. Again. He’d turn something he had done wrong into something I’d done. I’d have to get evidence first, and then confront him with it. I should just ask him – tell him I found the letter when I was looking for something else.

  Why did I keep thinking these thoughts? Jack has never been unfaithful. What happened in the past was all me.

  I met Gillian Crossley seven years ago – when I’d only been at the Preston branch of the charity-bookshop chain for a few weeks. I was pregnant with Sophie, and it was the first time I had been in the bakery she worked in; it was only a few doors down from my shop.

  She treated me like an old friend. Her cheeks were flushed with the heat of the ovens and her long da
rk hair was captured in a net that rested on her shoulders.

  ‘Hello,’ I said to her. ‘I’m the new manager of the charity bookshop.’

  ‘Oh, you must be Annie!’ she said the first time we met; her smile was beaming, infectious. ‘I heard you replaced Evelyn as manager – and that you’re a lot nicer than she is.’ She winked at me. I didn’t tell her that I preferred ‘Anna’, as it was nice hearing her call me Annie. People always got my name wrong.

  I just smiled.

  ‘I bet you like carrot cake, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, quietly, trying to find my voice. ‘I can’t eat too much though – I’m trying not to eat for two.’

  She grabbed a piece from the display cabinet, wrapped it in a paper bag and carefully twisted the corners shut.

  ‘Here’s a slice on me,’ she whispered, glancing to the back. ‘Don’t tell my boss, though. And don’t worry about your boss, Isobel. She might give you a hard time, but she’s like that with everyone … even us and we don’t work for her.’ She put the cake into a carrier bag with my sandwich. ‘I love your bookshop – reading and contributing to charity at the same time. Nothing like a bit of escapism. If you ever get any books about Blondie in, I’ll buy them. Obsessed, I am.’

  I took the bag from her and muttered, ‘Will do.’

  Debbie liked Blondie, I thought. It was on my list.

  I reached for my phone as I left the bakery, and took a picture of her through the window.

  It had to be a sign.

  Gillian looked about the same age as Debbie would be.

  When I got home that day, Jack was sitting at the kitchen table on his laptop.

  ‘There’s a woman at the bakery who was really kind to me,’ I said to him. ‘She’s called Gillian.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ he said.

  I doubted he was listening.

  Back then, I kept a photograph of Debbie on the phone table in the hallway: close enough to see every day, but distant enough that she didn’t look at me when I watched television.

  Jack kept typing on his keyboard. I reached into my handbag and took out my mobile.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a picture of her. Don’t you think she looks like the picture of Debbie by the telephone?’

  His fingers stopped mid-air.

  ‘You took a photo of some stranger?’

  I held my phone towards him. ‘She’s not some stranger.’

  He frowned at me.

  ‘What the hell are you on about, Anna? She looks nothing like Debbie. What are you getting at?’

  I looked at the picture of Gillian again. Granted, it was hard to tell through the glass of a shop window, but she had the same hair and she was the same height, the same age. And she had called me Annie.

  ‘Just wait till you see her in person,’ I said.

  He looked at me for a long time before he said, ‘I’m not going to see her in person, am I?’ He slammed his laptop shut. ‘I’m working upstairs. You should get some sleep – you’re not thinking straight.’

  He looked at my pregnant belly when he said it – as though all those hormones running through my body were making me say strange things.

  ‘Fine,’ I said, taking four slices of bread out of the packet, a block of cheese from the fridge, and a jar of chilli jam up to bed.

  That was just the start of it – though I didn’t know that then. I hadn’t thought anything I said had been out of the ordinary. I’d seen someone who reminded me of my mother. The mother I couldn’t even remember.

  I shiver, now, as I recall how much worse it got after that.

  The shop door opens, and in walks a woman with curly hair and glasses. She looks to be in her late fifties or early sixties. She is wearing a beige raincoat with the belt straps dangling either side. She doesn’t even glance at the bookshelves; she strides straight towards me. I get up from the stool.

  ‘Sally Munroe,’ she says, holding her right hand out in front of me. ‘Private investigator.’

  I shake her hand. ‘I—’

  ‘You’re Anna Donnelly. I would’ve come to your house but …’ She walks to the back room, grabbing each side of the doorway and leaning into it as she looks around.

  ‘But what?’ I say.

  ‘There was something not quite right about what your husband said to me.’

  She comes to stand in front of the counter again, only looking at me for the briefest of moments. Her eyes dart around as though she is looking for something. She glances at the clock and I make sure my mobile is still under the counter should I need to call for help.

  ‘Your husband doesn’t usually pop in at lunchtime, does he?’ she says.

  I look at the clock, too. I can’t believe it’s twelve thirty already. I’ve been daydreaming again.

  ‘No, he doesn’t,’ I say, sitting back down on the stool, closer to my phone. Jack mentioned a woman telephoning him at work, but she hadn’t contacted me in return. ‘I wasn’t expecting you. Why didn’t you just email me back?’

  She leans against the counter. She sighs heavily and relaxes her shoulders.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she says. ‘I like to get my bearings before talking about sensitive issues. We can’t have any Tom or Dick listening in, can we?’

  I shake my head. Did she mean to say that wrong?

  ‘The reason I’m here,’ she says, ‘is for a preliminary meeting. I need to make sure I can work with you. Some people can be high maintenance – can’t be doing with that. Can pick and choose my clients these days.’

  She reaches into her massive handbag and pulls out a polythene pocket. She takes a sheet of paper from it, placing it in front of me.

  ‘I take it you’ve read about my services online,’ she says, ‘and that you’re happy with me going ahead with any necessary searches?’

  ‘I haven’t actually heard from any of the other firms I contacted—’

  ‘Was it Tommy and Kev you contacted?’

  ‘It might have been – are they the other local ones?’

  ‘Yep. Tommy’s in the Isle of Man – will be for another few days, I’d say. And Kev … well, no one’s heard from him in weeks.’ Her eyes drift to the side. ‘I should look into that at some point. We might be each other’s competition, but still …’ She blinks and looks back at me. ‘So?’

  ‘So?’

  She rolls her eyes.

  ‘So, if you’re happy to sign this, I’ll get working on it for you.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘You didn’t mention a form to sign.’

  She picks up a pen from the counter and hands it to me.

  I look down at the paper.

  Confidentiality Agreement.

  Jack says I should scrutinise everything that needs signing.

  ‘It just means,’ says Sally, ‘that I won’t disclose to a third party the results of my investigation, unless specified by yourself – and, if it contains any evidence of a crime, that I’ll be duty-bound to hand over to the local constabulary.’

  Her signature is already on the document.

  ‘You’ve spoken to my husband.’ My pen hovers over the dotted line.

  ‘Yes. I wanted to make sure you were who you said you were – and to make sure funds would be available to pay for my services. I’ve been let down in the past, you see. And I told him I’d deal with Janet, his secretary, about my future invoices.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Is something holding you back?’ She speaks so quickly. ‘Are you sure you want to dig into all of this?’

  Hearing her say it makes me realise that I will be taking my search for Debbie to a different level. I won’t just have conflicting things my family have told me – the unreliable memories, their feelings about her tainting the information they gave me.

  That is, if Sally Munroe is any good at her job.

  ‘Look,’ she says. ‘If I don’t find anything that’s of any use to you, then I’ll only charge expenses. It’s a personal guarantee of mine.’<
br />
  I sign the piece of paper, already printed with my name.

  She picks it up, blows the ink dry and puts it back into the polythene pocket.

  ‘Very good,’ she says. ‘Now, as soon as is humanly possible, can you email me everything you have – including any little bits of information you think might be irrelevant? You never know. Then we can schedule a meeting convenient to us both. How does that sound?’

  ‘Good,’ I say. But I feel out of my depth. ‘I have photos, do you want to see them?’

  She fastens her bag and puts on a tweed flat cap.

  ‘Well, of course, my dear! I want to see everything.’

  She walks towards the door.

  ‘Wait!’ I say. ‘You said something before – about what my husband said.’

  She looks behind her before saying, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ She frowns and pulls down the peak of her cap so it half-covers her eyes. ‘He asked if I’d be investigating anything to do with him.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I said, “Of course I won’t.”’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But I didn’t mean it,’ she says, opening the shop door. ‘You’re the boss.’

  She winks at me, and then she’s gone.

  I closed the bookshop fifteen minutes before I should have, but there is never a sudden late rush for second-hand books, so I headed over to Dad and Monica’s. Sophie is in after-school club until five thirty, so I have at least an hour.

  ‘I can’t chat for too long,’ Dad says. ‘Monica reminded me that we’ve got a thing on at six.’

  ‘What kind of thing?’

  ‘Some wine-and-cheese evening,’ he says, waving his hand. ‘Seems we’re back in the seventies.’

  I’m holding the wallet of photos, and he glances at them as he pulls out a chair from under the table. I texted him after I got them, but he didn’t reply. He leans forward, his hands clasped in front of him.

  ‘I don’t think we should look at them right now,’ he says. ‘Monica could be down any minute.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It might upset her.’

  ‘But aren’t you curious? These are photos you’ve never seen of her.’