‘Jo, what’s wrong with you? Watch where you’re going!’
Jo wasn’t listening; she couldn’t hear a thing above the pounding of her heart and the voice inside her head telling her to come to her senses. Her fingers and toes tingled in anticipation and she began to feel warm, very warm. Her fringe was sticking to the beads of sweat prickling her brow so she tried to blow cool air on her face. Her breath caught in her throat as she drew level with the man in the next aisle and watched him reach up to grab a piece of heavy green damask. As he lifted his head Jo caught her first glimpse of his face albeit from the eyebrows up. It was enough; and with a small change in direction, Jo was no longer walking but running and didn’t stop until she hit fresh air.
Standing with her back against the store window with the rain beating down on her, Jo tried to slow her breathing and calm herself but the more she tried and failed, the more panicked she became. She recognized the sensation of her heart beating so fast it threatened to burst. She had felt the same thing shortly before passing out on Bonfire Night but her memories ran much deeper. She was no stranger to anxiety attacks.
Someone took hold of her arms as if she was about to fall. ‘I’ll be … all right … in a minute,’ Jo panted without looking up. When Steph didn’t release her grip she added, ‘Go back in and … buy the material … for Lauren. I’ll wait … in the car.’ She didn’t want her sister watching her fall apart; she didn’t want anyone watching.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Steph said levelly. ‘Try to slow your breathing down.’
‘What … do you think … I’m doing?’ Jo snapped.
‘If you’re not careful, you’re going to hyperventilate. Lauren, go back inside and ask for a paper bag.’
Jo lifted her head and to her dismay discovered two pairs of eyes scrutinising her. ‘Yes, go,’ Jo said and luckily Lauren didn’t object.
Steph had the good sense not to ask questions and by the time Lauren returned with the paper bag, Jo was starting to regain her composure.
‘I think I’ll be OK now,’ Jo said.
Steph was unconvinced. ‘We need to get you to the hospital.’
‘Not a chance! I started to feel a bit flustered … and then rushed out too quickly … that’s all. I won’t do it again.’
‘I think you should go, if only for a check-up.’ It was Lauren this time and if Jo didn’t know better, it sounded like a veiled threat.
Jo shook her head. With each passing minute, she felt more and more able to dismiss what had just happened. She refused to accept that the demons she had once battled in her adolescence had come back to haunt her. It had been different back then because her attacks had usually happened as she was drifting off to sleep. Without warning, her heart would start hammering and she had been convinced that she was suffering from some kind of heart failure. Eventually she had plucked up the courage to tell her mother, who had taken time out of her busy social life to whisk her troubled daughter off to see their GP. Liz had helpfully explained to him how Jo had just had her heart broken for the first time and so the doctor had been dismissive, quickly concluding that Jo was attention-seeking. He told Liz to come back when her daughter had decided what was wrong with her, so Jo had faced her fears alone. She had learnt to be strong and those early lessons would see her through her latest traumas.
‘There’s no shame in admitting you’re not coping. There must be some medication the doctor can give you, even if you are pregnant.’
‘I’m not going to touch any kind of drug that will mess with my mind! It’s messed up enough as it is.’
‘Don’t be silly, Jo. If you need help, for God’s sake, ask for it.’
‘I can manage on my own, Steph. Now give me the car keys and I’ll wait in the car while you go back inside and buy the red velvet we were looking at.’
There was no arguing with Jo, which gave Steph some reassurance. The incident had been an aftershock to David’s disappearance, that was all, and Jo was back to being the sister she knew and loved.
‘Don’t lift that, I’ll do it!’ Sally rushed forward as Jo grunted, hauling a bright yellow baby bath out of the car. Sally would have pulled the offending item from Jo’s hands if hers weren’t already full. ‘Get yourself back inside. Now!’
Sally had a strong, powerful voice and a disposition to match. It took Jo only a fraction of a second to realize that arguing was futile. She put down the bath and, checking for Sally’s approval, picked up a small carrier bag. ‘I’ll open up the garage first. Everything can go in there until I’m ready to sort things out.’
By the time Sally had unloaded the car, Jo had a steaming mug of coffee waiting for her.
‘I can’t thank you enough for this, Sally,’ Jo said as she slid a plate of biscuits across the dining room table towards her sister-in-law. ‘And it’s just a loan; you can have it all back when I’m done.’
Sally was laughing as she refused the biscuits. ‘Don’t bother; we won’t need it. One kid is more than enough as far as Steve’s concerned.’
‘And one too many for his brother,’ Jo said quietly as she set about arranging the untouched biscuits into a perfect circle on the plate, gathering up rogue crumbs into a neat pile as she went.
The smile that had accompanied Sally’s laughter faltered. ‘It just doesn’t make sense,’ she said. ‘For all his talk about putting off having a family, David loves kids. You’ve seen for yourself how much he adores Luke.’
Jo visibly flinched. ‘I know you mean well, Sally – but please, I don’t want to hear the arguments. I only manage to get through each day because I’ve convinced myself he’s walked out on us. It might be hard to stomach, but at least it’s an answer and one I could learn to live with.’
‘Sorry, I just think …’ Sally said, then pursed her lips tightly to stop herself from saying more.
‘I know there are other possibilities, of course I do! I lie awake at night torturing myself with them,’ Jo said, feeling that familiar mix of anger and fear gnawing away at her insides. ‘Yes, he could be lying in a ditch somewhere. Yes, he could have jumped into the Mersey …’
Sally put her hand on Jo’s before she had reduced the biscuits to a pile of crumbs. ‘It’s all right, Jo.’
‘No, it’s not all right, and it hasn’t been all right for a very long time. I should have seen this coming, Sally but I was too absorbed in my own selfishness. I don’t know who I should be more angry with, David or me.’ Or this baby, she added silently.
Sally gave Jo’s hand a quick squeeze before letting go. ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself; you made each other so happy. In fact I envied you.’
‘But not now, eh?’ Jo said with a trembling smile.
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘How about changing the subject?’ Jo offered. ‘How are things with you and Steve?’
There was a sneer to accompany Sally’s reply. ‘As bad as ever, but I won’t go burdening you with my troubles – you’ve enough on your plate.’
‘Tell,’ Jo ordered.
Sally sounded utterly despondent when she said, ‘I’m only just starting to appreciate how much David kept Steve in check. He has absolutely no self-control and I don’t know what to do about him any more. He’s hardly ever home and I don’t have a clue where he goes or what he gets up to. His friends try covering for him, but they’re not as good at lying as he is.’
‘Sorry,’ Jo said, wincing as she recalled David’s undoubted role in Steve’s subterfuge.
‘He tries to make out that he’s working a lot of overtime, but I never see the benefit – the reverse, in fact. I’ve had to start hiding my purse.’
‘Bloody moron,’ Jo said under her breath, remembering too late that she was sitting in front of his wife. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘It’s OK, Jo, I wholeheartedly agree.’
‘Although he does have a good side,’ Jo said. ‘He’s offered to paint the nursery.’
Sally’s features s
oftened and at first Jo couldn’t think why. ‘At least that’s one thing to look forward to. Whatever the men in our lives are up to, we have our children to keep us sane.’ She reached forward and, before Jo could stop her, laid a hand on Jo’s belly. ‘Is this one a kicker?’
Jo paled noticeably and tried unsuccessfully to ease back out of Sally’s reach. ‘I can’t help feeling the baby might just tip me over the edge.’
‘Oh, you think that now but just you wait. Maternal instinct is a powerful thing, Jo. Once that baby’s in your arms he or she will become your one and only priority. You’ll be able to put all this behind you and concentrate on being a mother – I promise.’
Jo wanted to believe that Sally was right but she had put the baby first once before and that was turning out so badly that there wasn’t even the slightest flicker of maternal instinct when she asked herself who she would choose if she had that choice over again.
14
By the time December arrived, Jo had completely outgrown her cashmere coat but Liz had come to the rescue with yet another bargain picked up in a charity shop in Kendal. The oversized tweed duffle wasn’t exactly Jo’s style but her tastes were far less demanding than they had once been. She could fasten it up and, with the weather taking a sudden turn for the worse, that was good enough for her.
The one – and perhaps only – advantage to the sudden cold snap was that the mire of a car park at the Southport site was frozen solid.
‘Watch the ice,’ Kelly warned. She was holding her arm out towards Jo in case she slipped.
Jo wafted the proffered hand away impatiently, her gloved fingers only just poking out from her coat sleeve. ‘I’m fine, Kelly, stop fussing. I’m pregnant, not incapable,’ she said, sounding harsher than she intended.
Jim was standing at the Portakabin door waiting for them. ‘Morning ladies,’ he said while his breath formed a cloud that temporarily obscured his smile. ‘The kettle’s on.’
‘We shouldn’t take that long,’ Kelly said busily. ‘And we have another four sites to visit before the end of the day.’
The visits were a routine audit that Jo had to complete at least quarterly and involved a quick check of attendance records and accident book entries to make sure the information on each site matched that being sent through to head office. She didn’t usually bring Kelly along but it had recently been agreed that she should cover some of Jo’s duties while she was on maternity leave. The original plan had been to recruit someone with more experience but that had been when Jo had imagined taking a year out to immerse herself in the joys of motherhood. As things stood, she would only be dipping her toe in it before returning to work. Gary was confident that, with his close supervision, there wasn’t much trouble Kelly could get them into.
‘But since the kettle’s on, it would be rude to say no,’ Jo told Jim, overruling Kelly’s not-so-subtle rebuff to his welcome.
When they stepped into the cabin, Jo discovered that they weren’t the only visitors and she immediately regretted accepting Jim’s hospitality. Jason was there along with a fresh-faced trainee who was plugging the gap David had left until Nelson’s decided how and when to fill the vacancy. There were awkward smiles, followed by an equally awkward silence. Everyone ignored the elephant in the room as Jo unzipped her mammoth-sized coat.
‘You’re looking well, Jo,’ Jason said.
‘You too; settling down obviously agrees with you,’ Jo responded, letting him know she knew almost as much about his personal life as he did about hers. Jason and David had worked together for several years and what Jason had shared with David about his various relationships, David had of course shared with his wife. Jason was twenty-seven and had spent much of his adult life flitting from one girlfriend to the next. The lines between each relationship were often blurred, but his latest conquest had defeated him.
‘He’s besotted with this one,’ David had told her as they lay in bed one night. ‘For the first time in his life, he’s not in control.’
Jo was resting her head on David’s chest and she could hear the steady beat of his heart. ‘He loves her more than she loves him, you mean?’
‘Maybe. Not everyone can be as lucky as we are. We’re the perfect match.’
‘You think so?’ Jo asked, unable to share her husband’s confidence for reasons he wasn’t yet aware of.
David lifted her face towards him. ‘Don’t you?’ he asked as he slipped down the bed so they were nose to nose, their bodies pressed against each other. Jo’s heartbeat was an echo of her husband’s.
‘I can be controlling.’
David smiled. ‘Didn’t you realize? It’s only because I let you.’
‘I love you, David.’
David pulled back as he recognized something akin to guilt in his wife’s face. ‘What have you done, Jo?’
She swallowed hard and bit her lip as she tried to summon up the courage to tell him. They had just come back from a Valentine’s break to Paris and had had the most wonderful time. They had stood on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre and repeated their wedding vows, or at least an updated version that they had made up on the spot. They had promised to love each other for ever and David had told her he would devote his life to making her happy. Taking him at his word, when they returned to England, she had started flushing her contraceptive pill down the plughole each morning rather than popping it into her mouth.
Her courage failed at the last minute and she started with a half-truth. ‘What would you say if I were to stop taking the pill?’
David was still scrutinising her and didn’t look reassured by what he saw. ‘I’d say it’s still too soon.’
She had hoped his prevarication was coming to an end and tried not to let her frustration show, asking softly, ‘What are you so scared of, David?’
‘Having a baby will change things between us,’ he said. ‘Look at what’s happening to Steve and Sally. Happily married and then Luke comes along and they can’t bear the sight of each other any more. I don’t want that to happen to us. I just don’t think we’re ready yet,’ he said.
‘We are ready,’ she said, simply. ‘I want to have a mini-you, or a mini-me. I want to see what colour their eyes are, if they have a dimple on their chin just like yours and if they inherit your patience or my stubbornness. I want to hear that tiny little heartbeat and know that we – we – made a perfect human being.’
‘I know.’ David’s words were gentle, as was the way he extricated himself from her embrace. ‘And I want that too. Just not yet …’
‘But coming off the pill doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll get pregnant right away. Sometimes it can take years to conceive.’
It was a convincing argument and one that Jo had already used to justify her actions to herself, however David wouldn’t relent – but then neither would she. Their love life had suffered a temporary setback, as if David suspected his determined wife had overruled him, but their desire for different things wasn’t as strong as their desire for each other.
Jo blinked away the memory, but the guilt remained. She should have told him what she was going to do.
‘We’ll leave you to it,’ Jason said. He had stood up and was waiting for Jo to hang up her coat so he could collect his. While he was close enough for only her to hear, he added, ‘I just thought you should know. The police went through everything in the office. There was nothing to find.’
‘I know.’
‘And I gave them a statement, for all the good it did. Has there been any news, anything to explain what might have happened yet?’
Jo considered how much she should tell him. She had hung on to as much privacy as she could, but after seven weeks she was desperate for any breakthrough. ‘I know he withdrew a fair bit of cash before he went missing. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’
Jason’s brow furrowed, and he took his time before he answered which gave Jo hope that it would at least be a considered reply. ‘Sorry, Jo,’ he said, shaking his h
ead slowly. ‘Other than saving up for your holiday to America, I don’t ever remember him mentioning money.’
‘It’s OK, never mind,’ Jo said, reaching over to touch his arm as if he were the one in need of comfort. ‘I’m getting used to not having answers.’
The audit was completed in record time and Jo wasn’t sure if Kelly had ploughed through the work to demonstrate how capable she was, or to prove her point to Jim that they hadn’t had time for the cups of coffee that were still half-full when they left.
It was when they were leaving that they bumped into Simon Harrison, literally. He had just arrived for work and had his chin to his chest as he fought against the arctic blast that swept Jo into his path.
‘Sorry, love, I wasn’t looking where I was going,’ he said, grabbing her arm to stop her stumbling.
‘Take more care next time,’ snapped Kelly, although it was unclear if her hostility was based on the near miss, or the fact he had used the term ‘love’, which was one of her pet hates.
Rather than look at Kelly, Simon’s smiling eyes were drawn to Jo, or to be more specific, her immense bump. ‘You’ve grown!’ he said, greeting her like an old friend.
She wasn’t the only one to have changed. She had visited Simon a few times when he was ill and the forty-year-old standing in front of her with broad shoulders and a square jaw bore no resemblance to the man she recalled crumpled up on his living room sofa. His eyes hadn’t been smiling then, they had been empty. Whatever cocktail of drugs his doctor had plied him with had allowed him to withdraw so deeply into himself that only an outer shell had remained and his muscular frame had trembled with the effort of keeping his head upright. Neither Jo nor his ex-wife, who had temporarily returned home to care for him, had been able to break through that shell and Jo wondered if he remembered the visit at all. The gratitude written all over his face confirmed that he did.
The Missing Husband Page 14