The Missing Husband

by Amanda Brooke

  31

  The sky was about to fall, weighed down by dark grey clouds that were ocean deep. There were dirty smears of rain on the horizon but for the moment at least, the regiment of graves looking out across Childwall Valley were bone dry.

  Hoping there was still time before the cloudburst, Jo pulled back the rain cover on Archie’s pram. Her son had been sleeping but his eyes flickered in confusion as he was lifted from his safe haven. He frowned only briefly before returning to his slumber in his mother’s arms. Jo retrieved a small posy of flowers next and then took a step nearer the weathered headstone.

  ‘David Taylor,’ she read out loud, before turning to her son. ‘That’s your daddy’s name, sweetheart, and you’re going to grow up hearing it an awful lot. I only wish he’d had the chance to know yours – and not only your name, but the whole of you. Everything you are, Archie Taylor, and everything you’re going to be. It breaks my heart that all I can do is tell you about him and oh, how I want to tell you. You’re missing out on so much, Archie.’

  Jo looked up to the skies and felt the wetness on her cheeks although the rain was yet to fall. ‘What did you want for your son, David? Did you ever think about that? I’m trying to forget about that note you wrote to your dad. I read your last texts instead and play your voicemail message over and over again, trying to find the meaning behind your words. Was the baby I was carrying ever in the plans you wanted to tell me about? Is that why you bought some baby things? Were you ready to love him? Did you still love me?’

  The only response to her questions came from the mournful cry of a seagull sailing across the ocean above her. She dropped her head and crouching down, placed the posy of purple and yellow spring flowers at the base of the headstone, which was leaning lazily to one side. She was tugging at one of the dandelions growing out of a crack in the base when she felt her phone vibrating in her pocket.

  When Jo stood up her legs felt wobbly and she thought she would faint but she held on tightly to Archie and allowed him to ground her. She inhaled deeply before answering the call.

  ‘Hello?’ she asked.

  ‘Hi, Jo, it’s Martin. Where are you?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m at your house and you’re not there.’

  As Jo explained where she was she could feel the air being wrung out of her lungs. She didn’t ask again why Martin wanted to speak to her but agreed to wait where she was. He would be there in five minutes.

  Time slowed to a deathly pace as Jo returned Archie to his pram and said goodbye to the old man lying six feet below as if he was an old friend. Her feet waded through an invisible mire as she made her way towards the church gate. Her mind had slowed too as she stood at the side of the road with Archie, waiting for life to catch up with her and then knock her down one last time.

  The first heavy drop of rain exploded on the dry pavement as the policeman’s car pulled up in front of her. Martin didn’t meet Jo’s eyes as he took the pram and, with surprising ease, unhooked the baby carrier from the frame and secured it in the backseat of the car. Next he collapsed the frame itself and put it in the boot.

  Jo watched without a word. She realized she knew absolutely nothing about this man who was so familiar with the intimate details of her life. The questions that suddenly came to her mind were easier to voice than the more pertinent ones she refused to confront. ‘Do you have children?’ she asked.

  ‘Two,’ he said as he guided her to the passenger seat. ‘They live with my ex-wife, but I see them every other weekend.’ He closed the door and then went around to the driver’s side where he took hold of the handle but didn’t immediately pull open the door. He didn’t want to do this either.

  When the policeman finally slipped behind the driving wheel, his waterproof coat was glistening with raindrops. Somewhere in the distance, there was a rumble of thunder. Still she didn’t ask.

  Martin took hold of her hand in a futile attempt to halt the tremors that weren’t only confined to Jo.

  ‘We’ve found him.’

  There was a gulp of air but no other sound as Jo swallowed back the tears that had blurred her vision, blocked her nose and closed her throat. The dark clouds she had watched approaching from the horizon had fallen with the weight of an ocean and she was drowning in it.

  She had been expecting the news and so the shock slamming into her body took her by surprise. The police search had begun at first light and she had intended on staying at home, waiting for the knock on the door that wouldn’t be David, not this time and not ever.

  It was ironic, then, that after spending so long yearning for answers, Jo would be so eager to flee from them when the sun had risen that morning. Steph had been on her way over when Jo made her bid for freedom and it had taken some considerable effort to convince her sister that she would be all right once she was in the fresh air; another irony. Eventually, she had persuaded Steph to go over and keep Irene company; Jo wanted to be on her own with her son and her thoughts.

  Foolishly, Jo had expected some kind of relief, but as she tried to breathe through the pressure that was not only constricting her chest, but had closed her ears and blackened her vision, she felt only grief. Heavy waves of it that made the sound of the policeman’s voice seem further away than it should.

  ‘There’ll have to be a formal identification of the body,’ Martin was saying, ‘but unofficially, there’s no doubt. It’s him, Jo.’

  Jo pulled her hand free from Martin’s grasp and held on to the edges of the car seat to keep her steady. ‘Do you know what happened yet?’ Even her own words sounded far away.

  ‘We still have officers at the scene gathering evidence and there’s a long way to go before we put it all together, but so far everything seems to substantiate Daniel Jones’s statement.’

  ‘Daniel Jones?’

  ‘The kid you talked to last night. It didn’t take long to identify the group of lads who hang out around that path. We took him and his mates in for questioning and they all said pretty much the same thing that Daniel told you. David climbed over the fence to get their football back and then they left him stranded there. From what we’ve uncovered at the scene, it looks like he tried to climb a tree to get back over. It was blowing a gale that night—’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ Jo said.

  ‘Sorry, of course you do. There’s a large broken branch close by so I’d say he fell from the tree. He landed in shrubbery, which stopped him rolling down the embankment. The debris from the storm accumulated around him, concealing his body perfectly.’

  ‘Did he … Do you think …?’

  ‘Did he suffer? There’ll be an autopsy and I know my opinion counts for nothing but you’ve waited long enough so I’m going to give it anyway. There’s a significant head injury and no indication that he even tried to get back up so my guess is he sustained it in the fall, probably on another branch. Are you OK?’ he asked when he noticed heavy drops of tears falling unchecked from Jo’s bowed head and on to her lap. She nodded. ‘I don’t think it was foul play, Jo. I think he was knocked unconscious and didn’t wake up again. So no, I don’t think he suffered.’

  Jo hung on to those words as if they were a life raft but her mind was still trying to pull her under, weighed down by an image of David lying on the ground all alone while Jo had been at home staring at the starburst clock and watching the last minutes of his life slip away.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Jo,’ he continued. ‘I’m sorry that we gave up so early on. I should have pushed for the resources I needed to do a thorough search of the area, beyond the fence rather than just the path.’

  ‘You weren’t the only one to give up too soon,’ Jo said, prepared to admit her own culpability even though she wasn’t yet strong enough to deal with it.

  ‘The one thing we’ve yet to clear up is exactly what role Daniel and his mates played. We only have their word for it that they ran off before David fell from the tree.’

  Jo looked up and when she wiped her eyes the wate
rproof mascara she had chosen specifically for an occasion such as this refused to smudge. She gave an undignified sniff. ‘I don’t think Daniel was lying,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’m sure of it.’

  Martin took out a pack of tissues from his pocket and handed them to Jo. ‘And I think I’d agree with you but you’re going to have to prepare yourself for some speculation, if not from us, then from the press.’ He left a pause before continuing. ‘There’s something else too.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The mystery shopping bag David was carrying. It was Daniel who ended up with it because no one else was interested.’

  ‘And was it a present for the baby?’ Jo asked. It sounded like a plea for mercy and in return she caught the beginnings of a sad smile on Martin’s face as he nodded.

  ‘He said it was full of baby toys,’ Martin replied tentatively, testing Jo’s reaction.

  Jo gave him a trembling smile and the courage to continue.

  ‘Daniel threw the bag over a gated entrance to one of the charity shops on Allerton Road. He described what sounded like bath toys and teething rings but the only item he could recall with any clarity was a cot mobile. It had sunflowers hanging from it.’

  The smile broadened even as her pain deepened and the tears spilled down her cheeks unheeded.

  ‘And it played, “You are my sunshine”,’ she added with absolute certainty.

  32

  The sound of a running shower lured Jo from sleep but her eyes refused to open. She could taste the soapy, damp air as the door to the en suite opened and David stepped out. Her mind turned towards him but her body remained statue-still as she listened to him dress. She could hear him moving and then the creak of the door as he prepared to leave. She tried to speak but her lips were glued tightly shut and the words she screamed could only be heard inside her head.

  ‘Don’t go, David! Please! Please stay with me; I don’t want to live without you. I love you. Oh God, please listen to me! I love you so much. Don’t go, don’t you dare leave me!’

  With her mouth sealed shut, Jo was struggling for air. Convinced she was going to suffocate, the panic began to build in her chest and she told herself to breathe slowly through her nose. The thin stream of air she managed to inhale was just enough to keep her lungs from exploding. Her ears pricked when she heard a noise. It was David moving towards her. She could smell his aftershave and then felt his warm breath on her cheek. She tried to open her eyes again and every nerve and muscle in her face strained with the effort. This was her last chance. David was going to be buried today in the graveyard with the perfect view of the valley. If she didn’t open her eyes now then she would never see him again. Her closed lids were quivering as she fought through her inertia and then, without warning, she felt herself fall. Her stomach flipped and her eyes snapped open.

  The room was filled with bright sunshine that lit up David’s face like a halo. He smiled and the ice running through her veins melted away. He smiled and she marvelled at it. This was the very same smile that had stolen her heart – but then, she had received his heart in return. And as her loving husband trailed a finger along the side of her face, tucking away a rogue curl, Jo wondered how she could ever have doubted him.

  ‘I love you, David.’

  ‘And I love you, Jo,’ he said.

  The smile easing across Jo’s face erupted into a full-blown grin that was smothered by David’s lips which were warm and needy. She kissed him back hungrily and, as she did so, she made the mistake of closing her eyes again. The darkness rammed into her and forced the air out of her lungs in a gasp as she snapped her eyes back open. It was too late. He was gone, and only the darkness remained.

  Her eyes darted around the room. From the green glow of the alarm clock, she could see Archie sleeping peacefully in the bassinet next to the bed and he would remain asleep for some time. It was barely five o’clock.

  Jo tried to concentrate on slowing her breathing but it was hard to ignore all the other thoughts running through her mind. Today was her last day of being David’s wife. She wasn’t going to think of herself as a widow, not until tomorrow. Only then would she try to start her life anew. Today she was still his wife.

  When she managed a deep breath, Jo knew she was winning her latest battle. She could still detect a trace of David’s aftershave in the air. It wasn’t imagined, nor was it a lingering remnant of his ghostly apparition. There was no guilt or self-reproach for adding a sprinkling of his aftershave to her pillows as she had done every night since his body had been discovered ten days earlier.

  Her legs were trembling when she eventually sat up and dangled them over the side of the bed. She felt defeated by the latest anxiety attack, but not surprised. The discovery of her husband’s body had brought no peace and, so far, no resolution. The mystery of the past had been solved but there were still those questions that would never be answered, the what-ifs and the what-might-have-been. What would they have been doing now? Would she have been a better mother to Archie? And what would David have been like as a father? As this last thought weighed heavily on Jo’s mind, Archie sighed deeply and twisted in his blankets. Grief wrapped around Jo and tried to pull her back beneath her duvet but she resisted. There was something she needed to do but she didn’t work out what that was until she found herself standing in the middle of the study.

  With the window blinds pulled down against a night that wasn’t quite spent, Jo switched on a reading lamp which cast an arc of yellow light across the bare desk. There were no stacks of folders, not even a single letter left unfiled from the various banks, insurers, government bodies and other inflexible institutions who had once regarded her either with suspicion, pity or had simply ignored her when she had tried to manage her husband’s affairs. Jo had taken no pleasure in informing them that her husband was dead, but in some ways it had been cathartic. ‘Here’s your answer!’ she had wanted to yell at them. ‘Are you happy now?’

  And it hadn’t only been in correspondence with faceless penpushers that Jo had felt this shift in position. Family and friends were finding it easier to express their condolences now that they knew exactly why they were consoling her.

  Her return to work had been short-lived but there had been no question about offering Jo two weeks’ compassionate leave. Gary had arrived with a bouquet of flowers and a card signed by everyone as a token of their sympathy. Clearly a bereavement card was easier to come by than the one declaring, ‘Sorry your husband is missing.’ Kelly had sent her own card and the message inside had been sweet and sincere. Jo had a feeling that her assistant was starting to realize she still had a lot to learn, or was that being optimistic? Jo didn’t mind, a little optimism was good.

  But it was Simon’s card that had moved her most of all. He hadn’t offered the usual platitudes. He had been honest and refreshingly blunt. He told her that he had no idea how she felt or how she would cope in the future. He had no way of knowing if the worst was over for her but he hoped it was. He was only certain of one thing. This too would pass.

  Jo knew he was right but the future still frightened her. She couldn’t imagine ever being able to look at the path that lay ahead without being aware of the one running in parallel that she and David had been meant to follow together. She tried to visualize that untravelled path as she opened a filing cabinet drawer and removed a file.

  She sat down and put it on the desk in front of her but she didn’t open it immediately. She was listening to her body. Her pulse had barely slowed since waking and opening the file wasn’t going to ease her anxiety, but she opened it anyway. She hadn’t looked at the contents since Jason had handed it to her; she hadn’t wanted to step into David’s dreams.

  Her hands were surprisingly steady as she lifted out the holiday brochures and set them to one side. A handful of loose pages slipped out from between them and Jo followed their torn edges with a finger. She had little doubt that these had been torn from the holiday brochure she had offered up as evidence to DS Baxter tha
t David had absconded. She had been right to think the missing pages had been part of his travel plans; it was just the timing she had got completely wrong. He had talked about plans that day, plans that would surprise her, but if these were part of them, then she prepared herself for disappointment as she turned her attention to the remaining papers in the file.

  David had obviously spent hours poring over the details of his secret project. She could see handwritten scribbles here and there so she presumed it had still been a work in progress. Before building up the courage to look at the future plans, Jo scanned the list of completed tasks. It was hard to believe that their trip to Vietnam had been less than two years ago. Looking closely, Jo spotted an image embedded in the description. It was a copy of the stamp on his passport; that was why he’d taken it into work, not because he had been preparing to leave at a moment’s notice.

  Feeling a little more encouraged, Jo skimmed over the next few lines which charted a weekend away in Venice, a winter break to Iceland and their Valentine’s trip to Paris, but it was the next entry that brought back uncomfortable memories; the trip to America David had been forced to cancel when Jo became pregnant; the point at which she had shredded his plans to connect the four corners of the earth. It surprised her to see that, rather than being deleted, the holiday had only been postponed.

  While David was used to working with complex charts, it took Jo some time to work out how all the individual pieces of paper fitted together so she could see the full picture. Page by page, she began piecing together David’s master plan like a giant jigsaw puzzle, but this was no chocolate-box scene. The chart was two pages high and six pages wide with a list of tasks running down one side of the chart, a timeline across the top, and coloured bars in the middle to indicate what would happen when. There was only just enough room to fit everything on the desk and the last pages teetered dangerously over the edge. The reading lamp shone brightly over the centre of the chart while the outermost details of his plan remained dipped in shadows.