“Caroline has a cottage in the country. Away from everything. Maybe we could take a few days….”
“Hey, hold on,” Wayne said. “I can’t take time off at a weekend. That’s the only time I can depend on everybody turning up. You know that.”
“Not a weekend necessarily,” Maddie said. “I’m off work. We can take a couple of days anytime. Just imagine. A little cottage in a small village surrounded by countryside. Ambling through fields and woods. A cosy fire in the grate. Nothing to do but walk and read and talk about anything. It sounds like luxury to me. And it would be just you and me.”
He touched his ludicrous haircut.
That did it. Things crashed around her. That damned haircut. The contacts. Being late when Wayne was always on time for dinner. A dinner cooked for him, served to him and the kitchen cleaned up afterwards while he luxuriated in front of the telly.
She rang Caroline. “I’m going to cancel our coffee date. Need to. Wayne doesn’t want a holiday away.” She wasn’t sure she was making sense.
“Let’s have a girl’s weekend instead,” Caroline suggested. “Drive up on Friday. Just the two of us.”
“Sounds like heaven,” Maddie said. And so it was arranged.
Maddie turned back to the kitchen. She took a deep breath. Let it out. Again. She looked around the kitchen with dirty dishes everywhere, her last bit of wine still in the glass. Wayne’s abandoned dinner.
Tears pushed at her lids.
Chapter Twenty-one
Maddie woke disoriented. Her eyes were greeted with old fashioned roses on wallpaper that extended over the ceiling and instantly she knew she was in Briar Cottage, Caroline’s Oxfordshire eighteenth century place-in-the-country. She stretched and listened.
Birdsong. Silence. More birdsong.
For the first time in what seemed a very long time, Maddie smiled.
She threw off the bedclothes and opened the casement window, filling her lungs with fresh country air that wafted in. It was cool, but leaning on the windowsill, cool felt good.
Beyond the garden, early morning sunlight filtered through the leaves of a stand of tall beeches – is that why the two villages were named Woodley? She could see the birds now, flitting to and fro, the only discernible movement.
She shut the window and put on her bathrobe. Smells of coffee were wafting up the stairwell. Coffee first, then a shower.
“Sit,” Caroline said when Maddie reached the kitchen. “No talking allowed. Just coffee.”
Maddie grinned and did as she was told. What a difference from her own chaotic breakfast times at home when she had to push two grumpy people out the door with some sort of food either in them or with them.
Caroline, on the other hand, was swimming in a sea of calm. Her greying hair flowed down her back in untidy waves, so different from the professional bun she habitually wore when she was seeing patients. Her bathrobe had seen better days, secured with an old tie belonging to … Maddie had to think. Bright blue with purple spots – that must be husband number two, the one who owned the nightclub. Good riddance to that one.
After breakfast, still in their dressing gowns, Caroline led Maddie to the back conservatory; silence abandoned, they clutched second cups of coffee.
“Okay, what’s up?” Caroline asked as they sat in wicker chairs. “More trouble with that cow of a boss of yours?”
Maddie shook her head miserably. “Wayne trouble.”
“What’s he done now?” Caroline, who had finally found happiness in her third marriage, had little sympathy with wives who put up with nonsense.
Maddie closed her eyes. “Put it this way: suddenly taken to dyeing his hair with no discussion beforehand. Brand new, highly inappropriate and trendy haircut. Contact lenses that he kept ‘for work’. I didn’t know about them until I saw the credit card bill.”
Caroline guffawed. “That just shows what happens when a man thinks with his littlest head!”
Maddie’s eyes snapped open. “So it’s not just me being paranoid?”
“Paranoid? If a patient of mine could not see in which direction those facts are pointing, I’d be recommending a brain transplant.”
Maddie shook her head in response. This was no laughing matter.
“What’s changed in your life?” Caroline, the psychologist, asked.
Maddie sighed. “Nothing. In anything that matters, nothing.”
“Come on, Maddie, my friend. I know – the world knows – you’re having trouble at work.”
“I’ve always kept a healthy distance between work and home.” She knew it sounded as if she were on the defensive, but it was the truth.
“Listen to yourself,” Caroline commented, settling back in her chair.
Maddie slowed herself down. Of course the Romania situation would affect things at home. She sighed. “Okay. The extra assignments given to me by Romania had to be done after hours. One of my complaints. That meant, go to work, home, dinner, work at home, bed. Rinse and repeat ... nothing for Wayne other than a quick cuddle before sleep.” She’d not been there for him. Not for ages.
“How long?”
“Almost since Romania became my boss. Quite a few months now.”
“But it’s different now. You’re suspended.”
Maddie thought long and hard about it. “Physically, I’m around a lot more, yes. But, I’m consumed with the situation, always going on and on about it. I must be the biggest bore ever.”
“It’s a huge thing, Maddie. Is Wayne being supportive?”
That stopped Maddie in her tracks.
Support. That was her role. Assigned by Wayne and his sensitive, creative musical and needy soul. She’d love to be supported by Wayne for once. Right now, she needed support.
“It’s not just the emotional support problem. I … I am facing … I have to decide whether to throw in the towel or not.”
“Give up work? You?”
“What can I do? If the authorities decide in favour of Romania, there’ll be no choice.”
“What does Wayne think about that?”
“When I mentioned it, he threw a hissy-fit.”
“He’s threatened,” Caroline said decisively. “Maybe he’ll be forced out of his comfort zone, finally have to earn some money. Actually get off his backside and take some responsibility for his family.”
Maddie stared at her friend. “Is that the way you’ve seen him all these years?”
Caroline let silence be her answer.
Maddie put her mug down on the wicker table between them. She let the silence linger. She needed to think. “Can we continue this discussion after I’ve been out for a walk?”
Caroline leaned forward and touched Maddie’s forearm. “I’ll be here.”
Maddie let herself out of the front door and walked down the pea-gravel drive. Across the lane, she spotted a path leading into the woods. Just what she wanted. A perfect place to analyse her life. Quiet, no people and she had the time for herself, an untold luxury. After all, that’s why she came this weekend. She didn’t allow herself to think about the romantic weekend she’d had to abandon.
Okay. Her marriage. She fell in love with Wayne shortly after she’d met him. He and his group had played at an outdoor venue on campus when she was completing her social work master’s degree one sunny hot day. Maddie and about thirty other students were sitting in the shade of a large tree for the concert. Weird music. Sort of appealing, although Maddie wasn’t a music aficionado. It was pleasant sitting outside doing nothing instead of figuring out the knotty problem of what she was to write up next for her thesis.
Afterwards, she continued to sit there, watching the musicians pack up. She hadn’t realised she was the only one left until the dark haired boy who had played the lead guitar called out to her.
“Did we send you into a dwam?” He smiled a wonderful smile as he said it. A smile that lit up his face, changing him from average looking to appealing.
“Must have,” she said, walking towards th
e group.
“We’re off to the pub. Join us?”
And that was the beginning. Now, several decades on, with two grown up daughters and a fair few unsuccessful albums, he continued to make weird music that she still didn’t understand. She was (perhaps, maybe) still working as a Probation Officer, a job she landed immediately she finished her university studies. And now he had bought himself contact lenses. Secretly. And his hair….
Yes, obvious what was going on. Big question: had it progressed or was he merely trying to impress somebody?
Her gut clenched.
The trees were old and stretched high above her forming a canopy of green. Undergrowth was minimal – far too little light, she presumed. This deep into the woods, even the birds were quiet.
The needy bit. She had to think about it. At first, she had a good salary coming in and he did not. She financed renting some studio space for him. She financed their house, or rather, she and the bank. She paid the credit card bills. She sent their older daughter to university and would contribute to their younger one’s studies next year. Whatever Wayne earned went back into ‘the business’. Or so he always said. And she had no doubts it was correct. Wayne periodically released CDs and DVDs of his music but never boasted about any great successes. Any. She assumed each was a flop but it was a subject that was not to be discussed. She knew he always felt there was always the next one coming, more innovative, more creative….
She’d been the strong one. She’d been the breadwinner. She’d been the giver. She did all the cooking. And the housework. And the gardening. And was the one to go to school concerts, meetings with teachers, games involving the girls and whatever else periodically had cropped up over the years.
An unfamiliar feeling welled up within her. It took a moment to identify what she was experiencing. Both her body and her mind were singing the same sad song. She listened. It was telling her something. Something important.
To run. Yes, for the first time in her life, she would like to run away.
Chapter Twenty-two
Maddie talked a lot, those two days she spent with Caroline in rural Oxfordshire. She knew this was her only opportunity to do so without rancour. If she could only get her distress under control, she could maybe return home to take up her life without Wayne or Jade realising something momentous was happening. Maybe. Buy some time to get herself sorted. Even thinking about it caused her guts to protest, her heart to race and her skin to break out in periodic sweats, particularly at night.
Sunday, Caroline set to prepare a French ragout to cook in the slow cooker she kept at the cottage. They would be driving home straight afterwards.
“I love preparing this dish,” Caroline said as she chopped fresh vegetables. “It’s therapeutic. Then all afternoon the smells intensify, driving everybody mad.” Piles of mushrooms, onion, leek, and turnip filled small bowls ready to be added to the slow cooker. Rosemary, clipped from an abundant bush outside the back door, thyme and oregano were ready. “You can start frying the veal, if you want to help,” she said.
Maddie, now her venting had petered out but with the energy of a decrepit slug, nodded as she picked up the wooden spoon. She’d rather be hiding under the duvet upstairs in the guest bedroom but she couldn’t tell Caroline that. She just hoped she’d have enough appetite to do the meal justice.
As soon as the ragout was cooking, Caroline cajoled Maddie into a walk.
The day was cooling and both put on jackets. “There’s a path down to a thirteenth century church. The bell tower is a century younger, fourteenth century. Half an hour’s walk or maybe a bit more,” Caroline said. “I want to show you the paintings they discovered – hidden, apparently, since Cromwell’s men tried to destroy all ‘decoration’ of churches.”
Once in the beech woods, Caroline pointed out several shallow hollows Maddie had not noticed on her first visit there, apparently the remains of pits where flint was mined, flint used to build churches and other buildings centuries ago, including the church to which they were headed.
Slowly Maddie became more interested. The forest was cool, still, and the two of them were alone on their walk. They came out of the woods on to a narrow lane across from an eighteenth century pub, bursting with activity as families spread themselves over picnic tables in the late afternoon sunshine. The two of them crossed the road, avoided the pub to find another ancient footpath that led towards the church.
Once at their destination, the church wall paintings – really more sketches or drawings, but obviously from the thirteenth century because of the fashions depicted – according to the plaque anyway – were indeed fascinating. Maddie knew she was slowly returning to her normal self: interested in history, loving being with her friend Caroline and feeling better now she’d stretched her muscles.
This was a dark period in her life but she could get through it, no matter what was coming. Fingers crossed.
Chapter Twenty-three
The first thing Maddie did on Monday morning after shooing Jade and Wayne out the door was to make an appointment at the prison where Henry was incarcerated. Visiting hours were that afternoon at two. Her name was on the list of Henry’s approved visitors, most likely an oversight on Romania’s part in not removing it. Maddie would take advantage.
Henry had aged a decade since Maddie had last seen him. He shuffled to the table where she was sitting, smiling, but looking dreadful. Maddie knew enough not to touch him and also not to comment on his appearance. He slumped in the chair.
“How are you bearing up, Henry?” she asked in a low voice. Other tables were occupied with a variety of people, most of whom were only interested in their own lives, so her low voice was only to emphasise she was aware of privacy issues.
He paused. “Fine. Absolutely fine,” he said.
She didn’t react to his obvious lie.
“Maybe not quite fine, Mrs Brooks,” he said. “Not adjusting quite as well as I’d like.” He took a deep breath. “But nothing’s happening this end. What about you? Loads going on your end, I gather.”
“Oh?”
“The unlovely Ms Carlisle tells me she’s now my PO. You are no longer working at the Service.”
“Not quite true,” she said. “But, you’ve surmised correctly. I’m having a bit of bother at work and, yes, she’s right. I’m not there right now. I’m hoping it can all be sorted….”
His eyes brightened. “But you’re here,” he said.
“I’m here. You’re not forgotten, Henry. Not by me, anyway. But I’m not here officially and there’s very little chance I’ll be your Probation Officer ever again. So that means I’m here as your friend. In an ordinary private capacity.”
A smile slowly spread across his face. “To tell the truth, I’d much rather you were my friend than my Probation Officer,” he said.
“How do you find your new PO?” The words were out of her mouth before she could recall them.
“Very different from you, I must say. Ms Carlisle keeps trying to make me confess. As if I’d confess to something I hadn’t done.” He turned his bright blue eyes on Maddie. “Even if I’d killed that poor child, Carlisle would be the last person I’d ever talk to about it. About anything that mattered.”
Maddie found herself smiling then quickly removed her smile.
“I certainly don’t blame you, my dear,” he said. “I know there’s no way I could ever believe you wanted Ms Bloody Carlisle to be your successor.”
For a brief moment, she thought he knew about her losing out to Romania for the head of department job, but quickly realised he was talking about himself. She’d been removed and her successor as his PO was Romania.
“The upshot is that I have some time,” Maddie said. “I can do my own investigations without supervision or other constraints. Other than obeying the law – the laws of the land and my own personal code of ethics, of course.”
His eyes brightened again. “Have you found the lady at the charity shop?”
“Yes an
d no,” she said and brought him up to date about Kathy’s travels. “I’m going to double down on tracking her movements starting tomorrow.”
“Thank you very much. I appreciate it.”
She caught a catch in his voice. The poor man had no support. His wife was gone and anybody he’d known years before he was put into prison had long forgotten him or been turned off by his sex abuser status. And the supposition he had murdered the child from his old school certainly wouldn’t be helping. How dreadful to be so utterly alone. Even with her present troubles, she had family and friends like Caroline. And she wasn’t in prison.
“I met up with the first victim. Now a young woman.” She blurted it out and instantly regretted it. Unprofessional.
“Geneva Hopworth?” He was genuinely surprised. “How is she doing?”
“Well. Grown up. Working. And, moreover, enjoying what she’s doing.”
“Thank God for that,” Henry said. “Why did you want to contact her?”
“Me being nosy.”
“Go on, please.” He leaned forward.
“You must understand, for her, it was a very long time ago.” Maddie hesitated. She was acutely aware discussing this topic with Henry was somewhat improper. Since she’d been put on leave, she’d felt a disconnect from her previous life, a disconnect she continued to feel, emphasised by her weekend away. She was here as a support for him, not as his former PO. She’d better make that clear.
“Look, Henry, even though I’m here as a friend, we’d better keep this conversation private. Between the two of us, just in case I get my job back. Which is not likely.” She surprised herself saying this. “Better call me ‘Maddie’.”
His smile stretched from one ear to the other. “Maddie. I’ll try to get used to it.”
She smiled back, then let her smile fade. “Can you bear to go back over the Geneva situation once again?” She waited for his answer.
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