by Penny Jordan
As though catching her mood from her the twins were particularly awkward during the evening—not just Mandy but Simon as well, and, her temper frayed by her brief sighting of James with his woman friend, Tara snapped crossly at them when they baulked at going to bed. That the battle was a nightly ritual and never normally bothered her was forgotten, their disobedience bringing to a head the churningly disturbing emotions she had been feeling all afternoon—no, not just all afternoon, she admitted to herself as she thankfully closed Mandy’s bedroom door behind her, but for several weeks. Ever since she had been forced to admit to herself that she still loved James. Mandy’s parting comment hadn’t helped either, but a brief smile tugged at Tara’s lips nevertheless, as she recalled Mandy’s piped and scathing, ‘You’re just cross because Uncle Chas doesn’t come round any longer—well, we don’t care. We don’t like him, we like Uncle James!’
If only she knew, Tara thought tiredly, regretting her impatience with them. She would make it up to them in the morning, she decided, thank goodness it was Saturday, they could all go out for the day. It would do them good to get away from London. They could drive down to Brighton, play on the beach. It was time she put James firmly behind her, she told herself. He didn’t care any more about her now than he had done before—probably less, and it was unfair of her to take her own pain out on the twins.
She said nothing to the twins of her decision to take them out for the day over breakfast, and was glad when she went out to the car and saw with a sinking heart the slow puncture in the front nearside tyre.
Her spare tyre wasn’t in the best of conditions, and rather than risk the journey without it, Tara decided to change the wheel and then drive to her local garage where she knew she could get another. She could also fill up on petrol at the same time, and instructing the twins to behave while she was gone, she hurried back out to the car, suppressing a faint smile.
The pair of them had been thoroughly subdued over breakfast, so much so that she had been tempted to plead for their forgiveness, but they would cheer up soon enough when they learned what she had in mind. Her mind on the picnic meal she intended to prepare, Tara completed her business at the garage and drove quickly home.
As she drew up outside the house the first thing she noticed was that the front gate was open, and she frowned. The twins were strictly forbidden to leave the garden when she was not with them. She glanced at her watch. She had been gone just over twenty minutes, hardly long enough for them to get bored enough with their own company to want to flout one of her strictest rules. She must have left the gate open herself in her haste, she reassured herself, but nevertheless her heart pounded sickly and her footsteps sounded anxious as she hurried up the path and pushed open the door.
Silence greeted her, a silence which made her stomach churn in agonised protest, her gaze desperately flying from one object to another as she called the twins’ names.
No answer. She hurried into the kitchen on legs suddenly desperately weak. On the floor lay the smashed pieces of a china teapot—part of a set her mother had given her the previous year. The china wasn’t particularly to Tara’s taste, but knowing how offended her mother would be if she didn’t appear to treasure it the twins were strictly forbidden to touch. Her heart lurched into her stomach as she contemplated the broken teapot which she dimly remembered had been wedged awkwardly in one of the bottom cupboards, at a slightly dangerous angle. She remembered that she had made a mental note to move it to a safer place and had then completely forgotten. There was evidence that some washing up had been in progress and it didn’t take any great powers of deduction to realise that the teapot had met its unfortunate fate during this operation. Recalling how cross she had been with the twins the previous evening, Tara realised that they had probably gone into hiding somewhere fearing retribution. The thought lifted her stricken spirits, and she hurried upstairs expecting to find the twins in one of the bedrooms, all innocent smiles when taxed with their ‘crime.’
The bedrooms were empty, and fear gnawed at her again. Downstairs she made a thorough search of the house before going into the garden. Could they have gone to see Janice?
Her neighbour was sympathetic but couldn’t help.
‘The little imps,’ she chuckled when Tara had explained what had happened, ‘they’re probably hiding somewhere in the garden.’
‘No,’ Tara told her tightly. ‘Oh God, Janice I’m so frightened! You were my last hope. One hears such dreadful things…’ She shuddered, burying her face in her hands, making no protest when Janice pushed her down into a chair and disappeared into her kitchen. She could hear her moving about and started to get up, but Janice reappeared, carrying a mug.
‘Hot, sweet tea—yes, I know you don’t take sugar, but it’s the best thing for shock. Look, let’s go through the whole thing again. I’ll come back with you and we’ll go right through the house. Panic makes people do odd things; ten to one they’re tucked away somewhere in the house, too scared to come out and admit what they’ve done. We’ll soon find them,’ she comforted practically. ‘Drink your tea.’
Numbly Tara did as she was told. Deep in her heart of hearts, she wasn’t convinced by what Janice had said. The twins had run away, she was sure of it. She remembered how cross she had been with them, how subdued they had appeared this morning and how tragic the broken teapot must have appeared. Oh God, what had she done? Allowing her own children to believe a china teapot mattered more to her than them!
This and other equally morbid thoughts ran through her head as Janice hurried with her back to the house.
Half an hour later Janice, now as pale as Tara was herself, was forced to concede defeat.
‘There’s nothing else left but to call the police, love,’ she said softly. ‘Shall I do it, or…’
Tara shook her head. ‘I’ll do it,’ she managed in a voice that cracked with pain.
The sergeant on the other end of the line was patient and helpful. ‘Just take your time, madam,’ he urged her when she broke down in the middle of describing Mandy’s pink dungarees. ‘I’ll send a W.P.C. round to talk to you, but meanwhile we’ll get some patrols searching for them. You just sit tight.’
The woman police constable was about Tara’s own age, pleasant and yet slightly distant. Tara had to go over every detail of the children’s clothing and the events of the morning yet again for her while she wrote it down.
‘Do you often leave the twins on their own?’ she was asked at one point, and the question drove the blood from her face. What was the woman trying to imply? That the twins were latchkey ‘orphans’, whose mother didn’t care one way or the other?
‘Never,’ Tara told her huskily. ‘I was gone twenty minutes… twenty minutes…’
Seeing the real agony in her eyes, the policewoman tactfully refrained from pointing out how many other parents had said something similar and had lived to regret those very few minutes.
‘Have you any idea what might have happened to them?’
Tara took a deep breath.
‘I think they’ve probably run away,’ she said huskily. ‘We had words—last night. I was going to take them out for the day today for a treat.’ Tears welled in her eyes and overflowed. There were other questions—questions that horrified and appalled her, hinting at child battering and worse, but while one part of her mind was outraged, Tara recognised that such questions were a necessary part of the procedure.
Janice too was questioned. She was in tears now as well, and Tara was asked if there was anyone she wanted with her—a boy-friend perhaps, the policewoman suggested.
Tara shook her head. ‘I don’t have one,’ she told her.
‘What about Chas?’ Janice suggested. ‘You need someone with you.’
Tara explained to the policewoman who Chas was, and as though somehow she were divorced from the proceedings Tara registered the fact that the girl was putting in a radio request for Chas to be contacted, her own voice saying inanely, ‘Please don’t bother him,�
�� over and over again, echoing in her ears like some vague recording.
The long day wore on. Chas arrived, full of concern and shock, Nina with him. The policewoman disappeared and reappeared a little later, her manner much more warm and comforting, and Tara suspected that she had been doing a little discreet digging in the social service records, making sure that neither Tara nor the twins had any record of past incidents.
‘Don’t worry,’ she was assured over and over again, ‘they’ll be found.’ But would they? London was such a vast place, the twins so terribly vulnerable. All the evils that could befall two young children filled her mind in crashing waves, terror after terror blanking out the sympathy of everyone with her. At one point, unable to stand the inactivity any longer, she begged to be allowed to go put with the patrols, but was gently refused.
‘It’s better if you stay here,’ she was told. ‘When we find them the first person they’re going to want is you.’
She heard, but didn’t accept. She was the last person they wanted, otherwise they would never have run away.
‘Their father is dead, is that right?’ The policewoman was asking her the question and just for a moment Tara longed to tell the truth and have James at her side to face this terrible ordeal with her, but sanity prevailed and she nodded her head quickly, averting her face, not wanting anyone to guess that she was lying.
‘And they’ve no relatives they could go to who live locally?’
She had answered all these questions already, but sensing that merely the automatic response of replying would occupy and free from pain some tiny part of her brain, Tara slowly responded.
Afternoon dragged into evening. The police left. They would keep her informed, she was told. Chas took Nina home, but then returned, insisting on making a light omelette which Tara couldn’t touch.
‘There’s honestly no need for you to stay with me—I’ll be pefectly all right,’ she insisted to Chas for the umpteenth time, but he overruled her objections, coming towards her and taking her in his arms.
‘For God’s sake try and let go a little, love,’ he said softly. ‘This isn’t the time to preserve that stiff upper lip act you’re so good at. What are friends for, after all?’
She started to cry, and he produced a large handkerchief, pushing the tangled hair out of her eyes. They heard footsteps in the hall, and Chas smiled down at her.
‘Sounds like the police are back,’ he told her. ‘Let’s hope they have some good news.’
That he suspected they wouldn’t have was apparent to Tara in the way in which he kept his arm round her, holding her against him as though he feared she would break into a thousand fragile pieces.
The door opened and she heard herself repeating the prayer she had been saying all day long. ‘Please God, let them be safe. Please, please, God!’
The footsteps stopped and she lifted her heady confusion and disbelief mirrored in her eyes as they met James’s contemptuously bitter ones.
‘My God!’ he whispered savagely. ‘Even now with your children missing you haven’t a thought in your head but your own physical satisfaction!’
Tara ignored the latter part of his statement, concentrating on his initial words, her croaked, ‘How do you know about the twins?’ drawing a grim darkening of his eyes, his mouth sour as he told her brutally,
‘I know because they’ve spent all afternoon with my housekeeper, too damned frightened to come home to you, and all over some crazy teapot they broke!’
Anger and pain rushed over her in a massive, turbulent wave. ‘All afternoon?’ Her voice registered shock and bitterness. ‘You mean you’ve known all afternoon and not let me know? Is this your idea of some sort of punishment for being an unfit mother, do you…’
Chas silenced her, his face nearly as white as her own.
‘If I weren’t a civilised human being I’d throttle you with my bare hands,’ he told James slowly. ‘Have you any idea of the agony you’ve caused her, of what she’s had to endure today? To say nothing of the fact that half the local police force is out looking for those two kids? You ought to be locked up!’ he finished in disgust.
‘Uncle Chas, I take it?’ James sneered back. ‘Comforting the grieving mother. All this performance today has nothing to do with the fact that those two kids don’t want you as their father, of course?’
Tara felt Chas’s surprise and looked up at him despairingly. He responded with a quick smile and a tiny squeeze of her arm.
‘It’s what Tara wants that concerns me,’ he replied smoothly. ‘And I think we’d better telephone the police. You’ll have some explaining to do,’ he warned James. ‘I’m not sure about the law concerning minors, but I would have thought simple common sense would have led you to report the fact that they were with you…’
‘I’m sure it would,’ James agreed quickly, ‘if I’d known. I was out of town for the day, and the first I knew of their arrival was when I got home. They refused to tell Mrs Hammond their surname or where they came from—my stepdaughter, who would have known, is away at the moment and she was obliged to wait for my return. When I did return I lost no time in coming straight round.’
‘You could have telephoned,’ Chas pointed out, reaching for the telephone as he spoke.
‘So I could,’ James agreed smoothly, ‘but the twins seemed rather reluctant to face their mother, so I decided to drive round instead in the hope that I could persuade her to return with me so that we could sort this whole mess out.’
Right at that moment Tara would have promised to go to the ends of the universe with the devil himself if it meant getting the twins back safely.
Refusing Chas’s offer to accompany her, she waited impatiently for him to finish reporting the twins’ safety to the authorities, so that they could leave.
‘They want to speak to you,’ he told James, handing him the receiver.
‘I’d better go, love,’ he told Tara in a low voice. ‘Unless you want me to come with you?’
‘No, thanks.’ Tara smiled up at him, kissing his cheek affectionately unaware of the fact that James was watching him or that his eyes had darkened furiously.
‘You just can’t leave him alone, can you?’ he threw at her when Chas had gone and they were on their way out to his car. ‘What’s so special about him? Or is it simply that he’s good in bed?’
Tara refused to respond to his taunts, huddling as far away from him as she possibly could as he slid into the Rolls.
He drove in silence through the London traffic, and just before they drew up in front of it, Tara recognised the mews block she had seen him emerging from with the dark-haired woman.
Something must have registered on her face, because he grasped her arm as she reached for the door, forcing her round to face him.
‘Something wrong?’
Some devil prompted her to say coolly, ‘Perhaps I object to my children being exposed to the sort of careless morals you seem to favour.’
She had expected him to let the subject go, but instead he prompted in a dangerously quiet tone, ‘I could say I find that remark extraordinary coming from you, but instead I’ll ask you to elucidate. Meaning what exactly?’
‘Meaning that I saw you leaving this mews yesterday with a woman,’ Tara told him proudly, refusing to be quelled by the rage she could sense boiling up inside him but kept tightly battened down.
‘She’d called on me to talk to me about some investments she was worried about.’ James shrugged broad shoulders. ‘An innocent enough meeting, and very far from your fevered imaginings of the two of us making love in my bedroom.’
But not from hers, Tara thought inwardly. She had desired James, and she hadn’t bothered to hide that fact from her.
‘Any more nasty cracks like that and you’ll have me thinking you’re jealous,’ James taunted as he took her arm and directed her up the four steps to the dark green front door, his threat leaving her speechless with fear.
Inside the house was far less grand than she had
anticipated.
Several panelled doors led off the small square hall with its polished parquet flooring and single oval table holding a pot-bellied brass container and an attractive arrangement of flowers.
A flight of stairs led upwards, but it was on the opening door in the hall that Tara concentrated.
Disappointment flooded her as a tall, middle-aged woman walked in.
‘The twins’ mother, Mrs Hammond,’ James introduced her. ‘Tara, meet Mrs Hammond, my housekeeper.’
‘I’m sorry if the twins have caused you any anxiety or trouble,’ Tara began awkwardly, wondering what on earth the housekeeper must think, but her apology was brushed aside by the older woman’s rich laugh.
‘Well, I was concerned,’ she admitted, ‘Simply because they wouldn’t tell me who they were, and I knew someone must be worrying about them. Too well dressed and polite for it to be anything else,’ she added, restoring some of Tara’s equanimity. ‘But Mandy’s a real caution, isn’t she? Oh, but you look so pale,’ she added to Tara. ‘You must have been worried half to death!’
‘I was,’ Tara agreed, ho longer ashamed to admit it, or concerned at what conclusions James might draw from the tears sparkling on her long eyelashes. ‘I can’t tell you how much, but what I don’t understand is how they got here.’
‘Apparently Mandy had memorised my address,’ James told her quietly. ‘They used their pocket money and somehow—God knows how—managed to make their way here.’
Tara’s stomach tightened as she thought of the appalling risks they had all unknowingly run, the terrible things that could have happened to them.