Meet Me on the Beach

by Hilary Boyd

  Karen nodded. She wondered where Mrs. Jason, Patrick’s cleaning lady, had got the gossip about the supposed affair. But since Sheila hadn’t mentioned it, and seemed to be utterly baffled as to the cause of the vicar’s defection, she felt she couldn’t ask.

  “Poor dear Rachel will be in bits, is my guess. She idolized her dad, she did,” Sheila was saying as she picked up the glass vases again. “Ah, well. Better get a move on, these vases won’t wash themselves. I suppose that dim-witted rector from Ashleigh will be standing in till the Church sorts out a replacement. What a mess.”

  Karen, finally hearing the details of the drama, couldn’t help but feel desperate for William, as well as having sympathy for his family. She knew he must be in despair to have behaved in such a way.

  She followed Sheila out of the church and walked slowly across the village to Jennifer’s house to pick up Largo. She was dreading seeing her friend. If Sheila—kind-hearted and charitable by nature—had not picked up on the full gossip, Jennifer, beadier by far and considerably more moralistic, certainly would have. Which was born out as soon as she answered Karen’s ring. No smile, no welcoming Karen inside as she usually would have, just a tight-lipped nod in response to her hello.

  For a moment Jennifer stood there, breathing hard, hand on the front door, bulk solidly filling the space as if she were guarding her home against invasion, then she gave a small harrumph and stood aside.

  “I suppose you’d better come in.”

  Karen could feel her stomach tighten with dread. So this was it.

  Largo ran through from the kitchen at the sound of her voice and jumped up joyfully to be patted.

  “Come through,” Jennifer commanded, going ahead of Karen to the sitting room, her hands seeking support from the corridor walls, then from the back of the sofa before slowly lowering herself into her wing-backed chair by the fireplace and placing her right foot—the one that was still giving her trouble from a bad sprain the previous winter—on to the tapestried footstool. She waved Karen imperiously toward the sofa, as if she were a servant come for a job interview.

  Karen sat on the edge of the cushion, instinctively wanting a quick escape if necessary.

  There was a chilly silence in the room, broken only by the heavy tick-tock of the antique French ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. Jennifer had her hands clasped across her girth, her mouth working in distaste.

  “Jennifer—”

  Jennifer held her hand up to silence her. “I don’t want to know, Karen. I have no details and I want none. Suffice it to say I am truly shocked by Reverend Haskell’s behavior. And although I loathe rumor and gossip, it hasn’t escaped my notice that you are somehow involved in all this too.”

  Karen hung her head. She couldn’t think of anything to say except “sorry,” and she didn’t feel she owed Jennifer Simmons an apology.

  “But as far as you’re concerned, I can see you might have been vulnerable . . . after poor Harry’s death. I know you turned to William and, fair enough, you couldn’t have imagined he would take advantage of you in this way.”

  “It wasn’t like that.” Karen’s tone was fiercer than she intended. “He didn’t ‘take advantage,’ as you put it.”

  Jennifer’s eyebrows shot up. She said nothing, her faded blue eyes steely as she waited for Karen to go on.

  “He . . . we . . . didn’t mean anything to happen. We knew it was very wrong . . .” It sounded pathetic, even to her own ears.

  Jennifer’s pursed lips made it clear she too was unimpressed. “So where is he now?” she asked.

  Karen shook her head. “We aren’t together. We’d ended it . . . whatever ‘it’ was. I didn’t know he was going to walk out on Janey like this—”

  “And the Church. He’s resigned his ministry, given up his whole life. I got Bernard to call the diocese and check, after Janey told me what William had said. I simply didn’t believe it.”

  “I know you think this is because of me but, honestly, I don’t think it is, Jennifer. He never said he would leave Janey—in fact, he said completely the opposite. I had no expectations . . . I knew how much his work and his family meant to him.”

  Jennifer was clearly suspicious as to whether Karen was telling the truth. “So you’re saying you don’t know where he went?”

  “No, I’ve no idea. It wasn’t till Patrick told me that I knew he had gone. I tried to call him, but he wasn’t answering.”

  “Hardly surprising. I would be hanging my head in shame if I were him.” She absently reached down to stroke Largo’s head.

  “This isn’t like him. I’m worried he’s having a breakdown,” Karen said softly.

  But Jennifer ignored her remark. “I’m livid. Such a cruel, heartless thing to do. The man’s clearly lost his senses. All that talk about family and community, and then he does this? And he seemed such a good chap, so caring. But if he thinks he can come back, tail between his legs, and carry on as before, he’s got another think coming . . .”

  Jennifer rumbled on, her ire gradually subsiding in mere grunts of disapproval. Karen got up. There was no mileage in going over it all again.

  “Thanks so much for looking after Largo.”

  “It’s been a pleasure . . .” She paused. “Oh, heavens, I haven’t asked about Sophie. How is the poor girl?”

  “She’s OK, I think. Exhausted and very low, but she seems happy she’s alive.”

  “Well, that’s the main thing, I suppose.” Jennifer closed her eyes briefly, her face looking worn and tired. “I don’t know what’s happening to everyone at the moment. So much trouble, wherever you look.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was four weeks since Sophie’s suicide attempt and nearly the beginning of October. The time had passed for Karen like the steady drip of a tap: measured, relentless, without purpose. Sophie was slowly improving. The antidepressants took a while to kick in, Karen knew, and the girl had only had a couple of sessions with the therapist Patrick recommended, but she seemed less withdrawn, more willing to engage with Karen. And she was eating better, taking Largo out each morning.

  Karen found herself watching Sophie like a hawk, hurrying back if she went out—which she tried not to do too often or for too long—always with a faint sense of dread as to what she might find at home. But as the days and weeks went past, that dread lessened as she realized she was beginning to trust the girl to stay alive.

  Over all her daily tasks, however—every breath, thought, walk, meal, drive—hung an unbearable ache for William Haskell. But it seemed no one had heard from him, or if they had, they weren’t broadcasting the information. Janey had not returned to the village either, just a van, pulling up very early one morning to take away all the family’s belongings, supervised by a woman around Janey’s age, whom none of the neighbors had seen before.

  So over the weeks the Haskells gradually slipped from the top spot on the gossip chart. Not least because a new vicar, Sarah Attwater, had been appointed, creating a fresh drama, this time from the grumbling traditionalists about the suitability of women to disseminate the word of God. But Reverend Attwater was a plump, energetic, middle-aged woman with a warm smile who appeared completely undeterred by the dissenting voices in the parish. So unlike the troubled Reverend Haskell, the word went out.

  “He must have told someone where he was going,” Sophie said one Sunday evening, as they sat in the den, each with a baked potato, chili, sour cream and salad on a plate on their laps. It was still fifteen minutes before Homeland began and the screen in front of them was switched off.

  William Haskell seemed to have piqued Sophie’s curiosity again, triggered, perhaps, by going to church for the first time in weeks that morning and seeing Reverend Attwater in action. Karen, remembering her stepdaughter’s quite reasonable ambivalence on the subject in the past, had initially tried to steer the chat away from Will, but Sophie was clearly intrigued by the situation, as if she were suddenly hearing about it for the first time. Karen decided that anything
that kept the girl interested, when currently not much did, couldn’t do any harm.

  “I don’t know . . . who would he have told, if he were looking to make a clean break?”

  “You, I suppose.”

  “Yes, well, I wish he had. It’s driving me mad, knowing he’s out there, probably in distress and with no one to talk to, no one to comfort him in the way he’s always tried to comfort others. Doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Don’t you think he’s behaved badly?” Sophie asked.

  “Of course I do, if all the gossip is true. But I think he must be having some sort of breakdown. He never had any intention of leaving Janey . . . I’m sure about that.”

  Sophie looked sideways at her, swinging the red chair back and forth as she thought about this.

  “Why don’t you look for him, then?”

  Karen stared at her. “Look for him?”

  She knew she sounded surprised, but the thought was not a new one. It was, however, the first time she’d had the idea validated. Till now, Karen had felt it was just a feeble limb of her ongoing obsession with a man who was obviously not obsessed with her.

  “Yes. Track him down, find out what happened. Have the conversation.”

  “How?”

  The girl shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. Social media? Was he on Facebook . . . Twitter?”

  “No.”

  “No, suppose he wasn’t really the sort. Although he could have sent God tweets, sort of inspiring stuff to lift the souls of the faithless masses.”

  They both smiled at the thought, then fell silent as they pondered the problem.

  “This is where I say, ‘You were close to him, where would he be most likely to go?’ like the detectives in Without a Trace,” Sophie said.

  “Yeah, and I’d think for a while and not be able to come up with a single idea, then after the ad break someone would say something handy to trigger a memory and we’d all leap in our cars and drive off and find him,” Karen sighed. “Shame this is real life.”

  Sophie was quiet as she ate her food.

  “Still, there must be something you can do . . . put an ad in a Church paper . . .” Her voice trailed off, then her face lit up. “I know, I could check out Rachel’s Facebook page, that might have some clues . . . maybe she’s going to meet him somewhere and we can spot it.”

  “Don’t you have to be Facebook friends to find out what’s going on in people’s lives?”

  “I am friends with Rachel. We sort of bonded a few times before she went away. I’ve hardly been on it recently, so I haven’t looked at her page, but I could.”

  “Wouldn’t she have de-friended you when she heard about me?”

  Sophie shrugged. “She might have, but then on the other hand she might not have heard about you. Her dad won’t be rushing to tell her, that’s for sure.”

  “But Rachel’s not going to be proclaiming her father’s whereabouts, is she? Not if he’s told her he wants to be left alone.”

  “I’ll look in a sec,” Sophie said, munching the last of her potato skin.

  Rachel Haskell hadn’t removed Sophie from her friend list, but there was no inkling of the painful family drama in the postings on her page, only weeks old fun snaps of her in Spain with darkly handsome boys and girls posed in front of landmarks in the hot summer sun, gurning happily for the camera.

  “Hmm, not much help . . .” Sophie put down her iPad. “But I can keep an eye on her page. There might be something.”

  “I suppose the Church would be no use.” Karen had thought about phoning the diocese and asking for a forwarding address, then realized it was stupid.

  “They probably don’t know any more than we do. God, they must have got a shock when he told them. Their golden boy, up for bish . . . quite funny really—” Sophie must have caught sight of Karen’s expression, because she added quickly, “Not funny for him, of course, but I’d have liked to have seen their faces.”

  “Maybe they knew it was coming. Maybe he’d already said he wasn’t happy . . . maybe we were just the last to know.”

  Sophie got up and took Karen’s plate, piled it on her own, glancing down at her. “The archery club?”

  “Tried that. They said he left because of family problems but they didn’t know anything else. I felt weird asking because everyone these days has mobiles and email, they can’t have thought I knew him that well if I didn’t have his contact details.”

  “You could always hire a PI. They’d find him in no time.”

  Karen thought how horrified Will would be to be followed and spied upon by a private detective. She shook her head firmly and saw Sophie nod.

  “Yeah, maybe not . . .” The girl paused. “So if you did find him, what would you say?”

  The answers to Sophie’s question, played out in Karen’s head over the previous month of long wakeful nights, were various and predictable. From “I love you” to “You bastard” and all permutations in between.

  She thought perhaps they’d say nothing much.

  “I’d be furious with him, if it were me,” Sophie was saying.

  *

  Karen spent the next few days on the Internet, searching options for finding someone who had gone missing. But the individuals the missing person sites were talking about were nothing like William. Many seemed to be either too young to have left home, had mental health problems—their families feared for their safety in the big bad world—or were running away from financial meltdown. It did seem extraordinary to Karen that so many people—a quarter of a million reported missing each year in the UK alone, apparently—could just slip away without being found by the various agencies on their case. Especially with CCTV on virtually every corner and each click of a mouse telling the world what we eat, whom we meet, how much cash we have, where we go on holiday.

  The truth was that William was not missing. No doubt Janey and Rachel, his extended family and friends knew exactly where he was. No doubt his bank knew. He wouldn’t have changed his name or canceled his debit cards, dyed his hair blond or taken to wearing glasses and a mustache. William could only be considered missing to herself, Karen. Knowing that he had deliberately walked away from her, she had tried to be tough with herself in her internal dialogue, tried to talk herself down, close the door on her feelings for him.

  But she had not succeeded.

  And unless he suddenly turned up on her doorstep, texted her his whereabouts, or bumped into her in some random place, she might never see him again. That was not acceptable to her. Even if he finally rejected her, she needed to hear it from his own lips, not just by default. They had unfinished business and William at least owed her a proper explanation.

  I won’t give up, she told herself. I’ll work it out. I’ll find him sooner or later. I’ll have that conversation with him. Then at least I’ll know for certain.

  Whatever she was doing these days, Karen was aware of a constant pick, pick in her head as she trawled through her conversations with William, searching desperately for a clue to some place or person that held a particular significance for him. A link that might draw him back when he was in distress.

  But she realized William had been a listener, not a talker.

  *

  The village prided itself on the annual Guy Fawkes bonfire and fireworks night. People came from all over the area to enjoy it and from September onward, brushwood was being collected to make the pyre even bigger and better than the previous year.

  “Come with me?” Karen asked Sophie, as she got ready to leave for the village hall meeting to discuss arrangements for the night.

  The girl shook her head, then paused, narrowed her eyes as if considering the proposition.

  “Hmm . . . maybe I will.”

  Sophie, although she went out for walks with the dog and had once attended matins at the church, avoided contact with the village as much as possible. And whereas Karen sympathized, and for different reasons felt very much the same herself, she knew it wasn’t good for Sophie to hide aw
ay any longer. The more you hid, the harder it became not to, she knew that.

  “It’ll be boring as hell and the usual suspects will take charge and bully the rest of us, but Patrick promised to bring goodies, which are never to be missed.”

  “I know I should get out more,” Sophie said, more to herself than to her stepmother.

  Karen didn’t reply, not wanting to nag the girl into something she didn’t feel ready to do. She couldn’t help treating her with kid gloves, constantly monitoring her own speech for anything that might be misconstrued or cause offense.

  Sophie took a deep breath. “I’ll come, but I’m worried they’ll all stare at me and think I’m a terrible person for doing what I did.”

  “I wouldn’t worry. This is the village, remember—yesterday’s gossip is for wrapping the fish and chips. They’re currently gripped by the new vicar and Peggy Blake disinheriting her two sons.”

  The old lady, who had died in the summer, had left all her money to a cousin who had cared for her in the last decade of her life—unlike her lumpish, mostly absent offspring.

  “OK. You’re probably right. It’s being on my own too much that makes me think everyone’ll be focusing on me. Stupid, really.”

  “Not stupid. Now go and get ready before you change your mind.”

  *

  The meeting was as dreary as Karen had predicted. But Patrick’s tiny, flaky, spicy, warm-from-the-oven sausage rolls, stuffed cheese and bacon baby potato skins and crisp toffee apple slices on sticks went a long way toward alleviating the pain. Sophie, despite her fears, had been welcomed with open arms by Jennifer and Sheila and the others who knew her.

  “I heard from Janey yesterday,” Sheila told the group around her, her voice dropping, as they nibbled on the snacks at the end of the hour-long meeting, fingers sticky, red paper napkins pressed to their lips.