by Anna Jacobs
THE WISHING WELL
Anna Jacobs
Chapter 1
August – Perth, Western Australia
The doorbell rang twice before Laura realised what the noise was and jerked out of her worried musings. She pressed the intercom and called, “I’m coming!” then walked reluctantly down the stairs to answer the door, wishing whoever it was would go away and leave her in peace.
Craig had been gone for a week now. Their marriage was finally over. It had been faltering for a while and she’d tried to tell herself they could patch it up again once he slowed down at work. She should have thrown him out the first time she found he’d been unfaithful, she knew that now. But she’d believed his promise never to stray again, believed he really was working late. How stupid could you get?
The trouble was, she felt disoriented, lacking confidence in her own judgement. Well, she and Craig had been together since she was eighteen and he twenty-two. All her adult life, really. It would mean changing everything now, and she could do it, she was sure she could, but it wasn’t going to be easy. So she was taking it slowly.
The first step would be to sign up for that advanced course on interior design she’d always wanted to attend. She’d got the information on it from the technical college where she’d studied the beginners’ course, and had even started filling in the forms before this happened.
Craig had rung her a couple of times to discuss business matters but had refused point blank to tell her where he was. She had his mobile number if she wanted to contact him. That was enough. So of course she hadn’t tried to contact him. What else was there to say anyway? They’d only wind up having another row.
She sighed and opened the inner door, staring through the security screen in shock. Two police officers, a man and a woman, with solemn expressions on their faces.
“We have some bad news for you, I’m afraid, Mrs Wells. May we come in?”
Her first thought was Ryan. She’d read an article saying young men had more car accidents than anyone else. As she fumbled with the lock she prayed silently: please let him not be dead, please, please, not dead, not my Ryan. Images of him as a boy, a youth, a sometimes defiant but always loving young man, flashed in front of her.
Numbly she led the way to the family room and gestured to a sofa, sitting opposite them. “Who is it?” she prompted. “Who’s hurt?”
The female officer leaned forward. “It’s your husband, I’m afraid.”
Craig, not Ryan. She closed her eyes for a moment in relief. “How badly?”
There was a pause. The silence went on and on. She stared at them in shock. “He’s not . . . he can’t be . . . ” She couldn’t get the words out.
“I’m afraid Mr Wells is dead.”
Laura closed her eyes to stop the room spinning. Next thing she knew, the female officer was forcing her head down. She struggled against it. “I’m not going to faint.”
“Just stay still for a minute, please, Mrs Wells. It really does help.”
“Let me up!”
They did but continued to watch her warily.
She straightened her tee shirt, avoiding their eyes, her thoughts in a tangle. She couldn’t imagine not seeing Craig walk through the door again, just couldn’t.
When she looked up, she saw them all reflected in the mirror: two solemn young officers, one forty-four year old woman with a white face wearing a shocked expression. Was that really her? “How?” she managed at last. “How did he die?”
“Car accident. He was killed instantly, if it’s any consolation. He couldn’t have known anything, wouldn’t have suffered.”
They were expecting her to weep. The male officer cleared his throat and reached for the box of tissues, pushing it nearer. She should be crying, sobbing on someone’s shoulder, calling Craig’s name - shouldn’t she? Only she didn’t feel like weeping, just felt chilled and distant, as if this was happening to someone else.
The male officer cleared his throat again. “Is there someone we can fetch, Mrs Wells? Someone who can stay with you?”
Her brain seemed not to be working properly because it took a while to realise who she should send for. “My children.”
“Are they at school?”
Another moment of blankness then, “Heavens, no. They’re grown up, at work.”
“Tell us where and we’ll get someone to contact them.” The male officer took down the details and went away. She could hear him in the hall talking into his mobile phone, but couldn’t make out the words.
The female sat watching her.
“I need a drink.”
“Shall I make you a cup of tea, Mrs Wells?”
“Not tea. Brandy.” Her father always gave people brandy for shock.
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“I’m not sure about anything, but I’m definitely going to have a brandy.” She pushed herself to her feet and made for the bar, sloshing some cognac into a brandy balloon. She sipped it slowly, finding the warmth it left behind comforting, because she felt cold.
When the male officer came back, he saw what she was drinking and exchanged worried glances with his companion. “You need to keep a clear head, Mrs Wells.”
Laura shrugged, then caught sight of the framed photo on the mantelpiece - Craig, Ryan and Deb, arm in arm, smiling. Other memories flashed before her eyes, the laughing young Aussie she’d met in Lancashire and fallen madly in love with, the proud father holding their new-born son, the not-brilliantly-successful business executive skirmishing at office parties, turning on her after they got home for not getting on better terms with the Chairman’s wife. Why had she remembered that stupid incident, for heaven’s sake?
She and Craig had drifted so far apart during the past few years. When had he started being unfaithful? It didn’t matter any more - not now.
Yes, it did. It always would. She took another swig of brandy to drown the pain.
“We’ll wait with you till your children arrive, shall we?”
Shrugging she set the empty glass down, feeling suddenly swimmy-headed. When had she last eaten? She couldn’t remember. She was on a diet, trying not to eat too much because during their final quarrel Craig had told her she was a fat old cow. She’d intended to lose weight and prove him wrong, but already the diet was faltering. She wasn’t fat, just a few pounds overweight, but he only admired scrawny women.
As if all that mattered now!
She turned to the young officer. “Where was he?”
“Pardon?”
“My husband. Where was he when he was killed?”
“On the freeway heading south.”
“Big pile-up?”
“No.” The woman hesitated, then said, “Actually one of his tyres blew and he slammed into a bridge. He was killed instantly.”
Laura tried to picture it. “Did he have his seat belt on?”
“I couldn’t say.”
Craig had hated seat belts. Often drove without. Pretended to be contrite when the police stopped him and gave him a lecture, then unfastened the belt again within minutes. A sudden thought occurred to her. “Am I supposed to go and identify the body?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Well, I won’t do it.”
The officer blinked in shock.
“I definitely won’t. It’d give me nightmares for years.” She couldn’t even watch a horror movie without it playing back in her memory regularly. Craig had mocked her for that, called her a wimp. Well, his battered corpse wasn’t going to haunt her nightmares for ever. No way.
There was the sound of the front door opening and footsteps running down the hall. Deb came in, stopped at the sight of the police officers, then flopped down opposite her mother. “What’s wrong? They told me there was a
n emergency. Are you hurt?”
“It’s your father - ” Laura hesitated, wanting to soften the blow, but finding no gentler way through the tangle of words in her head than the bare truth, “He’s been killed, Deb.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“It was a road accident,” one of the officers said quietly.
Deb stared from one person to another, then wailed, “Nooooo!” She burst into tears, shrugging her mother’s hand off her shoulder and burying her face in a cushion. Laura gestured to the police officers to leave her alone, set the box of tissues on her daughter’s lap and they all waited uncomfortably for the first paroxysm to subside. Deb never cried for long, not about anything. She was the sort who held her sorrows inside her, striking out at those who tried to comfort her.
After a few minutes Deb grabbed another handful of tissues, wiped her eyes and blew her nose. As she straightened up, she looked at her mother and her expression hardened. “Had you two been quarrelling again?”
“What on earth has that got to do with it?”
“You had been having a row! It’s your fault he’s dead. He’ll have been upset.”
Your fault! The words seemed to echo round the room then Laura rejected them, stared at her daughter and said very loudly and clearly, “He’d left me, been gone for a week, so if someone made him angry today, it certainly wasn’t me. You were holidaying in Bali with your friends or he’d no doubt have told you what had happened.”
Deb goggled at her. “He’d been gone for a week?”
“He found someone else. Moved in with her.”
“Caitlin?”
“He didn’t tell me her name.”
“He was seeing someone called Caitlin, but it wasn’t serious. It wasn’t!”
“Does that matter now?” Laura watched her daughter frown. Deb looked so like Craig, same dark wavy hair and eyes. His princess, he’d always called her, and spoiled her in every way he could. After she’d left home, Deb and her father had lunched together regularly. Laura had never been invited to join them. Deb came home for lunch sometimes, usually with her brother, rarely on her own.
Ryan came to see his mother much more frequently, eating huge meals and making her laugh. A gentle giant, her son. Everyone liked him. And very mature for his age. He’d been good buddies with his father. They’d gone fishing together and lately started playing golf. And he’d been a protective older brother.
“They want someone to identify the body, Deb.”
“Aren’t you going to do that?”
Laura shook her head. “I can’t face it.”
“It really should be you, Mrs Wells,” the female officer said quietly.
She swung round. “Well, it’s not going to be. What are you going to do about it? Drag me to the hospital screaming all the way, then force my eyes open?”
The officer looked helplessly at Deb, who gulped and shook her head.
The front door banged and Ryan came rushing in. Laura had to explain it all again.
He sat in frozen shock for a minute or two then wiped his eyes, saying in a thickened voice, “I can’t believe Dad’s dead. He was always so - alive. I haven’t seen him all week. I wish now I had.”
“I haven’t seen him, either,” Laura said quietly. “He moved out last week.”
Ryan stared at her. “Oh, Mum. I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t tell anyone. I felt ashamed.”
“She won’t even go and identify the body,” Deb offered as her contribution once the explanations had tailed away.
“God, you’re a hard little bitch sometimes!” He looked across at the officers. “I’ll come and identify him. I’d like to say goodbye. Deb? You coming?”
His sister stared at him in shock, then shuddered and shook her head.
“If you won’t go, how can you blame Mum for not doing it?” He went to put his arm round his mother’s shoulders. “Will you be all right while I’m gone?”
That act of sympathy was Laura’s undoing. She began to sob, clinging to her tall son and shaking with the vehemence of her grief. Because now she and Craig would never patch up their last quarrel. Because so many hopes had died in the past few years. And because no one deserved to be wiped out at the age of forty-seven.
The more she tried to control herself, the harder she sobbed. In the end Deb and the woman officer put her to bed and Ryan sent for a doctor.
He offered her some tablets to make her sleep and she took them, closing her eyes in relief and letting the world tick along without her for a while.
* * * *
When Ryan went downstairs after seeing his mother sink into sleep, he found Deb curled up on the sofa, sobbing quietly. He went across and put his arms round her, letting her continue to weep against him, knowing she only let down her guard with him and their father.
It was a long time before she stopped, then he had to take her home before he could go and identify his father’s body, because she was in no condition to drive.
His own grief ran deep but somehow he managed to control it, because someone in the family had to take charge and there was only him now.
Grandpop had taught him that: you did what was necessary to look after your family. Oh, hell, he’d have to phone both sets of grandparents and let them know, too.
What worried him most was what was going to happen to his mother now? How was she going to cope? She hadn’t worked outside the home for years.
Chapter 2
Bangkok
Kit Mallinder decided to return to the hotel, so dodged down a side street he hoped would lead him to the Patpong Road. Suddenly he’d had it with this place. Heat and humidity, the worst traffic jams on earth, people pushing you to buy cheap tee shirts and silver jewellery. And every alternate shop seemed to be an optician’s - did everyone in Bangkok have bad eyes, for goodness’ sake?
In the distance he could hear the sound of whistles, which the traffic police blew incessantly, though it seemed to make no difference to the snail-slow tangles of vehicles, nor did it alter the fact that crossing a main road was a suicide mission, for when the cars suddenly jerked into movement they seemed to ignore pedestrians completely.
Yeah, he’d really had it with Bangkok. This was to have been his last assignment, an extra investigative fling offered by a friend, a potentially huge story that Kit hadn’t been able to resist. Only it had gone sour on him. The information he needed was scattered to the four winds by now and he couldn’t be bothered to chase after it. Someone else could bloody well unravel the scandals and muddles - if they wanted to bother. And he’d throw in his notes free. He was quitting. As of now.
He wasn’t desperate for the money this assignment might have earned because he had quite a nest egg put by. He’d never lived richly and had had a few bits of luck here and there over the years, scooping major stories and selling them to the big syndicates. And he had not only reaped the rich dividends so many freelance journalists never saw, but invested them wisely, making a few killings on the stock market. So why the hell was he wasting his time here?
The thought made him feel better, freer, and maybe that was why he stopped looking over his shoulder as he approached the final corner that, from the noise, must lead to the main road again. Suddenly a young man wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses stepped out of a doorway and blocked his route. “Wallet,” he said.
Kit stepped backwards instinctively, only to bump into another anonymous young man. This one was hefting a baseball bat, with which he whacked Kit’s upper arm. The pain made Kit see red and instinctively he tried to ram his way past the man who stood between him and the main road. But the other grabbed his jacket and pulled him backwards.
Anger lent Kit the strength to fight them off for a moment or two and he managed to kick, push and shove his way towards the end of the alley, but one landed a kick between his legs and the other cracked him on the side of the head with the bat. Agony seared through him and he wanted only to curl up and p
rotect himself.
One held him upright while the other rapidly extracted his wallet, then they gave him a shove that sent him staggering out of the alley. Pain and dizziness blinded him to all else for a few seconds as he struggled to regain his balance.
Bad luck gave him a clear path through the pedestrians to the road itself and he stumbled right into the path of a big truck, whose horn was blaring at him. Voices yelled behind him as he tried desperately to right himself but couldn’t.
It was red, the truck. That colour was the last thing he saw as it bore down on him and he thought what a stupid, messy way this was to die.
Kit stared around, his vision blurring and wavering as he wondered where the hell he was. It looked like - it was a hospital bed! He tried to sit up and couldn’t. Just as panic was setting in, a nurse bent over him.
“Well, hello there. Awake at last. How are you feeling?”
“Bad.” His voice was croaky, his throat a sandy desert and he was strapped up like a Christmas turkey with a life monitor beeping gently beside him. “Bloody hell!” he whispered. Or he might only have thought it.
“Do you remember your name?”
“Mm-Mallin-der.”
“Good, good.” She might have been encouraging a small child to say its first word. “Don’t try to move. Your legs are broken and the rest of you is somewhat battered.”
He was alive, though! Joy welled up inside him. Alive! Whatever had happened to him hadn’t finished him off.
Within minutes his room was invaded by another nurse and a doctor who prodded and poked at him, asking him irritating questions. Of course it damned well hurt! The two of them kept looking sideways at electronic instruments whose purposes he couldn’t fathom and whose dials he couldn’t see.
When he felt the darkness descending again, he welcomed it with a sigh of relief. He wanted nothing but to sleep. If they’d just leave him in peace and let him sleep, he’d get better in his own time. He always did.
* * * *
When Kit next awoke he felt clearer in the head and there didn’t seem to be as much machinery around. It was night and the lights were low. He’d have liked to lie quietly and try to remember how he’d got there, but the minute he raised his head some damned alarm started beeping.