Theresa follows my line of sight. ‘Chest infection, apparently.’
‘Who said that?’
She shrugs. ‘Harriet, I think. I can’t remember.’ Theresa turns back to me and then nudges my shoulder. ‘Where’s Richard?’
I half expected it to be all around the village by now that he’s missing. I suppose it’s only me and the police who know.
‘He’s away,’ I reply.
Theresa nods, although I can tell from the way she shuffles on the spot that there’s something else to come.
‘People are saying Alice got into his car last night…’ She lets it hang and it feels more like an honest question between friends than anything mean.
‘It’s only Harriet saying that,’ I reply.
‘She wouldn’t lie about it, though, would she? Not something so important.’
‘She lies about all sorts.’
‘Probably not this…’
It’s impossible to argue. Of course not this.
‘Someone said there’s CCTV…’ Theresa’s staring ahead, not looking for a reaction. She’s wondering if I know.
‘From the garage?’ I ask.
‘Apparently.’
‘Who said that?’
She shrugs. ‘Everyone.’
I turn to look at her and Theresa offers a slim smile that almost says a silent ‘sorry’. Aside from Richard, she’s the only person who knows what happened with my dad. She understands what all this means.
I’m about to reply when I realise the room has gone silent. Harriet is no longer speaking and people have again began muttering among themselves.
‘…There is one other thing I should mention,’ Harriet says. Her voice resounds around the room and she instantly has everyone’s attention once more. ‘There are reports that Alice was spotted getting into a car outside Fuel’s Gold on Dodds Lanes last night. We all know that Gemma works at that garage and I believe that Alice sometimes cuts across Daisy Field to visit her mum.’
Another shout goes up from the crowd. Another man: ‘What are you saying?’
Harriet holds up both hands defensively. ‘I’m not saying anything. There might have been a perfectly innocent reason for Alice to have got into the car.’
A few heads turn towards me – and then it’s suddenly more than a few. It feels as if everyone is looking. Rumours are currency in a place like this.
‘The police are aware of all this,’ Harriet adds – although it’s already too late because everybody seemingly knows that my husband was the driver.
‘What type of car?’
Harriet waves away the latest question. ‘I think it’s best to leave that with the police. I just wanted this meeting so that we could come together as a community. There might be media here in the coming hours – and probably more police. Before any of that happens, I wanted everyone to know that we all have one another’s backs. If you’ve not already got my phone number, then make sure you get it from me on the way out.’
She pauses for a breathy moment – but only to look across towards her children.
‘Let’s work together to get through this,’ she says. ‘And let’s all be there for Gemma. She’s going to need us.’
There’s a ripple of approval and then someone starts to clap. A moment later and it feels as if everyone’s clapping, including Atal. Theresa shrugs towards me and then she joins in. I probably should, if only to keep up appearances, but the hypocrisy is astounding. The women of Leavensfield would usually be bitching about a single mother with a lowly job, like Gemma. There’s no way she would be getting an invite to the annual Harriet Branch Christmas party, but now, with a sniff of publicity on the horizon, it’s all change.
It doesn’t help that I can still feel hidden sets of eyes boring into me across the room. People know about Richard and Alice – and it’s only a matter of time until everyone finds out that he’s not been seen since.
Seven
I’m in the car park and heading towards the hill and home when a woman appears from between a pair of cars and reaches towards me.
‘You’re Maddy, right?’ she says. ‘I don’t think we’ve met properly. I’m Zoe and this is Frankie.’
She motions down towards a boy at her side who must be seven or eight. She has flawless caramel skin with dark freckles peppering both cheeks and a long ponytail of separated braids. Her boy has slightly lighter skin than hers but dark, curly hair with bright brown eyes.
Zoe nods towards the hall. ‘Am I late?’
‘Kind of,’ I reply. ‘Harriet was saying there’s probably going to be more police arriving, plus possibly media. You can probably catch her if you head in.’
I take a step forward, ready to leave, but Zoe catches my arm. ‘How’s the girl?’
‘Alice? I’m not sure. I’ve heard she’s in hospital but I don’t know much.’
Zoe nods along to this. I don’t know her as such, although it’s hard to miss any newcomers when it comes to Leavensfield. She’s a mystery in that she moved into a detached cottage up on the opposite side of the village from me within the past year or so. She is perhaps the only person who has managed to escape the thrall of the various committees and internal politics around the village. Her cottage is near Atal’s restaurant and used to be owned by a farmer whose name I’ve forgotten. After the farmer died, his estate was divided up among his kids and they ended up selling the cottage separately to the rest of the property. Zoe is another single mother although, because she doesn’t technically live in the village, she gets a lot less attention than Gemma.
In a village where competition means everything, Zoe is an enigma. It might not be out loud, but people will argue over who donates the most to charity, or who volunteers for the most causes. There’s never a summer that goes by without some sort of bitchy argument about who has the best – or worst – garden. I would guess that parents end up doing a good proportion of their children’s homework because nobody wants to have the kid who’s bottom of the class. It is impossible to avoid – and yet Zoe seems to drift around the fringes of everything while never getting involved. She does her own thing in floaty dresses and I’ve often seen her walking barefooted around the streets.
Not today. It’s too cold for all that and she’s in a pair of Doc Martens.
Being an outsider is usually a bad thing around here – but Zoe is such an outsider that it’s created something like a competition to figure out who can get closest to her. I was once at the school gates after a cooking session when I heard Harriet telling Zoe that she loved her style. Zoe’s reply was a laugh. It wasn’t quite in Harriet’s face but it was close enough. The fact that she didn’t drop to her knees and worship at the feet of Her Highness only made me want to know Zoe better. In many respects, that makes me no better than Harriet. I do see the irony.
I also know Zoe’s son, Frankie, through the cookery classes at his primary school. Those usually involve making a mess and eating cake – but there are certainly worse things in life than that.
Zoe makes no effort to pass me and head to the hall. ‘Does anyone know what happened to Alice last night?’ she asks.
‘I don’t think so. Atal was out with his dog when he found her by the stream. I live up there and called the police.’
I have no idea whether Zoe knows Atal but she doesn’t make an indication one way or the other. Instead she turns to her son, who is busy scuffing his feet on the spot and humming to himself.
‘Do you know Alice?’ she asks.
‘A bit,’ he replies.
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Dunno.’
He continues fidgeting and doesn’t look up from the floor. He’s still humming something I can’t quite make out. The noise feels oddly unsettling as Zoe glances up to me and gives a kids, eh half-grin.
‘Where’s your husband?’ she asks.
It catches me somewhat off guard, partly because I don’t know why she’s asking but also because I had no idea she knows Richard. I
suppose everyone knows everyone in a place like this – but it’s still unexpected. This is the most Zoe and I have ever spoken.
‘He’s away.’ I’m ready to leave it at that, before I feel a surge of confidence. ‘Any reason for asking?’
I instantly regret the somewhat aggressive tone as Zoe narrows her eyes as if to ask why I’m being so defensive. That’s all it takes for me to realise that she knows nothing of the rumours about Alice getting into his car.
‘I know he’s a lecturer,’ she says. ‘I was wondering if I could ask him a few questions about admissions sometime when he’s free.’
I find myself backtracking embarrassingly and manage to fire off three quick apologies before composing myself. He might be something of an outsider and a loner but Richard has lived in Leavensfield for a long time. He’s a fixture of the village and some of the young people have knocked on our door over the last few years to ask him to look at UCAS applications and the like. It happened around a month ago when the doorbell went on a Sunday afternoon. I opened the door to find a smiling, blonde teenager clutching a laptop, who asked if Richard could look over her application form. He did, of course. Why wouldn’t he?
‘I don’t see why that would be a problem,’ I say.
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know it’s a lie. Richard’s missing and the last time anyone saw him, there was a twelve-year-old girl getting into his car. That’s the definition of a problem. If Zoe wants him to go over a university form for her, chances are she’s going to be waiting a while.
‘That would be great,’ Zoe says. She takes a step towards the hall and then stops. There’s a fraction of a second in which I almost unload my worry onto her. I would tell her that I love my husband but that there’s a voice deep inside me saying something terrible has happened to him. I’d talk about my fear of what that means. Of being alone. Then I’d say how all my happy memories of us together feel muddied because he told me he was visiting someone he wasn’t. Because he was a mile up the road and a young girl got into his car, before she was found face-down in a stream.
I want to say all of this to someone but I don’t feel as if I can unleash it all on a person I don’t know. It’s too much.
The moment is lost anyway because Zoe turns back to Frankie. ‘Shall we go home?’ she asks.
Frankie doesn’t need asking twice and makes a zooming plane noise as he bounces off towards the far side of the car park.
‘Aren’t you going in?’ I ask.
Zoe shakes her head. ‘I guess I’ve heard all I needed to. I only wanted to know how Alice was doing.’
I walk alongside her until we’re at the edge of the car park, when she points towards a red hatchback.
‘That’s me,’ she says.
‘I’m on foot.’
‘Do you want a lift?’
‘Thanks – but the cold clears my head and I fancy a walk.’
She offers a suit yourself shrug and then calls Frankie across to the car. He’s still humming to himself and it’s only when he hurls himself into the passenger side that I realise why it’s all so disconcerting.
The tune he’s been humming this entire time is something that’s been tickling my thoughts since the moment Dini crouched to look at Richard’s pile of vinyl.
It’s ‘Why Do Fools Fall In Love’…
Eight
My phone starts ringing the moment I get in the front door. That instant flash of expecting it to be Richard is something that I suspect won’t go until I find out where he is. It’s not his name on the screen: it’s Kylie’s.
‘Mum…?’
It’s such a relief to hear my daughter’s voice.
‘Hi.’
‘I heard what happened with that little girl. Someone WhatsApped me. I can’t believe it’s happening in Leavensfield.’
I can understand her disbelief. This isn’t the sort of thing that happens in our village.
‘Atal found her in the stream,’ I say. ‘He knocked on the door last night and I called the police.’
‘It happened next to you…?’
I find myself sitting on the bottom step, recounting everything that happened with Atal, the stream, Alice, and the police. As sick as it all makes me feel, I know there’s a tiny part of me that enjoys having my daughter hang on my every word. It feels like a long time since that happened.
Kylie listens without interruption, other than the odd ‘that sounds terrible’ and ‘I can’t believe it’. It’s only as I get to the part where Atal left the house last night that she brings me back to the here and now.
‘How’s Richard taking it?’ she asks.
Richard has never been ‘Dad’ to Kylie. We married when she was fifteen and she spent about eighteen months resenting him, me, Leavensfield, England, and probably the Earth itself. It was only as she grew out of the hating everything stage of teenagery that she started to accept the situation. That was the time when she decided she wanted to go to university – and realised that Richard might actually be useful for that. She didn’t quite get the grades to get into Liverpool but Richard’s letter of recommendation and phone call seemingly swung it. That was after I told him not to make the call. The whole not-what-you-know-thing doesn’t sit well with me.
‘He’s away visiting a friend,’ I reply. It’s almost instinctive to lie at this point, even to her.
Kylie sweeps past this, unperturbed. ‘I still can’t believe what’s happened. I hope you’re okay.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Do they think she was attacked, or…?’
‘Nobody knows yet. The police are investigating.’
‘It doesn’t sound good, though.’
‘No…’
There’s a pause that I have to fight myself not to fill. Kylie doesn’t know how bad it is – and I don’t want to spoil her time at university by filling her in quite yet.
‘Do you think I should come home?’
The offer is so unexpected that I’m left floundering for words.
‘Mum…?’
‘No, um… I don’t think there’s any need. You’ll be back in a little over a week anyway – and then it’ll be Christmas. I’m looking forward to that.’
The line goes momentarily muffled and there’s a sound of someone else’s voice in the background. I know what’s about to happen but there’s little I can do about it. This is the first time Kylie and I have spoken to one another in five weeks. We’ve texted most days but it’s not the same. I want to tell her this, to say that I want to hear her voice for a while longer, but the moment has already gone.
The line suddenly clears and then Kylie speaks again. She sounds distracted: ‘I’ve got to go,’ she says.
‘Thanks for calling. It was good to hear your voice.’
‘Yours, too. I’ll be back soon anyway.’
There’s another sound that’s not quite clear and then Kylie says a final goodbye before hanging up. I stare at the screen for a moment, watching as her name fades from view, and part wishing I’d asked her to come home. I’m glad I didn’t because it would be for my own selfish reasons, of wanting someone there – but the alternative is an empty house and a missing husband.
I try calling Richard again. It’s the first attempt since this morning but the hours passed have made no difference as there’s still no reply. Not that I expected there to be.
There is nothing quite like the unknown. Absolutes can be processed, no matter how traumatic they might be. I know that as well as anyone. This is something else.
I glance over to Richard’s grandfather clock and then move across to take in the record collection. Dini was correct in that everything’s in alphabetical order, although it’s not as easy as that because there’s no specific standard for how a spine should look. Some have the artist’s name, others have the title of the album, single, or EP. Some have both, some have neither. Some have text that faces one way but there are others where it angles the other. Then there are the ones in which the sleeve i
s so old, all of that has worn away. There is an order – but only because Richard keeps everything so neatly filed. It is probably the only thing with which he’s particularly meticulous. His office is an explosion of books, files, papers and everything else. His half of the wardrobe is filled with clothes he’s not worn in years, as well as the same combination of trousers and jackets that he wears every day.
His record collection starts with A downstairs and runs through to G. Everything else is upstairs, where there’s a bit more space. I head up the stairs and scan Richard’s row of records until I’ve narrowed in on ‘Te’ ahead of ‘Teenagers’. I’m looking for Richard’s prized copy of Why Do Fools Fall In Love… his favourite record – and yet it isn’t here. I check both of the upstairs turntables and then go down to the living room and do the same.
There’s no sign of it.
Richard could have filed it in the wrong place – but that seems unlike him. It’s only when I google the song that I realise I’ve been wrong about the artist for all these years. There’s a picture of the album cover that reads ‘The Teenagers featuring Frankie Lymon’.
I’m not sure how I managed to miss that for such a long time.
I don’t have to think hard to be able to hear Zoe’s son humming along to a song that came out almost sixty years before he was born. Not only that, he’s called Frankie. Zoe could be a fan of that sort of music but in the moment, with my husband missing, there’s something about the song that doesn’t feel right.
I move into the hall to check the row of vinyl downstairs, wondering if the record is filed under F – but as soon as I get within sight, a howling blare of sirens rips past the house. I’m next to the front door and pull it open in time to see a trio of police cars racing up the hill, away from the village.
It’s too much urgency for anything routine, which means something must have happened.
What My Husband Did: A gripping psychological thriller with an amazing twist Page 6