by Paula Daly
They drive through Bowness village. It’s the busiest place in the National Park in the summer months, but now, in these dead weeks of mid-December, there’s no one around. The shops are shut. Joanne remembers they tried staying open till seven this time last year in the run-up to Christmas. ‘Shop Till Late!’ they advertised, but no one had bothered this time around. There’s no money now. Everybody’s skint.
She sees Guy pull into a space just along from Bargain Booze, so Joanne parks about twenty yards away from him. He gets out, disappears inside, and a minute later he’s back out again, lighting what looks like a Café Crème cigar. Then he climbs into his car and drives off without checking his mirror, almost colliding with an old Peugeot 206, before tearing off down the hill.
The road’s been gritted heavily, but still, he’s driving too fast. Even by Joanne’s standards he’s driving too fast. It’s a narrow road, cars parked up on the left-hand side, and in these conditions he’s not leaving any room for error.
But Joanne can forgive that. Your daughter’s been abducted, you’re allowed a bit of leeway.
He approaches the mini-roundabout and he should turn right here. If he’s heading back home, he needs to do a right.
He doesn’t. He heads on towards the lake, and then it’s as if he knows he’s being followed because he pulls a quick left on to Brantfell Road.
‘Fuck,’ Joanne whispers.
Brantfell Road is steep. Must be about a 30-degree slope, and it won’t have been gritted properly. It’s not a real thoroughfare, just leads to housing, so it’s not a priority. Guy Riverty has disappeared up there out of sight in a matter of seconds, and Joanne can’t even get her Mondeo to tackle the first part.
She puts her foot down on the accelerator and her tyres spin uselessly. There’s an old guy standing watching. He has an ancient black Patterdale Terrier shivering at his feet. The old guy shakes his head at her. Then he starts circling his finger, telling her to turn around, telling her she won’t make it up Brantfell.
‘Yes, okay, okay,’ she mouths at him, irritated.
What is it with old men?
Sometimes they stop to watch her parallel-park on the street where she lives, shaking their heads if they deem the space she’s trying to get into to be too small. You’d never get a woman doing that. You’d never get a woman stopping to say you were about to hit something, or taking the responsibility upon themselves to wave you in, directing you like you were the pilot of a bloody aeroplane. Women just walk on past when she’s trying to get into a tight space, perhaps throwing her a look of Rather you than me, but they’d never stop to watch.
Joanne forces herself to smile at the old guy when, really, what she wants to do is slam her fist on the dashboard. She’s lost him. She’s lost Guy Riverty.
The old guy approaches the driver’s-side door and motions for Joanne to lower her window.
‘Too icy for you up there, my love.’
His nose is purple, his eyes milked over and pale.
‘Looks that way,’ replies Joanne.
‘You could try Helm Road instead, but if it were me, I’d leave the car down here. I wouldn’t be chancing it.’
His terrier is looking up at Joanne. It’s gone grey around the muzzle, a dead ringer for Spit the Dog. Joanne smiles at it, feeling kind of sorry that he’s dragging it out in these temperatures.
‘It’s proper icy underfoot,’ the man tells her. ‘I’ve only made it down with these on,’ and he lifts his foot, showing her the plastic ice grips he’s attached to the sole of his boots. ‘Like snow tyres for shoes, these,’ he says proudly.
Joanne knows she won’t make it up there on foot in her work shoes. They’re not good on ice.
‘Do you live on the hill?’ Joanne asks him.
‘Yep, Belle Isle View. I shouldn’t be out really, broke my fibia when we had this weather last year, but Terence gets nowty if he’s not had his evenin’ walk.’
Terence looks like he’s about to drop down dead, she thinks.
‘You ever see that white Audi around here?’ she asks him.
‘That car what just went up?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t think so. Doesn’t live there, that’s for certain. I know everybody up there and no one’s got one o’ them. There’s a couple o’ Range Rovers, though.’ He smiles at this. ‘… Folk who can’t really afford ’em, just showin’ off. Reckon they’ll all be gone soon enough, when the money’s dried up. They’re all on the tick, you know.’
‘Isn’t everything?’ replies Joanne. ‘So you can’t remember seeing that car before now?’
He shakes his head. Then he cocks it to one side, looks at her kind of puzzled. ‘Why d’you want to know anyway? You his wife?’
Joanne laughs. ‘Just interested,’ she says, and tells him thanks.
She lets the car roll back a little before attempting to turn, the wheels spinning a few times more than she’d like, but finally she makes it.
As she’s about to get going again the old guy starts waving at her from the pavement.
Great, more driving advice, she thinks.
‘I’ve remembered something,’ he shouts. ‘I’ve not seen that car up ’ere before now, but I have seen him. He used to drive summat else flashy, can’t say what, but I remember the little cigars. Always got one in his mouth when he passes.’
Joanne shouts back, ‘Much obliged,’ and she can see he’s pleased he’s helped her.
Joanne gives him a small wave, and she’s gone.
‘That you, Joanne, love?’
Joanne steps in through the front door and the heat hits her. She walks straight to the thermostat and turns it down. Her Auntie Jackie has this place like an oven. Says she can never get warm. But every night, as soon as the two of them have eaten, they pass out on the settees with the heat. Like a couple of Magaluf tourists after a late lunch and a jug of sangria.
Mad Jackie’s been living with Joanne for almost a year now, since declaring herself bankrupt. Shortly before she moved in, Martin, Joanne’s boyfriend of three years, moved out. He decided he didn’t want to take the relationship any further.
Joanne’s friends rallied round, calling him a bastard, taking her out to get pissed – the usual cure for a broken heart. All of them were certain he had someone else, some slag somewhere.
Turned out he didn’t, though. Turned out he didn’t have anyone else and he was still on his own. This was something Joanne struggled with privately. She didn’t think it could be worse than being dumped for another person … but it absolutely was. She felt humiliated. Especially when she saw him around Windermere and he pulled this kind of pained expression, as if he were physically hurting from letting her down like that.
Joanne had taken to flicking the ‘V’s his way when they caught sight of each other. Silly, but it made her feel better.
‘Yes, it’s me,’ she shouts to Jackie, kicking her shoes off.
The lounge door opens. ‘Your tea’s in the oven,’ says Jackie, arms folded across her chest. ‘Why are you so late? Thought you’d be back an hour since.’
‘Got held up.’
Auntie Jackie looks comical in her uniform. She’s a carer. She wears a lilac dress, white tights and white clogs. And she’s no lightweight. Jackie’s had a ton of stress this last year and, like a lot of women, she swallows her stress along with any carbs she can find lying around the kitchen.
‘You heard about that missing girl?’ Jackie asks.
‘Yeah, I’ve been up there today. Me and Ron Quigley are on it.’
Jackie’s leaning against the lounge door. Her face is flushed pink. She’s probably had a couple of Bacardi Breezers already.
‘D’you think you’ll find her?’
Joanne shrugs. ‘Hope so. What’s for tea?’
‘Breaded fish. It’s a bit dry. There’s some tartare sauce in the fridge. Oh, and I got some nice strawberry trifles for afters.’
Joanne smiles at her. ‘How many’ve you had?’
>
‘Two. Saved you one, though.’
Jackie follows Joanne through to the kitchen. It’s a mid-terrace house in the centre of Windermere. Two up, two down, with a kitchen extension at the back. ‘I’ve just watched the girl’s parents on the news. How were they doing when you saw ’em?’ Jackie asks.
‘Gutted. Scared. What you’d expect. Their name’s Riverty – do you know them?’
Jackie shakes her head.
‘They thought she was staying over at her friend’s house after school, but that girl never went to school that day so … you know, crossed wires. I went up to interview the mother, the mother of the girl where she was supposed to be staying, and—’
‘What’s she called? She local?’
‘Lisa Kallisto.’
Jackie’s face drops and she blows out a sigh.
‘You know her?’
‘Yeah. Nice woman. She runs the animal shelter. I was only in there a couple o’ days ago, dropping off the cat of a dead client. She’s taken a few off my hands this past year … when I’ve not been able to get the relatives to take ’em, that is.’
‘Client’ never seems to be the right word to describe the people Jackie deals with. They’re old folk in their own homes, folk who need help getting up, getting dressed, who need their commodes emptied.
Whenever Jackie mentions ‘a client’, Joanne imagines her handing out legal advice or completing tax returns. Not wiping arses and checking leg sores. Jackie can be difficult to deal with sometimes, but Joanne knows she’s good at her job. She does the extras the young carers don’t do. Like painting ladies’ fingernails and calling to the library for audio books … and rehoming pets when she finds ‘a client’ dead in their bed.
‘Lisa Kallisto’s a grafter,’ Jackie says. ‘She’s a good little worker, an’ she’s proper caring, too. She’ll be beside herself if she thinks she’s caused this.’
‘They’re friends – her and the other mother – good friends, I gather.’
Jackie sucks in the breath through her teeth; the air makes a whistling sound. ‘That’s awful,’ she says. ‘Imagine that! Your friend’s kid goes missin’ on account of you. That’s really shit, that is.’
But Joanne couldn’t imagine how it would be, because she didn’t have kids. She wanted them, but she didn’t hold out much hope. She knew of a woman in the village who’d paid to become ‘inseminated’, as she termed it, down at a private clinic in Cheshire.
‘Inseminated?’ Jackie had said, truly staggered, when Joanne told her about it. ‘Why’d she not just go out and shag someone?’
Jackie’s son worked abroad. Dubai. He’d cleared off after all the trouble of last year and hardly rang his mother any more. Joanne knew it broke Jackie’s heart, but she never spoke of it. She was too ashamed about what had gone on.
Joanne opens the oven and sets her plate on a tray. She’ll eat it on her knee in front of the telly and watch Emmerdale. Jackie’s in the fridge getting the wine out. Officially, Jackie limits herself to half a bottle a night (because of the calories), but Joanne usually finds that she’s drunk the other half by the end of the evening without really realizing. Jackie looks at her. ‘Do you think it’s that same pervert who raped that young girl and left her in Bowness? Do you think it’s the same guy?’
‘We were working on that presumption, but he only kept that girl for a few hours … and then he let her go.’
‘So this one should have been back by now? That what you’re saying?’
14
IT’S AS IF WE’VE been dropped into a new world. A world so unfamiliar and bleak that we don’t know how to survive in it.
Me, Joe and the three kids are sitting around the kitchen table. The younger two, the boys, are shovelling their food down, racing against each other, as whoever finishes first will get to go back on the PlayStation. They feel the atmosphere and can’t wait to escape.
Sally and I are pushing the food around our plates. We can’t eat. Joe is hungry, but he’s not speaking. He’s been out searching all afternoon in the cold and will be going out again in an hour. They’re meeting up at the village hall to continue looking for Lucinda throughout the night. Mountain Rescue have joined the search now, and they’re bringing the dogs, the collies they use to find bodies beneath the snow and stuck in ravines. I can faintly remember putting some money in a box for them recently. Like all of us in the charity game, they’re struggling for funds.
Sally talked briefly about being questioned by the police. She said the officer she spoke to was nice, and was relieved when he just wanted her to tell him what she knew. I think she’d been expecting a telling-off, to be blamed.
I sense there is more, though. Sense she’s hanging on to something, and I’m waiting for Joe to leave the house before I push her. This is how I play it with Sally. I can tell immediately, the minute I set eyes on her, if there’s anything wrong. But I wait. I’ve learned. I might ask if school’s okay. ‘Any gossip from today?’ I might say, and she’ll say no. But then, later, when I’m clearing away after tea, making tomorrow’s sandwiches, she’ll appear. And, after a gentle prod, it’ll all come pouring out of her.
The thing I mustn’t do if I’m to get to the bottom of things is to judge her friends. If I were to say one thing to slight them, one thing that suggests I’m being critical, then her back is up and she shuts down. She’s incredibly loyal. So I tread carefully. And I listen.
We’ve had junk for tea; all of us on chicken nuggets, chips and beans. It was the best I could manage under the circumstances. Sally scrapes the leftover chips from her plate into the dogs’ dishes. I see her take two out and pop them into the next bowl so they’re divided equally. Joe has gone to the woodshed at the back to make sure I’m stocked up for the evening and Sally turns to me.
‘Mum?’
‘Hmm.’
‘Do you think Lucinda could have gone off with someone, like, I mean, on purpose?’
Carefully, I say to myself. Tread carefully.
I do my best to keep my voice even. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘I was just thinking, that’s all … I mean, it’s not like she’s a little kid. So it would be kind of hard to steal her.’
I cock my head to one side, make it seem like I’m weighing up what she’s said, rather than what I’m actually thinking, which is: Do you know something? Tell me. What do you know?
‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘It would be hard to take Lucinda against her will in broad daylight, but I don’t think that’s how it would’ve happened. I think if a man wanted Lucinda to get into his car, he would have been more subtle than that.’
‘Like how?’
‘Well, usually what happens is they trick them.’
‘But Lucinda’s not stupid. She’s not going to climb into his car if he tells her he knows her mum or something.’
I know what she’s getting at here, because this was what I used to warn my kids about when they were little. It crosses my mind that I’ve not had this talk with Sam for a while. And boys are daft. They don’t listen when you tell them. You have to keep reminding them.
You say, ‘Even if a person says they know your mummy, you don’t go off with them, okay? Even if they say, “I know your mum, she’s called Lisa, and she asked me to collect you from school today,” you never, ever go with them. You find a teacher, all right?’
And they look at you soberly, and you think, Yes, that went in. I think they got it.
But then their face changes, there’s a glint in their eyes, and they announce, ‘It’s okay, Mummy, because if I did get into the car, then I would bash him! And punch him! And make him crash. And then I’d run! And he’d never catch me because I’m really, really fast and …’
And your heart sinks. Because your child has descended into fantasy.
I stop what I’m doing and face Sally.
‘They don’t try to trick a teenager the way you’d trick a child, Sal. They talk to them, and flatter them, they—’ I try to th
ink how to put this so she’ll understand what I’m getting at. ‘A man would pretend to fancy a girl so the girl will think, He likes me, and because he’s older, and teenage girls are often insecure, they fall for it. They fall for what they tell them.’
I don’t tell her that abductors really do fancy teenage girls, that part is not a trick.
Sally starts nodding. ‘I get it,’ she says softly.
I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘I love you, Sal,’ I say, and her eyelids flicker.
She looks away, and I realize she’s trying to blink back tears that are forming. ‘It’s okay,’ I tell her. ‘You’re bound to be upset.’
She looks so young and vulnerable, and my insides ache for her. Her world is changing out of all recognition and—
‘Mum, that’s what’s happened!’ she cries suddenly. ‘Lucinda … this man, he’s been talking to her on the road after school. And, well, she said she was going to meet him.’
‘To do what?’ I say, astonished.
‘I don’t know!’
I sit down, the breath knocked out of me. ‘Why didn’t you tell us? Why have you kept this a secret? You know better than that. Christ, Sally, have you not listened to anything I’ve told you?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But what?’
‘Lucinda didn’t want anyone to know. She didn’t want her mum to—’
‘Jesus, Sal, this is beyond that. It’s beyond keeping a secret. You can see that, surely?’
She’s crying. ‘Don’t shout,’ she sobs.
Joe comes back in. ‘What’s going on?’
I turn to him. ‘Don’t speak, just for a moment. Just stay there.’ He stops, mid-stance, rooted to the spot. He’s holding the big plastic bucket filled with split wood; he doesn’t even lower it to the floor.
‘What’s happened?’ he asks quietly.
‘Lucinda’s been meeting a man and Sally knew all about it.’
‘Did you tell the police?’ he asks her.
She shakes her head. ‘No.’