If He Wakes

by If He Wakes (retail) (epub)

  ‘Is there any other way?’ I asked and she jumped up, came over and sat in the chair next to me. My voice was strange, alarming. ‘I mean, could I have got into someone else’s Twitter account? Hacked in through the website I was on?’

  She was silent. I knew she was staring at me but I couldn’t look at her.

  ‘No,’ she said finally. ‘Impossible.’

  The rain had started to fall. Della had given up on winding the tape in by the handle and was gathering it up as best she could. She was making her way back toward the orangery.

  ‘It was him, wasn’t it?’ Suzie asked. ‘You did see him yesterday and that’s why you went into the back of that car and broke your ankle. You saw Phil.’

  My heart picked up a gear. I felt the panic lap around me.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she was saying. ‘When Carl did it to me…’

  ‘Phil’s not like Carl,’ I said, looking at her directly.

  She stared at me for a moment in silence before her face fell into an expression of pity, and for the first time in my life I wanted to hurt someone. I wanted to scrape my nails through her sympathetic face and feel her skin slide beneath my fingers. I couldn’t stand to see the pity on her face, couldn’t stand to be made to feel so helpless.

  ‘Rachel,’ she said gently and I felt tears prick at my eyes. ‘You’re not afraid of Phil are you?’

  I blinked and the tears dropped onto my cheeks.

  ‘Oh Rachel,’ Suzie’s arms were suddenly around me. ‘You don’t need to be scared of him. Scared of this! I’m here. I’ll take the bastard on, you tell me now, tell me what happened, who you saw him with and we can work it out. You can stay with me for a bit. I’ll sleep on the sofa. Come with me, to my flat. When Adam gets back, I’ll tell him, tell him what’s happened and he’ll take us both out. He’ll spoil us both, we’ll go for a nice meal somewhere.’

  I looked at Suzie. She was making a genuine offer. She wanted me to leave my house, my girls, my life and go to her small flat in the city. Stay in her bed whilst she slept on the sofa. Go out for a meal with her and her fiancé, whom I’d never met, as if that would make everything better. Tell the girls, the parents from their school, the people I worked with, our friends from the golf club that I was now in a small flat in the city, that I’d left Phil to go there? I started to laugh, a pathetic convulsion at the thought of exchanging my life for the one Suzie was describing and her face hardened.

  ‘No,’ I said as I saw I’d offended her. ‘Suzie, it’s not that. It’s a lovely offer and thank you, really thank you, but it’s not that simple.’

  ‘Not that simple? You see your husband cheating and you’d rather stay with the lying bastard than come stay with me?’

  I shook my head, wiped my face.

  ‘I’ve got the girls to think about,’ I said. ‘I can’t just walk away.’

  ‘If he’s done it once, he’ll do it again,’ Suzie said and I looked up at her sharply. ‘It won’t be the first time,’ she said, ‘never is. It’s just the first time you’ve caught him.’

  I went to argue but the door opened and Della walked in with a gust of icy air, her cheeks were red, her eyes bright. ‘I think I got it all, oh,’ she looked up, ‘hi Suzie,’ and then, when she sensed the atmosphere, ‘is everything okay?’

  ‘Everything is fine,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Is it?’ Suzie asked and I stared at her.

  ‘Fine,’ I repeated and Suzie nodded, gave a small shrug.

  ‘Okay,’ she said and stood up. ‘I need to get the van, it’s a forty-minute drive to the prop warehouse so I'd better get going.’

  I nodded as she went to leave. ‘But Rachel,’ she said as she was at the door, ‘my offer is there, whatever you say you didn’t see Phil doing yesterday, if you want to talk about it, ring me.’

  I watched her go, heard the sound of the engine starting up and was about to instruct Della on re-measuring, when I sensed she’d gone very still at the side of me. I turned to her, she’d gone pale, all the colour from being outside seemed to have drained from her face, she was staring at her mobile.

  ‘Della?’ I asked. ‘Is everything alright?’

  She looked up, glanced at me and then went back to her mobile, to staring at the screen.

  ‘It’s the police,’ she said. ‘They left a voicemail, a Detective Sergeant Bailey. He wants me to call him, wants to talk to me about the events of yesterday.’

  My heart began to gallop, my stomach was tightening at her face, the way she was looking at me, her eyes wide. ‘Rachel, is everything alright?’

  15

  Suzie

  Suzie adored visiting the prop warehouse, it was one of her favourite things to do. She would wander through the aisles picking up novelties, gazing at the curiosities and imagining how they would look in a photograph. She’d read the tags attached to the items detailing the history and period, and immediately think about how she could style it, how it would reflect the light, but unfortunately, it was something that she rarely got to do. Her current gigs required little props from outside. She sometimes forced her styling on the B&B’s and hotels she photographed, introduced a Victorian breakfast tray here, a vintage writing set there, but usually, it went against the client’s idea of how the photograph should look and ultimately, her styled shots never made it off her laptop.

  Suzie walked into the warehouse and breathed in the scent of musty air and thought how she’d soon be a regular. Instead of stolen visits, these would become a necessity. It was as cold inside as outside and she zipped up her jacket as she walked in.

  ‘Farrell McFadden Events,’ she announced. ‘Rachel Farrell has an account with you here? I need enough nineteen-twenties props to fill three rooms and a marquee.’

  For the rest of the afternoon, Suzie was lost in the enjoyable task of choosing oversized champagne glasses, large feather fans and cardboard cutouts of people dancing the Charleston. By the time the hire van was filled, it was dark and she was hungry. She’d hardly eaten anything all day, hadn’t had time to do anything other than pick out props and, worryingly, there was still nothing from Adam.

  Not one voice message, not one missed call. She’d checked his Facebook, Instagram and Twitter account and there’d been no activity on those either. Her stomach churned, an acidic bite that accompanied her as she left the prop warehouse and saw four missed calls from the bank and two texts from Rachel telling her that the marquee had been hired. Della had proved to be useful, and they would meet tomorrow at the house again to finalise the catering staff.

  Poor Rachel. It was clear that Phil was having an affair and, what was worse, was Rachel had seen him and was now in denial. She’d seen something on Tuesday, Suzie wasn’t buying that she’d simply been ‘messing with her radio’ and gone into the back of another car. No, it was obvious in Suzie’s mind. Rachel had seen Phil with his mistress. They’d probably come out of the hotel whilst Rachel was on the car park, and unaware his wife was watching, he’d most likely kissed his lover right in front of her and gone off, completely oblivious that he’d shattered his whole life into tiny pieces.

  Once the shock of it had eased, Rachel would realise what a bastard Phil was and Suzie would be right there for her when she did. It would be hard, so hard. When it happened to her it had been relatively easy. There were no children involved and as it was Carl who ended the relationship, he’d practically given everything to Suzie without argument out of a sense of guilt. Rachel needed to make sure she got the same. In fact, Suzie thought as she drove back to Chester, Rachel should get more than half as well as the family home as she was the main care giver. She resolved to speak with her again tomorrow, see if she could find out exactly what happened. They may not be as close as they had once been, but Rachel was her oldest friend, she’d be there for her in any way she could.

  It was late when Suzie arrived back in Chester, she wanted nothing more than a hot bath and a glass of white wine but that was impossible. Throughout most of the journey, she
’d been in a battle with herself. She didn’t know what to do. She could hear Adam’s voice in her head, chastising her for calling the police. For bringing unwanted attention to his business, inviting the law to snoop around and what of the loan shark? Mark? That was illegal wasn’t it? What if the police found out Adam had been lending money illegally, would they prosecute him for that? And what was he doing with all this money? A honeymoon sounded lovely but Adam had cash for that. None of it made any sense to her.

  Sitting at the crossroads, waiting for the lights to change Suzie made a decision.

  ‘Fuck it,’ she said and put on her indicator to change lanes.

  She was going back to Adam’s flat. Back to the studio. There must be something she’d missed earlier, something in there. An old book of contacts, the name of the car dealership he was working at, something. She needed to call all of the people he knew, everyone he might be working for and see if they knew of his whereabouts. That was the first step. She didn’t need to be so dramatic as to call the police just yet. Adam loved her, he was her fiancé; he wasn’t like Phil, or Carl, he was the real deal. He was out there somewhere, probably panicking at not being able to get in contact with her and explain his actions. And it was only two days, it felt like a lifetime but it was only two days that she’d been trying to get hold of him. It wasn’t weeks or months; it was hours that he’d been out of touch. Most likely his phone was dead, he’d lost track of time and didn’t realise what was going on in his absence. If there hadn’t been all this trouble with the money and her bank card not working, she most probably wouldn’t have been worrying about him not being in contact at all.

  The flat was in complete darkness, the car park deserted. It took Suzie a moment to build up enough courage to get out of the van. She had to wait a while, it was ridiculous to think that Mark, the loan shark, would be making a return visit after this morning, but she waited all the same. The last thing she wanted was a repeat performance in pitch black, it had been bad enough in the light of day.

  When she felt calm enough, she went into Adam’s flat and switched on every light. She went back into the office, saw the empty safe and a moan escaped her lips. And then, she saw his laptop.

  ‘Bingo,’ she said, opening it up and then, ‘shit’ as she realised it was out of charge with no charger in sight.

  His bedroom drawers revealed nothing of interest, and it was the same with the bathroom cabinets, the kitchen drawers and the hall units. She only found the items of everyday life, underwear, toiletries, utensils. A search on her phone gave her numerous car dealerships in Wales, the first page listing over twenty-one. It was too late to call any of them, so instead she went on a thorough search of his flat in the hope of finding an address book, or contact list, something or someone she could call.

  It was only when she was ploughing through the DVD rack in the lounge that she came across a notepad. It was sandwiched between Aliens and a Game of Thrones box set. It was a thin cheap thing with gold writing on the front, ‘Be young, be happy,’ was written in swirly writing and it was so unlike Adam that she almost immediately discounted it, but opening it up, she saw it was full of his writing. Small words in blue ballpoint. A shopping list. What looked like the lyrics to some old pop song and the rest filled with what appeared to be directions.

  ‘Turn right at the roundabout,’ she read aloud, ‘fourth left after the traffic lights. Bungalow. Twenty-six.’ She turned the page. ‘Junction thirty-four,’ she murmured reading his scribbled writing. ‘Straight on until Dog and Anchor pub, second right. Asda car park. Yellow jacket, average build.’

  She frowned as she went through the pages, all hastily written, all in Adam’s writing and all leading to places that were unidentified with brief descriptions of what appeared to be people, but only as in so much of what they were wearing.

  ‘Blue jumper, holding black umbrella, with small whippet,’ she huffed as she read through them. ‘Shopping centre, Argos, brown duffle jacket.’ Adam never wrote anything, it was so unlike him.

  ‘What the…?’

  She put the notebook down. Why would Adam be using this instead of his SatNav or Google Maps? And why no names or numbers, only descriptions of people? Not in all the time she knew him had she seen him use this notebook, or any notebook for that matter. He liked his gadgets, always did everything via his phone so to see his written directions like this was confusing. She picked it back up and flicked through the notebook again, looking to see if she recognised anything. It looked old, out of date. Perhaps it was from the nineties, a time before she knew him when he didn’t rely on his phone so much, and then she saw it. A small number on a ripped page at the back, just about legible.

  Without thinking, she grabbed her phone and dialled.

  An automated voice told her that the number did not exist. She tried again, exchanging the eight for a three, but nothing happened. Suzie looked to her phone, checked the signal and then dialled again. This time, it started to ring and her pulse quickened.

  ‘Hello?’ the voice sounded asthmatic, wheezing and breathy. It was male, no one she recognised. ‘Anyone there?’

  ‘My name is Suzie,’ she began.

  ‘Who?’ they interrupted. ‘I don't know any Suzie.’

  The voice had a slight accent she couldn't place, each word ending as if it was clipped short.

  ‘Suzie,’ she repeated and ran a hand through her hair. Her face had got hot, she didn't know what to say, she wasn't prepared. ‘I think you might know my fiancé, Adam Staple?’

  There was a sucking in sound at the other end of the line, as if they were dragging on a cigarette or drawing something through a straw.

  ‘Don't know him,’ came the reply and the line went dead.

  Suzie froze for a moment, then pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it in disbelief. She looked at the number again, wiped her sweating hands along her thighs and dialled. This time she didn't wait for a response.

  ‘We just spoke, and I’m trying to get hold of my fiancé, Adam Staple. This number is written in a notepad of his and I was just wondering if he was there? Or perhaps you might know where he is?’ she let out a chuckle. ‘He has his phone with him, you see, and it has all his contacts on it. I don’t know the numbers of any of his friends, so I thought, if you were his friend, you could perhaps…?’ she let the question hang in the silence.

  ‘I’m not a friend,’ the reply came back slowly. ‘We’ve done a bit of work together in the past, but we’re not friends so I can’t help you.’

  ‘Wait,’ Suzie said quickly as she was sure the call was about to end, ‘please. It’s quite urgent I find him and I’ve got no one else to call, I don’t know any of his friends…’

  ‘You involved?’

  Suzie took a moment. ‘Involved in what?’

  He didn't answer and Suzie felt the phone was about to be put down on her again.

  ‘How long?’ she asked quickly, ‘how long have you been doing business with Adam? Was it recently?’

  ‘Since we came out,’ he said, ‘seven years ago.’

  ‘Came out of where?’ Suzie asked. ‘Was that when Adam was working abroad? Where you on the overseas jobs with him?’

  There was a bark like laugh. ‘Is that what he's calling it these days? Overseas jobs?’ he gave a cough. ‘I've heard worse.’

  ‘So you weren't abroad with Adam?’

  ‘I was inside. With Adam. We met inside, only, he got out early, on parole. In Liverpool for years, couldn't get anything out of him then.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Suzie began. ‘You’re telling me that you were inside, as in jail with Adam? Adam Staple? I don’t think…’

  ‘Listen,’ the voice interrupted her. ‘You tell Addy when you see him that I'm not on this number anymore, but tell him I’ll be in contact when I've got a new line. And a word of advice,’ he paused, ‘don’t go ringing any more numbers saying that Adam’s gone missing. He’s most probably got caught up in his work again, like we used t
o. Jobs that we take on can sometimes, well,’ he laughed, ‘they sometimes don’t quite go to plan.’

  ‘What jobs?’ Suzie asked. ‘Adam’s a photographer, his jobs always…’

  ‘Other jobs,’ the voice was harsh. ‘You’ve no idea what’s going on, best to keep it that way and stop interfering. Tell Adam you’ve called me, tell him we’ve had this chat and see what he does. If you’re planning on marrying him it should be him that tells you, not me.’

  ‘Tells me what?’ Suzie pressed. ‘And who are you? Who shall I tell him I called?’ but she was talking to herself. He'd already put the phone down.

  She stared at the number, dialled it again quickly but there was nothing. Silence and then, number not recognised. Suzie slumped back on her heels, stared at the DVD cases around her, the small book filled with his writing. Adam had been in jail. If what this man had told her was correct, then her fiancé, the man she was about to spend the rest of her life with, had a criminal record that she knew nothing about.

  She thought back to the empty safe, the way he fiddled the HMRC, the way he always dealt in cash, the loan shark and covered her face with her hands as the tears started to fall.

  16

  Rachel

  I did the catering once for a mindfulness course being held at a holistic therapy centre over near Chester Zoo. There’s a lot of land over that way, big wide spaces and just off one of the roads, down an uneven dirt track, was a farmhouse that had been converted into a therapy centre. They did the usual stuff: aromatherapy, reflexology, massage and had started an intensive one-day course in mindfulness.

  I was asked to provide a light lunch for twenty, as well as snacks for comfort breaks that were planned throughout the day. I did an assortment of vegetarian sandwiches, two pots of vegetable soup, bowls of fresh salad and had planned a cream tea for the afternoon break. They loved everything apart from the cream tea. When I asked why, they talked of ‘sugar crashes’. The peaks and drops in blood sugar levels that lead to mood swings, anxiousness and irritability. Not appropriate for a mindfulness course that included meditation.