Gone Astray

by Michelle Davies

  ‘Mack won’t budge on the reward so the DCI said we should take them home,’ she finished.

  ‘When he came out and saw me here I thought he was going to ask me about the reward but he didn’t,’ said Belmar, setting down his pen. ‘Thanks for backing me up. I appreciate it.’

  ‘If you really want to thank me, you can take Mack and Lesley back by yourself while I run a quick errand.’

  ‘But we came in your car. Mine’s back in Haxton.’

  ‘Your insurance covers you to drive other vehicles, doesn’t it? So take mine.’ She gave him the keys.

  ‘How will you get back?’

  ‘I’ll cadge a lift from uniform or get a taxi if needs be. I won’t be long – an hour, tops. But, listen, if Lesley’s still in a state when you get back to Angel’s Reach, call a doctor out to check her over.’

  ‘Sure. So where are you going?’

  She gave him a wry smile. ‘To do a money drop.’

  23

  Lou lived in a mid-terrace house on a road on the outskirts of the town centre. It was a fifteen-minute walk from the police station and Maggie texted ahead to say she was coming. As she approached the front door, it swung open and Lou greeted her with a scowl on her face and Mae balanced on her hip.

  ‘Have you got my twenty quid?’ she said brusquely.

  Maggie sighed. She was too tired to be goaded into a row and clearly Lou was angling for one. Instead of answering she reached over and took hold of Mae, who crowed with delight to see her.

  ‘Can I come in?’ she said, cuddling her niece to her chest.

  Lou stood aside to let her pass. There was no hallway leading from the door, so Maggie stepped straight from the pavement into the small lounge.

  ‘I’m doing spag bol for tea,’ said Lou.

  ‘Sounds great but I can’t stay.’

  Mae wailed as Lou snatched her back from Maggie’s arms.

  ‘If you’re not stopping you may as well go now. The boys are down the road at Toby’s playing Xbox, but I’ll tell them you couldn’t spare the time to wait for them. Let yourself out.’

  Lou flounced into the kitchen. Maggie went after her.

  ‘Hey, don’t you think you’re overreacting?’

  Lou ignored her as she lowered Mae into her high chair and gave her a lion-shaped rattle to chew on. She opened the fridge door and took out a sealed tray of raw mince, which she lobbed onto the counter beside the oven. A foul stench suddenly filled the room.

  ‘Christ, what’s that smell?’ said Maggie.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Lou, taking a couple of carrots from the crisper drawer and shutting the door quickly.

  ‘It smells like something died in there.’

  ‘Some chicken’s gone out of date and I haven’t had time to clear it out, okay?’ she said testily.

  As she looked around, Maggie saw the entire kitchen needed cleaning. Dirty crockery was piled precariously in the sink and every worktop was littered with the debris of a dozen meals: half-full baked bean tins and packaging for a ready meal shepherd’s pie jostled for position next to a Honey Monster Puffs cereal box and an empty four-litre plastic milk bottle. On the hob was a white patch where something had spilled and dried out. The mess unnerved her – even with three kids to look after, Lou always kept the house neat. Her own flat was a tip by contrast because she was rarely there to tidy it.

  ‘Lou, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. I haven’t had a chance to tidy up because you’ve not been here to mind the kids while I do it.’

  Lou threw a carrot into the sink, knocking a stack of unwashed mugs over. Then she leaned back against the sink unit, clutching the edge with her hands. It was then Maggie realized that Lou looked as much of a state as the kitchen. Her bright pink top had unidentifiable stains all down the front and her denim boot-cut jeans looked like they hadn’t been washed for weeks. They also emphasized how much weight she’d gained in recent months. Already on the plump side before she got pregnant with Mae, Lou had put on at least another stone since giving birth. Her stomach spilled over the waistband of her jeans and the line of her bra beneath her top revealed it was too small to fully contain her large breasts. Her auburn hair, usually a sleek, graduated bob, was now an unconditioned cloud of split ends. Maggie felt awful: she spent so much time with her sister and yet somehow she’d become immune to the obvious signs she was struggling.

  ‘Lou, is everything okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Rob came round earlier.’

  Maggie scowled at the mention of Lou’s estranged husband.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He’s asked for a divorce.’

  ‘Oh, Lou.’

  She went over and gave her sister a hug. She wasn’t a fan of Rob’s but she knew Lou loved him and how much she wanted their relationship to work. Their marriage, though rocky at times, gave her and the boys the stability they needed and Jude and Scotty had missed him terribly since he’d moved out. Rob was the only dad either of them had known.

  ‘He says he wants a divorce so he can marry her,’ said Lou, her deep-set hazel eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘Her’ was Lisa, Rob’s new girlfriend. They’d met when Lisa began working part-time as a receptionist at the gym Rob was a member of and it wasn’t long before their flirty exchanges by the front desk had spilled over into a physical affair. Within two months Rob had walked out on Lou to move in with her.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

  Maggie saw the pain etched on her sister’s face and felt a wave of hatred towards Rob for the callous way in which he’d dumped her. There was no warning: he just got up one Sunday morning, packed a suitcase and left.

  ‘Of course I’m not pleased. I hate the way he’s treated you.’

  ‘It’s my fault though.’

  ‘Don’t you dare say that,’ Maggie flared up. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. He’s the one who cheated.’

  ‘Can you blame him looking elsewhere when he always felt like he was second best? No bloke likes to think he’s not the love of your life. Rob has always felt like he’s in Jerome’s shadow.’

  Maggie’s pulse accelerated. She found it hard to talk about Lou’s dead fiancé – she hated being reminded of what had happened.

  ‘But you love Rob just as much.’

  ‘He’s never believed it though,’ said Lou, emitting a long, sad sigh. ‘He always went on and on about how you never forget your first love and that I must still be hung up on Jerome. In some ways he was right. You don’t forget, do you?’

  Maggie swallowed hard. ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘It’s like you with Danny.’

  Danny Burroughs was a fellow police cadet Maggie met at Hendon and the boyfriend Lou always assumed was her first love. Maggie had dated him for six months until the pressure of their new careers split them up. But while Maggie had liked him a lot, Danny wasn’t her first real love. He wasn’t the one who haunted her dreams, the one whose kiss she could still remember.

  That honour went to Jerome as well.

  She left Lou’s a few minutes later with a promise to ring the boys before they went to bed to say goodnight. She also offered to talk to Rob about the money he owed.

  ‘If he wants a divorce, you need to get him to start paying regular maintenance for Mae.’

  Her sister agreed, albeit reluctantly. She wasn’t in a rush for anything to be made formal because that would mean admitting her marriage really was over.

  Ducking through the alleyway at the end of Lou’s road, Maggie felt jittery and upset. Even now, a decade on, she still fretted when Jerome’s name came up in conversation, as though Lou might suddenly guess after all this time what she’d done.

  Their affair started at a friend’s house party, when she was seventeen. Lou was at home in bed, felled by flu, so Maggie went alone. Halfway through the evening, having necked a quarter-bottle of Smirnoff on her own, she staggered outside for some air and bumped into Jerome
smoking a joint with some lads she didn’t know. She was thrilled when he introduced her to the group not as ‘my girlfriend’s little sister’ but ‘my friend Maggie’. They started chatting and one by one his friends drifted away and left them to it.

  Maggie would never forget the look Jerome gave her just before he leaned over to kiss her. It made her skin blaze then and still made her shiver now when she thought about it. She knew she should’ve pushed him away, but the truth was she didn’t want to. She’d fancied him from the second Lou brought him home; he was all she ever thought about and she wanted him for herself, regardless of the consequences. Ten minutes after that first kiss they had sex – her first time – on their friend’s bathroom floor, which was everything she expected it to be with her back pressed against cold lino and someone banging on the door asking to use the loo. She didn’t care though – it was still the best moment of her life up until that point. Afterwards, back downstairs, she tried to blame it on the vodka, telling Jerome it wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been hammered. But they both knew that was a lie and he just grinned and said, ‘When can I see you again?’

  For months they met in secret behind Lou’s back, the guilt Maggie felt at betraying her overridden by the way she felt about Jerome. She loved him and to her teenage mind that took precedence over whatever her sister felt. Then Lou dropped an unexpected bombshell: she was pregnant.

  Maggie hadn’t expected the unplanned pregnancy to change anything though, because she never thought Lou would go through with it. Her sister was only twenty and Jerome a year older: why would they want to be shackled with a kid? But Lou announced that not only was she keeping the baby, but she wanted to get married too. With both of their families piling on the pressure, Jerome proposed.

  Lou wanted an engagement party in the function room of a local pub but it was the end of November and she feared everywhere would be booked up with Christmas office parties. So the following Friday lunchtime while she was at work – she was an accounts clerk for a skip hire firm – she sent Jerome, then unemployed, to speak to the landlord of one pub that still had some dates available. Maggie, looking for an excuse to spend time with him, offered to go as well to check the venue was okay and Lou agreed she should.

  It wasn’t easy listening to Jerome tell the landlord how excited he was about becoming a dad but Maggie knew he had to make it sound convincing. He’d reassured her nothing would change between them once the baby was born and, he promised, when the baby turned one, he would leave Lou and they’d be a proper couple. The teenage Maggie gave no thought to what that would do to her sister – she was too besotted to care.

  After agreeing the fee, the landlord gave Jerome a pint on the house to celebrate and he and Maggie ended up spending the afternoon sitting in the pub and getting drunk. It was dark when they left around 6 p.m. and the blast of cold air that hit them when they walked out made them feel even more inebriated. Leaving the pub, they’d staggered down the road arm in arm.

  What happened next remained scorched on Maggie’s memory like it was branded with a hot iron. As they reached the zebra crossing, she’d tried to kiss Jerome but he ducked away. ‘What if someone sees us?’ he’d slurred. Too drunk to take any notice, she’d giggled and tried again, grabbing at the front of his coat to pull him towards her. By now Jerome was laughing too. Then, with no warning, he hollered, ‘You can’t catch me!’ and jogged backwards onto the crossing – straight into the path of a car. The impact was so fast there was no time for either of them to react.

  He landed on the pavement opposite, legs bent awkwardly beneath him and blood seeping from his ears and mouth. As the stricken driver of the car and other passers-by tried to help, Maggie screamed at Jerome not to leave her, but he died less than a minute later as she cradled his head in her lap. Having to break the news to Lou that he’d been killed and that she’d watched it happen was the worst thing she’d ever had to do.

  Afterwards, she couldn’t mourn him properly, not in the way Lou was able to as his fiancée. She had to bury her grief deep inside where no one could see it and sit in anguished silence as a procession of friends and family paid their respects to her sister. Her only memento of their time together was a photo of the two of them with Lou, which she still kept in the drawer of her bedside cabinet along with a Valentine’s card he’d sent her. Taken a month after the house party, the photo showed a grinning Jerome standing between the sisters with an arm around each of them.

  The guilt finally kicked in six months after his death, when Jude was born. It devastated Maggie to know her nephew would grow up without his dad because of her. If Jerome hadn’t run onto the crossing because she was trying to kiss him, he’d still be alive.

  After that, ditching university to stay in Mansell and help Lou raise Jude seemed the least she could do. A decade of reflection had also altered her perspective on Jerome and she had come to accept what a shit he was to be sleeping with both of them at the same time. But acknowledging his duplicity didn’t mean absolving herself from blame and her continuing guilt meant that whenever Lou needed something – money, babysitting, emotional support – she gave it without question.

  But it was still nowhere near enough.

  24

  Lesley lay in a foetal position on her side of the bed. She had her back to Mack, who was stretched out on his side with his legs crossed at the ankles and his shoulders propped up on pillows. She could hear a faint tap-tap-tap as he pecked out messages on his phone.

  She was pretending to be asleep and had been for half an hour, squeezing her eyelids shut to keep out the daylight. But her mind was too fretful to rest and the climax of the press conference played on a loop in her mind: Mack standing up . . . Umpire trying to stop him . . . the reporters going crazy with questions . . . Mack yanking his arm away as she tried to persuade him to sit down. The impact of his words didn’t sink in at first. In fact, her first thought was could they afford to spare a million? Ludicrous now she thought about it. It was only when she clocked Umpire’s frantic expression and the reporters’ excited faces that it dawned on her Mack had just made a terrible mistake.

  She squeezed her eyes tighter but it was no good. Her skin felt hot and prickly, as though her pent-up fury was trying to leach out through her pores. She rolled over on the bed to face her husband and sat up.

  ‘You should never have said we’d pay that much.’

  Mack, in the same grey cord trousers and white shirt he’d worn to the press conference, glared at her and climbed off his side of the bed. ‘Don’t start, I had enough earache from Umpire.’

  She rolled off her side too, the bed a gulf between them. ‘Well, he knows more about these things than you do. You heard what he said: we’ve got to withdraw the reward. It’s too much.’

  ‘No,’ he said, hands balled into fists on his hips.

  ‘Lower it then. Ask DCI Umpire what he thinks it should be.’

  ‘I said no, and that’s the end of it.’

  ‘No, it’s fucking not.’

  Mack’s eyes widened in shock and Lesley knew it was because she rarely swore, let alone answered him back.

  ‘I’m warning you, Mack. Withdraw the reward or . . . or . . .’

  ‘Or what? You’re being hysterical, Lesley.’

  ‘No, I’m putting our daughter first.’

  ‘And I’m not? How is putting up a reward to find her me not putting her first?’

  ‘Because this is not about Rosie: it’s about you being the big man and flashing your money about.’

  Mack reeled backwards as though she’d slapped him.

  ‘How can you say that?’ he rasped.

  ‘Because it’s true! All you care about is throwing money around and showing off to your mates down the golf club, who,’ Lesley jabbed her index finger at him, ‘wouldn’t give a flying fuck if it wasn’t for the fact you pay for everything.’ She was shaking now and couldn’t stop the words tumbling out of her mouth. Every one she aimed at him like a dart. ‘We us
ed to be happy, but now you care more about fucking Caesar beds and bathroom chandeliers than you do your own wife and child.’

  She leapt forward and started yanking the duvet off the bed.

  ‘It’s crap,’ she screamed. ‘It’s just stupid, expensive crap.’

  She gathered as much of the duvet as she could in her arms and dragged the rest to the window. Flinging it open, she stuffed the duvet through the gap and watched it plummet onto the driveway below. The pillows went next. Mack stood frozen in shock on the other side of the bed.

  She pushed her hair roughly off her face as she wrenched the door open to her walk-in wardrobe. Rows of never-been-worn clothes greeted her; designer outfits Mack picked out during their trips to London. She pulled as many items as she could from their hangers then raced to the window and flung them on top of the duvet and pillows down below.

  ‘I don’t want any of this!’ she shrieked. ‘Don’t you get it? None of this will bring Rosie home. By making this about money, all you’ve done is make things worse.’

  Mack finally lost his temper.

  ‘Why do you hate us having money so much?’ he shouted. ‘Do you really want to go back to living in that shitty semi on that godawful estate? Be my guest! But don’t tell me what I can and can’t spend our money on. Fuck it, I should’ve offered five million if that’s what it takes to bring Rosie home.’

  ‘Why, so you can impress Suzy Breed?’

  Mack’s face contorted.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The police have been asking about your darling ex,’ Lesley spat.

  ‘Did they say why?’

  Lesley stopped. She realized Mack no longer looked angry or surprised but worried.

  ‘Does it matter? Suzy’s in New Zealand still, isn’t she?’

  ‘How the fuck would I know?’

  His expression made Lesley suddenly feel afraid. He was lying, she was sure of it.

  ‘When was the last time you heard from her?’

  ‘I don’t know, years ago. Don’t start all that again.’