Loving Susie: The Heartlands series

by Harper, Jenny

  Her fists are balled tightly and she thumps them down on her thighs. ‘I made him fall for me, Mum. I know I was bad and that it was wrong, but he did encourage me.’

  ‘You haven’t – Mannie, tell me you two haven’t—’

  ‘We haven’t slept together, no, if that’s what you’re asking.’ She turns her face up desperately. ‘But I would if he asked me to. I’d do anything he wanted.’

  ‘But he’s your uncle! And now that you know—’

  ‘I know that in my head, but here,’ she places her hands over her heart, ‘it doesn’t make any difference. I know it should, but it doesn’t. None at all.’

  ‘Mannie—’

  ‘Don’t preach at me. Everything’s bad enough already. I know it’s not going to be possible, I just want it to be so badly. My life’s falling apart, Mum.’ She shoves her sleek, dark hair back over one ear. Susie watches it slide forward, as it always does. ‘I missed my targets this month.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I can’t seem to keep my mind on things long enough. If I miss them next month too, they say they’ll have to consider my position.’ The face turned to her is tragic. ‘I can’t seem to cope, Mum. What am I going to do? I just want to be with him.’

  ‘I don’t know, pet. I don’t know. We’ll get through it.’ Feeling inadequate, she brews tea and makes sure that Mannie drinks it. ‘Will you stay over?’

  Mannie, a little calmer, shakes her head. ‘No. Thanks, Mum, but I’ll have to get in to work really early. I need to start impressing again, and it might take my mind off things.’

  ‘Sure? Are you all right to drive?’

  ‘Certain sure. Thanks for listening. And for not laughing at me.’

  ‘No-one’s laughing, Mannie.’

  Susie stands in the doorway until the red of the tail lights have disappeared behind the contours of the garden.

  How has everything fallen apart so badly? A few months ago she was riding high, confident in her beliefs, secure in the love of her husband, proud of her two children. Her stock in the country was good. ‘Home, Where My Heart Is’ was back on the small screen and was boosting her popularity. National Living Treasure. More in demand by the media than the First Minister. She could do no wrong – and now look at her.

  She closes the cottage door and climbs tiredly upstairs to her empty bedroom. On her dressing table, a family photograph thrusts at her like a jibe. They’re all there: Jonathan and Margaret-Anne, Archie and herself – even Prince, looking deceptively loyal – hugging and laughing, a loving family. Frustration, anger, loneliness, and self-pity flood through her. She spends her life caring for others, but does anyone care about her?

  The generous curves of her lips pinch into a hard, straight line.

  ‘Loving?’ she cries to the ceiling. ‘In all this mess, who the hell is loving Susie?’

  She sweeps her arm across the dressing table in a vicious, jabbing movement. The photograph flies off the dressing table amid a meteor shower of lipsticks and brushes, mascara and jewellery. The earrings Archie gave to her one Christmas jet across the carpet and the eternity ring he bought her when Mannie was born arcs towards the wall and slithers down to the skirting board.

  She stares at the mess blindly.

  I can’t stand this any more. I can’t stand it!

  She runs downstairs, unlocks the door, and hurtles into the courtyard. Above her, the stars have clouded over and she feels the first drops of rain splash on her hands. She lifts them to the skies as the shower gathers momentum.

  How can I protect my daughter?

  Rain soaks into her hair and runs down her face.

  How can I be true to my Party as well as everyone else who has put their faith in me?

  Water courses down the back of her neck, saturating her blouse.

  How can I salvage the wreck of my marriage?

  Puddles have formed in the courtyard but Susie splashes through them heedlessly. There’s a simple answer to all her problems. How could she not have seen it? How could she have so resolutely, so stupidly, turned her back on it all these weeks? Her feet, now, are as wet as her clothes, but it doesn’t matter. Her mind is filled with a kind of blinding joy and it’s focused on one thing, and one thing alone.

  I need to talk to Archie.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  By mid morning, the battering rain of the night before has stopped and the skies are clear – but Archie hasn’t yet stepped out to admire them. He is still surfacing from the deepest sleep he’s managed since he decamped there.

  Late last night the band finished recording the album.

  ‘That’s it!’ Jake shouted as the last reverberation of the guitar strings died out. ‘We’ve done it!’

  He high-fived Archie, he high-fived the rest of the band, they all whooped with glee and Archie cracked open the first bottle in the crate of bubbly he’d kept for the occasion. After they’d got through six bottles, he slept.

  Something nags at him as he begins to clamber into uneasy wakefulness. He props himself up on his elbow and surveys the mess. Jake, Sandie and the rest of them are all still there. He dimly remembers throwing them blankets and they appear to have more or less lain where they dropped. Jake is on his back, snoring gustily, his beard thick with drool. Colin’s bony frame pokes up from the floor like the broken spokes of a rusted bicycle. He can hardly be comfortable. Drew is curled like a cat, his head tucked under an arm. And in the corner, uncaring about privacy, Sandie sprawls, her hair spread around her like Ophelia floating downstream.

  They’d been right to celebrate, but for Archie, the task isn’t over. There’s one tune he hasn’t been able to finish and it still inhabits his head like a toothache.

  He needs coffee.

  He struggles to his feet and picks his way between bodies and instruments to the door. The rain has been heavy. At his feet, the notice he’d tacked up, ‘Strictly No Entry. recording in Progress’ has fallen, limp and sodden, into a puddle. He picks it up and watches the drips run off the useless paper.

  Susie wouldn’t have come near the studio anyway, what does it matter?

  The rain is over and the clean, fresh air is a welcome assault on his befuddled brain. He leaves the door open as he trudges across the courtyard to the cottage kitchen. Let the others benefit too.

  There are no cars there. Susie and Jon have both gone to work. Not surprising, because the sun is already high in the sky. He fills the kettle and glances up at the clock. That late? Midday already?

  The shrill sound of the telephone slices through the silence. He’s tempted to leave it, but the ring tone is flat and has always offended his ears, so he crosses the room and lifts the receiver.

  ‘Hello? Archie Wallace.’

  His voice rasps like a file on slate. Too much singing, too much celebrating, too much latent inhaling of Jake’s and Sandie’s filthy fags.

  ‘Archie! Thank heavens I’ve reached you at last.’

  ‘Karen? What’s up?’

  ‘Is Susie with you?’

  ‘Susie?’

  ‘Your wife, Archie. Susie Wallace?’

  ‘I don’t think she’s here, Karen. At least, her car’s not here. I’m just up.’

  ‘Can you check?’

  ‘Sure. Of course. She’s not with you?’

  ‘Would I be calling if—’

  ‘No, sorry, stupid question. She didn’t turn up this morning? She hasn’t just gone straight to some meeting or other?’

  ‘She was due in here for a meeting at nine. At ten she had a very important meeting with the Chief Whip, but she didn’t show for that either. She was scheduled at eleven to—’

  Okay, okay, I get the picture.’ Archie is as wide awake now as if he’d plunged into an ice cold loch stark naked.

  ‘I was about to start calling round the hospitals and the police.’

  ‘Hospitals? Police? You’re that worried?’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Well I wasn’t, but you’re beginnin
g to make me concerned. Listen, give me five minutes, Karen, I’ll call you back.’

  The cottage is small and there really isn’t anywhere to hide. Might he find her slumped on the floor in the bedroom, unconscious? Has she slipped in the shower and injured her head? The rational side of Archie tells him that these scenarios are unlikely, because her car isn’t in the yard, but even so—

  Jonathan’s room is empty. So is Mannie’s old bedroom. He stands at the top of the stairs and listens. The silence is broken only by the steady ticking of Susie’s old grandfather clock and the distant clucking of the hens, their contentment unaffected by his tension. He pushes open the door to their bedroom, uninhabited by him for so long.

  Christ. It looks as though a burglar has been in. The bed is tumbled, there are clothes everywhere and across the floor lies a trail of debris. Archie bends down and picks up a photograph frame. The glass is shattered. The faces of his family stare up at him, unblinking. He places it back on the dressing table, carefully, gathers the shards of splintered glass, one by one, and lays them in a pile by its side.

  He spies the earrings he gave Susie on their first wedding anniversary, half hidden under the rug. The brooch that was her mother’s favourite is behind the waste basket, its small rubies winking from their gold setting. Something is down the side of the carpet next to the skirting board. He stretches to pick it up. It’s the eternity ring he gave her when Mannie was born.

  What the hell has happened here? What was Susie going through when she did this?

  Archie sinks down on the bed and clutches the pillow to his chest. The scent of his wife on the linen is overwhelming.

  When he has exhausted all the possibilities, he calls Karen.

  ‘She’s not here. It looks as though – I don’t know, I just get the feeling she was a bit upset last night.’

  ‘Upset? Archie, listen, is her briefcase there? Her laptop? Her mobile?’

  He should have thought of these things himself, he isn’t thinking straight. ‘Hang on, I’ll look.’

  Two strides and he’s at the small desk where she bases herself in the cottage. The laptop is plainly visible, still plugged into the power socket. Her briefcase lies on the floor, its top open, papers spilling out. He bends down and rummages through it quickly, but there’s no sign of her mobile. ‘Karen? Laptop and briefcase here, mobile – I can’t see it.’

  ‘Very odd. Why would she leave without her briefcase? She doesn’t always carry her laptop, so that’s no great help. What about her handbag, Archie?’

  Idiot. What’s he thinking of? He looks around – sitting room, kitchen, both bathrooms, the bedrooms. ‘No sign of her handbag.’ Possible scenarios grow and multiply in his imagination. ‘Do you think she’s had an accident?’

  ‘Has she left a note? Where would she have left a note?’

  The kitchen table. Why hasn’t he thought of that? He glances at it, but it’s empty, save for the coffee tray he’d been preparing for the band. He glances across to the kettle, which is where they tend to leave notes for each other, knowing they’d be likely to head there first. Nothing. Of course, he has already filled the kettle, he’d have seen it earlier.

  He thinks of the fridge. Had she stuck some clue in there? A note wrapped a note round a bottle of wine, perhaps, in some kind of ironic comment on his drinking habits?

  But no, nothing.

  ‘What about your mobile, Archie?’ Karen asks. ‘Has she left a message on your mobile?’

  Again, he is being stupid. Checking his mobile should have been the first thing he did. ‘Hold on. No, listen, I’ll check it and call you back.’

  His mobile is in his shirt pocket – and there is a message from her, left this morning, early.

  ‘Listen Archie, it’s all too much. I’ve had to go away. You mustn’t ... tell ... so don’t—’

  That’s all he can make out, the rest is static. Then it goes dead. He replays the message, hoping to get more.

  ‘Listen Archie, it’s all too much. I’ve had to go away. You mustn’t ... tell ... so don’t—’

  It’s impossible to make out anything else. It sounds as though she is somewhere windy, but it could be anywhere.

  He calls Karen. ‘Hi. She’s left a message.’

  ‘She has? Thank heavens. Where is she. What did she say?’

  ‘It was really broken up, the signal was appalling. All I could make out was “it’s all too much, I’ve had to go away.” And, “you mustn’t tell—”.’

  ‘That was it?’

  ‘No, it was obviously a longer message, but that was all I could make out.’

  ‘Do you think Mannie and Jon might know anything? We have to find her, Archie, and quickly. It’s going to be impossible to keep this quiet.’

  ‘I can call and ask them.’

  But he doesn’t want to disturb Mannie and Jon at work and besides, the idea that she might have told them something she hasn’t told him is painful.

  ‘Archie, listen, let me make some calls. I’ll get a team onto it here, we can cover the ground quite quickly. I’ll get back to you when I have anything to report. Meantime – why don’t you do some phoning? Is there somewhere she might have gone? Someone she might have turned to, if she felt she needed support?’

  Me, she should have turned to me.

  ‘Honestly, Karen, I would have thought either us, her family, or you. She’s pretty close to you – but she didn’t get in touch?’

  ‘No. I find that quite worrying, I must admit. Why don’t you start going through her address book? We’ll do the police and hospitals.’

  ‘Police and hospitals? Oh surely not. She doesn’t sound that depressed, Karen.’

  ‘Just in case.’

  ‘You will call me at once if—’

  ‘Yes. Bye Archie.’

  ‘Bye.’

  He listens again to the long-familiar tones of the woman he loves so deeply. What was her mood when she left that message? Despairing? Suicidal? Or merely self aware? Is it the voice of someone who knows she’s at her limits and just needs to retreat for a while? With Susie, sometimes, it’s hard to tell. If she has thought her plan through, she could put anything she wants into her voice and make you believe it.

  He stands for a few minutes, deep in thought. Where has she gone? What’s happened? Why hasn’t she turned up at work today? What is she thinking? Archie, the most prosaic of men, reaches deep into his soul and tries to make a connection with his wife, but he gets nothing. Prince, trotting in from the courtyard, whimpers uneasily. He is catching something in the atmosphere.

  ‘All right boy. All right.’

  He pats the old dog.

  ‘Here. No need for you to go hungry.’

  He opens a can of dog food and spoons it into Prince’s dish. The dog eyes Archie mournfully.

  ‘Off your food, huh? Don’t blame you, Prince. Don’t blame you at all.’

  He turns his attention to brewing the coffee, then takes a moment to gulp some and feels his head clear a little. Karen is doing the horrid bit, the police and the hospitals, although he doesn’t seriously think she’ll find anything, because if anything has happened to Susie, surely he’d have heard by now? There’d have been a knock at the door, a phone call – something. Susie is very well known. Hell, it would probably be on the news by now, not that he’s had the news on, but Mo Armstrong monitors it constantly.

  So – plan of action. The logical Archie is beginning to come back. One, get the band up and away, no reason they should be involved in all this. Two, sit and think. What has triggered Susie’s disappearance and where might she have gone? Three, make some calls. Old friends? The children, obviously, but maybe not just yet. If either of them knows anything, they’d have alerted him already, so there’s no reason to disrupt their working day.

  He hacks a loaf of bread into rough slices, forages in the fridge for butter, cheese, cold meat, marmalade, and makes his way back to the studio bearing breakfast for five, on a tray.

  ‘H
ey, Archie, that smells good, pal.’

  ‘Surprised you can smell anything, Jake, through all that nicotine up your nostrils,’ Archie teases, his voice as normal as he can make it.

  A groan comes from the spiky pile of bones. ‘Uuurgh. This floor’s hard.’

  The cat-like figure uncurls, stretches luxuriously and says, ‘Waiter service. Excellent.’ From the corner, the petite form of Sandie Alexander sits bolt upright and her sexy, rasping voice declaims, ‘Fuck me, Archie, I need that caffeine.’

  ‘Right, guys.’ He places the tray on the low table by the window and pulls the curtains open, grinning at the universal groan as light slashes mercilessly into sleep-rimed eyes. ‘You’ve got fifteen minutes to get out of here. The cleaner’ll be in here with her mop and bucket and I’ve promised her complete peace. She’s a demon if she’s crossed.’

  It’s an outright lie, they don’t have a cleaner, but it’s the best he can come up with.

  Jake groans. ‘Aw right, pal. I get the message.’

  They don’t need to dress, because they didn’t undress. Drew, clearly the best-slept of the five of them, grins. ‘I’ll drive you all back to town. Just give me coffee first.’

  ‘Great night, lads.’

  It’s universal practice to treat Sandie as one of the lads. It’s what she wants and expects from them. She says, ‘So it really is a wrap?’

  ‘Bit of mastering to do, but it’ll be on target to meet the contract.’

  ‘We’ll talk about it soon,’ Archie says, standing up. ‘Sorry folks, but I do need to do stuff.’

  They pack their instruments into the van. The last he sees of them is Jake’s long, hairy arm waving lazily out of a window as the van rounds the bend in the drive where the hill hides it from view. A honk of the horn is followed by a blast of Colin’s small cornet. Archie smiles affectionately. Celtic Rock was formed by lucky chance and the band has validated his music. They’re a great team.

  The smile fades as he considers that. What validates Susie?