James retired into silence, sighed, creaked his chair. Eventually he spat, ‘Who?’
‘Guy. Kitty, her agent. Olly. Old friends.’
‘I’ve been trying her mobile,’ James offered grudgingly.
‘Pointless, isn’t it?’
‘So that’s the picture. She’s vanished. If you know anything ... I need to know she’s all right.’
Guy’s disembodied voice was careless. ‘Haven’t heard a thing! Disappeared whilst you were at work, did she? What about her mobile?’
‘She’s obviously changed her number. Look, Guy, I know she’s your cousin but for Christ’s sake, let me know if you hear from her. You don’t have to go into detail, as long as I know she’s safe.’
‘She’ll be OK, when she scarpered during her A levels she came home when she ran out of money.’
‘That’s not going to apply now, is it?’ He squashed down impatience, it was vital that he kept all avenues of communication open. ‘Anyway, if you come up with anything ...’
‘Well, well, well!’ Olly was going to be difficult. Going to adore being difficult, in fact. Ratty could just imagine his wide, thin-lipped smirk, his delight that Ratty had fucked up.
‘Yeah, yeah, have your little gloat.’ Desperation was threatening. He felt distant and unwell, and needed to eat. The joiners, at the kitchen window now, pounded their patterns on the front of his skull. He’d cease to function competently if he didn’t eat something. But his throat kept closing at the prospect.
He picked up a pen and stabbed it at the little pad he’d searched out, hoping to have lots of information to list on it. Apart from the stab marks, the page was blank. ‘Is she with you?’
‘So you think she might come here?’
Stab. Stab-stab. ‘I don’t know. Is she there? Do you think she might turn up?’
‘If she was coming to me she would’ve been here by now. James will know.’
‘Apparently not. Can you think of anyone she might’ve gone to? Friends?’
Ratty persisted and Olly, with a show of reluctance, read out some numbers. Ratty could envisage him scrolling through a list on his personal organiser. ‘But don’t waste your time. She won’t be with any of them, they haven’t heard from her since we split. They were people we knew together. I tried them before James coughed up her address.’
Ratty bulldozed on. ‘But if you do happen to hear, call me? Or at least James?’
Olly laughed. ‘I might.’
If he pressed the knuckles of his hand between his eyes hard enough, he might be able to burrow into the hammering and stop it. ‘You fascinate me. I don’t understand why you ever got together when you so obviously couldn’t give a toss.’
‘In actual fact I do, of course I do! Tess looks great, I like to go to bed with her and she’s good at looking after me. I thought being married to her would be comfortable, then I met someone else and lost the plot for a while. It happens. But if I get another crack at her, it won’t happen again. And, from what you say, I might be getting my next crack any minute.’
‘You give blokes a bad name.’
Unseen, through the French doors he watched his father turning papers, box file on knee, chin on knuckles. Pressing the door handle, he stepped inside a room that never changed. Parquet, pale wallpaper up to the moulded cornice, ornate plaster roses, a five-armed light fitting matching the one visible through the arch to the dining room. He wished, irrelevantly and irascibly, that his parents could have one single, pendant light in the house, with an ordinary cotton shade.
‘Miles!’ His father jerked up, flitting through surprise, pleasure, and into wariness. ‘What’s up?’
And suddenly he couldn’t speak, couldn’t loosen the knot in his throat to confess. He felt like a child who’d smashed a window. More than a smashed window though, this time.
Lester closed his file. ‘Come through. How about coffee?’
Follow. Follow grey trousers and leather moccasins, his own boots leaving the parquet with a sucking noise. Through into the spacious kitchen with oak units and a peninsular breakfast bar. He slid onto a tall wooden stool, propped the heaviness of his head on his palm while Lester bustled with the kettle. When the coffee came he looked down into the steam until his eyes smarted. Glanced at Lester and away.
‘What is it?’ Lester’s voice was kind.
Clearing his throat, he watched the little island of foam spin in the centre of his coffee. Mustn’t cry, too ridiculous, a grown man! Deep breath. ‘The CSA are alleging that I’m the absent parent of a little boy. Tess has left.’ It became easier, whilst Lester listened intently, to talk about Madeline and the bits of heedlessness that had jumped up to bite him, Tess’s extreme reaction, his endless, fruitless attempts to find her.
Thank God, Lester, sympathetic hand on his shoulder, was going to be reasonable, helpful. ‘You know, Miles, if she doesn’t want to be found it’s simple enough. People do it every day. Hotel, motel, rented house. Disappear into an unconnected part of the country. I’m not sure there’s anything to be done.’
‘And she’s pregnant. And in the past she miscarried, had a massive bleed that put her in hospital. I prefer her not to be alone somewhere, in those circumstances.’
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’
Ratty ground his teeth. ‘Is plural blasphemy the thing in legal circles these days?’ Why did Lester always make him sarcastic?
‘Well, you are rather springing grandchildren on me, Miles!’ Lester laughed shortly. ‘So, what have you done to find her?’
And he went though it all again, drinking coffee which was somehow strong yet tasteless, wearily enumerating the prolific phone calls. James, Guy and Olly. The frustrating chain of unreturned calls to Kitty, Tess’s agent, culminating in a curt refusal to discuss one of her artists. The pointless wading through the list that Olly had provided, every Melissa and Melanie, Jack, Samantha, Clare, all vague or surprised or uninterested.
‘It’ll have to be the police, then.’ Lester became businesslike.
Ratty looked up. ‘Will they help?’
‘Might. Depends who’s on duty.’ Lester drummed his fingers and thought. ‘But they’re reluctant to intervene in a domestic. We’ll have to be very concerned for her health, stress her history and that her parents haven’t heard from her, that sort of thing. ’Course, the police will automatically approach the Riddells and they’d be obliged to be frank with them in a way they might not with you, if they did happen to know anything.’
Glumly, he sipped the strong yet tasteless coffee. ‘Her father says I’m a stupid young bastard.’
‘Yes, well. List all the phone numbers of the people you’ve approached, all that. See what the boys in blue can do if you’re nice to them.’
Ratty grinned faintly, remembering it’s no wonder the children call you pigs. He’d be nice. Too nice for words if it got him somewhere. Some of the tension rolled away. At least he was getting the sensation of travelling positively instead of careering round in squawking circles.
Lester rubbed his chin. ‘The other baby. The mother?’
‘Madeline Gavanagh.’
‘Oh, yes. Dates fit?’
The obvious question. He let his elbow slide along the breakfast table, taking his head with it. ‘Couple of times we dispensed with condoms. It’s a possibility. Probability, even.’
He mustn’t be impatient that Lester was gazing at his garden, frowning. Odd not to be sure, he realised. Ratty’s son? Lester’s grandchild? Was their blood circulating the little body of Jason Gavanagh, a stranger?
So he explained about attending the Child Support Agency for interview, prior to arranging an appointment for a pinprick blood sample to be taken by a local doctor and sent to the DNA testing company. The two passport photos, so that Madeline could check the right person had provided the sample. Then all he had to do was wait a few more weeks.
‘And if he’s mine, I’ll be supporting him financially until he’s eighteen, I suppose.’
/> Lester rubbed his eyes. ‘What about ... meeting him. Will you want to be in his life?’
The stool screeched the tiles as he flung it back. ‘How the hell do I know? This is all new to me, I don’t know how it feels to be a father!’
Extending that sympathetic hand again to sit Ratty back down, Lester observed gravely, ‘It can be a hell of a job. Finish your coffee. Let me think.’ He tapped his terribly clean fingertips on the bar.
Ratty watched, sipped. The old man could be a great asset when he chose. It hadn’t apparently occurred to him to distance himself. There he was, bending his considerable intelligence to the problem without giving a second thought to all the wary years between them. Was that fatherhood?
Lester stopped tapping. ‘Why do you want to find her?’
He stared. How was he supposed to answer that, articulate the hugeness of his need?
Lester offered prompts, dotting his finger on the worktop. ‘Because she’s pregnant and you’re genuinely worried for her safety? Because it’s her turn to pay at the supermarket? Because you love her desperately? Because you feel she ought not to leave without permission? You need her to cook your tea? What?’
‘Love her,’ Ratty croaked eventually. ‘I thought we’d be together. And the pregnancy. And the danger is real. All the rest –’
‘– is rubbish. Yes,’ Lester nodded. ‘But think of it from the standpoint of the police. So our line is: you’re worried to death because she’s newly pregnant and has a history of miscarriage, followed by haemorrhage. You’re desperate to establish her safety. You realise they’ll ask if you gave her reason to fear you?’
‘What?’
‘Bashed her about.’
‘No, I bastard didn’t!’
‘Threatened to?’
‘No!’
‘Good. Come on, old son, let’s see what we can do before your mother turns up.’
And Ratty climbed thankfully into his father’s silver, leather-seated BMW, pathetically grateful to be taken in hand, home to shower and shave three days’ growth, climb into fresh clothes, be driven into Bettsbrough.
As well as moral support, he would benefit from the fast mind, quiet reason and inside track of a solicitor.
A solicitor who proved handy for the procedure that went just how Lester obviously knew it would. A civilian desk clerk greeted them, and was interrupted by a sergeant materialising from behind a door. ‘Are we expecting you, Lester?’
‘No, it’s just something that’s come up. Who’s the duty inspector today? Alan Rose? Would he have a minute for me, do you think?’
And they were in, shown into the inspector’s office with such speed that Ratty watched closely to see if there were any funny handshakes. But no, it seemed simply a matter of the contacts of a local criminal lawyer, built up over the years when Alan was a sergeant in uniform and then CID. And Lester having once defended a friend of Alan’s who’d been very, very stupid.
Lester, relaxed and friendly, ran through the facts of their problem unemotionally and he and Alan agreed philosophically that women will sometimes pack and go, it came under the heading of ‘choosing to leave’. Difficult for the police to interest themselves.
‘And I wouldn’t be wasting your time, Alan, but there is a genuine fear for her safety. If she hadn’t required urgent medical intervention after miscarriage in the past, if she wasn’t pregnant now ...’ Lester made a ‘tricky one’ face.
Alan Rose lifted his eyebrows and nodded gently. ‘OK, let’s see what we can do.’
With a sense of unreality Ratty watched Inspector Rose fill out a ‘misper’, missing persons form. Heard himself agreeing to drop in a recent photograph of Tess. Became aware that the inspector, behind quiet grey eyes, was exercising a fine talent in extracting information without committing himself.
No, arguments weren’t a feature of their relationship. She hadn’t left him before but he understood that she’d run away during exams, as a teenager. He couldn’t imagine why she’d claim benefit because she was self-employed and well able to support herself. He had put together all the details of friends and family who might be helpful.
Alan Rose neatened his paperwork. ‘Leave it with me. I ought to be able to find something in this lot. I’ll get back to you.’
Then they were back on the bustle of the pavement and Ratty deflated, as all the purpose and sense of progress that had carried him there soaked away. He mulled over the inspector’s list of steps that people took to cover the tracks they left in their finances or with their phones. And the electoral roll wouldn’t be renewed for months.
Painful realisation. ‘They’re right. She can disappear indefinitely, if she wants to.’
Awfully, Elisabeth turned up at the cottage that night with swimming eyes to clasp his hand and rake over it all again. ‘Just leave me to it,’ he kept suggesting, wishing desperately for her to take her disabling sympathy and leave.
‘But you were happy!’ she protested. And, ‘Babies! The oldest mistake in the book – and there’s no excuse for it these days. I wish you’d taken responsibility, Miles!’
Yep. That would’ve been good.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Every night! Every night this hell, tormenting, making him taut and restless, giving him no peace.
As if things weren’t bad enough already, with Tess still missing and nobody admitting contact with her. One of them knew, one, because the police had turned her up in nothing flat. Alan Rose had rung Lester, cagey about an address obtained through the back door from contacts made in his years tackling fraud. And confirmed by someone else.
Ratty had been urgent that his father might talk the police inspector into indiscretion; but Lester had been philosophical. ‘He’ll mean the tax office, I should think. She’s self-employed, they’ll have an address for her. Anyway, the local boys sent a bobby round and Alan’s satisfied she’s fit and well, but she doesn’t want to be found. And that is her prerogative.’ He must understand it was as much as could be divulged.
She didn’t want to be found.
Daily, a thousand reminders pricked him; empty workroom, empty bed, Tess’s mail. Daily, he passed Honeybun Cottage serene behind its gate, occasionally made himself go in and check that all was well, pick up more mail for Tess and see images of her in every corner. He stood very still for a very long time before the painting of the choked heart on the blue workroom wall, straining to get some feeling for where she was. Hopeless.
And at night, those damned dreams! Vivid, juicy dreams, leaving him completely aroused, equally frustrated. She’d once told him about similar lurid dreams after Olly, before him. She’d thought their truncated encounter after the ball had been one of them. He hadn’t understood, properly.
Memories dressed up as dreams – walking into their bedroom to find Tess standing by the chest of drawers, reading a book’s final chapter. He sucked in his breath every time he remembered. Soft white shirt not quite covering low-rise panties he promoted instantly to be his favourite. Bare legs. Newly brushed hair flowing over one shoulder, brush still dangling from her hand.
Jerked out of her book by his appearance, she’d squeaked, ‘Look at the time! I’m supposed to be with Angel!’ She shut the book, hasty, guilty.
‘I know you are.’ He hooked her to him, wanting to feel her in his arms, her hair running through his fingers.
She lifted her face for a quick kiss. ‘I’m late,’ she pointed out, pushing gently against him.
‘I know.’ He tightened his arms, kissed her again, more thoroughly, dropping his hands to cup her buttocks.
Her soft lips whispered against his. ‘Angel will be wondering.’
‘I know.’ He leant back to lift her feet clear of the floor and drifted to the bed, let the edge catch her behind her knees, lowering himself down to her. Flicking open the neat buttons of the white shirt, following his hand’s progress with his lips, hearing her breath catch, feeling her shudder. Ignoring another breathy, absent reminder that An
gel would be waiting.
Pushing the soft white shirt off the bed.
Her chuckle as she traced his throat with her lips. ‘Angel’ll be furious!’
‘I know.’
Her smoky, sexy laugh laced dreams full of slender, smooth hands on his body and the tissue softness of her skin. He groaned in his throat as he broke from the dream just before the exquisite moment, sweat cooling as another bitter disappointment raced his heart. He thought of her willingness, eagerness, his longing to bury himself. Of when he had Tess and every night was an adventure.
Unable to fall asleep again, he went over and over the same ground. Where was she? How could he find out? God knew he’d tried, but everybody hid behind confidentiality. She must be meeting her tax bills and National Insurance contributions, must be in contact with her bank.
But catch any of those bodies letting fall a clue? No. Would the family tracing organisations get involved in a domestic? Not a chance.
So he’d reach the garage, out of sleep and out of sorts, to work his way through another day of Cadillacs and Pontiacs, Lotuses and MGs, hunting down spares, replacing piston rings, reboring, rebuilding front wings that had corroded around headlights, making the occasional killing from a rebuild, his mind shaking the problem around like a terrier.
Out in the wrecker to pick up a vehicle, every song on the radio reminded him of her, every road they’d driven. The old poster on Port Road she always noticed, Massive Shoe Sale. He’d hear her giggle, ‘How many people wear massive shoes?’
And, despairing, he’d glare at the empty seat beside him. ‘Where are you? Are you alone? How does it feel? Do you know how crazy this is? What a waste?’ Had she ever loved him? She couldn’t have, could she, to do this?
Though she’d certainly seemed convincing.
Was he supposed to be going after her, carrying her home, making up?
How?
So he passed the days, introverted, worried, tripping over people willing to prop him up. Angel and Pete offering meals, Jos pointing out stock car racing meetings, Elisabeth and Lester ringing or calling almost every day.
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