“Hmmm good, or hmmm bad?” Rose asked, putting down the delicate lace she had been hand-stitching in her armchair in the corner of our workroom and looking at me again.
I couldn’t lie to Rose, especially not when she was giving me her full and unadulterated attention.
“Mark’s not at work,” I mumbled, lifting my mobile phone and walking absentmindedly down the spiral staircase to our dressing room and on through the French doors to the garden. I knew Rose would follow me, and I would let her, but now I had to try Mark again even though I knew he already had at least four missed calls from me logged on his phone and that if he wanted to call me then he would have done. I supposed, then, if he had wanted me to know he had – for whatever reason – left his job a week before, he would have told me.
His phone started to ring and I tried to keep my breathing calm even though there was a distinct increase in the volume of adrenalin coursing through my veins.
It went to answer-phone and I listened to his voice jauntily telling me he couldn’t take my call right now but would get back to me if I just left my number. As the message beeped to a halt, heralding my turn to start talking, I heard a strangled squeak spring forth from my lips.
“It’s Kitty! Your wife! Call me!” And for effect I added the number of the shop, even though he knew it or at least had it in his phone and would easily be able to find it. I hung up and turned, nodded to Rose who looked utterly confused – but not as confused as I felt – and dialled his number again. He would answer this time. I felt it in my water. It would be fine. There would be two Mark Shanahans working in his office and the other one would have left – or the gatekeeper had just been feeling extra-vicious and gate-keeper-y and had decided to tell me a big fat lie. No. Everything was fine.
My waters were wrong, as it turned out. He didn’t answer. He didn’t even answer when I rang back a third time and shouted “Answer the shagging phone!” at the handset in my hand. Rose walked towards me and very calmly said, “I think maybe we should close the shop early.”
She had a point. No bride-to-be would want to walk in on this. This was not what anyone needed when they were contemplating their Big Day – a rather pale and shaking wedding-dress salesperson screaming into her iPhone for her husband to talk to her.
I nodded and watched as Rose left the garden to go and lock the door while I stared at my phone and willed it to burst into life. There was still time for this to be okay.
“A cup of tea will do the trick,” Rose said, bustling back through towards me. “I’ll just go upstairs and put the kettle on.”
A cup of tea sounded nice. It sounded soothing, even, so I followed Rose up the stairs and through the office into our kitchen – clutching my phone to me as I went and I sat down and watched as Rose boiled a kettle and put two mugs out, making her tea.
Rose was like that – an oasis of calm. Nothing phased her. She was the kind of person who, if she developed a slight case of spontaneous combustion, would simply douse herself with some cold water and mutter “Ah well, never mind” before getting on with her day.
“Mark wasn’t at work,” I said, as she mixed milk into the china mug and stirred it gently.
“Yes,” she nodded. “Custard cream?” She reached for our biscuit jar and offered it to me.
“He hasn’t been at work in a week,” I said, raising an eyebrow and challenging her to look surprised. “And he hasn’t told me. He hasn’t mentioned it to me at all.”
She looked at me and bit on a custard cream before taking a sip from her mug.
“The receptionist had to tell me,” I said, willing her to agree with me that it was a Very Big Deal Indeed.
She nodded, and polished off her biscuit.
“And he’s not answering his phone. I’ve tried, seven or eight times. He left a week agobut he’s been getting dressed every morning and heading out as usual and coming home his usual grumpy self.”
She nodded again.
I fought the urge to snatch the biscuit from her mouth and give her a good shake. “When I say ‘left’ I don’t mean just, you know, left. I mean he doesn’t work there anymore. I phoned and the receptionist said, very clearly, that Mark Shanahan doesn’t work there anymore.”
Rose sipped from her tea before setting her mug, slowly and carefully, back on the worktop.
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” she said. Which was bad. Rose saying she didn’t like the sound of something was akin to us mere mortals running around screaming hysterically that we were all doomed, doomed, I tells ya.
The First Time I Said Goodbye Page 31