by Susan Gee
‘I don’t think she likes him at all.’
Harry rubbed his chin. ‘Did you see him the day he went missing?’
Mr Anderson stared out of the window at the snow-covered car park. ‘She’s cold. Don’t you think? You met her? I saw you on the drive with her.’
‘How well do you know the family?’ Harry asked.
‘The family?’ He smiled.
Harry frowned. ‘Yes?’
‘I just live next door.’
Joyce glanced at Harry.
‘She’s the one to ask,’ Mr Anderson continued.
‘What should we be asking her?’
‘She isn’t honest.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘She doesn’t look it,’ Mr Anderson replied.
‘Do you remember if Jacob was here on Friday?’ asked Joyce.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Right.’
‘Had been behaving differently lately? Have you seen him with anyone different?’
Mr Anderson smiled. ‘I reserve him books on badgers. That’s what he likes. I don’t concern myself with anything else.’
‘You say his stepmother shouts at him? Anything else?’
Joyce noticed him smile to himself again as he looked at the dolls’ house on the top of the cabinet and then out onto the white courtyard below.
‘He comes here most days. Other than that, his behaviour is unremarkable. He doesn’t like being at home. That tells you a lot.’
Harry walked over to the cabinet and picked up one of the wooden mannequins. He turned it over in his fingers before dropping it back into the little wooden house. Mr Anderson’s eye twitched.
‘How do you know he feels like that?’ Joyce asked.
‘He told me.’ He said the words slowly.
‘What exactly did he say?’
‘That he didn’t like it there.’
Mr Anderson walked over to the dolls’ house and placed the wooden figure back upright.
‘Are you fond of children?’ Harry tilted his head.
‘Indifferent.’
‘Your relationship with Jacob has been noticed by some of your colleagues.’
‘By Noreen? I took her out on a date. It didn’t work out. She wants a reason for my indifference. The reason is that she’s a bore.’
‘And your relationship with Jacob?’ Harry asked.
‘We’re neighbours and we chat sometimes. That isn’t unusual. Don’t you chat to your neighbours?’
Harry stood up. ‘Not the children.’
Mr Anderson sighed. ‘If they came into your work, I’m sure you would. I can check if he took out any books or returned something on that day. I’m sure that the others will assist you on any hearsay. They do take quite an interest in it.’
‘You haven’t heard from him?’ Joyce asked.
‘I’m unlikely to, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘I would.’ Mr Anderson looked them up and down and shook his head.
‘If you think of anything else…’
‘I can’t tell you anything, because I don’t know anything.’ Mr Anderson raised an eyebrow.
‘If something comes to you, even if it’s something small, you can ring me,’ Joyce told him.
Harry opened his mouth as though he was about to speak, but Joyce nodded towards the door. When they got outside, she could tell that Harry wasn’t happy.
‘I don’t like him.’
‘Let’s have another word with Noreen.’
Joyce walked down the corridor towards the main desk. Had she imagined it or had Mr Anderson been uncomfortable when Harry started to touch the dolls’ house? She dismissed it, it wasn’t important, but what was it that her father used to say to her? Follow your gut. It worked for her. Mr Anderson could say whatever he wanted to and it didn’t matter. There was something about him that she wasn’t sure about. She could sense it. There wasn’t anything in particular, but there was something behind his eyes. The way he’d licked his lips whenever Jacob’s stepmother was mentioned. She wondered if they were having an affair. It seemed an odd thought, but you never knew. People did strange things, she’d got used to that in this job.
*
Jacob sat with Maggie’s book on his knee for hours before he decided to read it. He ran his hands along the front cover and down the spine again and again until he opened it again. The writing was meticulous. Every letter so carefully written, as though it was almost typed. She’d dated each one at the top and he knew it was wrong, but once he started, he couldn’t stop. As he read the poems, he realised that she was everything he thought she was and more. She saw things so differently. Some of the words were beautiful. It made him almost light-headed that she had all that inside her. Other poems were clumsy and short, some were just a few words and he couldn’t understand them.
As he read further on, he felt the passion in her words, the feelings of excitement she had for some unnamed person on the pages of the little black book and he knew that it was all about Matty Vincent. He hoped she was writing about him, but no. It was Matty. He knew it was.
It was painful, but he kept reading. He read every word. Every sentence over and over. Every single emotion and as he did, he felt like someone had scraped out his insides. He read through the pages again and again, until he got to the day after Jayne was killed. As he read the words, he felt his throat tighten. The sun dropped from the sky and he held the book up towards the moonlight so that he could see the words. As he read them, he wished he could stop. He couldn’t.
36
That evening Mr Anderson sat on his brown leather sofa with a plate of ham salad on his lap. He inhaled the food before he ate it. It still felt indulgent, being able to have whatever he wanted to. There was no more oats and water for him now. He had cut the ham into neat little squares and arranged them on the plate first. He knew that the police would come and this was everything he didn’t need.
He slowly cut the ham again, enjoying the way the knife sliced through the meat. He ensured that each piece was of equal size and shape. As he looked down at the plate it reminded him of the square windows of the hunting lodge on Cage Hill, the tiny rectangular windows that covered the outside. He started to chew. Twenty times. Like his mother used to tell him to do. He could hear her now. ‘Be a gentleman.’
She’d lied. She hadn’t told him the truth. It was too late to go back. He needed someone strong to match her. He needed someone who hated him, who wanted to do worse to him than he could ever do them. Someone with so many secrets locked inside, waiting to be prised out of them – secrets that pulsated behind their eyes. He wanted to smell the hate on them as he got them prepared for Cage Hill.
Jacob’s stepmother was on his mind. She understood what a family should be. Run by fear. He pictured the neatly stitched canary yellow material and the beautiful dark hair of his last creation. He needed his mother, but with Jacob missing he knew he couldn’t go near her. It was a mess.
Thoughts of badgers came to mind. They were out there, under the ground in their sets, waiting under the earth to come out again. Just lying dormant underneath the ground like all his desires. Maybe Jacob had gone looking for them. The woods had become an obsession to the boy.
Mr Anderson was surprised that Jacob was on his mind again. He wanted to find him so that he could get back to work and yet it was more than that, he wanted him to be back where he belonged. There was a place for everything and he didn’t like it when the compartments were empty.
The frozen temperatures showed no sign of getting warmer. The local kids had built a snowman in the garden at the bottom of the road and it had stood there for days, solid and tall with a stick for a grin. He knew that Jacob Clarke wouldn’t last long if he was out in the snow.
He had a feeling that this had to be done quickly. As though the arctic wind had brought with it a most beautiful change that covered the filthy streets in glittering snow where he was able to find and build his l
ittle family. Jacob Clarke being out there was tainting things and it was bringing the wrong attention.
Cage Hill at Lyme Park was his place and Paula had mentioned it as though it was hers too. He wasn’t sure why, but an intense feeling built inside him. It grew inside until his heart was hard and heavy. He could almost hear it. He could feel it – the blood pounded through his body, in his ears, his chest.
It was a new feeling for him, the need for completion. He couldn’t risk the police taking more of an interest in him now. He glanced over at the wooden box on the sideboard. Thoughts of his father, laying standing over his bed came to mind and he dismissed it. He sometimes thought of that night, as though he had come back to save him, but he wondered if it was really him or just someone else. Perhaps he was just one of the many men that his mother would bring back to the house while he sat in silence in his cellar room, the slow thud of the headboard against the bedroom wall the only sound in the house. This was his own family now – a new one that he was in control of.
As the wind picked up outside, a chill came in through the old wooden window frame. The branches of the trees outside were heavy with snow that dropped in clumps as the wind and the snow got heavier.
The curtains were open so that he could keep an eye on the street without anyone seeing a change. He liked the way it lit up the room. Sometimes he craved the darkness. There was a peace about it, but today he wanted to go out. He put his hand to his head, those thoughts are not relevant now. He needed to focus.
He thought about all the faces he’d seen that week, the woman in the corner shop who had struggled to get the boxes up on the shelf and had smiled so warmly at the man who’d helped her. The lady with the shopping on Saturday who had slid down the pavement on the ice and grabbed onto the wall, sending tangerines tumbling over the pavement at his feet. The lady on her way to work, dressed in a sharp, fitted suit and the policewoman. The whiteness of the flesh, the pale features that made him imagine the feel of the modelling tools in his hand. There were plenty out there and yet his thoughts kept coming back to the same people. Jacob. Jacob Clarke and his stepmother. Somewhere among the snow-covered streets, he was waiting for him. He knew that he was out there somewhere and when he found him, the proper work could continue.
He thought about the motorway bridge and if he was there, just like his mother, but if this time someone could stop it. The ring of the phone disturbed the silence.
It was unusual. He never got calls.
He picked up the receiver, expecting a wrong number.
‘Hello?’
‘Perv,’ said the voice on the other end of the phone, followed by a hissing sound.
Mr Anderson was surprised. He thought there was something that sounded familiar, but the voice wasn’t anyone he knew.
‘Sorry?’
‘Perv,’ the voice repeated, before the phone was put down.
The buzz of the dial tone was loud in his ear. He looked at the phone as though he didn’t know what had just happened. He decided that Noreen’s rumours had caused this and that there would be more. It was the last thing he needed. He’d tried so hard to be unremarkable and to blend into the background. It was his own fault. He shouldn’t have been so familiar with the boy, he should have realised that it would lead to consequences.
‘Alright!’ he shouted, to himself.
Instinctively he put his hand over his mouth. His mother did not like shouting in the house and the rules were still there, no matter how long she’d been gone for. He looked down at the ham salad on his plate and put down the fork.
‘Alright, I’ll go look.’ He almost whimpered as he stood up and walked to the door.
37
Joyce got into the car with Jacob’s dad. She sat on the cold leather seat and stared at the thin coating of ice as the windscreen wipers scraped through it. As they creaked and scraped in arches across the window she thought about what the librarian had said about Jacob’s stepmother.
Jacob’s dad looked like he hadn’t slept for days. His cheeks were sunken and his skin was flakey and grey-looking. The wipers pushed away the last piece of snow and she drove them out of the car park. Joyce was glad that he’d come in to speak to her today. It gave her a chance to speak to him on his own and she couldn’t help wondering if his disappearance was linked to what happened to Jayne.
Jacob’s house was in the nicer end of town. She parked outside the thick leafy hedge that walled next door’s house where the librarian lived. They walked up the gravel drive, feet crunching under the tiny stones.
‘Paula’s home.’ He nodded.
Joyce saw her through the window.
‘How do they get on? Her and Jacob,’ she asked.
‘Fine. I mean, he’s a teenage boy.’
‘Any arguments?’
‘Just the usual.’
‘We’d heard she shouts at him.’
‘From who?’
‘That’s not important. Is it true?’
‘He never really liked her,’ Jacob’s dad sighed.
‘Any reason why not?’
‘He said she’s different when I’m not around, but he’s just a kid. Kids say things.’
‘Do they?’ Joyce looked him up and down. ‘Is there anything else I should know?’
‘It’s been difficult for him. He made up some stories about her bullying him, but she wouldn’t. She hasn’t been. I never saw anything.’
‘Right,’ Joyce replied as she opened the door and stepped out on the drive.
‘Paula said she’d never…’
‘And you believe her?’
Jacob’s dad looked over at the house. ‘I don’t know anymore. She just doesn’t seem to be taking it seriously.’
Paula came to the large wooden front door in high heels and a tight jumpsuit. Lip gloss shining and makeup done to perfection. Joyce wondered if this woman was ever not fully made up. She probably slept in her mascara. When Paula saw that Joyce was with Dave, her face dropped for a second, but she quickly regained her composure and broke into a smile.
‘I’m just going to take another look at Jacob’s room.’
‘It’s already been looked at,’ Paula snapped.
Joyce turned to look at Jacob’s dad with a raised eyebrow.
Dave walked in past her and pointed upstairs. ‘The second on the right. Can I get you a drink?’
‘I’ll go up with you,’ Paula said.
‘Leave her to it.’
Joyce gave him a nod and walked upstairs without waiting for Paula’s answer. The last thing she needed was his stepmother in here. No doubt next door could hear through the walls. She heard them chatting downstairs as she walked across the landing. The house was neat and ordered – nothing out of place. There were family photographs on the walls, but Jacob’s mother wasn’t included.
Jacob’s room was unsurprising. His noticeboard was pinned with pictures of animals. Photographs and hand drawn bits of paper. She looked at a photograph of him stuck to the noticeboard with a young girl. It was Maggie. She’d already spoken to her and his other friends and hadn’t gotten anything else about Jacob. Maggie had been her usual indignant self; she’d almost seemed annoyed at her being there. When she’d spoken to the Vincents she had felt that there was more that they wanted to tell her though and she was going to go back there and speak to them individually. It wasn’t looking good for Jacob Clarke. They had searched the woods and nothing, but she still had a feeling that he might turn up like Jayne.
She felt someone come up behind her and turned around. Jacob’s dad was standing on the edge of the room with one hand on the wall.
‘It’s not usual, is it? For him to be gone this long.’
‘It’s concerning,’ she replied.
He didn’t seem able to take a step into the room.
‘He was upset about Maggie. I should have talked to him about it.’
Joyce hoped he wouldn’t cry. She was alright with the facts, but she didn’t know how she’d handle it if he
started getting emotional. She felt her neck tense.
‘Any other friends I could talk to? Apart from Maggie and the Vincents?’
Dave shook his head.
‘Maggie was the only one he spent any time with.’
‘Right.’
‘Paula’s been through his room, but she hasn’t found anything useful.’
‘Has she?’ When the words came out the tone sounded sharper than she’d intended. He stood in front of her and glanced around as if seeing the room for the first time.
‘I don’t know what to think at the moment,’ he said. He sniffed and seemed to right himself.
‘We’re doing everything we can.’
‘I should have listened to him.’
Joyce picked up a photograph from the bed. ‘Jacob’s mother?’ she asked.
His dad nodded.
‘He’s got her looks.’
Jacob’s dad took a step closer and stared at the photograph. ‘They’re a lot alike. She was creative too. I can’t draw to save my life.’
‘Me either.’
There was a creak on the stairs and she turned to look on the landing, but there was no one to be seen. She guessed that Paula had been listening. She heard them both talking from the next room.
Joyce sighed and started to go through the drawers as she tried to get a feel for him. There was the smell of boys in the room. A teenage smell that was still there from the old clothes in the washing basket the pair of trainers slung underneath the desk by the window.
She imagined it must have been difficult for him getting used to life without his mother. She looked out of the window to the back garden, Mr Anderson’s house was hidden by the large conifer trees and a huge hedge that must put the garden in darkness. So close. She would go round to the house after she’d finished here.
There were some drawings in his wardrobe and there, in the sleeve of one of his records, was a pad. As she pulled it out there were more drawings. Drawing after drawing of Maggie. She knew that face well now, she had spoken to her enough times.
As she stood in the middle of the room, she hoped he had gone to stay with a friend. She hoped it was true, but something told her that he wasn’t. Something told her that she was going to find him soon and it wasn’t going to be good.