Dark Place to Hide Read online

  ‘And we need to feed the fish,’ chips in Clara, swinging on her mother’s hand.

  ‘No problem – we’ll take you.’

  PC Felton addresses the warden, who’s wearing a T-shirt bearing the castle logo, that looks two sizes too small. ‘You’ll need to cordon the area off and make it safe,’ she says. ‘It’s dangerous to the public as it is.’ He reaches for his phone with a sullen nod.

  Marion turns to thank the man with the cluster of keys and he nods, but is already speaking to someone on his mobile. The officers walk with the two of them towards the exit.

  ‘Will the car have blue lights on and make the whoop sound?’ Clara asks on the way.

  Rose answers with a smile. ‘I’m afraid not. We’ll take it nice and slow getting you back to Nettledon.’

  Clara looks disappointed and scrunches up her mouth so her top lip brushes her nose.

  Marion doesn’t want a lift; she’d rather walk for a while first, she needs the air, but the police insist. They can see she isn’t well and her daughter has had a nasty scare.

  As they reach the main road, Clara starts to skip.

  ‘Shall I tell you a secret, Mummy?’ she whispers, pulling on her arm.

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Being down in that mangy pit was the bestest fun ever…’

  Chapter 7

  Harper

  31 July – First day missing

  I’m surprised to wake, because I didn’t think I’d been asleep. I’ve been waiting to hear your key in the front door, but it didn’t come. Frank jumps on the sofa dropping the squelchy tennis ball between my knees. I toss it away half-heartedly and he flings himself after it, skidding on the polished wooden floors that are everywhere.

  I’m at a loss. All my calls last night ended up getting nowhere. Tara suggested you might need space, Sally said you’d seemed distracted lately, other colleagues from school haven’t heard from you since the end of term. I dreaded calling your mother, adding another thing for her to worry about when she’s already preoccupied with your father, but it had to be done. She was an unlikely source of information, but I’m hanging onto the possibility of finding any clues as to your whereabouts.

  The conversation with your mother took an inevitable turn after about twenty seconds. It sounds like Lucinda has gone overboard with post-it notes everywhere, leaving instructions about where Ted should hang his coat, which rooms are upstairs, where to find the toilet. She has stuck notes saying don’t drink this on the Domestos and cleaning fluid under the sink, others saying don’t use – cracked (on a chipped milk jug) or cat only (on pouches of rabbit meat). All the photographs on the fridge have stickers with names attached. His Alzheimer’s has become her round-the-clock project.

  Lucinda didn’t know you were pregnant, of course, and before being consumed by your father’s latest exploits she was only able to latch on to that part of our conversation. What happened? Is she okay? Why didn’t she call me? She was unable to grasp the real reason I was ringing. I tried to ask if she might know where you’ve gone, but she kept asking if you were all right.

  ‘I can’t leave Ted,’ she said, ‘otherwise I’d be over there straight away. Can I speak to her? Is she well enough to talk, poor girl?’

  I didn’t want to worry her. ‘She can’t come to the phone just now…’

  ‘I understand. Keep her nice and warm. Plenty of fluids.’ There was a violent crash in the background. ‘Ted…?’ A scuffle followed. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, ‘He’s got into the cellar…’

  Our closest neighbour is Ralph, about twenty metres away, but I’ve already spoken to him. He’s deaf and doddery and didn’t really grasp what I was asking about. Nevertheless, he invited me in for tea, but I told him I was in a rush and handed him the bottle of milk on the doorstep that looked like it’d been there for several days. After that, I tried Lorraine, your old pal from University, then I had high hopes for about twenty seconds when I suddenly remembered your new friend in the village, Jackie, the osteopath. She said maybe there was a problem with your phone, but the end result was that not one person has seen or heard from you.

  Are you hiding because you lied to me? Because you know the baby belongs to someone else?

  No – there must be some other explanation. You have never been someone to storm off – not from me, at any rate. Always the opposite, in fact. You seek me out whenever there’s something bothering you; you pester me and make me sit and listen. It’s what I love about you – your openness, your willingness to lay yourself bare and be seen.

  Concern and doubts roll at me like waves every few minutes; one moment, I think you’ve been involved in some terrible accident, the next that you’ve deliberately taken off. They hit me, one after the other – brimming with the unthinkable. Fear about your wellbeing seizes me and I ring the local hospital, The Queen Elizabeth in Cosham again, just in case. Maybe you crashed the car somewhere off the beaten track and have been lying unconscious at the wheel all night. Perhaps another passing motorist has finally found you. There is only one obvious way to get to the village shop from our cottage, but perhaps in your distraction, you went the wrong way – and that’s why I didn’t find you.

  You’re not at the hospital. I ask the receptionist to check twice. I ring St Luke’s hospital in Portsmouth, over five miles away. Same story.

  I take Frank out into the woods, but my mind isn’t on it. It passes in a blur and I’m back in the kitchen. I make myself the kind of strong tea you make for me – it’s barely drinkable, but it brings me closer to you. I pour it into your mug. It’s as if I’m drinking your tea with you.

  I drag myself around from room to room. I can relate to your father now, see exactly what it must be like, losing the order of things, forgetting how to live. I keep seeing your washed-out, bewildered face when you told me you didn’t know there was a baby and that you were so sorry. The potential for utter euphoria shot down before it could even register, because the baby had already left your body. You kept opening and closing your eyes as if you thought you were in a dream. I slam down the mug of tea, spilling it all over next week’s Radio Times and realise that I’m the one to blame. I’ve been so caught up in my own diagnosis and doubts about being the father – I haven’t reached out enough to share your pain. I’m so sorry, Dee. It’s all my fault. I’ve driven you away.

  You always tell me I’m laid-back, but it’s not true – I play the part well to everyone, even you, but underneath I’m uptight, holding on. You don’t know, Dee, that the day my father died, when adolescence was exploding inside my hormonally charged body, I did an abominable thing that I’ve never told anyone about. Blind rage can make people act in atrocious ways. In fact, I’m riddled with faults you don’t appear to notice. You admire my self-discipline – my refusal to be beaten at squash, rigorously completing my fifty chin-ups at the gym, meticulously planning my lectures – but really I’m just inflexible. I’m arrogant too, believing since I became entranced by you that we were invincible as a couple. With hindsight, my attitude seems not only pompous, but naïve – things aren’t always so black and white. Is that what you’ve found now, Dee?

  The first time I met you, five years ago now, I felt a solid certainty that we had not only met before, but that we’d existed together in some other setting and timeframe far removed from this one. I had this strong sense that we’d already been on an epic journey together, survived against the odds, so that when we met that day, in the crowd at Trafalgar Square, there was a startling familiarity and a sense of reunion. When I dared to mention it on our first proper date (bolstered by a couple of gin and tonics), you sat back with incredulity. You knew exactly what I was saying.

  ‘We must have known each other before…’ you said, breathless. ‘It’s so weird.’

  We joked about it – played little games to see what we could guess about each other. I was right when I said I thought you were sporty and liked animals. You were spot on with my interest in Formula One and Doctor Who. You even guessed that I liked loud Mandela-style shirts and could do a decent Sean Connery impression. This surreal ready-made understanding was why I felt instantly sure about you, secure both about who you were and my feelings for you. Even so, the way things progressed between us has still been breathtaking.

  Getting married had never been on my To Do list, but you won me over. I was convinced from the age of around seventeen that I’d always be a bachelor. I don’t need a psychotherapist to tell me why. Family. Everything comes back to family. As a young kid, I adored my dad and so did thousands of others. I had to share him. When your father is Ronnie Penn, left-back for West Ham, it’s hard to have him to yourself. Everywhere, people would stop him on the pavement and ask for autographs – but we had special times just the two of us; camping trips and seaside visits. There just weren’t enough of them. Mum joined us too and we had family days out at Alton Towers and London Zoo, but again, I can count them on one hand.

  If I wasn’t going to see much of my father, then I wanted a brother or sister. A proper family. I’m the sort of person who comes to life around other people and left to my own devices too long I’d get down in the dumps and lazy, so much so that Mum would often think I was ill. She wasn’t around a lot either; she insisted on working – as an optician – even though money wasn’t an issue. She was fascinated by the mechanics of the eye and didn’t want to give up her career. Dad was around even less: training, matches, publicity. I don’t blame anyone. They were both following their dreams. I slotted in there somewhere, but there was too much empty space around me – that books, toys, games and TV couldn’t fill. I had school friends, of course, but they were more interested in my father than me.

  Then dad left when I was only eight. He’d met someone else and it was
all over. Mum was devastated and coiled into herself. That was when I started having problems with anger. I hid it well: never disruptive in school, never snappy with Mum. But I knew one day it was going to erupt out of control and do some damage.

  In my view, my father had done a terrible thing to me and our family. I hated him for going. We met up now and again – every time away from the house, but it always felt fake. The ice cream never tasted the same, the rides on the big dipper had lost their thrill, the amusement arcades felt tacky and cheap.

  Then he died of a heart attack when I was fifteen. It was a shock to everyone, but to me it was as if he had died a second time.

  Amidst episodes of seething rage and grief, I made a decision. In my late teens, I vowed that I was never going to put myself at risk like that again. Marriages failed – it was inevitable – and it wasn’t fair on the children who were left like pinballs, ricocheting around in the middle. I wasn’t going to go anywhere near a situation like that – one which could cause so much pain.

  Then you came along, Dee, and day by day, without you knowing it, you gently tugged me away from my resolution. I don’t know how you did it, but before long there were new ideologies folded over my old fears and doubts. After about a year, it all became clear. The way forward was a matter of me making sure I didn’t repeat the patterns in my parent’s marriage, not about avoiding the situation altogether. You helped me see that I was all the things my father wasn’t: reliable, consistent, hands on, keen to be involved. There was no way I was going to turn out like him and do what he did. I wanted to start a family. A ‘proper’ family with not just one child, but several; knitted together with support and love. I was ready, with you beside me, Dee, to be a father.

  It’s 5.30pm and I’m struggling. I don’t know how to get through the rest of the day. I find myself in one room then the next with no recollection of getting there and no purpose behind my actions. I’m waiting for something, looking for something.

  At 6pm, I can’t bear the silence anymore and I try your phone again. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve called. I leave yet another voicemail message asking you to call. It’s now almost twenty-four hours since you disappeared – this is serious. I call the police and confirm you have not returned. I speak to a female duty sergeant and give the report number I was given yesterday. I explain you’ve been gone too long without getting in touch.

  All officers taking a report of a missing person must start with the viewpoint that it is a potentially serious crime enquiry; they’ll have to do something. She tells me they will visit ‘the premises’ this evening.

  I ring Tara and Sally again. It’s useless. There is nothing new. I decide to ring your sister once more – mainly to pass the time.

  ‘I tried to call you,’ comes her steely detached voice. ‘I’ve just heard from Diane.’

  ‘What? You have? When?’ I’m on my feet, blood charging through my body.

  ‘About twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘Thank God! Is she okay? Where is she?’

  ‘She’s fine – it was a text – but she didn’t say where she was.’

  ‘Did you ring her back?’

  ‘Yes – but it just went to voicemail.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

  ‘I did…well, I tried. You were engaged.’

  ‘Ah – I was doing another ring-round. What did she say?’ I gallop through the words greedy for answers.

  ‘She put, “Sorry – a bit stressed. Taking time out.” Then two kisses.’

  My feet rapidly fill with lead. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Yeah. I think she just needs some space to work things through.’ Alexa never misses an opportunity to demonstrate that she knows you better than I do.

  ‘Did she say when she’s coming back?’

  ‘No. No – she didn’t. I think we need to respect her need to be alone for a bit. After what’s happened. Don’t you?’

  ‘Did she…mention me?’ I want to scream Why didn’t you contact me, Dee? but I can’t expect Alexa to answer that.

  ‘No – I told you exactly what her message said.’ As usual, she doesn’t bother to hide her hostility. She’s always been like this. I’ve run out of ways to try to appease her.

  ‘You make it sound like my fault.’

  ‘I can’t believe you found out something as huge as that and didn’t tell her.’

  You must have told Alexa about my diagnosis sometime before you left yesterday. I don’t blame you. I know you sometimes have the need to turn to others, not just me. It’s often hard to say how you really feel to the person who is the source of the problem.

  ‘I’ve only just found out,’ I tell her, stretching the truth.

  ‘Six weeks, she said. That’s how long you’ve had the results and you must have had check-ups and tests long before that and never said a word.’

  ‘I was going to.’ Alexa is the last person I want to be justifying myself to.

  ‘Of course you were.’ She’s short and sharp with me. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Ring me – please – if you hear—’

  She’s already gone.

  I am stunned. You’re not missing – you’ve left of your own accord. I’m struggling with the notion that you need space. I can’t get my head around it. At what point did you make this decision? You left so casually – you didn’t look like someone who was taking off.

  I try to recall exactly what happened that night. We were hugging on the sofa discussing how we might mark the loss of our baby with some kind of ritual with candles and roses. I’d drunk too much – I apologise for that – and you offered to go to the village shop for me when I realised we were out of painkillers. It was last minute, you were just in your jogging pants. What did you say at the door? I can’t remember exactly. See you in a minute? See you soon? Back shortly? It wasn’t a grand goodbye.

  You kissed me. Yes, you did. You reached up on tiptoes as I stood on the doorstep and pressed your lips against mine. Not a dismissive peck on the cheek, but a plump back-before-you-know-it kind of kiss.

  You didn’t take anything with you apart from your phone and your handbag. Or did you?

  I hurtle up the stairs and fling open the wardrobes. Four empty hangers rattle as they swing loose. This isn’t the way it normally looks; we’re for ever having to double-up, because there are no hangers to spare. I check the bathroom cabinet – why didn’t I do this yesterday? Your little bottle of sedatives has gone. I sit on the bed and drag at my hair. Why is there no note? At least you could have left me a few words of explanation. Were you that angry with me?

  I check the top of the wardrobe – the suitcases are all still there. The holdall and overnight bags are still squashed up alongside the towels in the cupboard. I check your bedside cabinet. Your watch has gone – but you were wearing that during the day. There’s a hairclip, one with a butterfly – I notice you’ve started wearing the one with a kingfisher instead, lately. The novel you started is still here. I pick it up, flick through the pages. That’s odd. You told me you’ve read at bedtime ever since you were a child and can’t do without it – you say it’s a vital comfort that helps you get off to sleep. You always take a book when we go away. It’s still here.

  I call the police again and give them this new information; you’ve been in touch with your sister. I explain that your appointment diary isn’t by the bed, but that doesn’t mean a great deal. It could be downstairs. The same duty sergeant as before tells me to keep them informed, but as you’ve been in touch, they won’t be taking any further action for the time being. ‘It’s not a police matter if someone chooses to leave,’ she tells me. She’s no doubt had specialist training in handling ‘relationship breakdown’ cases and is drawing her own conclusions. We must have had a terrible row, but I’m refusing to acknowledge it. You must have taken off to make some serious decisions about your future…

  A new surge of energy consumes me as I start a major treasure hunt for your appointment diary, just in case it’s here. It might give some indication as to your plans and whereabouts. I scour each room, not caring about the mess I make as I fling cushions aside, pull out drawers, tip piles of magazines onto the coffee table. I can’t find it.