Losing You (13 page)

‘Yes?’

‘It’s me. Rory. I’m nearly there.’

‘No Charlie yet. Listen. When you come, wait with Jackson. Try to cheer him up. Keep him occupied. I’ll be back soon. There’s something I’ve got to do.’

‘I’m here to find my daughter, not to baby-sit my son.’ He was practically shouting down the phone.

‘I know. Look, I’ll call later.’ I cut him off before he could say anything else and, very briefly, put my head in my hands, trying to collect my thoughts. Then I drove back the way I had come, and turned at last on to the main leg of The Street, where most of the shops were. I drew up outside Walton’s, the newsagent, and leaped out.

‘Hello,’ I said, pressing up against the counter and ignoring other customers. ‘I’m Nina, Charlie’s mother. I phoned earlier to ask about her newspaper round.’

‘Hold on a minute,’ said the woman behind the counter. She was counting ten-pence coins into a small plastic bag.

‘No. I can’t hold on. It’s important.’

The woman didn’t answer, but carefully sealed the little bag. ‘How can I help you?’ she said, chilly disapproval in her voice.

‘I have to know who’s on Charlie’s paper round. At once.’

‘What for?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. She’s missing. I’ve got to have those names.’

‘We don’t just give out customers’ names to anyone, you know.’

‘Why not? You’re not a doctor or a priest.’

‘There’s no need for that tone. You’re still quite new round here, aren’t you?’

‘Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I’m doing this wrong. It’s because I’m worried. So please –
please
– can you give me those names?’

‘I’ll have to ask my husband.’

I gritted my teeth to stop myself howling in her face. ‘All right.’ But she didn’t move. ‘Is he in the back?’

‘He’s out on a delivery.’

‘What? Out?’

‘I’ll ask him when he gets back. It shouldn’t be long.’

‘But I need the names
now
!’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be patient.’

‘You don’t understand –’

‘Excuse me, I’ve got work to do.’

She went into the back of the shop, the bead curtains parting to let her through and dropping back into place. In despair, I banged hard on the bell on the counter, but she didn’t reappear.

So I left the shop, barging past customers, stumbling over the threshold like a drunken woman. I could feel fear rising in me inexorably, and I knew that if I let it, it would engulf me. I stood outside the door and closed my eyes, feeling the throb from my temples in the tips of my fingers. In the darkness, I searched for a way forward, a pinprick of light that I could follow.

‘Where are you?’ I whispered. ‘Where are you, my darling one?’

‘Here. This is what you were after.’

My eyes snapped open and the world loomed back into view. ‘Joel. What are you –’

‘The names you were after.’ He held up a sheet of paper.

‘Were you in the shop? I didn’t see you – how did you get them?’

‘I know Janet. It’s a matter of asking her in the right way.’ He handed me the sheet of paper. ‘Tam told me what
happened last night.’ He put his hands on my shoulders and gazed at me. ‘I’m so terribly sorry, Nina. And ashamed. I don’t know what to say to –’

‘Never mind that now.’

Together, we looked at the list. There were nineteen names, with the titles of newspapers and addresses next to them. Unfortunately, they weren’t all on the same street, but were scattered through the east side of the town and out towards the coast.

‘Which route would Charlie have taken? Which one is Pleshey Road?’

‘Let’s see.’ He frowned and followed his blunt, calloused finger down the page. ‘We need a map for this. Hold on, Nina.’

Once more he headed into the shop, but this time came back empty-handed.

‘No maps in stock,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to draw our own. Let’s go in here.’ He didn’t wait for my reply but, holding me closely by the arm, drew me into the coffee shop next door. ‘Sit down,’ he said.

I sat at the table next to the window, so that I could see whoever passed by. I was still buttoned up in my jacket and perched on the edge of the seat, ready to jump up at any time. Joel turned over the sheet with Charlie’s paper round on it to give him a blank space, and pulled a pen out of his overall pocket. He handed it to me. ‘Get started on this. I’ll get us coffee.’

‘I don’t want coffee.’

‘It’s going to be all right, Nina. And I’m going to help you. It’s the very least I can do. You’re not alone.’

At that point, I knew Joel was still in love with me, that
Alix was right to be jealous and bitter. But I didn’t care, if it meant he would help me. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

He smiled down at me, laying his large warm hand on the crown of my head for a moment, and was gone. I drew the approximate shape of the island, like a clumsy boot, its toes facing out to open sea, then sketched in The Street, running from the causeway towards the south coast, then veering inland.

‘Drink this. Here, let me.’ He took the pen from my hand.

‘This one’s Low Road, and Barrow Road goes here.’

‘The roads that Charlie had to go down were… Hang on.’ I turned over the page. ‘Tippet Row, East Lane, Lost Road and Pleshey Road.’

‘Pleshey Road’s the small one that connects East Lane and Lost Road. Approximately like this.’

‘Right.’

‘Now look.’ He drew the pen in a wavering line down a pattern of roads. ‘Charlie’d probably have gone this way, starting on Tippet Row, up Cairn Way, then East Lane, Pleshey Road and ending up at Martin Vine’s house at the far end of Lost Road, here. It’s the obvious route.’

‘Right,’ I said. I stood up and took the paper from the table. ‘Thanks, Joel.’

‘You haven’t touched your coffee. Anyway, I’m coming with you. We’ll find Charlie.’

I didn’t have time for niceties. ‘I hope so. And I’m grateful.’

‘You don’t need to be. I feel responsible, and anyway…’ He stopped himself.

I pushed at the door and the wind stung our cheeks. We stepped out into the cold and my hair blew over my face, half obscuring my vision.

‘We should start here.’ Joel jabbed his finger at the map.

‘Right.’

‘Or this is a better idea. Let’s miss out the first… let’s see… the first six or seven houses that are very spread apart, and start here, with the Gordons. I know them – I chopped down their old elm last month. We can take my truck. It’s a few blocks down. If they haven’t received their paper, we can go backwards instead of forwards.’

He linked his arm through mine and pulled me close to him.

‘Where do you think you two are off to?’ Alix was standing in front of us, a hat pulled down over her head and her eyes bright in the cold wind. ‘I saw your truck and wondered where you were,’ she said.

‘We’re trying to find Charlie, that’s all. We’re going to follow her newspaper round.’

‘We are, are we?’

I didn’t have time for this, but Alix laid her hand on Joel’s arm. ‘You promised to take Tam into town for her Christmas shopping,’ she said.

‘Do you really think Tam deserves to go shopping? Anyway, I’m not taking her.’

‘You are.’

‘This is an emergency. And I’m going to help Nina.’

‘No. I’m going with Nina,’ said Alix. ‘You’re staying here.’

‘I don’t think so.’

For an awful few seconds they stared at each other, but the winner of the battle of wills was never in doubt. She turned to me. ‘Come on, Nina – it would be better if we went in my car. I’ll drive and you can direct me.’

At any other time I would have left them there together,
tied up in the bitterness of their marital discord. Not now. I shrugged at Joel and turned away, leaving him disconsolate in the road. Alix and I hurried down the street towards her car. My eyes were watering in the cold; I held the sheet of paper fluttering in my hand. I climbed in and sat in the passenger seat, leaning forward anxiously, seat-belt undone. After I’d given her the address of where we were going first, neither of us spoke.

When we arrived at the seventh address on Charlie’s list, I leaped out and rang the bell of the Gordons’ house (23 East Lane, the
Daily Mail
), heard it sing a clanky little tune deep in the house. I heard footsteps and the door was pulled open. The young woman who stood there was holding a tiny baby to her breast. Its red, wrinkled face peered out of the white blanket. There was a milk blister on its lip. A smell of washing and baking wafted from the kitchen. Life was going on.

‘Mrs Gordon?’ I said. ‘My name is Nina Landry and I just wanted to ask –’

‘Come in. I don’t want to stand in the cold with Eva. She’s only a few days old and –’

‘I only wanted to ask if you received your
Mail
this morning?’

‘My
Mail
?’

‘Your newspaper. Did you get it all right?’

‘Why?’

‘My daughter –’ I started, then stopped and collected myself. ‘There have been a few queries about the papers this morning and we were simply checking that they’d all arrived safely.’

‘It’s here. I haven’t read it yet, though. No time. We only came back from the hospital a few –’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and stepped away from the door, hearing her voice following me down the path.

Next was Sue Furlong, whom I knew vaguely because her black Labrador was Sludge’s sister. The two sometimes had wild chasing games on the sea wall. Indeed, as I knocked at the door of her rather shabby terraced house, I could hear the dog barking frantically inside. But no one came. I pushed open the letterbox flap and peered inside. There, on the mat, lay her chewed and muddy newspaper, beside a pile of mail.

The Gunners (Honey Hall) had received their
Guardian
; Bob Hutchings on East Lane his
East Anglian Daily Times
. I could hear the radio from his kitchen: the news had just ended. Down Pleshey Road, and Meg Lee had her paper. She’d even glimpsed Charlie as she cycled up the short drive. The teenage son of the Dunnes didn’t know if his parents had received theirs, but I pressed him. He sighed, irritated, then went into the kitchen and came back to tell me it was there, opened on the table.

The houses were more scattered here. Charlie had only just started doing the paper round so she had the least desirable route, which took her twice as long as the ones that covered the centre of the town. Alix and I drove from Lost Road to the coastal road that led along the crumbling sea wall. We didn’t speak. The tide was drawing steadily nearer, rivulets of water running up the mud ditches. The long grass in the distance shimmered like a mirage in the chill breeze. It was probably not more than half a mile, but the flat road stretched ahead of us and we seemed to be getting nowhere, stranded in a monotony of scrubby grass, mudflats and oozing ocean. There was a faint streak of light where the sea met the sky, and I kept my eyes on that. I tried not to think of
how we were probably wasting our time, going in the wrong direction, further away from the truth, further away from Charlie. I used to think that if she or Jackson needed me, I’d know it and know where to find them, as if they could send out some radio wave of distress that only their mother could pick up. Not any more.

Christian called and I cut him off. Rory called and started saying something about how it was my fault Charlie had run away. I cut him off too. At last we bumped down the drive to where the Wigmores lived: it was a ramshackle cottage, with a sagging roof and stained, ancient walls. Small white lights festooned the tree at the front door. I knocked, and after a while an elderly man came to the door, wearing an apron, his sleeves rolled up. His face was whiskery and shiny and he was annoyed at being interrupted. ‘What is it?’ he said.

‘Did you get your paper this morning?’ I asked, without preamble.

‘Eh?’

‘Your newspaper, did you get it?’

‘My paper? I’m making the Christmas cake now. I’m putting in the glacé cherries. You could have asked me before.’

‘Sorry?’

‘That’s all very well.’

I exchanged a dispirited glance with Alix.

‘Did you get your paper today, Mr Wigmore?’ she enunciated loudly, clearly, and he scowled.

‘I can hear as well as you and I got it all right, but it was missing the sports. I like my sports pages on a Saturday.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, backing away, past the ancient tractor, the pile of wire netting and old doors.

The next house was half a mile further on, a red-brick townhouse that looked built for a residential road in a northern town, but had been plucked out of context and set down unprotected on this bleak spot, in the path of the wind and rain. Its square windows overlooked the sea in one direction, and toughened grassland in the other.

As she parked, Alix said, in the same voice she had used to Mr Wigmore, as if she were teaching elocution: ‘You weren’t the first, you know.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I said, you weren’t the first.’ It was almost a shout. ‘With Joel.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I opened my door and swung out my legs. ‘No, I didn’t know.’

‘He likes women. Usually younger than you, though.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, although it wasn’t true. I didn’t care about what had happened between me and Joel, and I didn’t care if there had been others before me. I knew that later these things would mean something again – unless, of course… My mind shuddered to a halt right there.

As we approached the door, Alix hesitated. ‘Is there a point in this?’ she said. ‘I mean, Charlie delivered the papers. Is this telling us anything?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘We’re retracing her steps. Someone might have talked to her. What else can I do?’

Alix nodded and rang the bell, then rang again. We both waited, our faces stiff with cold. A woman answered the door. She was wearing a blue housecoat. There was a mop in her hand.

‘Yes?’

Suddenly it all seemed ludicrous, hopeless, a meaningless
charade. I could hardly bring myself to speak the string of words. I glanced down at the piece of paper. ‘Hello. It’s Mrs Benson, isn’t it? I was wondering if you got your newspaper this morning.’

She looked puzzled. ‘My paper? Sometimes it comes late on a Saturday, so I don’t usually get too bothered.’