Forcing a smile for the girls, Debbie collected up the tray and steadied her grip as the milk trembled in its glasses. Walking through the back of the kitchen, straight into the hallway rather than meet the gazes of the others as she walked through the dining room and living room, she padded up the gentle curve of the exquisite staircase rising from the chequered floor below.
She was relieved to hear giggling from Abi’s room as she approached. Knocking gently, balancing the tray carefully on one hand, she stepped in and plonked the gleefully received offerings onto Abi’s dressing table.
Noticing a twinkle in the pair’s eyes, Debbie grinned. “What are you two up two? Are you going to settle down?”
Charlotte giggled and agreed a little too readily. When Abi asked before she reached the door, “Can we watch a movie?” Charlotte looked disappointed that permission had been sought, as though the naughtiness of sneakily staying up when they were expected to be asleep was half the fun.
Her face dropped further when Debbie declared, “Yes. Why not? It is Christmas.” Contrary child, Debbie thought as she quietly closed the door behind her, the absence of giggling making her roll her eyes as she walked away.
Trotting back downstairs, a glance at her wristwatch brought hope and anxiety in equal measure. Hope that the lateness made Matthew’s return evermore imminent, and fear that it would serve to underline what she suspected from the start: that something terrible had happened to her husband.
“Phone the police again! Phone the hospital. There’s no way he would stay out so late. The pubs probably aren’t even open now.” Mary snapped her orders. Her unfortunate tone riling Debbie, despite her agreeing with every word.
She phoned Brian’s home number again. When it rang and rang, she was tempted to hang up, but then a breathless Sue answered, giggling.
“Hi, Sue. Is Brian still out?” she already knew the answer. The hilarity evident down the phone had the air of intimacy to it. Brian and Sue had never had children, though not for want of trying. They spent the years since giving up on the idea taking advantage of their never-interrupted bedroom.
“Mmm Hmm,” she giggled. “Matthew?”
Debbie moved the phone away from her ear to give it an incredulous stare. “No, Sue. He hasn’t come home and I’m really worried.”
“Stop it…” she overheard Sue snigger to her drunken husband. “Sorry, Deb. Brian didn’t see him. He’ll turn up. We’ll let you know if we hear anything… Stop it, Brian!” She dropped the phone and there was an agonising minute before she realised, leaving Debbie unable to make any other call and forced to listen to the amorous antics.
Grateful for the click and resulting silence, Debbie dialled the phone number on the card the police officer had given her earlier.
“There’s no sign of him in any of the pubs,” he said, having just returned from his beat to fill his nightly report. “And no-one heard anything from the homeless man either. Colleagues are all still looking out for him, but at the moment, I’m sorry, I don’t have any more information.”
Debbie couldn’t speak. She just managed to expel an “Uh-huh,” through the lump in her throat to let him know she was still there.
“Let us know if he comes home. If he doesn’t, we might have to consider him as a missing person… Officially.”
Debbie just rasped, “Thank you,” before pausing her thumb over the red ‘end-call’ button on her screen. Turning, the faces of her in-laws were no comfort. They were all certain Matthew was in trouble.
Chapter Twelve
“What’s the time?” Mary’s first words as she disentangled from Alan’s embrace, snuggled for comfort in his thick arms.
“Four o’clock in the morning,” he barked without a pause.
Pushing herself up, she rubbed her eyes spreading a generous amount of mascara around her face. No-one cared. Silhouetted in the bay window, Debbie stared through the glass, arms folded, expressionless, like a ghost from Bristol’s past awaiting in vain for her beloved to return from sea.
No words were needed. It was clear as day Matthew had not returned. Searching out her other child, she spotted her, draped over the arm of a chair, spittle dribbling down her chin, a snore trapped in her nose as air sucked in and out.
Wriggling free from her husband’s grasp, she left his motionless figure to join Debbie to stare from the window. As she placed a caring hand on her shoulder, Debbie wrenched away.
Arm hanging in the air, Mary allowed her lips to open only a crack to disguise the escaping sigh. Standing next to her daughter-in-law was too uncomfortable to bear, and she shuffled away with a vague murmur of putting the kettle on.
“I’m going back out to look for him. He has to be somewhere,” Debbie spoke in a daze.
“I’ll come,” Alan creaked forward in his chair. Arms resting on his knees and hands hanging between his legs, he looked as shattered as he felt.
With no more words, the pair made their way to the car, either deliberately or distractedly ignoring Mary’s shouts of did they want tea.
The Saab had gained a coating of frost in the few hours it had been still and they had to wait in icy silence as the heaters fought Mother Nature for control of the vision and safety. With a side-plate sized hole, Debbie wouldn’t wait any longer. Throwing the stick into reverse, with a quick backwards glance that offered little visual information, she floored the accelerator.
Gravel sprayed as the wheels spun. The tarmac gave no grip, hidden beneath a sheet of sub-zero slipperiness. Regaining control seemed unlikely as the car spun onto the main road running through Clifton Down, but just as the adrenaline flowed and Alan thought his fingernails would pierce his hands gripping the handle above his left shoulder, the car came to a serene standstill.
As though that was the way she always left the house, Debbie drove on, lurching forward, rubbing pointlessly at the screen as she rolled on down the hill. “He’s out here somewhere, Alan. We have to find him. We can’t leave him out in this freezing weather overnight.”
Driving down every side road, and side-side road leading off them, Debbie drove with the windows rolled down and the heaters on full, calling “Matthew! Matthew! Where are you? Where the fuck are you?!”
Stopping in a particularly quiet road, Debbie reached up and pushed the button to lower the roof. About to object, Alan’s mouth stayed open but silent. If his son was enduring this cold lying in the gutter somewhere, then he could manage to search for him in the open air Saab without moaning.
Zig-zagging up this street and the next, there didn’t seem a single one they hadn’t driven up at least once. Where else could he be? Pulling into a space occupied by ice-cream salesmen in the summer months, Debbie clawed at her face, peeping through frozen fingers at the view below.
Exhausting the roads left few choices for Matthew’s whereabouts. The river glistening red, gold and green in reflexion of the jolly lights adorning the street in such stark contrast to the mood in the car, suddenly had a dark demeanour.
“He won’t be in there, Deb. Why would he be?”
“Well, he’s bloody somewhere.” Throwing open the door, Debbie tiptoed, slipping in the ice, her arms flailed before she steadied herself at the water’s edge and scanned the riverbank. Could he be in there? Something catching his eye and he slipped in? It seemed all too possible. Turning away, she couldn’t bear to look.
Huffing at the concentration of not slipping in the ice, Alan joined Debbie’s scrutinising the surface of the water. “Do you think he’s fallen in there?” Alan gasped.
Debbie nodded once. “What else could have happened to him?”
“The man in the shop said about the homeless man…”
“The homeless man who was so angered at the gentleman giving him money and a few kind words, he what? Mugged him? Murdered him? It doesn’t make sense.”
“But the police said it might have been more people… a gang. Seeing him with all that money… People are murdered for a fiver!” Realising he was arguing
against his son having drowned in the river by suggesting he might have been murdered stopped him in his tracks. It all seemed so unreal; like it was happening on TV and he was trying to work out the clues.
“No. You’re right. What gang would be out on Christmas Day? There’d be scant pickings. No-one’s about. And Matthew would have gladly given the money. He wouldn’t have risked,” he was going to say his life, but settled on a more palatable, “anything.”
Debbie nodded. “No. He wouldn’t. But what he might do, is try to get a closer look at some wildlife on the river; especially if he thought it was in trouble.
As the sun slowly warmed the hearts of the night-time searchers, they both knew any clues to Matthew having slipped into the icy water could soon be clear in the growing light. Faced with that ever-likely reality, it was time for some reassurances.
“He might have been carried down river and be sheltering somewhere to keep warm. He’s a really strong swimmer.” Debbie knew that strong swimmers died in mis-judged forays into open water all the time, never mind being steaming drunk in sub-zero conditions. But it was hope, and hope was all they had right now.
Birds in the surrounding trees broke into a frenzied cacophony that made their hope seem well-placed. With the fanfare cheering them to their grim task, they edged, hand-in-hand for safety, along the towpath. Every lap of water they were convinced was a hand, or Matthew’s head bobbing above the waves. Their straining eyes could have been persuaded the Loch Ness Monster had made an appearance if that’s what they sought.
When they reached one of the many bridges traversing the River Avon, they had excited themselves to an almost certitude that Matthew would be found, clinging and grateful, to one of the supports holding the bridge’s walkway high above the water. When he wasn’t immediately visible, they hurried over the bridge, stopping in the middle to peer beneath them at the centre struts.
Not bothering to speak of his failure to appear, they decided with a glance to carry on over the bridge to examine that side of the river. Treading over the flowing water to the opposite side seemed a significant change. Maybe their luck would change too.
Gaining a comfortable pace was difficult. Too fast, and they wouldn’t feel sure they hadn’t missed him. He might be clinging on for dear life to an outstretched tree root, or perhaps lying unconscious on a beach formed at a bend in the river. Too slow, and they might never reach him before the river carried him further from their reach.
The tendency was always to hurry though. If they couldn’t see him where they were, then he had to be somewhere else: they had to be somewhere else.
The swift flow of the river carried a little piece of hope with it at every turn; optimism speeding away with the flotsam and jetsam collected along the river’s seventy-five mile course.
The sun having risen high in the sky, Debbie stopped abruptly. Shoulders sagging, she allowed herself one final scan of her surroundings before declaring, “This is hopeless!”
“Phone the police again. Maybe they’ve heard something.”
“They’d have phoned home. Mary or Mandy would have called us.”
“Is there signal all along the river then?”
Debbie moved her head from side to side as she jostled with the notion of allowing hope back into her head. “I don’t know. There might not be.” Checking her phone, her heart raced. One bar! It was possible the police or her other in-laws had been trying to phone. She dialled home first.
“Any news?” Mary’s breathless voice answered.
“No. I hoped you’d have some.”
“What now?”
Debbie murmured through her angst about registering him as a missing person, but her voice failed her and she clicked to end the call.
“Are you going to call the police station now? They might have heard something.
Debbie slowly nodded. Trembling fingers tapped away to bring up her last dialled numbers. The one she recognised as the police officer’s popped up where she expected, displayed next to the time 23.11, on the 25.12.17, Heart pounding in her ears, she was desperate to hear that Matthew had been found and was safe.
“Hold on,” was the response to her inquiry. “I think that particular officer is off duty today. I’ll see if I can get his notes up… Ah yes. It’s still been less than twenty-four hours, hasn’t it?”
Debbie grunted her confirmation into her phone.
“I know it’s not what you want to hear, but we wouldn’t be that concerned at the moment. It’s hard for you left behind, but literally thousands of people go missing every week. The good news is that most of them turn up after a short time, and haven’t gone very far.”
“If you’re suggesting he’s gone missing on purpose, that’s ridiculous. We’re the happiest we’ve ever been, for Christ’s sake!”
“It says here on your file that your daughter has made a recent recovery from leukaemia? I’m pleased for you, but perhaps the time before… when her recovery was er, in question. Well, maybe it took more out of your husband than you realise?”
Debbie was silent. What could she say?
“We’re optimistic he’ll turn up again soon. Certainly our investigations thus far haven’t found any ominous signs. No-one heard a struggle, there was no sign of him having gone near the river, as far as we can tell, and there’s no sign of anyone matching his description at the hospital. I think it’s a case of no news is good news. I know it’s hard, but waiting is the best thing you can do.”
Debbie’s voice was no more than a whispered rasp through the lump in her throat. “What do I tell our daughter?” she squeezed through the gap.
“Be optimistic. Keep calm, and please be reassured that nine times out of ten, things work out just fine. Okay?”
Debbie coughed in her attempt at regaining her voice. “The policeman last night mentioned making an official report; registering him as missing?”
There was a confused silence for a moment. “No. There’s no need. We are already taking the matter seriously, let me assure you. He could have been talking about the charity, ‘Missing People.’ They may be a comfort if he doesn’t turn up really soon. Or the Missing Person’s Bureau. They have a useful fact sheet…”
She couldn’t blame them. It was their job to remain detached and impartial.
Turning to her father-in-law, she forced air into her lungs and tried to sound optimistic. “They say not to worry. He’s bound to turn up. She reckoned maybe Matthew was more stressed with Abi’s illness than we realised.”
Alan nodded, willing to grasp onto anything. “Maybe her getting better has let out some long restrained emotions? And the deal at work with the MOD; making the perfect Christmas... It got too much for him.”
Strolling back to the car, they offered occasional optimistic titbits to one another.
“He did this after his GCSE’s. Fine all the way through, then when he finally got his results and they were brilliant, he locked himself in his room for a week!” Alan shook his head with a smile. “I’d forgotten about that. Thinking about it, going missing isn’t so out of character after all.”
Debbie did her best to smile. “My mum. She was an SRN. A more capable woman you couldn’t hope to find. But one day, she cracked. My dad had died a couple of years before and she’d kept it all in. ‘Coped wonderfully,’ everyone said. Ended up spending a week in the local nuthouse. She was on anti-depressants after that.” Alan’s downturned mouth showed he was giving the story due consideration. “She’s fine now. You’d never think it possible.”
“You never would,” Alan agreed.
By the time they reached the Saab, they were as happy as they could be that Matthew was just taking a much needed break and would return requiring their compassion and support, and perhaps a little medical intervention.
Chapter Thirteen
“Where’s Daddy?” a yawning Abi greeted as they stripped off coats and slumped at the kitchen table.
“Coffee,” Mary hovered with a fresh pot, and poured at
her husband and daughter-in-law’s nods.
“We think he’s taking some time away. Having a bit of a break.”
Abi’s pout was a relief and preferable than the anticipated tears. “At Christmas?” she said, eyes wobbling to say ‘That’s crazy.’
“I know. But I think Daddy was a bit more stressed than we realised.”
“About me?” Abi’s high voice seemed perfectly upbeat.
As Debbie floundered for an answer, her brain was too fatigued to come up with an explanation that didn’t sound like she blamed her beautiful little girl.
“Not just that, honey,” Alan interrupted. “He’s been under a lot of pressure at work and everything.”
“When’s he coming back?” It was the most reasonable question in the world.
“Soon, love.” Alan did a convincing job of detaching from his distress to comfort his granddaughter. “I’m sure he’ll be home really soon.” The sound of the words echoing from the oak cabinets were oddly reassuring. Alan sipped at the scalding coffee. Thumbing the handle fondly, he allowed himself a small smile. He’d been right. His son would be home soon. Why wouldn’t he?
“Why don’t you get some rest?” Mandy had sat on the sofa next to Debbie, staring at her in between sips of tea. Hugging the tepid cup to her chest with both hands, her leg swung irritatingly back and fore, hooked over its grounded partner resting on tip-toe to extend her short leg to the floor.
Her short glossy brunette mane glistened in the lights of the Christmas tree like a glorious accessory, her full lips wet with the tea combined with saucer eyes to affect the epitome of sympathetic grace.
Debbie stared into space, ignoring the question because it was bloody obvious. She couldn’t get any rest, wound like a coiled spring, ready to unleash kinetic force in any direction that opened itself to the possibility of finding her husband. How Mandy looked so immaculate; could even bother to brush her hair, or find pleasure in a cup of tea when her brother was missing was unfathomable.
Blurred Lines: A box-set of reality bending supernatural fiction (Paranormal Tales from Wales Book 9) Page 8
