‘We’ll tell you all about it at lunch,’ said Roger. ‘Sushila, you’ll stay, won’t you?’
Sushila agreed, and Grace’s mother said she’d go and fetch Sally while Roger went to the kitchen for the champagne he’d put in the fridge just in case. Grace texted Jamie, who replied instantly with a whole row of grinning faces. She had Marcus’s number now, and texted him as well. There was no answer, but she knew that he didn’t always have his phone turned on.
There was a celebratory mood at lunch, not dimmed by the small number of students on this week’s mosaics course and the half-empty dining room. Roger poured champagne, and Grace’s mother said, as he hesitated over a glass for Grace, ‘Yes, go on, she can have some.’
‘Someone’s birthday?’ the tutor called across.
‘Better than that,’ Roger said. ‘Better than all our birthdays.’
They all reached across the table to clink glasses. ‘To Flambards! To the future!’
The talk was all of the new plans: a possible new teaching space, bunkhouse-style accommodation for groups of children, adaptations for special needs. Best of all, as Grace saw it, a proposal to manage the lake and meadow as a proper nature reserve. ‘With expert help,’ Roger said. ‘We’re going to approach the Essex Wildlife Trust for advice.’
‘Oh, won’t Jamie be delighted!’ Sally said.
‘It was his idea,’ Sushila said. ‘And wasn’t that astonishing about Mr Naylor’s granddaughter?’
‘What’s that?’ Sally asked.
‘We really thought we’d have a fight on our hands, to persuade him about opening up to schools,’ Roger explained. ‘But it turns out he’s got a step-granddaughter with cerebral palsy, so he’s well aware of special needs provision, or lack of. When Sushila started explaining her ideas she won him over straight away. We’re going to look into extra grants we can apply for, and plan some fundraising of our own, and he’ll do match-funding. It worked brilliantly.’
‘It’s lovely to think of children coming to Flambards. It makes the best use of what we’ve got here. Sharing it. Opening up all sorts of possibilities.’
How quickly a day could change! Grace sipped her champagne, feeling the fizziness slip down her throat, the bubbles spreading to her head, her whole body. After all the doubt and worry, this had turned into the kind of day where nothing could go wrong, where everyone was full of optimism and hope and pride in a job well done.
After that, as they ate, the conversation split into two halves: Roger talking to Sushila and Grace, while Grace’s mother and Sally talked quietly together. Half-listening to all of it, Grace switched her attention when she heard Sally saying, ‘He doesn’t say much, just pretends everything’s fine, but he feels things so deeply,’ and realized that she meant Marcus.
Grace’s mother made sympathetic mmm-ing noises.
‘But this is such good news.’ Sally took a sip from her glass. ‘At least I’ll still have a job, and the cottage. Even if I don’t know when Adrian’s coming back. Whether, even.’
Grace had forgotten about seeing the white van earlier, but now she said, ‘Oh, Sally! I think he has come back. His van’s parked in the yard.’
‘What? Is it?’ Sally looked astonished. ‘Are you sure it’s his?’
‘I think so. It’s there by the cottage. At least it was when I came by, about an hour ago.’
‘Excuse me.’ Sally pushed back her chair. ‘I’d better go.’
Grace saw glances of concern flash between Mum and Roger.
Sally hadn’t returned by the time lunch was finished.
Grace cycled over to Marsh House and found Charlie grooming Sirius outside his stable.
‘So, good news!’ Charlie said at once. ‘Thank God for that. Uncle Roger must be relieved, and your mum. Jamie’s gone off somewhere with Skye, but Marc’s over there’ – she gestured – ‘mending the fence.’
Marcus was by the water trough, nailing up a rail, with Flash watching closely. Grace collected Plum’s headcollar and went through the gate. Plum’s head went up as she saw Grace, and she made her sweet nickering sound of greeting, which alerted Marcus.
‘Hi there,’ he called. ‘If you’re riding I’ll go with you.’
He sounded reasonably cheerful, in spite of what Jamie had said earlier.
‘Great!’ She gave Plum a Polo mint and buckled the headcollar; then realized that he probably hadn’t heard. ‘Your dad’s come back – did you know?’
‘What?’ He swung round to face her.
‘His van was there in the yard. Your mum went to find him.’
He stood for a moment uncertainly, then made a few more blows with his hammer, put away his tools and said, ‘I’m going over. C’mon, Flash.’
He set off up the field, and Grace heard a brief, ‘Got to go,’ as he passed Charlie and headed for his bike. She followed more slowly, leading Plum.
‘What’s that all about?’ Charlie asked.
Grace explained about Adrian, and Charlie pulled a face.
‘Right. Let’s see what happens next. Something’s got to change. Poor old Sally’s at her wits’ end, anyone can see that.’ She carried on brushing Sirius’s neck with firm strokes; fine dust and hair rose from the chestnut sheen. Grace had never known that a horse’s coat could be so glossy; glancing colours in the sunlight like shot silk. Charlie looked round at her, and went on, ‘He’s been getting more and more weird, Adrian, I mean. All those days when he doesn’t speak to anyone or just switches off in mid-conversation. And then there was that thing when he first heard about you.’
‘When he what?’
‘Didn’t you know? When he heard about you and your mum coming, and Uncle Rodge told him about—’ Charlie stopped abruptly and bent over the box that contained her grooming kit. ‘Oh. Sorry. Me and my big mouth.’
‘What?’ Grace stared at her, baffled.
‘I don’t suppose anyone’s told you. Forget it.’ Charlie picked up a cloth that looked like a tea towel and smoothed it over Sirius’s neck.
‘No! You’ll have to tell me now!’
Charlie gave an oh well shrug. ‘Uncle Roger told him you’d lost your leg in an accident and you’ve got a prosthetic limb. I mean he wasn’t just telling Adrian, we were all here, my parents and Sally and Marcus and Jamie and me, having Sunday lunch. And Adrian sort of froze, and went quiet, like he does. Then – all of a sudden – he asked if you’d stepped on a landmine. Came out with it just like that.’
‘A—’
‘A landmine, right. Though Uncle Rodge had already told us it was a car that hit you. A landmine! I mean, as if!’
Grace’s thoughts were racing; she couldn’t speak.
‘I mean it was completely daft, wasn’t it?’ Charlie went on. ‘Funny, even. How could he think that? But it just shows what’s going on in his head. Proves he needs help. P’raps now, after all this, he’ll actually get it. Otherwise he’ll end up in a mental home or something.’
‘So what happened?’ Grace managed. ‘After he said that?’
‘Oh, I can’t remember.’ Charlie was brushing Sirius’s mane now. ‘I think Uncle Rodge took him off into the garden and they talked for ages. Then they came back in as if nothing had happened. Nothing does happen, that’s the problem. Until it does.’
Grace thought of Marcus heading back to Flambards. To what? To a blazing row? To more silence? She couldn’t see how it would end well.
‘Anyway, you’d better forget I told you,’ Charlie said. ‘I shouldn’t have. Are you riding? I’ll come with you, as Marc’s cleared off.’
‘What about your arm?’ Grace would have preferred to ride on her own.
‘Sod my arm. I’m sick of everyone fussing about it. It’ll be fine.’
The word had lodged in Grace’s mind, chanting itself to the rhythm of Plum’s hooves on the tarmac road.
Landmine.
Landmine.
He thought I was a victim of war. He thought I’d stepped on a landmine and blown my leg off.
This was obviously the thing Jamie had been about to mention, that time in the hide, but thought better of it sooner than Charlie had done.
But at least I know now. And they all did know. Marcus. Marcus knew.
What if it’s me coming here that’s made his dad go weird? He looks at me and sees the war. Afghanistan. Everything he thought he’d left behind.
He sees me as a damaged person. Which I am.
Like him. Only in a different way.
It’s not his fault, is it? How he is. How can it be? He’s a victim too. He’s seen too much, been through too much. He can’t forget.
‘OK?’ Charlie called out as they turned through an open gateway. ‘Ready to go?’
She tried to shake the disturbing thoughts away, giving herself over to the joy of a fast uphill canter.
Later, cycling back to Flambards, she met Marcus and Flash coming in the opposite direction. They stopped, and Marcus spoke first.
‘He’s not there. No sign. Must have been some other van you saw.’
‘I’m sorry!’
Marcus shrugged. ‘No need. Probably best if he stays away.’
‘Do you really think that?’
‘I don’t know what I think.’
‘But he needs help, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes, he does. But you haven’t tried persuading him, like Mum has and I have.’
‘Now, though?’
Grace wanted to tell him what Charlie had said, to ask what he made of it, but he was impatient to be on his way.
‘Who knows? See you tomorrow, I expect. Come on, Flash.’
Grace cycled on, full of frustrated energy, doubting now that she’d actually seen the van. All her fizzy happiness about the Flambards news had gone flat. Instead she was thinking about Marcus’s dad: remembering the moment when she’d kicked him, and he’d stared at her wildly, startled and in pain.
And Marcus: unhappy again, when they could have gone out riding together if she’d kept quiet. She didn’t know if he even knew yet about being a Russell, descended from Mark. With everyone focused on the meeting and the worry about Adrian there had hardly been time to think about that, let alone talk about it.
She’d only made things worse.
Early, before Grace and her mother were up, there was a loud rapping on the door of the Hayloft. Mum went to answer, and while Grace was donning her leg she heard Sally’s voice, raised in concern.
‘… must have been here, but now I’ve no idea where he is! It’s all my fault!’
‘Wait, wait,’ said her mother’s voice. ‘What’s happened? Isn’t he still in Maldon, with his friend?’
‘That’s what I thought. I’d decided to go there this evening and try to persuade him to come back. So first thing I came over to the cottage to tidy up, and found a phone message from Phil – from last night! Hours ago! He was checking that Adrian had got back OK.’
‘Back here?’
‘Yes … so I phoned him – Phil I mean – and he said Adrian left there yesterday morning. Packed his bag and left. He was coming here – said he’d got work waiting and was keen to get on with it.’
‘But he didn’t come back?’
‘No, I think he did.’ Sally looked up as Grace entered the room. ‘When you saw the van, Grace – you were quite right. The cupboard door was open in the bedroom and there was dried mud on the rug. It looks as if he went indoors just to get something, and then I noticed his Barbour coat wasn’t on the peg by the door – he’d taken that. If only I’d got there in time … where can he have gone?’
‘Are you sure he didn’t spend the night there?’
Sally shook her head vigorously. ‘No. The bed hadn’t been slept in. And besides, the van had gone when I went to check at lunchtime, and it wasn’t there later when Marcus came over. Where is he? Oh, why didn’t I make more effort to get him back?’
Her voice broke in a sob. Mum passed a box of tissues; Sally grabbed two and blew her nose, then answered her own question.
‘I was scared to. That’s why. I just couldn’t see how things would work. And he was obviously in no hurry to see me. So I carried on doing nothing, putting it off. Letting Phil decide what was best.’
‘Come and sit down. Don’t blame yourself,’ Grace’s mother soothed.
‘I do! Where can he be? Why was I so stupid? I shouldn’t have left him to come back alone. I should have gone and fetched him.’ Sally let Grace’s mother guide her to a chair, but sat down reluctantly, ready to spring up again. ‘Should I call the police?’
‘Wait – you’ve tried his mobile?’
‘Turned off. And Phil hasn’t heard from him since yesterday morning. He’s worried too. He and his wife left for work, and Adrian let himself out later. Phil said Adrian seemed fine when they said goodbye. He was asking about the nearest place to get petrol.’
‘So, he drove himself here, called briefly at the cottage yesterday, took his coat and went off again.’
‘Why would he need a coat?’ Grace asked. ‘It’s not cold. Unless he was going to stay out all night?’
Sally gazed at her, while Mum asked, ‘Are there other friends he might have gone to? Relations?’
‘He doesn’t get on with his parents. I can’t believe he’d go there.’
‘Could he be in the workshop? Maybe he slept there for some reason, or even worked through the night?’
‘No, no. I went over there after I spoke to Phil. It’s all locked up, and the van’s not in the yard.’
‘OK,’ Mum said. ‘Let’s have some tea – can you do that, Grace? – and I’ll phone Roger and Ian and we’ll all think what to do.’
She made the calls, explaining, but no one had heard anything. By this time Grace saw that she was almost as worried as Sally, though trying to appear calm.
‘He could be anywhere.’ Sally sounded despairing. ‘How can we even start looking?’
‘Have you got a key to the workshop?’ Mum asked.
He might be in there. He might have barricaded himself in, Grace thought, and knew that the same thing had occurred to her mother.
Her brain swirled with awful possibilities. Adrian might easily harm himself, his anger turning inward. She thought of the confusion and fear she had seen when he looked at her.
Fear of his own mind and what it could do?
‘No,’ Sally was saying, mopping at her eyes. ‘There’s only one spare, and Marcus has got that.’
‘I’ll phone Ian again. Get him and Marcus to go over with the key.’
But a phone call from Roger, twenty minutes later, confirmed that Ian and the boys had joined him at the farm, and there was no trace of Adrian or his van. Marcus had opened up the workshop, and was certain that nothing had been touched or moved since he last went in.
Grace and her mother had dressed quickly, and within half an hour everyone assembled in the office. Grace saw Marcus’s expression, set and unmoving, and knew better than to try to catch his eye.
‘So it wasn’t true, what he said!’ Sally was still jittery with panic. ‘About being keen to get on with work? He hasn’t even been there.’
‘It’s time to call the police, I think,’ Roger said.
No one disagreed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Love, Even
Roger made the call, soon passing the receiver to Sally so that she could give full details. Immediately the situation felt more serious. The laughter of a group of guests passing through the hall on their way to breakfast felt out of place, as if from a different world untouched by crisis.
‘What now?’
‘We can’t just wait.’
‘Someone needs to be here, though.’
‘I’m going to drive round the lanes,’ Ian said, ‘just in case. Anyone want to come with me?’
Roger went with Ian while Grace’s mother and Sally stayed in the office to make or receive phone calls. Jamie said that he’d look in the fields and woods nearby, and although that seemed pointless, Grace decided to
go too, for the sake of doing something practical instead of just standing about.
‘Marc?’ Jamie stopped in the doorway. ‘Come with us?’
Marcus shook his head, looking at the floor. ‘I’ll stay with Mum.’
The weather was unpromising: the sky grey and featureless, a cool wind from the east carrying moisture that was almost drizzle. At this early hour the grass was night-damp, laced with cobwebs; normally Jamie would stop to look for interesting spiders, but he walked on almost too fast for Grace to keep pace. As they passed through the deserted farmyard they heard footsteps pounding behind and saw Marcus sprinting to join them, Flash lolloping joyfully alongside.
Grace stopped dead, thinking there must be news, but all Marcus said as he slowed was, ‘I’ll come with you. Got to do something.’
They walked on, not speaking. Jamie led the way along the track out of the yard, the way the three of them had walked on the night of the bats. This time, instead of turning right towards the meadow and the gate into the woods, he took the left fork, keeping to the broader, beaten-mud track that swept round behind the woods and on up the gentle hill towards Marsh House. There was another gate on this side, the one Grace had ridden through on her first ride with Charlie, and many times since. As the track curved round, separated from the wood by a barbed-wire fence, she saw the gleam of white through foliage: looked again, and grabbed Marcus’s arm.
‘There – look! Is that the van?’
‘Yes – there—’
The boys were off, running, too fast for Grace to keep up. She jog-trotted awkwardly behind, soon seeing that the van had been driven under low branches and into dense shrubs and brambles as far as it could go. It wasn’t locked; Marcus had opened the driver’s door and was leaning in.
The Key to Flambards Page 20
