The Runaway Wife

by Dee MacDonald

  Foxy wasn’t. After what could only have been a couple of minutes Connie was aware of uproar behind her and, looking in the mirror, saw a frantic Foxy running towards the car, carrying a bag. There was no sign of the other two but bells were ringing and sirens were blaring in the jeweller’s shop just behind. Foxy burst into the front seat and dropped his bag on the floor.

  ‘Go! Go! Go!’ he yelled at Connie.

  She fumbled with the gears. ‘What’s going on? Where are the other two?’

  ‘Go, for Christ’s sake! They’ve been nabbed!’

  Dear God, what have I done now? Connie wondered.

  ‘What the hell were you doing?’ she asked as she pulled away from the commotion. ‘Surely you weren’t robbing the jeweller’s? I cannot believe this!’

  ‘That was the idea,’ admitted Foxy, hood up, looking round anxiously to make sure they weren’t been followed. ‘The bloody owner was supposed to be at lunch, just the girl in the shop looking after things. But the bugger was there and grabbed Marco, and set off the bloody alarms. Then this great big bloke came in and landed Gary on the floor, and all hell broke loose. Keep going, for God’s sake!’

  Foxy not only resembled Ben but she noticed he’d even got some of his mannerisms; the pull of his earlobe and the picking of his fingernails when he was nervous or scared, which was what Foxy was doing now. How old was he? Nineteen? Twenty?

  She turned down a side street. ‘I can’t let you do this, Foxy.’

  ‘Connie, for God’s sake…’

  Connie parked and turned off the engine.

  ‘Just get the hell out of here, will you,’ Foxy yelled. ‘There’s a bloody police station down the end of this road!’

  The boy was shaking visibly. Connie put her hand on his arm. ‘Whose bright idea was this?’

  ‘Not mine,’ he said, reaching for the door handle.

  ‘Don’t go for a minute,’ Connie said, still holding his arm. ‘No one’s looking for you here. Was it Marco who dreamed this up?’

  ‘Yeah, and every bloody thing he does gets fucked up. Gary too.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Me? I keep out of it. Well, not this time, ’cos Marco said they needed three of us. And I was short of cash ’cos the garage where I was working has just laid half of us off. Just when I found something I liked doing.’ He no longer looked as if he was about to bolt.

  ‘How old are you, Foxy?’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  God, seventeen, and the poor kid probably on the brink of a lifetime of petty crime.

  Connie sighed. ‘What’s in the bag?’

  ‘Notes, from the till. I only got a handful before the bloke got hold of Marco. Him and Gary were after the jewellery, see.’

  ‘Look, Foxy.’ Connie prayed she was saying the right thing. ‘If you hand that money in right now, tell them you got talked into doing this…’

  ‘You must be bloody mad!’ Once again he had a hold on the door handle and once again she grabbed his arm. Firmly.

  ‘I probably am,’ she said with a grin. ‘And I can’t stop you running away. But, if you were to hand that cash in right now, and – yes – apologise for having been persuaded to rob the jeweller’s in the first place, they’ll probably let you off very lightly. A reprimand or something. But you start spending that money and you’re sunk.’

  ‘Why should you care?’ Foxy still had his hand on the door handle but he wasn’t moving.

  ‘You remind me of my son, and I’m doing the same for you as I would have done for him. And I want you to find another job in another garage, and you aren’t going to be able to do that with a criminal record hanging over you.’

  Foxy thought for a moment. ‘I ain’t going inside no police station.’

  Connie thought quickly. ‘Leave the bag then, and I’ll take it in there.’

  He hesitated, fingering the handle of the canvas bag.

  ‘Please!’ Connie said. ‘Please! It’s important.’

  He shrugged and then nodded.

  ‘Now, where’s the police station?’

  Again he hesitated. Then replied, ‘A couple of hundred yards down on the right.’

  Connie took the bag from him. ‘Can you walk home from here?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s only ten minutes.’

  ‘Be off with you then.’ She took the bag and started to look round for a scrap of paper to write on. When she looked up again Foxy had gone.

  Police Constable Trevor Wainwright didn’t like being on the front desk, but the sergeant was in the office having his tea and his ham sandwich.

  Trevor had joined the police to catch criminals, not listen to hysterical women bawling about their bags being snatched, or dotty pensioners wittering on about missing cats. He stifled a yawn as a woman in a green dress came through the door, clutching a canvas bag. Now what?

  ‘Can I leave this with you, officer?’ she asked, laying the bag and a piece of paper on the counter.

  ‘What exactly have we here?’ he asked in what he hoped was his most authoritative voice, whilst fishing around under the desk for an appropriate form.

  ‘It’s money,’ the woman said, and then added with the glimmer of a smile, ‘I haven’t counted it, but I’ve left a note to go with it.’

  ‘Found it on the street, did you, madam?’ Damn, where were the wretched forms? ‘Can you hang on a minute while I get the correct paperwork?’

  Trevor headed into the office alongside, and found the sergeant had now started on a packet of custard creams while slurping his tea. After some searching he finally found the forms he was looking for and returned to find the office empty. She’d gone! But the bag and the paper were still there on the counter.

  ‘Shit!’ he said.

  ‘What’s up?’ The sergeant peered round the door, wiping crumbs from his mouth.

  ‘The woman’s gone! She’s just left this…’ he waved at the countertop.

  ‘I’ve told you before; you’re supposed to make sure you’ve got all your paperwork at the beginning of a shift. Anyway, she must be around somewhere. Check the CCTV – she’s probably in the car park.’

  But there was no sign whatsoever of a woman in a green dress.

  ‘So, what’s in the bag?’ The sergeant peered in warily before withdrawing a bundle of notes. He counted them carefully. ‘Three hundred quid. All twenties. Perhaps it’s a donation. What’s the note say then?’

  The piece of paper had plainly been pulled out of a small notebook. The writing was neat and legible.

  Trevor read:

  I haven’t looked in this bag but I believe it contains cash stolen from the till of a local jeweller’s a short time ago. I inadvertently gave a lift to the young man who took this money. His two companions are probably in custody by now.

  He very much regrets doing this, and has asked me to hand it in. Please be lenient with him. They were all kind to me and seem like good lads who need a bit of guidance.

  Chapter Eleven

  HONEYMOON HUNTING

  Roger McColl feverishly opened and shut drawer after drawer as he searched in vain for the tin opener. How was a man supposed to have a bowl of soup if he couldn’t open the bloody tin? Where had Connie put it? Finally he calmed down sufficiently to look in the top drawer again and there it was, exactly where it should be. In fact she’d left the kitchen immaculate, so he supposed he couldn’t complain about that.

  Had she been planning this for long? And was he to blame? Everyone would, of course, point the finger at him. And he hadn’t done a damn thing! He knew that he was considered to be an upright citizen, responsible, dutiful, conscientious, irreproachable. He’d been told this many times. It was just the way he was, and always had been. Unlike Connie, who didn’t get involved in anything much. God knows, he’d tried often enough to get her interested in golf. Other fellows’ wives practised regularly and some became jolly good players. Clive Hemming’s wife even got a hole-in-one a couple of years back.

  But not Connie. Always pr
attling on about it being cliquey. So what? If she was a member she’d be one of the crowd. Instead of pottering around in that bloody great garden they used to have. Gardens weren’t really his thing, apart from occasionally mowing the grass. Now, with this beautiful new bungalow, the builders had given everyone a sensible-sized patch at the back and a communal lawn at the front. His only complaint would be that the newness of it all, and the lack of shrubbery, meant that he had no escape from that nosy old biddy next door who kept trying to make conversation with him.

  ‘Haven’t seen your wife around lately,’ she’d called out just this morning when he ventured outdoors to chase away a neighbour’s cat, which was about to squat on the flowerbed. Neither have I, he thought.

  ‘She’s away for a few days,’ he’d muttered. Damn the woman. Get inside before she asks any more stupid questions.

  Well, he’d done nothing wrong, so heaven only knows what was going on in Connie’s mind. He’d always found the workings of her brain a puzzle. And she didn’t seem to care one bit that he might be starving to death. She need hardly blame him if his eye had wandered elsewhere occasionally.

  While Roger was hunting for the tin opener, Connie was heading north, and toying with the idea of revisiting their honeymoon spot. When she’d studied the map a few days earlier she’d wondered if she should go – just for a day. Then she changed her mind. Then she changed it back again. She would go to Harrogate.

  ‘We’ll have a few days in Harrogate,’ Roger had announced when they’d set the date for the registry office.

  It was January, it was cold, and Connie was pregnant. She hadn’t considered any kind of honeymoon since she’d spent much of the previous weeks throwing up copiously each morning, and any dreams of romantic Caribbean idylls or the like had rapidly been dispersed. Anyway they’d only had a week and very little money. But Harrogate? She wasn’t even too sure where it was. Yorkshire?

  Roger had been sent to boarding school a few miles from Harrogate. His father, an irascible major stationed with the Royal Tank Regiment in West Germany, had insisted on his only son having a proper English education but could find nothing either available or affordable in Sussex. He’d finally dispatched Roger to Arrodale, on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors, where they offered a concessionary rate for the sons of officers serving abroad, and where they still believed in cold showers, corporal punishment and bracing ten-mile hikes in all weathers. Roger said he’d hated it. But he’d become fond of Harrogate, where boys escaped on special occasions for genteel afternoon teas, thanks to visiting relatives. And his schoolfriend, ‘Dicky’ Dixon, just happened to live there.

  ‘I’d rather like to see the old place again,’ Roger had said. ‘And we’ll find a nice cosy hotel with log fires and cream teas.’

  As it hadn’t been too cold, Roger had suggested a walk on the moors and was then horrified to discover Connie’s lack of appropriate footwear or outerwear. Thus the first day of their honeymoon was spent in pursuit of walking boots and a ‘proper’ anorak for Connie, who would have been perfectly happy strolling round the Harlow Carr gardens, winter or not. And the hotel did indeed have log fires and afternoon tea with tiered plates of dainty sandwiches, scones and tiny cakes coated in lurid pink and green icing.

  Now she struggled to remember the name of the place. Was it the Huntsman’s Horn, or the Huntsman’s Return, or the Huntsman’s Something-or-Other? A sturdy, grey, stone building, probably Victorian. And, forty-one years later, what would be the chances of it still being a hotel? But you could never be sure. And she had to find Harrogate first, never mind the Huntsman’s anything.

  Thus Connie was relieved, and not a little surprised, to reach Harrogate without taking any wrong turnings. And she was delighted to see a pleasant-looking B&B, with vacancies and a car park, on her way to the town centre. She’d treat herself to one night and have a look round tomorrow.

  ‘I spent my honeymoon here,’ Connie informed Ellie, the amiable young landlady, as she was shown to her room.

  ‘What, right here?’ Ellie pointed towards the floor.

  ‘No, no, not right here, but in Harrogate. Somewhere called the Huntsman or the Hunter or something like that. Nice old building opposite a park. My husband would probably remember.’ Knowing Roger, he’d probably still got the receipt.

  ‘He’s not with you?’

  ‘No.’ Connie, eager to avoid awkward questions, added, ‘I’ll have to call him.’

  But of course she wouldn’t ask him. She’d look around for some likely landmarks and find the place herself.

  Now, because it was late, Connie had a stroll around, then opted for a pub lasagne and a couple of glasses of Merlot before heading back to the B&B for an early night.

  But sleep eluded her. First of all she thought about Foxy, and what might become of him. And whether she’d been seen; were the police on the lookout for a little green Ford? And then she recalled her honeymoon. She’d never dreamed she’d come back here alone, out of choice, so many years later. What did that say about her marriage? she wondered.

  Connie tossed and turned. Why ever had she come here? Had she really thought that Harrogate might provide an answer to the slow deterioration of her marriage? Well, she was here now so she might as well have a look round in the hope of being able to reconnect with the way she’d felt about her marriage then.

  Connie clearly remembered the large park opposite the hotel, which had had ornate wrought-iron gates, and several tennis courts. Not that anyone had been playing tennis in January.

  ‘My husband can’t remember the name either,’ she lied ruefully to Ellie at breakfast in the morning. However, Ellie had kindly marked out some possible locations on a map of the town, and Connie decided to try them all, particularly as they were within walking distance.

  It was a case of third time lucky. She spotted the elaborate gates first, and then the tennis courts, but nobody was playing today either. The gates, recently painted a glossy dark green, creaked as she entered. Remembering that the hotel would have been some way along on her left, she skirted the path on the inner perimeter for several yards until, across the busy road, she espied an ugly concrete edifice with ‘Hunter’s Lodge’ emblazoned in flashing orange lights across the front. And, in case she missed that, they flashed down the sides as well. Whatever had happened to the old building? Horrified, she sat down on a bench facing the road and stared across at Hunter’s Lodge. It looked exactly the same as countless other overnight stops, and doubtless the rooms would also look exactly the same as the one she’d occupied in Manchester a couple of nights before. She felt sure Roger would be equally horrified. If he knew. If she decided to tell him.

  Connie continued to stare at the flashing orange lettering through four lanes of heavy traffic. It had been a quiet, two-lane road back then. She took a picture with her phone, in case she ever did decide to tell her husband. And then she recalled the room in the old-fashioned hotel, with its four-poster bed and the bathroom down the corridor. Nobody expected en-suites then.

  Due to her pregnancy it hadn’t been a wildly romantic honeymoon, but Roger had been caring and considerate. Even during that hike on the moors he’d insisted that she sat down periodically on any suitable boulder. It had been cold and windy and Connie could still remember how icy those boulders had felt under her bottom. And the newly bought boots had hurt like hell.

  Roger had been adamant that Connie must meet Dicky Dixon, who still lived in Harrogate with his overbearing wife, Sonia. Sonia was one of those women who knew everything. And everybody. And, as she’d given birth some months previously, she’d been an expert on that as well.

  Roger and Dicky had reminisced continuously throughout that long, tedious evening, with much guffawing and back-slapping. Dicky had an endless repertoire of smutty, schoolboy jokes at which Roger laughed uproariously. Connie had willed the evening away but recalled Roger still chortling hours later as he collapsed onto the four-poster.

  Had they had anything in common ev
en then, except an embryo? she wondered. She’d so loved her garden but, as far as Roger was concerned, a garden meant reluctantly pushing a mower around each week when he could have been playing golf. And Connie had never taken to golf. Nevertheless, she’d been fond enough of Roger to have three more children and stick with him all these years. And, in his younger days, he was a very good-looking man. But when had the indifference really set in…? Perhaps her children, the floristry and, in summer, her garden had occupied too much of her time. Then Roger’s newly set up accountancy firm, plus golf, of course, had occupied most of his. Their shared time had centred mainly on birthdays and Christmases and holidays. But weren’t all marriages like that? Connie wasn’t sure. She had several friends who still openly adored their husbands and did everything as a twosome.

  In retrospect Roger had been, and was, a dutiful husband. And I’m a dutiful wife, Connie thought. But is being dutiful the recipe for a happy marriage? she considered. Probably not.

  Connie crossed the road with difficulty, dodging between cars and trucks, and entered the deserted lobby of Hunter’s Lodge. A bored-looking youth glanced up momentarily from his laptop and said, ‘Sorry, love, we’re full.’

  ‘I don’t want a room,’ Connie said. ‘I just wondered if you might know what happened to the nice old hotel that used to be here?’

  He looked at her blankly. ‘Nah,’ he replied. ‘I only been here a couple of months.’

  ‘Well, is there anyone around who might know?’

  He sighed and yelled into an inner office, ‘Glad-ys!’

  Gladys, hefty and hennaed, emerged with much tut-tutting at being disturbed from whatever it was she’d been doing. ‘What is it now, Kevin?’

  Kevin pointed mutely at Connie, who repeated her request. ‘I spent my honeymoon here, you see,’ she added.

  Gladys, beneath the henna and many layers of make-up, appeared to be around sixty.