by Rosie Fiore
‘Come to the house at ten,’ I said. ‘We’ll see what the weather’s like and then we can decide what to do.’
He made it by quarter to eleven, which was better than I was expecting. I’d told Frances he was coming at lunchtime. She’d still been frenzied all morning and had changed her outfit about fifteen times, made me do and redo her hair in three different styles and had one hysterical crying jag when I said I wasn’t sure Marc would be staying for dinner.
‘You’re so mean to him!’ she screamed at me, and slammed her bedroom door.
I stood outside the door and patiently explained that as far as I was concerned, he was welcome to stay, but that I didn’t know what his plans were. The crying paused for a brief second and then started up again with fresh fury. I had to let her sob herself out. I knew how she felt.
The doorbell rang, and Frances went thundering down the stairs at a hundred miles an hour. I heard her ecstatic ‘Daddy!’ even though I was still in the bathroom upstairs. I squared my shoulders and marched downstairs.
As the day progressed, it became clear to me that Marc hadn’t changed at all. He was full of flighty rhetoric about his business successes, but he did admit that he had sold his house and was ‘sharing with a friend’. That meant one of two things – he was bunking on a friend’s couch and was penniless, or he had found a girlfriend who was footing the bills.
And yet the kids loved him. Jonah took a bit of time to warm up, but then he played with him with boisterous abandon. He took great joy in running off across the grass, turning to face us, shouting ‘Daddy!’ at the top of his voice and then hurtling back to throw himself into Marc’s arms. Frances stared at Marc, every second. If I hadn’t quieted her every now and again, she would have talked non-stop, telling him anything and everything about school, her friends and her dancing. Marc nodded and tried to keep up with the endless monologue. Every now and again he’d ask a careful question to show he was still interested. One of these was ‘Who’s Miranda?’ Unsurprisingly, Miranda featured large in almost all of Frances’ stories.
‘She’s my best friend in the whole world except for you, Daddy,’ said Frances, as if stating the obvious. ‘Her step-mum ran away and disappeared and now her dad Sam is Mum’s boyfriend.’
Marc shot me a sharp look. ‘Is he now?’
‘Yes,’ I said coolly. I didn’t elaborate further. I could see Marc wanted to ask some more questions but didn’t feel he could. He didn’t need to worry, however. Frances was ready to spill the beans.
‘Sam and his kids stay over at our house a lot. It’s like we’re a big family with four children.’
‘Sounds cute,’ said Marc, but the way he said it didn’t sound cute at all. ‘Gosh, I wonder when Mum would have told me about all of this?’
‘Around the time it became any of your business,’ I said crisply, and instantly cursed myself. I had sworn I wouldn’t get bitchy around the kids.
‘Yeah,’ said Marc in a slow drawl, ‘I can see how some guy living rent-free in the house I paid for wouldn’t be any of my business.’
I felt suddenly cold. He had a point. The house was his, after all. We lived in it entirely at his mercy. I did my best to keep my tone calm and even, but a wobble in my voice betrayed me. ‘It’s not like that,’ I said. ‘We’re just dating, it’s not serious. Sam has his own place. Like Frances said, his wife disappeared, so I help him out with his kids.’
Luckily this titbit was enough to distract Marc. ‘What do you mean his wife disappeared?’
I relaxed a fraction and filled him in on the story of Helen’s vanishing trick and its aftermath.
He shook his head. ‘Mad bitch,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t she just tell him she was leaving him, sue him for a bundle and cut up his suits like a normal psycho woman?’
He had some fairly archaic and misogynist views on how women might behave, but he also kind of had a point. I’d never understood it. If Helen had wanted to leave, why didn’t she just tell Sam? Why the cloak-and-dagger secret flight?
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘And Sam doesn’t know either. She just went, and she disappeared completely. No one knows where she is.’
‘Maybe she’s chopped up in bits and buried under his patio.’ Marc laughed. ‘Come on. I’m starving. Let’s go and get some food.’
Reading between the lines, I didn’t think Marc was all that flush with cash. He certainly wasn’t playing the beneficent millionaire of a few years ago who had swooped in, paid off the house and knocked me up with Jonah. So I thought we’d go for the burger place at the end of the high street. It was cheap and cheerful, and Jonah could happily throw chips on the floor without offending the management.
Sam
My great purge of the flat had revealed plenty of gaps in our store cupboard. I made an extensive shopping list and dragged the girls out to the supermarket to get all the things we needed. I could glimpse a golden future of well-planned, home-cooked meals served in our tidy apartment. Maybe I could get a slow-cooker or something. Make soups and stews and freeze them. Helen would be so thrilled when she saw how well we were doing. I left the supermarket glowing with self-righteous goodwill, and when Miranda asked if we could go to the milkshake bar for a treat, I agreed readily. The girls had had a dull day so far, with all the cleaning and shopping. We loaded the groceries into the boot, and, leaving the car in the supermarket car park, walked down the high street together. I was half listening to a long story Marguerite was telling me about a baby squirrel (she was currently obsessed with squirrels), and half watching Miranda, who was walking a carefully calculated three steps ahead of us, trying to pretend we weren’t together. She’s got so tall, and she’s getting slender, with a slightly womanly curve to her hips. She looks so like Leonora. It struck me how much the girls have changed since Helen left. How much she’s missed. Marguerite losing her first two teeth and learning to ride a bike. Miranda passing yet another ballet exam. How could she bear it? Unless, of course, she never really loved them at all. But I don’t believe that. I’m not sure what I feel – is it anger, or sadness? If only I could talk to her about it.
I thought of the details I had found for the woman called Helen Day, working in the agency in Stratford. On Monday, I could try to call the agency. But was that the right way to proceed? What if that spooked her and she disappeared again? Maybe it would be best if I went there instead.
‘Look, Dad, there’s Frances!’ Miranda’s excited voice cut through my thoughts.
‘Hmm?’ I said, looking around. She pointed, and I saw Frances walking on the opposite side of the high street. She was holding the hand of a tall, blonde man, chattering animatedly. Frances is a quiet, reserved girl, but she looked like someone had lit her up from the inside, and she was bouncing and grinning. Lara was walking beside them carrying Jonah on her hip, and she too was smiling up at the tall man. Marc. That had to be Marc. Funny, Lara hadn’t mentioned he was coming into town.
‘Can we go over, Dad? And say hello?’
I looked at Lara, playing happy families with Marc and their two kids.
‘Not right now, love. That’s Frances’ dad, I think. Let’s give them a little bit of privacy, eh?’
I watched the group on the other side of the road. So that was how Lara was going to play it. Cozying up with the ex because we weren’t speaking. Well, two could play at that game.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sam
On Monday morning, I dropped the kids at school and then rang the office, saying I was still sick and was on my way to the doctor’s. I boarded the Tube and headed for the centre of town, then changed on to an eastbound train to Stratford. The train was fairly empty by the time I got there. It was a little late for commuters, and too early for shoppers heading for the gigantic shopping mall which stood between the station and the Olympic Park. I left the station and went into a nearby coffee shop.
I got an espresso and sat down to look at the map on my phone. I’d put in the postcode from the Simon Stanley a
nd Associates website, and it looked to be around half a mile from where I was. I didn’t know Stratford at all and I took some time to memorize the route, so I wouldn’t wander around looking too lost and conspicuous. I finished my coffee and set off.
I hadn’t counted on the area being so undeveloped. I’d imagined a busy high street where I could find a coffee shop, or at least a bus stop, where I could settle in and watch the door of the office block. But SSA was in the only inhabited building in an otherwise half-built street. I felt exposed walking up the road. What if Helen’s office overlooked the street and she was watching me approach? I wished I had thought to wear a baseball cap or a hoodie or something. I was walking on the far side of the road so I could get a good look at the offices, but I ducked across the street and stayed close to the buildings, hoping that would make me harder to spot.
I got to the front doors and looked in through the glass. There was no one in the building’s reception area. Cautiously, I pushed at the door, but it was locked. There was a panel of buzzers and a laminated card with the SSA logo beside the top button but no other names. The building was three storeys tall, so I reasoned this meant they were on the top floor. Did that mean that SSA was the only company in the building? That somewhat scuppered my plans. I’d imagined sweet-talking a building receptionist, or, at worst, getting someone from another company to buzz me in. Now I had no way to get into the block, and I was just a slightly dodgy bloke hanging around the pavement in a deserted street.
I was at a loss. I hadn’t thought beyond getting there, and I’d imagined there’d be enough bustle and crowd cover that I could wait in the foyer for Helen to emerge from the building. I didn’t want to try to force my way into SSA and confront her in her workplace – having heard about Lawrence, I could imagine how she would respond to that. I had to retreat.
I cursed my lack of forward planning, and I felt doubly vulnerable walking back down the deserted street. I broke into a clumsy jog.
I was horribly out of breath by the time I reached the coffee shop by the station. It brought home how much I’ve let things slip. I haven’t run or gone to the gym since Helen left (cancelling the gym membership was one of the first cost-cutting measures I took). And of course my diet of fast food, booze and self-indulgent misery isn’t conducive to a svelte silhouette. Panting and sweating, I ordered another coffee, grabbed a bottle of water and slumped into a chair in a corner.
The coffee shop was a Starbucks – one of the ones set up with long tables and free Wi-Fi to encourage people to stay there and work. There were several earnest women with Macs and trendy glasses, and some blokes with hipster beards and tablets, all, I was sure, developing the latest ground-breaking app or writing the seminal east London novel. I had my iPad with me too, so I felt confident that I could sit unnoticed in my corner for as long as I liked, if I bought an espresso every hour or so.
I opened up the SSA webpage. It was slick and overdesigned, and a pain to navigate. There wasn’t much substance to it, but the few case studies they featured suggested they were on the up and up. There was a key personnel page (except they’d called it ‘The Gang’). I’d visited this particular page repeatedly. There was a pic and biography for the CEO, Simon Stanley – bald and young, and ambitious, by the looks of him; and the head of sales was a swarthy guy called Tony. There was the biography for Helen, which was pure fiction, or at least elided time considerably. It called her a ‘talented freelance marketer’ who’d worked on some key accounts, and then talked about her work in Australia. There was no picture. The last bio on the page featured ‘office manager and all-round guru Sophie Penn’, a beautiful mixed-race girl. I know how these small agencies work – they’re always trying to look bigger than they are. If they were featuring the office manager as key personnel on their website, then that was probably all the personnel they had. By the looks of it, there were just four people working at SSA. I had pictures of three of them, and I knew the fourth. My spot in the corner gave me a good view of the concourse outside that joined the station to the shopping centre. If Simon, Tony, Sophie or Helen left the office for lunch or to go to a meeting, unless they had a car, they would have to pass my window. I just had to sit tight and keep watching.
It was easier said than done. After an hour or so, I was jittery from three espressos and my mouth tasted foul. I was desperate for the loo, and my attention kept wandering away from the window. I glanced at my watch. It was 11.30 a.m. It struck me that the men would be more likely to go to a meeting, but also that they might find a strange man accosting them and asking about their co-worker suspicious. Sophie, the ‘all-round guru’, probably stayed in the office, emerging only at lunchtime. My instinct was that she might be a better bet for information.
Having reformulated my plan, I went to the loo and then visited the newsagent opposite to get some chewing gum to get rid of the stale coffee taste in my mouth. I also bought a copy of NME. I wandered around until 12.30, then found myself a spot outside the station to stand, casually reading, as if I were waiting for someone. She was likely to take her lunch sometime between 12.30 and two, I reasoned.
After a day of frustrations and dead ends, I was finally rewarded. Sophie walked briskly into the concourse at about ten past one. She was chatting on her phone and swinging an empty shopping bag. She was pretty – tall and slim with a mass of dark hair and wide, smiling, green eyes. I pushed away from the wall and followed her into the shopping centre. She walked around for a while, chatting on her phone the whole time, looking into the windows of shops. Every now and then she’d stroll into a store and I would wait outside. She didn’t stay in any of them for more than a minute or so – she was clearly browsing, rather than shopping seriously. It was the twenty-fifth, possibly too late in the month for clothes shopping on a receptionist’s salary.
After about ten minutes she finished her call and abruptly reversed her course, almost walking into me. I let her pass and then turned to follow her. She walked quickly towards the entrance, and I had to trot to keep up with her. Then she swerved and headed into Marks & Spencer. It was a huge store, and I was worried she might leave by another exit, so I followed her in. She was still moving quickly, as if she knew where she was going, and I found myself following her into the food hall. She went over to the fridges filled with sandwiches and salads, and started picking out items. She grabbed two sandwiches and a couple of tubs of salad, so I assumed she’d been sent to get a lunch order for the whole office. She stacked the items precariously on one arm and reached for a bag of crisps. The top sandwich toppled off the pile and as she lunged for it, the pile collapsed and she dropped everything. I rushed over and helped her to pick up the items.
‘Thanks.’ She smiled at me. ‘Should have got a basket.’
‘I’ll grab you one,’ I said, spotting a stack of them at the end of the aisle. I ran and got one for her, while she protested, but when I got back, she tipped her items into the basket and I handed it to her.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I always try to carry too much.’
I gave her my most disarming smile. ‘That’s a lot of lunch.’
‘Everyone in our office is stuck in this massive brainstorm, working on a big proposal,’ she said. ‘I got sent out to get supplies.’
‘Ah, I’ve been there,’ I said, grabbing a sandwich and drink for myself, trying to look like another casual shopper. ‘Will you be pulling an all-nighter?’
‘It’s probably going to be a late one. We’ve got this marketing executive who’s a real firecracker. She’s great, but she’s such a perfectionist. She won’t stop till every detail is exactly the way she wants it.’
‘Sounds like a nightmare.’
‘Nah, she’s cool. She just works harder than anyone I’ve ever known.’
‘Well, good luck,’ I said, and forced myself to walk away. I wanted to press her for more details, and ask her more about the marketing executive, but I was scared I would make her suspicious. The last thing I wanted was for her to go
back to the office and tell Helen about the bloke in the M&S who was asking after her. I paid for my lunch, keeping a discreet eye on Sophie, two tills further along. As soon as she’d loaded her purchases into bags, she strode out of the shop. She gave me a vague smile as she went, but she was already dialling on her phone and beginning another call. I knew she’d have completely forgotten me by the time she got out on to the pavement.
I had to collect the girls from after-school club at five, so there was no way I could wait around for the SSA lot to finish their brainstorming. It didn’t sound like Helen would be emerging from the building for many hours to come. I was satisfied with my day’s work though – I knew where the office was, and Sophie’s description of the perfectionist marketing executive made me even more convinced that I had found the right Helen.
I got back to north London with plenty of time to spare, so I went to the flat and sat down to plan my next move. I wanted to be able to catch Helen outside of the office, but it would only be possible to do that first thing in the morning or at the end of her work day. As a single, working parent, I couldn’t see how that was going to be possible. At the times Helen was going to work or coming home, I would be doing the same, and I also had to drop off and collect the girls. It might take a few days to catch her too; I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t miss her the first few times. I gave it some thought. Catching her going home seemed more likely than catching her on the way in. If I was even a minute too late in the mornings, she’d be in the office already and I wouldn’t even know I’d missed her. But if I could get to Stratford by 4.30 or so – from Sophie’s workaholic description, she’d be unlikely to have left before then – I’d have a good chance of spotting her as she left to go home. I could use the Starbucks as my observation post.
