Mum brings a mug of tea to her mouth. She’s lost weight these last few months. It’s not surprising. She and Dad were as close as anything. Soulmates, she used to say. Sometimes they’d get mushy in front of us – Dad wrapping Mum up in his arms when he thought no one was looking, pressing a kiss down in the curve of her neck. Jacob used to screw up his eyes, while I pretended not to notice.
But all that’s gone now – the love, the spontaneity, the ferocious fits of giggles the four of us would get into over dinner. Something as simple as Dad slurping his spaghetti, or Cooper stealing a sausage.
Now nothing is simple, and everything is grey and empty.
‘I’m so pleased, Hannah,’ Mum says quietly. ‘Dad wouldn’t want us to waste it.’ She glows at the prospect.
‘It’s not as though it’s even far away,’ she continues excitedly. ‘He’d have chosen it for that reason, in case you’d needed us in an emergency. We could have been back in under an hour.’
‘For God’s sake, I’d have been fine,’ I say, laughing, though wishing I hadn’t. The hurt on Mum’s face is obvious. She sits down next to me, cupping her hands round a mug Jacob gave her one Mother’s Day.
‘Thanks, Han. This trip means so much. I hardly slept a wink last night, thinking about it.’
There’s an energy in her voice that I’ve not heard in a while. These days Mum is permanently drenched in worry. She only has to hear the door knock, the phone ring, or a police siren streak past the house, and she’s a bag of jelly. It’s good to see her like this, as if everything really is better in the morning.
‘And you know what?’ she continues, her mouth fanning into a smile. ‘I can’t help wondering . . .’ But she stops, shaking her head. ‘No, that’s silly.’
‘What?’
Mum tips her face to the ceiling before giving a little sigh. ‘It’s just that . . . Well, you don’t think Dad’s cooked this up, do you? Like, pulled some amazing stunt to . . . oh, I don’t know. To con us all, maybe.’ She hesitates. ‘But not in a bad way.’
I stop eating, put down my knife and fork. Something in my head thrums and whooshes as I try to work out what to say. I suddenly feel like the adult.
‘No, Mum, I really don’t.’
Her shoulders drop a little.
‘Dad wouldn’t do something like that. And how could it possibly be not in a bad way if he had?’
What does she think this is – a warped TV game show where she has to go through months of agony, wasting police time, driving herself mad every time a car pulls up outside the house or the phone rings, and Dad’s somehow cooked it all up?
‘It could be along those lines though, love. Think about it.’ Her voice is shaky.
‘So you think that when we get to the hotel, he’s going to leap out of the wardrobe, or walk into the dining room clenching a red rose between his teeth with TV cameras beside him?’
Ta-da!
‘No, of course n—’
‘Good. Because he’s not, Mum. He’s not! He’s not going to be at the hotel, right?’ My eyes prickle and my cheeks flush. I fight it all back.
‘Eat your breakfast, love.’ Her eyes are glazed and dreamy.
‘I just want you to understand that what you’re saying is . . . is not real.’ I’m hurt that her good mood isn’t because she was looking forward to spending time with me.
‘I do understand, love, but PC Lane said we have to look out for signs like this. In case he’s trying to tell us something. In case he was in a bad place emotionally, and now he wants to come home but doesn’t know how.’
‘Mum!’ I feel sick. ‘PC Lane also said she thinks there’s a good chance Dad may be dead.’
Silence.
I reach out and take her hand, but she pulls away.
‘Just don’t get your hopes up, Mum. He booked this break before he went missing.’
I think frantically, trying to come up with something that will convince her.
‘He must have had other things arranged before he vanished – like appointments and stuff?’ I can’t have her clinging on to false hope. ‘Like maybe he’d booked his car into the garage? Or scheduled a dental check-up?’
Mum’s face is stony still. I hear her breathing – rasping and shallow.
‘Yes,’ she says eventually, forcing a smile. ‘There was something.’
‘You see?’ I reach for her hand and squeeze it, but when I ask what, she looks away.
Gina
I didn’t know what to tell her.
Your dad had an appointment booked with a psychotherapist six days after he vanished . . . He’d been seeing her for months without me knowing . . .
I didn’t mention it to PC Lane initially because I didn’t find out myself until right before Christmas, and knew that she’d taken time off. I couldn’t face dragging it all up with a new officer, explaining everything all over again – trying to make them understand that Rick seeing a counsellor was not only completely out of character, but that it was something he’d simply never do. Not to mention that he hadn’t told me about it.
Rick and I always shared everything.
It cut deep.
Of course, I pondered for ages whether to phone the counsellor whose number I’d found, demand to be put through to her, begging her to tell me whatever she could about their sessions together, but I didn’t. I knew it would be futile.
In January, I called the police station and left a message for Kath, telling her what I’d discovered. She never followed up. Phone calls and contact about the case were getting more intermittent anyway, and I figured she didn’t think it was particularly important. Everyone had a therapist, didn’t they?
And now Hannah is asking about it again as we drive to Fox Court Hotel with Cooper slobbering on the rear window in anticipation. He’s not been in the car for weeks.
‘So what appointment was it that Dad had booked anyway, Mum?’
‘Sorry, love?’ I stall as I pull away from the junction, knowing exactly what she’s talking about.
‘You said he had something booked or planned when I mentioned it last weekend. I’ve been thinking about it and want to know what it was.’ Her voice is resolute, her chin jutting forward when I glance across at her.
‘I think we’re lost,’ I say, slowing at the next junction. I have no idea why she’s suddenly brought this up.
‘No, we’re not,’ she says immediately. ‘Take a left here, then right at the next roundabout. We’re 8.4 miles away according to Google Maps.’ Her phone sits in her palm as she tracks our way.
‘It doesn’t feel right,’ I say, looking each way before pulling out.
‘So what was it? A barber’s appointment? The doctor? Tell me, Mum.’
‘I don’t really remember.’ I lie so badly I imagine even Cooper could sniff me out. I desperately want to tell her, but don’t think it would help. As ever, I keep it all inside, knowing it’s safer there.
The discovery happened in the spare bedroom when I ventured in a few days before Christmas – nearly a month after Rick disappeared. He used the room as an office, but we also put guests up in there when they stopped over.
There’s a sofa bed – I’d sometimes bring him up a cup of tea while he was working, occasionally catching him napping on it if he was tired – and across the other side of the small room, there’s a desk set up with his equipment. The police returned his laptop within a few days, saying they’d found nothing of any use. Just the contents of a normal life – everything from his Amazon shopping trail to the latest job he’d been working on, which was a three-minute promotional video for the Scottish tourist board. He never completed it.
I was looking for presents – if there even were any, and it was only out of curiosity. Anything to bring me closer to him, maybe give me a clue. Rick was a big kid at heart and had always adored Christmas, getting far too excited for a man in his forties. It felt wrong prying, but I was hoping they might give me an insight into his state of mind around early November when
he’d confessed to having already bought Hannah and me a few gifts to fill the stockings he always gave us.
‘That’s so kind,’ I’d whispered the very first year he did it.
Hannah had only been a baby, and hers had been filled with soft toys, rag books, rattles and chunky bricks. Mine had contained beautiful lingerie, a poetry book, some incense he’d picked up at a market, and a framed photograph he’d taken of Hannah and me just minutes after she was born. The gift I’d cherished most, though, had been a necklace – a silver leaf skeleton pendant. I still wear it most days.
But instead of discovering the latest round of presents, I found a small notebook that had fallen down the back of his cupboard. He often hung his favourite jacket in there, and I assumed it had dropped out of a pocket. I’d seen Rick jotting in the little book many times before, and he usually carried it whenever he went out. When I’d not come across it, I’d reckoned he must have had it on him that day.
I flicked guiltily through the pages, not seeing anything I didn’t already know. Hastily scribbled shopping lists, notes about jobs he’d been working on – a record of equipment used, light settings, dates, who else was working on set. There were doodles and a password or two jotted down, though I don’t know for what. I looked at the last thing he’d written. It was a woman’s name and a phone number with Same time, Dec 5th noted beneath. Six days after he vanished.
I googled her: Jennifer Croft-Bailey. The unusual name threw up a psychotherapist’s website in our town, so there was no mistaking what the note meant. Rick was getting some kind of psychiatric help. But why? He was the sanest person I knew.
I rang the number – not asking for Jennifer herself, rather just to check it was a real office – and sure enough, a receptionist answered after a couple of rings, confirming the practice name.
I hung up, snapping the notebook shut and binding it up again with the elastic band that Rick had put around it. Then I shoved it in my box of stuff. All the things I’d collected about Rick. Newspaper cuttings, trinkets from pockets, and other snippets and glimpses into a life that seemingly had vanished.
I rarely looked at them. It was easier not to see what the sum of these little things might add up to. I’d tried, to begin with, but they just wouldn’t mesh together in any meaningful way. As it stood, they were just regular pieces of a very normal puzzle. A puzzle I thought I’d known all about. Later, I left a message for PC Lane, giving her the therapist’s details, hoping she’d think it important enough to follow up. I prayed it would help, though I was nervous about what it might reveal.
‘Mum, you’ve just driven past our turning.’
I jam the brakes on and the car behind hoots loudly. ‘Oh Christ,’ I say, flicking on the indicator and pulling into a lay-by. ‘I was miles away.’
‘It’s OK, Mum.’ She puts her hand on my arm as I struggle to get the car into reverse. I’m shaking. ‘Just take a moment. You look really pale.’
I catch sight of myself in the rear-view mirror. She’s right. My cheeks are white, my lips drained of colour, and my eyes are mapped with the thinnest of veins.
I take a few deep breaths before I drive off, making sure I exhale more than I take in, just as my own counsellor, Paula, showed me. I wouldn’t have got through the last few months without her.
Ironic, though, that Rick was also seeing someone. If our therapists colluded, I wonder as I turn down the final lane, would they have guessed we were married? Realised we were one and the same? Because that’s what Rick always said.
We’re like one person, me and you. In each other’s DNA . . .
‘Oh. My. God,’ Hannah says in that voice of hers. The one where she forgets everything and slips back to how she used to be. Carefree and happy, innocent and trusting.
She leans forward in her seat, peering out of the windscreen while making appreciative noises.
She’s mostly stayed in her room these last few days, though she’s still wanted to know where I am. She phoned me three times at work yesterday, checking when I’d be home, asking me to let her know if I was going to be late. I can’t say I blame her. Similarly, if she doesn’t reply to my texts within a few minutes, I start to wonder what’s happened to her and my mind shoots off thinking the worst.
Ripples, I think, remembering what Paula said. With Rick at the centre and repercussions circling out to infinity around him.
I touch the brakes, slowing our approach to the hotel, coming to a stop on the drive so we can take in the beautiful building. There’s no one behind.
‘Nice one, Dad,’ Hannah whispers, and for a moment it feels as if he’s in the car with us.
I don’t know what to say so I just sit in silence for a moment.
I feel overwhelmed with sadness, happiness, but also with love. Rick chose this place to celebrate our anniversary. We would have eaten fine food here together, laughed, taken walks, and fallen into bed at night tangled up in a glow of contentment. I adore him for the thought of it, yet I hate him for what’s happened. The terrible legacy he’s left me.
Where are you, Rick?
‘Right,’ I say, tears stinging my eyes. ‘Let’s get inside.’
I drive into the car park at the side of the hotel, and we stretch out of our seats, gathering our bags from the boot. I clip Cooper’s lead on to his collar and give him a rub as he lumbers out of the car. He’s been surprisingly good on the journey from Oxford.
Hannah is busy on her phone, so I look around the grounds, taking in the view. Down a slight incline from the gravelled car park is a beautiful lawned area, peppered with topiary bushes and benches, and the tall monkey puzzle tree I saw on the website. Further round the other side of the building there’s a rose garden cut out of the lush green grass in geometrical shapes. Beyond that, the land stretches down to fields and paddocks, with one side bordered by woodland.
The building itself is breathtaking and beautiful – from the gingery Cotswold stone crumbling with lichen, the dark and almost foreboding mullioned windows brooding with history, to the twiggy wisteria and clipped ivy clinging to its weathered corners. But its grandness is tempered by something softer. Something humble and inviting. Something that makes me hurry Hannah up so we can get inside and discover what it was that drew Rick to it.
It’s as if I can sense him already, almost see his face staring out at us, watching our arrival . . . not that of a woman in an upstairs window.
‘Hi,’ I say to the receptionist a few minutes later, allowing my excitement to grow for the first time in ages. Rick wouldn’t have wanted me to waste these precious days. ‘We have a room booked.’ Hannah is right beside me. I give her hand a little squeeze.
I never bothered to alter the booking to Mrs and Miss Forrester – rather I left it just as Rick made it, not having the heart to tamper with what he’d done. Although I did send an email saying that we’d be bringing Cooper. He sits obediently at my side, staring around, unimpressed.
‘The surname is Forrester.’ I smile, hoping to convince her that we’re not half conning our way into a room that was booked for a romantic break, rather that we’re a mother and daughter seeking a few days of normality.
Looking around the beautiful interior – the oak panelling, the polished sweeping staircase, the antique furniture, the calm yet unfussy atmosphere – it’s easy to see Rick chose this place with all his heart. So far, it’s perfect.
‘Mrs Forrester, how lovely to meet you.’ The woman’s face blooms into a smile. It’s then that I recognise her voice.
‘Did we speak on the phone?’ I ask, reflecting the smile back as best I can.
She nods, and reaches out her hand across the mahogany counter. I shake it, my arm accidentally nudging a little brass bell, making Cooper twitch his head round and give a high-pitched whine. ‘Please, call me Gina.’ I feel embarrassed now that I didn’t forewarn her about the change.
‘Welcome to Fox Court,’ she says, glancing between each of us warmly. ‘So lovely to have you here. And this is
Cooper, I imagine?’
She comes out from behind the desk. At the mention of his name, Cooper stands and wags his tail. The woman fusses him.
‘I’m Susan Fox, owner, receptionist, chambermaid, sometimes cook, cleaner and chief bottle-washer,’ she says with a laugh. She glances at Hannah, but says nothing. ‘Was your journey OK?’
Back behind the desk, she’s skimming down a preprinted form. ‘Though you’ve not had far to come by the looks of it.’ She smiles, sliding the sheet of paper across the counter. ‘Just fill in here and then sign there, and I’ll get you up to your room.’
She watches as I write, making small talk. ‘If you’re eating in tonight, I’d recommend a reservation for the restaurant as all our rooms are fully booked. Your husband specially reserved the Alexandra Room. It’s one of my favourites, and gets the morning sun.’
My heart curls up at the mention of Rick. I attempt another smile and hand back the form. Susan is tall and attractive, and obviously looks after herself – her white jeans and grey short-sleeved top show off her good figure, while her glossy hair, a chestnut shade of light brown, appears mainly blonde with its natural-looking highlights.
She’s quietly sophisticated and comfortable with her appearance, her confidence coming from understatement and simplicity, as if she doesn’t even have to try to look good. I’d say she’s around my age, but appears younger.
By comparison I suddenly feel frumpy, old-fashioned and not even vaguely attractive. But then I hear Rick’s voice inside my head, so real it’s as if he’s checking into the room with us. At least I have that over her, even if he is absent, and the way I feel is hardly Susan’s fault. She doesn’t know anything about my situation.
You are the most beautiful woman in the world, Gina. Every cell of you perfect . . .
I know he meant it. He always made me feel special.
Susan takes a swipe of my credit card, giving Hannah another glance.
‘Look,’ I say, knowing I have to mention it eventually. ‘I’m really sorry not to have let you know about the slight change of plan. I do hope it’s OK that I brought my daughter along instead of my husband.’
In Too Deep Page 4
