by Susan Lewis
Maureen visibly blanched.
‘Just tell us,’ Andee snapped.
Penny’s gaze flicked to her, and returned to her mother. ‘It’s up to you,’ she said. ‘If you want to know …’
‘Your father checked,’ Maureen broke in shakily. ‘The police, everyone … It’s not where you were.’
‘They looked in the wrong places, but Daddy found me, once. He stared right at me, then he turned around and walked away.’
‘No!’ Maureen cried. ‘He’d never have done that.’
Penny didn’t argue.
‘What is going on?’ Andee demanded of them both. ‘Where were you, Penny? Who hid you? Someone, others, had to have been involved …’
‘Oh, someone was,’ Penny confirmed. ‘His name was John.’
Maureen flinched, and clasped her hands to her face.
‘John who?’ Andee pressed.
Getting to her feet, Penny said, ‘I’ll leave Mum to tell you. Oh look,’ she exclaimed, gazing out of the window, ‘you have a cat. How lovely.’
‘It belongs to next door,’ Andee informed her.
Penny nodded. ‘That makes sense. I don’t suppose you’d ever want another after what happened to Smoky.’
Maureen looked as though she’d been struck. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked desperately. ‘I thought … I’ve made some lunch.’
‘I need to go,’ Penny told her. ‘You two have things to discuss. I’ll be in touch,’ and moments later the door closed behind her.
Andee regarded her mother’s ashen face. The air in the room seemed to have contracted, as though Penny had somehow taken it with her. ‘So who is John?’ Andee demanded, trying to keep her voice even.
‘I can’t do this now,’ Maureen replied, clearly deeply upset as she got to her feet. ‘I need to think. Please don’t press me, Andee. It won’t help.’
‘Then what will?’ Andee shouted. ‘You’re going to have to tell me at some point …’
‘Just not now!’ her mother snapped, and leaving Andee staring after her she ran upstairs and shut herself in her room.
She didn’t come out for lunch, or accept a cup of tea. When Andee called out, all she would say was, ‘I’ll be fine. Please just leave me alone.’
Andee was so angry she wanted to beat the door down, but knowing it would only stress her mother more to be terrorised she kept herself in check and waited.
Eventually, still pale and visibly shaken, Maureen appeared downstairs and announced she had to hurry or she’d be late for one of her regular WI teas at Kesterly town hall.
‘And you think that’s more important than what’s going on here?’ Andee queried tersely.
‘I’m not arguing about it,’ Maureen replied, picking up her keys and handbag.
‘So when will you be back?’
‘In time for dinner, but I won’t want much. There’s some fresh pasta in the fridge if you’d like that.’
More worried now than frustrated, Andee said, ‘Mum, I’m not sure you should go anywhere while …’
‘Don’t fuss, Andee. I need to get out of the house and do something … normal. So please let me be.’
‘Then let me drive you.’
‘I’m not an invalid. I’m capable of driving myself.’
If it had been possible, Andee would have stopped her, but without getting physical there was nothing she could do. Nor was she able to go and see DI Gould, for he’d texted to say he was at a conference somewhere in Devon this afternoon, not due back until tomorrow.
Deciding to call Penny, Andee found herself bumped through to voicemail. Abruptly she said, ‘I don’t know what you were hoping to achieve this morning, but Mum’s very upset and I need to know what’s going on. Call me when you get this.’
Two hours passed with no response.
In the end, in need of some air, Andee took herself over to the pub where she sat at an outside table with a shandy, barely aware of the world going by as she tried to deal with the unsettling, even alarming turn events were taking. Her past, and all the perceptions she’d had of people and things that had happened, the beliefs in those she loved, the guilt that had weighted her for years over Penny, the longing she’d felt for a sister she’d wanted so desperately to share things with, none of it seemed rooted in reality any more. And why was her mother so reluctant to talk to her, when it was clear that she needed to lean on her now more than she ever had? For some reason Maureen wasn’t allowing herself to do that.
Becoming vaguely aware of a car slowing as it passed, Andee watched it absently, registering a young couple in the front who seemed to be staring at her. Were they friends of Luke’s or Alayna’s? She didn’t recognise them, and when they didn’t wave she simply assumed they were tourists and tracked the red Corsa round to the other side of the green, where it came to a stop a few yards from the entrance to the Smugglers’ Cave. No one got out, and Brigand Bob, all kitted out in his usual scary smuggler’s gear, was too busy seeing in a tour group to move the car on. Bob was very strict about parking, and the area around the green, especially outside the cave, was strictly off limits to anyone, except the disabled.
Maybe there was a badge in the car that she hadn’t seen.
‘Fancy another one of those?’
Shading her eyes, she looked up to find Graeme’s partner, Blake Leonard, standing over her, and felt a rush of gladness to see him. If it couldn’t be Graeme himself appearing out of nowhere, then Blake was an excellent second best.
‘No more shandy,’ she replied, ‘but I’d love a glass of Sauvignon.’
‘Coming up. Crisps, nuts, scratchings?’
Realising how hungry she was, she said, ‘Nuts would be good. Thanks. You’re home early.’
‘I had to go and see a client over on Temple Rise, so I decided to call it a day rather than go back to the shop. Have you spoken to Graeme today?’
‘Briefly this morning. Everything seems to be going well in France.’
‘Will you be surprised to hear that he’s asked me to keep an eye on you?’
Andee smiled wryly. ‘I guess not, but please tell him I’m fine, and he shouldn’t worry.’
With a dubious arch of an eyebrow, he said, ‘Right, wine and nuts it is. Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back.’
Admiring how upbeat he managed to seem when inside she knew he was still grieving deeply for the loss of his daughter, Andee gazed across the green again. The red Corsa was still there, and the young driver was standing beside it talking to Bob. Next thing, the two men were shaking hands before the younger one returned to the car, while the smuggler ambled back to the cave.
In spite of feeling surprised that Bob was allowing the Corsa to stay where it was, Andee soon dismissed the thought as Blake returned with their drinks and settled down opposite her.
‘OK, do you want to do small talk, business talk, or some other kind of talk that might explain why you’re looking so worried?’ Blake offered after taking the top off his Guinness. He was a remarkably good-looking man with sandy brown hair, clean-cut features and eyes that were as kind as they were knowing. ‘I can also do no talk at all,’ he added generously, ‘but that doesn’t seem like much fun.’
Knowing from his tone that Jenny had told him what was going on, Andee said, ‘My sister visited again this morning.’
Blake didn’t look surprised. ‘Jenny saw the Mercedes on her way out,’ he told her. ‘So how did it go?’
Heaving a deep, uncertain sigh, Andee said, ‘I hardly know where to begin, apart from with the fact that my family has apparently been hiding something from me for years. And I don’t just mean something, I mean information that I should have been told, that probably should have been in the police files, but never was.’
Frowning, he said, ‘Do you know what it is now?’
She shook her head. ‘My mother still won’t tell me, and Penny isn’t returning my calls.’
Clearly understanding how upsetting this was for her, he sat back in his
chair and regarded her steadily. ‘So do you have any theories?’ he prompted.
‘Not really. Penny mentioned someone called John. How many Johns do you think there are …’ She broke off suddenly and stared at Blake. ‘My mother had a brother called John,’ she stated, only just remembering. ‘We never really knew him, he was a bit of a black sheep, so no one ever talked about him, at least not in front of us children. I don’t recall him coming to visit more than a handful of times. He was into gambling, I think, or drugs, maybe both … He had a dreadful row with my father once. I don’t remember what was said, only that there was a lot of shouting and my father ended up throwing him out of the house.’
‘Did you ever ask your father about it?’
‘No, I was quite young at the time, maybe thirteen or fourteen, so I was probably afraid he’d tell me off for eavesdropping. But my mother told me later … that’s right … that he’d wanted Daddy to lend him some money, and he’d started threatening him when Daddy refused.’
‘A gambling debt?’
‘Possibly.’
‘So do you know where this villainous uncle is now?’
She shook her head. ‘As far as I know no one’s heard from him … Hang on. He died. Quite a long time ago. I must have still been in my twenties and there was something …’ Her eyes sharpened as they went to Blake’s. ‘They found his body off the coast of Carmarthen, I think it was.’
Blake’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Well, the first question that comes to mind, is did he jump, or was he pushed?’
‘I don’t know. There must have been an investigation … Maybe I need to look into it.’ She was watching the red Corsa again. It was pulling away, heading out of the hamlet. ‘Given my mother’s reaction to the name John being mentioned this morning,’ she said, ‘I’m going to guess that her brother was somehow involved in Penny’s disappearance.’
Blake said nothing, only watched her as she continued trying to pull things together. It was like attempting to complete a jigsaw in a fog with no idea if she even had the right, never mind all the pieces.
‘Maybe she just assumed my father checked out her brother,’ she said, ‘but in reality it never happened. I know it sounds odd, but from some of the things she’s said lately, there didn’t seem to be a lot of proper communication going on between them at the time Penny went missing.’
‘It doesn’t sound odd to me,’ Blake responded. ‘Jenny and I all but dried up when Jessica disappeared. It’s like you’re afraid to talk in case something you say will raise hope where there is none, or stir up guilt, or blame … It’s like navigating a minefield with something blowing up in your face every other step.’
Feeling for how desperate it must have been for the Leonards during those two agonising years of not knowing, Andee said, ‘Well, whatever did or didn’t happen with my uncle, we know that Penny was never found. Except she claimed this morning that she was. She said that my father saw her once, but he left her wherever she was and walked away.’
Blake blinked in shock. ‘Do you believe that?’ he asked.
Andee shook her head. Her father had been an unflinchingly honourable man who, more than anything in the world, had wanted to find his daughter and bring her home.
‘So why would she lie?’
‘Because she’s messing with us,’ Andee declared, certain it was true. ‘Don’t ask me why, maybe she’s getting a kick out of it, but she definitely wound Mum up this morning, and I think it was intentional. In fact, I’m sure it was. The big question, though, is what is she really up to?’
Maureen couldn’t think how this had happened. One minute she’d been driving home from the WI tea, the next she’d found herself here, on the wrong side of the headland with the car hopelessly stuck in a ditch. She obviously hadn’t been paying attention when she’d reached the fork at Pollard’s farm, and had somehow managed to veer to the right instead of driving straight on towards Bourne Hollow.
There was nowhere to go from here, apart from over the cliff into the rampantly foaming sea below. Thankfully there was a barrier in place to stop such plunges from happening, or she might have done just that. Instead she’d tried to turn around on this narrow, rutted track and her back wheels had dropped into a gully, so were now spinning uselessly in thin air.
Her eyes scanned the mountainous landscape around her dotted with sheep and cattle, dissected by trees and hedgerows. Beyond there was only sky and sea, a vast swathe of perfect blue with the speck of a ship in the far distance on its way to the docks in Bristol. Seagulls screeched and dived through the air, and she could see, but not hear the merry lights of Paradise Cove curled into the hook of the bay. No matter how loudly she shouted or heartily she waved, no one there would be able to see or hear her.
What was she to do? There was no mobile phone reception here, and Pollard’s farm was at least three miles back.
She gazed along the track, feeling hopelessly daunted by the prospect of such a long walk, too exhausted to do anything more than sink on to the grassy bank beside the car and drop her head in her hands.
Everything was crowding in on her, and she just knew that the next thing she was going to learn were gruesome details of all that her daughter had suffered at the hands of her brother and his cronies. She didn’t want to go there. She simply couldn’t bear it.
How had he hidden her?
Why had the police been unable to prove that he had her?
She knew so little of what had happened during that terrible time; she’d left it to David, knowing he’d had every available resource assigned to the search, that he’d have given his life to save his girl …
Daddy found me, once. He stared right at me, then he turned around and walked away.
It wasn’t true; David would never have done that.
So why had Penny said it?
Maureen could only despise herself now for how weak she’d been back then. How could she, a mother, have allowed things to happen without asking more questions, insisting on more answers? It was no excuse that her husband had been far better placed than she was to understand, even oversee, the investigation. She shouldn’t have been so trusting, should have forced them to let her be more involved, or at the very least more informed.
She was sure David had appointed a special team to interrogate John, for she could remember the relief she’d felt when she was told that her brother wasn’t involved in Penny’s disappearance. It wasn’t that she’d ever been close to John, or cared about him enough to want him to stay in their lives, she’d simply needed to know that he hadn’t carried out the veiled threat he’d once made to David.
Keep playing things my way, David, and I’ll make sure everyone stays safe.
Oh Andee, Andee, she wailed desperately inside. She so badly needed to reach out to her elder daughter, and she would, because she had to, even though she knew Andee would never understand her mother’s weakness, because Andee simply wasn’t the sort of woman Maureen had been all those years ago. She was someone who took control, who wasn’t afraid to stand up for herself and those she loved. If she wanted answers she’d get them, and Maureen was in no doubt that Andee would be expecting them now.
‘Hello. Are you all right? Is there anything I can do?’
Maureen looked up, and her heart gave a twist of shock as her mouth opened and closed. ‘Penny, what are you doing here?’ she asked hoarsely. She wanted to pull away from the hand on her shoulder, but her limbs were like liquid, the world seemed to be spinning. ‘Did you follow me? Why did you follow me?’ she asked.
Penny looked confused and concerned. ‘Have you had some sort of accident?’ she said.
‘It’s proper stuck,’ someone grunted from behind her. There was a man, with a beard and long hair inspecting the car.
‘How did you know I was here?’ Maureen asked Penny. ‘I thought you were going to London.’
‘Have you hit your head?’ Penny enquired, coming down to her level.
Maureen drew back. ‘Why did you go w
ith him?’ she asked. ‘Did he force you?’
‘We need to get help,’ the man decided. ‘Stay with her, I’ll go and rustle some up.’
Maureen watched him start down the track, then turned back to the woman beside her. She could see now that it wasn’t Penny, and felt a surge of bile rush to her throat.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, trying to dab away her tears. ‘I’m not … I got confused.’
‘It’s OK,’ the woman soothed. ‘It seems like you’ve had a bit of a shock. It’s lucky we were passing, you could have been stranded here for hours. What happened? Did you get lost?’
‘I took a wrong turn,’ Maureen told her. ‘Silly, because I live up this way, in Bourne Hollow, with my daughter, Andee. I should call her. She’ll be worried.’
‘Give me her number and I’ll run after Simon. He can ring as soon as he’s able. Will you be all right for a minute if I leave you alone?’
‘Yes,’ Maureen assured her, and after giving the woman Andee’s number she lay down on the bank and closed her eyes.
Never, in all the years since Penny had disappeared, had she imagined herself one day wishing that she’d never come back, but it seemed that day had arrived, and she couldn’t have felt more racked with guilt and remorse if she’d tried.
‘Mum, wake up,’ Andee urged gently.
Maureen’s eyelids flickered as she rose slowly from the depths of a strangely dark sleep back to the sunlit world. ‘Andee?’ she said faintly, seeing Andee’s face swimming about before her.
Easing her up, Andee said, ‘Come on, let’s get you home.’
Maureen looked around. ‘Where are we?’ she asked.
‘Bearing Drop. You took a wrong turn and managed to get stuck.’
It was coming back to Maureen now, in slow, horrible waves. John, Penny, the search, the suicide note that hadn’t been a suicide note at all, just a way of trying to get away from them all …
‘We’ll leave them to it,’ Andee said, referring to Blake and the others who were helping him to bounce the Punto out of the ditch. ‘Blake will drive your car back. I don’t think there’s any damage.’
