Thorn in the Flesh

by Anne Brooke

  ‘Where are you, Nicky?’ she whispered. ‘What’s happening here? What’s really going on?’

  She had no idea how long the travel preparations took, but it seemed as if she’d been left in a slow stretch of darkness with no end to it by the time David opened the door again.

  He coughed and his fingers fiddled with the door-jamb. She could see he was sweating. Behind him, she glimpsed a flash of Louise’s pink coat.

  ‘Do you …?’ he began, coughed and tried again, ‘Do you want to say goodbye to the twins?’

  She didn’t know, but was glad he’d asked her. So she walked towards him until she could see the lines at the corners of his mouth and round his eyes. ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  Under the gaze of David and his mother, Kate smiled for the children as best she was able.

  ‘You’ll be good, won’t you?’ she said. ‘Have a lovely time with your grandmother. Don’t keep her up too late now.’

  Louise giggled and Charlotte waved solemnly.

  ‘Goodbye, Auntie Katie,’ she whispered.

  Kate watched from the threshold as David helped the twins into their grandmother’s Renault, making sure both child seats were securely in place. She waved as they peered out of the window and saw their answering waves as the car drew away. David remained leaning on the gate, gazing out into the street in the direction his children had gone. Even from this distance, she could sense the tension in his hands as he gripped the gate bars.

  She waited for him to walk back down the path.

  Only when he was almost level with her, did she break the impasse.

  ‘I can talk, if you want me to talk,’ she said. ‘Tell you more if you need to know it.’

  ‘No.’ He shook himself as if shaking away something unwanted and his voice was rough. ‘We should go to the police now. That’s all that matters.’

  They parked in the Waitrose car park, although it took several minutes to find a space. This evening the ticket barrier wasn’t working, so there was no need to buy something in the shop in order to be able to leave. Kate had never worked out why sometimes the barrier was operational and sometimes it simply wasn’t there. Another one of the peculiarities of life, she thought, and then cursed herself for thinking of something so trivial at such a time.

  David walked along the edge of the car park and strode across the road, heading straight towards the 1960s-style concrete and glass police station as if unconscious of the volume of traffic surging past him. Kate almost cried out a warning but by then he was safely on the other side and there was no need. She followed him across, stumbling as she too dodged through the cars, who hooted as they continued on their way. They must think we’re both mad, she thought, but they don’t know anything. They don’t know what’s going on. How normal and everyday we must look – simply a man and a woman crossing a road, but they don’t know why we’re here. But then again, in their cars and going about their separate journeys, they look normal to me, and I don’t know anything, I don’t know why they’re there either. God help me, I wish it was over, I wish Nicky was here and none of this was happening. I wish … I wish …

  Too late for wishing. She was beside her companion now and together the two of them entered the police station.

  The foyer was small and smelt of polish. As if someone had tried recently to give the place a more approachable air but hadn’t been too serious about the mission. No-one was around. David rang the bell on the counter and, while they waited, Kate stared at the plain white walls and the small selection of crime prevention posters and flicked through the scattering of leaflets exhorting her to lock her car, join a Neighbourhood Watch scheme and keep a close eye on her personal belongings. She almost snorted, but didn’t want to draw her companion’s attention. If only all crime could be so easily prevented, she thought.

  Without warning, the door behind the counter opened and a trim, young man dressed in uniform smiled across at them before locking the door behind him.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir, madam. Can I help you?’

  She could tell from his expression that he didn’t recognise her. No reason for him to do so, however, she reminded herself. Her case had been dealt with from Guildford, not from here. To them, she was simply another statistic. Nothing special, nothing rare. She hoped they would listen seriously then to what she and David had to say.

  It was David who explained the circumstances, his voice clipped and his sentences broken. As Kate drew nearer to him in an attempt to offer support, he turned further towards the policeman, cutting her out. She could smell the tang of sweat and aftershave rising from his skin like mist.

  ‘So you see. My wife – Nicky – is missing. Since yesterday evening. I know it’s too soon to … but. The circumstances. Her friend, Kate. We think it’s deliberate. Threats, you see.’

  He stopped abruptly. The officer nodded, as if the explanation had made any kind of sense at all.

  ‘Yes, I see, sir. Since yesterday. I see. Can you tell me whether she might have been in London at all, perhaps? With the situation as it is, it might be …’

  He trailed off and David shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No, Nicky didn’t go to London. She was busy painting for an exhibition, here in Godalming. There’d have been no need for her to be anywhere else.’

  ‘I see, sir. That’s good. Then perhaps you’d like to come with me into one of the interview rooms and we can take a statement from you both, complete one of our forms.’

  ‘No.’ David’s face was white and he was shaking. ‘No. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to waste time. I want someone to find my wife and find her now. I don’t know … I can’t … Nicky …’

  His face crumpled and he wiped one hand furiously over his face. Kate could see he was beyond words and, reaching out, she touched his arm. This time, he didn’t flinch.

  ‘I know, I know,’ she said, as if talking to an unruly child. ‘We all want that, David. But if we do what the police ask, then the chances of getting Nicky back sooner are improved. If we complete the paperwork, then we can all help to find her. All right?’

  After a couple of moments, David nodded and Kate gave the officer a brief smile. The two of them followed him through the door, which he unlocked for them, and then along a corridor into another room, this one with no windows and furnished only with a screwed-down wooden table and three or four chairs.

  It took almost an hour. David began slowly, with Kate interjecting her concerns and then little by little taking over the narrative with the knowledge of past facts while the policeman listened and noted down the details in a neat, almost feminine hand. Now and again, Kate found herself wondering when she was going to wake up, when she would be transported back into reality. It seemed ridiculous but it was so. Her voice flowed on, something separate from herself and, all the time, behind her foremost thoughts, the image of Nicky drifted, sometimes nearer, sometimes further away and she had to struggle to keep down the rising tide of dread. What was happening to Nicky? Why had she been taken? Was she right in her fear that the man threatening her – she couldn’t yet bring herself to say “my son” to anyone other than herself – had done this also? Was she over-reacting? Would the police laugh in her face, tell them both to go home and reassure them that Nicky would be waiting when they arrived?

  But no, her whole being told her she was right. Yes, she could agree with the police if they told her she was jumping to conclusions, but they only saw the surface, not the truths that lay beneath. They hadn’t seen the letters she’d been receiving, and which at last she was telling them about now, or the shadowy figure with its aura of subtle menace on the lawn. Neither had they experienced for themselves the devastation of her own rape. Not for the first time, she acknowledged her fault in not bringing the letters to the police earlier, either before or after her attack, or later when the pressure mounted, and she was forced to shut her eyes and swallow down the knowledge of it. She couldn’t have done it though; she couldn’t have ad
mitted what she suspected then and knew, almost for sure, now. Such a confession would have been like being raped again.

  ‘Would you like a glass of water, madam? Or a coffee? Tea?’

  She opened her eyes and glimpsed the officer’s concerned face. It was a time for strength, not weakness, so she shook her head.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m all right.’

  Afterwards, she couldn’t remember what else she’d said or what she’d had to sign. At the door to the outside world, the officer – whose name she couldn’t remember, although she was aware of David taking his card and slipping it into his pocket – smiled a wasted reassurance and promised to make the usual investigations. Kate didn’t know what they might be, but couldn’t imagine anything except failure.

  For another moment, the two of them stood in silence and stared out at the town. She could hear the ragged hum of cars and people, and from across the road the lights from Waitrose lit up the starkness of the view. She noticed a smell of traffic fumes and rain.

  Without a word, David strode to the car, with Kate scurrying along in his wake. She wondered if she should suggest buying provisions now they were here: something basic like milk, bread, coffee. Whether or not such purchases were necessary. But in the end he simply drove back home, and the silence continued to fester, like pain, or grief.

  She followed him inside the house, brushing past the hanging ivy and closing the door behind them. She didn’t know whether she was shutting the world out, or themselves in.

  David headed straight for the kitchen, and she could hear the sound of cupboards being opened and the kettle switched on. Without the children, or Nicky, the house seemed only a shell, and Kate stared at her reflection in the mirror. She looked gaunt and grey, as if she’d not slept or eaten in a long time. Nicky, where are you? she thought. Please, please come back. I’m sorry.

  Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply. From now on, she would have to be the wise and strong one. There was no-one else. Somehow everything that had happened over recent months seemed to have been leading inexorably to this; at last it was up to her.

  She walked into the kitchen. The kettle had finished boiling, a trail of steam rising up and along the yellow walls. David was sitting slumped at the table, his head on his hands. All around him, the scent of his aftershave drifted like a protective cloud. She didn’t know how to reach him.

  For lack of any clear idea of what to do next, Kate made coffee. She thought about tea but rejected the idea as too obvious. Besides, tea was comforting. Here there was no room for comfort; here they must be alert, ready for action. Of any kind.

  When she placed the cup, an apple, and a couple of slices of cheese that she’d found in the fridge, next to David’s elbow, he muttered something short and dark. She sat down opposite him, gripping her own cup as if it might fly away and escape her grasp.

  ‘You need to drink,’ she said. ‘And eat. Afterwards we have to talk. Then we can decide what to do.’

  The unaccustomed sharpness in her tone must have pierced David’s armoury. His head jerked up and he stared at her, eyes blinking rapidly. Still he did nothing.

  ‘Do it,’ she said, leaning forward and trying to will him to courage with her gaze alone. ‘If we want to help Nicky, we have to be strong.’

  He ate, staring up at Kate between bites, saying nothing. Then he drank his coffee, sip by sip. Watching him, she let hers go cold, finding after all that she didn’t need it.

  When he’d finished, she stacked the crockery in the dishwasher and sat down again. Finally he spoke.

  ‘You don’t have to be here,’ he said, spitting out the words as if they were a rotten taste in his mouth. ‘The police know everything now. They’ll find my wife for me. My wife, Kate. Not just your friend. My wife.’

  Kate stared back at him. She swallowed and felt the sound of it echo through her body.

  ‘Yes, I think they will,’ she said, ignoring the heavy undercurrent of him opposite her. ‘But it will be too slow and too late. We have to do something ourselves to find Nicky and get her back.’

  ‘What then?’ his eyes glittered in the wall-light and she could see the tightness of his jaw. His words now sounded staccato, like small daggers. ‘What should we do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But I know we must do something.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Together they sat in the living room and made a plan. Or rather she made a plan and David merely sat and listened. Kate found that the sound of her voice itself ruffled her nerves. It was as if she were talking and talking, trying to be logical, cool-hearted, when all she wanted to do was run from this house and the man listening to her, race wildly through the streets shouting Nicky’s name and banging on doors until someone somewhere told her where her friend might be.

  On a sheet of paper, Kate made a list of Nicky’s friends, acquaintances and contacts, the last category mostly people she’d met through her painting. To this, David added relatives – not many of those of course, and all but one lived in Scotland. It was virtually the same list they’d already given to the police and Kate wished she’d had the sense to ask them for a copy before leaving the station.

  Halfway through her efforts, David asked, ‘Why are we bothering to do this then? If you’re so sure that this man who’s been threatening you has taken Nicky, then why aren’t we out looking for her? Why aren’t we doing our best to bloody well find her and bring her home?’

  Kate laid down her pen.

  ‘Because it’s getting dark now,’ she said, ‘and it’s best to make a search in the light. Because if for some reason what I think has happened is untrue and she’s somewhere else, somewhere safe, then it would be stupid of us not to ring up and find out. Which is what we’ll be doing tonight. The two of us, as that’ll mean we’ll get through it more quickly. You can take family and regular friends; I’ll ring business contacts and less regular friends. And because, if it is true, then he’ll want me to know. He’ll leave a clue. It’s not Nicky he wants; it’s me.’

  ‘You cold bitch.’

  Kate jumped and her hands gripped the table’s edge. When she glanced upwards at David, she detected anger in his eyes but no violence, and she didn’t move to escape. ‘Look, this won’t get us anywhere, will it?’

  ‘Maybe not, but you listen to me this time. Bitch. And I mean it. Do you know why? Because it pisses me off that you come in here when my wife … my wife is God knows where, and tell me what to do. You and Nicky, you’re always together, you’ve always been together. For God’s sake, sometimes I don’t know if either of you even realise I’m here at all. What am I to her? Provider? Father of her children? It’s always been you she goes to first if she’s in any kind of trouble, you she calls to say if something has gone right. Do you know what that does to me? Can you imagine how that makes me feel? I thought it would be okay at first, I thought that in the end she’d come to me with what her life was about. Especially after the children came along. But it never happened. I’ve always been the third in the chain, way behind Nicky and you. And I loved her so much … love her so much. All the bloody time. I understand you’ve known each other since school and I’m not blaming you for that. But all I am is a shadow to you both. For God’s sake, Kate, do you actually know who I am? Do you even know what I’m like? Christ, sometimes I hate the both of you.’

  When he finished speaking, Kate could feel an almost irresistible prickle of exhaustion behind her eyes. Slowly, so slowly, she relaxed her hands and let the table go. It seemed to drop away from her like crumbling dust.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I see that you’re right. I’m sorry.’

  David made a small noise in his throat: an animal in pain. She thought it might be an invitation to go on, or perhaps a command. She sighed.

  ‘Yes, I see,’ she said again and then cleared her throat. ‘I imagine it must be hard for anyone, any potential partner, to know what to do about your loved one’s friends. I’ve never been in
that position, but I can see it would be difficult. There’s so much history that it’s impossible to guess at, so much you can never know. Not really know, I mean. I love Nicky. You know that. I’ll always love her. But I could see how it was when she met you. She loves you, David. Not me. When any decision has to be made, whenever that moment comes, then Nicky will choose you. Just as I would choose her, although that opportunity will never be offered to me, of course. I understand that. I always have.’

  Kate stopped. She had more she wanted to say, but she couldn’t find the words. David was standing next to the window, where he’d drifted whilst she’d been speaking. He was gazing out onto the garden but she was sure he wasn’t taking in the faint outline of the swings and the patio in the darkness. She was sure he was seeing nothing at all.

  Without another word, she finished writing out her lists. One for David to ring and one for her. Taking hers, she got up.

  ‘I’ll be in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘I’ll use my mobile to ring the people I should ring. I’ll leave your list here. Are you able to ring them tonight?’

  No answer. Only the briefest of nods.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Because we need to work fast.’

  In the kitchen, Kate checked her mobile – to her relief it had plenty of battery power left – before spreading her papers out on the table and beginning to work through her list. In the distance, she could hear the low rumble of David’s voice from the living room. She sighed and rubbed her eyes. Then she dialled the first number.

  Two hours later, and she was no further forward. Her skin felt tight and her mouth dry. Nicky knew so many people: artists; business acquaintances; other mums from the nursery and kids’ clubs. A whole range of names and activities Kate only knew of, rather than knowing directly, but none of them had been able to help her. It was strange, she thought, how you can know someone so well but it’s only a part of their lives that you see. There was so much you could never tell another person or, even if you did, they would never fully comprehend it. Was that it then? Whatever efforts we make to link our lives, intertwine them with others, is only a faint calling into the wind? No, she didn’t believe that, or at least she didn’t believe it for Nicky, though it might very well be true for herself. She’d made that choice once, hadn’t she? After Peter, she’d wanted to be alone, connected with no-one. But now it was different. In spite of what she thought she’d chosen, she, Kate Harris, was part of the world in which she found herself and she would learn to feel it, no matter what it cost.