by Carol Wyer
Jackson should have been at work that morning. It felt strange to have him at home. They had a set routine and it unsettled her to have it disturbed. Normally, he would have left early and even if he was on a later flight, it was Abigail who rose early to attend to Izzy while he caught up on precious sleep before showering and heading off to the airport to file his flight plan and check on weather conditions.
Izzy was the focus of her attention these days. Each day was carefully planned around Izzy’s needs and demands. If they went out, it required forethought to ensure Abigail left with sufficient baby wipes, nappies, fresh clothes, bottles and the usual paraphernalia that parents acquire along with their child. If they were at home, it was surprising how quickly the day passed juggling housework, shopping and caring for Izzy. Abigail adored being a mother. She had loved being pregnant and read up on what stage of development baby Izzy had reached. She bloomed during pregnancy, enjoying the ripeness of her body, the fullness of her breasts and she was filled with anticipation and love for the child she had yet to meet.
Motherhood had come naturally to her and she did not want to let her precious baby out of her sight for one minute. She was going to give her child every ounce of attention. That was part of the problem. While Abigail was so focused on being a great mother, she had given up on being a wife.
Then there was Jackson’s job. He worked odd hours as a private pilot for an executive airline – BizzyAir Business Aviation – an airline he had set up himself with only one small aircraft two years before he had met Abigail. Nowadays, he operated two aircraft – a Gulfstream 550 jet that could carry up to sixteen passengers and fly for over twelve hours without a fuel stop, which was popular for transatlantic flights, and a Citation Jet III that carried up to seven passengers and could fly up to almost five hours without a fuel stop, which he used mostly for trips into Europe. He employed several pilots to take them all over the world but he still flew regularly and it was not unusual for him to get called into work at an ungodly hour to fly a jet to Amsterdam or the south of Spain where his clients could attend meetings and return home in time for an evening meal with family, or in time to join them for breakfast. His erratic hours meant they had little family life but Abigail had not minded, happy to enjoy the time he was away with her pink-cheeked daughter.
‘So what shall we do today?’ he said, collecting his cup from the coffee machine. ‘Fancy taking Izzy to see the animals at the petting zoo?’
She felt guilty at her response. ‘I’m meeting the girls for coffee this morning. I haven’t seen them for ages what with Izzy being so miserable with her teeth and their busy work schedules. I didn’t expect you to get a day off,’ she added, spotting the flash of disappointment cross his face. He lifted the cup to his lips.
‘You could cancel,’ he said. ‘Tell them I’m home?’
He grinned at her – a sexy smile that had always made her veins fizz with desire. Today, it did not have the desired effect. She shook her head.
‘Sorry, it’s too last minute to cancel. Zoe has used a day off especially. It’s a lot harder for her now she works in London,’ she said, knowing it was a lame excuse.
Jackson opened his mouth to speak but Izzy chose that moment to belch loudly and regurgitate some of her breakfast. Abigail sighed and started over to the playpen to collect her daughter whose chin was now covered in yellow-green goo. Jackson raised his eyebrows in apology. ‘Maybe she hasn’t got her daddy’s constitution,’ he said. ‘Sorry, babe.’ He reached out a hand as Abigail passed, rested it on her arm and looked into her eyes.
She halted for a moment. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Is it?’ The meaning in his question was clear.
‘Of course it is. Now, I’d better get this little lady cleaned up.’
She lifted the child from the playpen complete with patchwork dog clutched firmly in her tiny fist. Izzy regarded her with innocent eyes and a look of wonder, and she cooed – a warm, bubbly sound that made Abigail smile.
‘I’ll clean her up,’ said Jackson. ‘It was my fault.’
Abigail shook her head. ‘It’s fine. I’ll sort her out.’ She left him standing against the kitchen top. He looked slightly forlorn and she hesitated, wanting to say something appropriate to make everything right again, but she couldn’t. She had kept too many secrets from him and she couldn’t tell him the real reason she had been anxious and so distracted. The note that had been hand-delivered through her letter box the week before had thrown her out completely. Someone knew about her past and it had unnerved her. She had used Izzy’s teething problems as an excuse for her behaviour but the true reason was one she could not share with anyone, not even Jackson. And now, added to that, the mobile phone pressed into the back pocket of her jeans with its taunting message was threatening to change everything.
As she cleaned up the wriggling baby, she reflected on her life with Jackson. He had never given her any reason to doubt him. Life was as near perfect as it could be. She had everything she could ever hope for – a kind, handsome husband who doted on her and baby Izzy. He could not fake that look he got in his eyes when he gazed at their daughter curled up, tiny fist in her mouth, or the way he held Abigail in bed at night, one arm protectively around her shoulders, holding her towards his chest where she could hear his heartbeat, steady, regular and strong. The text on her mobile was no more than a stupid prank or it had been sent to the wrong person. She needed to get a grip.
That said, since she’d given birth to Izzy a few things had changed. First, the endless sleepless nights where Izzy had cried and cried and cried. Nothing Abigail or Jackson had tried pacified the baby. She took it on herself to stay up with Izzy, comforting her, rocking her, singing to her and walking up and down the nursery until she knew every inch of the room. As she became worn down through lack of sleep, she lost confidence in herself. Even though Jackson never gave her reason to doubt she was still attractive, she became convinced she was. She was far too aware of her floppy belly and sagging breasts that had never had enough milk for Izzy and now were empty and useless. Her insides felt stretched and the rip she had suffered when Izzy’s head had pushed forward still seemed to be sore even though the stitches had long since dissolved.
She needed to remember who she had been before baby Izzy became the focus of their existence; she needed to make more of herself. Jackson had fallen for a vibrant woman filled with energy who loved being with people and laughing at life.
He laughed less these days. When had she lost the ability to make him laugh? She gazed at her dark-circled eyes and noticed the roots of her hair were showing. They needed some attention. She ought to have made an appointment at the hairdressers before now. Somehow, it hadn’t seemed important and there was always Izzy to play with or sort out. There was no time for Abigail herself any more. Abigail had transformed into a tracksuit-wearing frump. If she didn’t watch out, Jackson would definitely become fed up with his dull wife and look elsewhere. Izzy looked up with bright, focused eyes filled with wonder. Abigail’s heart flipped much as it had when she had first set eyes on Jackson and sudden warmth filled her entire being. Love was such a fierce, protective emotion. In that instance, she reached a decision. The warning text was the wake-up call she needed.
She headed for the bedroom and placed the now clean Izzy on the carpet. The baby watched her, fist in mouth. Abigail hunted in her wardrobe, slipped into a pair of black fitted trousers and teamed it with a fetching Armani T-shirt that flattered her shape. Jackson had always liked her in it. She slicked on some mascara, bounced a brush with bronzer over her cheekbones and applied a deep red lipstick that harmonised with the auburn lowlights in her hair. Izzy gurgled in approval.
She extracted the phone and read the text for the last time:
You are not the only one keeping secrets. Ask Jackson what his are.
Surely it was a joke? The text came from a number she did not know. Her fingers hovered over the keys. She ought to reply but she didn’t want to engage in
conversation with a stranger. There were all sorts of weird scams these days. In the end she replied: Go and annoy someone else and deleted the offending text once and for all. She picked up Izzy who began to jiggle up and down in delight at going back downstairs to see her father.
‘Come on, little Miss Mischief, let’s go show Daddy how pretty we both are.’
3
Paul Matthews laced his Skechers Go Run trainers, a bargain at less than twenty-five pounds, yet rated as one of the best in a survey that claimed expensive, top-brand running shoes were rated more poorly than some cheap brands. They were, he concluded, very comfortable and didn’t rub his feet, which were calloused and worn through neglect. The same article went on to say that an anonymous bidder now owned the spikes Roger Bannister wore during that record-breaking four-minute mile. They were purchased at auction at Christie’s in London. The shoes sold for seven times their estimated value. He gave a wry smile and looked at his blue trainers. He’d be lucky if his fetched a few pounds in a charity shop.
His back twinged in protest as he drew his six-foot, three-inch frame up to its full height, a reminder that he ought to sit down for such actions. He was no longer a young man and although, at sixty, Paul still had the physique of a man some twenty years younger, he had recently begun to feel his age. That was in part due to his son, Lucas, but more to the guilt that weighed him down each day. He mentally cursed Lucas who had brought his problems to Paul’s door and opened up the past – a past that Paul had wanted to obliterate from his memory.
He lifted his house key from inside a wooden box on the wall, easily mistaken for a piece of art. Paul was cautious. He had watched documentaries about house safety and knew some of the tricks thieves employed to find keys carelessly abandoned on console tables in entrance halls or left in door locks. And now, there was a new threat. He locked the back door and checked the handle. He needed to be even more careful now. He slipped the key into his lightweight jacket pocket, zipping it and patting it, feeling the metal for reassurance before he jogged down his garden path and into a vast field of maize, following the trodden path that skirted it, just as he did every afternoon.
A pale yellow sun in a lightly veiled sky struggled to warm the ground. A heavy shower had fallen earlier, and now the air smelled damp and humid. Paul ran on, lost in thought, oblivious to the wet leaves that slapped against his legs as he brushed past the tall plants and headed down the hillside towards the reservoir, which sparkled like a huge, grey diamond in the near distance. Paul preferred to run in the late afternoon. He was unlikely to meet any dog walkers, ramblers or twitchers, most of whom would have packed up and returned home by now, or they’d be sitting in any one of the welcoming pubs in Abbots Bromley, enjoying a well-earned pint.
He ran lightly, heels bouncing over pine-needle-strewn paths that twisted between tall trees whose canopies rose so high, little light could enter. He weaved past aged oak trees, guided by memory, ducking under boughs gnarled with time and jumping over broken branches that lay dry and twisted like dark brown bones on the floor. The organic compost aroma of rotting vegetation rose like waves around him and the freshness chilled the sweat that trickled down his neck.
En route he passed golden dock and orange foxtail plants – beautiful names for plants associated with the muddy, seasonally inundated edges of water bodies, which had chosen the reservoir woods as their habitat. Now flanked by elm, oak, birch and several sycamore trees with trunks of light grey and white, he jogged on, his breath deeper, his muscles beginning to ache with the effort of driving onwards at the same relentless pace. These grey-trunked trees were his favourites and best enjoyed in autumn.
For a while he forgot about Lucas, recalling an article he had recently come across about the Egyptian goddess Hathor, the holy cow, who sat in a sycamore at sunset and created the earth, everything living on it, and the sun.
There was no goddess in these sycamore trees, only a pair of rather agitated blackbirds who chattered angrily as he raced by, his heels crushing fallen leaves.
Autumn was Paul’s favourite season. The wood took on rich colours; russets, chartreuse, and cardinal reds he wished he could capture on canvas. Then sycamore seeds, the samara or keys, would detach themselves with free-spirited abandonment and rotate to the ground like small helicopters. He wished he had spent time with Lucas and shown him such beauty. Maybe his son would have turned out differently if only Paul had invested the time. Bad father. You could learn so much from nature. Sycamores possess the ability to grow in the shade of their parent. What a shame Lucas had not grown in his father’s shade. Things would have been so different.
From the corner of his eye Paul spotted a movement but didn’t catch what it was. Deer often roamed in these woods and he had seen a roe deer only a couple of weeks ago, the russet brown of its rump and the flash of white of its under-tail as it fled into the dark woods.
He squinted as rays of light seeped through trees and blinded him temporarily, and then he felt the trees folding in on him, his brain not comprehending but his instinct forcing his arms forward to break the fall. He lay winded, hands grazed, a sharp pain in his right ankle. Then, grimacing, he hauled himself to an upright position, clinging onto the gnarly tree where he had fallen. A paper-thin piece of bark pulled away, crumbled and dropped its powder residue onto his bleeding fingers. He touched his face, already swollen, and traced a thick line of blood that trickled down his cheek.
His ankle protested at the weight on it. He had never fallen over before. He must be getting really old, he mused. He should take up a different activity. Then there was a crack. Someone or something was hidden in the trees, a walker, or a birdwatcher perhaps. He searched for life but saw nothing.
‘Hello! Is there anyone there? Could you give me hand? I’ve had a fall,’ he shouted. ‘Please,’ he shouted. There was no reply. He looked down at his cheap trainers, wondering if they were to blame for his accident, and spotted the reason he had tumbled. A piece of thick plastic rope like washing line was attached to the tree. Someone had intentionally tripped him.
He had no time to deliberate further. A figure came into view and stood by the trees.
An invisible hand gripped Paul’s pulsating heart. His senses told him to run but the pain emanating from his foot meant he would manage no more than a hobble.
The figure moved closer. Shadows fell across its face, creating a grotesque mask.
Paul drew a deep breath. ‘We need to talk. This is getting out of hand. We can sort it out.’
The figure moved even closer, and camouflaged against the trees it seemed like a spirit or angel floating towards him. It raised both hands, revealing what it had been hidden before.
‘Too late,’ the figure replied. ‘You had your chance.’
Before he could react, the figure flew at him. A scream rose in his throat but did not reach his mouth. He dropped to the ground soundlessly. His final performance over.
4
The coughing alerted Robyn to the fact Ross had arrived.
‘I hate these bloody e-cigarette things,’ he grumbled. ‘I look such a twit smoking them. They are so uncool.’
‘Unlike other cigarettes that make you look really cool especially when you hack your lungs up. And don’t get me started on how they lead to potential life-threatening illnesses. Get over it. You know we only make you smoke those e-cigarettes because we care about you and you refused to go cold turkey. You’ll feel much healthier once you get some of that tar out of your system.’
‘I should know better than to expect any sympathy from you. You’re one of those health nuts. You eat muesli for breakfast, for heaven’s sake,’ he said in a disgusted tone. ‘You can’t possibly understand what it’s like for me. I’ve been a smoker since I was twelve. It’s not easy to give up just like that.’ He dragged on the e-cigarette and scowled. ‘And these are really pricey.’
‘I guess so and you can hardly roll your own e-ciggy, can you?’
He barked a quick lau
gh. That was one of the things about Ross she liked, he never stayed in a bad mood for long. He shoved the metallic object into his pocket and squatted against the corner of his desk. His blue trousers rucked up to reveal mismatched socks. Sartorial elegance wasn’t his forte.
‘Sorted the Terence Smith case?’ he enquired, noting the paperwork next to her computer.
Robyn swivelled to face him. ‘It was just a matter of time. Once he admitted to playing football, I knew I didn’t need much more evidence. I’ve typed up the report,’ she said. ‘It’s ready to be sent to the insurance company. Just need some photographs of him playing football at the weekend and it’s all set to go. How did you get on last night?’
He scratched away an itch on his ear. ‘Wasted night. I tailed Robert to the pub. Figured he was meeting his woman there but it turned out he was involved in a card game with his mates and they had a lock-in. Sat in the car in case he went onto his mistress afterwards but he didn’t. He rolled out of the pub and went home like a good boy. I didn’t get home till after two o’clock. Woke up Jeanette. You can imagine how that went down. She’s got an important meeting this morning.’
Jeanette Cunningham was a ‘vintage dolly’ – a slim woman in her late thirties, usually dressed in a skirt teamed with a jacket or cardigan and with hair immaculately swept into a pompadour hairstyle. She was a complete contrast to her husband. Although she had no full-time employment, she was an active member of the local Women’s Institute, sat on the board of various local charities and was highly respected within the community. It was a surprise to most people in the town that she and Ross had survived twenty years of marriage given his ridiculous working hours and lack of dress sense but anyone who knew them well understood the fierce loyalty and love that kept them glued together.
