Date Night (ARC)

by Samantha Hayes

  ‘It’s Marion I came to see, actually,’ she said, stepping inside without being asked. ‘Did you have a rough night?’ she continued, casting a look up and down Libby. Her long blond hair swished around her shoulders as she put her bag on the kitchen table, removing her huge owly sunglasses. She forked them on her head, revealing glittery blue eyes – highlighted and shaded under perfect brows. Effortless beauty, as ever, Libby found herself thinking, though it was the least of her concerns. Natalie flouncing around was, in the scheme of things, unimportant.

  ‘Marion is about somewhere, though I’m not sure where,’ she said. She had no idea what Sean’s ex-wife could possibly want with her ex-mother-in-law. Though she’d always had a hunch that Marion still favoured the woman, having gleaned that it was Marion who set Sean and her up in the first place many years ago. Sean had never divulged the full story, but Libby knew that Natalie’s parents, also farmers and local landowners, were good friends with Marion and Fred. They also took it hard when Sean filed for divorce.

  ‘I’ll wait here for her, then. She won’t mind.’ Natalie took off her coat, revealing a white chiffon blouse tucked in at the front of her jeans, showing off her slim hips and flat stomach. Then she pulled out a chair and sat down, crossing her impossibly long legs.

  Libby cleared her throat. ‘Coffee?’ she said, hitching up her tracksuit bottoms. While she just wished the woman would go, she didn’t want to be rude. She was the mother of Sean’s son, after all, and was always going to be in their lives in some way. They may as well try to get along.

  ‘Espresso, please,’ she said.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s instant granules only here,’ Libby said, filling the kettle and dropping it on the hotplate harder than she intended. ‘The only actual choice you have is milk and/or sugar.’ Her heart thumped as she folded her arms, leaning against the rail of the cooking range. She couldn’t stand it if Natalie saw how much she was shaking – through lack of sleep and the woman’s sheer brazenness. They rarely encountered each other, with Sean usually stuck in the middle when it was time to take Dan home or pick him up, or attend a school play or carol service. Or deal with solicitors. But Libby had never been alone with her before. It didn’t help that she looked awful and had had no sleep, while Natalie may as well have stepped from the pages of a fashion magazine.

  ‘Black, no sugar, thank you,’ Natalie said, checking her phone quickly. ‘Oh, and I passed Sean on my way here,’ she added in what Libby could only describe as a taunting voice. ‘We stopped for a chat. He… he also looked worn out.’

  Libby froze. Was there news? Anything could have happened since he left. She gave a brief nod in reply, in case Natalie was referring to something else.

  ‘Plus there were police everywhere in the village.’

  She wasn’t.

  ‘Tell me to mind my own business, Libby,’ she went on, ‘but is everything OK with you and Sean? I got the impression that maybe…’ Natalie flicked back her hair and stuck out her chin, highlighting her angular jawbone even more. ‘That things are… perhaps difficult between you?’

  ‘Everything’s fine, thank you,’ Libby replied, wiping her hands down her face. She didn’t care any more about the smudged mascara, the dark circles under her eyes. And she wanted nothing more than to tell Natalie to mind her own business and leave, but she bit her tongue. ‘We’ve both been work—’

  ‘Mummy…’ Alice said, suddenly running in from the other room and lunging at Libby’s legs. She stared at Natalie before making a whimpering sound and burying her face in Libby’s old cardigan, mumbling again something about bad dreams and monsters in the house.

  ‘Oh, haven’t you got the same curly hair as your daddy,’ Natalie said in a baby voice, tilting her head to the side. ‘What a cutie you’re turning into!’

  Alice peeked up briefly, before running off again when Natalie made a comment about how she looked so similar to her big half-brother, Dan, at that age. Libby had never been so grateful to see Fred, her father-in-law, kick off his boots at the back door as she was then. A waft of freezing air accompanied him inside.

  ‘Hello, Nat,’ he boomed in that voice of his, except, unusually, it was accompanied by a broad smile, exposing several missing teeth. Libby tried not to care that he’d completely ignored her and gone straight over to Natalie to deliver a hug – he’d got her off the hook, after all, and she was grateful for that. ‘Sorry I stink a bit,’ he continued, laughing. ‘Been fixing the muck spreader.’ He wiped his big hands down his overalls, turning to Libby. ‘Coffee on the go?’ he said, without even greeting her. She’d not seen him yet this morning as he was out working when they’d arrived. While Fred was cool and distant with most people – it was just his way – she wasn’t too worried as she knew he had a soft spot for her. But, it seemed right now, that his spot was even softer for Natalie.

  ‘Of course, Fred,’ Libby replied quietly, thankful that Marion also came back into the kitchen and, after she’d handed out coffees, she made her excuses and slipped away to find Alice.

  Libby closed the living room door behind her, settling back onto the sofa, wishing that Sean was there, wishing that she could rewind time to this time yesterday – no, to this time a week ago, and just have life back to normal.

  ‘Mummy, why is that lady here? I don’t like her. She’s scary,’ Alice said, snuggling up against her.

  ‘That’s Dan’s mummy, Natalie,’ she said vaguely, staring at her phone, wondering what to do. ‘You know that.’

  ‘She’s a bad lady, isn’t she? She scareded me last night when you and Daddy went out.’

  ‘Sorry, sweetie?’ Libby looked at her daughter, frowning as she suddenly realised what she’d said. But Alice didn’t seem willing to engage further and was engrossed in the television again.

  Libby tipped back her head and stared at the ceiling, sighing as she heard laughter and chatter from the kitchen, Natalie’s shrill voice ringing out. In the end, she sent a quick text to Sean.

  News?

  Then, when there was no reply, she texted Fran.

  I need to see you… xx

  Nineteen

  ‘Please, Lib,’ Sean said, pacing about. ‘It’s only for a night or two. Why do you have to make this hard?’

  ‘Wait… what?’ Libby stared at him, hands on hips, her mouth hanging open. ‘Maybe it’s because something terrible has happened to Sasha, I’ve had to move out of my house so the police can tear it apart, my daughter is exhausted and upset by something, none of us has had any sleep, I’ve had to cancel tonight’s dinner event, and your ex-wife has been swanning around telling me we’ve got marital problems while loving every second of me looking like ten tons of shit. Do you think maybe that’s why it’s hard?’

  ‘Libby,’ Sean said, shaking his head. ‘You’re stressed. Calm down. And you honestly care about what you look like at a time like this?’ He bent down and fiddled with the radiator under the small paned window of the back bedroom – his old room when he was a child – trying to turn on the stiff valve. They were both freezing.

  ‘No, of course I don’t care what I look like, but it felt as though she was looking down on me and I really don’t need—’

  ‘Libby,’ Sean repeated calmly. ‘I told you. If you get stressed and lose it, that’s not going to help anyone. Especially you. Alice needs you to be strong. I need you to be strong. Don’t fall apart, love. Have you thought about how Jan must be feeling right now? Her daughter has seemingly vanished off the face of the earth.’

  Libby halted herself, her shoulders slumping forward. ‘Sorry, you’re right,’ she said, dropping down on the bed. It was hard and lumpy and the eiderdown had a musty smell. But Marion had been kind enough to let them stay for a couple of days or however long the police needed to be at the cottage, so she could hardly grumble. ‘I should give Jan a call, see if there’s anything I can do to help. Even if it’s just taking her some food. I’ve got plenty of frozen dishes.’

  ‘That’s better,’ Sean
said, standing above her and cupping her face. ‘And you really didn’t need to cancel the event tonight, did you? Surely carrying on as normal is better all round? Plus we can’t really afford for you to lose business.’

  Libby stared at the floor, her eyes tracking the green and red cabbage roses in the pattern, imagining Sean playing with his cars on it as a little boy. He’d told her the room hadn’t changed at all in the couple of decades since he’d left. By all accounts, and there weren’t many, Marion had found it hard to let her only son go, even though he’d been twenty-three when he’d finally gone off to train as a vet. Libby knew that something had happened to Sean during the time between leaving school and deciding on a life path, she just wasn’t sure what. If she ever brought it up, he glossed over that period as if it was never talked about.

  ‘I know, you’re right. But I don’t think I can do a good job for my client on no sleep and with this mess hanging over us. I should be getting on with food preparation now but can’t even think about it, let alone do it. Anyway, the police are probably swarming all over our house as we speak.’ Libby fell backwards onto the pillow. ‘I told them I’d do another dinner for them at no charge in the future. They were quite understanding, but it’s not going to help business.’

  Sean stared at her for a moment before nodding, biting his lip, looking thoughtful. ‘There’s something I need to tell you, Libby,’ he said, his voice low.

  ‘Oh?’ Libby replied, sitting up again.

  ‘Mack found a shoe when we were out searching earlier,’ he said, hanging his head briefly. He went over to the window and stared out, leaning his head against a glazing bar.

  Libby hadn’t had a chance to ask when he returned as she was still reeling from Natalie’s presence. It was Sean, thankfully, who’d finally encouraged his ex-wife to leave.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Libby said, getting up off the bed. ‘That must have been awful.’

  ‘It was,’ Sean replied after a long pause. He turned around slowly, silhouetted against the low sun in the bright morning sky. ‘And it wasn’t where you’d expect it.’

  ‘I see,’ Libby whispered, coming up close. She hardly dared think what it might mean. ‘It… it was Sasha’s, I take it?’

  ‘They don’t know officially yet. When we came back into the village, Mack handed it over to an officer who was outside our cottage. He’s marked where he found it with his scarf, tying it round a fence post so they can go back and look. It was up near Blake’s Hill.’ Sean’s voice was grave.

  ‘No, no… Christ.’ Libby looked up, staring into Sean’s eyes. ‘Was it just one shoe? I mean, who loses one shoe, Sean? What colour was it?’ She thought back, trying to remember what Sasha had been wearing last night. Jeans, her favourite sweatshirt and her parka coat, though that was still slung over the back of the sofa.

  ‘It was a white trainer,’ Sean said. ‘Size five. And yes, it was just the one shoe.’ The look he gave Libby betrayed that he was thinking the same as her: that it wasn’t good news. Though neither of them said a word.

  * * *

  DI Jones commanded a large presence in the low-ceilinged farmhouse kitchen. As ever, Marion was fussing around with tea and biscuits, complaining that if she’d known she’d have all these visitors, she’d have got something better in than just plain digestives.

  ‘Mum, it’s fine. I don’t think the detective is bothered about biscuits.’ Sean shook Doug Jones’s hand and briefly introduced him to Marion. ‘Is there news?’ he asked, turning his back to the room, trying to say it in a way that Marion wouldn’t hear above the noise of the kettle and the clattering of cups as she set things out on a tray.

  ‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’ the detective said. ‘You and your wife?’

  ‘Of course,’ Sean replied, looking over his shoulder for Libby. She’d been there a moment ago, trying to amuse Alice, but there was no sign of her now. ‘Mum, I’m going to have a chat with the officer in Dad’s study, if that’s OK.’

  ‘Yes, feel free,’ Marion said, pulling back her long grey hair into a ponytail and securing it with a band. Her eyes flicked between Sean and the detective. ‘I’ll bring in some tea.’

  ‘Sean?’ Libby said, halting suddenly as she saw him and the detective in the front hallway. She took hold of his arm. ‘What’s happening?’ She squeezed Sean’s arm, bracing herself for them having found a body. Since last night, she’d had terrible thoughts and images in her head that she couldn’t shake. They switched between Sasha lying dead in a ditch somewhere remote – her skin pale and cold, her eyes staring blankly at the night sky, her tongue lolling out of her open mouth – and that of the poor girl being forcibly dragged and manhandled out of Chestnut Cottage, her belongings abandoned as she was carted off to her fate. Each option made her shudder.

  ‘The detective wants to have a chat with us, love,’ Sean told her. ‘Just to go over what we know.’

  Libby swallowed. ‘Of course,’ she said, hugging her cardigan around her as Sean led the way. She’d only been in Fred’s study a couple of times previously and thought ‘study’ was misleading, given the boxes of papers stacked up, the general clutter of the small room. Despite the mess, the three of them found somewhere to sit – Libby and Sean on an old sagging chesterfield, with DI Jones perched on a wonky captain’s chair in front of Fred’s rolltop desk.

  ‘As you’ve probably guessed, no one has heard from Sasha yet,’ DI Jones said. Libby thought his voice was rather matter-of-fact given the circumstances. He took a pen from his jacket pocket and balanced a clipboard on his knee. A few papers were pinned to it and, as he was talking, he was filling out details and writing notes. ‘So, naturally, given the circumstances surrounding Sasha’s disappearance, we’re taking this matter very seriously. We’ve opened an official missing person investigation.’

  Libby leant closer to Sean – an attempt at calming herself. ‘I just can’t believe this,’ she said. ‘It’s just so awful. Unthinkable. I mean, Sash was all set to help me with a dinner party tonight. I’ve cancelled, of course, but… I just don’t understand how…’

  The detective looked up from his notes. ‘I know there’s a lot going through your mind, Mrs Randell, but perhaps we can take it one step at a time?’

  Libby nodded, trying to make her thoughts stay on track and not leap ahead as they had a habit of doing. Not think the worst. She was reminded of the time Sean hadn’t come home from work a couple of years ago, how she’d phoned and texted him and watched and waited until she could do no more. When calls to Marion and a couple of his mates proved fruitless, she’d risked embarrassing herself by calling his boss, several work colleagues and, eventually, a couple of local hospitals in case he’d been in an accident. It was as if he’d disappeared off the face of the earth, and Libby was beside herself with worry. In the past, if he was going to be late, he’d always let her know.

  It was 2 a.m. when Libby heard thumping on the front door of the cottage. She hadn’t been able to sleep and was sitting bolt upright on the sofa, her phone in hand and the television playing something mindless on low volume in the background. She’d leapt up, praying it was Sean come home and, when she saw him standing there, leaning against the door frame, barely able to keep himself upright, her heart had almost disintegrated from relief.

  She’d helped him in as he’d staggered inside. ‘Sean, what the hell…?’

  ‘Libby, don’t… I don’t need this, I was just… it’s OK, for fuck’s sake give me a break. I was… I’m fine, I love you, I just need to get some sleep and I’ll be fine just let me…’

  He bumped past her, his hands sliding along the wall as he tripped over the uneven flagstones. In the kitchen, he ran the tap, ducking his head to drink directly from it but getting it all over his face and hair instead. Libby had never seen him like this before.

  ‘Sean, where have you been? You’re… you’re drunk. What’s going on?’

  Of course, in the four or five years they’d known each other they’d indul
ged in a few boozy nights with friends, perhaps gone a little too far and regretted it the next morning, but Libby had never encountered Sean – an upstanding man with a responsible career and commitments – behave like this. This was a deep-down, purposeful kind of drunk. The kind that was self-inflicted, as though he’d wanted to escape his feelings. As if he was a different man entirely to the one she knew.

  ‘I’m fine, just need to go to bed…’

  ‘So that’s it?’ Libby had said. ‘Like, no explanation as to where you were or why you didn’t call me? I’ve been worried sick, Sean.’

  He’d looked at her then, almost as if she were a stranger. There was something in his eyes that didn’t belong to him, as if he didn’t want to be him. At that moment, she didn’t recognise the man she knew and loved. The memory of that evening had stuck with her, but it was the way he’d looked through her, rather than at her, that had disturbed her the most.

  As if he were with someone else instead.

  Twenty

  DI Jones was patiently writing down everything that Sean and Libby remembered from the previous night, pausing to listen, to clarify if either of them garbled or stumbled over their words. While they were conscious of getting their story straight, Libby was also conscious, and worried, that with each retelling of events she’d either forget something important or add something in that she’d unwittingly dreamt up in an attempt to make the whole thing seem less serious than it actually was. It was, she realised, a kind of denial that any of this had happened.

  And she couldn’t stop shivering.

  ‘So, before you left, you told Sasha that you would be home around eleven?’ DI Jones said.

  ‘Yes,’ Sean confirmed.

  ‘Was that the usual sort of time you’d return when Sasha’s babysat for you in the past?’

  Libby nodded. ‘Sometimes it’s been a bit later if we’ve gone to a party or into Oxford with friends, maybe getting back at one or two a.m., but we’ve always said she can stay over if that happens. And that was only ever on a weekend, never a college night.’