“Oh, you didn’t, Greg! You were marvellous and boosted my morale like mad.”
“All sheer bluff, I assure you.”
“And you fetched Mrs.—what was her name? Ellis—Mrs. Ellis from next door, and she knew exactly what to do. I tell you, someone always knew what to do and wanted to help then! Oh, they were wonderful days!”
“Were they, Clare? In spite of the pinching and scrimping?”
“Yes, of course. I try not to think of them now, because—” She stopped suddenly and stared at him, hardly able to believe that they were speaking to each other with such frankness.
“Why, dear? Why do you try not to think of them?”
“Because—” she tried to steady her voice and failed—“because it makes me—cry.”
“Oh, Clare!” He put out his hand and covered hers as it lay there on the table. And when she glanced up he saw that her eyes were full of tears. They seemed to him in that moment just as young and scared as they had been on the night Pat was born, and the expression in them caught at his heart as nothing had done for years.
He drew breath to voice the impulsive words that rose to his lips. But even as he did so he saw her expression change. She looked not at him but past him, and the spell was broken; so rudely that it was a moment before he registered the fact that astonishment, alarm and anger had succeeded that tremulous look.
“What is it?” he exclaimed, as though he would still grasp at a vanishing dream. “Don’t look like that. What is it?”
“That girl!” gasped Clare. “The one who’s going out of the door now. She was wearing Pat’s bracelet.”
“She couldn’t have been!”
“She was, I tell you! I’d know it anywhere.”
“It must be a similar one. Bought at the same shop, probably.”
“No, no. I had it made for her. Go after the girl, Greg, and ask how she came by it.”
“I can’t possibly do such a thing! She’s a stranger.”
“What does that matter? That’s Pat’s bracelet, I tell you. What sort of a parent are you? If you won’t go, I will!” And she half rose to her feet.
“No. Stay where you are! I’ll go,” he said, perhaps stung by the slight on him as a parent. And he quickly followed in the wake of the rather flashy-looking girl Clare had indicated.
She was out of the restaurant by now, and so was her escort, so that Clare had no means of seeing how the encounter went. She wished now that she had gone too—she who had the conviction Greg lacked that the bracelet was unquestionably Pat’s.
It was a few minutes before he came back, and she guessed from his heightened colour that the scene had not been a pleasant one.
“Well?” she said sharply.
“She told me to mind my own business. Not unnaturally.”
“But you didn’t leave it at that?” she cried, dismayed.
“No, of course not. I explained the thing had once belonged to my daughter, whom I was anxious to trace.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“That I was surely old enough to think up a better line of approach than that,’ ’replied Greg drily. “Then her escort wanted to know if I were looking for a fight, and finally they both got into a car and drove off.”
“Oh, Greg! D-did you take the number of the car?”
“I did, as a matter of fact,” he said, looking slightly sheepish. “But honestly, Clare, I think the whole thing is a mare’s nest. You had no more than a glimpse of the bracelet, surely?”
“I saw it quite clearly. She put up her hand to her hair for a moment, just as she was passing our table,”
“Then if you’re absolutely certain there’s no question of a duplicate—”
“How could there be a duplicate? I had it specially made, I tell you!”
“But whoever made it might well have repeated the design, since it was so attractive and successful. The original idea was yours. But there was nothing to prevent the maker of the thing copying it for someone else.”
“I—never thought of that.” Clare was shaken. “Alternatively, if Pat got low in funds she might have sold the bracelet.”
“I don’t think she would do that,” Clare exclaimed, instinctively rejecting the idea that her daughter would sell anything so personal for the sole purpose of staying away from home a little longer. “No. Perhaps, as you say, it wasn’t Pat’s bracelet after all. I’m sorry, Greg, if I gave you a nasty job unnecessarily.”
“It doesn’t matter. All in the life of a parent,” he said, and grinned.
She smiled faintly too, and after a while they talked of other things. But they could not recapture the lost magic of that moment when they had looked at each other across the table and he had smiled and she had almost shed tears for the days when they were young and happy together.
On the way home he said, “What are we going to do about Pat now? Do we let her go on playing us up until she decides in her own good time to come home and explain herself, or do we admit that we’re still scared and go to the police about her?”
“I still don’t think it’s the moment to go to the police.” Clare frowned consideringly. “We have her own statement in her own handwriting that she is well and safe. And only this afternoon she did telephone, 'even if she cut off again just as soon as I spoke to her. I think we should give her a day or two longer, don’t you?—If you can stay that long, I mean.”
“Stay? Of course, I’m staying here until she’s found,” retorted Greg with a grim determination she found comforting. “Though I’m not quite sure that I shall be able to keep myself from wringing her neck when she is found,” he added.
“You won’t even want to,” Clare told him with a smile. “You won’t be able to keep yourself from embracing her with relief and thankfulness.”
“I don’t know so much about that! I’m not as forgiving as you are, Clare.”
“Aren’t you?” She turned and smiled at him as he drew the car to a standstill outside the block of flats. “I think you are. It seems to me that I was often the stupid, hard, unyielding one.”
“Forget it. That isn’t the way I remember you at all.”
“No? How do you remember me, Greg, when you look back over all those years—the difficult ones as well as the lovely ones?”
“Sometimes in a way that’s not too good for my peace of mind,” he told her, lightly but uninformatively. “Good night, my dear, and thank you for coming out with me.”
“Thank you for asking me, Greg. In spite of the anxiety about Pat, it was—lovely.”
“Will you come again?”
“If you ask me—yes.”
“I shall ask you,” he said. And he stood and looked after her until she entered the block. She turned just before the door swung to behind her, and he smiled and raised his hand to her. Then he got back into the car and drove away. And as Clare went up in the lift again she asked herself remorsefully how she could be so happy when Pat was still missing.
Marilyn was in bed when she came in. But as there was a light on in her room, Clare went in, to find her younger child reading, though she looked oddly rumpled and unquiet somehow.
“Oh, Mother, how glowing you look! Was it a nice evening?”
“Lovely. Except for one upsetting thing.” And she proceeded to tell Marilyn about the girl with the bracelet, which made her daughter open her eyes wide.
“If you’re sure it was really Pat’s, I suppose she must have sold it. Which means she must be—” Marilyn cleared her throat—“temporarily hard up.”
“Why temporarily?” enquired Clare impatiently. “If she refuses to come home she’ll remain hard up. Unless she is counting on getting some sort of job.”
“Which she must be,” Marilyn pointed out practically. “How else could she manage?”
“I don’t know,” said Clare with a sigh. “I don’t pretend to understand at all what is behind this mystery.”
“Don’t worry, Mother,” Marilyn advised her soothingly. “I’m
certain everything is going to work out all right quite soon. You say that otherwise the evening was a success? Did Dad enjoy it too?”
“I think he must have,” Clare smiled. “At least he suggested we should repeat it.”
“Did he? Oh, that’s wonderful!” Marilyn sat right up in bed. “It’s all working out splen—”
“What’s working out?” Her mother looked both amused and curious.
“Oh, well—” Again Marilyn cleared her throat and looked slightly self-conscious. “I was just thinking, while I was here alone, that it was almost a good thing Pat went off in this queer way. Provided nothing’s really the matter, of course,” she added virtuously. “But at least it brought Dad home, didn’t it? And that gave you two a chance to—well, to get together again and find some common ground. You’re looking so happy, Mother, in spite of the anxiety about Pat.”
“I know.” Clare gave a quick, remorseful sigh. “I keep on asking myself if I have any right to feel so happy when there’s still this mystery about the child.”
“Don’t reproach yourself about that,” cried Marilyn eagerly. “You just go right on being happy. There’s no need to worry about Pat. She’s all—I mean I’m sure she’s all right, and the best thing you can do for all of us is to make the most of having Dad here in London. You never know what might happen from this—this enforced meeting.
“Don’t raise your hopes too high, Mari.” Her mother smiled at her affectionately. “Nothing is ever just black and white. There are a lot of shades of grey in this particular problem.”
“But you enjoyed yourselves together. You said you did! And if things went on developing from there you’d be glad, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you, Mother? Tell the truth.”
“Oh, Mari! How do I know?” Then, as she saw the dismay and disappointment in her daughter’s face, Clare added hastily, “All right. I’d be desperately glad if there were some way back to the happiness of those early days. But I don’t know if one can ever find quite such a long road back. Or if he would want it,” she whispered half to herself.
“Of course he would! Oh, Mother, everything’s going to be all right. I’m sure it is! I can feel it in my bones.”
And so joyously confident was Marilyn’s tone that her mother laughed before she kissed her good-night and went to her own room.
It was not entirely easy to produce yet another excuse for slipping off the next morning, but Marilyn was becoming good at ingenious implications and suggestions; and after an anxious minute or two she got away all right without actually having to invent a specific story.
Her spirits were as high as they had ever been, and the alarm occasioned by the policeman’s visit the previous evening had almost completely evaporated. There was simply no question in her mind now about the certainty of her finding a message waiting at the garage. Pat had said she would leave one, and later events had made it imperative that she should do so as soon as possible.
Consequently it was a cheerful and smiling Marilyn who presented herself once more at the garage, and she waited confidently until her friend of the previous day should be free.
Evidently he remembered her, for he grinned immediately and said, “Still looking for the Chipperfield Hotel?”
“No.” Marilyn grinned back at him in a friendly way. “But I think my sister left a message with you for me?”
He looked surprised and shook his head.
“No message left for you here, my dear.”
“N-no message?” Marilyn was shaken and appalled. “But there must be one. Perhaps a written one? Perhaps there’s a note for me in the office. One of the other attendants might have taken it?”
“I’ll go and ask for you. When was it left?” the man wanted to know.
“Some time yesterday. In the afternoon or evening, I should think.”
“She didn’t leave any message when she first came making enquiries in the morning,” the man asserted positively.
“No, no, I don’t mean then. She wouldn’t have worked out what to do at the point. She was too much taken aback at finding no hotel there. You said she just got back into her taxi and drove away.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“But later. She must have come back later. She phoned a friend of mine and said she’d leave a message here for me about her plans. It—it would be rather urgent.”
“I’ll go and enquire.” The man went away into the small office, and Marilyn saw him through the window talking to a girl at a desk, and another man who was lounging against the wall. But presently he came out again and said there had been no message left the previous day, either verbally or in writing.
“I can’t understand it!” All Marilyn’s smiling confidence had drained away from her, leaving her puzzled and scared again. “It’s just possible that she left it until today, I suppose. Though I’d have thought—” She broke off. Then, aware that the man was looking at her curiously, she made an effort to seem cheerfully normal. “Well, she might come along any time now. I’ll wait about a bit. I might go and have a coffee at that place over there.”
“That’s right. You do.” A customer who evidently thought the world was run for him began to honk his horn impatiently and, losing interest in Marilyn, the man turned away.
Slowly she made her way to the small cafe across the road, and there she ordered a coffee and sat at a table in the window, watching the garage opposite and longing, as she had never longed for anything in her life before, to see the familiar figure of her sister coming along the street.
“Why didn’t she leave a message at the first opportunity? Either yesterday or early today? She had absolutely nothing else to do, and it must have seemed to her of the utmost urgency,” thought Marilyn, trying to resist the panic which threatened to swamp her. “She must have been hoping against hope that I’d come early rather than late. Why on earth should she delay? Unless of course—” irresistibly the possibility forced its way into Marilyn’s mind—“unless of course, she was stopped in some way.”
The moment the idea had formed in words Marilyn felt quite sick with dismay. She nervously pushed away the cup of weak coffee, which seemed to her now even more nauseating than it really was. And she thought of the policeman last night saying that Pat’s handbag, rifled of any contents of value, had been found on the river towpath.
“I must have been mad not to tell Mother—or Dad—at the first possible moment!” She was overwhelmed with remorse for her fatuous complacency. “I should have known something must have been terribly wrong. Why, for all I knew, someone might have snatched her bag and then just pushed her—”
But, as the frightened tears gathered, she forced them back with the reassuring reflection that no one who has pushed someone else into the river then lingers to examine the contents of a handbag—still less leaves the bag on the scene for easy identification. No, wherever Pat had been when her bag was lost or stolen it had not been by the river.
Then why, why was there no news of her?
“She’s just—vanished!” Marilyn told herself in unspeakable dismay. “No word from her. No sign of her existence. Except—”
And then, as a fresh wave of chill engulfed her, Marilyn suddenly remembered the incident of the girl her mother had described wearing Pat’s bracelet.
How had she come by that bracelet?
When Marilyn first heard the story from her mother she had smugly taken it as no more than confirmation of her theory that Pat had sold what she could in order to bridge a difficult twenty-four hours. Now, however, in view of Pat’s genuine disappearance, the incident became suddenly sinister and terrifying. So terrifying that, for the very first time, Marilyn began to understand, with personal, poignant intensity, the anguish which she and Pat had inflicted on their parents.
“It wasn’t really a good plan, after all,” she thought remorsefully. “However good the cause, we shouldn’t have done that to anyone. We should have found some other way of getting them together. Mother must have gone through a
gonies before that first letter came. She must have felt as I’m feeling now! Oh, Pat, why don’t you come? Why didn’t you leave a message?”
She bent her head to conceal her distress from anyone at the neighbouring tables, and a few tears fell into the coffee, making it even weaker and less appetising. It was no good pretending to herself any longer. She was utterly at a loss, and quite unable to think what she could do next. And, like the smallest child, all she wanted to do was to run to her parents and unload her desperate troubles on to their more capable shoulders.
“If I told Mother now—”
But then she recalled her mother’s happy look when she had come in the previous evening, and she flinched from the very thought of transforming that expression into one of fresh horror and anxiety.
“She’s had enough,” Marilyn muttered unhappily. “I don’t think she could take any more.” And then, after a long pause—“That leaves Dad.”
It was not going to be easy, owning up to her father. Most of Marilyn’s cheerful self-assurance wilted at the very thought. On the other hand, if Pat were in some real danger or difficulty, her father, rather than her mother, might be the right person to deal with it.
One thing was quite certain, she herself could no longer tackle the situation alone. And, having come to that unpalatable conclusion, she got up, paid for her undrunk coffee and slowly left the place.
Just once more she went to speak to her friend at the garage, to make absolutely certain that no message had come in by telephone while she had been sitting in the cafe. Then she said with some resolution,
Missing From Home Page 11
