by Carys Jones
Amanda unlocked the doors and stepped outside. The evening air was blissfully cool as it wrapped around her bare legs and arms. With quick, light steps she headed to the outside tap and the long emerald green hose pipe attached to it. Beneath the watchful gaze of the moon she quickly sprinkled water over the frayed parts of the lawn. Will’s desire for the perfect house was rubbing off on her.
Her feet were damp as she hurried back inside, leaving a trail of footprints along the wooden floor as she wound her way deeper into the house. Amanda was grateful to touch down on the soft grey carpet of the hallway. She paused at the foot of the stairs and listened. Usually if Will had gone to bed first she’d hear the gentle hum of him snoring. Now there was only silence. Taking care to move on her tiptoes and make as little sound as possible, Amanda crept up the stairs and quietly carried herself over to their bedroom.
Though the cream curtains were closed, the bright light of the moon burned against them, making the room seemed infused with ethereal light. In the centre of the room was a grand queen-sized bed which took up almost all of the space, barely leaving the required inches for the sleek mirrored bedside tables Amanda had bought with her from her apartment. Will had insisted on a large bed. When he’d first seen the double bed in Amanda’s apartment he’d paled.
‘Where am I going to sleep?’ he’d wondered.
Amanda untucked her side of the bed. The duvet was already bunched at the foot of the bed, no longer needed during the long hot nights of the summer. The linen sheets were crisp in her hands as she folded them back. Will was rolled up on the other side of the bed, his back to her. He seemed so far away. Settling down into bed, Amanda threw her husband one final longing glance. She yearned for him to roll over and grin at her sexily. But instead he remained frozen in place, probably already lost to a dream. She couldn’t resent him for getting a headache. In her line of work she suffered from them with an annoying regularity.
‘Goodnight,’ Amanda whispered to him, feeling every single one of the extra inches their giant bed placed between them. Leaning back on her plump feather pillows, Amanda looked up at the ceiling and sighed. The house was stoic around her, indifferent to her still racing mind, as was the man sleeping beside her.
3
The waves roared like a beast about to pounce as their white tips pounded against the rocks. Amanda could feel herself falling. The ground beneath her gave way and several stones were skittering past her, disappearing into the whipped waves below. She was toppling over the cliff edge, soon she’d be free-falling to her certain doom. Her hair tangled around her, she opened her mouth to scream but the wind buffeted the sound away.
Everything slowed down. Amanda tasted something metallic as her heartbeat echoed so loudly in her head that it almost drowned out the ferocious roar of the waves. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the jagged rocks which were inching ever closer. With a gasp, she imagined how it would feel to crash against them like a piece of debris. She’d break as easily as the pieces of driftwood she loved to source along the beach.
Suddenly something strong was pulling on her legs, reversing the momentum of her fall. As she flailed, she was winched back over the cliff edge as she sucked in frantic, desperate breaths. Her hero was backlit against the sun. Squinting, she prepared to say something, but her breathing was still ragged. Her vision was blurred, her heart still racing—
Amanda’s eyes snapped open. Panting, she sat up, drawing her crisp bed sheets up to her chest. The cliff edge was still so vivid in her mind, she could taste the salt on the air, smell the freshness of the sea breeze. Cupping her head in her hands, Amanda took several slow breaths and waited for her body to calm down.
‘It was the nightmare again,’ she eventually muttered groggily. ‘I keep dreaming about that day on the cliffs.’
Amanda paused expectantly, but there came no reply from the other side of the bed. Turning, she noticed that the sheets were already pulled back; the pillows sagged in the centre.
‘Will?’ she called out for her husband, his absence making her feel even more disorientated. She leaned to glance at her bedside clock. It was a quarter to seven. The alarm wasn’t set to go off for another fifteen minutes.
The bedroom was already ablaze with early morning sunlight which pressed heavily against the closed cream linen curtains. ‘Will?’ Amanda rubbed her eyes and looked around the room. Tilting her head, she remained perfectly still and listened for the whine of the shower coming from the en suite.
Had she tossed and turned so violently during her nightmare that Will had been forced to get up? Lately her nightmares had been worse than ever, going from a weekly occurrence to a daily nuisance. It felt like every time she closed her eyes she was transported back to that fateful day when her twelve-year-old self got to sample a bitter taste of her own mortality.
The white panel door to the en suite was firmly closed and there was no sound of rushing water coming from beyond it. Pulling her eyebrows together, Amanda swept her long legs over the side of the bed and stood up.
‘Will?’ she was calling for him as her hand pressed down on the door handle. It opened with ease. Inside, the pristine white suite was stark and unoccupied. The air wasn’t even clotted with steam from a previous shower.
‘Will?’ Amanda leaned back out of the small bathroom. Where was he? He was usually such a reliable creature of habit. When the alarm shrieked at seven, he’d grumble, get up and stalk over to the shower. After standing beneath the powerful jets of almost boiling water for a good twenty minutes he’d saunter downstairs and turn on the percolator. As the house filled with the comforting aroma of fresh coffee, Amanda would make them both breakfast, usually something simple like porridge or poached egg on toast. At quarter past eight he was heading out the front door. Amanda always dismissed him with a parting kiss before waving as he climbed into his navy blue van and carefully backed out of the driveway. The routine was always the same. Will wasn’t a man who welcomed change.
‘Will?’ Amanda was out on the landing, still calling out his name. The stony silence of the house mocked her as she wandered towards the staircase and breathed in deeply. She wanted her senses to be relaxed by the oaky aroma of fresh coffee. But all she could smell was the vanilla-scented plug-ins she turned on each night. The plug-ins which kept her house smelling like a show home.
‘Where the hell are you?’ Amanda asked of the emptiness as she went down the stairs and burst into the kitchen. Will was not there. The room was empty. The expensive percolator the couple had received as a wedding gift was still flush to the wall.
‘Will?’ Amanda sighed wearily as she dropped one hand to her waist. Absently, she stepped deeper into the room and gazed out of the large window which overlooked the garden. The sky was already the brightest blue, stretching out above her little house as vast and empty as a perfect ocean.
Perhaps Will had gone for a jog. Sometimes, usually on weekends, he liked to pull on his running shoes and power through the nearby woodlands. Unlike Amanda, who’d run at any time of the year, Will preferred to save his running for the months of the year when the sky was heavy and grey and the ground beneath his feet hard and icy.
Amanda drifted through the house to the hallway. She opened up the cupboard beneath the stairs and peered inside. Will’s running shoes were gone. As were his work boots.
‘Huh,’ she straightened and closed the cupboard. She must have been sleeping so deeply that she didn’t even wake when Will left. But why the early departure? He hadn’t mentioned anything about working overtime.
Back in her bedroom Amanda grabbed her phone from her bedside table and fired off a text to Will.
Hey handsome. Woke up to find you gone :( You working earlies this week or something? Xxx
Placing the device back down, Amanda returned to the en suite, keen to stand beneath the massaging power of its hot water and wash away the remnants of her dream.
*
Stepping out of the shower, Amanda was immediately
enveloped in a thick cloud of steam. She dipped down, grabbing a towel, and flicked her long hair up into it and then secured it atop her head. Her skin glistened from the heat of the shower as she opened the door and wandered into the bedroom, which now felt icily cold in comparison. Immediately she headed for her phone. It was twenty past seven. Will would surely have text her back by now.
Amanda clicked off the alarm clock which had been shrilly bleating for the past twenty minutes. She looked at her phone. She had no new messages. No missed calls.
‘Huh,’ she tossed the handset on to the bed. It landed amongst the unmade sheets. Now that Amanda was completely free from the fog of sleep she was starting to get annoyed with Will.
On her way downstairs she paused by the window on the landing and looked down at the driveway. Her silver Prius was alone, Will’s blue van was gone. If she’d just taken off so early without saying anything he’d be furious.
‘Oh, baby, you had me so worried, don’t do that,’ she was mumbling angrily to herself as she went back into the kitchen. She briskly pulled the percolator into the centre of the counter and switched it on. It gurgled to life and began making everywhere smell like a Parisian café.
‘You know how I worry,’ she continued mockingly in a deep tone as she reached into a cupboard for a mug. Like most other things in her home it was uniform white and without a single chip or crack. It was perfect.
‘Perfect, perfect, perfect,’ Amanda lamented as she dropped a spoonful of sugar into her mug. She paused, teaspoon in hand, before making a snap decision and ladling in a second helping of the sweet white powder.
By the time she’d drank her coffee, ate her porridge and dried her hair, it was eight o’clock and there was still no word from Will. But Amanda couldn’t afford to sit around and fret over him. He was blatantly just working an early shift and had forgotten to bring it up.
Nursing a fresh coffee between her hands, Amanda walked up to her study.
Turning on her Mac, she tied her hair back and prepared to buckle down for the morning.
*
Amanda loved to code. She liked the structure she found within the string of symbols and letters, liked how she could manipulate the way something looked with the input of the correct information.
As a little girl Amanda had been the kind of child who’d take apart a toy just to see how it worked. Her behaviour would infuriate her mother, especially when she took apart the Game Boy her parents had bought her one Christmas, which was apparently a very expensive gift. But her dad always encouraged her inquisitive nature. He’d bring home old calculators from the bank where he worked for her to take apart and then methodically put together again. Sometimes Amanda could even repair broken models.
She’d often struggled to understand people. ‘Cold’ was the term Shane had used during their bitter break-up. Amanda knew he was half right, as painful as that was to admit. People were difficult, unpredictable. Technology never asked anything of Amanda, it always just did as she wanted without question.
And Will was like that. He took the lead in their relationship, happy to give Amanda enough space to be her introverted self. He didn’t try and take her to parties or on nights out with his friends. In fact, he’d never actually introduced Amanda to anyone other than his work colleagues. But it was because he respected how she was; that she wasn’t a people person. She belonged behind a computer screen, lost in cyberspace.
Amanda’s fingers were dancing across the keyboard of her laptop, effortlessly making changes to the Diowater website. A soft smile pulled on her lips as she worked. She was in her element. By nine o’clock she’d forgotten all about the dream which had woken her so abruptly that morning. She was in the zone, working hard and working fast which was always her preferred method.
Something was ringing.
The sound was so sudden, so piercing, that it caused Amanda to audibly gasp. Her gasp deepened into a groan as she realized that it was the phone.
‘Great,’ she moaned to herself as she twisted round in her leather office chair and reached for the cordless handset which was cradled on the far side of her desk. Before pressing the green answer button she sucked in a breath, praying that it wasn’t Diowater calling her to make yet more changes to the website. They’d already changed their mind four times since she’d taken on the project three weeks ago. Marnie had assured her only last night that this last change would be the final one. Now that she was so close to completion she wanted them to just allow her to get on with their job. At the end of it they’d have a beautiful, sleek website and everyone would be happy.
‘Hello?’ Amanda sounded formal as she answered. She braced herself for what was coming next. She wished she’d opted for a more expensive model of cordless phone which would at least show caller ID. Either her current client would start reeling off a list of newly urgent requirements to her, or worse, she’d hear the clipped greeting of her mother.
Corrine Roberts was usually out in her garden early on a morning, pruning her beloved roses and tending to her azaleas. She normally didn’t intrude upon Amanda’s work day until at least two in the afternoon, by which time she’d gossiped adequately with all her neighbours and friends and was keen to try and get blood from a new stone. For Amanda never had any gossip. None that her mother and her bingo clique would be interested in. But that didn’t stop Corrine calling and probing her daughter on a daily basis.
‘Mrs Thorn?’ So it wasn’t her mother calling.
Amanda pulled her chair back towards her laptop. Her mouth became dry as she considered it might be another wrong number. This voice was softer than the one who called yesterday, with less rough edges.
‘Yes,’ Amanda coughed uneasily.
‘Mrs Thorn, this is Mike from the warehouse. We just wanted to check why Will hasn’t shown up for work today. Is he off sick?’
Amanda reached forward and gripped the edge of her desk for support. The slick surface did little to stabilize her. She could suddenly hear the crashing of the waves in her eardrums as her heart’s pace quickened in her chest.
‘He… um…’ she tried to find her voice, to sound decidedly less startled than she was. ‘He’s not come in?’
‘No,’ Mike confirmed quietly. Had something crept into his voice that wasn’t there before? Remorse? Embarrassment? Amanda couldn’t tell. ‘His shift started at half eight but he’s not here yet.’
‘He’s not?’ Amanda blinked away tears.
‘Maybe he’s got stuck in traffic,’ Mike offered. Could he sense her distress?
‘Yeah,’ Amanda cleared her throat. ‘That must be it.’ Only she knew that couldn’t be it. Will had been gone since before she got up. Still holding the phone, she stood up and went to the window on the landing. She looked down at the dark tarmac of the driveway. Will’s blue van was definitely gone.
‘Okay, Mrs Thorn, well can you tell him to get here as soon as possible?’
‘Yes,’ Amanda was wiping her free hand across her eyes, ‘yes of course.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Thorn. Sorry for bothering you.’
The line went dead and Amanda leaned towards the window, staring at the vacant space on the driveway. For a moment she froze, allowing her mind to entertain a host of panicked thoughts.
What if he’d been in a car accident?
What if he was currently lying in a pool of his own blood as the life seeped out of him?
What if he never came home?
Amanda’s chest was tightening as she headed downstairs, making her breaths ragged. She punched Will’s number into the cordless handset and raised it back to her ear. She was in the hallway as she waited for the call to connect. It was taking longer than usual. Each second was painfully drawn out as Amanda was forced to just stand and wait.
‘Ring, dammit,’ she urged the handset. Why wasn’t it ringing?
Finally she heard something click in on the other end of the line. Had Will picked up?
‘The number you dialled has been disconnec
ted,’ an indifferent mechanical voice told her.
‘What?’ Amanda raged. That was impossible. She sprinted back up the stairs, running into her bedroom and grabbing her mobile phone. With a few swipes of her finger she was calling Will again. There were the same drawn-out delay and then the clipped voice informing her, ‘The number you dialled has been disconnected.’
She tried the number again. And again. There was no way Will’s number had been disconnected. She’d spoken to him on his mobile only the previous day during his lunch break. What was going on?
Amanda listened to the automated response eight more times. Her hands were shaking as she threw her phone back on to the bed and paced anxiously back and forth. Will wasn’t at work. He was unable to answer his phone. Where the hell was he?
4
Every ten minutes, Amanda dialled Will’s number again, clinging to the hope that this time the call would connect. But it was never her husband who picked up. Amanda knew the clipped monotone response by heart as it echoed in her ear: ‘The number you dialled has been disconnected.’
She’d heard the message so many times that she feared it had been forever ingrained on her soul. That years, even decades from now she’d hear the objective words as they became permanently housed in the darker recesses of her mind.
‘Come on,’ Amanda chewed down on her thumbnail as she paced across the landing. Her mobile phone was held to her ear in the midst of a pregnant pause during which she crossed everything, praying that Will would answer.
Amanda had never been someone to entertain superstitions. She’d put shoes on the table, cross someone on the stairs and deliberately fail to acknowledge a solitary magpie. She didn’t believe in fate. But now, as the morning started to creep worryingly close towards the afternoon, Amanda was willing to do whatever it took to find out where her husband was. She’d cross her fingers, never walk beneath a ladder again and throw salt over her shoulder if she had to.
