‘No, he’s not.’
‘Ah, right. Will he be long? D’you think?’
‘I’ve no idea. I’m going out myself now, though, so if you’ll excuse me …’ She made to shut the door.
‘Oh, well, it’s just that he knocked on my door. About an hour ago. And I just wondered – what he wanted.’
She frowned. Opened the door a bit wider. ‘You didn’t answer it?’
‘Um, someone else answered.’
‘But didn’t come and get you?’
Not so stupid, this old bag. Superior thought processes were apparent. ‘Er, no. You see, I was very busy. Very involved.’ Oh, no, not involved, Olivia!
‘Well, I wouldn’t worry. I don’t suppose he specifically wanted to see you. He was out delivering leaflets.’
‘Oh, leaflets! Lovely!’ I enthused. ‘Getting out and about then?’
She narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously, declined to answer. No, quite right. Probably fiercely protective.
‘Well,’ I hastened on, ‘when he comes back, perhaps you could just say – that I’d love to have a chat? When he’s around?’
‘I’ll give him the message.’
She shut the door and left me staring at the paintwork again. God, what an old harridan, I thought as I turned and went slowly down the steps. Poor old Sebastian. Heavens, it was no wonder he was like he was with a mother like that. She probably smothered him as a child, hadn’t let him play with any rough boys, probably hadn’t even let him go to school. I’d hazard a guess she still ironed his pants for him, tucked his pyjama top into his bottoms at night. It was years since I’d seen it, but she reminded me of that nutty mother in Psycho, the one at the top of the house in the rocking chair, which I suppose made Sebastian the creepy son … although now I came to think of it, hadn’t the son dressed up as the mother? Yes, that’s right, there hadn’t been a mother at all. I glanced back nervously. Could that have been – Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Olivia. She’s half his size! None the less, I thought with a shiver, no showers for me until I’d safely explained away Lance’s sexual marathon story. I didn’t want him thinking we were poking fun at his own sexual inadequacies; didn’t want him meat-cleaving his way round to my place.
I slowed my pace as I approached my gates and stopped. Hesitated. It was funny, but now that I was out, and it was such a beautiful day, I didn’t much feel like going back. I also didn’t feel like facing Lance. However accommodating he’d been this morning, now that it was all over I felt slightly foolish. I wanted to distance myself from him. Wanted to get back to that more formal employer-employee relationship we’d had yesterday, forget the cosy, reclining-about-on-rugs-half-naked relationship of this morning. I always kept a ten-pound note in the car in case of petrol emergencies, so not wanting to pop into the house, I stopped by to pick it up. I shoved it in my shorts pocket and strolled on. Yes, that’s it: I’d go into town, buy a bar of chocolate, get the papers, wander around for a bit – why not? And with any luck, by the time I got back, Lance might just have eased himself up from his supine position on the lawn and gone back to making cupboards for my bloody kitchen – which, let’s face it, was what he was contracted to do in the first place, I thought (a little uncharitably, perhaps, under the circumstances). I joined the footpath, walked on through the park and out on to the steep hill that led to the high street.
Being Sunday, the town was fairly empty – just a few tourists, sitting around in cafés and wine bars, studying guidebooks, heading no doubt for the Roman ruins. I bought the Sunday papers, and suddenly realised I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, which I’d hardly touched, so I stopped off in one of the sunnier watering holes and sat down outside, under a shady umbrella. As I shook out the review section of the newspaper, for one startling moment I felt a delicious sense of freedom. No Sunday lunch to cook, no Johnny to worry about, no volatile moods to pander to; no joint to wrestle out of a steaming oven, no apple sauce to make, no pudding – which I never ate but which Johnny and Claudia liked – to spend half the morning preparing. Just me, a glass of chilled white wine – I studied the menu, and – yes, a Caesar salad. I snapped it shut and smiled up at the rather attractive Italian waiter who was hovering, and gave him my order. Well, I thought, lighting a cigarette, which Claudia would have objected to, with dire threats of ‘death, Mummy, really slow and lingering, and me an orphan, with no one to look after me.’ Well. I smiled into the sunshine. This really wasn’t so terrible, was it? A beautiful day, with no one to please but myself. Yes, in theory, I would have had it differently, but actually, in reality, it was not so unpleasant. Was I even warming to it? This single life?
When I’d finished my lunch and read most of the papers, I paid the bill and strolled back, taking a short cut through the West Gate of the Abbey and down a cobbled side street. I passed the Abbey nearly every day of my life but never failed to be moved by it. I stopped now and stared up at the square, red tower, which had been built in something unbelievable, like 1080, from Roman tiles that had already been hanging around for – ooh, about eight hundred years. In anyone’s history book, that made it pretty ancient. I strolled on round to the more recent, Gothic façade, but stopped short at the door.
When we’d first moved here, I’d gone in quite a lot, marvelling at the vast painted ceilings, exploring the nave, the crypts, the chapel of the first martyr, enjoying the history, the architecture. Claudia loved it too, and I occasionally accompanied her to evensong, which she liked, but never with Johnny. Having been quite a strict Catholic, he’d suddenly taken against it all, declaring it a load of papist mumbo jumbo – which was odd, because in London he’d chivvy us all into going at least a couple of times a month. Now he no longer went at all. Too much to confess, I thought bitterly. And to be honest, with no one to bully me into it, I didn’t choose to worship much either. It didn’t bother me that this church wasn’t my denomination – and, anyway, they did hold Catholic services here. It was just that I’d always felt attendance a duty, an onerous one, to be done under duress. But as I stood there on the main steps, worn down by centuries of pilgrims’ feet, I realised I missed it. It was imbued in me, this religious ritual, whether I liked it or not. A combination of my mother, the nuns at school and, to a lesser extent, Johnny and his family, had seen to that. I missed the contemplation, the peace of prayer. In truth, I missed that still, small voice of calm that I’d kicked against all my life.
On an impulse, I stuffed the rather gaudy Sunday papers in a bin and walked in, abruptly conscious of my shorts. I pulled the turn-ups down a bit. The morning service had finished and the tourists had taken over, swarming about the place. On the South side, orchestra stands and chairs were also being noisily assembled, possibly for a rehearsal of the concert Imogen had mentioned. I stopped, disappointed. Something pompous about not causing a commotion in my father’s house came to mind, but in truth, I think the bustle annoyed my romantic sensibilities more than my religious ones. It was at odds with my vision of myself as a young Sophia Loren-like figure, alone in a huge cathedral, black headscarf tied under chin, kneeling to ask my maker for guidance, for forgiveness, whereupon a rather sexy young curate would approach, see my bent head – and, of course, my sylphlike figure and finely chiselled profile – sit beside me and place a hand on mine.
‘You look troubled, my child.’
‘Yes, well,’ I’d sigh. ‘You’d be troubled if you’d been left for a complete bimbo, and were having to contend with the builders, not to mention –’
At this point my fantasy lost any religious fervour it might have possessed and plunged into mediocrity. I grinned. Just as well the place was packed, I decided, as I came out through the Chapel door, and I couldn’t attempt my prayer/fantasy. Who knows where it might have ended, and anyway, declothing vicars was a rather serious offence, I believed.
I smiled as I rounded the bend into my road, admiring the roses that cascaded over my garden wall. Madame Alfred Carrière was such a good doer. It didn’t
last all summer, of course, like the modern hybrids, but, my goodness, that flash of splendour made up for its brevity. I was also pleased to see the back of Lucy’s mother’s car parked outside: the Range Rover lookalike, with its spare wheel giving free advertising to the garage of purchase, that badge of the upwardly mobile, school-running mother. Ah good, Claudes was back then. I realised with a guilty pang that I hadn’t really missed her at all, as I usually did. Too preoccupied, no doubt. As a treat, I thought, I’d make her pancakes for supper. Let her eat them in front of the telly, in front of Ballykissangel – or Ballykissarsehole, as Johnny used to call it – with a packet of Jaffa Cakes between us for pudding, as was our wont.
Lucy’s mother, Amanda, was sitting in the front seat. When she saw me in her rear-view mirror, she shot out of the car. I saw her face and stopped short, as if I’d hit a barrier.
‘Is she with you?’ she called. I’ll never forget the sound of her voice. ‘Have you got her?’
Her face was pale, strained. I made myself go on, broke into a run.
‘What?’ I called stupidly, knowing.
‘Claudia, is she with you?’
‘Of course not! She’s with you, isn’t she?’
Amanda’s face crumpled as I reached her, her hand clutched her mouth.
‘Oh God, Olivia, this is all so awful and it’s all my fault! I’m so sorry.’ Her voice cracked as she reached out and gripped my arm. ‘Claudia’s gone missing!’
Chapter Eleven
‘What d’you mean, gone missing?’ I felt my stomach heave, my heart leap into my throat.
‘Well, she wanted to come back, you see, this morning,’ Amanda fell over her words in her distress, ‘and so I brought her back because she seemed so anxious, and then, of course, you weren’t here and – and stupidly I left her because she said she’d be fine, and then I panicked and rang and you still weren’t back and she wasn’t here either and – oh God, Olivia, I’m so sorry!’ She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
Feeling sick to my stomach but knowing I had to stay calm, I sat her on the garden wall.
‘From the beginning, Amanda,’ I said trembling. ‘Slowly. Tell me exactly what happened.’
She wiped mascara from under her eyes with the tips of shaky fingers. Nodded. ‘Sorry.’ She seemed to pull herself together for a moment. Took a deep breath. ‘Well, she was fine last night. I let them have pizza in front of a video and then they all slept on mattresses on the floor in Lucy’s room and giggled for ages. Claudia was as cheerful as the others, had a great time – midnight feasts, dancing to pop music, that sort of thing – but then this morning at breakfast, well, she seemed rather quiet. The others were still shrieking away, very overexcited and hyped up, but she wasn’t, and she didn’t eat anything either. I asked her if she was OK and she said she was fine, and then a bit later on, I dropped them off at a ten o’clock matinée of Titanic. When I picked them up outside, the other three were larking about as usual, but Claudia was still withdrawn, so I took her aside and asked her what was wrong. Her eyes filled with tears. She said she normally saw her daddy on a Sunday, but she’d chosen to come here instead, and now she felt awful because she thought he might be upset, think she’d chosen her friends instead, that she didn’t want to see him.’
‘Oh, Claudes!’ My hand flew to my mouth.
‘So I said, well, OK, what time did Daddy normally come round? And she said, oh, about lunchtime, I think, so I said – well, look, Mummy’s probably put him off, but d’you want to go home and check, and maybe ring him to see if there’s still time to see him? Well, her face lit up at that, and she said she did.’ Amanda paused for breath, took a huge gulp of air. ‘Anyway, I said, OK, that’s fine, I’ll drop you off, so we all piled in the car and drove straight over, but you weren’t here. There was a note on the door from someone called Lance who said he was in the Fighting Cocks if you wanted to join him, but otherwise the place was deserted.’ She gave a tremulous sob. ‘Except that the back door was open, and Claudia said that if you’d left it open like that you wouldn’t be long and you’d probably only popped to the shops, and that, in any case, the builder would be back soon.’ Amanda raised her chin to hold back tears. ‘Anyway, the other three were going on and on about how I’d promised them Café Rouge and how they were starving, and Claudia was insisting that she didn’t want to come, and then the baby started screaming and – oh God, Olivia, in the end I just left her here!’ She turned guilty eyes on me.
I nodded. ‘It’s OK, Amanda. I might well have done the same.’
‘So off we all went for lunch and, of course, sitting there in the restaurant, I worried, so I rang to make sure you were back but there was no answer. Then I really panicked. I hurried the girls through their pudding but it took ages to get the bill and then I dropped them all off with my neighbour before dashing back over here. The back door was still open and I looked all over the house and the garden and she just wasn’t here. Then I looked down the road and then I thought – well, maybe you’d come back and you’d both gone out together and I’d missed you or something, but then you came back and – Oh God, Olivia, I feel sick!’ She held her hand over her mouth, eyes full of fear. ‘What are we going to do!’
She felt sick. I swallowed. Right. So she’d searched everywhere and Claudia wasn’t here. My head told me that she was very sensible for her age and that she wouldn’t be far, maybe across the stream in the thicket at the back, or maybe even next door with the Joneses, but my heart told me that she was ten years old and she was on her own somewhere, had been for two hours, and I didn’t know where.
‘Should we ring the police?’ trembled Amanda.
‘Not yet. You go and ask next door. I’m going to check out a few places near the river.’
I flew round the back of the house and down the garden. Most people assumed the stream was our boundary, but our land – such as it was – carried on over the other side. Amanda wouldn’t have been down here. I ran over the bridge and into the little thicket where Claudia had her tree house. Oh, please let her be sulking up here, I begged as I climbed the rope ladder, please let her be reading a comic, cross that I wasn’t around to get hold of Daddy for her, please! I reached the top and peered in. Empty. I clattered back down again and ran to the back fence. My hands clutched the black railings. There was a park beyond with wide pathways where we sometimes went roller-skating up to the lake. I shaded my eyes. No sign. Just a few teenage girls immobile on the grass with skirts pulled up, and an old couple asleep in deck chairs. I ran back, across the bridge, then veered off left to the caravan. I flung open the door. Nothing. I felt panic rising, but made myself stop and rack my brains. As I shut the door I had a thought: the note on the door from Lance. If she’d read it, and thought – oh, Mum’s gone to join him in the pub – then she’d surely come and find me there! Of course! And there was a garden there too, so she was probably on the swings, or having an orange juice and a bag of crisps with Lance, happy as Larry!
I ran breathlessly back to Amanda in the drive.
‘She wasn’t next door!’ she shouted.
‘No, it’s OK, stay here in case she appears, but I think I know where she is.’
‘Oh, thank God!’ She clasped her hands. ‘Where d’you –’
But I didn’t wait to explain, I was gone. The Fighting Cocks was only a couple of hundred yards from our house, at the end of The Crescent, and in the summer it teemed, mostly with teenagers having their first illicit pint, loafing around on the grass, laughing loudly as it reached the relevant parts, or even just hanging out on the wall with an orange juice. The garden was heaving when I arrived. I glanced at the swings, but they were being ridden by much older children, showing off, standing two to a swing, facing each other, making them soar in the air. I spun around, squinting against the sun to spot her. There were children everywhere, running amongst the tables, eating chicken nuggets with their parents – but no Claudia. Then suddenly I spotted Lance. He was sitting at the end of
a long table he was having to share with a multitude of others, one hand holding his mobile phone to his ear, the other, shading his eyes as he gazed, rather grimly, at the table. My hand shot up.
‘Lance!’
I dashed across. ‘Lance – is Claudia with you?’
He glanced up quickly from his phone. ‘Speak to you later,’ he informed someone abruptly. He snapped it shut. ‘Ah! You made it at last.’ He smiled. ‘D’you want a drink?’
‘No!’ I shrieked, gripping the table with two hands. ‘Is Claudia with you!’
The rest of the table caught the hysteria in my voice and paused, drinks and sandwiches halfway to mouths.
Lance got up. ‘No, she’s not, why?’
‘Oh, Lance, she’s missing!’ I gasped, rapidly losing control. Vocalising it was so awful. My baby. Missing. He came round the table, took my arm and led me away.
‘When was she last seen?’ he muttered gently.
‘Lucy’s mother brought her home – I think about an hour and a half ago. We must have both just left the house!’
‘You mean, she left her there?’
‘Yes, because she thought I’d be back in a minute!’
‘Well, an hour and a half’s not long. She must be around here somewhere.’
‘Yes, I suppose, but where?’ I wailed, spinning around, as if vainly hoping to see her sitting at another table, with another family perhaps, tucking into a ploughman’s, grinning and waving a fork at me. We pushed our way through the throng to the gate. ‘Where?’ I repeated hysterically.
‘Now don’t panic. She’s a sensible girl, and it’s not as if she’s a baby, for heaven’s sake. She’s probably just popped round to see a friend or something.’
‘No.’ I shook my head, knowing he was talking about a different world. A friendlier, latch-key world, an every-mum-in-the-street-is-an-auntie world, not the closeted, privately educated, socially divisive world Claudia belonged to. ‘It’s not like that, Lance. She doesn’t go to the local school, none of her friends live round here, she gets ferried everywhere by car. Oh God, where is she?’
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