‘Did he leave the house with you?’ Anne persisted. ‘Is he outside somewhere?’
‘I-I don’t think so. He was asleep …’
Anne glanced back, almost involuntarily, over her shoulder.
So, Stevie might still be asleep in his bedroom, with his mother hanging dead from the bannister directly outside. She needed to check the bedroom. But she couldn’t do so with little Joanna in her arms. Neither could she inflict any closer proximity with her clearly dead mother on the little girl. Nor on herself, come to that, she thought.
She’d just decided that she would continue with her intention of taking Jo home and get Gerry to seek out Stevie, when she heard a sound from the landing. She looked up. Stevie, wearing a dark blue sleepsuit decorated with silver star-bursts, was standing on the top stair. His spiky blonde hair was tousled, he had the thumb of one hand in his mouth, and in the other hand carried his toy teddy bear. He looked like something out of Christopher Robin.
But this was no Christopher Robin story, thought Anne, wondering exactly how she was going to cope with both children in these shocking circumstances.
Stevie was staring at his mother, hanging there in front of him. But it was almost as if he did not see her. He kept looking, yet didn’t react. Anne knew she had to get him away from the house too. And as quickly as possible. She coaxed the little boy down the stairs and handed him her phone.
‘Right Stevie, you and Joanna are going to come next door to ours with Gerry and me for a little while, and I want you to shine the torch right in front of us as we go. Can you do that?’
‘Of course, I can,’ said Stevie.
‘Let’s go, then,’ said Anne.
She took his hand as they walked awkwardly down the short drive and onto the street, Stevie’s steps uncertain and Joanna a near dead weight in Anne’s arms. The little girl had buried her face in Anne’s shoulder and was continuing to sob. The little boy still seemed more bewildered than anything else, and was clearly trying to be brave.
Anne could see the lights of her own house were now on, including the outside lights, and that Gerry was making his way towards her, shining the torch from his phone in front of him. She narrowed her eyes and peered into the gloom. At least she hoped it was Gerry. Then she told herself off for letting her imagination run away with her. Of course it was Gerry, and he was just in time. Anne feared her knees were going to buckle. It was not just the weight of stocky little Jo which was making it difficult for her to remain standing. She felt as if all her strength had left her.
Gerry noticed at once that she was struggling, and took the child from her. She leaned against her husband, desperately glad of his physical as well as his emotional support.
‘What on earth has happened?’ asked Gerry.
‘Just help me get these children away from here,’ said Anne, in a voice so curiously high pitched she barely recognized it as her own.
‘Anne. What is it?’
‘Let’s get these children away from here,’ Anne repeated. ‘Then I will tell you.’
ONE
Just under three weeks earlier the lives of Felix and Jane Ferguson had finally and irrevocably changed for ever. They had both been forced to accept the unacceptable, and to embrace a terrible stark reality which they had previously continued to deny the very existence of.
For Felix, the day, which they both came to refer to as Black Monday, had begun like any other. He ran a café, the long established Cleverdon’s, in Bideford, the historic little market town a couple of miles up-river from Instow. He had been given it, and control of one of the family property businesses, by his father.
People who knew Felix were inclined to remark on his extreme good fortune. Everything Felix had seemed to have fallen into his lap with very little effort required, including his marriage, his children, and his beautiful home.
He certainly had no great love of hard work, whenever possible escaping to sail his boat, the twenty-one-foot drop keel shrimper he kept at the North Devon Yacht Club, ten-minute’s walk down the hill from his home.
He made an appearance most days at Cleverdon’s, but employed a chef to cook the assorted cakes, scones and pasties for which the establishment was well known. On leaving school, Felix had undertaken a catering course at college. He’d learned to cook professionally and also studied for a diploma in business studies, and had managed to successively achieve the minimum acceptable grades with the minimum possible work.
On the insistence of his father, after leaving college Felix had become the principle chef at Cleverdon’s. This had involved rising at five a.m. six days a week. Felix had not been at all keen, and only reluctantly agreed when his father promised that his taking the job would be an experiment for both of them, and that they would re-examine the situation after a year.
Perhaps unsurprisingly Felix proved unable to make those early starts on a regular basis. And although he was actually a talented cook, he was also an absent-minded one who bored easily. Felix’s attention, both physical and mental, was all too often diverted onto matters he found more interesting and consuming. The Fastnet yacht race on the TV in the office, or a major golf tournament, a quick pint in The Heavitree Arms, a coffee front of house with a passing chum. The result was that he burnt the cakes. And the pasties. Literally. And failed to achieve risen scones with any consistency at all.
His father’s experiment lasted a scant six months.
However Sam Ferguson made it clear that he still wanted his only son to assume his rightful place in the family business. The otherwise unfortunate experiment at least allowed Sam to become aware of his son’s strengths as well as his weaknesses. Felix brought in the customers to Cleverdon’s, enticed by his smiling demeanour and gentle humour. He had a certain natural charm, and every so often even proved himself able to negotiate better business deals than Sam was able to.
And so Sam Ferguson had embarked on a new course of action, that of playing to his son’s strengths. Instead of falling out with Felix and demoting him, he promoted him, making him managing director of Cleverdon’s and a director of the family property business.
Felix promptly brought in his mother, always besotted with him, to manage the café, and a distant cousin – one trait he had inherited was that of keeping everything possible in the family – to manage the nitty gritty of the property business. Meanwhile Felix himself concentrated on what he called ‘the frilly bits’ – in the main the wooing of customers of the café and of the various business associates involved in the property business, over long lunches, and days out sailing, or playing golf at the Royal North Devon Golf Club on the burrows at Westward Ho!.
The arrangement, seeming somewhat bizarrely to suit all involved, had continued with perhaps surprising success through Felix’s bachelorhood, withstanding his preference for boats and golf and fast cars over any form of work, and into and beyond his marriage to Jane. The café did better than ever before, and when Felix realized that his mother was beginning to struggle with the workload, he found another distant cousin to manage that too.
Nowadays Felix, using the need to look after, indeed to watch over, Jane, as his excuse should he ever need one, rarely arrived at any of his workplaces before eleven. Sometimes midday. And sometimes not at all. Particularly on a good sailing day.
Jane did not know that Felix used her as his excuse in that way. And Felix knew that she wouldn’t like it. He was genuinely a kind and caring man who wanted nothing more than to be able to help his wife through the difficulties which they were both finding harder and harder to deal with, but one of his less endearing traits was that he did like to be seen to be doing good, and indeed to be admired for it.
This particular fateful day, the day that became Black Monday, began, as usual, with Jane preparing a family breakfast. Then she cleared the breakfast things away and washed up whilst Felix completed the morning school run, also as usual. After Felix returned, she continued to clean and tidy the house whilst he sat with his papers and his coffee.
One good thing about Jane was that she had never required him to do anything much in the house. He did occasionally put the rubbish out. Men did, didn’t they? And every so often he would cook a special meal, if only to show off his professional skills. Albeit not nearly as often as when they were first married.
All of this suited Felix’s indolent nature down to the ground.
However, although Felix was not by nature a worrier, he was becoming more and more concerned by Jane’s ‘little problem’. She was all right during the day, he told himself for the umpteenth time. Indeed, perfectly all right. She didn’t really need his supervision.
The sun was shining, and a moderate easterly breeze was blowing. The tides were right too. Felix thought he might treat himself to an entire day off and take the Stevie-Jo, named, of course, after his children, out for a blow around the estuary. They’d put her on her river mooring ready for the season just a couple of days previously, and this really was an exceptionally good day for mid-April. To be comfortable, and Felix wasn’t big on discomfort, he needed one crew. He glanced towards his wife and considered asking her if she would like to go sailing with him on this glorious morning.
But no, that would never do. He would be able to pick up somebody at a loose end at the yacht club, for sure. After all, he didn’t entirely trust Jane on a boat, did he? Indeed, who would? She was no natural sailor.
He informed Jane of his intentions, which, as usual, she accepted without any adverse comment, and a little later began the stroll down the hill to Instow sea front and the North Devon Yacht Club at the Bideford end of Marine Parade. Leaving his car behind meant he could drink as much as he liked. And by the time he faced the uphill walk home he was usually feeling no pain.
Felix was aware that he might be beginning to drink too much. Jane had tentatively mentioned it once or twice, but had never laboured the point. After all, she was in no position to criticize him. And Felix had swiftly responded that if he wasn’t worried sick about her, he probably wouldn’t drink at all. Although he didn’t really believe that was true. He’d always enjoyed bar-room bonhomie.
On that day it was well after four before he left the yacht club. He’d found a sailing companion without difficulty, as he had predicted that he would. An old school chum, working on his own vessel not yet ready for its river mooring, had been delighted to be offered a diversion from a day of tedious tasks. He not only crewed for Felix, but then spent a convivial afternoon in the bar with him.
Felix was an amiable drunk, whose nature led him largely towards agreeable melancholy when under the influence of alcohol. As he stepped out of the clubhouse into the fresh sea air, he began to reflect on his first meeting with Jane. It had been love at first sight, it really had, even though, at the time, Felix would have said he did not believe in such a thing.
There’d been a vacancy for a waitress at Cleverdon’s. Jane, who’d recently moved into the area following the death of her mother and was living in a bedsit over at East the Water, applied for the job. As soon as she walked into the café for her interview, Felix was captivated by her natural prettiness, her warm shy smile, the beautiful glossy brown hair which fell to her shoulders, and the look in her bright eyes which held just a hint of unknown sadness. His heart had melted. And he’d known, with devastating clarity, that this was the woman he would marry.
Was he glad that he married her? Yes, of course he was, he told himself. Apart from anything else, she had given him two beautiful children. Was he happy with his life? Well, until recently the answer to that would have been a resounding yes. Nowadays he wasn’t quite so sure. There were certainly problems in his marriage. Problems he’d never imagined could have happened. Not to him, anyway. Not to him and Jane.
Felix didn’t like problems, and he had no real capacity for dealing with problems.
He caught his toe on a piece of uneven pavement along the seafront, stumbled slightly, and hung on to a lamp post for support.
Was he still in love with Jane, he asked himself? Obscurely he found himself thinking about the fateful news coverage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana when they became engaged to be married, and Charles had been asked if he were in love with Diana. That had been before Felix was born, of course, but the footage was still shown repeatedly on TV and, like so many, in view of subsequent events, Felix always found himself chilled by it.
Charles had memorably replied, ‘Whatever in love means’.
Felix suspected that if he even had to ask himself that question, then he wasn’t still in love with Jane. But he had been once, by God he had. He certainly wouldn’t have needed to ask ‘whatever in love means’ when Jane had consented to be his wife. And how many couples were still in love with each other after seven years of marriage?
Loving your husband or wife, now that was a different matter. Did he still love Jane? Felix squinted into the bright sun. He told himself he was being ridiculous. He really shouldn’t go there. He was half pissed and fully pickled. Did that make sense? He didn’t know. Did he still love his Jane? Of course, he bloody well did.
He loosened his grip on the lamp post and hoisted himself up to his full six foot one inches, making a monumental effort to stand straight and generally pull himself together.
Then, walking with any sign of inebriation now so very slight that only the most intent observer would notice anything amiss, he stopped off at Johns, the village shop.
The shop often stocked flowers from local suppliers. Felix hoped there might still be some late daffodils on offer, Jane’s favourite. There were. A large bucket stood outside containing four or five bunches.
Felix bought the lot, and proceeded along the Parade, still concentrating hard on his walking, whilst clutching an armful of budding yellow daffs.
By the time he reached Estuary Vista Close, Jane had collected the twins from school, as she routinely did, and was in the process of preparing their tea. Fish finger sandwiches. Their favourite.
Felix pecked Jane on the cheek and presented her with his daffodil offering. She responded with smiling thanks. If she noticed that he had once again been drinking heavily – and he was pretty sure that she would have done, Jane knew him far too well not to – then she passed no comment.
Felix assumed she was getting used to it. He supposed that was what all married couples did sooner or later. They just got used to each other. And put up with each other, of course.
Some things, however, he thought to himself, were more difficult to get used to than others.
He bent to attend to his children, who had, upon his arrival in the kitchen, jumped from their chairs at the table and wound themselves around his legs, noisily demanding his attention.
After only a few minutes of playfulness, fatherly teasing, and listening to their tales of the school room and playground, Felix, who was beginning to feel extremely weary, was grateful when Jane announced that the twins’ beloved fish finger sandwiches were ready, and they should return to the table. Smartish.
He then took the opportunity to retreat to the bedroom. There he did what he often seemed to do nowadays: slept off his afternoon excesses before joining Jane for dinner.
TWO
Jane Ferguson was definitely no longer happy with her life. But she didn’t blame Felix. By and large he was a good husband. And she believed that he loved her. As she did him. In spite of everything. He was kind, and he was an excellent provider; albeit not entirely through his own efforts. He was also the best of fathers.
She didn’t mind his streak of lazy indolence. She had been aware of it from the very beginning of their relationship, and had always regarded it as being the flip side of the coin to the charmingly easy-going man she’d fallen in love with.
She wished he did not drink quite so much. This was a relatively new thing. And she could understand his desire to seek an escape from reality, but she didn’t like it that Felix’s increasingly frequent afternoon drinking encroached upon his time with his children. All too often he would retreat
to bed to sleep it off just at their tea time, when he would otherwise be joining in and making this ordinary evening event so much more fun than she ever seemed able to. Felix was good at that.
But no. Jane didn’t blame Felix for anything. She blamed whatever it was that was going on inside her own head. The wretched curse gnawing away at her very being, making it increasingly more difficult for her to cope with even the most basic challenges of her day-to-day life. She had almost totally lost confidence in herself. She only went out when she had to, preferring to remain in her own familiar territory. Even then, her days were filled with nervous uncertainty.
Jane was beginning to dread bedtime more and more. And she suspected that Felix was too.
Nonetheless she continued to proceed with the routine of a normal family evening as if there were nothing wrong. Or she tried to, anyway. After all, what else could she do?
Felix emerged at around six thirty p.m., just as Jane was preparing to put the twins to bed. He seemed very nearly sober. He’d always been a quick recoverer.
‘I’ll do it,’ he said.
Jane happily demurred. Felix nearly always took charge of bedtime duties. Even his drinking rarely got in the way of that.
She went back to the kitchen to make dinner for them both, leaving the door open so that she could hear the cheery sounds from upstairs. First the splashes and shrieks emulating from the bathroom, and then, later, the low hum of Felix’s voice as he read the twins a bedtime story. This was a nighty ritual at which Felix was also rather good.
The whole thing usually took around an hour.
By the time she heard her husband’s footsteps on the stairs, Jane had set the little table in the conservatory, with its panoramic views across Bideford Bay, where they almost always ate when alone, and made a green salad which she placed in the centre of it. Two decent-sized sirloin steaks from their local butcher were marinating in oil and seasoning ready to be sizzled in the griddle pan waiting on the hob. A tray of chips in the oven were about to brown. There was fruit and ice cream for afters.
Dreams of Fear Page 2
