What Became of You My Love?

by Maeve Haran

  Stella spotted Izzy looking nervously around and the smile of relief that it was her gran, rather than an unpredictable Emma, who had come to meet her wrung Stella’s heart.

  Stella had taken her mind off the waiting and the moaning mummies by running through all they should be doing in the hunt for her grandson. By now, with luck, Stuart would be home and any fireworks hopefully exploded by the time she and Izzy arrived. Deliberately, she suggested they stop for an ice cream.

  ‘Ooh, Gran, you are naughty. Mum never lets me.’

  ‘What are grandmothers for, if not to let you do what your mother doesn’t? Especially if you promise not to tell her!’

  Izzy chose butterscotch and vanilla in a crunchy sugar cone. Stella opted for her favourite, lemon sorbet.

  ‘Do you want a flake in that, love?’ enquired the cafe owner.

  Stella decided, unorthodox though it might be, that the combination sounded delicious. She was right.

  ‘We’re just going to pick up Ruby from the childminder,’ she explained to Izzy, ‘and then I’m going to make your tea. Shepherd’s pie with real shepherds.’ They both giggled. This had been their joke since Izzy was tiny.

  ‘Can we have baked beans with it?’

  ‘You certainly can.’

  Ruby was thrilled to see her gran and her big sister and chuckled away to herself as they fitted her into her Bugaboo pushchair, carefully doing up the straps. ‘Can I ride on the back?’

  Stella hesitated, worried that Izzy might break it, but she was a tiny little thing for her age. ‘Why not?’ So Izzy climbed aboard.

  By the time they reached home it was 5.45 p.m. and Stuart’s car was in the drive.

  ‘Dad’s home early.’ Izzy looked at Stella anxiously. ‘They think I don’t know about Jesse still being away, but I do.’

  ‘Did he say anything to you?’

  ‘He asked if he could borrow some of my Christmas money. I asked everyone for cash this year because I want a new phone and Mum won’t buy me one.’

  ‘Did he say where he was going?’

  ‘No, but he took his little surfboard thing.’

  Stella wondered if Emma had had a proper look around his room. If not, this should be the next thing on the list.

  ‘I hope Mum and Dad aren’t shouting at each other.’

  This wish was unfortunately not to be granted.

  ‘I can’t see why you didn’t ring the police straight away,’ Stuart was saying angrily. ‘We’ve lost another whole day. All you have to do is dial one zero one, and they’ll put you straight through if the child’s under eighteen.’

  ‘You’re the expert on the law, Stuart,’ Emma defended herself, ‘how could I know that?’

  ‘You could have gone online. We don’t live in the middle ages. What have you been doing all day, anyway?’

  ‘Sitting on the sofa eating chocolates!’ Emma flashed back. ‘What do you think? I’ve been ringing anyone I think is friendly with him and their parents too. Everyone seems to think this Kirsty is our best option.’

  ‘But I don’t suppose you’ve managed to track her down?’

  ‘Stop it! Stop it, both of you!’ Izzy shouted and put her hands over her ears.

  Overcome with guilt, Stuart opened his arms. ‘Sorry, Izz, I’m really sorry. C’m here.’

  Izzy buried herself in his embrace, still weeping.

  ‘I’ll call them in a minute,’ Stuart announced. ‘Sorry, everyone. That wasn’t helpful.’

  ‘Sit and watch TV for a bit, Izzy. Ruby can stay in her walker while I start the supper.’

  Emma shot her a grateful look.

  Five minutes later, Stuart was off the phone. ‘They’re sending someone round later. That’s the kind of treatment you get if you’re a nice middle-class family. If it were one of my clients, they’d suggest the kid was in a gang or on drugs.’

  ‘Leave it out, Stuart!’ snapped Emma. ‘Spare us the right-on lecture.’ She paused a moment, struck. ‘You don’t think he is on drugs, do you?’

  Stella was impressed by how quickly the police arrived. They had just finished supper when the doorbell rang and a young man and woman introduced themselves as the ‘initial investigating officers’.

  Emma invited them into the cosy-if-somewhat-chaotic living room. Ruby was still in her high chair at the kitchen table while Izzy was helping with the clearing up. To Stella they looked like the most normal of families. She wondered how quickly police assessed any situation.

  ‘Actually, I’m a lawyer so I know the ropes,’ Stuart stated with a slight but discernible air of hostility. Stella assumed he was simply telling them they were dealing with a professional here, on the assumption that this would make them treat it more seriously. She hoped it worked.

  ‘Right.’ The male officer looked at him. ‘So when did your son actually disappear?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Less than twenty-four hours ago?’ His tone implied a certain over-reaction on their part.

  ‘Yes, but as you know, if the child is under eighteen, that is the correct procedure.’

  ‘Indeed. And his name?’

  ‘Jesse. Jesse Cope.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  The woman officer was looking around the room, taking in family photographs, books, the size of the television. In some ways, just being a woman and working out her instinctive take on the family.

  ‘Did anything happen to explain his departure? Pressures at school? Fall-out with friends? Any quarrels with you?’

  Emma hesitated. ‘Well, yes. We did have words, as it happened.’

  ‘You had words,’ Stuart commented.

  The policewoman ignored him. ‘And what was that about?’

  ‘A girl. I felt he was neglecting his studies and getting too intense about a girl.’

  ‘And have you talked to the girl he was . . .’ she paused and Stella sensed she thought Emma one of those pushy mums who only cared about exam results – ‘getting too intense about?’

  ‘Yes. That was the first thing we thought of. That he might have gone there, but he hasn’t.’

  ‘Has she heard from him?’

  ‘She says not.’

  ‘And he hasn’t contacted anyone? No phone calls, texts, Facebook messages? None of his friends or anything?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. He’s quite a solitary boy.’

  ‘And you have no idea where he’s gone yourselves?’

  ‘We did wonder if he might have gone to find an old friend, a girl, who moved to Brighton.’

  ‘Right.’ The male officer made a face. ‘Brighton.’

  ‘Why do you say it like that?’ Stuart asked testily.

  ‘A lot of runaways go to Brighton. They think it’s cool, apparently.’

  ‘My son is not a runaway!’ flashed Emma.

  Neither officer reacted. ‘For tonight we need a photograph and some DNA.’

  ‘DNA?’ Emma repeated, horrified. ‘My son’s not a criminal!’

  ‘Calm down, Em, it’s routine practice,’ Stuart insisted. ‘His toothbrush will do.’

  ‘And we’d like to search his bedroom, if that’s all right with you. By the way, has he ever run away before?’

  This was too much for Emma. ‘No he hasn’t! We’re a happy family!’

  As if on cue, Ruby began to wail.

  ‘I’ll take her up for her bath, shall I?’ Stella suggested. ‘Izzy could help me.’

  Emma nodded gratefully. The officers had gone upstairs to Jesse’s room where they stayed for half an hour.

  ‘What on earth are they doing?’ Emma demanded, getting more and more wound up.

  Eventually they came down.

  ‘Did you find anything useful?’ Stuart enquired before Emma could speak.

  ‘We’ll put Jesse’s details out on our website. Good idea if you follow your own leads too, though. It can be a long process. Two hundred and seventy-five young people go missing every day. I assume you’ve tried his phone?
’

  ‘Only about a thousand times.’

  ‘Then perhaps just send a text telling him you love him, no pressure.’

  Stella thought of Jesse out there somewhere, probably alone and scared, and decided that tomorrow, interfering or not, she would get involved in finding him as well.

  The officers took their leave.

  ‘I’d better go too,’ Stella announced, feeling that they might cope better with this alone.

  ‘Thank you, Stella.’ Stuart got her coat. ‘You’ve been a great help.’

  ‘Well, whatever I can do, don’t hesitate to ask.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ Emma called out.

  In the car she realized how worried she was about Emma. It was bad enough when your child was in trouble, but a hundred times worse when you felt that they were in some way responsible. Emma needed to find a way of mending her relationship with her son.

  But before that they had to find him.

  All she wanted now was to get home and have Matthew make her a nice cup of tea and talk it through with him. Talking things through wasn’t exactly Matthew’s great strength, but with something of this magnitude, she was sure he would do his best.

  But when she got home she found the whole house was dark and empty.

  On the hall table was a note from Matthew explaining that he had gone to help Fabia with something, and he was sure Stella would understand.

  Well, she didn’t bloody understand.

  The red light winked on the answerphone and she rushed to it in case it was from Emma about Jesse.

  In fact, it was Duncan. If Jesse wasn’t back by tomorrow, he suggested, they should put his photo on their website, as he’d suggested, and ask him to contact them so that they could arrange for him to come to a concert in Brighton. It was a long shot but at least they’d feel they were doing something.

  Although Stella longed to go to bed, she made herself stay up till midnight, and she heard Matthew’s key turn in the door.

  ‘Matthew!’ she greeted him. ‘How the hell could you go out when Jesse has disappeared and everyone is desperately looking for him? We even had the police round!’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Stella, Fabia’s being really helpful. I thought you wanted this campaign of yours to succeed! Jesse’ll come back, just you wait. As soon as he runs out of money he’ll be on his phone in five minutes.’

  ‘I can’t believe you don’t care when even Duncan has been on the phone suggesting we put something on Cameron’s website to help find him.’

  ‘Perfect bloody Duncan! You’d think he was Jesse’s granddad, the way he goes on! As a matter of fact, I’m knackered and now I’m going to bed!’

  It occurred to Stella that instead of a caring grandfather Matthew was behaving more like a love-struck teenager and the shocking and startling fact struck her that sometimes she really didn’t like her husband.

  Thirteen

  ————

  ‘So what’s happening about Jesse now?’ Suze asked when Stella arrived at the studio the next day. It seemed months since she’d painted any pets, but actually it wasn’t more than a week or so.

  Stella almost crumbled. ‘Stuart’s blaming Emma and Emma’s blaming Dora and Dora’s parents are blaming Stuart and Emma. The police came round and seemed about as interested as if they’d lost a cat rather than my beautiful grandson and told us that a hundred thousand children run away each year. Duncan came up with a really kind suggestion that they should put an appeal on their website, but I can’t honestly imagine Jesse ever going online to check out Cameron Keene, even if he hadn’t run away. They think he may be in Brighton. A friend from his school has just moved there.’

  ‘Has he got his phone with him?’

  ‘Yes. Everyone’s been leaving supportive messages but no response so far. I think the best idea is to find this girl Kirsty, but, annoyingly, she’s only just moved there and no one seems to have her new address except the school and they won’t give it to us because of data bloody protection or some such thing.’

  ‘Has anyone tried Directory Enquiries? You’d be surprised how effective it is, even in these days of social media. And why don’t you go on one of those mummy websites and enlist the giant support group that is the Internet?’

  ‘Anything’s worth a try, I suppose,’ Stella replied doubtfully. She opened her iPad and logged on to 4Mums, then searched for ‘missing teenagers’. To her surprise there was quite a lot on the subject, including an advice page put together with a young people’s charity on what to do if your teen ran away, but they had done most of the things already. There was one bit of advice they weren’t following: don’t go into meltdown because most teenagers return safely.

  Stella decided to follow the thread and see what other families had found useful, but soon discovered that she didn’t understand what on earth anyone was on about. It was as if they were speaking entirely in acronyms.

  ‘I don’t get it. What’s all this gobbledegook they’re talking?’

  Suze laughed. ‘You have to learn to speak Internet, that’s all.’

  ‘OK, what is AIBU when it’s at home?’

  ‘It stands for Am I Being Unreasonable?’

  ‘And YANBU? It sounds like a Nigerian dialect.’

  ‘You Are Not Being Unreasonable.’

  ‘Here’s a good one: AYSOS.’

  ‘Are You Stupid Or Something?’

  ‘Gosh, that’s rather rude. And what are all these DD, DS and DH’s?’

  ‘They mean Darling Daughter, Darling Son and Darling Husband.’

  ‘And what’s PITA?’

  ‘PITA is Pain In The Ass.’

  ‘OK, it may not be Shakespeare, but I’m beginning to get the hang of this. My DH is a PITA: My Darling Husband is a Pain In The Ass. You can say that again! Do you know my DH went tango dancing with Fabia when everyone else was worrying themselves silly about Jesse?’

  ‘Well, he is Matthew. What have these Internet mums got to say now you understand the lingo?’

  Stella applied herself to the heartbreaking stories of runaway children, lack of police interest, and the sense of utter helplessness felt by most parents in the face of their lost teenagers. The plight of one very pretty fourteen-year-old girl was being discussed at length. Missing for three weeks with no word to her parents, she had only been found when celebrities supported a Twitter campaign to track her down.

  ‘Do you think Duncan’s offer of an appeal on their website is a good idea? I just couldn’t see Jesse seeing it. Cameron’s not exactly his kind of music.’

  ‘No, but other people might see it and start talking about it.’

  ‘Suze! I’ve just had an incredible idea!’ Stella pushed her iPad away. ‘Cameron Keene might not exactly be a buzzword among the twitterati, but Mrs Cameron Keene certainly is!’

  ‘You mean Roxy?’

  ‘Absolutely! I feel a bit bad because she’s already done so much for us, but still. I’ll give her a ring.’

  Stella felt so much better that she was able to spend the next half-hour assessing where they were on the vintage market, how much they’d made from Fabia’s barbecue and the profit from the tango lessons. ‘I’d hoped Emma would get on board and help find this office space the council’s so keen on, but this is hardly the moment.’

  ‘And what’s happened to Debora? Has she gone on tour with Cameron?’ asked Suze.

  ‘Duncan says she’s standing by.’

  ‘At The Glebe? Nice place to stand by.’

  ‘She’s doing a cookery course. Their chef teaches cordon bleu to the rich and famous. Using only the very best ingredients.’

  ‘Even I could cook if I were handed a fillet steak and foie gras.’

  ‘Suze, I’m not sure about that.’

  ‘Neither am I! On the subject of cordon bleu, Fabia’s a bit of a revelation, isn’t she? Who’d have thought she could swap those foxes for a pinny? Speaking of food, let’s nip into the King’s Arms and grab some.’

  As they
approached the pub Stella and Suze congratulated themselves on one small achievement: thanks to them the pub was a great deal more inviting than it used to be. Before, it had appealed only to the desperate, the alcoholic and the raucous overspill from the betting shop who drank only pints of the cheapest lager with utter dedication until they started a fight or passed out. Today the clientele was relatively normal, even including men in suits and – more amazing still – women! Les the landlord greeted them with a delighted smile. The barbecue had proved so popular that he had added burgers and pizza, he announced, as if he were Marco Pierre White revealing a new five-star menu. ‘And when somebody asked for a mojito,’ he added with simple pride, ‘Mick the barman knew what it was! Plus we’ve got a new barmaid, Nicky. A college girl. If we’re getting a better class of drinker, we need a better class of bar staff; stands to reason.’

  He nodded in the direction of a lively blonde. ‘Nicky, come and meet these nice ladies who’re trying to bring some life back to the old manor.’

  ‘Stella,’ Stella smiled, ‘and this is Suze.’

  ‘Which of you ladies has got the hot husband? The one that was dancing with the lady from Buenos Aires?’

  ‘That’d be me,’ Stella replied, startled at this new view of Matthew.

  ‘He’s really something, isn’t he?’

  If Stella and Suze had been sitting on bar stools, they would have fallen off.

  ‘We were watching them the other night. Made me quite hot and bothered, it was so sexy. The lady said people just come in off the street and dance like that on the way home from work. With complete strangers. If people round here knew about that it’d put dogging out of business in no time.’

  ‘Well, there’s a thought.’ Suze tried not to giggle. ‘Matthew and Fabia clearing the car parks of doggers. Did you know Matthew had turned into a Latin American lounge lizard?’

  ‘I knew he was dancing with Fabia a lot, that was what made me hopping mad when we were so worried about Jesse, but not that he was quite so talented. I’m as amazed as you are.’

  ‘To think dull old Matthew has hidden depths.’

  ‘Yes,’ Stella mused, ‘I wonder if there are any others she’s going to uncover.’