by A J Waines
She shrugged. ‘He didn’t tell me about these photos. Or about anything else concerning you, for that matter.’ Her features took on an earnest expression. ‘Something underhand is going on with that Stuart guy, but he won’t say anything. You know Rick. Some cockeyed scheme, no doubt. The long and the short of it is he now seems to have disappeared.’ She let her legs dangle in mid-air, like a child. ‘I think he might need help.’
‘Hmm. I’ve seen a totally different side to him lately.’
‘He’s been really weird since last summer. Since we cleared out Mum’s house. It totally got to him.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘We had to wade through a load of stuff. Stuff from the past. Dad’s books, the little wooden toys he made, old photographs. Mum hadn’t even thrown out Dad’s old clothes. And then there was Miles’s room.’
‘Rick told me about that.’
‘It brought it all back. Rick’s been down, since then. Maybe even depressed.’
Daniel was determined not to let the discussion head off down the road of feeling sorry for him. ‘It’s not just that, though,’ she added. ‘He’s been cruel. A real bully at times.’
Daniel sighed. ‘He’s always been shrewd. But, there’s shrewd and there’s devious and then there’s downright malicious. I think he’s walked the whole line.’
He was still for a moment as he saw the crestfallen look on her face and knew he’d deeply wounded her. ‘Sorry… it’s just…’
‘It’s true. You’re right. He’s gone off the rails.’
Rain began to spatter on the window pane facing them and the light outside turned a tarnished grey. They finished their drinks in silence.
Daniel got to his feet. ‘Let’s keep in touch,’ he said finally, pushing the stool under the ledge. ‘Let me know if your brother contacts you and I’ll do the same.’ He glanced out into the rain. ‘Do you need a lift?’
‘No, I only live along here.’ She waved her arm vaguely.
When they got outside, the air had already taken on that distinctive acidic wet-pavement smell. She stopped him as he turned to go. ‘Do we need to do something?’
‘About what?’
‘Tell the police or something about Rick going missing.’
Daniel pulled up his collar as the drops fell thicker and faster onto the canopy above them. ‘When did you last speak to him?’
‘Two days ago.’
‘Would you normally expect to be in touch every day?’
‘No, but the school…’
‘It’s only yesterday and today. I’m sure he’s bunked off school before. He certainly did when we were younger.’ He gave her a wry smile to try to set her mind at rest. ‘Let’s wait a couple of days, at least,’ he suggested, pulling away.
They separated and he put up his hand in a goodbye gesture.
Right now he had other things on his mind.
Chapter 66
‘Thank you for what you did.’ Daniel was standing on Jody’s doorstep.
He hadn’t intended to get in touch with her again, but he had a question he needed answering. Besides, she might have picked up a clue about Rick’s whereabouts.
She moved to the side to let him through. ‘Did it help?’ she asked, walking down the hall to the kitchen.
He followed her. ‘It clarified things.’
‘Not in a good way by the sound of it.’
He shrugged. He didn’t want to explain further, although he was certain she must have had an inkling as to why he’d wanted strands of Rick’s hair.
She poured two glasses of sparkling water and took them out to the patio. She turned to look at him, squinting into an isolated shaft of sunlight that was breaking through a gap beside the roof next door. ‘I didn’t think I’d see you again. I thought I’d made up for what I’d done and we were more or less quits.’
‘I’m not here to harass you. I won’t stay,’ he said, settling into a patio chair and taking a sip of the water, nevertheless. He leant forward, studiously tracing the curved pattern in the cast iron table with his finger.
She took a deep breath. ‘So what happens now?’ He had the feeling she was referring to their relationship, but he skipped around that particular interpretation.
‘I need to ask you a question. It’s not another favour,’ he said, fixing on her eyes for the first time. ‘You said you never found what you were looking for at my house, but what was it you were trying to find?’
‘Rick asked me to look for Sophie’s diaries.’
Daniel knew she’d kept one, on and off, but Jody’s words set his mind racing.
‘Why?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘Is that all?’
He dunked his finger in his glass to retrieve a tiny fly that had fallen in. He set it on the table, but it was already dead.
‘And any of her medication I could find,’ she added. ‘Hence having to break the lock on the bathroom cabinet.’ She dropped her head, her lips nipped together. ‘Sorry about that…’
Little did Rick or Jody know that all of Sophie’s medication had gone into the filing cabinet. Although, if he was honest, he’d only kept it because he never seemed to get around to throwing things away.
‘Is that also why you got into the loft and went down to the cellar?’
‘Yes. The filing cabinet down there was locked and I’d been trying to track down the key.’
Ah. The key. The one he kept on a magnet stuck to the back of the fridge for absolutely no good reason, except that he’d put it there. Jody had never found it. Maybe his scatty nature had worked in his favour for once.
‘That was probably the night you left the front door open,’ he said, wryly.
She looked genuinely horrified. ‘Did I? Shit! I’m so sorry…’ She slapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Ben… was he okay?’
Daniel nodded, his mind already elsewhere. So Rick was after Sophie’s diaries and her medication. He drummed his fingers over his lip. He recalled the restless afternoon when he’d cleared a pile of her stuff away. Various boxes of paperwork had been bundled into the filing cabinet, for certain. Sophie’s diaries could easily have been among them. He’d never broken her trust by looking at them.
‘When you say medication, do you mean Sophie’s insulin or something else?’
‘Rick asked me to get hold of anything and everything. He didn’t say why. I didn’t ask. I just did what I was told, I’m sorry to say. Once I’d started to get to know you, I felt terrible about what I was doing. I just wanted it over with.’
He held her gaze, watching her carefully. ‘Rick’s disappeared. Do you know where he is?’
She raised her eyebrows instantly. ‘When?’
‘This is the third day he’s missed school, apparently. No one’s seen him since he left his flat with armfuls of luggage.’
‘That doesn’t sound good. What’s he up to?’
She sounded almost as mystified as him, but Daniel had to remind himself that she was a consummate actress, after all.
‘You look like your mind has gone to the moon,’ she said.
‘Too many loose ends,’ he sighed, as he twisted his wrist to look at his watch. ‘I ought to head off.’
‘Sure,’ she said, giving him a warm smile as though there had never been an issue between them. ‘If there’s anything I can do, you know where I am.’
Chapter 67
As soon as he got back, he went straight down to the cellar with the key to the filing cabinet. He’d never thought about looking at Sophie’s diaries; it hadn’t crossed his mind.
In the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet were a stack of box files; most were for Sophie’s work, but there was one without a label.
As soon as he opened it, he knew they were the right papers. Sophie’s personal jottings.
He carried the box up the steps and spread out the spiral-bound exercise books on the kitchen table. Each one had the dates clearly marked on the front. With trepidation he peeled open
the first page.
I want to preserve as much of these precious years as I can, she’d written in her first entry, because I know it will fly past in a flash.
He saw instantly, there was a snag. The first book started after Ben was born. He scuttled back to the cellar and riffled through the rest of the paperwork, but there was nothing more. Then he checked the suitcases in her wardrobe and under the bed. Drawing a blank, he climbed up into the loft and sifted through every box.
Nothing.
The entries from Ben’s birth onwards were all there was. He decided to read a few random sections nevertheless, just in case there were references back to Rick, to Ben not being Daniel’s son.
There were occasional entries about work, but mostly her notes described cosy, special family times and the delights of motherhood. Pure moments. Not descriptions of what they did and where they went, but tiny gems of love, sweetness, tenderness. Cherished recollections. All wrapped in an overflowing blanket of affection and joy.
I feel like my life has truly begun, she’d written. When Daniel and I got together I never dreamt I could be happier, then Ben came along and my life took off into another stratosphere altogether! Now I know what love is.
Every word broke his heart.
He’d traced a few stray comments about Rick, but all of them were disparaging. No covert comments or coy hints about him. No guilty revelations. Nothing about Rick being Ben’s father. Nothing about Daniel not being Ben’s father.
Nothing about hiding secrets or having to lie.
He couldn’t bear to read anymore. In any case, it was of no real use to him as the notes didn’t go back as far as Ben’s conception which would have been the end of 2014. That was the period he’d been most keen to read about.
He stopped reading and sat back. Why had Rick instructed Jody to steal her journals? What did he think was there? And did he want to keep hold of what he found? Or get rid of it?
He decided to take a break and made coffee.
Sitting at the table with his mug, he found his eyes returning to the pages. Everything he’d found so far had been testament to a loving and devoted family unit. But what about later? Had she made entries when it had started to go wrong? Is that when her true feelings about Ben’s paternity had been documented?
He didn’t have long left before he had to collect Ben from the nursery, so he speed-read entries from July of last year until he got to September. That’s when the tone changed. He swallowed hard, unsure about whether he could stomach reading on.
He skimmed over all the accusations, the disbelief and anguish about the ‘proof’ she’d found. He knew all that. He was looking for statements about Rick, Ben, about Daniel not being his true father. He searched and searched, but found nothing. Nothing at all.
Though something else did catch his eye.
Her handwriting seemed different from mid-September onwards; less precise and symmetrical. Over the next six months it got worse and worse, gradually disintegrating into an illegible scribble. This wasn’t Sophie. She’d always taken pride whenever she put pen to paper. Even her shopping lists were a work of art.
But it was the description of her emotional and physical state that was most striking.
September 29
Had to leave a meeting at work as I was shaking and sweating. Cassandra said I must be coming down with flu, but it’s not that. I’ve never felt like this before. It’s like a raging fire inside my head. And a dread all the time. Like someone is going to jump out at me.
By November, she was talking about her constant fear of waking up in the morning and finding Ben had gone:
Daniel is plotting to abduct him. I know he is. I saw it in his face at breakfast this morning. He and his whore are going to steal him. They’re in it together. I’ve got to watch Daniel all the time. I can’t bear to leave Ben in the mornings. I’m terrified he won’t be there when I get home.
Then, January 26:
Can’t think straight. Pain in my eyes, like pins. My brain… hot. Burning. Can’t walk in a straight line. I looked in the mirror and I saw an ugly fish… gaping mouth. Bad smell everywhere. Mustn’t tell Daniel or he’ll get me sent away… got to be strong for my boy.
And February 1:
Nearly passed out after a meeting this afternoon. Unbearable heat under my skin. My eyes feel like they’re on fire. Everyone is staring at me. I’m being watched – I know I am. Followed. Daniel is on to me. He gave me that look again at breakfast, only this time he wants to see me dead. I’ll never see Ben again.
The last entry was the day before the attack, February 3. By then, none of her statements made any sense and he couldn’t even make out her final words. Finally, her pen had merely dragged across the page in one long flat line.
Chapter 68
Sophie was reluctant to send him another visiting order at first, until Daniel made it clear during her next phone call that what he had to say could affect Ben’s future.
He was led through to the same fluorescent lit visitors’ room, bracing his nostrils for the smell of disinfectant, but this time it was Sophie’s perfume that greeted him.
She was sitting tall in the chair, her arms folded, primed for a fight.
‘You’ve been reading my diaries?!’ she said, hurt clouding her eyes, as he got straight to the point.
‘Only a few pages. They didn’t go back far enough.’
‘Far enough to what?’
He avoided her intense gaze. He wasn’t going to mention any dates. He didn’t want her to work anything out. Unless she got there first, he wasn’t going to mention a thing about Rick being Ben’s father.
The prison officer sauntered over to their table.
‘We had a hold up on medication this morning,’ she said, addressing them both, ‘and Sophie didn’t have her insulin injection. She needs to come and have it now.’ A perfunctory smile followed. ‘You’ll still get your full hour,’ she said, then added pointedly, ‘if you want it.’
Sophie left the room without a word and Daniel kept his eyes firmly fixed on the table, not wishing to look like he was taking an interest in anyone else.
He let his mind wander back to yesterday.
After the long stint reading at the kitchen, he’d been glad to bundle everything up and return the papers to the cellar. He’d picked up Ben and spent most of the afternoon playing skittles with him, desperate to push the new revelations about Sophie’s radical decline into a dark cupboard at the back of his mind and bolt it shut.
But he couldn’t do it. His mind kept pulling him back to the diary entries. Her deterioration was far worse than he’d ever thought. How come he hadn’t noticed all her odd physical symptoms? Why hadn’t he marched her down to the GP to request a psychiatric assessment or specialist tests to find out what was going on?
Simple answer: she’d hidden as much as she possibly could from him. Not least, because she was afraid she’d look like an unfit mother.
Just before bed, another idea occurred to him. What about emails from around the time of Ben’s conception? Daniel grabbed his laptop and scrutinised all the messages he and Sophie had exchanged during the weeks before Sophie discovered she was pregnant. It was the only record of that time he had.
One event in particular grabbed his attention. Daniel had been away one weekend, giving a series of lectures in the soil science department at Reading University. Sophie had mentioned going to a dreadful party. A Christmas do with Cassandra.
He used Sophie’s password to get into her personal email account to see what other messages she’d sent at that time. They’d never hidden passwords from each other, although he did feel a twinge of guilt for snooping.
She’d mentioned the party only once, to her friend Greta, describing it as ‘excruciatingly boring’. There was even a reference to Rick: Daniel’s oafish school ‘mate’ was there, she’d written. He’s a total pain and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Daniel had called Cassandra and asked if she
could remember the event. She was her usual brusque self.
‘Work thing. Don’t remember much,’ she said.
‘Can you remember who was there?’
‘I’m sorry Daniel. It was over four years ago. Book people, I really don’t know. I’ll play it over in my mind… see if anything comes back to me.’
‘Where was it?’
‘Er… Islington, I think.’
‘Were there any bestselling authors there? Did anyone take photos?’
‘I doubt it. Just an in-house excuse for staff. Although, a bunch of gatecrashers turned up I seem to recall, and it got a bit rowdy.’ She paused. ‘Sophie didn’t hang around – she left early.’
‘Did she? Why?’
‘Well, that kind of loud bash is hardly her thing, is it? In any case, she didn’t feel too well, I think. I really can’t remember.’
But to her credit, Cassandra came good. She’d rung back. After asking around in the office, she discovered that someone who’d been leaving the company had taken short bursts of video footage of the gathering on her phone. It had been uploaded onto one of the office computers and forgotten about.
Daniel made the journey over to the publishers straight away to take a look.
He had to scour every frame, but once he found it, there was no mistaking him. Rick had certainly been there. He was leering in the background, wearing a pair of red Rudolf antlers on his head and holding a can of lager.
The approaching voice of the prison officer pulled him back. Daniel heard the click-clickety-click as her key fob banged against her thigh as she brought Sophie back in.
His wife approached him with that familiar, alluring glide that she’d lost in the past few months. Surprised by a tingle of adrenaline, he had a momentary glimpse of the way things used to be, before the juggernaut dressed as Richard Fox had blasted its way through their lives.
