The Waiting List (Strong Women Book 5)

by Sarah Till

  All that was left now was to deal with the list. I looked at Tim's list and the pile of abandoned lists. It seemed a shame to add his to the growing pile. Besides, he hardly counted really. It wasn't as if we had a relationship. We had only known each other a short while, so did he count as a listee? I sniggered to myself. The pennies. The lists. There were about the same amount of each and I was just about to try to make a tenuous connection between the two when I heard Jenni pad heavily down the stairs. She appeared at the door, bleary-eyed and half asleep.

  “Back then, are you? I thought I'd grab a few hours? How did it go? Did you find out much?”

  “Yep. I met him and I actually found out the road she lives on. He told me she has no family. It all fits, Jen. It all fits.”

  Jenni stretched and sat down at the table.

  “Hmm. It still might not be her though. You need to get someone else involved now, girl. Don’t try to do it on your own.”

  I snorted.

  “Oh no, Jenni, I won’t try to do it on my own. Not like you, with your secret children and your secret ex-husband and your three jobs.”

  We both smiled.

  “Yeah, I can see what you are saying. But this is different, Clem. My life will just rumble on whatever happens. No one died. No one went missing. But this is different. Isn't there some police officer you can talk to? Or an agency? There must be something.”

  “There is. The police had a case open for five years. They closed it and told us that they feared the worst.”

  “Oh, my god. How were your parents? They must have been devastated.”

  “They were. But it had been five years of searching for her. I think we'd all got used to the search, every day, Mum going to London and standing at the train stations with pictures of Charlotte, asking strangers if they'd seen her. That all stopped then. They just sort of went into limbo. Just silently waiting.”

  “Could no one help them?”

  “Not really. There are charities who deal with it, but they're concerned with the person who's missing, not the people they leave behind. As time goes on and the person doesn't reappear or the police don't find them, their input slows down. I suppose if there's nothing to see there's nothing they can do.”

  Jenni sighed.

  “So, they are getting no help at all? And you?”

  “Well, Mum has been having counselling and Dad has his hobby. I just try not to think about it. I suppose we've got back to some kind of normal.”

  Even as I said it, I knew it wasn't true. My mind flashed to my mother's now deformed body, the single bed in Caroline’s room, Dad's locked shed where no one else was allowed, and their inability to look me in the eye. Normal it definitely wasn't. Jenni leaned on her elbows.

  “What will you do then?”

  “I suppose I should tell Mum and Dad. I'm going to go over there today and show them the pictures. They can help me decide what to do.” She nodded but her expression was worried. “What? Don't you think I should go?”

  She sighed heavily.

  “I do, but I'm just worried that it isn't Charlotte. I mean, girl, living so near? Wouldn’t she have tried to contact you? It doesn't seem right.”

  “Hmm. I suppose. But walking out of the house and not coming back doesn’t seem right either. She might have had her reasons. It might have just got harder to come back as time went on. Or maybe she just didn't want to.” A deep stab of the past seared through me and I was sharply reminded of all the all the time I'd doubted myself, wondering if I was the reason Charlotte had gone. Was I a bad sister? Why couldn't she talk to me? Why didn't she tell me? I'd reasoned this out with the possibility that she hadn't just walked out. There was also the unbearable notion that she had been taken, snatched off the street. In some morbid, unbalanced way, this was better for me. I wouldn’t then have to face my failings as her sister. The blame would be on someone else. Yet I didn't want to consider this option. That she had suffered. That she was dead. I tempered these thoughts now with my usual 'the police found no body' mantra and feigned a smile. “Ooh. I didn’t tell you about the fireman, did I?”

  Jenni switched topics with me and pulled up her legs underneath her.

  “Fireman? In the park?”

  “Yes. I was just going to meet Tim and I saw a lucky penny down a grid.”

  Her eyes rolled heavenward.

  “Fucking hell, Clem. Not another penny.”

  “Uh-huh. Anyway. I got the penny out but my hand got stuck. Tim called the fire brigade and three of them came. I swear it was like a film. They were all gorgeous!”

  Jenni licked her lips.

  “Men in uniform. Let me guess. All tall dark and handsome, were they, brown eyes, brown hair, more than 5'8”? Already got your boxes ticked there, Clem? Reliable and generous ticked as well?”

  I flushed. She was making fun of me.

  “Actually, he was blond. With blue eyes.”

  “He? I thought you said there were three of them.”

  I reversed back to the park and couldn't for the life of me remember what the other firemen looked like. Just Liam's bright blue eyes, the little wrinkles when he smiled. His strong hands as he rubbed my fingers.

  “Obviously, it only needed one of them to get my fingers out of the drain. He was OK. Not anything to shout about. Seemed reasonably pleasant.”

  Yet all the time I denied my attraction, I was desperately trying to remember if he had a wedding ring on. Jenni got the conversation back on track.

  “So, Tim was OK about you not seeing him again?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I thought you had got what you wanted. You know, the info about your sister. You did tell him, didn't you?”

  “Not really. What if I need more information? What if...”

  “Oh, fucking hell, Clem. Clem, baby, the guy's obsessed with his ex. Leave him to it. Don't get involved. Please, Clem.”

  “I know, I know. I'll tell him soon.”

  Jenni leaned closer to me.

  “You've agreed to start seeing him, haven't you? I bloody knew it. Just like you did with that arsehole Lenny. It's always the same, Clem. You meet someone. He's a loser. We talk. You do the opposite of what we agree. We agreed Lenny was a womaniser. And weird. Yet you still wasted time on him. Clem, baby, this is the same. Fuck your list. Fuck it. Just because he looks hot and ticks all your fucking boxes doesn't mean you should be with him.”

  “But it's a start, isn't it? No one's perfect, Jenni. I've started to realise that at my age I'd be lucky to find anyone without... without...”

  “You were going to say fucking baggage, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. But that’s not what I mean. I don't mean kids or an ex. I'm past that now, I can see how shallow that is, and I totally don’t expect the next man I meet to be single with no children and thirty plus. What I mean is, these men have all had a hard time. They need someone to help them get over it.”

  “Clem. Fucking reality check. Have you heard yourself, girl? You're sitting here telling me that these little-boy-lost blokes you keep finding need you to fix them. Doesn’t that say more about you than them? I mean, they're grownups, perfectly capable, well in theory, of sorting themselves out. In time. I'm sure Tim is a perfectly nice person when he stops collecting his ex-girlfriend's hair and skin cells. But that obsession is either going to take time or strong medication to get over. Maybe both. Why take that on, Clem?”

  I knew Jenni was right. I'd knowingly agreed to start seeing someone who was still in love with his ex-girlfriend.

  “You're right. I'll tell him when he phones. I just got carried away because of Charlotte.”

  Jenni nodded and smiled.

  “If you do need any more info you can phone him. Simple. Done. Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded emphatically. “I'm going to go over to Mum and Dad’s this afternoon. I'll just show them the pictures and see what they think.”

  “Great. Take it easy, Clem. Easy. Slow. Don't get your hopes up.�
��

  “Yeah.”

  I smiled at Jenni and went to get changed. I knew that, on the outside, I looked calm and measured, but on the inside I was a chaotic mess. My heart was rebelling against my head's suggestion that it would be a good idea to stop seeing Tim. It seemed to be a two-way battle. He was rapidly ticking all my boxes and I was hopelessly attracted to him on a physical level, yet he was obsessed with Caroline. The common denominator was the information he potentially unknowingly held about my missing sister.

  As I undressed, I saw a red mark on my neck where he had gently sucked my skin as his hands ran over my body the other night. I ran my finger over the mark and touched my nipple where his mouth had been. It hardened into a firm button as I brushed over it lightly again and again. There was no mistaking the battle raging in my body between sensibility and passion. My fingers brushed my stomach and down to my thigh. Passion was winning, but suddenly sensibility played the Jenni card and it all seemed sordid. I quickly pulled on my pants and jeans, chose a jumper and turned my thoughts to Mum and Dad.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was raining outside as I drove to my parents' house. The nearer I got, the more I felt like I was on a wild goose chase. I had the photos and the hair strands in my bag, nestled beside the list. I'd decided not to put the list in the 'abandoned without hope' folder until I'd told him I wasn’t seeing him again. I liked to do things in order. Now I thought about it, his suggestion that we skip the rules of dating and just start seeing each other had immediately disturbed me. As if someone had suggested that I ate sweets before my dinner. I concluded that, as Jenni had stated, he was probably not after a long relationship, just a chocolate truffle to get him through to the main course.

  I parked the car outside my parents’ home and grabbed my bag. Dad appeared at the door with a puzzled look on his face and I realised that for the second time this that week I'd defied visiting etiquette and not telephoned first. He stepped down onto the drive and I rose from the car to meet him.

  “Hello, Dad. OK?”

  His strained expression and the constant wiping of his ever-greasy hands told me Mum was inside.

  “She's in the lounge. Not expecting you, were we? Is it about your young man again? You know, Clementine, absence makes the heart grow fonder. Fonder, Yes. He might be back yet.”

  “No, Dad. He's gone. Anyway, I met someone else. That’s what I want to talk to you both about. Shall we go inside?”

  “You're not getting married, are you? Seems serious. Too soon, Clementine. I know, time waits for no man, but at least get to know him...”

  “I'm not getting married, Dad. Let's go in.”

  The hand wiping became more intense and we went inside. The house looked more clinical than ever and I noticed that the hallway had been painted a cold shade of light mint green. Mum sat in the lounge on what appeared to be a huge rubber tyre. She had a small plaster over the bridge of her nose and what appeared to be a gum shield in her mouth. Even so, she still pressed a cigarette between her lips and sucked hard. She exhaled deeply before she spoke.

  “Clementine. What do you want? I'm a bit indisposed at the moment. You could have phoned.”

  I pushed the urge to laugh behind the importance of what I was going to say. Mum hadn't actually looked at me since I'd arrived, as her gaze rested on her dog and she inclined her body in a way that nearly made her capsize in her tyre. I could see, though, that her eyes bore a blank expression. I admitted to myself that it could be the effects of Botox, but she had been like this since Charlotte had gone. Her shoulders drooped and she hunched over as she walked, a desperate figure whose suffering was clear despite expensive clothes and surgery. I loved her still as I had as a child, the warm bubbly woman who had baked and potato printed for all she was worth. Dad, too, with his stay-at-home style of parenting. If they went out, we went too. It was very sad to see them like this, trapped in what appeared, on the surface, to be normality, but with bizarre clues breaking the surface from time to time to indicate their distress.

  “Sorry, Mum. I've had a busy couple of days.”

  Mum dragged on the cigarette as Dad stood behind me.

  “Haven't we all? Look, what do you want? Is it about that bloke again?”

  Dad chirped in now.

  “You win some, you lose some. Something's got to give.”

  Two clichés in one sentence indicated his stress levels were reaching nuclear levels and I sat down heavily. Mum tutted and shifted her weight away from me. From the side, I hardly recognised her. Nothing really looked the same as it did fifteen years ago. Her nose was tiny, her chin sculpted. Anyone who hadn't seen her since then would not recognise her now. I recognised her only from the digital images supplied by the police. She was a three-dimensional duplication of a photograph that someone had produced on a computer that might have been Charlotte.

  “Actually, it's not about a man. Well not directly.”

  Mum tutted again and shook her head. She turned her head and her stony stare met my words. Her mouth set into bitterness, pulling her taught skin even tighter over her chin, challenging me.

  “Come on then. Spill the beans. What’s so important for you to arrive unannounced on a Sunday afternoon, interrupting my recovery?” Her scarlet talons encircled the obligatory gin and tonic as she slurped. She took out the gum shield now and her stretched lips leered at me. “Spit it out.”

  I took a deep breath. This wouldn’t be easy to explain to these two desperate people. Dad had stopped wiping his hands and stood with his hands on his hips.

  “I think I’ve found Charlotte.”

  As the words escaped my lips, Dad’s knees buckled and he held onto the sofa. Mum’s eyes fixed on me.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. How could you do that?” She snorted and almost laughed. “Half the police force couldn’t find her. What makes you think you have?”

  I shuffled about in my bag and collected the photographs. The room was cold and I was shaking. I moved towards Mum and she recoiled as I sat close to her on the sofa next to her tyre. Dad bolted across from the other sofa and sat beside me. I passed the photographs to them one by one and they examined each closely and in silence. There was no hint of collaboration, no comparing of notes, just an eerie silence. Dad held one picture in particular for a long time and stared at it. Mum stooped over in concentration, flicking through them again and again. Suddenly. she straightened. A light glow spread over her face and neck and she turned to face me as slowly as her new bottom would allow. I almost witnessed the life return to her eyes as she sparkled a little.

  “Where did you get these, Clementine? Who gave them to you?”

  Dad was crying and she beckoned him over to her. He crouched down like a frightened child and his head rested on her chest. Sobbing noises mixed with laughter and the words: “We’ve found her.”

  “I took them from someone’s house. This person had been seeing the girl in the photo who calls herself Caroline.”

  Mum gasped. I'd never seen her more alive.

  “You mean she lives round here?”

  “Yes. On Carlisle Crescent. Over the other side of town. I don’t know the number but I expect I could find out. We could go over there?”

  Dad sat on the floor beside Mum and held her hand.

  “I think we’d better alert the police. Better safe than sorry. And your Mum, well, as you can see...”

  Mum interrupted gently.

  “I’m not supposed to go out until Tuesday. But then, well then we’ll go and find her.”

  She pulled my hand towards her and for the first time since Charlotte had gone, we were a family, actually touching each other, all of us were smiling through our tears. Her body was harder than I remembered and I could feel the bones in her chest as she hugged me.

  “But are you two sure it’s her? I mean, she’s a lot different to when she went out that day. She does look like her and the guy who was seeing her was attracted to me because I look like her. Long story. But are you
sure it’s her? I don’t want to go barging in on someone’s life to find out it’s not.”

  Mum struggled up slowly with Dad’s help and stood resolute.

  “It’s the closest we’ve come to finding her. She’s so... so... like you. I don’t suppose we’ll really know until we see her face to face but, Clem, I’m almost certain.

  Clem. It was the first time Mum hadn’t addressed me by my formal Clementine for sixteen years. My heart melted and I wanted to squeeze the reincarnation of my Mum who had been hiding in the body of an ice queen. Dad rallied and stood up.

  “Plan of action. That's what's called for. We'll ring the police tomorrow and alert the missing people chaps. Just to make sure they know. Then we'll see what they have to say. Police can find out what exact number house it is and all that. Tuesday, we'll go round there.”

  I imagined us all trooping up the drive and seeing her. What would happen? What if it wasn't her?

  “I think we need to slow down. It still might not be her.”

  Mum waved the close-up of Caroline above her head triumphantly.

  “I know my own daughter. It is her. It is.”

  Dad nodded vigorously and they actually looked like a couple for the first time in years. Then I remembered the rest.

  “But we can't go barging in. She's got a child.”

  Mum flopped back down onto the tyre and paled.

  “A child. A grandchild. How old?”

  “A girl. Amy. She's fifteen.”

  They looked at each other, raised eyebrows.

  “We thought as much, you know. Got herself into trouble. Ran away. But she could have come to us.”

  Dad bent down and pulled Mum's head towards him.