Christmas on Primrose Hill (42 page)

She ran after the guys, but the long paws of the suit made it awkward and she fell behind them slightly. She tried to pin her ears back, but they kept falling forwards again.

‘Come on, fat bum!’ Jimmy laughed, glancing behind and finding her trailing. ‘They’ll catch you otherwise.’

‘I’m coming!’ she called, panting as she turned into a fire escape, remembering to thank the security guard holding it open for her. They were in a narrow stairwell of concrete stairs, the treads less than a third of the length of her paws. ‘Oh crap!’ she yelled as she caught sight of them and started trying to climb them sideways.

‘Helicopter’s waiting!’ Dave hollered from two levels above. ‘Hurry up.’

She swore viciously, doing her best, but she’d like to see anyone else go faster, frankly. She established a strange step-hop pattern, almost crying with relief as she got to the top and saw the door onto the roof.

The men were all waiting for her. ‘You ever been in one of these before?’ Dave asked her.

She shook her head, her long ears hitting Gus in the face.

‘You gotta run and get low, OK? God only knows how buoyant you must be in that thing. We don’t want you taking off too.’

Everyone laughed except Jamie. He was staring out through the small, round window in the door, looking at the helicopter, his hands jammed in his pockets.

‘Ready?’

She nodded and gave a thumbs-up sign, just as a door to their right burst open and a man in a beanie and turquoise down-padded North Face jacket ran into the small area.

‘Miss Watson, have you any response to the allegations made about your mother?’

What? She whipped her head round, recoiling from the man as he thrust a digital recorder towards her face. What allegations?

‘What the fuck?’ Dave spat. ‘Oi! Get out of here! You’re not supposed to be up here! This is strictly off limits!’

But the man never took his stare off her, his eyes trying to see beyond the black mesh that kept her a secret. ‘Just a comment, Miss Watson. Why do you think she left? Do you know where she is? Do you even know if she’s alive? Has there been any contact at all?’

She was up against the wall, unable to breathe, to process, to comprehend what he was saying. How could this be happening? How could he possibly know?

No. No.

She had to get out of here. She had to warn—

The man flew backwards suddenly, his feet leaving the ground by a two-foot clearance as he slammed hard against the door he had just come through. Jamie was leaning over him, his arm drawn back, his hand in a fist, his mouth in a snarl so that the reporter cowered on the floor.

Dave grabbed Jamie roughly by the arm, forcibly dragging him away from the reporter. ‘Get in the chopper, Jay!’ he was shouting, trying to get Jamie to look at him, but Jamie wouldn’t take his eyes off the intruder, his chest heaving as he readied for the fight. ‘Get in the fucking chopper, Jay.
Now!
’ Dave shouted again. ‘I’ll deal with this scumbag, all right?’

Jamie turned, as though hearing him for the first time. His arm dropped.

‘Come on, mate, let’s get out of here,’ Gus said, patting him on the shoulder and forcing him to turn away.

Jamie looked at her, his attention on her now. ‘Get in the helicopter, Nettie.’

She obeyed without question as he opened the door, daylight dazzling them all momentarily before she dipped low and began her lolloping run towards the helicopter landed on the roof.

The rotors were spinning so fast, but still not as fast as her heart. This was a nightmare, the worst possible thing that could have happened, the very thing – the only thing – that had necessitated the need for her anonymity.

Jamie got in the helicopter first, extending an arm and – with a helpful push on her enormous backside from the rest of the band – pulling her in awkwardly after him. She perched on the edge of the seat as Jimmy and Gus followed.

‘I’m afraid that’s the downside of fame,’ Jimmy said sympathetically as he pulled on his safety belt. ‘You know you’ve made it when you get doorstepped like that.’

‘What was he even on about, anyway?’ Gus asked, sitting opposite her.

She stared at him, too stunned to speak.

She felt something on her knee and looked left. Jamie was leaning towards her. ‘You OK?’

She blinked, but he couldn’t see that.

They saw Dave run out from the building, ducking low beneath the rotors, something in his hands. ‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘That’s what this is all about apparently.
Evening Standard
have got the scoop, but they’re all running it tomorrow.’

‘What is it?’ Gus asked, reading the newspaper that Dave passed in to them.

‘Look, I’m gonna stay back here and sort things out.’ Dave looked at Jamie. ‘I think you’ve broken his jaw, Jay.’

Jamie tutted and looked away, his own jaw firmly set. She noticed he was rubbing his knuckles.

‘Go back to the hotel and I’ll catch up with you in a bit, all right?’

Jimmy gave him a fist bump and Dave stepped back, sliding the door shut, then ducking low and running out of the draught again, back towards the building.

The pilot was doing his final checks now.

‘Jesus Christ, Nettie – your mum just upped and left?’ Gus spluttered as he read the article. Her eyes stopped at the headline: ‘Tragic Family Secret of Charity Star.’

All the guys looked at her in amazement and pity, Jamie rubbing his face in his hands.

Slowly she reached up and lifted off the bunny head. Her curly, dark hair swung free, settling at her jaw.

‘
Jules?
’ Gus cried.

‘But where’s Nettie?’ Jamie demanded, sitting back like he’d been slammed there.

Jules looked back at him, looking every bit as stunned. ‘I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

‘She’s not answering her calls. I spoke to her at lunch when she got off the train and since then . . . we’ve not been able to get hold of her all afternoon.’ She bit her lip as shock and panic and worry combined. ‘I don’t know what to do, Jamie. It’s not like her to go AWOL like this. I think she’s missing.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

The pot-bellied stove glowed orange, the cracking of the coals in its belly like a siren call, keeping her eyes fixed on the flames. Potato soup bubbled on the hob, the golden scent of the bread rolls in the oven beginning to permeate the small cabin.

It was perfectly still beneath them today, the water dark and viscous beneath an ice-glazed veneer, and even the moorhens and ducks weren’t venturing in, roosting instead in their twig- and feather-filled nests on the banks.

Dan came and sat beside her again on the small L-shaped bench. The brown floral covers were worn and bald in places, her hands motionless on Scout’s wiry coat as he slept in a curl on her lap. ‘Warmer yet?’

Her eyes slid over to him and she tried a smile, but the right muscles wouldn’t work. Nothing would behave as it ought. Not her body, not her instincts. She was at odds with nature today, at odds with herself.

His hand covered hers lightly. ‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’

She looked at him, willing him to read her mind, to understand what she’d done and not make her have to say the words out loud and give voice to her monstrosity. But he couldn’t. Though he knew her better than almost anyone else, he would never be able to guess or predict or understand what she had done.

He squeezed her hand again. ‘Nets?’

‘I found her.’

The light that darted through his eyes was like a comet, the spark in his muscles making his hand flinch, an automatic impulse as his brain processed the apparent contradiction: good news – and yet she was here.

‘I found her and I ran.’

She watched the shadow in his eyes now, chasing after the light and extinguishing it.

‘Why?’

The question was seemingly simple, but there was no answer. Not that she knew of. ‘I don’t know.’

She remembered again the vision of her mother standing on the other side of the glass – haunted eyes in a thin face, hair that had been hacked with scissors, and the colour of squab, unisex clothes that came from a charity bin. Her mother – and yet not.

Not the mother she remembered laughing at the square’s annual barbecue, tongs in hand and a frilly apron on, not the mother who had sat her on her knee and read her the entire collection of
Mallory Towers
with a different voice for every character, not the mother who made Christmas puddings for the church fair every Christmas, not the mother whose hair smelt of meadows.

She had expected change, deterioration even, but four years of missingness had corroded more than a daily routine and the woman who’d blinked back at her had been a stranger.

She squeezed her eyes shut, a gasp escaping as a realization hit her. ‘What am I going to tell Dad?’ She looked at him. ‘How do I tell him that I turned my back and left her there?’

‘He’ll understand.’

But she shook her head. He wouldn’t.

Dan was quiet for a bit. ‘Have you told Gwen?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

She shrugged. ‘I feel too . . . ashamed. I’ve spent all these months and years telling her how much I want my mum back and the second my wish is granted, I
reject
her.’ A spasm of pain crossed her face at the brutality of the word.

‘I bet she’d say this is quite normal.’

She shook her head again. ‘It’s normal for the missing person to take several attempts to return. It is not normal for their family to slam the door in their face.’

‘That isn’t what you did. You were just shocked, that’s all; it gave you a fright. These things don’t go like they do in the movies, you know.’

‘Don’t they?’ she asked with a flat tone. She stared at the sprig pattern on the sofa, plucking absently at the loose fibres on one of the holes. ‘No. She’s gone for good now. I bet she’s left the area already.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I do. We’ve always been able to read each other. She was going to do it, you know? Come back. I could see it in her eyes.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘She was probably gearing up for some dramatic entrance on Christmas Day or some-thing.’ She stared into the flames, lost in the memory. ‘She held her arm up to me, like she wanted me to take her hand.’ She shook her head again, blinking back to the present.

‘I really think you should speak to your dad and Gwen.’

‘I can’t. He’ll never—’

‘You can, Nets. He’ll understand. He’s angry too.’

She looked at him in surprise. ‘We’re . . . we’re not
angry
.’

‘Nettie, how could you not be? Everything you’ve been through – all that worry and shock, the searches, walking every weekend, waiting every night, not knowing if she’s alive or dead, safe, nearby, abroad. You haven’t had anything concrete to hold on to. Sometimes I think it would have been easier on you to just know she was dead . . . You’ve put your life on hold while trying to keep it together. Anger is frankly your basic right. You’d be a psycho
not
to feel it.’

She shook her head, rebutting his words. ‘No, it’s my fault. I’m the one who keeps on making everything harder than it needs to be, refusing to accept the plain fact that she’s gone. That part of my life is over, and yet – ’ Her voice broke – ‘I just can’t let go of the dream of how things should be; the family I ought to have had.’

‘And what would that have been?’

‘A mum who’d never left, a dad who wasn’t frightened to feel. A – ’ She hesitated. ‘A brother.’

His eyes met hers with a start. It was the only time either one of them had ever put a label on the bond that had been forged over years of casual Saturday drop-ins, evenings at the pub and poker nights on the barge. She knew now he had hoped for possibly more, but even without Jamie coming into her life, that moment between them in their teens had flickered and died on its own. It wasn’t what they were to each other, and she sensed that deep down, he knew it too.

‘I’m not going to lose you too, am I?’ she asked quietly.

His jaw was jutting, his blue eyes burning with rare intensity, but he dredged up a smile that made her muscles ease. ‘As if,’ he scoffed. ‘We need each other whether we like it or not. You and me, we’re like mathing pepper pots. I’m the guy with too many dads; you’re the girl with no mum.’

Nettie couldn’t help but smile at his bald, unsentimental logic.

A bubble of boiling liquid spat from the pan suddenly, leaving a grey smatter on the ceiling. ‘Oh shit, the soup,’ he remembered, getting up from the bench and running over to the kitchenette, jumping and cursing as droplets of the boiled soup landed on his wrists.

She watched as he shoved his hands into the oven gloves and slid out the tray of rolls, but she felt so far away from the warm little cabin on the iced water, she didn’t particularly register the invasion of ‘Drinking From the Bottle’, Dan’s ringtone, coming from the worktop.

Dan glanced at the phone, the pan in his hand as he poured the soup into bowls. He looked up at her. ‘It’s Jules.’

She snapped into focus. ‘I’m not here.’

‘But—’

‘I can’t speak to her right now. She’s just going to freak at me for not going to work and I can’t deal with that right now. Please, Dan.’

She looked at him with desperate eyes and he nodded. ‘Sure.’ He picked up the phone. ‘Hey, Jules . . . No, I haven’t seen her . . . What’s up?’

Nettie looked away as he listened, though his gaze remained upon her. She looked into the gardens of the house on the opposite bank, her eyes on the black woven daybed – no cushions at this time of year – on the first-floor veranda. She tried to imagine who got to lounge on it, stepping through the grand French windows and out on the deck, maybe holding a morning cup of tea or an early evening drink, enjoying the peaceful rhythms of the canal and being a part of a life that didn’t have a horror at its core. Downstairs, she could see lilies in the window, shadows flickering on the wall as the inhabitants moved about in the evening light, confident that their only onlookers were the pigeons in the bare trees.

She hadn’t heard him hang up. She was surprised to find him still looking at her. Surprised by the expression on his face.