Dark Place to Hide (17 page)

I’m sitting on cold stone that eats into my bones. The light is fading, but I can make out scatterings of straw on the floor, box shapes and a tin bath. There’s a leathery, oily smell. Above my head on the wall is a rack with more straw. I wriggle to try to bring feeling into my backside, but everything aches, so I stay still and lean back against the rough bricks instead. I want to cry out but my voice splits at the first attempt. I sound like a dying seagull. My mouth is dry, my lips cracked and my throat seems to have seized up. Even breathing is precarious – my airways are clogged up with mucus, blood and something acidic, like vomit. I have to coax each breath gently so I don’t choke. Closing my eyes hurts, but it’s all I can think of to make this go away.

This can’t be real.

It must be a feverish nightmare and when I come to again, I’ll be cosy in my own bed and it will all be over.

8 August – Ninth day missing

My specialist is running late. I can see his office door from the bank of seats in the waiting room and in the last forty minutes he’s been in and out twice, the second time returning with a bulky medical monitor. A nurse and two other doctors have also been in to see him, carrying clipboards and charts. It makes him look important.

Dr Swann finally calls me through, wearing an unbuttoned white coat as if he’s fresh from ground-breaking new research in the lab. Blue biro marks, like hairs, are growing out of his top pocket. He’s hunched over his desk, the correct shape to look straight into a microscope, and I wonder how many hours he’ll put in this week.

‘Sorry for the wait,’ he says, ‘We have a ridiculous amount to do…’ he tails off, looking away, as if afraid he’s being disloyal to his profession. He offers me the seat set at right angles to his, so if I lean forward I’m able to see the computer screen in front of him. The room is small and sparse, with an adjoining one that contains an examination couch draped with flimsy white paper. On his desk is a small vase containing sprigs of dusty lavender stems which look fake and there’s a snow globe next to a selection of pens. It strikes me as odd, given it’s the height of summer.

Dr Swann pulls my notes in front of him and I sense he needs a few moments to recall who on earth I am and what on earth I’m being treated for. I judge him to be in his fifties and he’s just the wrong side of handsome; his nose is too big and looks like putty and his eyebrows tuft up, like the edges of a rug. His hair isn’t thick, but still has all its colour – a bland tawny
brown, unless it comes out of a bottle – and his skin is well worn like an overused leather sofa. I wonder if he falls into the category of ‘professional counting down the days to his retirement’ or whether he lives for the job. It’s hard to tell. He seems efficient enough given the constraints of the NHS.

He skim reads my notes, flicks the page over and nods. ‘So – how are you finding the injections?’

‘Fine.’ I feel his time is precious; I want to answer as concisely as I can. ‘I can manage them myself.’

‘You’d had a couple of nosebleeds when I saw you last – any more?’

‘Yeah – I’m afraid so.’ I tell him I had one in the shower yesterday and one the day before as I was taking Frank over the fields – a really bad one.

He crumples up his nose. Complications. That’s not what he wants. He wants me to be a straightforward case, so he can claw back some of his time this morning and not have to miss his lunch break. At least that’s what I imagine as I watch his expression rearrange itself.

‘And the nausea?’

‘Yeah – I’ve had that most days.’ I hesitate about complicating matters further, but I conclude it’s worth mentioning. ‘But, I’ve also had a domestic issue that might be contributing to that, to be honest. I’m off my food.’ I don’t want to tell him what the reason is – I can’t bring myself to have to go through it all again.

He slides a pair of weighing scales out from under the desk and invites me to step on them.

He refers to his notes and I take a peek in his open briefcase beside the desk, because I’m innately driven to snoop, it would seem. There’s nothing much to pique my interest: two DVDs,
a book called
The Pursuit of Conception
and a sandwich box. ‘You’ve lost half a stone since we started the injections,’ he announces. ‘That’s not so good.’

He types something into the computer. ‘I think the nausea from the injections should wear off shortly. The nosebleeds are a common reaction, I’m afraid.’ He straightens up. ‘Contact me again if you’re having more than around two a week, okay?’

‘So, I should carry on with the injections?’

‘For now. Make an appointment in a month’s time and we’ll review things. We’ll get you in for semen tests too, to check the way things are going.’

He stands up. He looks in a hurry to get me out, but is careful not to glance at his watch.

I walk out into the maze of corridors. They seem like underground tunnels and I’m demoralised at the thought of going back to the empty crumbling cottage. It feels like it’s got a mind of its own and has decided to demolish itself; it’s not the solid haven I thought it would be. I get the impression that as soon as one job is fixed another will present itself. The surveyor was certainly unimpressed and one of the builders who is due to fix the chimney made a passing comment about problems with the roof. Is it a metaphor for our marriage, I wonder – showing up the cracks I haven’t been able to see?

I turn the final corner towards the hospital exit and walk straight into someone. A blur of blue and lemon yellow, it’s a woman with a child. I recognise them instantly: Marion and Clara.

‘Hello,’ I say, probably sounding too cheerful for the situation, but I’m genuinely pleased to see them. ‘Back again?’

‘For Clara, this time. We’ve just finished.’

‘You’re the man with Frank,’ Clara says. ‘Look…’ She pulls the mother-of-pearl key fob I gave her out of her pocket.

‘She loves it,’ Marion says. ‘She won’t lose it…’ she tips up Clara’s face with a finger under her chin, ‘will you?’

‘Not never,’ says Clara.

‘You don’t have time for a hot drink, do you?’ I suggest on the spur of the moment. ‘There’s a coffee shop…but then, you probably know…’

Marion smiles. ‘I’d love to. As it happens, I’ve never stopped here for coffee. Always in a rush to… get out.’ She addresses Clara. ‘Is it okay if we have a nice drink, here?’

‘As long as we all go,’ her daughter tells her.

She leans across and whispers, so Clara can’t hear. ‘Getting Clara here was a nightmare, but as soon as she saw the crayons in the doctor’s office, she forgot all about kicking up a fuss.’

The coffee shop is around the next corner and Clara rushes in to find a free table by the window. ‘Did you bring Frank?’ she asks, looking out of the window. ‘Is he tied up outside?’

‘No,’ I reply, ‘he’s at home. You can come and see him later, if Mummy says that’s okay.’ Anything to prevent me having to step over the threshold alone.

‘Yes, oh, yes…’ Clara cries.

‘I think that should be okay,’ Marion adds.

I queue at the counter and order two coffees and a chocolate milkshake for Clara.

‘Thank you for the key ring,’ Marion says, as I set down the tray. ‘She’s been having a bit of a rough time lately.’ Clara has pink glitter on her cheeks and is playing with a stick-thin doll with hair that extends from a hole in the top of its head.

I nod, but don’t know whether to enquire further. Marion looks like she’s only just holding everything together. I can relate to the wild, desperate look in her eyes. She is clearly frail, suffering the effects of cancer and chemo that has taken all her hair. She’s also struggling to parent her bubbly young child. I don’t want to tip her over the edge by asking questions.

Marion stirs her coffee deliberately and takes a sip. ‘She’s been to see the child psychiatrist. Dr Pike thinks Clara is retreating into fantasy – more than usual that is – after the “incident”…you know…’

‘Right, yes – the one you mentioned,’ I say, making sure I avoid anything specific within Clara’s earshot.

‘My best friend is Rapunzel,’ Clara says between sips on her stripy straw. ‘She has long hair and I can climb up it to get inside the castle. We play tiddlywinks together. She tells me all about the castle and shows me all the rooms and the dungeon.’

Marion throws her eyes up. ‘She has plenty of “real” friends,’ she insists, stroking her daughter’s soft hair. ‘You haven’t seen Marnie for a while, have you?’ She turns back to Harper. ‘Marnie likes skipping and plays the piano.’

‘And tennis,’ Clara adds, folding the doll’s long legs so she sits on the table.

‘And there’s Lucy,’ continues Marion, ‘she likes dolls, horses and swimming. She plays the flute and has a trampoline in the garden. When did you last play with Lucy?’

‘Lucy is boring and Marnie’s a cry-baby,’ Clara says. ‘I like Helen – she reads the stories at the library. I see her on Saturdays and sometimes after school, but that’s finished now.’

Marion shrugs. ‘She used to be gregarious and inclusive – now she hides in her room, tells me to keep out and spends all her time locked inside her own pretend world.’ Her shoulders
sink. ‘Anyway, enough about us,’ Marion concludes. ‘What about you and your wife? You’re both teachers?’

Marion can’t have seen the posters.

‘Diane teaches children of Clara’s age at St Mary’s.’

‘Ah. Clara goes to Trinity – it’s a bit nearer.’

‘I teach criminology and forensics at Portsmouth University. We’ve both finished for the summer.’

‘Criminology? How interesting. What does that involve, exactly?’

I try to dredge up some enthusiasm. ‘It’s largely exploring the tools and techniques the police use to catch criminals. We examine the latest technology and how certain cases were solved and why others never will be.’

‘Jack the Ripper…’ she murmurs.

‘Mrs Stockton says there’s a skelington in her sister’s wardrobe,’ Clara interjects. ‘I’d like to see it.’

‘I don’t think she means for real,’ Marion says. ‘It’s what people say sometimes.’

‘Why?’

‘It means they have troubles they want to hide and they call it a skeleton in the cupboard.’

‘So, how do you know if someone is telling what’s real or if they only mean it as a story?’

Good question. Marion gives her an answer. ‘As you grow older, you’ll learn
the little sayings people use when they’re really meaning something else. But sometimes it’s still hard to tell if someone is telling the truth or making it up.’ She leans over and tugs playfully at Clara’s cheeks.

‘Sometimes you can’t tell the truth, because it’s a secret,’ Clara says seriously, bending the straw at the ribbed section near the top.

‘Do you have secrets?’ Marion asks her.

Clara doesn’t look up. ‘A few.’

It goes quiet after that. I lean back ready to go; I feel like I should be doing something, making progress. I glance down at my phone, but I have no missed calls. Marion smiles. She looks at ease with me and doesn’t seem to want to break away just yet.

‘You have a sad face,’ she says unexpectedly.

I come clean. Telling strangers my private business goes entirely against the grain for me, but the more people who know you’re missing, Dee, the better. Everyone is a potential witness and Marion may have seen something.

‘The truth is my wife, Diane, has gone missing. She left the cottage on July 30
^th
, just over a week ago. I haven’t heard from her since.’

‘Oh my God, how awful.’ Marion’s pallor does the impossible task of fading even further, to a shade resembling waxy parchment. She drags her hands down her neck. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I’ve put posters up in the village.’

‘The pretty lady?’ Clara throws in. ‘I saw her on the lamppost.’

Marion apologises; says she’s probably walked past the notices too, but she didn’t register.

‘You didn’t see anything did you?’ I press her. ‘The evening of July 30
^th
– it was a Wednesday. She drove out of our drive around 7.30pm?’

Marion holds her head still, focusing on the pepper pot. ‘No…I don’t…I think I was lying down…’

‘Of course. You haven’t had a visit from the police yet?’

‘No – but I could easily have missed them. Being here…and I spend a lot of time in bed, I don’t always hear the door.’

‘They’re making house-to-house enquiries.’

‘I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how awful that must be.’

Touched by her kindness, I end up confiding more than I mean to. I tell her that you withdrew money inside a convenience store near Heathrow airport. A thought niggles at me. ‘It’s odd, you know, because Dee never uses a cash machine that charges a fee,’ I mutter, half to myself. I visualise the extra £1.50 that appeared on the computer screen, paid to cover the transaction. ‘She has a thing about not paying when there are plenty of ATMs that don’t charge.’

‘Perhaps, it wasn’t her,’ Marion suggests.

‘In which case, she must have given someone her PIN number, or someone got hold of it somehow.’ This is the sort of conversation I should be having with the police.

I must appear disoriented, because Marion puts her hand on my arm.

‘Have you eaten a decent meal in the last few days?’ she says in warm motherly tones.

‘Probably not,’ I admit with a smile.

‘Then you’re coming to us,’ she says, getting up. ‘My mother made a chicken and mushroom pie that’s far too big for Clara and me. Would you do me the honour of sharing it with us this evening – around seven?’

‘That’s very kind,’ I reply. ‘Perhaps before that, we could see if a little girl would like to meet Frank?’

Clara skips alongside us as we turn towards the exit. ‘Can Little Red Riding Hood come too?’

‘Of course she can.’

It occurs to me then that Marion has been the only person to truly question your actions.

The week before the miscarriage

‘I’m going to have to get a new one,’ says Diane, rolling up her yoga mat. ‘Frank’s taken the corner off and holes are breaking out everywhere.’ She walks over to the corner of the dance studio and dumps it in the bin.