Gone Astray (18 page)

Maggie’s pulse accelerated. She found it hard to talk about Lou’s dead fiancé – she hated being reminded of what had happened.

‘But you love Rob just as much.’

‘He’s never believed it though,’ said Lou, emitting a long, sad sigh. ‘He always went on and on about how you never forget your first love and that I must still be hung
up on Jerome. In some ways he was right. You don’t forget, do you?’

Maggie swallowed hard. ‘No, you don’t.’

‘It’s like you with Danny.’

Danny Burroughs was a fellow police cadet Maggie met at Hendon and the boyfriend Lou always assumed was her first love. Maggie had dated him for six months until the pressure of their new
careers split them up. But while Maggie had liked him a lot, Danny wasn’t her first real love. He wasn’t the one who haunted her dreams, the one whose kiss she could still remember.

That honour went to Jerome as well.

She left Lou’s a few minutes later with a promise to ring the boys before they went to bed to say goodnight. She also offered to talk to Rob about the money he owed.

‘If he wants a divorce, you need to get him to start paying regular maintenance for Mae.’

Her sister agreed, albeit reluctantly. She wasn’t in a rush for anything to be made formal because that would mean admitting her marriage really was over.

Ducking through the alleyway at the end of Lou’s road, Maggie felt jittery and upset. Even now, a decade on, she still fretted when Jerome’s name came up in conversation, as though
Lou might suddenly guess after all this time what she’d done.

Their affair started at a friend’s house party, when she was seventeen. Lou was at home in bed, felled by flu, so Maggie went alone. Halfway through the evening, having necked a
quarter-bottle of Smirnoff on her own, she staggered outside for some air and bumped into Jerome smoking a joint with some lads she didn’t know. She was thrilled when he introduced her to the
group not as ‘my girlfriend’s little sister’ but ‘my friend Maggie’. They started chatting and one by one his friends drifted away and left them to it.

Maggie would never forget the look Jerome gave her just before he leaned over to kiss her. It made her skin blaze then and still made her shiver now when she thought about it. She knew she
should’ve pushed him away, but the truth was she didn’t want to. She’d fancied him from the second Lou brought him home; he was all she ever thought about and she wanted him for
herself, regardless of the consequences. Ten minutes after that first kiss they had sex – her first time – on their friend’s bathroom floor, which was everything she expected it
to be with her back pressed against cold lino and someone banging on the door asking to use the loo. She didn’t care though – it was still the best moment of her life up until that
point. Afterwards, back downstairs, she tried to blame it on the vodka, telling Jerome it wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been hammered. But they both knew that was a lie and he
just grinned and said, ‘When can I see you again?’

For months they met in secret behind Lou’s back, the guilt Maggie felt at betraying her overridden by the way she felt about Jerome. She loved him and to her teenage mind that took
precedence over whatever her sister felt. Then Lou dropped an unexpected bombshell: she was pregnant.

Maggie hadn’t expected the unplanned pregnancy to change anything though, because she never thought Lou would go through with it. Her sister was only twenty and Jerome a year older: why
would they want to be shackled with a kid? But Lou announced that not only was she keeping the baby, but she wanted to get married too. With both of their families piling on the pressure, Jerome
proposed.

Lou wanted an engagement party in the function room of a local pub but it was the end of November and she feared everywhere would be booked up with Christmas office parties. So the following
Friday lunchtime while she was at work – she was an accounts clerk for a skip hire firm – she sent Jerome, then unemployed, to speak to the landlord of one pub that still had some dates
available. Maggie, looking for an excuse to spend time with him, offered to go as well to check the venue was okay and Lou agreed she should.

It wasn’t easy listening to Jerome tell the landlord how excited he was about becoming a dad but Maggie knew he had to make it sound convincing. He’d reassured her nothing would
change between them once the baby was born and, he promised, when the baby turned one, he would leave Lou and they’d be a proper couple. The teenage Maggie gave no thought to what that would
do to her sister – she was too besotted to care.

After agreeing the fee, the landlord gave Jerome a pint on the house to celebrate and he and Maggie ended up spending the afternoon sitting in the pub and getting drunk. It was dark when they
left around 6 p.m. and the blast of cold air that hit them when they walked out made them feel even more inebriated. Leaving the pub, they’d staggered down the road arm in arm.

What happened next remained scorched on Maggie’s memory like it was branded with a hot iron. As they reached the zebra crossing, she’d tried to kiss Jerome but he ducked away.
‘What if someone sees us?’ he’d slurred. Too drunk to take any notice, she’d giggled and tried again, grabbing at the front of his coat to pull him towards her. By now
Jerome was laughing too. Then, with no warning, he hollered, ‘You can’t catch me!’ and jogged backwards onto the crossing – straight into the path of a car. The impact was
so fast there was no time for either of them to react.

He landed on the pavement opposite, legs bent awkwardly beneath him and blood seeping from his ears and mouth. As the stricken driver of the car and other passers-by tried to help, Maggie
screamed at Jerome not to leave her, but he died less than a minute later as she cradled his head in her lap. Having to break the news to Lou that he’d been killed and that she’d
watched it happen was the worst thing she’d ever had to do.

Afterwards, she couldn’t mourn him properly, not in the way Lou was able to as his fiancée. She had to bury her grief deep inside where no one could see it and sit in anguished
silence as a procession of friends and family paid their respects to her sister. Her only memento of their time together was a photo of the two of them with Lou, which she still kept in the drawer
of her bedside cabinet along with a Valentine’s card he’d sent her. Taken a month after the house party, the photo showed a grinning Jerome standing between the sisters with an arm
around each of them.

The guilt finally kicked in six months after his death, when Jude was born. It devastated Maggie to know her nephew would grow up without his dad because of her. If Jerome hadn’t run onto
the crossing because she was trying to kiss him, he’d still be alive.

After that, ditching university to stay in Mansell and help Lou raise Jude seemed the least she could do. A decade of reflection had also altered her perspective on Jerome and she had come to
accept what a shit he was to be sleeping with both of them at the same time. But acknowledging his duplicity didn’t mean absolving herself from blame and her continuing guilt meant that
whenever Lou needed something – money, babysitting, emotional support – she gave it without question.

But it was still nowhere near enough.

Lesley lay in a foetal position on her side of the bed. She had her back to Mack, who was stretched out on his side with his legs crossed at the ankles and his shoulders
propped up on pillows. She could hear a faint
tap-tap-tap
as he pecked out messages on his phone.

She was pretending to be asleep and had been for half an hour, squeezing her eyelids shut to keep out the daylight. But her mind was too fretful to rest and the climax of the press conference
played on a loop in her mind: Mack standing up . . . Umpire trying to stop him . . . the reporters going crazy with questions . . . Mack yanking his arm away as she tried to persuade him to sit
down. The impact of his words didn’t sink in at first. In fact, her first thought was could they afford to spare a million? Ludicrous now she thought about it. It was only when she clocked
Umpire’s frantic expression and the reporters’ excited faces that it dawned on her Mack had just made a terrible mistake.

She squeezed her eyes tighter but it was no good. Her skin felt hot and prickly, as though her pent-up fury was trying to leach out through her pores. She rolled over on the bed to face her
husband and sat up.

‘You should never have said we’d pay that much.’

Mack, in the same grey cord trousers and white shirt he’d worn to the press conference, glared at her and climbed off his side of the bed. ‘Don’t start, I had enough earache
from Umpire.’

She rolled off her side too, the bed a gulf between them. ‘Well, he knows more about these things than you do. You heard what he said: we’ve got to withdraw the reward. It’s
too much.’

‘No,’ he said, hands balled into fists on his hips.

‘Lower it then. Ask DCI Umpire what he thinks it should be.’

‘I said no, and that’s the end of it.’

‘No, it’s fucking not.’

Mack’s eyes widened in shock and Lesley knew it was because she rarely swore, let alone answered him back.

‘I’m warning you, Mack. Withdraw the reward or . . . or . . .’

‘Or what? You’re being hysterical, Lesley.’

‘No, I’m putting our daughter first.’

‘And I’m not? How is putting up a reward to find her me not putting her first?’

‘Because this is not about Rosie: it’s about you being the big man and flashing your money about.’

Mack reeled backwards as though she’d slapped him.

‘How can you say that?’ he rasped.

‘Because it’s true! All you care about is throwing money around and showing off to your mates down the golf club, who,’ Lesley jabbed her index finger at him,
‘wouldn’t give a flying fuck if it wasn’t for the fact you pay for everything.’ She was shaking now and couldn’t stop the words tumbling out of her mouth. Every one
she aimed at him like a dart. ‘We used to be happy, but now you care more about fucking Caesar beds and bathroom chandeliers than you do your own wife and child.’

She leapt forward and started yanking the duvet off the bed.

‘It’s crap,’ she screamed. ‘It’s just stupid, expensive crap.’

She gathered as much of the duvet as she could in her arms and dragged the rest to the window. Flinging it open, she stuffed the duvet through the gap and watched it plummet onto the driveway
below. The pillows went next. Mack stood frozen in shock on the other side of the bed.

She pushed her hair roughly off her face as she wrenched the door open to her walk-in wardrobe. Rows of never-been-worn clothes greeted her; designer outfits Mack picked out during their trips
to London. She pulled as many items as she could from their hangers then raced to the window and flung them on top of the duvet and pillows down below.

‘I don’t want any of this!’ she shrieked. ‘Don’t you get it? None of this will bring Rosie home. By making this about money, all you’ve done is make things
worse.’

Mack finally lost his temper.

‘Why do you hate us having money so much?’ he shouted. ‘Do you really want to go back to living in that shitty semi on that godawful estate? Be my guest! But don’t tell
me what I can and can’t spend our money on. Fuck it, I should’ve offered five million if that’s what it takes to bring Rosie home.’

‘Why, so you can impress Suzy Breed?’

Mack’s face contorted.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The police have been asking about your darling ex,’ Lesley spat.

‘Did they say why?’

Lesley stopped. She realized Mack no longer looked angry or surprised but worried.

‘Does it matter? Suzy’s in New Zealand still, isn’t she?’

‘How the fuck would I know?’

His expression made Lesley suddenly feel afraid. He was lying, she was sure of it.

‘When was the last time you heard from her?’

‘I don’t know, years ago. Don’t start all that again.’

‘What?’

‘You, banging on about me still wanting to be with Suzy. It was bollocks then and it’s bollocks now.’

A chill ran through her.

‘I wasn’t thinking that. But now you mention it, don’t you think it’s strange the police have brought up her name?’

‘I’m not having this conversation,’ Mack said angrily. ‘It’s nonsense. We should be thinking about how to find Rosie. That’s why I’m not lowering the
reward, no matter what that Umpire says.’

‘But it won’t make a difference!’ she shrieked back. ‘I saw the blood on her skirt. Someone hurt our baby and whoever did it isn’t going to come forward for a
reward. They’re not going to want to get caught.’

Mack suddenly looked stricken and let out a sob as he pitched forward onto his hands and knees.

‘I just want my little girl home,’ he cried. ‘I just want to know where she is.’

Lesley stumbled across the room and sank to her knees on the floor next to him.

‘I know you do. So do I.’ She wanted to wrap her arms round him but something held her back.

‘I’m going crazy not doing anything.’

‘We need to let the police do their job, Mack.’

‘But I’m her dad. I should do
something.
’

As he buried his face in his hands and cried, all Lesley could think about was his reaction to her bringing up Suzy Breed. Looking up, she saw that his phone, a sleek, limited edition BlackBerry
Passport, was still on the bed. Carefully, she reached out and pocketed it.

‘It’s okay, love,’ she shushed, patting his back gently.

After a moment, Mack sat up and wiped his eyes. ‘I can’t stand much more of this.’

‘I feel the same. Look, why don’t you go and talk to Belmar about the reward? If he thinks it’s fine, then let’s leave it as it is.’ She didn’t imagine Belmar
would disagree with DCI Umpire but she just wanted Mack out of the bedroom.

‘That’s a good idea. I’m sorry I shouted at you, sweetheart,’ he said, leaning over and gently kissing her. It took all her willpower not to pull away. ‘I’ll
make you a cup of tea while I’m at it.’

She smiled thinly as he hauled himself off the carpet and left the bedroom. With one eye on the door in case he came back, she got out his phone. It was password protected but she knew the code:
Mack used the same four digits for everything.