Missing (16 page)

As she turned onto the main street she caught a glimpse up ahead of red brick houses with grey tiled roofs and white-framed sash windows. These, she suspected, were some of the council properties that had been built during the early seventies to replace the prefabs that had gone up after the war. Apparently Sharon Goss and her children lived in one of them.

She’d just pulled into the pub car park and drawn up alongside a battered-looking Subaru, when someone startled her with a sharp rap on her driver’s window. She turned quickly, and immediately started
to
smile, not only in response to the beaming, round face with its wind-mottled cheeks, pixie nose and crowning thatch of carroty hair, but at how accurate Alice’s description had been.

‘Stella Coombes is a cross between Benny Hill, Dennis the Menace and Wendy,’ she’d claimed, and she clearly hadn’t been joking.

‘Hello, hello,’ Stella gushed in her engaging West Country burr as she pulled open the door. ‘Welcome to Kenleigh. I bin looking out for you. You did jolly well to get here so quick. Did you come M4, M5, or 303?’

‘Motorway,’ Vivienne answered, getting out of the car.

‘Oh my,’ Stella clucked, as she took Vivienne’s hand in a rough, stumpy grasp, and to Vivienne’s astonishment she went off into peals of laughter.

‘I’m sorry,’ Vivienne said, looking around uncertainly, ‘did I miss something?’

‘No, not at all,’ Stella assured her. ‘It’s just me. Can’t help laughing sometimes, specially when someone looks like you.’

Vivienne started to laugh too. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ she asked, wondering what kind of paroxysms the woman might go into when she looked in the mirror. Not that she wished to be rude, but really, if anyone was strange around here, Stella Coombes had it in spades.

‘Nothing’s wrong with you,’ Stella replied, dabbing her eyes. ‘It’s just that you and Alice … I’ve never come across a pair who look more like their namesakes. Her, with all her golden hair, and you … Go on, tell me, I bet your dad named you after Vivien Leigh.’

‘Actually, you’re right,’ Vivienne admitted, ‘but he spelt it differently.’

‘With those twinkly blue eyes and all that black hair, you’re the spit,’ Stella informed her cheerfully. ‘Anyway, come on in now, let’s get you a drink, bet you’re dying for one after the drive. It’s a lovely day, innit? Bodes well that, the sun shining on your arrival. Some of the others is already here. Not everyone, because a lot of us has jobs. Meself, I’m a farmer’s wife, well you knows that, so I’m a bit of an early bird, which gives me a couple of hours to meself in the afternoons.’

Vivienne followed her inside to find the pub’s interior as dark and moody as any self-respecting smuggler’s inn ought to be, with low, shadowy doorways and secret niches, a big stone fireplace, and crooked beams running through the peeling paint of a faded white ceiling. Chalked on a blackboard between two recessed windows was a delicious-sounding menu of fish, hiked out of the estuary that very day, it claimed, along with mussels, scallops, prawns and an abundant selection of local game.

‘Aha, here she is,’ the landlord cried, thumping a fist on the bar as the door swung closed behind Stella and Vivienne. He was a tall, bullish man with kindly blue eyes, ruddy cheeks and a belly so big Vivienne had to wonder when he’d last seen his knees. ‘Glad you came now,’ he told her, ‘because these ladies was starting to get out of hand.’

Vivienne smiled at his bawdy wink, and followed Stella over to the small group of mainly forty-plus women who were still laughing and clucking at the landlord’s tease.

‘What’ll you have to drink?’ Stella demanded, digging into a capacious pocket of her baggy jeans for a handful of coins. ‘We’re all on tea, herbal and normal,
but
if you wants wine or beer, we shan’t think none the worse of you.’

‘Tea’s fine, thank you,’ Vivienne responded.

‘We’m meeting here,’ Stella explained, while pulling out a chair for her to sit down, ‘because the village hall’s took up with something else today. Is someone pouring her a cuppa? Are you ’ungry? There’s crisps and stuff behind the bar. Or I ’spect Jonty can make you a sandwich.’

‘No, no, I’m fine,’ Vivienne assured her, sinking into the chair and taking the cup and saucer someone was offering.

‘Sharon just rang, she’s on her way,’ Stella told her, sitting down too. ‘She’s ever so grateful that you’ve come in person. It’s going to make a big difference to her morale, having you around, I can tell you that. Not that she’s doing badly, mind you. She’s a brave girl. But after what you did for Keith and everything, well, it makes you a bit like one of the family, if you knows what I mean. It’s not really a time for her to be dealing with strangers.’

‘If I’d known it was for Sharon, I’d have come the first time,’ Vivienne assured her. ‘No one mentioned her on the phone.’

‘No, well, she didn’t want us to in case it seemed like emotional blackmail, or something, was what she said. I told her she was being daft, that anyone would want to help out in a situation like hers, but she got it in her head that you wasn’t to know until you was actually here, and there was no talking her round.’

‘Well, I’m here now, and I intend to do everything I can to help, but let’s begin with some introductions. I know it might be a bit AA, but if you could tell me your names first, followed by whether or not you actually
live
in Kenleigh, how you know Sharon, and how much you think we need to raise to help her, it should give us a place to start.’

The woman next to her wasted no time. ‘My name’s Mary Allsop, and I lives at number three The Willows. I knows Sharon because she’s my neighbour, and I think we need to raise a lot more than any of us here can on our own, which is why we’ve asked you to come and help. Oh, and by the way, we all reckons it’s a brilliant idea to call in the fire brigade.’

Stella led a round of applause. ‘Good on you, Mary,’ she declared. ‘Sharon’s kiddies is going to need looking after while she has her treatment, and those chaps from the fire station is likely to get us a lot more bidders than the local lads would have managed.’

Wondering how they were going to react to the news of Theo, Vivienne kept it to herself for the moment, wanting the introductions to continue.

‘I’m Eileen Rawlings,’ said a platinum-blonde woman with a waxy complexion and ill-fitting false teeth, the sweep of her eyes telling Vivienne that she wasn’t appreciating having her position as the glamorous one challenged. ‘I lives at forty-eight Dodd Lane, which is behind the church, and I knows Sharon because we’ve lived here all our lives and my girl, Tina, who lives up in Bristol now, went to school with Sharon and Keith. Just like I went to school with Sharon’s mam, Betty, God rest her soul. I don’t know how much we needs to raise, but I’m happy to dip into my savings as far as I can …’

‘Especially if she’s going to get herself a nice bit of action out of it,’ the woman beside her piped up.

Eileen chortled along with the rest of them. ‘Can’t wait to see my old man’s face if he thinks I’ve won
meself
a fireman to come and sort out me chimney,’ she told them, giving a nudge to the woman next to her.

‘Might put his horse back in the stable,’ someone else guffawed.

Vivienne laughed along with the others. Though their humour might lack subtlety their enjoyment of it was infectious, and as they continued to introduce themselves – Lizzie, Cath, Gail, Janet and Fliss – she found herself warming to them more and more.

Then, as if on cue, the outside door opened and everyone looked up as a waif-like creature with a startling abundance of glossy black curls, starkly pale skin and a rich red mouth wafted in, like the heroine from the pages of an old-fashioned romance.

‘Sharon,’ Stella cried, ‘you made it. Good girl. Everything all right?’

‘Yeah, perfect,’ Sharon said breathily as she straightened her ill-fitting wig and came towards them. ‘He got sent off, silly bugger, so he didn’t mind me leaving early. I’ll box his ears when I get him home though, punching another player. I’ve told ’im about that before. ’Ello, you’re Vivienne, aren’t you?’ she said, smiling shyly as she held out a hand to shake. ‘I’m Sharon, the one what’s causing all the fuss. Just shoot me and be done with it, is what I tell ’em. It’s what they’d do with a ’orse, but they don’t listen, none of ’em.’

‘There’s no fun in that,’ Gail protested.

‘Not when you’ve got risky ideas like you’ve got,’ Sharon retorted dryly. Then to Vivienne, ‘It’s lovely of you to come all this way. Keith was always talking about you, so I felt like I already knew you. I hope that’s not too much of a cheek, and you don’t mind that we got in touch.’

‘No, of course not,’ Vivienne assured her, thinking how thin and frail she looked, in spite of the bagginess of her clothes that was presumably meant to disguise it. ‘I’m glad you did, and I’m sure we’re going to raise even more money than you think.’

‘Bound to now we got the firemen involved,’ Stella announced.

‘I just hope you made it clear what we’m expecting of ’em,’ Eileen piped up. ‘Can’t wait to get me hands on one of them helmets.’

‘Listen to her,’ Sharon said, ‘there’s been no controlling her since she started holding those Ann Summers parties back in the summer. I’m telling you, they’re just using me as an excuse to get into all that kinky underwear.’

‘Not true, we wants to make sure you’re all right,’ Lizzie chipped in hotly.

‘Just teasing,’ Sharon assured her, and sweeping a copy of the
West Country Times
off a window seat she sat down, hugging the paper to her meagre chest. ‘So where are you up to?’ she asked, eagerly.

Still trying to tear herself from the unholy images of their Ann Summers parties, Vivienne said, ‘Actually, I have some news which I think is going to make a great difference to our auction. Theo Kenwood-South has agreed to take part.’

There was total silence as the enormity of the honour made several jaws drop.

‘Bloody hell,’ Stella finally pronounced.

Sharon’s eyes were rounding with protest. ‘But he’s ever so busy,’ she said. ‘We can’t ask him to give up his time for something—’

‘She obviously already has,’ Stella interrupted, ‘and it’s up to him to say whether or not he’s too busy.’

‘What a lovely lad,’ Gail declared. ‘I always liked him, even before he won his gold medal.’

‘Course, he knew Keith,’ Eileen added. ‘I bet that’s why he’s doing it.’

‘God bless him,’ Mary murmured, shaking her head in wonderment.

Loving them for their appreciation, Vivienne was about to continue outlining her plans when Stella said, ‘Reckon all the excitement’s gone to me bladder, but before I takes meself off to the lav, do you have any more surprises like that up your sleeve?’

‘It’s the only one,’ Vivienne assured her with a smile.

‘They don’t come any better,’ Cath declared, as Stella got up to lumber across the bar. Then to Sharon, ‘Have you ever met Theo Kenwood-South?’

‘Only once,’ Sharon answered, putting the paper back down to press her hands to her cheeks. ‘He’s really nice.’

‘Here, in’t that the woman what’s gone missing?’ Mary said, pointing at the front page. ‘The one that lives over Haytor way?’

Sharon looked down. ‘Oh, yeah, that’s her,’ she said, looking at a picture of Jacqueline. Then suddenly remembering Vivienne’s connection, her eyes shot nervously to Vivienne’s.

‘They reckons she never went in the station,’ Eileen stated knowledgeably. ‘There’s no CCTV footage showing it, they say, so they’ve only got her husband’s word …’

‘Eileen,’ Sharon said awkwardly.

‘He’s the one who ran the
Telegraph
, in’t he?’ Mary asked.

‘I think it was the
Independent
,’ Cath told her.

‘Whatever, it don’t make him innocent, does it,’
Eileen
said tartly, ‘just because he had a fancy job what paid him loads of money.’

Sharon’s dismay was complete as she turned her eyes back to Vivienne.

‘It’s OK,’ Vivienne whispered, putting a hand on hers.

‘Do you reckon he’s done away with her then?’ Lizzie was saying. ‘Thass what they’m implying.’

Eileen shrugged. ‘Who knows? It’s starting to look that way. Next thing you know they’ll have the sniffer dogs and helicopters out going all over the place, but they’ll have their work cut out, with him being nearly on the moor.’

‘Right, shall we go back to—’ Vivienne tried to interrupt.

‘Must have been terrible having her kiddie stolen like that,’ Cath came in tragically. ‘They reckons you never gets over it. Well, how can you, when the poor mite could still be out there somewhere? You’d never be able to stop yourself hoping, would you? I know if it was one of mine I’d probably go off me head worrying and wondering and imagining all sorts of things.’

‘Just goes to show it can happen to anyone, dunnit,’ Mary said. ‘They might be rich, but money and privilege didn’t keep ’em safe from that, did it? Poor sods. She looks really nice, too. I can’t imagine he’d want to get rid of her. I mean, why now, after all this time?’

‘You never can tell what goes on behind closed doors,’ Eileen said darkly. ‘For all we know he might even have done away with the kid all those years ago and she somehow found out.’

Unable to take any more, either for herself or
Sharon,
Vivienne said in a voice that cut right across them, ‘I think we should get back to the reason we’re all here, and what our next moves are going to be.’ It wasn’t that she blamed them for gossiping, it was only to be expected, but she had no intention of listening to Miles’s character being shredded by people who knew nothing about him, and even less of what had happened fifteen years ago. ‘We’d just finished the introductions when you arrived,’ she told Sharon, ‘and now you know about Theo, we need to start discussing goals.’

‘Our goal is to get her and those kids looked after while she’s having her treatment,’ Stella declared, as she rejoined the group.

‘Of course,’ Vivienne responded, ‘but what we don’t seem to have a clear idea of is how much we need to raise, and I realise we can’t really know that until I’ve had time to talk to Sharon about how long the treatment is likely to take, and what sort of expenditure needs to be covered.’