Missing (12 page)

‘Mm mum!’ he gurgled, trying to grab her face.

‘Come on, let’s go in. It’s cold out here,’ and snuggling him against her as she picked up her bag, she went on up the path to embrace her mother, whose gentle brown eyes and faintly lined features were shining with love. ‘Hi. Are you OK?’ she asked, stepping in through the front door.

‘Of course,’ her mother answered. ‘You look tired.’

‘I am a bit, but not too tired for my boy,’ she added, blowing a raspberry into his neck.

Rufus gave another yelp of pleasure, and taking two fistfuls of hair he started to bounce up and down.

‘OK, young man,’ his grandmother said, coming to the rescue, ‘let’s go and show Mummy your drawings. Prepare to be impressed,’ she added quietly to Vivienne. ‘They just about blew my mind.’

Vivienne let her take him, and after dumping her shawl and coat on the banister, she followed them into the cottage’s cosy kitchen to inspect her son’s latest achievements. ‘Wow,’ she exclaimed, when she saw the crayoned pages spread out on the table, ‘did you do these?’

‘He did,’ Linda confirmed. ‘I told you they were impressive.’

In fact, they were random sweeps and squiggles that depicted absolutely nothing at all, but Vivienne was well used to her mother’s conviction that Rufus was going to be a great something when he grew up. This week it was clearly an abstract artist, while last week, after he’d staggered the entire length of the village hall to plunge into a pile of spongy balls, it was an Olympic athlete, and next week, after he’d hopefully mastered a few more words, he’d no doubt be a UN linguist.

‘Are you hungry?’ Linda asked. ‘There’s lamb casserole for dinner, but it’s not ready yet.’

‘I can wait,’ Vivienne assured her, taking Rufus back. ‘I just want to be with my boy for now,’ she said, squeezing him, and noticing, as she always did, how like his daddy he was growing – at least, that was what she liked to tell herself, and who was going to contradict her? ‘So what’s on the agenda this weekend?’ she asked, sitting him on the table in front of her to play pat-a-cake.

‘Well, Rufus has a birthday party tomorrow afternoon,’ Linda answered, checking the calendar magnetised to the fridge, ‘and I have yoga in the morning. Other than that, we’re free. How about you? Much work to do?’

‘A little. I’m en route to Devon where I’ll be for at least part of next week, then I’ll come back here, hopefully for a long weekend, if not then for the night before I go on to London.’ With a surge of happiness she said, ‘Things are starting to look up, Mum. We’ve snagged two big paying clients this week, and another that’s paying nothing, but could give us loads of prestige if we play it right, not to mention a young mother’s peace of mind.’

Linda’s tone was sober as she said, ‘You told me on the phone, Vivi, but the question is, do you have any hard cash yet? Or at least a way of meeting your mortgage?’

Smiling past a pang of anxiety, Vivienne said, ‘Not yet, but it’s coming. Anyway, the important thing is that we keep up the payments on this place.’

‘I’ve still got some savings left—’

‘No!’ Vivienne exclaimed firmly. ‘I already owe you enough, and I’m not going to let you use up any more.’

‘You’re my family. What else am I going to do with it?’

‘Mum, you’re not even sixty yet, and look at you. You’re gorgeous, a figure women half your age would die for …’

‘Oh stop, I’m putting on weight like you wouldn’t believe.’

‘What I’m saying is, you’ve got plenty of years ahead of you, and already Rufus and I are taking up too many of them. You’re entitled to your own life now, and you’ll meet someone else – OK, maybe not as fantastic as Dad, but someone who’ll appreciate you and understand how lucky he is.’

Colouring slightly, Linda said, ‘What are you soft-soaping me for? There’s no need, you know.’

‘I’m just stating the truth, and telling you that whatever savings you have belong to you. It’s bad enough that you won’t let me pay you for taking care of Rufus …’

‘What are you talking about? You settle all the bills in this house.’

‘You mean I used to, but I will again, and this great heffalump is a full-time job. It would cost me a fortune for professional childcare—’

‘It was never an option and you know it,’ Linda interrupted. ‘Maybe, if that poor wife of Miles’s weren’t—’

‘Don’t let’s go there again.’

‘But I think we should. The woman’s disappeared, Vivi, and it’s making me nervous. Miles told us himself how afraid she is of him having another son if he remarries. It’s why she won’t let him divorce her, and look what happened when she found out about you, what she did to her own daughter to make him give you up.’

‘She was under enormous stress … No, I know what you’re going to say. Sam went missing a long time ago, she should be over it by now, so maybe her problems go deeper than that, but think how you’d feel if you’d lost a child that way.’

‘I’m not denying it’s terrible. Horrible beyond bearing, but she’s not the only one it’s happened to, and people do manage to survive it and move on.’

‘How do you know? Who have we ever met, besides Miles and Jacqueline, that it’s happened to? They’re in the news for a while, then we never hear about them again, so how do you know what it’s like for them?’

‘OK, I don’t, but you can’t tell me you’re not worried about where Jacqueline might turn up, or what might be going on in that head of hers even as we speak. For all we know—’

‘Let’s not start speculating on things we know nothing about,’ Vivienne interrupted, wanting to stop her mother’s fear adding more fuel to her own. ‘As far as I remember, Sam’s sixteenth birthday is coming up, so think of how sad it must be making her.’

‘It’s not that I don’t feel sorry for her,’ Linda replied earnestly, ‘but I have to tell you, Vivi, if she does anything to hurt you or Rufus—’

‘It’s not going to happen,’ Vivienne cut in. ‘You know very well that not even Miles knows about Rufus, or where you’re living now, so let’s end this … Rufus!’ she laughed, catching him as he launched himself at her.

‘Duh, duh, mum, mum, mum,’ he cried, bouncing up and down in her arms.

Gazing at him with more love than words could express, she said, ‘It must be time for your bath, young
man.
I’ll just get my things in from the car, then we’ll go up.’

‘By the way,’ her mother said as she settled Rufus in his high chair, ‘I want to hear all about these firemen. Are you really going to teach them to dance?’

Vivienne started to grin. ‘Not me personally,’ she answered, ‘but we’re lining someone up to do that. Actually, I’ve got some photos with me, so you can take a look at them if you like.’

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Linda twinkled. ‘What skills are they offering?’

‘So far we’ve got a gardener, a taxi driver, a painter and decorator, a car mechanic, a window cleaner, a DIY enthusiast and a Spanish teacher. I’m pretty sure there are going to be more, but it all depends on what their hobbies are and how useful they can be to others. Why don’t you come down to Devon and make a bid on one of them yourself when the time comes?’

‘I might just take you up on that,’ Linda commented dryly, and stooped to pick up the bricks Rufus had just flung on the floor, while Vivienne went to bring her bags in from the car.

She was just struggling back through the front door when her mobile started to ring. ‘Can you get it, Mum?’ she called. ‘I left it on the table. Tell them I’ll ring back.’

‘Hello?’ she heard her mother saying, as she started up the stairs. ‘No, it’s— Yes, it is. Who’s that, please? Oh, Annie. How are you? Yes, I’m fine, thank you. And you? I see. Yes, you’d better speak to her. I’ll pass you over.’

Surprised to be hearing from her next-door neighbour, Vivienne let go of her bags as her mother came down the hall, and took the phone. ‘Hi Annie,’ she said. ‘Is everything OK?’

‘I think so,’ Annie replied. ‘I was just checking to see if you knew your garage door was open?’

Vivienne frowned. ‘I’m sure I closed it when I left,’ she said.

‘Oh well, you know how they sometimes flip open again. Would you like me to go and close it? I’ll get Geoff to come with me in case there’s been a break-in, but the connecting door to the house looked closed as I went by, so hopefully there’s no cause for alarm.’

‘Thanks,’ Vivienne said. ‘Actually, can you let yourself into the house to make sure everything’s all right?’

‘Of course. I’ll call back once we’ve checked it all over to put your mind at rest.’

‘Thank you,’ Vivienne said again, and clicking off she continued up the stairs, reminding herself that Annie was right, the garage doors sometimes did flip back open after closing, so that was almost certainly all that had happened.

Finding the lamps already on in her bedroom, and the satin quilt turned back ready for her to get in later, she dropped everything on the bed and unzipped her bag. More than anything she wanted to believe that Jacqueline’s disappearance was connected to Sam’s sixteenth, but she couldn’t help being afraid that she might have somehow found out about Rufus. She kept telling herself it wasn’t possible, for she’d never even told Miles she was pregnant, never mind about the birth, and her mother had moved house before she’d even started to show, so the number of people who knew the identity of Rufus’s father was limited to those she trusted implicitly. However, she couldn’t stop thinking about what it would mean to Jacqueline to discover that Miles had a son. That kind of cruel
twist
of fate could prove the final straw for a woman whose suffering had never stopped over the years, and whose only reason for living had been in the hope she might one day find her child again.

Starting as her mobile rang, she quickly grabbed it and clicked on.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Annie told her, and Vivienne practically unravelled with relief. ‘No break-in, and nothing seems to be missing from the garage,’ Annie continued, ‘so it was obviously a random flip-up. The door’s safely down now, so no need to worry.’

‘Thank you,’ Vivienne said warmly. ‘Thanks for letting me know. I’ll have to be more careful next time.’

‘It happens to us all. Fortunately so far we’ve been lucky. Anyway, call if you need anything, we’re here all weekend, then we’re off to Canada for a month, don’t forget.’

‘I haven’t forgotten, and I’ll definitely keep an eye on the place. Have a wonderful time, if I don’t speak to you before you leave.’

After ringing off Vivienne dropped the phone on the bed and went back downstairs to fetch Rufus for his bath.

As usual, as she played with him, squeezing spongefuls of warm soapy water all over his lovely slippery skin, and pretending to be shocked when he splashed her, she was thinking of how delighted father and son would be with one another. She found it easy to picture them together, Miles’s hands so strong and tender on his son’s chubby little limbs, and Rufus’s delighted bubbles and squeals as he tried to grab his father’s nose. She imagined them sleeping side by side, or playing in a park. She could see Miles feeding him, rolling him over on the floor in a mock fight, or trying
to
be stern and failing. She couldn’t help it, but the longing for Miles to know his son made her forget how hard it might be for him to be reminded of the child he had lost – she thought only of how happy Rufus could make him. And more than anyone, she knew how much he deserved that happiness, for Sam’s loss had always been seen as his mother’s tragedy. No one had ever really considered how hard it had been for his father too.

Miles was in a taxi on his way to visit friends for the evening. Though he appeared relaxed, with his long legs stretched out in front of him, and one arm propped on the window edge, the deep line between his brows betrayed his inner tension. Right up to the last minute he’d been tempted to call and say he couldn’t get to the dinner, but in the end he’d decided that a little relaxation with people he trusted not to gossip later, or push him to talk about Jacqueline, might do him some good. It might also help him to get a better perspective on whether or not he’d made the right decision to involve Justine James the way he had.

With a barely audible sigh, he turned to gaze out at the darkness. Everyone knew what a difficult time Justine was having at
The News
, so if she approached the investigation the way he wanted her to, she was bound to expect a ticket out of there as payment. Not that he was in a position to give her a job right now, but he could always open other doors for her, which he would, if she covered the story his way – or at least kept him informed of what the Critch was about. That kind of bold detail had yet to be spelled out between them, but she’d be fully aware of how he’d feel about the Critch dragging up the past and spilling it all over
his
Sunday rag. With Jacqueline missing there was every excuse to do just that, and whereas in other hands the story might be sensitively told, in the Critch’s it certainly wouldn’t. Of course Justine would be unable to influence her editor’s approach, but few were better placed to warn Miles if the Critch was about to make a splash, or, far worse, if he managed to turn up anything new.

Looking down as his mobile started to ring, he saw it was Kelsey and immediately clicked on. ‘Hi, how’s it going down there?’ he asked, hoping she was in a less tricky mood than when he’d spoken to her earlier.

‘Everything’s great,’ she assured him chirpily. ‘Mrs D is making some pasta for us this evening, then we’re going to watch a couple of DVDs. I just wondered, Dad, would it be all right if we had some wine? Mrs D said I had to get your permission before she’ll give me the key to the cellar.’

‘How many are you?’

‘Five, including Mrs D.’

‘Then you can have a bottle of Pinot Grigio between you.’

‘Oh Dad! That is like so mean. We’ll hardly even get a glass each.’

‘OK, two bottles, but make sure Mrs Davies has more than the rest of you.’

Sounding much happier with that, she said, ‘So what’s going on with you? Did you decide to go for dinner?’

‘Yes, I’m in a taxi on my way there now.’

‘Good, you need to get out, it’ll do you good.’

Smiling at her parental tone, he said, ‘I take it there’s been no text or anything from Mum?’