The Collared Collection (12 page)

Somehow, she formed the words to ask, ‘Polly, is that you?’

The girl started to sob, so that Callie could hardly understand what was being said. She did pick out, ‘Dom … boys … missing …’

Callie couldn’t string a phrase together, her brain jammed with a horrific slideshow of her precious boys lost at sea, terrified, crying for her – perhaps drowned, the boat their seabed tomb …

In one fluid movement, David put his arm around her to stop her body falling and took the phone, to glean as much information from Polly as he could, as quickly as he could.

Chapter Twenty-one

Callie wrung the thin leather strap of her bag tightly through her hands, making angry white indents in the flesh, though she felt nothing.

Half-heartedly she asked, ‘Shall I drive for a while, David? You must be exhausted.’

He patted her thigh and for the first time, in the suffused blue light from dashboard instruments, she noticed a thin band of skin on his wedding ring finger that wasn’t as tanned as the rest. She decided now was not the time to ask; all she could think about – all she wanted to think about, was Sam and Alex.

‘I’m OK, just try to relax. If you’ve never driven an automatic with power steering it takes a bit of getting used to – and the motorway isn’t an ideal testing ground.’

Secretly relieved, she sank back into the grey leather upholstery, fighting to keep her mind on the positive side of frantic. Over and over in her head, she recited the mantra ‘Alex and Sam will be fine’, willing it to be so. She couldn’t imagine life without them; if anything should happen to either of them, she wouldn’t be able to carry on, of that she was certain. Though she tried her hardest, she couldn’t dispel morbid thoughts – anymore than she could shake off a crushing premonition of impending doom.

After David had ended Polly’s call, he asked Ginny to give them a lift to his place so they could pick up his car. She’d accused him then of wasting time, but now she had to concede it was the right decision. Her jalopy couldn’t anywhere near match the speed of his BMW and it would probably have broken down or lost a wheel or two by now.

However, even doing a spot of low flying in the souped-up model of German precision engineering along mostly-deserted roads, it would take them five hours, perhaps longer, to reach Cornwall. They still had a very long way to go. For a few more dark miles she made herself dizzy, watching black silhouettes of trees and hedgerows whizz past – until she surrendered to the prickling sensation behind her droopy eyelids and closed them.

Someone was shaking her arm. ‘Callie, wake up – we’re here.’

Here? Where’s here, she wondered, then remembered Polly’s call and their helter skelter drive through the night. Springing wide-awake, she accepted the Styrofoam cup of coffee David was wafting under her nose. ‘Thanks.’

‘I’ve spoken with the harbourmaster,’ he said. ‘The search resumed about an hour ago at first light – they’ve got the coastguard out, co-ordinating with a helicopter search team from an air base along the coast. They’re doing everything humanly possible – and all we can do is wait.’

She climbed out of the car to stretch her legs, but reached straight back in to grab a bright blue ski jacket Ginny had thrust into her arms at the last minute, when they said goodbye. A bitterly cold wind slashed at her face, making her eyes stream. She prayed Alex and Sam had warm clothes with them, wherever they were. She looked at her watch; two minutes before 6 a.m. – David must have floored it through Devon. She was thankful she’d been asleep and oblivious to him careering down those scary, seldom lit country roads, with their hairpin bends jumping out like apparitions on a ghost train ride.

A tiny figure wearing oilskins a hundred sizes too large, sat huddled on a bench close to the edge of the harbour wall.
Polly?
Callie swallowed the pride that had lost all significance in the circumstances and wandered over to speak to her.

‘How are you?’ she asked, looking down on the hunched, shivering body.

Polly tried to smile. ‘OK. You?’ She was far from OK – her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot and her pallor deathly under all the freckles. Callie didn’t answer, but offered her a sip of coffee, which was declined.

‘Why didn’t you go with them, Polly? That’s been bugging me for hours – you come all this way and then don’t go out on the boat? Wise decision as it turned out, of course.’

She looked embarrassed. ‘Chronic seasickness – I warned Dom, but I don’t think he believed me. Well, not until I puked over the side while we were still moored to the jetty.’ Her laugh was heavily laced with hurt. ‘I’ve never seen him so angry – as though I did it on purpose.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said, for want of anything more sensible coming to mind, ‘he can be really vicious when he doesn’t get his own way.
Mal de mer
is hardly your fault.’

Her top lip quivered and Callie sat to put an arm around her, feeling older than Methuselah.

‘Yeah, he was a real pig about it,’ she whimpered. ‘He practically threw me off the boat.’

‘At least he didn’t make you walk the plank.’ Little comfort, she realised – the scales were falling from the young girl’s eyes.

David was making a series of calls on his mobile, which reminded Callie. ‘Sorry to cross-examine you, but how come you have Alex’s phone?’

‘I’ve got Sam’s and Dom’s too – he was worried they’d lose them, drop them in the sea or something. Thank goodness, really – or I wouldn’t have been able to find your number.’

For some minutes, Callie stared out to sea, wishing and hoping and offering all sorts of rash promises to God; if He would just give her back her precious children, she’d do anything. Surely there must be a sighting soon …

She shook her head to clear it and tried think about something else. ‘You know, Polly, I can’t get used to you calling him Dom – he’s always hated that, said it made him sound like a fat Mafia thug.’ She left ‘whereas he’s actually only two out of those three’ unsaid.

‘Really?’ She looked surprised. ‘That’s how he introduced himself when we met.’

Even in this horrible situation, she couldn’t let a golden opportunity like that go. ‘And where was that? I’ve never swallowed Dominic’s tale of you knocking a pyramid of baked beans onto him in Tesco.’

‘What? He’s so full of shit – we met speed dating! He was a regular, but I just went along once with a friend, for a laugh.’

Callie considered pushing it a bit further before suggesting, ‘Come on, Polly, let’s go and sit in the car – we’ll be much warmer.’ Meekly, Freckle Face allowed herself to be led.

Callie realised she might be driving Polly insane – the girl didn’t say – by prattling on about anything and everything that fluttered into her thoughts, so that she wouldn’t have room in there for tragic scenarios of what might have become of her poor boys. Her heart physically ached and as hour after hour passed with no news; she began not just to fear, but to expect the worst. Dominic was not an experienced sailor in any type of vessel – as far as she could recall, he’d never even ventured out on the lake at the local park – now he was in sole charge of what sounded like quite a powerful cruiser. Big boys’ toys were one thing – but how dare he put Alex and Sam at risk in that way.

The rage she felt toward Dominic was therapeutic, but exhausting, and to stop herself dwelling on the totally negative, she tried to appreciate their picturesque surroundings; tormenting herself with ‘might haves’ and ‘what ifs’ was wasting energy she needed to conserve. And surely this was the sort of pretty postcard place where nothing bad could possibly happen?

Now the sun had gained in strength, its light tripped along the tips of surface waves. It was hard for Callie to tie that pleasing, restful image to the danger posed by the immense power of the sea. She shunned mental pictures of drowning souls by diverting her attention to glorious tubs of flowers, cemented along stone paths eroded of relief by generations of feet – and ancient sea dogs with rubber aprons and rubber faces, strolling around in Wellington boots, chewing on the stems of clay pipes.

There was a lot of activity around them now – a mini Dunkirk of fishing boats and pleasure craft of all sizes were joined in the search with Air Sea Rescue, and people patrolled the shoreline for miles, using powerful binoculars to spot anything that might be of interest to those co-ordinating the search. David had played his Detective From The Met trump card early on, and his rustic colleagues were pulling out all stops to be of help – which they would doubtless have done anyway. At least her body had thawed out.

Mid-afternoon, David marched Polly and Callie over to the Lifeboat Inn, where he’d booked a room for them to rest. He insisted he’d be fine catnapping in his car, to be on hand should there be any developments. Ignoring the irony of wronged wife and incumbent mistress sleeping together on a cosy double bed, she was quickly seduced by the soft feather pillow and quilt and drifted into a disturbed sleep.

She opened her eyes. It was getting dark. Sam stood by the bed, looking frozen and half-starved. It was then she knew he was dead, appearing to his mum in a vision to say a final goodbye, before he was whisked off to wherever drowned little boys exist in Eternity.

She whispered, ‘I love you, Sam … goodbye … God bless.’ She couldn’t keep her eyes open … if she could just snatch a few more minutes’ rest …

Something cold and wet on her cheek woke her once more.

Unaccustomed to being ignored, Sam shouted in her ear, ‘Mum! Wake up! We’re back!’

He was wrapped in one of those foil blankets they give to marathon runners. And this time, she wasn’t hallucinating.

Chapter Twenty-two

It seemed sensible for all six of them to book into the Lifeboat Inn for the rest of Sunday and then Monday night. They were drained by worry and needed to recharge their batteries – and, of course, Callie desperately wanted to spend some time with Sam and Alex. She couldn’t find the words to describe how wonderful it felt to hold her sons in her arms again, and squeeze them until she was in danger of bruising their ribs. She’d feared they were lost, but they’d been given back to her, thanks to the Herculean efforts of all those who took part in the rescue operation – those men and women would have her undying gratitude.

Justly so, Dominic received a humiliating lecture from both the coastguard and the local constabulary, along the lines of endangering life and wasting resources due to his breathtaking stupidity. Callie felt he got off far too lightly – he had neglected to check the boat’s tank was fuelled up before leaving port and, to compound that cardinal error, when the cruiser spluttered to a stop miles from anywhere, he’d run the battery flat trying to restart the engine. Not the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer. As you would expect, the dead battery rendered the ship to shore radio useless and he’d left his mobile with Polly …

She rang Ginny as soon as she knew the boys were safe and she dissolved into raucous laughter when Callie told her Dominic had run out of diesel.

‘Leave it with me, Callie – I’ll hit the law books and see if I can find a precedent for prosecution for being in possession of a dick brain. Perhaps you should suggest he has that hymn, “For Those in Peril on the Sea”, as his ringtone? Miss you loads – look forward to seeing you soon. Oh – give Sam and Alex a huge cuddle from me.’

On Monday, she and David (who she noticed was getting very adept at playing hooky) spent the day on the beach with the boys. She found a hideous flowery shorts-and-top combo in a charity shop and used it as both beachwear and swimming costume, while David splashed out on a new pair of flash Lycra trunks that fitted more snugly than his epidermis. They played around on the sand and in the water and for those few, wonderful hours she was allowed to forget that Balaclava Man ever existed. They were both convinced that he was in no way connected to the boat episode – Dominic had managed that all by his stupid self. He and Polly were conspicuous by their absence surfside, last seen having an animated disagreement in the breakfast room. Callie assumed Polly had seen the light with a vengeance, poor baby.

Later, when they all went to dinner, Polly and Dominic could hardly bear to speak civilly to each other and it came as no surprise when Polly confided over dessert that she intended going home alone by train, to stay with her parents. Callie offered her honest opinion that she was doing the right thing, wished her the best of luck – and meant it.

It was torture having to say goodbye to Alex and Sam so soon on Tuesday morning, but the truth was, they didn’t know whether Balaclava Man had cottoned on to the fact that she didn’t know him from Adam and therefore couldn’t identify him – or not. Ergo, the boys had to continue to live their lives separately from Callie for as long as it took, for their own protection.

David waited for her in the Beemer. As she walked away from the boys toward him, trying her best to cover up the tears she could no longer hold back, she had a Eureka moment, spun around, and marched back to Dominic. The little weasel looked very scared when she aimed for his shin (her second choice of target), scoring a bone-crunching direct hit.

‘In future, take far greater care of my sons!’ she yelled, like a fishwife on speed. Leaving him to hop around, squawking in agony and indignation, she returned to David, who’d hung his head in his hands either in disbelief or mirth – she wasn’t exactly sure which. Amid the euphoria of learning the boys were safe, she hadn’t let Dominic know just how furious she was with him. Now she’d physically assaulted him, she felt so much better, and figured justice was on the way to being done. She alone knew that Polly was about to ditch him.

They stopped about two-thirds of the way home for a late lunch/early dinner – from a distance, David had spotted a little place off the beaten track, and they sat beside a millpond by an aged barn that had been converted into a restaurant. The setting was both idyllic and romantic.

He brought her out a large glass of Chardonnay. ‘There you go,’ he laughed, ‘I thought you’d earned that after your kickboxing demonstration.’