The Missing Husband (18 page)

Sally put her hand on Jo’s before she had reduced the biscuits to a pile of crumbs. ‘It’s all right, Jo.’

‘No, it’s not all right, and it hasn’t been all right for a very long time. I should have seen this coming, Sally but I was too absorbed in my own selfishness. I don’t know who I should be more angry with, David or me.’
Or this baby
, she added silently.

Sally gave Jo’s hand a quick squeeze before letting go. ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself; you made each other so happy. In fact I envied you.’

‘But not now, eh?’ Jo said with a trembling smile.

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

‘How about changing the subject?’ Jo offered. ‘How are things with you and Steve?’

There was a sneer to accompany Sally’s reply. ‘As bad as ever, but I won’t go burdening you with my troubles – you’ve enough on your plate.’

‘Tell,’ Jo ordered.

Sally sounded utterly despondent when she said, ‘I’m only just starting to appreciate how much David kept Steve in check. He has absolutely no self-control and I don’t know what to do about him any more. He’s hardly ever home and I don’t have a clue where he goes or what he gets up to. His friends try covering for him, but they’re not as good at lying as he is.’

‘Sorry,’ Jo said, wincing as she recalled David’s undoubted role in Steve’s subterfuge.

‘He tries to make out that he’s working a lot of overtime, but I never see the benefit – the reverse, in fact. I’ve had to start hiding my purse.’

‘Bloody moron,’ Jo said under her breath, remembering too late that she was sitting in front of his wife. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘It’s OK, Jo, I wholeheartedly agree.’

‘Although he does have a good side,’ Jo said. ‘He’s offered to paint the nursery.’

Sally’s features softened and at first Jo couldn’t think why. ‘At least that’s one thing to look forward to. Whatever the men in our lives are up to, we have our children to keep us sane.’ She reached forward and, before Jo could stop her, laid a hand on Jo’s belly. ‘Is this one a kicker?’

Jo paled noticeably and tried unsuccessfully to ease back out of Sally’s reach. ‘I can’t help feeling the baby might just tip me over the edge.’

‘Oh, you think that now but just you wait. Maternal instinct is a powerful thing, Jo. Once that baby’s in your arms he or she will become your one and only priority. You’ll be able to put all this behind you and concentrate on being a mother – I promise.’

Jo wanted to believe that Sally was right but she had put the baby first once before and that was turning out so badly that there wasn’t even the slightest flicker of maternal instinct when she asked herself who she would choose if she had that choice over again.

14

By the time December arrived, Jo had completely outgrown her cashmere coat but Liz had come to the rescue with yet another bargain picked up in a charity shop in Kendal. The oversized tweed duffle wasn’t exactly Jo’s style but her tastes were far less demanding than they had once been. She could fasten it up and, with the weather taking a sudden turn for the worse, that was good enough for her.

The one – and perhaps only – advantage to the sudden cold snap was that the mire of a car park at the Southport site was frozen solid.

‘Watch the ice,’ Kelly warned. She was holding her arm out towards Jo in case she slipped.

Jo wafted the proffered hand away impatiently, her gloved fingers only just poking out from her coat sleeve. ‘I’m fine, Kelly, stop fussing. I’m pregnant, not incapable,’ she said, sounding harsher than she intended.

Jim was standing at the Portakabin door waiting for them. ‘Morning ladies,’ he said while his breath formed a cloud that temporarily obscured his smile. ‘The kettle’s on.’

‘We shouldn’t take that long,’ Kelly said busily. ‘And we have another four sites to visit before the end of the day.’

The visits were a routine audit that Jo had to complete at least quarterly and involved a quick check of attendance records and accident book entries to make sure the information on each site matched that being sent through to head office. She didn’t usually bring Kelly along but it had recently been agreed that she should cover some of Jo’s duties while she was on maternity leave. The original plan had been to recruit someone with more experience but that had been when Jo had imagined taking a year out to immerse herself in the joys of motherhood. As things stood, she would only be dipping her toe in it before returning to work. Gary was confident that, with his close supervision, there wasn’t much trouble Kelly could get them into.

‘But since the kettle’s on, it would be rude to say no,’ Jo told Jim, overruling Kelly’s not-so-subtle rebuff to his welcome.

When they stepped into the cabin, Jo discovered that they weren’t the only visitors and she immediately regretted accepting Jim’s hospitality. Jason was there along with a fresh-faced trainee who was plugging the gap David had left until Nelson’s decided how and when to fill the vacancy. There were awkward smiles, followed by an equally awkward silence. Everyone ignored the elephant in the room as Jo unzipped her mammoth-sized coat.

‘You’re looking well, Jo,’ Jason said.

‘You too; settling down obviously agrees with you,’ Jo responded, letting him know she knew almost as much about his personal life as he did about hers. Jason and David had worked together for several years and what Jason had shared with David about his various relationships, David had of course shared with his wife. Jason was twenty-seven and had spent much of his adult life flitting from one girlfriend to the next. The lines between each relationship were often blurred, but his latest conquest had defeated him.

‘He’s besotted with this one,’ David had told her as they lay in bed one night. ‘For the first time in his life, he’s not in control.’

Jo was resting her head on David’s chest and she could hear the steady beat of his heart. ‘He loves her more than she loves him, you mean?’

‘Maybe. Not everyone can be as lucky as we are. We’re the perfect match.’

‘You think so?’ Jo asked, unable to share her husband’s confidence for reasons he wasn’t yet aware of.

David lifted her face towards him. ‘Don’t you?’ he asked as he slipped down the bed so they were nose to nose, their bodies pressed against each other. Jo’s heartbeat was an echo of her husband’s.

‘I can be controlling.’

David smiled. ‘Didn’t you realize? It’s only because I let you.’

‘I love you, David.’

David pulled back as he recognized something akin to guilt in his wife’s face. ‘What have you done, Jo?’

She swallowed hard and bit her lip as she tried to summon up the courage to tell him. They had just come back from a Valentine’s break to Paris and had had the most wonderful time. They had stood on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre and repeated their wedding vows, or at least an updated version that they had made up on the spot. They had promised to love each other for ever and David had told her he would devote his life to making her happy. Taking him at his word, when they returned to England, she had started flushing her contraceptive pill down the plughole each morning rather than popping it into her mouth.

Her courage failed at the last minute and she started with a half-truth. ‘What would you say if I were to stop taking the pill?’

David was still scrutinising her and didn’t look reassured by what he saw. ‘I’d say it’s still too soon.’

She had hoped his prevarication was coming to an end and tried not to let her frustration show, asking softly, ‘What are you so scared of, David?’

‘Having a baby will change things between us,’ he said. ‘Look at what’s happening to Steve and Sally. Happily married and then Luke comes along and they can’t bear the sight of each other any more. I don’t want that to happen to us. I just don’t think we’re ready yet,’ he said.

‘We
are
ready,’ she said, simply. ‘I want to have a mini-you, or a mini-me. I want to see what colour their eyes are, if they have a dimple on their chin just like yours and if they inherit your patience or my stubbornness. I want to hear that tiny little heartbeat and know that we –
we
– made a perfect human being.’

‘I know.’ David’s words were gentle, as was the way he extricated himself from her embrace. ‘And I want that too. Just not yet …’

‘But coming off the pill doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll get pregnant right away. Sometimes it can take years to conceive.’

It was a convincing argument and one that Jo had already used to justify her actions to herself, however David wouldn’t relent – but then neither would she. Their love life had suffered a temporary setback, as if David suspected his determined wife had overruled him, but their desire for different things wasn’t as strong as their desire for each other.

Jo blinked away the memory, but the guilt remained. She should have told him what she was going to do.

‘We’ll leave you to it,’ Jason said. He had stood up and was waiting for Jo to hang up her coat so he could collect his. While he was close enough for only her to hear, he added, ‘I just thought you should know. The police went through everything in the office. There was nothing to find.’

‘I know.’

‘And I gave them a statement, for all the good it did. Has there been any news, anything to explain what might have happened yet?’

Jo considered how much she should tell him. She had hung on to as much privacy as she could, but after seven weeks she was desperate for any breakthrough. ‘I know he withdrew a fair bit of cash before he went missing. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’

Jason’s brow furrowed, and he took his time before he answered which gave Jo hope that it would at least be a considered reply. ‘Sorry, Jo,’ he said, shaking his head slowly. ‘Other than saving up for your holiday to America, I don’t ever remember him mentioning money.’

‘It’s OK, never mind,’ Jo said, reaching over to touch his arm as if he were the one in need of comfort. ‘I’m getting used to not having answers.’

The audit was completed in record time and Jo wasn’t sure if Kelly had ploughed through the work to demonstrate how capable she was, or to prove her point to Jim that they hadn’t had time for the cups of coffee that were still half-full when they left.

It was when they were leaving that they bumped into Simon Harrison, literally. He had just arrived for work and had his chin to his chest as he fought against the arctic blast that swept Jo into his path.

‘Sorry, love, I wasn’t looking where I was going,’ he said, grabbing her arm to stop her stumbling.

‘Take more care next time,’ snapped Kelly, although it was unclear if her hostility was based on the near miss, or the fact he had used the term ‘love’, which was one of her pet hates.

Rather than look at Kelly, Simon’s smiling eyes were drawn to Jo, or to be more specific, her immense bump. ‘You’ve grown!’ he said, greeting her like an old friend.

She wasn’t the only one to have changed. She had visited Simon a few times when he was ill and the forty-year-old standing in front of her with broad shoulders and a square jaw bore no resemblance to the man she recalled crumpled up on his living room sofa. His eyes hadn’t been smiling then, they had been empty. Whatever cocktail of drugs his doctor had plied him with had allowed him to withdraw so deeply into himself that only an outer shell had remained and his muscular frame had trembled with the effort of keeping his head upright. Neither Jo nor his ex-wife, who had temporarily returned home to care for him, had been able to break through that shell and Jo wondered if he remembered the visit at all. The gratitude written all over his face confirmed that he did.

‘It’s good to see you back,’ Jo said. ‘How are you getting on?’

‘I’ve been to the doc’s this morning, that’s why I’m late,’ he explained. ‘Coming back to work was the right thing to do. I still have my moments but I’m getting there. One day at a time.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. I really am.’

Simon hesitated then said, ‘I heard about David.’ There was another pause, a familiar one to Jo, where the person in front of her tried to decide whether to offer condolences or hope. ‘He came to see me while I was off.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Jo said as she tried not to let her pain show. She didn’t want to be reminded of how kind-hearted and thoughtful her husband could be. She was more than happy for the police to keep an open mind – but if she wanted to continue to function, hers needed to be closed to all possibilities except one.

‘I can’t believe David would leave you in the lurch, not like this,’ Simon added. It was another familiar response that was starting to grate on Jo’s nerves. ‘The way he talked about you and the baby – he was so excited about becoming a dad.’

At first Jo was too stunned to say anything. She had watched David gradually getting used to the idea of impending fatherhood, or so she had thought, but after discovering his note, she had convinced herself that it had been an act, played out occasionally in front of others for her benefit. It was the first time she had heard of David talking about the baby so positively while she hadn’t been there to be hoodwinked. Realizing her mouth was an ‘Oh’ of amazement she swallowed hard and said, ‘Really? What did he say?’

‘Well—’

‘We should be going, Jo,’ interrupted Kelly, who had been more interested in the dropping temperature than the conversation.

‘And I need to get going too, I’ve got a morning’s work to catch up on,’ Simon said. ‘But anytime you want to have a chat, give me a call. It would be nice to feel like I was doing something to repay his kindness, and yours too.’

Jo half expected him to give her a hug goodbye and when they shook hands politely it left her surprisingly disappointed.

‘I still think Mr Harrison is pulling the wool over our eyes. Have you seen how many medical appointments he’s attended since coming back?’ Kelly said once she was in Jo’s car. They were travelling together today so there was no escaping her assistant’s scepticism.

‘And did you also notice how he’s been more than making up his hours over the rest of the week? Simon Harrison is a good man who has been through a very rough time. It happens, Kelly. There but for the grace of God and all that,’ Jo said with more emotion than even she had expected. She couldn’t compare what she was going through with Simon’s post-traumatic stress but she certainly appreciated how little control even the strongest-minded person could have over their own thoughts and emotions.