Why Don't You Come for Me? Read online

  A solution presented itself in a rush of anger. Dom must have pushed Lauren further up the street, not thinking of the fright he would give her when she emerged from the shop and found Lauren was gone. Then she saw him approaching. The smile as he caught sight of her died in an instant. Her expression and the absence of the pushchair told him everything. It was then that she began to scream.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jo made sure that Sean set out for the school bus in good time on Monday morning. A little cloud of guilt descended on her as she watched him slouching away from the house. Did all parents’ hearts gladden to see the back of their offspring at the resumption of each new term? She called a goodbye from the doorstep, but when he did not turn she let the arm she had lifted in farewell fall back to her side.

  Was this the answer to all those prayers, all that yearning to have a child in the house? She had often imagined how life would be when Lauren was restored to her. She had even tried to kid herself that if she took proper care of Sean, maybe the Fates would see what a good mother she could be – given the opportunity – and then Lauren could come home. Of course, life did not work like that, but at least if she lavished enough love on Sean and was seen to take good care of him, then maybe people would stop thinking …

  She was rinsing a bottle at the sink when she caught sight of the Phantom Jogger. That was what Marcus had nicknamed him, because when he first started to pass the house on a daily basis, a grey shadow in his faded jogging bottoms and pale t-shirt, they could not imagine where he had come from. Although their house, aptly named The Hideaway, was partly screened by trees, from the kitchen window it was just possible to see a short stretch of the lane where it began its descent to the little stone bridge from which the hamlet took its name. Jo watched the Phantom Jogger as he steadily covered the ground, striding out easily, looking neither to right nor left, until he went out of sight where the lane bent sharply to avoid an outcrop of rock. Although his identity had initially been a mystery, within a week of his first appearance, Maisie Perry, who passed for the next best thing to a town crier in Easter Bridge, had informed them that the daily jogger was the latest tenant of High Gilpin.

  High Gilpin belonged to a family called Tunnock, but was often let on short leases to people who were working on temporary contracts, or needed a base while looking for a permanent home in the area. It was generally considered that if any place was calculated to put you off country living, it was High Gilpin, a one-time working farm, which stood in an isolated spot at the end of an unmade track, a good half-mile or so from the next nearest habitation. After heavy rain, ice or snow the track was impassable to any but four-wheel drives, and the house was completely off the radar of delivery vans or taxi firms. Easter Bridge might be the best part of ten miles from the nearest shop, but at least you had a handful of neighbours to whom you could turn in extremis. When the power line blew down and the lights went out at High Gilpin, you were on your own.

  When Jo had finished with the milk bottle and dealt with the rest of the recycling, she crossed the hall and went into the room they called the office, in order to check emails. There was a new message in from Nerys, sent from an internet café on the other side of the world – a couple of chatty paragraphs in which Jo could hear her friend’s voice outlining her latest adventures in New Zealand.

  She missed having Nerys readily available at the end of the phone. Not that she begrudged the trip for a moment. If anyone had earned their midlife gap year it was Nerys, who had survived redundancy, divorce and a brush with cancer. ‘There’s a million and one reasons why every woman knows all the words to “I Will Survive”,’ Nerys once said.

  Resolute, grounded Nerys, whose friendship had stood the test of time, someone with whom she had managed to stay in close touch, even after moving north with Marcus. When Nerys fell ill, Jo had made frequent trips down to visit her, both in hospital and at home. It had been during one of these that Nerys had announced, ‘I’ve decided when this is all over, I’m going travelling. I’m going to see the world.’

  At the time the prognosis had seemed so dire, Jo could only wonder at Nerys’s determination – no ifs, or buts, she was going to go travelling. That conversation had been four years ago, but it had taken time for Nerys to get well again, and almost as long to formulate her plans and put them into action. ‘I’ve been taking lessons from my nephews and nieces,’ she told Jo. ‘The thing to do is bum a bed from anyone you can claim the slightest link with: third cousins once removed, long-lost colleagues, friends of friends. All the kids do it – they’re quite shameless, and I’m getting good myself. I’ve even managed to trace a girl I used to know at school whose family emigrated to New Zealand. Turns out she lives near Snells Beach, which isn’t far from Auckland, and she’s offered to put me up for a couple of nights.’

  About a week before she left, Nerys held a going-away party. Marcus had been tied up with work, but Jo travelled down to be there. It was great to be part of the send-off, yet at the same time she had experienced a faint sense of misgiving. There was something so final about a going-away party. It made you feel as if you might never see the person again. Nerys must have picked up on this, because when she gave Jo a farewell embrace, she said with attempted gravity: ‘You do know that I might not be coming back?’

  ‘What do you mean? Of course you’ll be coming back.’

  ‘Not if I meet a millionaire and he takes a fancy to me. An oil tycoon would do nicely. And, of course, if I’m discovered on some beach in California and they want to put me in the movies …’

  ‘Well, don’t forget that if you do land the lead in a remake of Gone with the Wind, I want to be the first to hear about it.’

  ‘Absolutely. I expect Spielberg has got broadband in his mansion – and if not, there’s sure to be an internet café just down the road.’

  To date, Nerys’s emails had made no mention of millionaires or film directors, but she had been swimming with dolphins, hiking on the Tereziana Trail and photographed in front of the Taj Mahal … Maybe not as slim as Diana, but much funnier … you should get some tours organized in India. Can’t you come up with a Kipling link? Without a set itinerary, she had overstayed her time everywhere and arrived in New Zealand at least six weeks later than originally anticipated, so it was no surprise to read this morning: I’m hoping to extend the trip. It sounds as if my tenants would be happy to stay at least another six months, and my money is lasting really well. Everyone is so hospitable, and won’t let me pay for anything.

  ‘I miss you,’ Jo said aloud. ‘Don’t stay away too long.’ She hit the reply key and began to type. That would be fantastic. It’s so great that everyone is giving you such a lovely welcome.

  She did not have much news to offer in return for Nerys’s lively description of the Takapu gannet colony. Spats with Sean and what she thought of Sebastian Faulks’s latest novel were rather small beer by comparison, and seemed to emphasize an increasingly large gap in her life. Before the amalgamation with Flights of Fantasy, she had been much more involved with the day-to-day running of the business. At the inception of M. H. Tours they had employed an extremely capable woman called Moira, who had driven out from Ulverston four days a week to work in the little office at The Hideaway, but Moira eventually decided that her elderly mother needed her more than Jo and Marcus did, and after Moira there had been a succession of short-term staff, some better than others, until the company eventually acquired proper offices in Kirkby Lonsdale, with two full-time women, both of whom seemed more than adequate to the task. The location of the company’s offices had been chosen for its proximity to the home of Melissa Timpson, one-time proprietor of Flights of Fantasy and now their business partner, which meant that when Melissa was not guiding tours herself, she was nicely placed to keep an eye on things.

  These new premises were a good forty-five minutes’ drive from Easter Bridge, but as Marcus said, with phones and email what did that matter? It was undoubtedly far easier to recruit good staff
to work in the little market town than it was to persuade them to drive out into the countryside, and besides which, the room they used as an office at The Hideaway was not large enough to allow for expansion.

  When she and Marcus had originally agreed to take it in turns to stay at home, Jo assumed that during her periods as the parent ‘off-tour’, she would go into the office at Kirkby Lonsdale while Sean was at school, but though she had initially tried to establish this routine, she soon began to feel surplus to requirements. Sally and Janice ostensibly went out of their way to make her welcome, but on volunteering to check the drivers’ hours, she would be greeted by, ‘Oh, Melissa went through them yesterday.’ A suggestion that she might relieve them of inputting some invoices would be met with the smiling reassurance that Janice had them all completely up to date – and the statements too. When the telephones rang, she was always just too late picking them up. The business which she had coaxed gently into life, nurtured like a baby and helped totter to its feet, was all grown-up and doing very nicely without her. She consoled herself with the thought that she and Marcus had not begun M. H. Tours so that they could sit in an office, shuffling papers. She still went out regularly with the tours, and after all, that was the heart and soul of the enterprise.

  Thus Jo had fallen out of the habit of going into the office, using her new-found leisure to catch up with long-postponed household jobs, initially luxuriating in the chance to watch a film or read a book during the day. Marcus certainly had no problem filling the days when it was his turn at home – not with satellite television beaming cricket and rugby from around the globe virtually twenty-four/seven. Which was not to say that he did not put time in on the business too. Somehow his visits to the office seemed to be more productive. Jo had seen the way Sally and Janice visibly brightened as he swept in, full of easy charm, always ready with an amusing anecdote about something which had happened on a tour. He didn’t need to justify himself with offers to help out – his mere presence had a positive impact on staff morale. He also managed to research and work out new itineraries, often in collaboration with Melissa, whose days at home seemed to coincide with his quite frequently, so that when Jo got home after a week with a coach load of Richard III enthusiasts, she would find Marcus brimming with their latest ideas. She tried to stifle any feelings of exclusion because she didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm, and on the odd occasion when she had grumbled that at one time he would have talked through the new Daphne du Maurier tour with her rather than Melissa, Marcus simply could not see her problem. What difference did it make who came up with the ideas, or who worked on what particular aspects of the business? The three of them worked as a team now. It did not matter which particular permutation of staff was involved, so long as they got the job done well.

  Jo attempted to compete with some suggestions of her own, but somehow her ideas were never so inspired or so workable as the schemes which Melissa and Marcus dreamed up in her absence – in spite of her having an abundance of thinking time. That wasn’t a good thing, either. For the past few years a large part of her survival mechanism had relied on not thinking too much, keeping busy, always having something immediate to think about, something to do. In the past few months there had been terrible stories in the news about young girls being kidnapped and kept prisoner for years, used as sex slaves, never seeing daylight. It could send you mad, dwelling on stories like that.

  As an antidote to having too much time on her hands, she had recently taken up sketching. She had not done any ‘art’ since school, but it was one of those things she had always yearned to have a go at. She told herself that she might eventually buy some watercolours, then maybe enrol in a class, although the peripatetic nature of her work made any regular weekly commitment impractical. She was disinclined to sign up for any of the painting days which were always being advertised, in case everyone else turned out to be an experienced artist and she looked ridiculous. Instead she began to work alone, almost secretively. At first she arranged groups of objects in the house, rather as they had done in art class at school, but soon she was venturing beyond the house, trying to capture trees, buildings and the natural features of the landscape, then figures covertly observed from a distance as they ate their picnic lunches. All of these were infinitely more satisfying than a trio of oranges in a bowl. She knew she was improving, but was shy of showing her work to anyone – even Marcus, who teased her gently about her ‘secret sketches’ whenever he caught sight of the drawing book lying about. Going out to draw had become a regular routine. On days when the weather permitted, she packed her sketch pad and pencils into a rucksack, together with a flask of raspberry tea and her mat to sit on, before heading out in search of a subject.

  After a whole week of being at home with Sean, she badly needed to escape the house. It was a cold day, but dry and bright – ideal weather so long as she wrapped up warmly. Her walking boots sounded loudly on the tarmac as she headed north away from the old stone bridge. The Hideaway stood at one extreme of the hamlet, a modern house set back from the road. A much older building stood a few yards further north on the opposite side of the lane. There had been no blacksmith at The Old Forge in living memory, but according to Sean, who had a penchant for the macabre, the house was haunted by the ghost of a drunkard who had burned to death after falling into the blacksmith’s fire. Sean said he got the story from someone at school, and although Jo regarded all this with considerable scepticism, she had always thought there was something creepy about the place, even before Sean related his dubious tale.

  More recently The Old Forge had been home to Mr and Mrs Pearson, but the latter was long dead and old Mr Pearson had eventually gone into a nursing home, leaving the house unoccupied for almost a year. About a month before Christmas, news had reached them of Mr Pearson’s death, and in January a house-clearance firm had removed all contents save the greying curtains at the windows. Soon after that, a black and yellow ‘For Sale’ board had appeared, nailed to the rotting front gatepost. The property particulars described The Old Forge as ‘an investment opportunity’, although Marcus said ‘money pit’ might be a better term. Very little had been done to the place since the Pearsons moved in at the end of the 1960s, but in spite of the obvious drawbacks, there had been a good deal of initial interest. Glimpses of the estate agent’s silver BMW were a frequent event, and it was not long before a red ‘Sold’ sign was fixed to each side of the yellow and black board.

  Jo glanced at The Old Forge as she passed. The place had been empty for more than a year, but she often felt as if there was still someone inside the house, watching. Even as she ridiculed the notion, she found herself reluctant to look up at the windows, lest she glimpse a pale face there in confirmation of her fears. Subconsciously she quickened pace, hurrying past much as Harry had done a couple of nights before.

  The next building was an old farmhouse, now a holiday let and currently unoccupied. For practical purposes this was The Hideaway’s next-door neighbour, although it was too far away to have much impact on them unless occupied by exceptionally noisy visitors. They occasionally caught a whiff of barbecuing, if the wind was in the right direction, and once discovered a woman exploring their garden, her justification arising from the townie notion of a ‘right to roam’ anywhere she liked, once she got into the countryside.

  Across the lane from the farmhouse was Honeysuckle Cottage, a seldom-occupied second home, and a few yards beyond Honeysuckle Cottage lay Throstles, home to Maisie and Fred Perry. (After more than half a century of jokes about cheap Wimbledon tickets, the unfortunate man’s smile was wearing a little thin.) The Perrys were a retired couple with a passion for gardening. When not fulfilling their duties at Holehird Gardens, where they were both enthusiastic members of the Lakeland Horticultural Society, they were tending their own plot with such assiduous devotion that in summer their bungalow was almost obscured by the fecundity of the garden. Marcus was convinced that the real motive for Maisie’s constant presence in the garden was t
he insight it gave her into other people’s business, privately theorizing that the principal attraction of Throstles for Maisie lay not so much in the generous size of its garden but its position on the bend, from whence the gateway to every other property in the lane was visible, affording Maisie a virtually uninterrupted view of all her neighbours’ comings and goings.

  As Jo approached the Perrys’ gate, she caught sight of Maisie emptying some peelings into a compost bin near her kitchen door. There was no chance of escape because Maisie looked up at just the wrong moment, waved a hand in greeting then made purposefully for the gate. Maisie did not bother with any ‘how are you’ preliminaries – a sure sign that she had some news worth sharing.

  ‘Have you heard who’s bought The Old Forge?’ She scarcely waited long enough for Jo to shake her head before continuing: ‘Well, as you know, I had heard a rumour that it was going to a builder. There was some talk of planning permission and I said to George, “They’ll be putting in to knock it down and start again. We’ll have no peace if that goes ahead.” My friend up at Holehird has been driven mad this past year, what with the alterations her new neighbours are having done – noisy jack hammers and mud everywhere.’ Maisie paused to take a breath. ‘But apparently it isn’t a builder who got it in the end. Definitely a private buyer – a widow with a daughter – and she plans to live here all the time.’

  ‘I expect they’ll still need to have a lot of work done,’ said Jo. ‘It hasn’t had anything done to it for years. Is the daughter grown-up?’

  ‘No. Just a youngster of thirteen or fourteen, so I heard. That would be nice for your stepson, wouldn’t it – another young person? I saw Harry going up and down last week. What a shame he and his sister aren’t here all the time. It makes for a proper little community, having children around the place, the way things used to be in the old days.’