The Missing Husband Read online

  Gerry seemed reassured and when Jo promised to phone if she felt worse he handed over the keys and returned to the school hall to catch his daughter’s show-stopping finale.

  Sitting in the back of Gerry’s four-wheel drive, Jo’s body ached in much the same way as it did after an intensive workout or a long run. Her legs trembled and her lungs burned, but it was her heart that hurt the most. She was too tense to cry; that would come later when she had used up the last of her willpower to convince her family that she was well enough to be dropped off back at home and left without supervision.

  17

  When Jo awoke, her bedclothes were sodden. She couldn’t recall the dream that had chased her through the night so concentrated instead on releasing the tension from her body as she raised herself into consciousness. Every muscle still ached from her anxiety attack the night before.

  As she tried to summon the energy to get up, the radio came on and headlining the news was the dwindling shopping days left until Christmas. Jo would normally have all the presents wrapped up with neat edges and elaborate bows by now but she had given little thought to the festive season other than accepting she could afford only token gestures this year rather than the extravagant gifts she and David had enjoyed giving. Jo wondered if she should at least start writing out some Christmas cards at the weekend but the thought of that blank space where David’s name should be appended to hers made her body twist in pain. She groaned and reminded herself that she wouldn’t even be able to afford cards if she didn’t get to work.

  Jo’s aches and pains intensified as she hauled herself up into a sitting position and spent a moment rubbing her stomach until the discomfort ebbed away. Fifteen minutes later, when she stepped out of the shower, her body was hit by yet another aftershock from the previous night’s trauma. She ignored her ghostly reflection in the steamed-up mirror and leant against the washbasin, waiting for the dull pain running across her abdomen to ease.

  Too exhausted to dress, Jo wrapped a bathrobe around her tremulous body and went downstairs to make a drink. The coffee was strong and its warmth soothed her but the house was colder than she was used to. In a cost-cutting exercise she had not only lowered the thermostat but switched off radiators in unused rooms. After years of rebelling against her mother’s frugality, Jo was being forced to follow her example. This new surge of hopelessness was accompanied by another wave of pain and the cup trembled in her hand. She looked at the clock on the microwave and then forced herself to pick up the phone.

  ‘Do you think it’s too early for me to be in labour?’ she asked, already feeling silly and hoping her sister would talk some sense into her.

  ‘Why? What’s happened? Are you having contractions?’

  In the background, Jo could hear a clamour of familiar voices rise up in response to Steph’s questions. Her mother’s was loudest, adding more questions to the ones Steph had just posed. As Jo began to explain about the pains that had been slicing across her abdomen at regular intervals, snatches of her dream came back to her. She had been caught up in a gigantic spider’s web. Strands of spun silk had tightened around her, pulling her into its lair. ‘I think I might have been having pains during the night too. Do you think it’ll be all right for me to go to work?’

  ‘No, Jo, you most certainly cannot go to work, not until you’ve been checked out,’ Steph said. She was doing her best to remain calm despite the commotion erupting around her. A moment later the phone was pulled from her grasp.

  ‘I’m on my way over,’ Liz said. ‘Pack a bag and be ready to leave in ten minutes.’

  A wave of panic washed over Jo but this wasn’t like the paralysing fear of the unknown she had suffered the day before. She had a pretty good idea of what was happening and what she needed to do. She cut off the call only to dial another number and this time Gary answered.

  ‘Don’t worry, Jo, you’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Keep me informed when you can but otherwise don’t give work a second thought.’

  Jo sounded almost petulant when she asked, ‘But what if I have to start my maternity leave now? I was about to start preparing for the O’Dowd case next week.’ She wanted to go to work. She didn’t want to give up the one part of her life that still functioned relatively normally; she didn’t want things to change.

  ‘I can manage an Employment Tribunal and Kelly will help,’ he insisted. ‘Your most important job now is to make sure that you and the baby are safe and well. I hope everything goes OK. I’ll be thinking of you.’

  After Jo had finished the call she stood still for a moment and let Gary’s concern for her unborn child bleed into her consciousness. The baby was early; seven weeks early and she didn’t have a clue how serious that could be. She had been wishing it away often enough in the last two months and now she could be losing it. Was this her punishment for wicked thoughts? Fear crawled down her spine and wrapped itself in a tight knot, bringing forth the now familiar pulling sensation around her abdomen.

  Baby Taylor arrived in the world two days later with little more than a whimper. It was Liz who cried like the proverbial baby.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Jo asked faintly, as a group of nurses and the doctor crowded around the small, limp body that had been delivered moments earlier.

  ‘They’re just going to give him a little help with his breathing,’ the midwife said as she gave Jo’s hand a comforting squeeze.

  ‘Him? It’s a boy?’ Liz gulped.

  ‘Will he be all right?’ Jo asked again. During the long, slow labour, Jo’s conviction that her child was being punished for his mother’s sins had grown in strength, much like her contractions. She didn’t know how to react to this latest development, but her heart was in her throat as she watched the team work on her baby.

  The minutes ticked by and Jo held her breath, releasing it all in one dizzying rush as she heard a squawk and then a cry from a pair of tiny lungs.

  The doctor brought the baby over and rested him on his mother’s chest for a brief moment. ‘We’re going to have to give him some extra help for a while. He’s weighing in at three pounds fourteen ounces which might sound small but it’s good for his dates and he looks like a fighter to me.’

  Jo placed a trembling lip on her son’s tiny head. She couldn’t believe she was holding the baby she had always longed for. He was finally here and she felt such a rush of love that she wanted to burst into tears, but the baby let out the briefest cry as he fought against his mother’s embrace. He was obviously aware of her failings and Jo felt the full force of his rejection. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘Have you decided on a name yet?’ Irene asked, her voice rising softly over the gentle hum of machinery that kept the tiny miracles in the special care unit safe and warm.

  Jo wasn’t looking at her mother-in-law. She couldn’t take her eyes from the impossibly small baby lying in his incubator. There was a web of threadlike veins visible beneath his bright red, downy skin. He was fast asleep but flinched occasionally as if he sensed his mother’s gaze upon him. Jo, still stunned by the fact that she had just given birth, felt that naming her child without David was beyond her. All she had to help in her deliberations was a snatch of a conversation two years earlier.

  ‘How about Matilda for a girl or Archibald for a boy?’ David had suggested back then.

  ‘Archibald?’ Jo asked, and shook her head. ‘It sounds way too pompous, although I do like the sound of Archie.’

  ‘OK, if you want something more average, how about Barry? Or Tracy for a girl?’

  They were on holiday in Vietnam and had wandered off from a guided tour of a Hindu sanctuary to ramble through its scattering of ancient ruins alone. It wasn’t how Jo had envisaged celebrating her thirtieth year but now they were disconnected from the realities of life back home and being immersed in the past, she thought it might be a good time to tempt David to look at the future from a safe distance. It wasn’t working. ‘There’s no point talking to you about babies until you’re matur
e enough to take it seriously,’ she said before hitting her husband with the palm leaf she had been using to fan herself. She had intended the strike to be playful but it had been impossible to hold back all her frustrations.

  She was ready to stomp off back to the tour guide but David grabbed her hand and pulled her towards him. He slipped his arms around her waist and waited for her to stop wrestling and look at him. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I do want kids one day, honestly, Jo. But I want to get it right and that means waiting for the right time.’

  ‘Steve and Sally had problems long before Luke came along. We’re nothing like them,’ she said, responding to the argument he was alluding to.

  ‘I know and I thank God for it.’

  ‘So?’

  David relaxed his grip on her but didn’t answer.

  ‘This has something to do with your dad as well, doesn’t it?’

  David’s dad had only been fifty-eight when he had suffered a massive stroke, severely affecting him mentally as well as physically. The larger-than-life and seemingly indestructible fireman had vanished in the blink of an eye and the dying man Irene and her sons cared for through his final months was all but a stranger to them. Alan had been frustrated and humiliated by his incapacity, devastated at the prospect of having his life cut short and angry with the world in general. Jo suspected that David had been affected more by his dad’s final months than by his actual death, but the pain was still too raw for him to talk about openly.

  ‘I just want us to squeeze all we can out of life before we settle down,’ David said by way of explanation. ‘That way we can give our children the perfect foundation to go on and create wonderful lives of their own.’

  ‘We already have a perfect foundation, don’t you see that, David? Look how much we enjoy looking after Luke and Lauren. Don’t you want one of your own? Don’t your arms feel empty when you hand Luke back, because I know mine do.’ She thought she glimpsed a flicker of agreement in David’s eyes but it was still annoyingly out of reach. ‘I’m thirty, David,’ she said, reminding him of their original plan.

  David had the good grace to sound guilty but he wouldn’t back down. ‘A short delay is all I’m asking. Not years and years, just a little bit longer. Does that sound OK?’

  Jo couldn’t understand his pain but she could see it on his face and it hurt her too. She wanted so much to heal him and she knew that she could if only he would trust her. She cupped his face gently in her hands. ‘I’ll wait,’ she promised, leaning in to kiss him and hoping that she could convince him sooner rather than later. It was fatherhood and not time that would heal him.

  How wrong she had been.

  ‘We can’t keep calling him Baby Taylor,’ Irene said when Jo hadn’t answered.

  Jo almost suggested calling him FB but she wasn’t that cruel, and as she placed a tentative hand on the plastic shell that separated her from her son, she didn’t understand how David could have been. ‘I’m not ready yet,’ she said. ‘But if you’re going to push me then how about Barry?’ she asked, her voice dry.

  ‘Maybe it is too soon to think about it,’ Irene said hastily. ‘Baby Taylor will do for now.’

  In the yawning pause that followed, both women became aware of the space to the side of the incubator where David should have been standing.

  ‘I’m sorry he isn’t here for you,’ Irene said and it was a testament of her strength that the tears welling in her eyes didn’t fall.

  ‘It isn’t your fault, Irene.’

  ‘And it’s not yours either.’

  Jo looked down at the defenceless little boy sleeping uneasily in the rigid incubator which was a poor substitute for a mother’s womb. Her body’s rejection of him had been inevitable given that her heart had been doing the very same thing. When she looked at her son, she felt an overwhelming sense of guilt and an obligation to care for him but there was no desire to do it. That initial rush of devotion was now a distant memory and she wondered when it was that she had turned into the kind of monster who could not love her own child. Had David seen it? Was it Jo he had been thinking of when he had said they weren’t ready?

  18

  ‘Joanne, where are you?’

  ‘Why, where are you?’ Jo answered in a tone neither she nor her mother had heard since her teenage years.

  ‘I’m at the hospital – where I’ve just been told that you’ve discharged yourself.’

  Jo was looking out of the nursery window, her gaze following the path leading from the house to the wrought iron gate. Of the small section of Beaumont Avenue she could see, the road glistened in afternoon sunshine that was only now strong enough to melt the morning frost. Occasionally her pulse quickened as she caught a glimpse of a passer-by who would inevitably do exactly that, pass by without a second glance.

  ‘I need to be home,’ she explained, knowing it was no explanation at all. She couldn’t tell her mother how she felt completely out of her depth with the baby, how she felt she was drowning under the weight of the responsibility for a new life who needed intensive care and unconditional love, neither of which she felt qualified to give. She needed David and she had come home to wait for him because that was something she was expert at.

  There was a sharp intake of breath, which gave Jo enough time to move the phone an inch away from her ear before Liz began her tirade. ‘You need to be here, Joanne, with your son who is doing amazingly well but would do a lot better if his mother was caring for him and not a bunch of strangers.’

  ‘Those strangers are qualified nurses who have been giving the baby the intensive care he needs. I’ll keep going in every day, but there’s no point me living at the hospital, Mum. All I’ve been doing for the past couple of days is expressing milk like a prize cow or changing his nappy when I’m allowed to get within an inch of him.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Liz snapped. ‘I’ve just been feeding him.’

  ‘They let you hold him?’ gasped Jo, immediately crushed that the nurses had judged the grandmother to be more capable than the mother.

  ‘No but I dripped a little milk into his feeding tube to help the nurse. They wanted you there, we all do. Now don’t be silly, come back to the hospital.’

  Resting her head on the cold glass, Jo closed her eyes. ‘I’m not running away,’ she said carefully. ‘I’ve had things to do. I’ve been in touch with the police and Mary Jenkins has put together a press release to let the world know that I’ve had the baby and that I can’t so much as give him a name yet without his father around. It’s just made the midday news on the radio. I need to be here – in case David comes home.’

  There was a pause and then Liz sounded more amenable when she said, ‘Maybe you’re right. He’ll know you’re in hospital and might think he can come back and clear you out. Did you ever get around to changing the locks?’

  It was one of the few scenarios that Jo hadn’t and wouldn’t consider. She was simply trying to tempt David out of the shadows and she had already decided what she would say when he appeared. She wouldn’t be angry with him; he would have his reasons for running away and she would listen. She would promise him anything if only they could go back to the way they were. He didn’t need to be frightened; the baby was still in hospital and, if it came down to a choice, if he didn’t want the baby to come home, then maybe that was for the best. There was surely a better, more worthy set of parents out there that would give their unnamed baby the love he needed. Jo was ready to consider anything, sacrifice anything, if only she could have David back where he belonged.

  But before Jo could leap to her husband’s defence, something outside caught her attention. There was a man on the other side of the road, partially obscured by a tree. She couldn’t see his face and had no idea how old he might be, but he was about David’s height and he was standing still, facing the house. Watching.

  ‘It’ll be fine, Mum, and I’ll come back in later,’ Jo said. ‘I have to go now. I’ll phone you when I’m there.’

  The call was ended befo
re Liz had a chance to respond and then Jo took a step away from the window so she couldn’t be seen from the road. For one long, heart-stopping minute she didn’t move and neither did the man. She was about to rush downstairs and into her husband’s arms when the watcher stepped out of his hiding place.

  When Jo flung the door open, he was already halfway up the path and jumped in surprise.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be at home,’ he said.

  ‘So what the hell are you doing here, Steve?’

  Her brother-in-law made a point of scanning the length and breadth of the house and garden. ‘I was passing and thought I’d better check to make sure everything was OK. You can’t be too careful these days.’

  ‘You don’t have a key, do you?’ Jo asked, not even trying to hide her suspicion.

  ‘No, of course not. I was only going to check the outside. I wasn’t about to break in, Jo,’ he said with a nervous laugh.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ she replied and reluctantly let him into the house.

  ‘Is the baby home then?’

  ‘No, I’ll be going back and forth to the hospital for a while, but I – I had to come home. The news is out that I’ve had the baby and I thought …’

  ‘That David might turn up?’

  ‘Do you think he will?’ she asked, desperately. She stared intently at Steve, looking for the slightest hint that he knew more than he was telling. There was no denying he had helped immensely since David’s disappearance but Jo didn’t yet understand why. Was he making up for his brother’s failures or was it guilt? And if it was guilt, then whose? Could it be that Steve was a puppet and his strings were being pulled by someone else?

  ‘It’s great that you and Mum have that reassurance that Dave is out there but he’s been gone two months now, Jo.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ she demanded, her voice quaking. ‘Please, if you know something, anything, tell me. Please, Steve.’