The Missing Husband Page 22

  As she drifted off, Jo continued to sing along to the lullaby, long after the mobile had stopped turning. In her dream, she could see sunlight streaming through the front door. She could see the perfect outline of her husband surrounded by a halo of red and green light so bright it stung her eyes. Jo’s heart beat once, then soared and her fingers were bathed in sunlight as she reached towards the doorknob. But when her skin touched the metal, the icy cold shock ran through her body like a bolt of lightning before plunging the house into darkness. Overcome with dread she opened the door and found Steve standing there amongst the shadows. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered as he made a grab for her. Jo stumbled back and for one terrifying second she felt her body plummeting before waking up with a sickening jolt. Archie felt it too and began to whimper. She kissed the top of his head and gently stroked a finger down his nose, over his lips and coming to rest on the merest suggestion of a groove in his chin just like his daddy’s. ‘Please don’t take my sunshine away,’ she began to sing, and as her words echoed in the darkness, they both began to cry.

  21

  When Jo got up on Sunday morning, the world had returned to normal – or at least what counted for normal within the four walls of her pristine and empty house. After proving to Archie that she was as incompetent as ever by taking over an hour to feed and change him, she felt exhausted but not too exhausted to get herself dressed and ready to go out. Steph had invited her over for lunch and she was glad of the excuse to escape the confines of the house. She had mopped away the trail of footprints Steve had left at the door but the aftershock of his arrival persisted.

  Archie remained fast asleep as she prepared to leave, but when she placed him in his baby carrier, his eyes flickered opened and he glared at her. She felt ridiculous, but she couldn’t meet his gaze. She was determinedly holding on to the feeling she’d had the night before; of wanting to hold him and love him as a real mother should; but only just. She loved him, but she couldn’t give that love freely when she was expecting her son to reject her affection in much the same way as his father had.

  More desperate than ever to get away, Jo picked up the baby carrier and turned to face the front door, but then came to a juddering halt. The sun was shining brightly through the stained glass, scattering a rainbow across the hallway like the creeping fragments of a dream. Her skin began to prickle as she raised her eyes to the doorknob and her fingers tingled with the memory of the ice-cold touch of metal. She tried to take a deep breath but her lungs refused to expand and the little air she had managed to inhale was released with a gasp, quickly followed by another. Her cheeks burned as she recalled the David-shaped silhouette that had appeared out of the shadows the night before.

  Since Archie’s birth, Jo had come dangerously close to having another panic attack on a few occasions, but she had always managed to regain control. This one was different. It struck without warning and her muscles began to seize up almost immediately, which only added to her distress. There was a thumping pain in her chest and her arms and legs became leaden even as her mind screamed at her to move. She was fighting a losing battle and, with the power of an avalanche beginning its slow tumble downhill, the attack fed off her rising sense of powerlessness. Jo’s gaze remained fixed on the door and panic turned to terror as she realized she had become completely paralyzed.

  ‘Help me,’ she gasped.

  I’m here, whispered a voice in her ear.

  She closed her eyes. ‘David,’ she said as she leaned ever so slightly into the man standing behind her.

  Her husband’s hand swept down the side of her face, wiping away the tears. His fingers trailed down her neck, making her shiver and releasing some of the tension. He slipped his arms around her, placing a hand over her diaphragm. Breathe with me, he said.

  Jo took a breath and was surprised how deeply she was able to inhale.

  Slowly, let it out, he commanded.

  She could feel his breath against her face as he exhaled with her. That’s good. Now, let’s try that again.

  It was only when she tried to lean further into David and stumbled back a few steps that she realized she had broken through her inertia. Still holding the baby carrier, Jo started to move but instead of heading out through the door, she found herself in the living room where she waited until she could trust her voice not to tremble before picking up the phone to make her excuses to Steph.

  ‘Why are you out of breath?’ Steph demanded. She was standing on the doorstep with her arms laden with takeaway containers.

  Jo shoved her shaking hands into her pockets and licked her parched lips. Steph had promised to call in after school to drop off the leftovers from Sunday lunch since Jo had been too exhausted to come over. Jo had been expecting the knock on the door, she had known it would be Steph and she had even practised opening the door a couple of times. She couldn’t explain why something so simple had become such an impossible task. She managed a smile as she let her sister into the house. The door had not defeated her.

  ‘Archie’s asleep so I was busy catching up with some housework,’ she said. ‘Isn’t Lauren with you?’

  ‘There’s a bug going around and she was looking a bit peaky. I didn’t want to chance bringing her in case she passed something on to you or the baby.’

  Jo raised an eyebrow and only just stopped herself from suggesting it might be a love bug. ‘That’s a shame; it would have been nice to see her.’

  Steph was uncharacteristically quiet as she poked her head into the living room to see her favourite nephew before heading to the kitchen to relieve herself of the mountain of food she had brought with her.

  ‘Have you heard any more news from Irene?’ she asked.

  ‘Steve’s still staying with her. Apparently Sally turned up with all his worldly goods packed into bin bags so I don’t think there’ll be any going back this time.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, it’s Luke I feel sorry for.’

  Jo couldn’t summon up the sympathy she knew the family deserved. ‘There are worse things that could happen,’ she said. ‘And I can’t help thinking Sally and Luke are better off without Steve.’

  Steph was quiet for a moment. ‘Do you think it has anything to do with David? You’ve said yourself you wouldn’t be surprised if Steve knew all along where he is.’

  Jo was already shaking her head. ‘I don’t think so. Steve and Sally had enough problems of their own to begin with and besides …’ she said. ‘Now, don’t go saying I’ve lost it, please, Steph …’

  Steph tried to laugh. ‘I can’t until you tell me what you’re trying to say.’

  ‘It’s stupid, I know it’s stupid.’ Jo held her breath a moment before blurting out, ‘I think he’s dead, Steph.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe David did leave on purpose and maybe he was involved in something I can’t even begin to imagine, but he’d be back by now if he could. Even though he wasn’t ready to admit it to me, he did want the baby. He wanted to be a dad and he’d come back for me and for Archie if he could. And I think he does …’

  Steph was staring at her and when Jo sensed another ‘What?’ forming on her lips she closed her eyes and thought back to the recent anxiety attack and how she had got through it. ‘He’s here with me sometimes, I’m sure of it.’

  From the living room, Archie could be heard whimpering which usually summoned dread in Jo but she felt relief at escaping the conversation she already regretted starting. ‘So go on, say it. It’s wishy-washy voodoo, right?’

  ‘Well, when you put it like that …’ Steph offered. ‘But it’s not surprising you want to find comfort where you can, even if it is … wishy-washy voodoo.’

  ‘OK, confession over. Forget I even said anything,’ Jo said. ‘Now back to the real world of feeding, burping and changing babies.’

  ‘Shall I do it?’

  Jo warmed up the milk then looked on enviously as Steph managed to get Archie to accept his feed on the first attempt. ‘Are you sure you’re OK on your own w
ith the baby?’ Steph asked.

  ‘We have a routine,’ Jo said but chose not to expand that the said routine involved Jo tensing up, Archie tensing up, Jo pleading, Archie crying, Jo crying.

  ‘Good,’ Steph said brightly and aimed a beaming smile at her sister.

  Jo tilted her head. ‘Why?’ When her sister tried to shrug, she added, ‘What are you after, Stephanie?’

  There was a pause as Steph put the baby on her shoulder to wind him. ‘We’ve been invited to a friend’s wedding next month.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Steph said slowly and deliberately as she resumed feeding the baby, ‘it’s a weekend affair in the Peak District. We could take Lauren with us but she doesn’t want to go and, to be honest, her time would be best served at home revising.’

  ‘So?’ Jo asked. She wasn’t going to make it easy for Steph to ask the favour but it wasn’t because she was about to refuse. She was simply enjoying the moment. It had been a long time since she had felt of use to someone else and not a constant drain on her family.

  ‘Would you mind? It would only involve staying over one night and I’ll make sure Lauren earns her keep and I think it would be good for you to have some company.’

  Jo was about to say it would be her pleasure but there was no time for her to wallow in the glowing sense of normality because the phone began to ring. It was Martin Baxter.

  ‘There’s been another withdrawal from David’s bank,’ he said after only a brief warning that there had been a development in the case.

  Jo had stood up to take the call and as she turned to look at Steph, her face was white. She rubbed her chest hard, concentrating on the warm, comforting sensation of her hand against her skin and not the cold wave of despair crashing over her continuously battered body. ‘Oh,’ she managed.

  ‘You don’t sound surprised.’

  Jo wasn’t quite sure what the policeman had expected. If he had heard the conversation she’d had with her sister moments earlier he would understand that what she actually felt was disappointment, quickly followed by guilt. Was she sorry he wasn’t dead after all? ‘It’s hard to get excited about something that confirms David really has abandoned me and his son.’

  ‘You haven’t had any contact with him yourself?’ Martin asked, still sounding suspicious.

  The derisory snort was almost manic. ‘I’m apparently the last person he would want to see.’

  When the policeman then asked Jo to call into the station to look at the CCTV image, she refused point-blank. Steph had been watching and listening and quickly grabbed her chance to help her sister survive this latest betrayal. ‘Tell him I’ll do it,’ she said.

  When Jo relayed this information, Martin reluctantly agreed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But I’ll send you some stills in the post. I need you to confirm it’s him for the record.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I’m afraid we’re quickly reaching a point where this stops being a police matter.’

  As Jo’s legs turned to jelly beneath her, she reflected that the only positive aspect of feeling so completely and utterly defeated was that she didn’t even have the urge to cry. Even as Steph began fussing around her, Jo couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t quite there in the room with her. She had stepped out of the picture and was looking at the impassive shell of the woman who would continue to function while the real Jo Taylor shrank away until nothing was left.

  Jo was in the nursery, waiting for the sun to rise. The days were lengthening but there were no other signs that winter was loosening its grip. The drop in temperature overnight had given the world a sugar frosting that glistened in the lamplight, confirming that the roads would be as treacherous today as they had been the day before and the day before that.

  Four days had passed since Steph had visited the police station to confirm that it was indeed David withdrawing more cash from his dwindling account and in that time Jo had left the house precisely once to take Archie to baby clinic. She had proved to herself that she could leave if she wanted to, she simply chose not to.

  The feeling that David might be watching her from the shadows had returned and she wondered, as she had many times before, what would happen if they were to meet accidentally. She had once imagined beating her fists against his chest before falling into his arms and telling him she still loved him but not now. She felt as if her emotions had been peeled away like the layers of an onion. The love she had felt, the loyalty, the guilt, the anger and forgiveness had all been stripped away one by one until there was nothing left. If he were standing in front of her now she doubted she would feel anything at all. She would shake her head and simply turn away, because the thought of dealing with any of those old emotions was simply too exhausting.

  The sky had turned from a molten red to soft pink while Jo continued to stare out of the window and she didn’t even realize she had been humming Archie’s lullaby until she stopped. She thought she heard him waking up in the next room.

  Archie had been more restless than usual during the night. He had woken every couple of hours and at first had screamed as loud as ever when she tried to feed him, but as dawn approached his complaints had reduced to the kind of whimper she could hear now.

  Turning from the window, Jo’s eyes followed the trail of morning sun across the floor reaching towards the side table and lamp on the other side of the nursery. She was about to leave the room but something was unsettling her and she couldn’t quite work out what it was. She moved closer to the table and scrutinized its clean, white-painted surface, the small drawer beneath with its silver handle and the shelf nearer the base where a stuffed giraffe stared up at her, slightly bemused. Lifting her gaze back to the table top, the shock hit her so hard she saw sparks dancing across her vision. The birth certificate was missing.

  It had still been there the other day – she had even dusted it. Ignoring Archie’s continued whimpers, Jo searched around the table, even lifting up the lamp and opening the drawer as if the certificate were capable of moving of its own accord. When she couldn’t find it, she wracked her brain trying to remember if she had seen it since taking Archie to the baby clinic. Possibly not, she concluded with sickening dread. Had David been in the house? What other explanation could there be? Had she put the certificate away without remembering? Could she have accidentally thrown it away? She didn’t think so, but if David had been there then he had disturbed nothing else, she was sure of it. But why take the birth certificate? What did it mean? What was he trying to tell her?

  Her skin crawled as she imagined David watching her, biding his time until she had finally left the house so he could sneak in and take a closer look at the life he had abandoned. Jo rubbed away the goose bumps as she went downstairs to prepare Archie’s next bottle to distract herself from yet more dizzying questions, all the while glancing around the house in case she might spot other evidence that her husband had returned. She used the dead bolt on the front door before returning upstairs.

  It was only when she was feeding her son that thoughts of David were abruptly pushed to the back of her mind. The baby had gulped down his feed without complaint but the moment she lifted him up to wind him, Archie threw up over both of them. For once she didn’t care about the mess, only her son, who unnerved her when he didn’t object to being put down on the changing mat. It was only when she stripped off his sodden Baby-gro that she noticed how hot he was to the touch. He had a temperature.

  ‘What should I do?’ she asked Steph over the phone.

  ‘I think you should get him to the doctor.’

  Jo had thought the same thing, but had been hoping Steph would persuade her that she was overreacting – she had wanted someone to give her an excuse not to step outside where David could choose to follow her or perhaps return to the house a second time. ‘But the surgery won’t be open yet,’ she said.

  ‘Then phone the out-of-hours service.’

  The urgency in her sister’s voice snaked
fear down Jo’s spine. ‘Do you think it could be serious?’

  ‘It’s probably only a virus but you need to get him checked out, Jo. They’ll be able to give you something to bring down his temperature and rehydrate him. He’s too little to fight it all by himself.’

  ‘OK, I’ll go,’ Jo said, finally putting aside her own irrational fears for what might be a real danger to her son.

  Half an hour later and Jo was in the hallway ready to leave. She hadn’t stopped to draw breath since making the emergency appointment and she was panting as she shrugged into her coat. Her cheeks were glowing, surely a result of rushing around, but she could feel the beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead. Her breath juddered with the force of her hammering heart. She fought the urge to cry as she realized what was happening but she was determined to help her son and picked up the baby carrier. Archie scarcely noticed: he was becoming more and more listless by the minute. She could barely breathe for fear of losing him and yet, rather than spur her into action, her fear paralyzed her to the spot in a repeat of Sunday morning. She couldn’t move towards the coloured streaks of light stretching out like monstrous fingers towards her, trying to pull her back into the nightmare that still invaded her thoughts.

  Archie stared up at her through heavy lids and whimpered again, pleading with his mum to save him.

  You can do this, someone whispered in her ear.

  The sound of her husband’s voice was only in her head but the surge of adrenalin that arrived with it brought all of Jo’s fears into sharp focus; fear of David standing behind her ready to slip his arms around her and pretend he still cared; fear of him being outside somewhere watching her every move for his own sick amusement; and, God forbid, the fear that she had got it completely wrong and he wasn’t there at all. Her terror was tangible, a fiery demon that sucked the air out of her lungs and yet had ice-cold hands that wrapped around her heart. Her whole body quaked and she couldn’t imagine getting any closer to the door, let alone reaching up to turn the lock. She was failing Archie again.