The Missing Husband Read online

  Jo snapped open the file, hopeful that Jason had stumbled upon a vital clue, but the collection of holiday brochures helped only to explain the meaning of the title David had chosen for this special project. ‘“The four corners of the world”,’ she said, and with distinctly less enthusiasm sifted through the contents. ‘America, Asia, Australia. David wanted to travel the world twice over. Did you know he had a map on the wall at home with colour-coded pins stuck all over it? All the places we’d already visited and the places left to see.’

  ‘There’s some other stuff in there, too,’ Jason said.

  ‘So I can see,’ Jo said. Amongst the brochures she spotted a complex chart that carefully detailed the timelines for David’s plans. From a cursory glance, their trip to Vietnam to celebrate Jo’s thirtieth had been the start of his worldwide voyage that went on for years. She blinked back the sting of disappointment.

  ‘His passport’s in there, Jo,’ Jason said when he noticed she was about to close the file. ‘It’s in the brown envelope.’

  Jo tore at the envelope in her haste to retrieve what had been the very first piece of damning evidence to cast David as a villain and was now the last to be dismissed. The unflattering photo of her husband left her speechless.

  ‘I hope it helps.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she managed to reply. ‘I’d better let the police know.’

  Jason shuffled from one foot to the other. ‘It’s good to see you back, by the way,’ he said. It was the same discomfort she had witnessed from other colleagues, as if one wrong word or look would send her into a spiral of despair.

  Jo kept hold of the passport but closed the file on David’s dreams which were destined to remain a painful juxtaposition to her own, no matter what the cause of his disappearance which looked bleaker by the day. ‘Thanks, Jason. It’s good to be back. So how are you?’

  Jason’s relief at the change of subject was obvious and his eyes lit up. ‘I’m getting married,’ he announced.

  Jo tried to smile. ‘Congratulations. It’s about time.’

  ‘I know – it had to happen eventually, I suppose. Anyway, I’d better go.’

  Jo didn’t object. Her first day at work had given her a much needed sense of purpose but she wanted to be home. After saying goodbye to Jason, Jo slipped David’s passport into her bag, closed down her computer and stood up. Turning, she looked out of the window towards the horizon. The sky was darkening above the Liverpool skyline and she was reminded of a saying about it being darkest before the dawn. But dawn was still a long way off and she had an unshakeable conviction that it would get very, very dark before she could hope to bask in sunshine again. She didn’t want to be alone and the need to have her husband’s arms around her was unbearable. She fought the urge to cry but her heart tugged her in another direction. The feeling wasn’t unpleasant; in fact, it was positively uplifting. At last she found the strength to smile when she realized how much she was missing Archie too.

  30

  Five months after David had stepped off the train at West Allerton and into oblivion, a young policeman followed in his footsteps. It was eight o’clock on a cool, crisp Wednesday evening in March. Notable by its absence was the howling gale that had greeted David. The storm that night had heralded a winter that was now far behind them, the gentle breeze in the air its final breath.

  As he left the station, the David lookalike glanced towards Jo. She was standing with a group of curious onlookers made up of police officers, journalists and family. They made quite a crowd.

  ‘Are you sure you want to be here?’ Steph was looking intently at Jo, trying to work out how her sister was handling the sight of the man wearing a Nelson’s jacket and carrying a John Lewis bag, a man who, if you squinted your eyes at just the right angle, you would swear was David.

  ‘He doesn’t look anything like him,’ Jo said, dismissing the ghostly apparition that tugged at the cracks and fissures of her breaking heart.

  ‘Don’t you think?’ It was Irene this time and she was less adept at hiding her feelings. Her voice quivered.

  People shuffled around them and then from behind, someone spoke.

  ‘Hi, Jo.’

  When Jo turned around, Sally was squirming as if she expected her sister-in-law to send her away again with a flea in her ear and from the furtive glance she gave Irene, she was expecting the same from her. But the moment of awkwardness was swept away when Luke peaked from behind his mum. There were squeals of delight from grandmother and grandson alike and the distraction gave Sally the opportunity to talk to Jo.

  ‘I just wanted to be here to offer my support and to say I’m so sorry for upsetting you the way I did. Steve kept me in the dark about everything. I swear I never knew what was going on with the money he took from David and I certainly never saw him with the coat he stole from you.’

  ‘You may have been kept in the dark but you were the only one to see through Steve’s lies,’ Jo offered and it was her turn to look guilty. ‘You were the only one to remember the real David.’

  ‘You do know that he and I … We never …’

  ‘Please! Forget I even said that! I don’t think for a minute there was ever …’ Jo was as unwilling as Sally to voice the unfounded accusation. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she continued. ‘I was grasping at straws but I shouldn’t have said it. I certainly hadn’t been thinking it, before or since.’

  Sally nodded. ‘But I still want to make things right. The house is being sold and if there’s any money left then we’ll repay what Steve took.’

  ‘You’re losing the house?’ Irene had Luke in her arms and had been listening to far more of the conversation than she had been letting on.

  ‘I’ll be moving back to my mum’s in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Steve really has messed up this family, hasn’t he?’ Irene said, not needing to wait for a reply from either of her daughters-in-law. ‘Sally, I’m sorry if I never gave you the support you needed but I want you to know that I’m here for you if you need me. You, Jo, and me are all single ladies now, trying to make our own way in this world. It would be so much easier if we worked together. If you ever need an extra babysitter, you know where I am.’

  It was a major breakthrough for two women who had shared such opposing opinions of Steve for too many years. This felt like a new understanding, but there was no time to stand back and admire the bridge they had just built.

  ‘Jo?’ Lauren said, tugging at her arm. ‘Come on or we’ll lose him.’

  Jo went to follow her niece but couldn’t manoeuvre the pram past the throng.

  ‘Why don’t I take the baby back to the house?’ Irene offered. She returned Luke to his mum with a confident smile and tried not to look at the man in the Nelson’s jacket striding past them. ‘I thought I could do this but …’ Her smile wavered. ‘I’m sorry, Jo.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can either, Irene, but I’d like to try,’ Jo said, handing over her house keys. ‘And if I do happen to freak out, chances are I’ll run so fast I’ll be at the front door waiting for you.’

  ‘Come on!’ insisted Lauren.

  There was only the merest trickle of daylight left from the setting sun, nowhere near enough to light their way along the overgrown path that Jo, and now the police, were convinced David would have opted for to get him home that little bit sooner, the irony of which wasn’t lost on her. She felt a brief shiver as she remembered the last time she walked down this path, and the figure she had created with her mind, the one who had driven her to withdraw from the world and away from watchful eyes.

  Lauren had a torch but Jo could still feel the darkness closing in around her until it was so deep it could easily swallow up an unsuspecting traveller on a lonely, wintry night. Jo tried to remind herself that the police had searched the area again only recently and found nothing. The only thing they hoped to find tonight was even just one person who might step out of the gloom and remember something.

  ‘This is pointless,’ complained Steph. ‘If anyone
had been walking down here they wouldn’t have been able to see their hands in front of their face, let alone remember walking past David.’

  ‘There’s always a chance that something happened that night which will have stuck in someone’s memory,’ Mary Jenkins said. She had been corralling the journalists and camera crew who were in hot pursuit of the man who was acting as David, but she was also charged with keeping an eye on Jo. She had deliberately held back to check on her but Jo said very little as Steph and the family liaison officer discussed the relative merits of the reconstruction.

  Detaching herself from her surroundings, Jo focused on every step she took along the path as if it would lead her straight to David. Her concentration was so intense that she wasn’t prepared for that path to come to an end quite so soon, and when the reconstruction spilled back out on to the road, Jo wasn’t ready. Her steps faltered and she let a handful of stragglers file past her. David hadn’t come out the other side, she was sure of it now more than ever. She turned back, her movements lost to her family as the crowd flowed around her.

  Her progress was slower this time, the light had faded completely and there was no torchlight to help her on her way. She reached the widest section of the path at the midway point and stopped. This was the place her terror had really taken hold of her, those few short weeks ago. On her right was a distant row of houses partly obscured by trees and on her left the railway embankment sloping down twenty feet behind the tall rusted fence.

  Jo held her breath and listened. At first all she heard was Mary and Steph calling out her name but then she heard something else. Rustling and whispers came from the clearing where she had seen the group of youths playing football on the day she cut her hand, the clearing where she had stood beneath the creaking oak and imagined David striding away from her and out of her life for ever. ‘Who’s there?’ she called out.

  There was more rustling. A youth, his dark hoodie over his head, emerged out of the darkness and came closer. He might have been the boy who had seen her stumble; she had no way of telling. ‘What was all that about?’ he asked.

  ‘My husband went missing in October last year. It’s a reconstruction.’

  ‘The bloke with the shopping bag everyone was following – was meant to be your husband?’

  ‘Did you recognize him? He would have come down here on his way home.’ There was desperation in her voice. ‘Please, if there’s anything you remember about that night then you have to tell me.’

  In the dim light that was barely light at all, Jo felt the boy looking at her. If he was about to say something then he didn’t get the chance.

  ‘Don’t you say anything to anyone! Come on, let’s go.’ It was another youth, a little older or at least old enough for his voice to have broken.

  ‘Jo?’

  Steph had caught up with her and as soon as she spoke the rustling grew thunderous. Twigs snapped as the two teenagers ran off.

  ‘No!’ Jo cried and began to run after them and away from her sister and, more importantly, away from Mary in her police uniform with its reflective strips that shone like a beacon through the darkness. Jo wasn’t about to let this one tenuous lead slip through her fingers and she ran as if her life depended on it.

  There was a hiss and crackle behind her as Mary’s radio burst into life. ‘Two youths running along the path heading back to West Allerton! Somebody grab them!’ she shouted but Jo was determined to get to them first.

  The boys immediately deviated away from the path and plunged deeper into the undergrowth. Thorny branches clawed at Jo’s clothes as she followed the sound of the boys’ retreat. She was forced to scramble rather than run after them but her quarry was slowing too. She caught occasional glimpses of darting shadows but clearest in her sights was the impassable silhouette of the eight-foot fence that sectioned off the clearing from the back gardens of the neighbouring houses.

  There was a crash as one of the boys hit the wooden fence running. She didn’t realize he had scaled the barricade until she caught sight of a human-sized spider silhouetted against the black sky. A second later the shape disappeared with a thump as the escapee hit the ground on the other side. Jo’s heart thumped too and then it skipped a beat as she heard the second boy begin his ascent.

  ‘No, please!’ Jo cried as she reached the fence. The white flash of trainers was directly in her eye line, propelling their owner upwards. She lunged at them, grabbing hold of one dangling foot and refusing to let it go even as it kicked and thrashed. There began a desperate tug-of-war and Jo used the fence as leverage, bringing all her weight to bear as she pulled at the trapped leg while fending off kicks from the free one. One kick glanced off her cheek and stars sparked across her vision but she wouldn’t give up. She found purchase on the boy’s clothes and began to prise him off the fence, using up every ounce of strength and pent-up frustration she had harboured for the last five months. She cried out with rage even as her superhuman powers began to fail. He was slipping through her fingers. And then he was up and out of reach, balanced on the top of the fence as effortless as a cat.

  Jo fell back against the brambles, caught in its web of thorns, spent and useless. ‘No! Please don’t do this to me!’ she cried.

  As Jo forced back the tears she stared up at the silhouette of her last, fading hope. The shadow gazed down at her for a moment and then it was gone. There was the crunch of dried bracken as the boy dropped back down to earth.

  The first sob escaped as the boy’s face loomed over her. ‘Are you all right, love?’

  Jo put her hand to her mouth and nodded to the boy who was undoubtedly the one who had come up to her all those months earlier. Her heart was hammering and her breath caught the occasional sob as she spoke but she spoke quickly, aware that time was against them. They were still being pursued by others, and the crashing of undergrowth was getting closer. ‘On 16 October last year I was waiting for my husband but he never came home. I was pregnant and I was scared. I didn’t know if he’d left me or if something bad had happened. I still don’t know and those questions have been eating away at me and pretty soon there’ll be nothing left. I can’t be the person I was and I can’t be the person I should be now, the mother to my son, because I don’t know if I’m worth loving. I can’t move on with my life until I get some answers, if not from David then from the last person who saw him that night. Was that you?’

  The boy looked as if he was about to speak but the beam of a flashlight cut through the night, snaking its way along the wooden fence towards them, making him tense for flight. Jo could hear her name being called.

  ‘This is between you and me. I’ll keep them away if you promise to talk to me. Please, will you?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘I’m over here!’ Jo called out. ‘I’m fine but I’m with someone. Please, let me talk to him. Stay back!’

  There was a pause as collective minds tried to decide what to do. ‘Are you in any danger, Jo?’ It was Mary.

  ‘No, I’m perfectly safe. Please, I just need a few minutes on my own.’

  ‘OK, five minutes,’ Mary called back.

  Jo looked to the boy and waited. Her patience was eventually rewarded.

  He crouched down until he was level with Jo who had remained tangled in the undergrowth. ‘We play footie here all the time,’ he said, ‘even when it’s pitch-black and teeming down. There’s nothing else to do around here.’

  ‘Or there are worse things to do.’

  The boy laughed. ‘Well, maybe we do a bit of that too,’ he admitted although Jo preferred to believe it was only false bravado from her reluctant hero. ‘Anyway, that night Reddo kicked the ball right over the railway fence. It was only stuck in some bushes, it hadn’t rolled down the embankment, and everyone said we should leave it. But it was my ball; I’d only had it a few days and I knew I’d be in for all kinds of grief from my mum if I left it.’

  Jo was nodding as if she understood, but all the time she was urging him to say something that woul
d end her misery.

  ‘There’s this massive tree just on the other side of the fence and if someone can give you a bunk up, you can use it to get over and then back again when you’re done. I was halfway up the fence when this bloke came along.’

  Jo shuddered. She suspected the tree he was referring to was the oak that had creaked and groaned as she called out to her husband and begged him not to leave her. And there was no doubt in her mind who the man was. ‘David.’

  The boy shrugged. ‘He was carrying a John Lewis bag full of baby stuff.’

  The explosion of pain in Jo’s chest took her breath away. She hadn’t thought her heart could break any more. ‘Baby stuff? Really?’

  ‘He started off by telling us how dangerous it was. He wasn’t having a go at us or anything, it was just a bit of banter and he gave as good as he got,’ the boy said with a hint of admiration. ‘That’s when he started telling us how he used to do the same thing when he was a kid and we gave him a bit of a challenge.’

  ‘David went over the fence?’

  ‘He was pretty nifty for his age. It was Reddo who gave him a bunk up and he was up and over in no time and got us our ball back.’ It was here the boy stopped as if his story had come to its end and he began to straighten up.

  ‘Wait, what happened next? Did he get back over?’ The question hung in the air and with a sickening twist of her stomach that felt like she had been punched, she had her answer. ‘You left him?’

  ‘He’d left his shopping bag on this side of the fence and Reddo decided to pinch it. We took the bag and ran.’

  ‘You left him,’ Jo repeated in a whisper but this time there was no question and she didn’t even try to stop the boy as he scrambled over the fence and out of sight.

  When the beam of Mary’s torch eventually found her, the tears were slipping silently down Jo’s face. ‘Are you OK?’

  Jo nodded even though she had barely heard the question. She was listening to the silence. For the first time since she could remember, there was no background noise inside her head, no questions waiting to be answered. ‘He’s still there,’ she said.