The Missing Husband Page 4

  During her absence from the living room, the minute hand of the clock had sneaked past the hour but there was nothing Jo could do except resume her vigil. Each time she blinked, she could see the ghostly impression of the starburst burnt on to the back of her eyelids.

  For the next hour and a half Jo remained in the living room. If this was David’s idea of punishing her he couldn’t have planned it better. Jo hid her insecurities well but they were there and they tormented her now. Only a single lamp glowed in her self-imposed prison, its light too weak to reach the shadows into which she had crawled and was determined to remain until her husband appeared. Other than the torturously slow progress of the hands around the clock, the only other movement in the room came from the rhythmic strum of Jo’s fingers on the armchair. Occasionally the glare of headlights swept across the window blinds, causing the strumming to halt and Jo’s heartbeat to quicken. But without fail the car would continue on its journey, taking with it the hope that a taxi was about to pull up outside and put her out of her misery.

  When her gaze could be drawn away from the clock, Jo stared at the two phones she had placed in her lap: one her mobile, the other the house phone. She was using her mobile to dial David’s number at regular intervals, listening only long enough for the automated announcement to kick in advising her to leave a message. She didn’t. She hung up each and every time before waiting precisely ten minutes until she allowed herself to repeat the process.

  Jo hadn’t yet decided what she would use the landline for. She wanted to phone someone but didn’t know whom. She had gone through her address book on her mobile but dismissed every one. Right now there was only one person’s voice she wanted to hear and no one else would do, not family or friends and, God forbid, not the emergency services. If there was the possibility that something awful had happened to David then, she reasoned, it wasn’t yet real and it wouldn’t be real until she told someone. She and David lived an unremarkable life; nothing bad had ever happened to them and as long as she didn’t let her imagination run wild, it wasn’t happening now. Telling someone would be like taking a pin and bursting the protective bubble she was desperately constructing around herself.

  And then the phone rang.

  Her mobile shone through the darkness and the warm rush coursing through her body took Jo’s breath away. She squeezed her eyes shut but it was too late. She had seen the caller ID and the spark of excitement was cruelly extinguished.

  Jo’s tone was flat as she answered the late night call from one of her oldest friends. ‘Hi, Heather.’

  ‘Sorry, I’ve only just seen your missed call and thought it must be important for you to call so late. What’s up?’

  ‘What missed call?’ she asked but was already working it out for herself. ‘Oh, sorry, I must have pressed a button by mistake when I was going through my address book.’ Jo’s mouth was dry as she spoke, a stark contrast to the tears stinging her eyes.

  ‘I didn’t wake you up, did I?’

  ‘No, I’m waiting up for David.’

  ‘Out on the town, is he?’

  ‘He’s been in Leeds all day,’ Jo replied, leaving a pause to summon up the courage to say more but Heather was already talking.

  ‘I’ve just got back from London. I was only away one night but Max acted like I’d been gone a month,’ Heather said of her six-year-old son. ‘He’s been clinging on to me for the last couple of hours so this is the first chance I’ve had for some peace and quiet. I’m sure Oliver’s been winding him up just to put pressure on me to travel less. It wouldn’t cross his mind that my earnings from these sales trips mean I don’t have to squeeze him for every penny he’s got.’

  As Heather launched into complaints about her ex-husband, Jo’s eyes returned to the clock. The longest hand was creeping towards ten past eleven – the next ten-minute marker for phoning David. ‘I’d better go,’ she said, interrupting Heather mid-flow.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  There was a pause. In the fifteen years they had known each other, she and Heather had taken it in turns to be the shoulder to cry on. It was only in the last year, while Heather was going through a bitter divorce, that Jo had found it impossible to confide in her friend. She hadn’t been able to share her worries about the direction of her own marriage because in comparison, her troubles had been trivial. They didn’t seem trivial any more. ‘I don’t know where he is, Heather.’

  ‘David?’

  Jo told her what time David was supposed to have arrived home and left her friend to draw her own conclusions.

  ‘He’s probably met up with Steve and gone for a drink,’ Heather said. ‘I know what you’re like, Jo. Stop thinking the worst!’

  Jo shook her head. If David had gone out with his brother he would have called her from Steve’s phone. Heather wasn’t the only one who knew how much of a worrier she was. ‘I’m sure you’re right, but can I go now? He might be trying to phone as we speak.’

  Heather wasn’t fooled by Jo’s quick acceptance but she didn’t think for a minute that her friend’s concerns were warranted. Jo, on the other hand, wouldn’t rest until she heard David’s voice and she cut off the call to Heather before she had even finished saying goodbye. She made the call to David with only seconds to spare.

  The automated voice grated on her nerves and Jo cut that call short too. Leaning forward in her chair, she closed her eyes and put her hands over her face. Her bump was substantial enough to make her attempt to curl into a ball uncomfortable. She wished she could hold her baby. She wished she could fast forward four months to the moment David could share in the miracle growing inside her, to a time when they could heal the rift between them, but for now her arms were empty and the only thing she could feel was the pressure on her bladder. She hadn’t dared go to the toilet in case David turned up because she wanted to be there when he came through the door as she knew he would; he had to. Heather’s theory about his whereabouts wasn’t the only one Jo had explored. There were a myriad other explanations which could have delayed him, the majority of which involved nothing more than mild inconvenience and Jo had practised her response to each of them.

  He could have lost his wallet and might have decided to walk the eight miles home from the city centre. That would take a good few hours, in which case he should be walking up to the door right about now …

  The travel information might be wrong. The train could have broken down or been delayed by a fallen tree, in which case he would be arriving home right about now …

  He could have met an old friend and gone for a quick drink, in which case he would be arriving home … right about now …

  Or he could have had enough of his interfering wife who thought she knew best. He could have tired of all those idiosyncrasies he had said he found sweet, such as her obsession for neatness – in which he case he would be coming home … right … about … never.

  She shook her head. Kelly was right, her hormones were playing up and she was definitely overreacting.

  But why hadn’t he phoned to say he was delayed? Even if his mobile wasn’t working, he could use a pay phone or work his charm on someone to borrow theirs. And if he didn’t have cash he could reverse the charges.

  To break the monotony of going around in circles, Jo replayed David’s voicemail message from earlier that day and listened to every nuance in his voice, analysing everything he said and didn’t say. When that didn’t settle her mind, she looked at the last text message he had sent. It was even shorter than the one replying to Jo’s earlier message.

  On train home.

  Arrive Lime Street 7:10 p.m.

  D x

  He was rushing with his texts because his battery was low and his battery was low because it hadn’t been charged the night before. But if Jo hadn’t been sulking like a child, she would have made sure that it had a full battery. David relied on his wife’s obsession for detail to ensure that both of them were ready for anything.

  But as time ticked by and
it became less likely that David had been held up for some simple reason, Jo was anything but ready. As long as something too awful to contemplate hadn’t happened, and she prayed it hadn’t, then there was only one other explanation left.

  David had chosen not to come home.

  And if Jo was being perfectly honest, that was the real reason she hadn’t been prepared to pick up the landline and phone for help.

  At eleven thirty, Jo’s urgent need to relieve herself forced her into action. She went upstairs to the bathroom as fast as she could and only just made it. The near miss made her angry with herself. She had become paralyzed by a fear of the unknown, compounded by the theories her mind was conjuring to fill the torturous gap in her knowledge. David was only a few hours late and there would be a rational explanation. She simply didn’t know what that was yet.

  Rather than return downstairs to be held captive by the ticking of the clock, Jo slipped into the spare room they had made into a study. She sat at the desk, switched on the laptop and began browsing not only the rail network sites she had checked before, but local traffic and news reports that might mention disruptions or serious incidents. The search was fruitless, but enough of a distraction to have eased her anxiety a little. The reprieve, however, was short-lived and her stomach lurched the moment she walked back into the living room. Both hands of the clock were pointing north.

  Jo paced the floor as she tried again to reach her husband. The automated voice had the same effect as someone scraping their fingernails down a blackboard and made her shudder. There was nothing else for it; she needed to hear a human voice.

  She picked up the landline and dialled, only to be greeted by another automated voice not too dissimilar from the one that had been taunting her all night. A scream began to build at the back of her throat, tearing at her vocal chords as she listened to the answering machine message. She came close to releasing it when the message cut off.

  ‘Hello?’ asked a groggy but blessedly familiar voice.

  ‘I’m sorry, did I wake you?’ Jo whispered.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Steph asked, ignoring the question and reacting instead to the unmistakeable catch of emotion in her sister’s voice.

  ‘I don’t know.’ The words had started off so strong but then quivered over trembling lips. ‘I don’t know where David is.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was supposed to be home at eight.’

  There was a groan as Steph rolled out of bed. ‘What time is it now?’

  ‘Quarter past twelve.’

  ‘And he hasn’t been in touch to say—’

  ‘Nothing. I’ve been phoning him constantly but it’s going through to his voicemail.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Jo bit her lip. It wasn’t the response she wanted to hear. She could already imagine the scenarios being played out in Steph’s mind; they had played out in her own on a continuous loop all evening. ‘I’m scared, Steph,’ she managed to say in a broken whisper. Her hand flew to her mouth but it was too late, the first sob had escaped. Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her vision as she stared at the living room clock, its lethal shards blunted but not obscured.

  ‘There’ll be a reason.’

  ‘I know, I just wish I knew what it was and I hate to say it but right now I don’t even care how bad it is. I need to know.’

  There was the sound of soft footfalls, the creak of floorboards and the occasional click of a light switch as Steph made her way downstairs. ‘It’ll be all right.’

  ‘Will it?’ Jo asked, preparing to grasp even the most tenuous thread of hope.

  ‘Have you thought about phoning the police … or the hospitals?’

  Steph’s words were soft and gentle but they stabbed fear into Jo’s heart. ‘No, I don’t want to look like a complete idiot when David turns up alive and well.’

  The pause that followed was excruciating. ‘Steph?’

  ‘Could your argument last night have been more serious than you thought? Have you checked his things?’ she said. ‘Is anything missing?’

  It took a fraction of a second for Jo to catch up with Steph’s train of thought. She laughed nervously. ‘I think I would have noticed if he’d packed a suitcase before he left this morning,’ she said, immediately dismissing the theory, not because she didn’t think it possible but because it was perhaps the most plausible – and that terrified her. She glanced towards the stairs, measuring the need to check his closet against her fear of what she might find. She tried to corral her thoughts. ‘Do you think I should phone the police?’

  ‘Maybe. Do you want me to come round?’

  ‘No, Steph, it’s late and blowing a gale again outside. Besides, you’ve got work in the morning.’

  ‘It’s not as if I’ll be able to get back to sleep now.’

  ‘But you have Lauren to look after,’ Jo protested, even while hoping deep down that Steph might overrule her.

  ‘That’s what husbands are for.’

  Steph didn’t need to be in the same room to know that Jo had flinched at the remark.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m sure we’ll laugh about this tomorrow. Now please, go back to bed. Keep your phone under your pillow if you have to and I’ll call you as soon as he turns up. And he will,’ she added as if the words alone would make her husband materialize.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes when he does,’ Steph offered with forced cheeriness.

  Left to her own devices, Jo stared at the armchair she had been glued to for most of the evening. She couldn’t sit and stare at the clock any more but needed to keep herself occupied. Unable to resist the urge a moment longer, she rushed back upstairs to satisfy herself that David’s clothes were still in the wardrobe. They were, but the sight of his things only made her long for him more. Desperate for any kind of reassurance, Jo slipped back into the study to check one more thing. When she couldn’t find what she was looking for, the theory she had hoped to dismiss took on a life of its own.

  Jo went through every drawer and file, not only in the study but in every other possible hiding place. Her search for the missing article was methodical and she left the paperwork in a tidier state than she had found it, but by the time she reached the kitchen there was nowhere else to look. Refusing to think about what that might mean Jo began clearing away the uneaten dinner.

  She carefully wrapped the dried-out steak and ale pie in foil before gathering up the hardened bread rolls and throwing them in the bin along with the side salad that had been left to wilt on the dining table. The plates were returned to the cupboard and the cutlery back to the kitchen drawer, which Jo couldn’t bring herself to close again. Forks lay across knives and a couple of teaspoons were peeking out beneath half a dozen soup spoons. The disorder in the drawer set her already frazzled nerves into a fresh jangle, but at least this was something she could fix. As Jo removed every item from the drawer, an image of David standing behind her, came unbidden. He rested his head on her shoulder, the warmth of his sigh caressing her neck. His breath smelled of coffee and dark chocolate from the cake she had made him for his birthday.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘Tidying up your mess.’

  She was grouping the stainless steel soldiers into regiments, laying them in tight formation. Knife-edges facing left, fork tines pointing upwards and spoons – well, they simply spooned.

  ‘There was nothing wrong with it.’

  ‘I need to tidy it,’ she persisted. She could feel the anxiety constricting her chest although it had been there long before she had opened the drawer. It had been building ever since she had missed her last period and she was now about to miss the next, but she wasn’t ready to tell David yet. It was still early days and anything could happen, or at least that was the excuse she was using to put off making her announcement.

  ‘And what exactly do you think would happen if, God forbid, you threw the cutlery into the draw and left things where they fell?�
�� he asked.

  Jo’s eyes narrowed in concentration as she tried to apply David’s logic. Perfectly ordered cutlery wasn’t going to have even the slightest effect on his reaction when he found out what she had done. ‘Nothing,’ she offered.

  David kissed her neck, unaware of her deceit and simply enjoying the sport of challenging his wife’s compulsions, which had been increasing of late. ‘Make a mess. I dare you.’

  She leaned back against the man she knew so well and felt their bodies meld into one. He was going to love the idea of becoming a dad once he had got over the shock, she was sure of it. Putting aside her troubles for another day at least, she let a soft laugh tickle her throat as she picked up a single fork and turned it on its side.

  ‘Nah, not good enough.’ David leaned over and when the thunderous clank of metal subsided, the drawer was in more of a mess than ever.

  ‘I’m going to make you pay for that,’ Jo warned but David was already wrapping his arms around her and pulling her away.

  The sound of their laughter faded and Jo’s eyes began to sting as she stared unblinking at the cutlery drawer where the tight formations had been reformed. ‘What was the worst that could happen?’ she asked herself, but without David holding her, she shrank in terror from the answer.

  Quickly closing the drawer, Jo pulled up her sleeves and set to work scouring the grey granite surface of the kitchen counter until it sparkled. Next she mopped the floor, not limiting herself to the porcelain tiles in the kitchen but moving on to the timbered floor in the dining room, even moving cupboards to reach hidden nooks and crannies. And she didn’t stop there. She swept the mop in wide, purposeful strokes out into the hallway and then continued through to the living room.

  The smell of industrial strength bleach had completely obliterated the more homely smells of cooking. It had started to burn the back of Jo’s nostrils but she couldn’t, wouldn’t stop. She returned the mop to the store cupboard under the stairs and picked up a duster and a can of polish. In no time at all, the black marble fire surround in the living room was so shiny it reflected an image of the clock she was refusing to look at. She was in the process of polishing the coffee table when there was a knock at the door.