He didn't do so. On the other end of the line, someone spoke, and Andy looked at his watch. He said, “Unfortunately, we're not altogether sure … No …. Thanks. Fine. I appreciate it.” He rang off and picked up the tray that his wife had placed on the desk. He headed towards the kitchen. Nan and Julian followed.
Christian-Louis was just leaving, his chef's whites changed for jeans, trainers, and an Oxford University sweatshirt with its sleeves cut off. He grabbed the handlebars of a bicycle that was leaning against the wall, and taking a moment to measure the tension among the other three people in the kitchen, he said, “Bonsoir, ` dermain,” and he quickly left them. Through the window, they saw the white glow of his bicycle lamp as he pedaled off.
“Andy, I want the truth.” His wife planted herself in front of him. She was a small woman, nearly ten inches shorter than her husband. But her body was solid and tightly muscled, the physique of a woman two decades younger than her sixty years.
“You've had the truth,” Andy said reasonably. “Julian and Nicola had a date. Nick's forgotten. Julian's got himself into a twist and he'd like to track her down. I'm helping him out.”
“But that wasn't Will Upman on the phone, was it?” Nan demanded. “Why would Nicola be seeing Will Upman at—” She glanced at the kitchen clock, a functional and institutional timepiece that hung above a rack of dinner plates. It was eleven-twenty, and all of them knew that the hour was unlikely for paying a social call on one's employer, which was what Will Upman had been to Nicola for the last three months. “She said she was going camping. Don't tell me you actually think she stopped to have a chat with Will Upman in the middle of a camping trip. And why would Nicola fail to show up for a date with Julian? She's never done that.” Nan shifted her sharp gaze. “Have you two had a row?” she asked Julian.
His immediate discomfort came from two sources: having to answer the question another time and concluding that Nicola hadn't yet told her parents of her intention to leave Derbyshire permanently. She would hardly have been seeking her next summer's employment if she'd been planning to leave the county.
“Actually, we talked about marriage,” Julian decided to say. “We were sorting out the future.”
Nan's eyes widened. Something akin to relief wiped the worry from her face. “Marriage? Nicola's agreed to marry you? When? I mean, when did all this happen? And she never said a word. Why, this is wonderful news. It's absolutely brilliant. Heavens, Julian, it makes me feel giddy. Have you told your dad?”
Julian didn't want to lie outright. But he couldn't bring himself to tell the full truth. He settled on the precarious middle ground. “Actually, we're just at the talking stage. In fact, we were supposed to talk again tonight.”
Andy Maiden had been watching Julian curiously, as if he knew very well that any talk of marriage between his daughter and Julian Britton would be as unlikely as a discussion on raising sheep. He said, “Hang on. I thought you were going to Sheffield.”
“Right. But we planned to talk on the way.”
“Well, Nicola would never forget that,” Nan declared. “No woman is likely to forget she has a date to talk about marriage.” And then to her husband, “Which is something you ought to know very well.” She was silent for a moment, dwelling—so it seemed—on that final thought while Julian dwelt on the uneasy fact that Andy still had not answered his wife's questions about the phone call he'd made. Nan reached her own conclusion about this. “God. You've just phoned the police. You think that something's happened to her. And you didn't want me to know about it, did you?”
Neither Andy nor Julian replied. This was answer enough.
“And what was I to think when the police arrived?” Nan demanded. “Or was I just supposed to keep serving coffee?”
“I knew you'd worry,” her husband said. “There may be no cause.”
“Nicola could easily be out there in the dark, lying hurt or trapped or God knows what else and you—both of you—didn't think I should know? Because I might worry?”
“You're working yourself into a state right now. That's why I didn't want to tell you till I had to. It may be nothing. It's probably nothing. Julian and I agree on that. We'll have it all sorted out in an hour or two.”
Nan attempted to shove a handful of hair behind her ear. Cut in a strange fashion that she called a beret—long on the top and clipped on the sides—it was too short to do anything but flop back into place. “We'll set out after her,” she decided. “One of us must start looking for her at once.”
“One of us looking for Nicola isn't going to do much good,” Julian pointed out. “There's no telling where she went.”