Nick stood at the top of the drive watching, just the trace of a smile lifting his lips.
Maggie was running, running faster than she’d ever run in her life, flying down the drive after the pram as she became aware of another sound, a rumbling sound that she knew, the sound of one of the massive timber lorries coming along the road.
‘Duncaaaaan!’
She wasn’t going to catch the pram.
He’d timed it.
He’d probably practised, when he was alone in the house. Timed the pram’s descent. Timed the lorries from when he could first hear them to when they passed the bottom of the drive.
Too slow!
Maggie was too slow.
The pram was moving too fast.
And then Duncan appeared, running out of the trees, right into the path of the pram, staggering backwards as he flung his arms around the hood and stopped its onward rush just as the first of the timber lorries thundered past, the vortex it made pulling at his hair and shirt.
Sobbing, gasping, Maggie snatched a red-faced, yowling Isla up out of the pram and pressed her to her body. ‘It’s okay, you’re okay, my wee darling.’
Duncan was still hugging the pram, his face stiff, chest heaving.
‘He did it! Nick did it!’ Maggie wailed, clutching Isla, although she knew Duncan wouldn’t believe her. ‘He must have waited for the lorries and then pushed the pram –’
But Duncan’s face was white. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I saw him. I saw him do it.’
15
Lulu - June 2019
‘It’s just so strange,’ said Michael. ‘Yvonne always takes her phone with her on her walks.’
He’d told Lulu and Nick that he’d become worried when Yvonne hadn’t returned from her walk at the usual time. He had driven around, checking out the various places she liked to walk, until he’d found her car. Now they were standing in the rain, the three of them, in the small, informal parking area at the entrance to a forest track at a place called Craibstone Wood, waiting for the police to arrive. Yvonne’s phone was visible on the passenger seat of her car.
Lulu was trying to stay upbeat. ‘Typical, isn’t it? The one time she doesn’t take her phone, she twists her ankle or something and can’t summon help. But she can’t have gone far. We’ll find her. Should Nick and I start looking while you wait here for the police?’
‘Yes. Thanks. Yes.’
As she and Nick headed off up the track, Nick grumbled, ‘Stupid bloody woman. Who goes walking in the rain on slick forest paths without their phone?’
As they trudged along, calling Yvonne’s name, Lulu looked around her at the sodden trees and imagined Yvonne, huddled somewhere out here, soaked through, cold, maybe in pain, maybe not able to call out for help . . .
They did a full circuit of the main track, returning to the parking area to find that the police had arrived. Michael came hurrying towards them. ‘They’ve sent for a dog. They said I should go home, and I will, but only to fetch our dogs. I’m going to help with the search.’
‘We will too,’ said Lulu at once.
As Michael hurried off towards a policewoman in a yellow tabard, Nick shook himself like a dog, sending drips flying off his jacket. ‘What did you have to say that for? We’re soaked through already.’
She stared at him. ‘Nick! Yvonne’s probably lying out there hurt! The more people searching, the sooner we’ll find her.’
‘The cops will have drones and what have you. We’ll just be getting in the way, enthusiastic amateurs getting themselves lost.’
She touched his damp arm. ‘I know this must be hard.’ It was bound to be triggering, yet another member of his family going missing.
He snatched his arm away. ‘Of course it’s hard!’
Lulu took a step back.
Then he sort of froze, staring off at the trees so intently that Lulu turned to see what he was looking at. Then she realised that his eyes were unfocused. What he was seeing wasn’t in the here and now.
He made a sort of wordless sound, almost a whimper.
‘Oh, Nick.’ She put both arms around him and pulled him into a soggy hug.
They didn’t find her.
They searched for five hours, until the light began to go and the police called a halt. Lulu suggested that Michael come to Sunnyside with them, but he said he wanted to go back to the farm, ‘Just in case she calls the landline. Or comes home.’
And thank goodness Michael hadn’t come with them, because as soon as they’d stepped into the hall Nick doubled up, as if in pain, and then Lulu was cradling him like a baby while he sobbed.
‘It just takes a heartbeat,’ he gulped, clutching her shoulder. ‘And you’re gone. Snuffed out. The end of it all.’ And suddenly he was roaring in her face: ‘Why is life such a fucking bastard?’ And he was half-laughing, half-crying, and gently Lulu was guiding him through the hall and into the big, airy drawing room, where they’d forgotten to shut two of the windows and the room was filled with the fragrant, earthy scents of summer rain.
In the dusk, the room was cool and shadowed and calming, she hoped. She eased him onto the big chintzy sofa and sat with him, rocking him. ‘We don’t know that any harm has come to Yvonne.’
‘Oh yeah?’ He barked a laugh. ‘Of course harm has come to her! God, Lulu. How do any of us keep going, how do we keep functioning in a world where one misstep, one split second of inattention, one stupid mistake of trusting the wrong person can bring it all tumbling down, and that’s your nice, safe, normal, everyday existence fucked forever?’
‘Nick –’
‘At the wood, it was like I was back in that day, back telling the cops what had happened, and they were looking at me the way they looked at Michael, like they were thinking poor bloody idiot. The cops, they know. They know how fucking dangerous it is, the world out there, and they know that most of us are living in blissful ignorance of the fact until something like this happens.’