‘Oh, okay, let’s see. While I’ve been shut away in the study working, you’ve been sneaking off here, there and everywhere, listening to all the local gossips. Carol Jardine. Was Andy there? He’s been bad-mouthing me, no doubt? And you’ve been stirring him up, telling him all about me and my anger management issues. Andy’s touched in the head. He’s probably told the police I’ve done something to Yvonne.’ He unfolded his arms and came across the kitchen towards her. ‘You. Are. My. Wife. You’re supposed to be on my side.’
Lulu just shook her head. Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she felt weak, insubstantial, as if all her muscles had lost their strength.
‘I am on your side,’ she got out.
He kept walking towards her, and she found herself moving back.
‘I put a tracking app on your phone,’ he said, smiling a little, but his eyes on her were completely without expression. ‘I already knew you were at Carol’s.’ And suddenly she had nowhere to go. Her back was pressed against the door to the passage and his face was so close she could see a tiny piece of stubble in the little hollow under his mouth.
‘I thought I could trust you!’ he spat at her.
Lulu took a big breath. ‘If you thought that, why did you put a tracker on my phone?’
He took hold of her, his hands grasping the flesh of her upper arms, and then he was slamming her back against the door, her head ricocheting off it painfully.
She didn’t cry out.
He didn’t say a word.
For a long moment, they stared into each other’s eyes.
Then his face crumpled. ‘Oh God, Lulu! I’m sorry!’
She felt herself caught into a hug, pressed against the muscles of his chest as he kept repeating how sorry he was, how much he loved her. She felt his hand stroking her hair over the place where her head had hit the door and made herself not flinch from it. Made herself hug him back.
‘It’s okay.’
He held her in front of him, his gaze running up and down her body. ‘Did I hurt you? Lulu, tell me I didn’t hurt you!’
No. She wasn’t going to let him off that lightly. ‘You banged my head.’
And then he was weeping, choking that the tracker was for her protection, that of course he trusted her, but after what had happened to Yvonne, surely she could see now that it made sense to be ultra-careful?
It took all Lulu had to step outside herself in that moment and be objective. Re-examining his traumatic memories had been fuelling his paranoia. She’d always known that things would get worse before they got better. And now, with Yvonne gone, it was no wonder he was freaking out.
‘It’s okay. I understand.’
He shut his eyes. ‘I don’t deserve you!’
‘Let’s take some time out, and then we’ll go for a walk and talk this over. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ It was a whisper.
They walked round the garden and along the road a little way, and Nick talked quietly, apologising over and over again and admitting that Yvonne’s disappearance was churning up all sorts of emotions.
‘So talk to me about them,’ Lulu said quietly, taking his hand. ‘I’m your wife. That’s what I’m here for.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘You’re an angel. You’re my angel, Lulu, and you have no idea how much I love you.’
‘I think I maybe have some idea,’ she whispered with a little smile, taking him into her arms.
18
Maggie - October 1997
Maggie was dozing in the summerhouse with Isla when Duncan opened the door, came in and sat down on one of the wicker chairs.
‘They’ve released Nick without charge. Michael’s gone to pick him up from the police station. He’s going to bring him here.’
Fuck.
‘I’m sorry, but – Yvonne won’t have him at the farm, and where else can he go?’ His voice broke. ‘He’s still my son, Maggie. He’s still my Nick.’
‘Of course he is,’ she made herself say. ‘But how could they possibly not be charging him?’ She reached out to touch the pram.
Duncan just lifted his shoulders.
19
Lulu - June 2019
The track was so overgrown that in places Lulu was pushing her way past prickly gorse bushes and brambles, and her trainers were soon soaked from walking through the wet grass and wild flowers growing in the middle of the track. It had rained overnight, but the sky was now cloudless and the fields of pasture that surrounded her were gently steaming. The smells of early summer were intense – pollen and wet grass and warm soil. The sun danced on all the millions of water droplets on the gorse and the nettles and the blades of grass.
She was late. It was already 7:40.
She’d underestimated how long it would take her to walk here from Sunnyside. She would have to be careful to be back before Nick left the study at the end of the trading period or he’d freak out, wondering where she was. She hadn’t brought her phone, leaving it in the pocket of her other coat, which was hanging up in the boot room.
Where had Andy parked? He surely couldn’t have brought a vehicle up here.
The little house came into view, its slate roof sagging, the sash windows silvery with age but retaining their panes of glass. No vandals, she supposed, way out here.
An expensive-looking bike was propped against the wall, a bright yellow helmet slung on one handlebar.
She could just imagine Beth and Jenny’s reactions to what she was doing, meeting a man she didn’t know, someone Nick described as ‘touched in the head’, in a lonely place like this. She didn’t even want to think what Nick would say.
‘Hello?’ she called tentatively, walking round the side of the house to an old courtyard of tumbledown outbuildings full of waist-high weeds. Someone, though, had recently trampled a path through them, and Lulu followed this through the courtyard, the wet vegetation soaking her jeans below the knees. The path led to an open doorway in one of the outbuildings.
She peered into the gloom of the interior. The floor was cobbled, the walls glistening wet and green with algae. This outbuilding looked much older than the house. Maybe it had been here for centuries, maybe right back to the time of The Debatable Lands, when the people who lived here could have locked their enemies up in this dank –
‘Lulu,’ said a voice behind her.
She gasped, a hand going instinctively to her breastbone, and wheeled round.