Disappeared, page 27
She scrubbed a stubborn stain on the oven tray as an advert came on the radio between the tracks of music.
‘Could you help a young mother in North Wales? Mentor Mums is a new project connecting new mothers with experienced mums who can give advice and support. Help end the loneliness and stigma many young mothers feel.’
Cerys froze, listening. Gavin, noticing, grabbed his phone and punched in the website details as they were read out. Then he handed her his phone. She dried her hands and scrolled through the site.
‘It’s a charity. It says they’re especially interested in hearing from mature women who can give practical support as well as emotional help.’ She stopped, her brain whirring. ‘They’re open 24/7. I’m going to call them.’
She didn’t ask Gavin what he thought. Once, she would have checked it was okay with him, but not now. And he didn’t object to that at all. In fact, as she dialled, she realised that Gavin never had objected to her taking the initiative and just doing something. It was her who’d needed the validation of asking. Almost asking for permission. No, she couldn’t blame Gavin for that. It was her own silly fault, wanting him to agree with everything she did and then if he didn’t, taking that as him denying her.
There were mixed faults in this marriage.
She went through to her bedroom to make the call, and when she returned, she found Gavin watching a TV show. Or at least staring at the TV. She wasn’t convinced he was engaged by it.
She sat down beside him. ‘It’s a habit I got into,’ he said, muting the sound. ‘Sometimes I can’t even think what I’ve watched. But it stopped the silence and kept me from dwelling on it.’
He didn’t ask her about the call, but he didn’t say anything else either so she filled the gap herself. ‘They were really interested in meeting me. They even asked me about a paid position with the charity and invited me to an interview next week!’
‘That’s great,’ he said. ‘You’d be amazing.’
‘Would I?’
‘You made the best mother imaginable for our kids. Of course you would.’ And then he sank his head into his hands.
‘What’s wrong then?’ she asked with a large dose of irritation. Even now, couldn’t he want her to have something for herself?
‘It means you’re not coming home. I should have known you wouldn’t. Stupid of me to think you might want to, but I’d hoped anyway.’ He rubbed his face. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll get Katie to pick me up tomorrow. You’ve got a new life here and I’m in your way. I can see that.’
‘No, I’m not coming home,’ she said, ‘or at least not going back because this is my home now.’ She could see Dilys’s grin in her mind’s eye. ‘Someone special to me gave me this gift because she knew I would love it as she did and I’m not throwing that away.’ Cerys took a deep breath. Was this really what she wanted? Was she sure? She reached out and took Gavin’s face in her hands. Lined hands now, weather-beaten too. But they fit around the familiar angles of his face as if they belonged. Roots, still.
‘But you could stay if you want. For as long as we need to work this out. Maybe we can find a way through this. I don’t know. I only know I haven’t stopped loving you, not really. We may never work our way through this, Gavin. We may be too far gone—’
He held his finger to stop her. ‘We won’t know if we don’t try. I only ever did it all to make you happy. If you’re not happy then there’s no point to it. I learned that while you were gone. So let’s try something else, eh?’
71
It was an autumn wedding and Drew made a stunning bridesmaid with a wreath of red berries and dark-green foliage lighting her blonde hair. Lily had used the curling tongs on it as it was starting to grow out now and she looked like a little faerie creature in a dress that matched her mummy’s. They got ready at the farmhouse under Cerys’s supervision, although Lily and Rhys now had a cottage they were renting in Beaumaris where it was easier for him to get to work and Drew had started school there that September.
They married in the village church on the hill, where Dilys was buried. Cerys gave away the bride. ‘Because why should it be a man?’ Lily said. ‘The only person who’s ever earned the right to do this is you.’
She’d decided to keep the name Lily, she said. She liked the sound of Lily Jones and it had happy associations for her. Kayleigh was someone she wanted to leave in the past. This here, these people, they were her fresh start. So while she was changing her surname, she might as well make the forename official too. Drew was happy to be able to be herself again. ‘Being Sammy was fun,’ she told her mother solemnly, ‘but not forever.’ She crinkled her nose up. ‘And I never want to have to dye my hair again. It stinks, Mummy.’
Lily had laughed. ‘You might change your mind about that when you’re older.’ But if that was her main complaint from her months as a boy then Lily could breathe easy.
They’d thought at first the vicar might say no to a church wedding as she’d been married to Danny but he remembered the events of the spring, which had been big in the local news. ‘No hesitation at all,’ he’d said to Rhys when he approached him. ‘It’d be an honour.’
Cerys’s family came, and along with them Rhys’s family and friends packed the church. ‘There’s loads of them,’ Lily had laughed to Cerys when they’d been sending the invites. ‘I always wanted that you know, a big extended family, a husband, kids. Nothing flashy. Just that.’ And her face flushed pink as she suddenly leaped up and hugged Cerys. ‘And a mum.’
The first of Cerys’s Mentor Mums girls came too – Shannon, and her baby boy. She’d stayed in the cottage over the summer and into September. A thin, nervous girl, a care-leaver like Lily. ‘She’s no idea what to do with a baby, Gavin,’ Cerys told him that first night Shannon arrived. ‘And she’s exhausted and he won’t sleep. I’ll stay over in the cottage tonight.’ And she had done for two weeks until she’d got little Tyler into a sleep routine and the great dark shadows had disappeared from under his mum’s eyes. She saw the gleam of pride in Gavin’s eyes when she finally came back to the farmhouse to sleep. He didn’t say a word but it wasn’t needed. That day, their branches touched again.
Shannon had been nervous about attending a wedding with so many family members there, but Lily had delivered the invite personally to her and said, ‘I want you there. I’ve been where you are. Remember that.’ And so she’d accepted Cerys’s help to find a nice dress and an outfit for Tyler and promised to be there on the day to be part of it all.
Gavin had found his stride again but at a different pace. Alex had taken over a large chunk of running the company and Gavin kept in touch remotely. To everyone’s surprise, they both enjoyed it that way and it seemed to be working so Gavin was content and he’d learned to value the peace and quiet around him, and the long walks he had time for now. Matt had laughed and said Alex had always wanted to be in charge but never thought he’d get the chance, so really it had worked out for the best for everyone.
The wedding reception was down in Beaumaris. Angharad had pulled out all the stops to make up for her part in this and had got the hotel at a good rate. She knew the manager and it was quiet season so she’d cajoled him round, plus all those guests coming over from the mainland, and he’d all but given the venue and the grand dinner away.
Before they left the church on the hill though, Cerys and Lily walked in the glints of the autumn sun to where Dilys lay at peace.
‘I didn’t know you’d had the gravestone done,’ Lily said as she looked at the marble slab with the second inscription fresh and new under the name of Dilys’s husband.
‘Last weekend,’ Cerys replied. ‘Just in time. I wanted it to be here for the wedding. It took me a long time to think what I wanted for her on here but I finally decided.’
‘Dilys Matthews, devoted wife, beloved periglour and completely her own woman,’ Lily read. ‘What does periglour mean?’
‘It’s a Welsh word meaning soul friend,’ Cerys replied. ‘I think she would have liked that.’
‘She would,’ said Lily, and she bent to place her wedding bouquet on the grave. ‘It’s beautiful. And I love the last part too.’
Cerys smiled. ‘Ah, she was, wasn’t she? I wanted something that honoured her properly.’
‘It does, it really does.’
As they turned to go, Lily hesitated. ‘Can I tell you something?’
‘Always.’
‘I’m a bit scared about this next part – the reception, I mean. Everyone expects a good party and they’ll get one because Angharad has gone to town on it. Like her guilt trip knows no bounds and she’s determined to make it up to me. But the thing is, I’m not really a party person. And what if all Rhys’s family think I’m miserable or boring?’
Cerys set her hands on Lily’s shoulders. ‘You don’t have to be a party person. This is your wedding and you enjoy it in the way you want, and if anyone tries to bully you into being otherwise, I’ll head them off. You be yourself and that’s all you need to be.’
Lily nodded. ‘I just don’t want to let anyone down.’
Cerys pointed back at the gravestone. ‘One thing that woman taught me, and a thing I wished I’d learned years ago, is we don’t have to be anything other than who we are. We don’t have to pretend, or put on an act.’
Lily smiled and took Cerys’s hand. ‘You’re right. But then you always are.’
And Cerys laughed, a sound that echoed out as far as the hills. ‘I haven’t always been, but I am about this.’ She touched her fingers to her lips and then touched them to the gravestone. ‘Bless you, Dilys.’
Together they turned and walked back towards the waiting wedding cars.
Cerys tightened her grip momentarily on Lily’s hand. ‘Cariad, always remember, you and I are enough just as we are.’
Acknowledgements
As ever, thank you to my fabulous agent, Ariella Feiner. We’ve been together a long time now, longer even than I’ve been married. I still use her wedding present for my coffee every morning almost a decade later and she remains the calm voice of good sense in my publishing journey. Thanks to her assistant, Molly Jamieson, for taking care of me too.
At Trapeze, my thanks for this book go to Sam Eades and Zoe Yang for their editorial input and promotional support and enthusiasm. Also to Laura Gerrard for further editorial work. To Donna Hillyer, my gratitude for finding all my errors in the copywriting stage and for some great insightful editorial work to further improve the book, and to Rosie Pearce for being my project editor again. A lovely team of people and a pleasure to work with.
This book has been written in the strangest of times and between three different houses as my family relocated just after the first Covid lockdown ended, hated it, and then came back again as the second lockdown was released. It marks a period I think most of us never want to go through again. We went on an adventure, I told my daughter, we just didn’t like this one and that’s sometimes how it goes. To my husband, I quoted the saying, ‘If you don’t like where you are, move – you are not a tree.’ So to Paul and to Orlaith, my love and thanks for putting up with me during the various stages of my writing process with which they are now so familiar, including the inevitable part where I declare the book is rubbish and nobody will ever read it. At this my husband calmly responds, ‘You always says that,’ and goes out and buys me a bag of Haribo which miraculously helps. Why it does is one of life’s great mysteries, but it is a truth recognised by my family that it will.
A thanks goes to my in-laws, Allan and Alison Holdsworth, for all their help and support in the weirdest and toughest of years. Thank you for being there for all the emergencies, both of you.
I don’t tend to thank huge lists of friends because I rarely share much of the process or plot with anyone other than my agent or family, but I do want to thank two. My unending thanks go to Victoria Roberts for a couple of minor points of legal advice but mostly for being the best of friends – that is, a friend in need. You kept me standing at times this year and that’s something I will never forget. I also want to thank Jayne Thane for her encouragement and for making me laugh and for her loyalty and understanding – I hope you like this one too.
And finally, the book is dedicated to my mother’s memory. She was my greatest confidante and I miss her every day.
Credits
Orion Fiction would like to thank everyone at Orion who worked on the publication of Disappeared.
Agent
Ariella Feiner
Editors
Sam Eades
Zoe Yang
Copy-editors
Laura Gerrard
Donna Hillyer
Proofreader
Sally Sargeant
Editorial Management
Rosie Pearce
Charlie Panayiotou
Jane Hughes
Claire Boyle
Audio
Paul Stark
Contracts
Anne Goddard
Jake Alderson
Design
Joanna Ridley
Nick May
Clare Sivell
Helen Ewing
Finance
Jasdip Nandra
Rabale Mustafa
Elizabeth Beaumont
Sue Baker
Tom Costello
Production
Claire Keep
Fiona McIntosh
Sales
Jennifer Wilson
Victoria Laws
Esther Waters
Frances Doyle
Ben Goddard
Georgina Cutler
Jack Hallam
Ellie Kyrke-Smith
Inês Figuiera
Barbara Ronan
Andrew Hally
Dominic Smith
Deborah Deyong
Lauren Buck
Maggy Park
Linda McGregor
Sinead White
Jemimah James
Rachel Jones
Jack Dennison
Nigel Andrews
Ian Williamson
Julia Benson
Declan Kyle
Robert Mackenzie
Sinead White
Imogen Clarke
Megan Smith
Charlotte Clay
Rebecca Cobbold
Operations
Jo Jacobs
Sharon Willis
Rights
Susan Howe
Krystyna Kujawinska
Jessica Purdue
Louise Henderson
About the Author
Laura Jarratt is a Carnegie Medal and Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize nominated author. She lives in Cheshire with her husband and their two children. She works in education and has written four YA books and two adult novels to date.
Also by Laura Jarratt
Mother
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Orion Fiction,
an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
Copyright © Laura Jarratt 2022
The moral right of Laura Jarratt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library.
ISBN (eBook) 978 1 4091 9383 8
www.orionbooks.co.uk
Laura Jarratt, Disappeared
