Disappeared, page 8
Dilys was still sitting by the range with the dog. Cerys thought she brightened when the boy followed her in, but then she wasn’t sure as the old woman’s usual slightly sour expression returned. Dilys said nothing as Cerys made Sammy’s breakfast and sat him down at the scratched pine table to eat it but Cerys noticed how her eyes watched him as he ate. His first taste of the honey made his eyes widen in delight and he licked his fingers enthusiastically. ‘Aye, that’s the proper stuff from Welsh bees fed on good Welsh flowers,’ Dilys said with her sardonic chuckle. Sammy smiled politely but his mouth was too full of toast to reply.
Cerys tidied up, giving the washing-up an extra good scrub in hot soapy water. None of the dishes were that clean, she found, and she suspected the old woman’s eyesight wasn’t what it was. She dried them with a fresh tea towel and they made the satisfyingly clean squeak she expected from her pots.
When she’d finished, she realised Sammy and the old woman were regarding each other across the kitchen. Sammy was frowning slightly. ‘Why do you have a beard?’ he asked suddenly.
Cerys opened her mouth in horror to cut in – oh, the awful candour only a four-year-old could muster – but Dilys’s delighted peal of laughter stopped her.
‘Because I’m an old woman,’ she replied with a grin that crinkled the skin around her eyes into corrugations. ‘And it happens to old women – they get whiskers. I should pull them out but I can’t see them so well now. Maybe I should shave them.’
Sammy nodded. ‘My daddy shaves—’
And then he stopped dead and clapped his hand to his mouth.
Dilys gave Cerys a questioning look and she shrugged and shook her head slightly to tell her not to ask further.
It was the reaction more than the child’s words. He’d been told not to talk about his father, that was pretty clear. But why?
She could press him but that would be wrong. She could ask Lily, but was that fair when she didn’t want questions herself?
So many secrets.
She shook herself. There were chickens that needed tending to. And that’s what women did – or women like her – when the problems were too big. They buried themselves in busyness, because if you couldn’t solve it, you might as well be doing something practical.
She waited until Sammy finished his breakfast and then took him with her. He was, as she expected, delighted by the chickens. One of the hens was happy to be scooped up and cuddled by him and trotted round the pen after him when he laid a corn trail for her to eat. ‘Has she got a name?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. You can ask Dilys when we go back in.’
There was a mist settled higher up on the hills and the air felt damp but the sun reached them dimly and she took pleasure in the freshness of outdoors and the light on her face.
Simple things. Things that used to matter to her before the darkness came and took the joy away.
It had stolen so much from her, that suctioning blackness, more than she’d realised.
For a second there she had a thought – as she watched Sammy laying the corn for the hen – that she was terrified it would come back. That stopped her in her tracks. For it was almost as if she’d forgotten everything, forgotten her family, forgotten how she’d got to this point where she’d decided the only punctuation point available to her now was a full stop.
Here she was, still alive, and surviving day to day. But, and this was the awful reality, she was less unhappy than she had been.
What a terrible thing to admit.
That today, right now, she didn’t want to die. But at home, she had.
Her hands were shaking. In fact, her legs were shaking too.
She loved them. Didn’t she? Then why did she feel this way?
Sammy came skipping back to her and took her hand. ‘Finished!’
A warm, sweaty, sticky little hand. The most precious kind there was. She pushed the emotions down and went back inside with him.
‘What’s up with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Dilys asked her, narrow-eyed.
‘Nothing,’ she replied.
‘Ha!’ said Dilys with a tone of contempt. ‘I might be old but I’m not stupid.’
Cerys sat down heavily at the table. ‘Sometimes I don’t know who I am any more,’ she said. ‘Do you ever feel like that?’ She didn’t really want to share that with this irascible old woman but it came leaking out anyway. Maybe force of habit from a childhood surrounded by Dilys’s type.
Dilys snorted. ‘I’m too old for all that business. When you get to my age, you’re busy deciding if you’re likely to wake up the next day. It stops you worrying about things like who you are. Alive is the only answer you need when you get past seventy.’
Despite herself, Cerys laughed. And then Sammy announced he was hungry again and she was off the hook while she had to go and deal with that.
She looked around once Sammy had been fed. This place was a mess. Rancid, in fact. It needed a good clean. She pulled out the cleaning products from under the sink. Well, it was going to get one. At least she could achieve that.
18
Lily pulled a sleepy-eyed Sammy into her bed with her when Cerys went out to tend the sheep the following morning. Sammy’s hair stood up in little tousled spikes and Lily smoothed them down with her hand. ‘You’re doing so well,’ she said. ‘Do you miss home?’
Sammy shook his head. ‘No,’ he replied with a force that both surprised and relieved her.
‘And are you managing okay? You know, with the toilet thing.’
Sammy snuggled in under her arm. She loved it when he did that. Something about it made her feel like a real mother, and like he believed in her as one. And if Sammy really believed in her like that, did it matter what anyone else thought. Did any of what Danny said count? Here, in this place, far away from him and with a sleepy, content child cuddled up to her, it really felt like it might not.
‘I am four,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be able to do it myself. It’s okay, Mummy.’
‘I know, but even at four, you might need some help and it’s so important you don’t ask her. She mustn’t know. Are you sure you can cope?’
He raised his head and looked at her with those solemn, big green eyes. ‘Mummy, don’t worry. It’ll be okay.
She felt her eyes fill up slightly and squeezed them tight for a second because she didn’t want him to think she was upset. It wasn’t that. ‘Are you happy, Sammy?’
His little arms tightened round her. ‘Yes. I love it here, Mummy.’
Oh thank god, thank god. Because when she thought about what she was doing to him, sometimes it made her blood chill. She didn’t know how this would end, but at least for now, it was all right.
19
‘She can’t just have disappeared!’ Matt stared at his sister with incredulity. He’d got there as soon as possible but he’d been on a uni friend’s stag do in Croatia – some kind of crazy fake-army-guns-and-tanks lads experience in some remote spot, so it had taken a few days to sort flights and get back.
Katie had been so relieved when her big brother had appeared through the front door with the noisy, careless crash that always heralded his entry. Alex was the precise and sensible one; Matt was like a wrecking ball. But it was Matt she wanted in a crisis. Alex would flap and fuss whereas Matt would get something done.
‘And Dad’s not doing anything? He can’t just do nothing!’
Katie threw up her hands in exasperation. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I can’t get any sense out of him. You try!’
Matt nodded and got up.
‘I didn’t mean now!’ She hadn’t even had chance to offload how worried she was.
‘No time like the present,’ he called over his shoulder.
Their father was in the garden by the apple trees. Matt went to stand next to him, fastening his coat up. It was chilly out there. He stifled down the sense of impatience he felt at his father’s silence and they stood together staring up at the skeleton branches of the trees.
‘I think she’s left me,’ his father said finally.
Matt estimated it had taken him a full twenty minutes to speak. It was one of the reasons he found his father so frustrating. He should have called Alex to come over. His brother dealt with Dad far better.
‘What happened?’ Matt bit down his rising frustration. Mum could be dead and Dad didn’t seem to have even considered that. He wasn’t sure Katie had either but she would crumble if he mentioned it and he wasn’t good with girls crying on him, even if it was his little sister.
‘We had an argument the evening she left. I said some terrible, terrible things in the end. Things I don’t think in the cold light of day she will ever forgive me for. I wish I could unsay them but I can’t. I was tired and I knew inside I’d done enough damage and couldn’t fix it so I went to bed.’
Matt bit back his exasperation. Wasn’t that his father all over?
‘In the morning the car had gone. I thought she might have nipped to the shop for milk or something, but the fridge was full of it when I checked. Bread in the bread bin too. I waited and waited but she didn’t come back. Then I thought maybe she’d slept in the spare room and overslept but she wasn’t there. I checked all your rooms too. I called and called her phone but she didn’t answer.’
‘Did you look for a note?’
‘Everywhere, but there was nothing.’
Matt sighed. He’d been hoping against hope that had been forgotten and they might still turn something up.
‘So what did you do?’
His father shrugged. ‘I waited and waited and waited.’
Matt rolled his eyes. Typical Dad – do nothing. He should have gone out looking for her, called her friends, anything but just sit there. At work, he was one of the most driven men Matt had ever encountered but, outside of that, he seldom seemed to shift out of first gear. It was as if he burnt away all of his energy on the business and there was nothing left for them.
Okay, how to progress this now. ‘Did you call any of her friends to see if they knew where she was?’
His father gave a deep sigh and closed his eyes. There was a long, long silence.
‘I didn’t really feel there was anyone I could call, Matthew.’
Matt frowned in confusion. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She hasn’t been in touch with her old friends in a very long time. It was one of the things we argued about. She never speaks to them now, she never goes out. She just mopes around. And she’s never happy.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, Matthew.’ He held his hand up to his forehead as if in pain. ‘I don’t know anything any more.’ And he walked slowly back into the house, leaving Matt open-mouthed in shock because he hadn’t known any of that. Not a thing. But they’d been fine, hadn’t they? What Dad said seemed to indicate not, though. How had none of them known it had got this bad?
20
It was becoming a habit – that waking in the middle of the night. That crushing sense of shame when she remembered just who she was and how far away that was from what Cerys believed her to be.
At least Danny had always known.
And look how that had turned out.
She was only just sixteen the first time she met him and walking back to the care home in her school uniform. She’d deviated off by the back of the tyre factory to score. There was often a dealer there after school who’d have something for the kids for just a tenner. She knew it’d be cut with all kinds of rubbish for that price – she wasn’t stupid. But getting her hands on a tenner was hard enough so she didn’t have much choice. The other girls in the home had less trouble getting money, but she knew what they did for it and something inside her balked at that. She wasn’t ready to be like her mother, not yet. Though let’s face it, that’s where everyone thought she’d end up. She could see it in their faces, the staff at the home, the teachers, and definitely the other kids who didn’t bother to hide it at all.
But when she got to the corner, the dealer wasn’t there. Instead there was a guy with a van parked up and the bonnet popped and he had his head inside, fiddling with the engine. As she passed, he swore and jumped back, sucking his finger viciously.
He was a lot older than her, she realised immediately, but he was very good-looking. So much it made her blush when he noticed her and smiled. ‘Cut my finger,’ he said, pulling it out of his mouth for a moment so he could speak. ‘You want to watch it down here on your own. There was some guy dealing here when I broke down.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Or is that why you’re here.’
She coloured an even more fiery shade and shook her head.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s a mug’s game. Still, you shouldn’t be walking round here on your own. I’ll give you a lift home when I get this thing started again. Don’t want you running into anyone dodgy. You need to be careful, you know.’ He paused and gave her a hard look. ‘Pretty girl like you,’ he said with a shake of his head, ‘all kinds of trouble you don’t even know you can get into.’
If only she didn’t know. If only she was what he thought she was right now. He thought she was pretty and that gave her a warm rush, like a smile on the inside.
She knew she shouldn’t accept the lift. She didn’t know him and she was taking a big risk but he was only offering to keep her safe, so that couldn’t be a bad thing, right?
‘Hop in the cab,’ he suggested. ‘Get out of the cold. It shouldn’t take much longer.’
She nodded and climbed into the front of the Transit. From here, she could see brief glimpses of him while he worked and he was right, it was warmer out of the wind. He gave her a quick wave and a grin the next time he emerged from the engine and her stomach did a funny kind of flip-flop of excitement.
After ten minutes he slammed the bonnet shut and dusted his hands off, then jumped back into the cab. ‘Here goes!’ He turned the engine on and it caught with a splutter and then settled to a normal steady chug. ‘All right!’ he yelled with a whoop. ‘Okay, let’s get you home. Tell me the way.’
She directed him back to the main road.
‘So I’m Danny,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Kayleigh.’
‘Nice name. This where I go left, yeah?’ As they drove, he told her about the business he was starting up. She’d never met anyone with their own business before. He must be really clever.
It wasn’t far back to the home. A short block of council houses all knocked through into one long building. He looked at it as she directed him to pull up nearby, and then at her.
‘I’m in care,’ she said with that flush of shame she always felt when someone found out. ‘But I’m sixteen so I leave soon.’
‘Where do you go then?’
‘Don’t know, but I’m not staying here. It’s a dump.’
He glanced down the road and she followed his eyes to the next street corner, where a group of older teen boys and men were hanging around in cars, waiting for the girls at the home to come out. They didn’t even bother to do it out of sight of the home and there was nothing the staff could do about it. The police came occasionally but not often enough and the guys just moved on and returned when it was all clear.
Danny shook his head at her.
‘I don’t go with them,’ she said indignantly. Well, she didn’t now. She’d tried it before she’d realised fully who and what they were. Since then, she stayed inside the home and kept her door shut when the other girls tried to get her to go too. It was horrible and she’d never felt so dirty in her life. And it made her think of her mum and cry.
‘You were there to meet that dealer, weren’t you?’ he asked and he completely knew so there was no point lying. She nodded her head miserably.
He made an exasperated sound. ‘You’re too pretty to waste your life on this,’ he said. And she was blown away that he’d still said she was pretty after what she’d just admitted. ‘I’ll pick you up after school tomorrow and drive you home again. You need to get clear of this shit. See you tomorrow. I’ll be by the gates.’
She nodded and got out of the van with her heart singing, because he was gorgeous and older and all the other girls would be totally jealous. She felt a warm curl of satisfaction as she kept replaying the scene in her mind that night. The way he had just told her, not given her any choice, because he wanted to take care of her. And nobody had ever done that for her before.
21
The town was buzzing with Kayleigh’s disappearance. The local paper had taken it up and they were definitely on Danny’s side. It was a sorry tale of a troubled young mother with her priorities all wrong and a father who desperately wanted his family back. Who could help?
So far there were no leads and it looked like she’d got well away, but no news either of any local guy she could have absconded with. And that gave Danny some small ease. Maybe that policeman was wrong and she hadn’t hooked up with someone else after all.
He liked the headline: ‘Respected local businessman appeals for help on missing family.’ That eased his heart, and yeah, it gave him some pride. ‘Respected local businessman’ – he’d worked hard for that.
Why couldn’t she see what they had? Why did she have to do this to him?
The reporter was undoubtedly on his side. He was a middle-aged guy with a melancholy expression and sludgy skin that said he had a drink problem. ‘I want some leads on where she’s gone,’ Danny told him on their first meeting.
‘I’ll do my best,’ the guy replied grimly. ‘Women now just think they hold all the cards, and whatever they want, a judge agrees with in a custody case. You’ve got my sympathy, mate, you really have. I hope you find your kid.’
Danny grimaced. ‘You got kids?’
‘Yeah, once-a-month visitation and a couple of weeks in summer if I’m lucky. But she took me to the cleaners for maintenance. It’s not right – the cards are stacked against us.’ He shook his head sourly.
