Now, as Raj arrives to start his shift in the control room,
Gareth nips into the toilets then makes his way down to the
first floor. There’s an hour to go until the end of his shift and as he patrols the walkways and common areas of the shopping
mall he sorts through his thoughts. Last night in the pub, after 187
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he made his decision to ask Kath out, Tony gave him Auntie
Ruth’s number. Gareth was feeling so buoyed up he decided to
bite the bullet and give his aunt a ring there and then. The pub was at full volume so he went outside. Someone called Maureen
answered the phone. She told him that Ruth had been hospital-
ised for a stroke a week earlier and they didn’t know when
she’d be back. They chatted for a while, discovered they were
cousins, and Maureen promised to ring if there was any news.
Afterwards, when Gareth returned home, it was all he could do
not to beckon Kath into the kitchen and tell her everything. But when he walked into the living room, she jumped out of her
armchair and slipped her feet back into her slippers. She was
obviously keen to get back to Georgia and he didn’t want to
keep her. Later, after he put his mum to bed and turned in
himself, Gareth couldn’t sleep. Should he tell his mum or not?
There was a very real chance that the news about Auntie Ruth’s stroke would upset her, regardless of their estrangement. It might also confuse her if she was having one of her episodes trapped in the past. At one in the morning he made his decision. He’d
tell her. Then it was up to her if she wanted to see Ruth.
Now, Gareth strolls along the walkway, scanning the level for
any unusual activity. The number of shoppers has thinned out now the mall is so near to closing and those that are left are darting from shop to shop, their faces pinched with anxiety. Gareth watches them, trying to guess what they’re so keen to get their hands on.
The man speeding towards the jewellers is almost certainly grabbing a last minute present for his wife’s birthday. The woman
nipping into Claire’s Accessories probably has a daughter who’s lost her favourite hairband or needs to fill party bags for the weekend. And the old man walking towards Waterstones is—
Gareth’s heart stills.
White-grey hair. Olive-green jacket. Rigid spine.
Go, Gareth’s brain tells him, but he doesn’t move an inch. It
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is as though someone has pressed pause in his brain. He can’t
move, he can’t think, he can’t feel. All he can do is watch. His heart restarts with a thump so powerful that his brain sparks
back to life. Thoughts, dozens of them, flood his mind and now it’s indecision that paralyses him. It’s Dad. It’s not Dad. I want to find out. I don’t. I don’t know if I could bear the disappointment. What if he rejects me? What if he doesn’t? If he walks
away, I’ll never know.
He takes off, jogging after the man, catching up with him as
he reaches the bookshop’s glass double doors. He reaches out a hand and touches him on the shoulder. The man turns slowly,
twisting at the waist as his neck follows suit. He raises a hand in self-defence. The skin is slack and lined, aged-spotted with bulbous, rope-like veins so prominent it’s as though they’ve risen to the surface in an effort to escape. But Gareth doesn’t see the man’s hands. His eyes are trained on the back of his head, the sliver of face as he turns and then—
‘I’m sorry.’ Gareth takes a step backwards, his hands dropping to his side. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.’
Somehow Gareth manages to make it to the end of his shift.
He locks his pain and disappointment in a box in the back of
his head and marks it ‘Do not open unless alone’. He keeps it
there until all the doors are checked, all the shoppers have left and all the rotas for the next week have been completed, then
he leaves the shopping centre, crosses the near-empty car park and lets himself into his car, then he puts his hands on the
steering wheel and he sobs.
As Gareth walks up the path to his house, Kath’s flowers hanging loosely from his hand, he doesn’t so much as glance at the CCTV
camera above the door. He doesn’t care who’s been sending his
mum the postcards. He doesn’t even care if Mackesy has been
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trying to extort money. And he hasn’t got the energy to ask
Kath out. He’s tired, so damned tired. All he wants to do is say hello to his mum, change his clothes and then watch TV so loud that it blocks out his thoughts.
‘Mum!’ He puts the flowers on the sideboard, slips off his
jacket, then pauses as he crouches to remove his shoes.
Something’s not right. The house is too quiet. The TV’s not on.
Oh God, she’s not packing for a holiday again, is she?
‘Mum?’ He pops his head into the living room then does the
same in the kitchen and heads up the stairs. ‘Mum?’
He pushes open the door to her bedroom. The room’s exactly
as it was when he left that morning, curtains pulled, the suitcase on top of the wardrobe and the bed neatly made. His heart
lurches as he heads for the small bathroom. He knocks on the
door and waits.
A second passes, then two, three. He turns the handle. ‘Mum,
are you in there?’
But there’s no one sitting on the avocado-coloured toilet or
standing in the shower. There’s only one room left to check but when he walks into his bedroom it’s as empty as every other
room in the house.
‘Shit. Shit.’ He flies down the stairs, grabbing hold of the
banister as his feet slip out from beneath him on the second to last step. In an instant he’s up again. He grabs his keys from the wooden bowl by the front door then he’s out of the house,
down the path and sprinting down the street. He runs all the
way to the corner shop and grips the counter, sweat pouring off him and his wet socks clinging to his feet.
‘Have you seen my mum?’ He takes three shallow breaths.
‘Joan. My mum. Has she been in?’
Fred, the man who’s owned the shop for as long as Gareth
can remember, slowly shakes his head. ‘I’ve not seen her in
weeks. Is she okay?’
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Gareth doesn’t answer. He bursts back out again and pushes
at the door to the post office. Locked. They’ve already closed up for the day. The only other shops on the small stretch of
street are a boarded-up hairdresser and a Chinese takeaway. He doesn’t bother going in there. It only opened six months earlier and he’s pretty sure his mum’s never been in.
Panting and panicked, he desperately tries to work out where
she might have gone. Did she decide to take herself off to the doctor or the dentists’? She’d normally go with Sally or Yvonne but if they’d already left and she’d had some kind of accident then . . .
Kath! He’s told his mum over and over again that if anything
happens she needs to go next door and ask Kath for help. He’s
pinned a note to the side of the front door, saying the same.
He sets off at a spri
nt, then slows as a stitch gnaws at his
side. He should never have left his mother alone. He’s been
telling her for months that she should move into a care home
where she’d get better help, but she’s always refused. On a good day she’s lucid enough to argue with him. On a bad day she
bursts into tears or looks at him confused, telling him that she promised ‘until death do us part’ and she’s not going anywhere without her John.
‘Kath!’ He hammers on the door with his fist. ‘Kath! Kath!’
He sees a shadow move behind the thin living room curtains
then the light in the hall goes on and the front door opens.
‘Is she here?’ he asks before his astonished neighbour can
speak. ‘My mum, is she here?’
There’s a split second as Kath’s lips part when he thinks
everything’s going to be okay, that’s she’s going to tell him that his mum’s in her living room, watching telly at top whack. But then her eyes fill with concern and she shakes her head.
‘Mum’s not at home.’ Gareth grips the door frame. ‘She’s not
anywhere. She’s completely disappeared.’
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Chapter 33
Alice
Alice lifts her glass and chinks it against Emily’s and Lynne’s.
‘Thanks for coming out, both of you. I would have gone mental
if I’d spent another minute at home.’
‘Oh cheers!’ Her daughter laughs. ‘Glad I was such great
company. I’d have stayed the night at Adam’s if I’d known.’
‘You know what I mean.’ Alice takes a sip of her wine. ‘Thanks for putting up with me, both of you.’
‘I’m just glad you’re okay,’ Lynne says. ‘I knew something
was up when you rang in sick this morning but I didn’t want
to pry.’
‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Simon’s a shit.’ Emily sits back hard in her chair. ‘I know you didn’t want to play
games but—’
‘Ems.’ Alice holds up a hand. ‘It’s not about that. Didn’t you listen to a word I just said?’
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better off without him.’ Her daughter looks from her to Lynne, who shrugs.
‘He could have been more supportive,’ Lynne says. ‘Sorry,
Alice, I know that’s not what you want to hear but I think
maybe you’re reading too much into that text.’
‘Exactly.’ Emily sits forward again. ‘Let’s say it was Flora who texted him. If she threatened you, why didn’t he call the police?
Or even better, talk to you about it!’
‘Emily. Not so loud.’ Alice turns her head. There’s a man
sitting alone at the next table. He’s staring down at his phone but he’s close enough to hear every word. She lowers her voice.
‘Maybe he just panicked. Or . . . I don’t know. Maybe he dumped me to protect me.’
Emily snorts into her hand. ‘Really?’
Indignation bubbles in Alice’s chest. ‘Lynne, help me out here.
You don’t think I’m being ridiculous, do you?’
‘No.’ Her best friend shakes her head. ‘I don’t, but honestly, Alice, I think you’re better off out of it. Someone didn’t want you around him and maybe it’s safer that you’re not.’
‘But what if he’s not safe?’
‘Then he should go to the police.’
‘He’s not your problem, Mum,’ Emily pipes up. ‘Not any
more.’
Alice reaches for her wine. They both have a point. She prob-
ably is safer without him. Whoever scratched her car hasn’t been in touch since. But it feels wrong, forgetting about Simon and carrying on like they’d never met.
‘Excuse me a minute.’ She pushes her chair away from the
table. ‘I’m just going to go to the loo.’
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night’s air. Alice pauses as she comes out from the loo, distracted by the laughter drifting up from below, the low rumble of a
man’s amusement and the high-pitched squeal of a woman having
fun. It reminds her of the time she had lunch with Simon in the cafe when the conversation naturally bounced between them as
though they’d known each other for years. It wasn’t like that
in the restaurant when she quizzed him about his ex-girlfriend and he hurried outside to take a call.
As more laughter creeps under the back door, curiosity
prompts her to turn the handle and step outside onto the narrow platform at the top of the metal stairs. It takes her eyes a moment to adjust to the dark but then she spots them, the couple on a bench beneath the only heater that’s not casting a hazy orange glow. They’re wrapped in each other, totally lost to the world, the blanket around their shoulders falling away as they kiss. She thinks of the way Simon smiled at her in the restaurant and the warmth of his coat against her fingers as she took his arm. She continues to stare, lost in the memory, as the couple break apart and the man reaches across the bench for a pack of cigarettes.
He holds one out to the woman, then pops one into his mouth
and sparks his lighter. Alice inhales sharply as his face is illu-minated. She takes a step back, catching her heel on the wooden door frame. As she overbalances she feels a hand in the centre of her back, stopping her fall.
‘I was wondering where you’d got to.’ There’s amusement in
her daughter’s voice. ‘I told Lynne I thought you’d probably
gone for a poo. Why are you outside? I thought you gave up
blocking her view.
‘Let’s go back in. It’s freezing out there.’
‘Mum, what are you doing? You look weird. What are you
hiding?’ As Emily pushes past, Alice watches warily as her
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daughter reaches the railings and looks down. She can’t see her expression but from the way her spine stiffens she knows she’s spotted the couple below.
‘What the fuck?’ Emily’s howl reverberates around the small
courtyard and then she’s off, heels clacking on the metal steps.
‘Emily, stop!’ Alice hurries after. ‘Emily! He’s not worth it.
Come back in!’
But her daughter’s already reached the bench where Adam has
cast off the blanket and is clambering to his feet. As she gets closer he holds out a hand to ward her off. ‘It’s not what you—’
Emily’s outstretched hand connects with the side of his head.
She hits him again, the blow glancing off his shoulder as she
tries to claw the nails of her other hand into his cheek.
‘Stop!’ Alice shouts as Adam’s shock wears off and he grips
Emily’s wrists. He holds her at arm’s length as she twists and writhes and kicks. Laila, standing to one side, watches with her hands cupped over her mouth.
‘Emily, stop it!’ Alice shouts but her daughter has given up
fighting and now she’s screaming obscenities into her
boyfriend’s face.
‘I can explain!’ Adam shouts back. ‘If you’d just fucking calm down.’
Alice steps towards him. ‘Don’t you swear at my daughter.
Get your hands off her. Now!’
There’s something in her tone that must remind him of his
own mum because he immediately lets go of Emily’s wrists and
steps away.
‘Take her home. She’s embarrassing herself.’
Alice snaps round at the sound of Laila’s voice but before she can respond, Emily launches herself across the courtyard. Alice throws herself at her daughter, wrapping her arms around her
waist and pulling her away before her outstretched hands can
tear clumps out of Laila’s long, black hair extensions.
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‘You’re a fucking bitch!’ Emily screams as Alice hauls her
away. ‘You’ll pay for this. I swear it. You’ll both pay for this.
You’re a pair of cheating, lying—’
‘Stop it!’ Alice hisses in her ear. ‘Don’t stoop to their level.
Walk away. You’re better than this.’
Her daughter continues to shout and scream as Alice marches
her up the stairs, twisting and gesturing and fighting every step they take. She’s still shouting when Alice pushes her towards
the door of the pub, but the moment it closes behind them she
howls and bursts into tears.
They half-guide, half-carry Emily down the street, Lynne on one side and Alice on the other. It breaks Alice’s heart, hearing her daughter sob so desperately. It makes her angry too, the callous way Adam spoke to her, even though he was in the wrong.
There’s a part of Alice that’s proud of Emily for reacting the way she did. Not of the screeching and swearing, but because
she let her anger erupt rather than holding it in. It couldn’t have been more different to her own reaction to Peter’s infidelity.
When he broke the news that he was moving out because he’d
met someone else she simply stared at him from the sofa, too
shocked to move and too numb to speak. She made her feelings
known later, ringing him up at all times of the day and night, telling him how much she hated him, demanding that he tell
her the name of the woman he’d left her for, or else crying and begging him to come back. Peter being Peter, he simply ignored her calls, relaying a request to stop through their daughter