The Baby Question

In Hertfordshire?

He paced to the window, glowering out into the impenetrable blackness of the wet night. It was truly foul out there. What if she was lying somewhere hurt?

Oh, God. Panic surged through him, and he pulled on his dogwalking coat and some wellies and went out into the garden, noting as he did that her coat and boots were missing. He called her as he tromped over the sodden grass, scanning round with the torch he’d taken with him. It hardly penetrated the gloom, and he didn’t know where to start. The garden was more of a mini-wilderness, ten acres, many of them rough and wild and boggy, with lots of places where she could be lying out of sight.

The woodland? Oh, lord, the lake?

He crushed the panic and told himself not to over-react, and concentrated on calling the dog, over and over again, but there was nothing. After an hour he gave up and went back inside, ready to phone the police, and that was when he spotted the note.

It was stuck on the front of the fridge door, held by a magnet, and he pulled it off and opened the envelope with fingers numb with cold and wet.

‘I’ve gone away for a while. I need to think. Don’t worry, I’m fine. I’ll ring. Laurie. PS. I have the dog.’

Rob stared at the paper, stunned. Gone away? To think? Think? About what, for God’s sake?

The baby, he thought with a wave of sadness. The baby they couldn’t seem to have. Oh, Laurie.

A lump formed in his throat and he swallowed it, hard. Where had she gone? What was she doing? She shouldn’t be alone—

The phone rang, and he snatched it up and barked, ‘Hello?’

‘Rob, it’s me. I just got your message. I didn’t realise you were coming home yet.’

He stabbed a hand through his wet hair. ‘Where the hell are you?’ he snapped, his relief releasing his anger. ‘I’ve been worried sick. I’ve been out in the rain and the dark scouring the garden with a torch—I’ve only just found your note. How come you haven’t got the car—and what do you mean, think?’

‘I’ve got another car.’

‘What?’ He sat down abruptly, stunned. ‘What do you mean, you’ve got another car? That one’s almost new!’

‘I know. This is mine.’

Mine. Something about that word rang alarm bells in his head and he stared at the phone cautiously. ‘The other one’s yours.’

‘Not in the same way. I don’t want to talk about it. Anyway, I just wanted you to know I’m all right. I’ll be in touch.’ There was a soft click, and the burr of the dialling tone sounded in his ear.

‘Laurie? Laurie, damn you, don’t do this to me!’ he yelled, and slammed the phone down, frustrated by his impotence.

Where was she? What was she doing?

Thinking.

What the hell did that mean, when it was at home? He phoned her again, and bombarded her with text messages, but to no avail. He was met by a relentless silence that nearly drove him crazy.

He paced round all evening, throwing together a scratch meal of bacon and eggs—about the only thing he could cook—and channel-hopped for a while, but the television couldn’t hold his interest, so he had a hot shower and got ready for bed, but he was wide awake because it was still only five in the evening New York time, so he went into the study and went through some paperwork that was waiting for him.

And all the time he could see Laurie’s face, a pale, perfect oval framed by that glorious soft, thick, shiny hair the colour of dark, moist peat. Her eyes were hazel, but when she was angry they fired gold and green sparks, and when she was aroused they went a wonderful soft smudgy green, and her mouth would yield to his touch, her lips swelling slightly and becoming rosy from his kisses, and afterwards her smile would be gentle and mellow and loving—

He frowned. She hadn’t looked like that for a while. It had all lost its spontaneity, and the sparkle seemed to have gone out of their relationship.

What relationship? Apparently they didn’t have one any more, he thought bitterly, slamming down the report unread. Damn her, where was she?

He left the study, prowling round the house, his temper fraying at the edges. He made a drink—just tea, he’d had too much alcohol and coffee in the past few days and he was feeling jaded and rough around the edges.

If only he could sleep, but there was no way. Between Laurie and the jet lag, he was stuffed. Maybe a long, hot soak in the bath would help. He went upstairs, and as he turned off the landing light a chink of light under the attic door caught his eye.

Someone must have left the light on—Laurie, probably, searching for a suitcase. He opened the door at the bottom of the narrow little stairs and reached for the switch, but the stream of gold came from further up. He nearly didn’t bother, but something prompted him to go up.

There were three rooms up there, cluttered and untouched. The whole floor was filled with a load of old junk, really, things they’d bought and outgrown the need for, old family things they didn’t have the heart to throw out. He hadn’t been up here in months—years, probably. He never needed to.

But someone had, because everything had been cleared out of one of the rooms, and it was almost empty.

Empty, except for a desk, a chair, a filing cabinet and a telephone—and a dangling flex with a bare, glowing bulb on the end.

He stared round, utterly confused, and slowly crossed to the chair, running his fingers thoughtfully over the back of it. It was his old desk chair, too upright to sit at for long, but ideal for working at the computer. Better than the one he had now, in fact, although not as good looking.

Still, that wasn’t everything.

He looked around at the room, puzzled. It looked like an empty office after a business had moved out. Odd scraps of paper here and there, barren and lifeless, the heart gone out of it.

He sat down and went through the desk drawers, but they were empty. The filing cabinet?

Also empty. He checked the bin, but all there was in it was a bit of stamp edging and an old envelope with a frank mark on it—a frank of a firm in Scotland.

William Guthrie Estate Agents, Inverness.

Estate agents? Why was she corresponding with estate agents?

Unless it was a clue to her whereabouts—

He tore the place apart, searching every nook and cranny again, and then pulled the desk out from the wall. Nothing. Then, behind the filing cabinet, he saw a sheet of paper.

His hand wouldn’t fit, so he grasped the cabinet and shifted it, then plucked the paper from its hiding place. It was dusty and wrinkled, handwritten, a mass of jottings and calculations of figures. Figures that looked like the turnover of a business. Figures that made him blink.

Laurie’s business?

Doing what? Maybe she was working as a homefinder? Hence the letter from the estate agents. No. She’d never earn that much.

He glanced at the back of the desk, and there, suspended halfway down the back of it, hanging by a corner, was a yellow sticky note. He peeled it off, and sat down on the desk thoughtfully.

William Guthrie, it read, and a number, and jotted below were the words ‘Little Gluich’.

A house? Had she for God’s sake bought a house in Inverness?

With what?

He looked again at the figures on the sheet of paper, and shook his head slowly. With that, maybe. With her apparently very healthy income. Unless she was renting.

He looked at his watch. Ten minutes past midnight. Almost nine hours to kill before he could reasonably ring the estate agents and find out what the hell was going on.