Down to Earth

As soon as she closed the door behind her, I dialled Calum’s number. He answered on the second ring and I felt my eyes tearing up at the sound of his voice. I swallowed and tried to make my voice sound matter-of-fact. ‘Calum, it’s me, Michaela.’

‘What do you want?’ I could hear the weariness in his voice.

‘I wanted to say sorry for what happened today. I told them you hadn’t done anything wrong.’

‘Well, we’re home now and Abbey’s sleeping. Where are you?’

‘I’m still at this house they’ve taken me to. I was wondering what you did with all my things. I don’t have any clothes or anything.’

There was a long silence at the end of the line and for a moment I thought we’d been cut off. ‘Calum?’

‘Yes, I’m here. I packed everything up and took it to your parents about a year after you vanished … when it became obvious you weren’t coming back.’

‘Everything?’

‘Yes.’

So he’d given up on me after a year. I felt a chill run through me. When I’d moved into his home six months ago his wife had been dead less than two years, but there had been no possessions of hers lying about, no photos or mementoes of any kind, no forgotten clothes lying hidden at the back of the wardrobe. It was as if he had erased her memory completely from his and Abbey’s lives.

We had never talked about her much. After him initially telling me he was a widower, Grace’s name had hardly been mentioned again and I realised that I had been grateful for that. Now it suddenly seemed like a betrayal. It was as if the years they had spent together meant nothing to him, not even worth an occasional thought. I realised with a shudder that to Calum it was as if she had never existed. Now he was doing the same to me.

I gave myself a mental shake. He wasn’t going to get away with sidelining me that easily. ‘Do you know what happened to my things when Mum went into the home?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Thanks a lot, Calum.’

‘Well, what did you expect?’ His voice was suddenly angry. ‘You weren’t here, Michaela. You weren’t here to see Abbey grow up, you left her motherless and grieving. And you left me to cope on my own!’

I wondered if it was me he was angry with, or Grace, or both.

‘I told you I didn’t leave you on purpose. I wouldn’t have hurt you or Abbey for the world.’

‘That’s what Grace said during those few hours when she was in the emergency room after the accident,’ he said bitterly. ‘She said she didn’t want to leave us, but she did. And so did you!’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I, Michaela. I had hoped we’d grow old together, but it was not to be, was it? Look, I hope you find your things. I hope everything works out for you, really.’

It was a dismissal; he wasn’t going to help me. I felt bereft. Yesterday morning we had been a happy couple chugging along with our daily lives, today we were strangers. ‘At least tell me where my mother is. Which nursing home is she in?’

He gave me the address and I scribbled it down on a notepad on the doctor’s desk. ‘Thanks,’ I paused but he said nothing more. ‘Goodbye then, Calum.’

‘Goodbye, Michaela.’

It was another full hour before I was able to leave the police house. Dr Patel had returned my clothes and boots, for some reason minus the socks, given me the address of a women’s refuge where I might stay and enough money to catch a bus and train back to Leatherhead, where my mother was apparently ensconced in a secure nursing home called ‘AcornLodge’.

As I stood at the bus stop shivering in the dull light of a chilly late autumn afternoon, I had the strangest, fleeting feeling of freedom. It could have been scary, standing there owning only the clothes on my back, with no bag, no possessions, no money or identification and my bare feet stuffed into hard brown boots. Cars sped by, their occupants intent on the journey ahead of them, like shoals of fish in an endless silver stream. I felt strangely out of sync with everything, outside of it all. I wanted to run wildly up and down the grass verge screaming my frustration to the sky, but I had the strangest sensation that if I did no one would even see me.

Chapter Fourteen (#ulink_4e18d067-fe5a-5e09-b560-8bcfeae8b6e1)

A black car drew up at the kerb next to the bus stop and I glanced over to see Matt sitting in the driver’s seat. He rolled the window down and grinned at me.

‘Need a lift?’

I found myself smiling back. ‘You’re still speaking to me then?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

I edged over to the car and saw Kevin watching me from the back seat. ‘A small matter of being incarcerated in a police interview room for most of the day, perhaps,’ I suggested.

‘Just like old times,’ he said flippantly. ‘It took me back six years. Only the interview rooms have been repainted and the coffee is better.’

‘I’m really sorry.’

I was sorry and yet I wasn’t. The relief I felt at Matt’s appearance was palpable. The feelings of being so completely alone and at odds with the rest of the planet had melted away as soon as I’d seen him. I’d felt the same when he’d come for me in the pub, I realised. He was the only one with the possible exception of Kevin, who wasn’t treating me with hostility and suspicion. And just like the previous night when I’d insisted on sharing his bed, I felt an overwhelming desire to connect physically with him, as though he might be able to anchor me securely to the world.

Kevin ran his window down and stuck his head out. ‘Are you getting in, or what?’

I realised they had been waiting for me. Kevin had apparently even left the front seat vacant, so I scurried round to the passenger side and slid onto the cream, leather upholstery.

‘Where to, Milady?’

‘I was going to find my mother. She’s in a nursing home – but you knew that didn’t you?’

Matt nodded. ‘I thought you had enough to cope with this morning, without us telling you about your parents.’

I read out the address of the nursing home and swivelled to look at his profile as we headed back towards Leatherhead. ‘How come you know so much about me and my family? I understand that you were sucked into the aftermath of what happened to me all those years ago, but my father died a whole two years later and my mother went into a home some time after that. After the police released you, why didn’t you simply put it all behind you?’

‘I told you. I felt responsible for you. What happened to you seemed like my fault. I convinced you to jump, I asked you to put your trust in me and promised you’d be OK. When you vanished I felt like I’d failed you. Kevin and I have considered every possible scenario for your disappearance, including keeping watch on what was happening to the people in your life.’

It made sense to me. But DI Smith’s voice echoed in my head. ‘An unhealthy interest, an obsessive amount of documentation …’

‘I still don’t understand why.’

Matt sighed. ‘It isn’t every day something inexplicable happens. Maybe I just needed an explanation as to where and why you vanished, to make my own life worth living. It seemed a scandal that you had your whole life ahead of you and the police gave up with the investigation.’

‘The trouble with the police,’ Kevin put in from behind me, ‘is that they have no imagination. They deal in the here and now and what’s right in front of them. Lateral thinking is beyond them.’

I watched the imposing rise of Box Hill looming against the darkening skyline on our right, and settled more comfortably in my seat. The two of them sounded completely nuts, yet however crazy it was, I felt increasingly relaxed in their company. On the pretext of watching the shadowy scenery, I studied Matt’s profile and resisted the urge to reach out and brush my fingers along his jaw. Glancing in the mirror I realised that while I’d been watching Matt, Kevin had been watching me. What was it with these two, I asked myself?

The nursing home was in a big old house on the corner of a large plot behind a church. Matt drew the car into the kerb and turned off the engine. ‘We’ll wait right here for you.’

I paused as I climbed out of the car, trying to keep the doubt out of my voice, ‘I’m not keeping you from work or anything, am I?’

Matt shrugged. ‘I don’t have a flight for a few days and Kevin’s between trouble-shooting jobs.’

Hesitating with one foot on the kerb and the other in the car, I stared at him in surprise, ‘Flight? Trouble-shooting? What do you do?’