Coming Home

‘Can we make more angels?’ Jadie asked me croakily as I wriggled onto the rug next to her.

‘Maybe after breakfast,’ I said distractedly.

I was worried about Vincent. Last night he had opened up for perhaps the first time since losing his child and being abandoned by his wife, and now he had disappeared. After two years of denying his grief, it had all come bubbling to the surface. His emotions must have been raw and overwhelming. I hoped he hadn’t done anything stupid.

‘I’ve had breakfast already,’ Jadie said. ‘I had peanut butter sandwiches.’

‘Oh, good,’ I tried to instil some cheer into my voice. ‘Did you save some for me?’

‘There’s cereal and milk on the kitchen table,’ Tara told me as she patted and rubbed Jadie’s extremities. ‘Help yourself.’

I headed for the kitchen, poured cereal into a bowl and sat looking at it despondently. Whether it was from the three-day-old head injury or the red wine I’d drunk the previous night I didn’t know, but I felt somewhat queasy. After a while I decided I may as well eat something and I added milk, which felt as cold in the jug as if it had come straight from the fridge.

I felt much better after the cereal, though a cup of hot tea or coffee would have been very welcome. As soon as I’d cleared away I hurried down the passage to Vincent’s office and peered in; I knew Tara had said she’d already checked, but I needed to see for myself that he wasn’t busying himself somewhere, too embarrassed about our nocturnal chat to see me. There was no sign of him. I looked into the boot room and the downstairs loo, but he wasn’t there either. Retracing my steps, I went into the icy-cold dining room but it looked unlived in, uninviting. Then I jogged up the stairs, trying to keep myself warm by moving quickly.

Starting at the end of the landing I worked my way back, hurrying up the uneven staircase that led into Tara’s attic room. I peered round the door at the empty room with its sloping ceiling and single bed, walked back down past my own room, the bathroom and Jadie’s room. Everywhere had a blue glow of light coming from the windows, a reflection of the thickly falling snow outside. At the door to Amber’s room, I paused and listened. This would be the obvious place for him to come if the grieving process had begun for him at last, and it was somewhere Tara might not have looked. Slowly I turned the door knob and poked my head into the room.

It was a pretty girly room, all decked out with pink hearts. The wallpaper was pink, the curtains were purple with pink heart shapes, the bed was tidily made up with a pink duvet and matching pillowcases with heart-shaped cushions strategically scattered. I noticed with a smile that even the white cupboards had pink hearts for door handles. There were soft toys on the bed and a little white dressing table with a pink cushioned stool. On the dressing table there were a couple of elastic hairbands with pink bobbles on them. Everything looked as if the room’s occupant was about to return at any minute; perhaps that was how it was meant to look, I thought sadly. Amber’s room had become a shrine.

But Vincent wasn’t in there and I began to feel afraid for him. He surely couldn’t have gone out in this weather; the snow would make any kind of journey virtually impossible. Pulling Amber’s door closed softly behind me, I crossed the landing to his bedroom. He wasn’t anywhere else, so he had to be in here, I reasoned. After knocking and receiving no reply, I inched the door open and stepped inside the red and cream tapestry-hung room. It was disappointingly empty. I checked round anyway, noting that the bed looked as though it hadn’t been slept in. I pushed open a door I hadn’t noticed before, which led to an ensuite bathroom housing a free-standing tub with brass fixtures and fittings and a shower unit in the corner with the curtain pulled tightly round it.

I stood for a moment surveying the closed shower curtain with a quaking heart. What if Vincent was lying in there…? I quashed the thought before it took shape and in a decisive move stepped forward and yanked the curtain back. The shower was empty.

‘Where are you, Vincent?’ I demanded of the echoing room. Turning on my heel I was about to leave the room, when I spotted the medicine cabinet door standing slightly ajar. I peered at the shelves containing toothpaste, mouthwash, a razor, a bottle of what looked like headache pills and a can of anti-perspirant deodorant. Anxious not to be found snooping in this most private of places, I pushed the cabinet door closed and was about to leave when on impulse I crossed to the walk-in closet. For a moment I simply stared at the tapestry wall hanging, but then I flung open the concealed door to reveal the contents of the couple’s wardrobe.