Behind Closed Doors (27 page)

Surprised, and faintly shocked, Andee said, ‘Luke’s never told me that.’

‘No? I thought he might have.’

‘Your dad shouldn’t have tried to create a division between you.’

‘I’d already done it,’ he reminded her. ‘Although I didn’t realise it straight away. I guess he’s been bottling things up for a while . . .’

‘That surely can’t be a surprise.’

He shook his head. ‘Not really, I guess I just haven’t allowed myself to see it.’

She frowned. ‘You mean you’ve never stopped to consider how lonely he is without you? You used to do everything, go everywhere together, then suddenly you weren’t there any more.’

‘I never stopped seeing him,’ he protested. ‘Or Alayna. Even when I’m away I’m always at the end of a phone . . .’

‘You don’t have to tell me what I already know, you just have to accept that the day you decided you didn’t want to live with me any more you weren’t only hurting and rejecting me, you were doing the same to them. Think how you’d have reacted if your father had walked out on your mother. Luke and Alayna are naturally protective of me, especially Luke. He sees it as his role, now you’ve gone, to be strong for me, and it shouldn’t be that way. He should be focusing on his own life, thinking about his exams, uni, girlfriends, his sports, not having to worry about me, or whether you’re going to be in touch.’

He was clearly taking everything in. ‘I get that,’ he told her, ‘and I promise you, I want to change it, I just don’t know how.’

Being unused to seeing him at a loss, she found herself feeling almost sorry for him. ‘Then work it out,’ she said firmly. ‘He’s your son. He needs you to explain why you did, what you did, so that he can at least try to understand it and move on.’

‘And how is telling him I felt stifled, that I was losing myself, that I didn’t want to live the way I was any more supposed to make him feel better?’

Wondering if he realised how hurtful his words were for her, she replied, ‘You need to find a way of explaining it that
will
make him feel better. I can’t tell you what to say, because I’m not the one who felt they had to get out of our relationship.’

Swallowing dryly he picked up his beer and stared at it hard, apparently frozen in his thoughts, maybe his guilt, before putting the glass down again. With a hint of irony in his tone, he said, ‘To think I’ve been trying to get you to sit down and talk to me for over a year. If I’d known it was going to go like this . . .’

‘Oh come on, Martin, what did you expect? It’s not just about us, you know it’s about the children too, and as far as I’m concerned they matter far more.’

‘If that’s true, then how come it’s taken you so long to agree to see me?’

Flushing angrily, she retorted, ‘Is that your way of trying to say the children don’t matter to me?’

‘Of course not, but shutting me out, refusing to let me near you, was hardly in their best interests, was it?’

Smarting with the truth of that, she said, ‘You’d hurt me enough. I didn’t want to go through any more, and nor did I want them to see me going through it. Anyway, we’re talking now. It’s just a shame it took your father’s death to make it happen.’

‘Meaning you wouldn’t be here now if you weren’t feeling sorry for me?’

‘Not sorry for you, sad for your loss, though you’re right, if it weren’t for that I probably wouldn’t have come.’

He arched an eyebrow. ‘Well, at least you’re honest.’

Taking a sip of her drink she said, ‘It would be nice to know that you feel at least some regret for what you did.’

‘Of course I regret it,’ he cried. ‘It was never my intention to hurt you, or the children, it was just that when the contract came up I saw how desperate I was to get away. I hadn’t realised until then just how much everything had been piling in on me . . . No, listen,’ he insisted as she made to interrupt, ‘I’ve tried telling you this before, but you’ve never wanted to hear it. You don’t know what it’s like to be a stay-at-home parent, because it’s not something you’ve ever done. If it were, you’d have a better understanding of how bloody soul-destroying it can be at times, not because you don’t love your kids, but because you almost stop existing outside of their needs . . .’

‘And yet you managed to build up a very successful business while you were not existing, and somehow succeeded in keeping your frustrations to yourself, because I don’t recall you ever discussing them with me.’

‘Oh believe me, I tried, but you’d always find something else to do, or to talk about, as if the minutiae of my world, my needs couldn’t possibly compare to the larger issues you were dealing with outside the home.’

Silenced by that, it took her a moment to say, ‘I never felt that way, ever. In fact, I used to take time off when you insisted . . .’

‘You took hours off, Andee, and maybe a week here in Kesterly before rushing back to London to solve the next case. And do you know what really got to me about it all? It wasn’t only that you’d never actually wanted to join the police in the first place, though that was bad enough, it was how you were behaving like your own parents, shipping the kids off for the summer, focusing on your work, without seeming to realise that you were putting
our
children in danger of going the same way as your sister.’

Andee’s face paled. ‘If that’s the rubbish you’ve been telling yourself to try to excuse walking out on us, then you appal me,’ she informed him furiously. ‘To use Penny’s disappearance that way . . . Jesus, I can’t believe you even thought it, never mind said it.’

‘I thought it, and said it, because it’s true. You were doing everything your parents had done, and I wasn’t prepared to see our children go the same way.’

‘So you saved them by walking out and leaving them? Yes, that makes sense . . .’

‘I thought, if I went, you wouldn’t have a choice, you’d have to put them first, but what did you do? You got your cousin Frank and his wife to take over, and then your mother.’

‘They were thirteen and fifteen. How the hell was I supposed to cope on my own when I have a full-time job?’

‘You could have given up work. I was earning enough, I’d have given you anything you asked for, but oh no, you were too damned proud to take anything from me. You were earning your own money and as long as you could do that you could carry on putting your career ahead of your children . . .’

‘That is
not
true. Nothing has ever mattered more to me than them . . .’

‘But you weren’t showing it, you weren’t even acting it . . .’

‘So how come I have such a great relationship with them now? And if you’re trying to suggest for a single moment that either of them could at any time sink into the kind of depression Penny did without me noticing, then you are seriously deluded. No, I’m sorry Martin, you can try all you like to make me responsible for what you did, but in the end
you
are the one who left, not me.’

Since he could hardly refute that, and because he never had been able to argue for long, he swallowed whatever he was going to say next and sighed wearily. ‘I really didn’t want this to happen,’ he said, ‘but at the same time I guess it was inevitable, and of course, you’re right, I’m the one who’s really screwed up.’

Reminded of how gifted he was at defusing a situation, of removing the sting before it went too deep, she found herself thinking that this was one of the things she missed most about him. He’d never been able to cope with bad feeling, hadn’t even experienced a grudge that she knew of, though he was capable of regretting his mistakes – and was even big enough to own up to them.

Maybe she ought to try doing the same.

‘So where do we go from here?’ she asked, not quite able to meet his eyes.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Obviously I have a lot of ground to make up with Luke.’ He regarded her anxiously. ‘Alayna’s OK, is she? Please tell me there’s not something I’m missing . . .’

‘She seems fine,’ she interrupted.
Apart from being mad keen for us to get back together
, but she certainly wasn’t going to say that. ‘Something she is finding quite difficult,’ she said cautiously, ‘is Brigitte being here.’

He nodded slowly, clearly accepting that.

Though she really didn’t want to know, she found herself asking, ‘How long have you been together?’

Seeming not to hear the question, he said, ‘She understands that it wouldn’t be right for her to come to the funeral. She didn’t know Dad, has barely met Mum and the kids . . .’

‘Is it serious between you?’ she interrupted, aware of how tense she’d become.

‘Mum wants us all to sit together on the day,’ he said, again as though he hadn’t heard the question, ‘as a family. Are you OK with that?’

‘Of course,’ she agreed.

Reaching for her hand, he entwined their fingers and smiled ironically into her eyes. She wondered what was going through his mind, what he might be about to confide, or ask, and almost smiled when all he said was, ‘Do you want to eat here, in the bar, or shall we go through to the restaurant? Apparently there’s a band playing in the other room tonight, so we’ve been advised to get our orders in early.’

A while later, with their food and half a bottle of wine between them, she was aware of falling prey to another of his natural gifts. He was so skilled at putting people at their ease, being a great listener, always seeming to know the right responses, at the same time as being able to make someone laugh, or feel good about themselves or their opinions. Unless he disagreed, of course, but even then he was never combative or pig-headed, merely persuasive, sometimes insistent, though not to a point where he felt he had to raise his voice or hit back by causing unnecessary offence. In fact there were times when his calmness in the face of her frustration had driven her to start hurling things at him, which had invariably made him laugh.

‘What are you smiling at?’ he asked, as their plates were cleared.

‘Was I?’ she countered.

He nodded.

She shrugged, in an effort to make her comment seem offhand. ‘I guess I was just thinking about how good we were together at times. Very different in many ways, but somehow we used to . . .’ She shrugged again. ‘I don’t know,
fit
I suppose. Or I thought so, anyway.’

‘Listen,’ he said softly, ‘I didn’t mean to make it sound all bad earlier, because I swear, it was never that. We had some really good times, the best, and to go with all our wonderful memories we have two gorgeous kids we can feel damned proud of.’

Finding her thoughts straying to Sophie whose family had been torn apart by her mother’s death, and by her disappearance, she was about to voice them when she remembered his accusation. She focused too much on her job.

With the sardonic tone she knew well, he told her, ‘You can’t hide it from me, and you’re right to be thinking of her. She doesn’t stop mattering because you’re out for dinner, or at any other time. So how’s the search going?’

She regarded him anxiously, needing to be sure he wanted to hear it before she launched into a detailed account of the past week. This was something else she missed about him, the way he used to listen quietly, patiently, as she talked her way through a case, sometimes nodding his understanding, or frowning his confusion, and more often than not helping her to find another perspective, or even an answer that had become masked by a forest of conflicting information.

It didn’t happen this evening, nor did she tell him about the unease that had overcome her during the press conference. Or had it happened afterwards? She really couldn’t be sure. She only knew that it hadn’t gone away.

‘So do you think this Polish guy knows where she is?’ he asked as they reached her car.

Putting aside her misgivings, she said, ‘I think there’s a good chance he knows something.’

‘And what about this Perkins bloke?’

‘I’m not sure how involved he is, but something’s going on behind the scenes at that campsite, I’m convinced of that.’

He nodded pensively. ‘If she’s got her computer and her phone,’ he said, ‘then you have to wonder why she’s stopped making contact.’

‘It’s a question we’re constantly asking ourselves, and the answer has to be that she’s managed to lose them, or someone’s taken them from her.’

‘Or she didn’t take them at all.’

She frowned. ‘But we know that she did.’ She regarded him carefully. ‘Are you thinking her parents lied about that?’

He shrugged. ‘I was just trying to see it another way, but I guess we know she did take the phone because she texted – and I’d say my money’s on the Sikora connection.’

Sighing, she looked into his eyes as she said, ‘Sorry, I’m making it all about me and my work again.’

He simply raised his eyebrows.

She took a breath and tried to think what to say next, but her thoughts were all tangled up in how closely they were standing together, how worried she was becoming about this case, and things she could hardly give voice to in the confusion. ‘You didn’t answer me earlier,’ she began, and stopped as he tilted her mouth to his.

His kiss was so gentle and unexpected that she barely knew how to respond. ‘What did you ask me earlier?’ he murmured.

‘I . . . I was wondering how serious it is with Brigitte.’

Sighing softly, he dropped his forehead against hers as he said, ‘Now isn’t the time to get into it.’

‘Well, it either is serious or isn’t.’

‘OK, she wants to get married and . . .’

Andee pulled away, so sharply that she almost lost her balance. ‘If it’s that serious,’ she snapped, feeling as though she’d been struck, ‘I have to wonder what she’d make of what just happened. I should have known . . .’

‘Andrea, I tried to tell you now wasn’t a good time . . .’

‘Actually, there’s no good time to break it to me that you’re getting married when you’d never marry me . . .’

‘Will you listen,’ he cried as she tore open her car door.

‘No thanks, I’ve heard everything I need to for tonight. And for your information, I’ve met someone else too,’ and slamming the car door she started the engine.

As she reversed out of her space he simply stood looking down at her. She couldn’t look back, couldn’t bear him to see how angry and foolish she felt, so keeping her eyes straight ahead she put the car into gear and drove away.