Stage Fright (16 page)

‘Cass?' There was a note of pleading in Kevin's voice. ‘You would say, wouldn't you, it you had any idea at all why Melissa's left or where she's gone?'

‘Of course I would. But honestly, Kevin, I don't have a clue.'

He said, ‘I just thought she might have confided in you.' He looked as if he was about to cry.

I shook my head. ‘I wish she had.'

Agnes had stopping crying, and was trying to stick her hand in Kevin's mouth. He took her hand away.

‘You know, looking back. I think perhaps she hadn't been herself since the baby was born. I'm blaming myself for not taking more notice. I wasn't always as attentive as I might have been. If I hadn't been so busy with the play…'

There were tears in his eyes. I felt tears of sympathy welling up in mine. I didn't know what to say and, God, I was so tired. A wave of fatigue swept over me. I could have put my head on the table and fallen asleep right there and then.

The kettle clicked off. I got up and moved around the kitchen in slow motion. Find jug, yes, water into jug, yes, bottle into jug … Agnes began bawling again. I held out my arms for her and Kevin handed her over. I gave her my finger to suck and for a little while there was silence. I leaned back against the work surface. The next moment Agnes was yelling again. My eyelids shot up and I realized that I had actually fallen asleep for a few seconds with the baby in my arms.

‘I've got to sit down,' I said. ‘I'm falling asleep on my feet. Now I know how they felt in those dance marathons in the twenties.'

Kevin shook out a few drops from the bottle on to the back of his hand. ‘It's ready anyway,' he said.

I went into the sitting-room and sat down on the sofa with Agnes in the crook of my arm and offered her the bottle. Kevin sat down in a chair opposite. At first, the baby sucked greedily on the teat, but after a few moments she began to whimper. She pushed the bottle away and started to cry again, this time in a monotonous, hopeless wail, even more nerve-shredding than before. Upstairs Grace had woken up. She began to yell and the two shrill voices wove in and out of each other in a counterpoint of misery.

I got up and put Agnes in Kevin's arms.

‘Here, walk up and down with her. Maybe that'll help.'

I went upstairs. As soon as I lifted Grace out of the cot, she clutched me and nuzzled her face into my breast. She wanted feeding again. I looked round for somewhere to sit down. There was just the cot, a chest of drawers and a small table. I took her next door and sat on Kevin and Melissa's bed. The noise downstairs broke off briefly. I unbuttoned my shirt and opened my bra. Grace latched on to my breast. I looked up to see Kevin standing in the doorway. Our eyes met and he looked away. Agnes was still crying, but as soon as she saw me, she stretched her arms out towards me.

He said, ‘She wants her mother.'

‘Give her to me.'

He hesitated. Then taking care not to look directly at me, he placed Agnes by my side. He turned and went downstairs.

I offered Agnes my other breast. She latched on eagerly and started to suck.

Silence settled over the house.

Chapter Ten

J
OE
leaned towards me and pressed his lips to mine. He drew back a little to allow me to respond. Without hesitating I kissed him back. The kiss was gentle and romantic, scarcely erotic at all. We were somewhere outdoors and it was sunny. I was floating in a haze of warmth and light. And now something wasn't quite right. The light was too strong. I was wincing and blinking. A dazzling shaft of light had fallen over my face. I hadn't quite closed the curtains the night before, that was the problem. I shifted my head on the pillow. I was in bed, and Joe had gone. I wanted to sink back into the dream, but it was too late. Where was I? Not at home. The light was coming from the wrong side. So where was I? At Stephen's flat? At my mother's? I even wondered if I was back in my old childhood home in York. Then the warmth and weight of Grace against my side reminded me that I was a mother myself now. There seemed to be something on the other side as well. Did I have two babies, then? It all came back to me. I was lying fully clothed on Melissa and Kevin's bed. My shirt was undone, but someone – presumably Kevin – had covered me with the duvet and there was a baby tucked in on each side.

I looked at the bedside clock. Seven o'clock. Amazing that they'd both slept through. Grace was making little snuffling noises, clenching and unclenching her fists. Agnes was still sound asleep. When I stroked her face, she didn't stir. I disengaged myself from the pair of them and crawled down the middle of the bed. I pulled the curtains back and looked out of the window. It was another peerless August day.

I had that clammy uncomfortable feeling that comes from sleeping in your clothes and I smelt of sweat and milk. When I ran my hands through my hair it felt sticky. I went into the bathroom, stripped to the waist and had a good wash. I eyed my dirty shirt with distaste. I really didn't want to put it back on. Should I borrow one of Melissa's? It didn't seem quite right somehow, but borrowing one of Kevin's would be even worse. I'd feel like someone in a Whitehall farce. Most of the shirts in her wardrobe were too small for me, but I picked out a baggy candy-striped one that did just fit. Under the circumstances I didn't think Melissa would mind.

Downstairs in the sitting-room, a dented pillow on the sofa told me where Kevin had spent the night. But where was he now? He wouldn't have gone off to the theatre without letting me know. I looked out of the window in the front door. The hire car had gone. I was looking around for a note when I was startled by the phone ringing. I walked over to where it stood on the wooden chest next to the sculpture of the woman and child. I was reluctant to pick it up. I felt like an intruder alone here so early in the morning.
Who's been sleeping in my bed. Who's been wearing my shirt? And now who's answering my phone?
But of course I had to do it. It might be news of Melissa – or even Melissa herself.

‘Hello,' I said.

‘Hello? Who is that?'

Just for a second, before I caught the slight Australian accent, I thought the woman who replied
was
Melissa, and my heart lurched.

‘This is Cassandra James. I'm one of Melissa's friends.'

‘Oh, Cassandra. Melissa's told me all about you. I'm Maire, her sister. I'm ringing from Canberra?' She spoke with that rising inflection that makes every statement sound like a question.

‘Oh, yes, hello.'

‘I've just got in from work. You're ten hours behind us. I guess there's no more news of Melissa or Kevin would have left a message on the machine?'

‘I'm afraid there isn't, no.' I heard a sound of a car crunching over the gravel outside.

‘Oh, my God, I just can't tell you how worried I am. I just wish I could get on a flight today and come straight over. Guess I'll do that if there's no news soon. How's Agnes? That poor kid's on my mind the whole time.'

There was the slamming of a car door.

‘Well, Kevin was worried about her last night. She was missing her mother. Anyway, I stayed to look after her.'

‘Bless you. You've a daughter the same age, is that right? Melissa mentioned that.'

‘Yes. Look,' I said. ‘I know you must be terribly worried, but Stan and I – Stan's the stage-manager – we're keeping an eye on Agnes.'

The front door swung open. Kevin appeared with a sheaf of newspapers in his hand.

‘Kevin's just coming in if you want to speak to him. Hold on.' I held out the receiver. ‘Melissa's sister.'

Kevin looked rough. His chin was dark with stubble and his hair was lank and stringy. He dumped the papers on the sofa and took the phone from me. A copy of the papers slithered to the floor. As I bent down to pick it up, a huge headline caught my eye. MISSING ACTRESS it screamed.

Behind me, Kevin was saying: ‘It's splashed all over the newspapers.'

I sat down on the sofa and skimmed the article: ‘Missing since Wednesday … acclaimed classical actress … married to Kevin Kingleigh, star of
Half-Way to Paradise
 … blonde 32-year-old … has abandoned six-month old Agnes.' There was a highly coloured account of how I had broken into Journey's End.

‘Yes, yes, of course, as soon as I hear anything myself,' Kevin snapped. He put the phone down without saying goodbye. He turned to me. ‘Could do without her on my case.'

I was surprised by the irritation in his voice.

‘She's bound to he worried.'

‘Oh, I know,' he said wearily. ‘But she made it bloody obvious that she thinks I must be to blame somehow. We've never really got on.' He swept the newspapers off the sofa and sat down next to me. ‘These fucking newspapers. That's what has really upset me.'

‘But – isn't it a good thing, really?' I said. ‘That it's in the papers. Someone might remember seeing her. Or she might see the headlines herself and realize how worried we all are…'

Upstairs a baby began to cry. It was Grace. I got to my feet. Agnes began to cry too on a slightly higher note.

‘The dawn chorus,' I said. ‘Come on, we'd better deal with them.'

Kevin said, ‘You're right about the publicity. Of course you are. But somehow this makes it all seem so real, you know? And when it's all over the papers there's no going back, is there.'

*   *   *

I thought about that as I stood by the window in Agnes's room, holding Grace up so that she could look out. It hadn't occurred to me the newspapers might make it harder for Melissa to come home. What had Thomas Wolfe said?
You can never go home again.
And in a way he was right, wasn't he? The home Melissa came back to wouldn't be the one she had left and the newspaper coverage could increase the gulf between the two. Seeing what she had done in cold print might make it seem more final and dramatic. And it would never be forgotten: whenever a journalist turned up the files to do a lazy scissors-and-paste job on Melissa – or Kevin – the story would come up again.

I turned from the window. Kevin fastened the tabs on Agnes's nappy and straightened up.

‘She's too young to find this out,' he said.

‘How do you mean?'

‘What life's really like. That you're never safe, not really. You know, some people manage to get through their entire life and they never realize that. Not until the end anyway.'

I knew exactly what he meant, but all the same …

‘I don't think Agnes really understands that Melissa has disappeared. They say that babies are about six months old before they realize that it isn't a new mother who appears every day. So if Melissa seemed to disappear every time she left Agnes, this might not be much different.'

Kevin lifted Agnes up and swung her gently with his hands under her arms. She chortled and waved her hands about.

‘What about last night?' he said. ‘Agnes was missing her mother then, wasn't she?'

‘Perhaps she was just missing the breast. She fell asleep when I'd fed her.'

Kevin looked dubious and I wasn't convinced myself. Did Grace really forget about me when I was out of sight? I didn't believe it for a moment. To hell with the baby books.

‘Anyway,' I said, ‘I'm sure Agnes doesn't know what's happened. And perhaps she won't have to know. Melissa could show up any moment. I mean, thousands of people go missing every year and most of them turn up again, don't they?'

‘Tim Fisher told me that two hundred thousand people go missing every year and all except three thousand come home in a few days.'

We contemplated that fact.

Kevin said, ‘Somehow, I can't quite get a handle on that.'

I knew what he meant. On the one hand the odds seemed almost to guarantee that Melissa would be back in a day or two. On the other, 3000 seemed an enormous number: it was enough to fill the Everyman theatre three times over. I saw row after row, tier after tier, of blank faces …

The doorbell rang.

Kevin froze with Agnes held up in the air and we stared at each other. The window looked out on the other side from the drive so we hadn't heard anyone driving up.

Then he put Agnes in her cot and made for the stairs.

‘I hope that's not the bloody press,' he said.

I followed more slowly with Grace in my arms and was just at the bend in the stairs as Kevin opened the door. I stood and watched. Outside were two strangers: a tall thin man and a woman with fairish gingery hair. I thought Kevin might be right, but then it struck me that the suit the man was wearing and the woman's jacket and skirt weren't quite right for journalists.

The man unfolded his wallet and showed something to Kevin.

‘Detective Sergeant Michael Vickers,' he said, ‘and this is Constable Wendy Pritchard, from Cambridge CID.'

‘What's happened?' Kevin asked.

‘Can we come in, Mr Kingleigh?' His voice was slow and deep, making everything he said seem deliberate and considered.

‘But why? What is it? What's going on? Where's Tim Fisher?' When Vickers didn't reply, Kevin looked at the woman for a response. She said nothing. My own feeling of foreboding increased.

‘If we could come in…' Vickers repeated.

Kevin stood back and they filed in past him. They had their backs to the stairs and didn't seem to have noticed me.

Vickers said, ‘We've found your wife's car, Mr Kingleigh.'

‘You've found the car? But then where's Melissa?' Kevin's voice was hoarse. Was he wondering – like me – if they had come to announce the discovery of a body?

‘We're hoping you can help us there,' Vickers went on.

‘Me? But – where did you find the car?'

‘Oglander Road.'

Kevin looked baffled. ‘But –
where?
'