Cath Staincliffe - Make Believe

She didn’t like the way her mind was working. Perhaps it was a distraction, a defensive thing, if she was fretting over Clive it diverted her from facing the probable truth about Sammy. That he was dead. That he was never coming back. He would never need new shoes again. She would never hold him in her arms again.

Clive came in then. ‘I’m going up,’ he said quietly. ‘You want anything?’

She shook her head.

‘Sue said she’d sort out some shopping tomorrow, should be back here mid-morning.’

Like I care , Claire thought. Then felt uncharitable as tears burnt her eyes. Sue was only trying to support them and Clive was just passing on the message. ‘ OK,’ she said.

He made no move to touch her, to give her a goodnight kiss but turned and went. Just as well, really, she would only have rebuffed him. Her body language communicated what she’d not been able to articulate, that she mistrusted him.

She listened as Clive made his way upstairs. She heard the creak of the floor in their bedroom above.

I can check, she thought, put an end to all these stupid fantasies and then concentrate on Sammy, on what really matters. Probably find out I’m wrong, that Clive was doing exactly what he said he was and this is just him knocked sideways by the abduction. Easy enough to look. It had been wet for weeks before that Saturday. One reason why the park had been so busy, the fine weather was a relief. It had rained again since, the good spell only lasted a couple of days. People were talking about the wettest spring on record. Where had Sammy been then? When the rain came back? All those days since? Wet and cold, somewhere? Hungry? Or by then had he-

She wrenched her train of thought back to Clive. The ground would have been waterlogged, wouldn’t it? He’d put dubbing on his boots the day before, she knew because Sammy had been asking a stream of questions: what was it, why, could he have some on his shoes?

Claire listened again for any movement upstairs and then, satisfied, got to her feet. She felt hollow and shaky, as though she had flu. She went through to the utility room at the back of the house and switched on the light, pausing again and listening. No sound from above.

His boots were on the bottom of the rack. She lifted them, they were heavier than she expected. She turned them over. No mud in the cleats, nothing. She examined the uppers, a uniform dull sheen on the brown leather from the dubbing. No new cuts or scrapes, no smears of dirt.

Her stomach dropped and a clammy sweat erupted all over her skin. It doesn’t prove anything, she tried to tell herself. But a voice was clamouring in her head: he’s lying, you know he’s lying.

Was he? Perhaps he’d taken a route that was paved, avoided the boggy parts and the rough tracks that criss-crossed the great peak. But she knew herself from walking there with him how few sections were paved. Any halfway decent walk meant navigating peat bogs and gullies, fording streams and tramping through heather and bracken.

She put the boots back. His Barbour jacket was hanging on the pegs. Her hands trembling she felt in the pockets. A tissue in the left, a piece of paper in the right. Folded. She opened it out. A flyer, and a parking ticket tucked inside. The leaflet read, Sports Bonanza. Sport City. All welcome. She was about to dismiss it as the sort of thing left on the car under the windscreen wiper, until she noticed the date. Saturday April 19th.

The same date on the parking ticket.

She felt her heart kick and skip a beat.

April 19th. Sport City.

She couldn’t bear to think what this meant beyond knowing that Clive had lied. Oh God. She perched on the buffet in the corner, shivering, her pulse galloping. She stared at Clive’s jacket, at her own hanging beside it, at the lower row of pegs for Sammy’s things. Her eyes blurred with tears.

Why would he lie?

She would tell the police. She had to. For Sammy.

Michael, her eldest son, had agreed to feed the kids and for that Janine was so grateful. She would clear up, couldn’t expect him to do that as well. Vicky, the nanny had gone out, didn’t work evenings, except by prior arrangement and with lots of notice, but she would have put Charlotte to bed before leaving.

After Janine had taken off her coat and slipped off her shoes she went into the kitchen, catching the tail end of conversation.

‘Charlotte will be two and you’ll be ten,’ Eleanor was telling her little brother, and I’ll be thirteen.’

‘It’s still warm,’ Michael told Janine, nodding at the remnants of a lasagne.

‘It’s bound to have dark hair,’ Eleanor went on.

‘Wonderful,’ Janine thanked Michael and sat down next to Tom. ‘Shove up,’ she said, ‘make room for a little one.’

Michael passed her a plate of food.

‘Why?’ Tom said to Eleanor. ‘Why would it?’

Janine took a mouthful and tried to catch up with the conversation. ‘What’s this?’

‘Tina’s baby,’ Tom said.

Baby! Janine felt the thump in her chest as her heart jumped. She choked on the food, coughing and spitting it out. Eleanor stared at her and Michael turned round to see what was going on but Tom, oblivious, carried on, ‘Eleanor thinks it’s well good just ‘cos Dad said she can babysit. I’m not having it in my room. All babies do is cry.’

‘You didn’t know?’ Michael said, shocked.

‘I do now,’ Janine said.

‘Dad probably didn’t get chance to tell you,’ Eleanor said.

A baby. How could he? Starting a family with Tina, did he not see how hurtful that would be to Janine? To the kids? As if what he had, two sons, two daughters, was not enough.

Janine’s eyes stung and she sniffed hard, cleared her throat.

‘He wanted to surprise you,’ Tom announced, navigating the strange territory of the grown ups’ world.

He’s done that, all right, Janine thought. ‘Yes,’ she smiled at Tom.

‘But it won’t go in my room, will it Mum?’ he said.

‘No,’ she promised.

The kids barely got enough attention from Pete as it was, a new baby would make it even worse. No wonder he had been so awkward that morning, eager to escape. He was like a child sometimes, pretending that hiding a thing meant everything was all right. Just as Janine had hoped life was getting back onto an even keel, he’d provided her with another huge complicated mess. It felt the same as when Tina and he had shacked up together. Bloody awful.

The kids were in bed, apart from Michael who was on the computer. Janine stood over Charlotte’s cot and watched her sleep. Charlotte sucked her thumb at nights but had relaxed enough now for her to lose the suction and her hand was against her chin, a thoughtful pose. Janine saw the slight movement of the cover as Charlotte breathed, shallow and slow. Being parents was the one thing Janine and Pete shared that Tina wasn’t party to. It was special. It had been theirs for the last seventeen years, that and the marriage. It had been a comfort of sorts that although Tina was now Pete’s partner, she wasn’t the mother of his children. Janine knew she’d get used to it in time, she’d have to, but now she was feeling stupidly jealous and raw.

Her phone rang and she moved out onto the landing and checked the display. If it was Pete she’d not answer. She didn’t trust herself to be civil and bawling at him down the phone was not what she wanted to do. Well – she did but it wouldn’t achieve anything but cement the hostility that kept flaring up between them. When she read Shap’s name, she accepted the call. ‘Hello.’

‘Boss.’

‘Shap, if you’re angling for overtime, you can forget it,’ she said.