Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

She giggled and waved, calling, “Uncle Frank, ’lo. Won’t you let Nickie stay the night with us please?” Her mother dashed into the doorway and pulled her back, casting a frantic and apologetic look towards the car.

Maggie slowed, then stopped. She turned to Nick. She looked from him to his father to the farmer. She saw the resemblance fi rst— how their hair grew the same although the colour was different; how their noses each had a bump on the bridge; how they held their heads. And then she saw the rest — the dogs, the blankets, the direction they’d been walking, Nick’s insistence that they rest at this particular farm, his form at the window standing and waiting when she had awakened…

Her insides went so calm that at fi rst she thought her heart had stopped beating. Her face was still wet, but her tears disappeared. She stumbled once in the muck, grabbed the Nova’s door handle, and felt Nick take her arm. From somewhere that sounded like a thousand miles away, she heard him say her name. She heard him say, “Please, Mag. Listen. I didn’t know what else…” but then fog filled her head and she didn’t hear the rest. She climbed into the rear seat of the car. Directly in her line of vision a pile of old roof slates lay beneath a tree, and she focussed on them. They were large, much bigger than she’d imagined they would be, and they looked like tombstones. She counted them slowly, one two three, and was up to a dozen when she felt the car dip as Mr. Ware got into it and as Nick climbed in and sat next to her on the rear seat. She could tell he was looking at her, but it didn’t matter. She continued counting — thirteen fourteen fi fteen. Why did Nick’s uncle have so many slates? And why did he keep them under the tree? Sixteen seventeen eighteen.

Nick’s father was unrolling his window. “Ta, Kev,” he said quietly. “Don’t give it a thought, all right?”

The other man came to the car and leaned against it. He spoke to Nick. “Sorry, lad,” he said. “We couldn’t get the lass to go to bed once she heard you were on your way. She’s that fond of you, she is.”

“S’okay,” Nick said.

His uncle slapped his two hands down on the door in farewell, nodded sharply, and stepped back from the car. “Funny blokes,” he called to the dogs. “Away with you.”

The car lurched round in the farmyard, made a slippery turn, and set off towards the road. Mr. Ware turned on the radio. He said kindly, “What d’you fancy, youngsters?” but Maggie shook her head and looked out the side window. Nick said, “Anything, Dad. It doesn’t matter,” and Maggie felt the truth of those words pierce through her calm and drip like cold bits of lead into her stomach. Nick’s hand touched her tentatively. She fl inched.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t know what else to do. We didn’t have any money. We didn’t have any place to go. I couldn’t think what to do to take care of you proper.”

“You said you would,” she said dully. “Last night. You said you would.”

“But I didn’t think it would be…” She saw his hand close round his knee. “Mag, listen. I can’t take care of you proper if I don’t go to school. I want to be a vet. I got to get through school and then we’ll be together. But I got to—”

“You lied.”

“I didn’t!”

“You phoned your dad from Clitheroe when you went to buy the food. You told him where we’d be. Didn’t you?”

He said nothing, which was affirmation enough. The nighttime scenery slipped by the window. Stone walls gave way to the bony frames of hedges. Farmland gave way to open country. Across the moors, the fells rose like Lancashire’s black guardians against the sky.

Mr. Ware had turned the car’s heater on along with the radio, but Maggie had never felt so cold. She felt colder than she had when they were walking in the fields, colder than she had on the floor of the cart-shed. She felt colder than she had on the previous night in Josie’s lair, with her clothes half off and Nick inside her and the meaningless promises he’d made creating fi re between them.

The end was where the beginning had been, with her mother. When Mr. Ware pulled into the courtyard of Cotes Hall, the front door opened and Juliet Spence came out. Maggie heard Nick whisper urgently, “Mag! Wait!” but she pushed the car door open. Her head felt so heavy that she couldn’t lift it. Nor could she walk.

She heard Mummy approach, her good boots clicking against the cobbles. She waited. For what, she didn’t know. The anger, the lecture, the punishment: it didn’t really matter. Whatever it was, it couldn’t touch her. Nothing would ever touch her now.

Juliet said in a curiously hushed voice, “Maggie?”

Mr. Ware explained. Maggie heard phrases like “took her to his uncle’s…bit of a walk… hungry, I’d guess…tired as the dickens…. Kids. Don’t know what to make of them sometimes…”

Juliet cleared her throat, said, “Thank you. I don’t quite know what I would have done if…Thank you, Frank.”

“I don’t think they meant real harm,” Mr. Ware said.

“No,” Juliet said. “No. I’m sure they didn’t.”

The car reversed, turned, and headed down the lane. Still, Maggie’s head drooped with its own weight. Three more clicks sounded on the cobbles and she could see the tops of her mother’s boots.

“Maggie.”

She couldn’t look up. She was fi lled with lead. She felt a whispery touch on her hair, and she withdrew from it fearfully, taking a gasping, indrawn breath.

“What is it?” Her mother sounded puzzled. More than puzzled, she sounded afraid.

Maggie couldn’t understand how that could be, for the power had shifted once again, and the worst had happened: She was alone with her mother with no escape. Her eyes got blurry, and a sob was building down deep inside her. She fought against letting it out.

Juliet stepped away. “Come inside, Maggie,” she said. “It’s cold. You’re shivering.” She began to walk towards the cottage.

Maggie raised her head. She was fl oating in nowhere. Nick was gone, and Mummy was walking away. There was nothing to grab on to any longer. There was no safe harbour in which she could rest. The sob built and burst. Her mother stopped.

“Talk to me,” Juliet said. Her voice was desperate and uneven sounding. “You’ve got to talk to me. You’ve got to tell me what happened. You’ve got to say why you ran. We can’t go any further with each other until you do, and if you don’t, we’re lost.”

They stood apart, her mother on the doorstep, Maggie in the courtyard. To Maggie, it seemed that they were separated by miles. She wanted to move closer but she didn’t know how. She couldn’t see her mother’s face clearly enough to know if it was safe. She couldn’t tell whether her voice’s quiver meant sorrow or rage.

“Maggie, darling. Please.” And Juliet’s voice broke. “Talk to me. I’m begging you.”

Her mother’s anguish — it seemed so real— tore a little hole in Maggie’s heart. She said on a sob, “Nick promised he would take care of me, Mummy. He said he loved me. He said I was special, he said we were special, but he lied and he had his dad come get us and he didn’t tell me and all the time I thought…” She wept. She wasn’t quite sure what the source of her grief really was any longer. Except that she had nowhere to go and no one to trust. And she needed something, someone, an anchor, a home.

“I’m so sorry, darling.”

What a kindness sounded in those four words. It was easier to continue in their echo.

“He pretended to tame the dogs and to fi nd some blankets and…” The rest of the story came tumbling out. The London policeman, the after-school talk, the whispers and rumbles and gossip. And finally, “So I was afraid.”