Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Polly.”

He’d been steadfast in his unwillingness to face Polly Yarkin because of what she represented. She knew the facts. She also forgave them. But her knowledge alone made her the single contagion he had to avoid if he was to continue to live with himself. She couldn’t see this fact. She was incapable of grasping the importance of their leading completely separate lives. She saw only her love for him and her longing to make him whole once again. If she’d only been able to understand that they’d shared too much of Annie ever to be able to share each other, she would have learned to accept the limitations he’d imposed upon their relationship after his wife’s death. Accepting these, she would have allowed him to go his own way without her. Ultimately, she would have rejoiced in his love for Juliet. And, thus, Robin Sage would still be alive.

Colin knew what had happened and how she had done it. He understood why. If keeping the knowledge to himself was the only way he could make amends to Polly, he would do that. Scotland Yard would unravel the skein of events in good time once they looked into her access to Cotes Fell. He would not betray her while he himself bore so much responsibility for what she had done.

He drove on. Unlike the previous night, all the lights were on in the cottage when he pulled to a stop in the courtyard of Cotes Hall. Juliet ran out as he opened the car door. She was struggling into her pea jacket. A red-andgreen scarf dangled from her arm like a banner.

“Thank God,” she said. “I thought I’d go mad with the waiting.”

“Sorry.” He got out of the Land Rover. “Those blokes from Scotland Yard stopped me as I was leaving.”

She hesitated. “You? Why?”

“They’d been to the vicarage.”

She buttoned the coat, wrapped the scarf round her neck. She fished gloves from her pocket and began drawing them on. “Yes. Well. I’ve them to thank for this, don’t I?”

“They’ll be off soon, I expect. The inspector’s got the wind up about the vicar going to London the day before he…you know. The day before he died. He’ll no doubt be on the trail of that next. And then on the trail of something else afterwards. That’s how it goes with these types. So he won’t be bothering Maggie again.”

“Oh God.” Juliet was looking at her hands, taking too much time about adjusting the gloves. She was smoothing the leather against each finger in an uneven motion that betrayed her anxiety. “I’ve phoned the police in Clitheroe, but they couldn’t be bothered to take me seriously. She’s thirteen years old, they said, she’s only been gone for three hours, madam, she’ll turn up by nine. Kids always do. But they don’t, Colin. You know it. They don’t always turn up. And not in this case. Maggie won’t. I don’t even know where to begin looking for her. Josie said she ran off from the schoolyard. Nick went after her. I must fi nd her.”

He took her arm. “I’ll find her for you. You’ve got to wait here.”

She twisted from his grasp. “No! You can’t. I need to know…I just…Listen to me. I must be the one. I’ve got to find her. I must do it myself.”

“You need to stay here. She may phone. If she does, you’ll want to be able to fetch her, won’t you?”

“I can’t just wait here.”

“You’ve no choice.”

“And you don’t understand. You’re trying to be kind. I know that. But listen. She isn’t going to phone. The inspector’s been with her. He’s filled her head with all sorts of things…Please. Colin. I’ve got to find her. Help me.”

“I will. I am. I’ll phone the instant I have any news. I’ll stop in Clitheroe and get some men out in cars. We’ll find her. I promise you. Now go back inside.”

“No. Please.”

“It’s the only way, Juliet.” He led her towards the house. He could feel her resistance. He opened the door. “Stay by the phone.”

“He filled her head with lies,” she said. “Colin, where’s she gone? She has no money, no food. She’s got only her school coat to keep her warm. It’s not heavy enough. It’s cold and God knows—”

“She can’t have got far. And remember, she’s with Nick. He’ll watch out for her.”

“But if they hitchhiked…if someone picked them up. My God, they could be in Manchester by now. Or Liverpool.”

He ran his fingers against her temples. Her great dark eyes were tear-fi lled and frightened. “Sssh,” he whispered. “Let the panic go, love. I said I’ll find her and I will. You can trust me on that. You can trust me on anything. Gentle, now. Rest.” He loosened her scarf and unbuttoned her coat. He caressed the line of her jaw with his knuckles. “You make her some dinner and keep it warm on the cooker. She’ll be eating it sooner than you can know. I promise.” He touched her lips and her cheeks. “Promise.”

She swallowed. “Colin.”

“Promise. You can trust me.”

“I know that. You’re so good to us.”

“As I mean to be forever.” He kissed her gently. “Will you be all right now, love?”

“I…Yes. I’ll wait. I won’t leave.” She lifted his hand, pressed it against her lips. Then her forehead creased. She drew him into the light of the entry. “You’ve hurt yourself,” she said. “Colin, what have you done to your face?”

“Nothing that you need to worry about,” he said. “Ever,” and he kissed her again.

When she’d watched him drive off, when the sound of the Rover’s engine faded and was replaced by the night wind creaking in the trees, Juliet let the pea jacket fall from her shoulders and left it in a heap by the front cottage door. She dropped her scarf on top of it. She kept on her gloves.

These she examined. They were made of old leather lined with rabbit fur, the skin feather-smooth with the years she had worn them, a thread unravelling along the inner right wrist. She pressed them against her cheeks. The leather was cool but she could feel nothing of her face’s temperature through the gloves, so it was much like being touched by someone else, like having her face cupped with tenderness, with love, with amusement, or with anything else that hinted remotely at romantic attachment.

That’s what had started all this in the fi rst place: her need for a man. She’d managed to avoid the need for years by keeping herself and her daughter isolated — just Mummy and Maggie taking on the human race in one part of the country or another. She’d diverted both the interior longing and the dull pain of desire by throwing her energies into Maggie, because Maggie was what her life was all about.

Juliet knew she had bought and paid for this night’s anguish in coin she had minted from a part of her make-up that had never failed to give her grief. Wanting a man, hungering to touch the hard fierce angles of his body, longing to lie beneath him — to straddle or to kneel — and to feel that moment’s delight in their bodies’ joining…These were the voids that had started her on this current path to disaster. So it was utterly fitting that physical desire, which she had never been able to eradicate completely no matter how many years she refused to acknowledge it, should be what had brought her to losing Maggie tonight.

There were dozens of if only ’s barking in her head, but she fastened on one of them because, although she wanted to do so, she couldn’t lie to herself about its importance. She had to accept her involvement with Colin as the prime mover behind everything that had happened with Maggie.

She’d heard about him from Polly long before she’d ever seen him. And she’d thought herself secure in the belief that since Polly was herself in love with the man, since he was so many years her own junior, since she rarely saw him — indeed, since she rarely saw anyone now that they’d found what she’d come to believe was an ideal location to get on with their lives at last — she stood little chance of involvement or attachment. Even when he came to the cottage that day on his offi cial business and she saw him parked by the lavender on the lane and read the bleak despair on his face and recalled Polly’s story about his wife, even when she felt the ice of her detached composure receive its first rift in the face of his sorrow and for the first time in years she recognised a stranger’s pain, she’d not considered the danger he presented to the weakness in herself that she believed she had mastered.