There had been a couple of occasions in the past when she had got things very wrong, and she could see now that it had probably been a mistake to confide these episodes in Marcus because they naturally reduced the likelihood of him accepting everything she told him at face value. The worst of these had occurred four years ago, when she followed a woman in a car the impulse of an instant because there was a little girl in the back, a little girl who had looked just the right age ...

She stared afresh at the mess she had made of the cupboard door. The irony of her earlier cautious search was not lost on her; she might as well have turned the place upside down, because there was no way she could pretend the cupboard had met with some accidental injury while she was cleaning the room. Cold fingers of doubt encircled her neck and crept over her scalp. Without the justification of a newly discovered knife, the cupboard simply appeared to have suffered a violent attack from a random maniac. She saw the screwdriver in her hand with fresh eyes. Suddenly she wanted to put as much distance as possible between herself and the cupboard and screwdriver.

She retreated downstairs, noting that the post had been delivered, probably at the very moment she had been breaking into the cupboard, since she had not heard the letterbox. She collected the cl.u.s.ter of envelopes as she pa.s.sed, flipping through them to see if there was anything interesting. Halfway down the pile she encountered a couple of envelopes addressed to Sh.e.l.ley and Brian, which had somehow found their way among The Hideaway's post.

The misdirected mail provided her with a welcome excuse to depart the scene of the crime. She would walk into Grizedale and find something to draw, dropping off the stray letters on her way. In less than five minutes she was striding along the lane, resolutely ignoring the threat of rain in the sky ahead. She had intended to drop into the gallery and hand the letters over in person, but when she got there she found the lights were out and the 'closed' sign still displayed, so she backtracked to Ingledene where she opened the wrought-iron gate, advanced up the path and climbed the trio of steps to the front door.

As she gained the top step she was met with the sound of loud, angry voices. With no pa.s.sing traffic, sound penetrated the wood as easily as if she had been in the next room. It was awkward, but it was too late to go back now. If someone happened to see her, she would still have the letters in her hand, so it would be obvious that she had overheard them quarrelling and was trying to slip away. At the same time she was reluctant to open the letterbox, because the feuding parties might be standing in sight of the door and realize she was there.

She tried the flap with a fingertip but it did not move. It must be held in place with a taught spring the sort of letterbox which would make a loud noise unless handled very cautiously. She pushed a little harder, levering the flap upwards as slowly and quietly as she could, almost letting go in fright when an angry roar erupted from Brian, in which she could make out the words, 'Oh, no you won't.'

'Let me go, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!'

Who would have imagined that gentle Sh.e.l.ley could conjure up such a harridan shriek? Jo fed the letters in and heard them flop on to the encaustic tiles a spilt second before there was a crash of something heavy hitting the floor. Jo let the flap go with a snap. The occupants were making so much noise they probably wouldn't hear it. She tried not to be in too obvious a hurry to reach the gate much better to pretend she had not heard anything.

Pretending always pretending that there was nothing wrong. That's what I'm doing now, she thought. I do it all the time, pretending that there is nothing wrong between me and Marcus; pretending that I can cope with Sean; pretending that I'm not thinking about what happened to Lauren, every minute of every day.

She wondered where Marcus was just at that moment. Some itineraries she knew well enough to place him almost to the minute, but Border Raids and Battles was a new addition to their repertoire, so she was not familiar with it. More to the point, where was Melissa? Melissa could so easily join up with Marcus on those nights when she was not booked to be away with a tour herself. Man-eating Melissa, who had already worked her way through two husbands. Not that you could condemn a woman just for being married twice she had been married twice herself but Melissa, with her fake fingernails and her two divorces, why, why, why had they ever thought it was a good idea to go into business with Melissa?

There had been room for two firms offering a similar kind of thing: plenty of customers to go round, in fact, and even if there had not been, you didn't have to jump into bed with your compet.i.tors, figuratively or literally. It was not as if she had any definite proof, except that Marcus seemed to have changed recently. He had once been her rock: the one person in the world she could always turn to, the one person who would always be on her side. It did not feel like that any more. When they were at home together they skirted around one another, as if each were afraid of too close an encounter, lest they find in the other what they already feared to be there.

When it began to rain Jo drew up her hood and carried on walking. It was too wet to draw, but she did not want to return to the house, where Sean's cupboard stood fatally wounded in his bedroom. Her boots sounded out a steady rhythm against the tarmac, although she wasn't sure where she was going any more. It was like the day after Lauren disappeared, when she and Dom had joined the search, carrying on long after the weather turned against them, refusing to stop when everyone advised them to; continuing to look because there was nothing to do except go on looking. Scouring the countryside, yet hardly knowing what they were looking for, because it was perfectly obvious that Lauren had not wandered off into the fields on her own. Someone had taken her. Someone had wheeled the pushchair down the street towards the sea, then turned aside into the public gardens and from there up on to the cliff path, where they had tossed the buggy but not Lauren, thank heaven, not Lauren herself over the edge of the cliff.

Where was Lauren taken after that? In place of the valley bottom, misty with rain, Jo pictured the cliff path, following the shape of the land where it rose in imitation of a round-topped rolling wave, the path sometimes wide enough to walk two abreast, sometimes narrowing to single file, hemmed in by the gorse which grew there in abundance. She pictured the abductor, a shadowy figure carrying Lauren along the path, further and further away from the village street, which was already alive with rumours of a missing child. Jo began to walk faster in tandem with the figure in her mind, her boots splashing in the puddles, her breath coming harder and harder, but although the figure on the path did not appear to hurry, even enc.u.mbered as it was with a child, she could make no ground upon it. The path twisted out of sight and the figure vanished with it. From somewhere down the years, she could hear the voice of a child, fearful, uncertain: 'Why didn't you come for me?'

She realized that she was gasping for breath, all but running along the road. She slowed to a steady walk, conscious of the cold perspiration which was running down her back, making her shirt feel damp inside her anorak. It was not Lauren who had asked that question. Lauren had been too young to talk properly when she was taken away. Jo had never heard her speaking in sentences. The voice belonged to that other little girl, standing uncertainly at the kerbside, behind the railings which guarded the William Street School infants' gate, waiting for what had seemed like an eternity, until someone came to collect her. A car screeching to a halt, the result of last-minute arrangements cobbled together in a hurry, to take care of her until 'things were sorted out'. That had been the first time they had taken Mum away to the hospital when she had come home a few days later. Not like the last time. The vision of the wooden garage doors had been growing in her mind, but she pushed it away. 'No,' she said aloud. She did not want to go back there.

With a start she realized that she had almost reached Satterthwaite. In her hurry to leave the house she had forgotten to make up her usual flask, but she was briefly cheered by the thought that when she got to the Eagle and Child she could go inside and have a coffee. Alas, when she reached the pub she found it was closed. There was nowhere else to get a warm drink until you reached the Grizedale Visitor Centre, which was at least another mile and a half along the road.

'This is crazy,' Jo said to herself. Crazy. For a second she caught sight of her reflection in the wing mirror of a parked car. Did she look like her mother, or didn't she? She had never been able to make up her mind. She turned around and began to trudge back towards Easter Bridge. The rain was in her face now, and blinded her whenever she lifted her head. The Lake Artists Tour she would focus on that. Maybe when she got back to the gallery the lights would be on and Sh.e.l.ley would be inside, her quarrel with Brian over. They could talk about the tour together, over mugs of hot, bitter coffee. Sh.e.l.ley had appeared enthusiastic about the idea, and now it occurred to Jo that maybe Sh.e.l.ley might like to guide it. The company needed knowledgeable people who were good communicators and pa.s.sionate about their subject; people who were happy to take on an occasional specialist a.s.signment. She suspected that Sh.e.l.ley was quite often short of money. She hardly ever seemed to buy herself any new clothes, and never had her hair done. Luckily she was a pet.i.te natural blonde, who could look marvellous simply by pinning up her hair, putting on a flowing Indian cotton dress and big earrings.

When she eventually drew level with the gallery it was still in darkness which was very odd, because they were not usually closed on Wednesdays. As she pa.s.sed beyond the gallery and reached the wall which marked the frontage of Ingledene, she heard a couple of car doors slam in relatively quick succession, and then a car engine coming to life. Brian and Sh.e.l.ley's estate car shot out from the parking place behind the house, swerving so violently into the lane that it narrowly missed the wall on the opposite side of the road. Brian was in the driving seat, but there was no sign of Sh.e.l.ley.

Jo hesitated at the gate, but then thought better of it. Sh.e.l.ley might be upset after their row, and it was not as if she and Jo were close enough to have a heart-to-heart about a marital contretemps, so Jo walked on towards The Hideaway, while the sound of the speeding car faded into the steady whisper of the rain.

As she walked through their ever-open gates, she noticed that someone had put a seash.e.l.l on top of one of the gateposts some pa.s.sing walker probably, perhaps a child. She wondered absently how long it had been there without her noticing.

Her heart sank when she entered the house. She was dreading the inevitable confrontation when Sean came home. He would notice the cupboard immediately, and flare up. She spent some time rehearsing an argument to the effect that had he not been so duplicitous about the knife, she would not have been forced to take matters into her own hands, but she knew that without hard proof of the knife's existence, it was a difficult line to pursue. As the afternoon drew on, she began to watch the lane for signs of his approach. She saw their local farmer, David Tyson, trundle past on his tractor, and later Brian's car returning, before Sean finally came into view.

She greeted him normally when he came into the house, received the usual grunt in reply, then positioned herself just inside the kitchen doorway, listening as his dragging footsteps mounted the stairs, fully expecting him to come pounding down again seconds later, but to her surprise, there was no immediate outburst of adolescent fury. Instead he stayed in his room until she called him down for dinner.

'Now for it,' she thought, but Sean was quiet throughout the meal, almost subdued. Even when his stepmother offered him an opportunity to unleash invective, asking him if there was anything the matter, he only said, 'No, nothing,' if anything in a marginally more polite tone than usual.

There was no accounting for teenage boys, she thought. Sean was normally red hot on the issue of his privacy, and this was the first occasion he had genuine cause for complaint. After he left for school the next morning, she slipped up to his room, where she found the vandalized cupboard and its contents just as she had left them the day before. He had not even bothered to push the broken part of the door back into place. It was as if he was pretending not to have noticed.

It began to rain again at about nine o'clock in the morning, which precluded any possibility of an escape with her sketch book, so she washed the kitchen floor, then tidied up in the office for a while, although there was not much for her to do.

It had been so different in the early days of M. H. Tours, when she and Marcus had done almost everything themselves. It had been her first real job since being forced to give up work when Lauren went missing. She had been on a fortnight's holiday when it happened, and this had extended into compa.s.sionate leave, then sick leave and finally they had to let her go. The company had made her redundant on health grounds nervous exhaustion, the doctor had written on the certificate, or something like that.

Eventually, when her financial situation had become pretty desperate, when there seemed nothing else she could actively do to look for Lauren, and when she no longer cried every day, she had tried to go back to work, but it had been impossible to get another job. All the application forms asked 'Reason for leaving last employment', so an explanation was unavoidable. Employers did not like the idea of nervous illness, although quite a lot of people invited her for interview, probably just to get a look at her see what she was like in the flesh since none of them offered her a post. One or two had actively probed into areas which seemed unconnected with the job. Never mind her qualifications, or how up to date her IT skills were; what did she think had happened to her daughter? Their curiosity was always wrapped up in affected concern. 'That must have been a terrible time for you ... I wonder, did they ever find anything ...?'

Intrusive questions. The things everyone wanted to know. She and Dominic had achieved a horrible form of celebrity, which drew false friends like wasps to a jam pot. People they had hardly known before it happened now appeared in the newspapers, talking about them, making things up. Complete strangers approached them in the street and hundreds of people wrote letters all of which they opened in the hope that, sooner or later, one of them might contain news of their daughter. But the communications which were not completely mad either said terrible things about herself and Dom, or else came from would-be hangers-on, people who wanted to be your 'friend', just so that they could satisfy their curiosity about you. It was just the same with people you met. They wanted to talk to you and weigh you up, so that they could tell their friends all about you, what they had made of you and how it affected their take on the case.

Marcus had not been like that. Although he undoubtedly knew from the very first exactly who she was, and even if he hadn't realized straight away, someone would have been quick to tell him. By the time she met Marcus, her confidence was at rock bottom. If Nerys had not dragged her along to an open meeting of the local history society called 'Who Really Killed the Princes in the Tower?' they might never have met at all.

Even her marriage to Marcus had attracted adverse attention. The local paper got hold of the story, described Marcus as 'a businessman' and made a point of mentioning that Jo had previously been claiming benefits. They made her sound like a gold-digger. An old anger surged at the thought of it. She must stop dwelling on the past. Why not pop some of the books she had finished looking at back to Sh.e.l.ley? And while she was down at the gallery, she could sound Sh.e.l.ley out about becoming a guide when her new tour got off the ground.

Jo double-wrapped the books against the rain, encasing half a dozen volumes inside one tightly folded plastic carrier bag, which she then placed inside another before setting out. The lights inside the gallery were on, but when she looked through the gla.s.s panels in the top half of the door, there was no one sitting at the desk-c.u.m-table. She pushed the door open and stepped inside, calling out, 'Anyone at home?'

Brian stepped out from behind one of the display panels, his face darkening to a frown at the sight of her. Brian was a big man, not quite as tall as Marcus, but much broader. He had wavy black hair which was going grey at the sides and matching bushy eyebrows, which made him look fearsome when he glowered.

'Oh ... hi.' Jo hovered just inside the door, trying not to drip anywhere except the rope-weave door mat. 'I've brought back some of the books Sh.e.l.ley lent me.'

'Just drop them by the door.'

Brian was often curt to the point of rudeness. Jo did as she was told, noticing the way the rain ran off the yellow and white plastic bag on to the pine floor. 'Is Sh.e.l.ley around?' she ventured. 'Only there was something I wanted to have a chat with her about.'

'She's not here.'

'Is she in the house? I could come back later if she's busy.'

'When I said she is not here,' Brian appeared to be on the edge of losing his temper, although Jo could not see what possible reason she had given him for doing so, 'it means she is not here, full stop. Not in the house, not in the gallery, not hiding in the garden shed, not here at all.'

'Oh, I see.' Something made her pursue the issue. That faint sense of unease she had experienced on overhearing noises through the front door of Ingledene had returned with a vengeance. 'What time do you think she will be back?'

Brian hesitated. He half turned away, as if his attention had just been caught by a bold abstract piece in green and red oils. 'She won't be back. She's gone for good.' He turned his back and stalked down to the far end of the gallery, where he was hidden from her by a couple of display panels.

Jo stood dripping on to the mat for a minute or two longer, but when Brian failed to reappear he must have known she was still there; there was a little bell above the gallery door which tinkled when anyone let themselves in or out she stepped back into the rain. It seemed unaccountable that Sh.e.l.ley would just leave. They might not have been bosom pals, but Jo knew enough of her neighbour to know how much she cared about the gallery and, indeed, how loyal she was to Brian, in spite of his difficult nature. As she walked home a jumble of ideas competed in her mind. How long had it been between her hearing Sh.e.l.ley in the house and seeing Brian drive away? And if Brian had been using the car alone, how could Sh.e.l.ley and presumably most of her belongings have been spirited away? Unless Brian had driven her somewhere, then driven back again, the car could not have returned by itself. She suddenly remembered the afternoon when Sh.e.l.ley had originally loaned her the books: Sh.e.l.ley had said the bruise on the side of her face had been caused by a book falling on her. Brian was a great bear of a man, whereas Sh.e.l.ley looked as if a puff of wind could knock her flat. Let me go, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Then that awful crash, like a piece of furniture going over.

CHAPTER SIX.

Marcus had barely been home from Border Raids and Battles for eighteen hours before he waved Jo off to lead an Arthur Ransome tour. The success of every trip was hugely dependent on what each individual guide brought to it, and in a business which relied heavily on personal recommendations and repeat bookings, it was vital that standards never slipped. He would never know how well the tour had actually gone unless she made such a hash of it that there were letters of complaint but something in her demeanour made him uneasy. Once you lost confidence in a member of the team, you were walking on quicksand. He experienced a sinking feeling as he watched her drive away.

Last night, tired from the journey, he had almost lost patience with her over some nonsense about the gallery people; another little incident which had contributed to the unspoken tension which existed between them lately. He knew that a lot of it related to his son's arrival in the household, and on the one hand he did feel guilty that she had to spend so much time at home taking care of Sean. He would gladly have done the same for her if the situation had been reversed, but that did not alter the feeling that he owed her, whereas in the past it had always been the other way around. Even so, he thought most people would have cla.s.sified him as a more than normally considerate spouse. Taking on a woman like Jo would have been too much for a lot of men in fact, there had been times in their five-and-a-half-year marriage when he had found it pretty taxing himself. There were so many minefields to avoid tiptoeing around all the things he must never say. Familiar patterns of speech were denied him, everyday expressions completely out of bounds. No 'You must be mad to say a thing like that'; not even in the face of the latest fantasy that one of their neighbours might have done away with his wife.

It was crazy, of course. Only Jo would imagine the worst, having merely overheard a domestic argument, following which one of the parties had walked out. But of course 'crazy', like 'bonkers', 'barmy' and 'doolally', was also among the words he must not use, all as verboten as implying that Lauren might be dead although privately Marcus was more than ninety per cent convinced that this was so. He could understand of course he could why Jo could never bring herself to accept this, even if in her heart of hearts she must know that abducted children almost never come home.

He had never imagined that marriage to someone as traumatized as Jo would be plain sailing. They had been through some b.u.mpy patches before, and the arrival of a 'Lauren postcard', bearing the usual cruel message, was often a trigger. Jo inevitably erred towards the belief that they were genuine, although there was nothing about the cards to specifically indicate that. On the contrary, they always featured the same old photograph, which had been in the public domain since Lauren's disappearance. The picture had clearly been obtained from a newspaper, whereas a genuine kidnapper might have given them something more a photograph of Lauren which had been taken after she was abducted, a lock of hair, or a voice recording perhaps.

'Not if they were clever,' Jo argued. 'Not if they didn't want us to track them down.'

He had not disputed the point, although he couldn't see anything particularly clever in sending the cards. If the kidnapper didn't want to be found out, why draw attention to himself in any way at all?

Missing children always attracted the loony brigade. Just weeks ago there had been something in the papers about a case in the USA. A man had come forward claiming to be one and the same person as a two-year-old boy who had been kidnapped back in 1955, but DNA tests had disproved the theory.

Marcus could well imagine the agony of the family involved. Could you resurrect a familial relationship after more than half a century or even after a decade? Suppose Lauren were to be miraculously found? She would be a stranger now. It would be horribly complicated, much more so than Sean's coming to live with them had been. At least he had always maintained regular contact with Sean; even when they lived in different parts of the country, they had enjoyed a regular relationship which gave them something to build on now. He had been surprised when Sean expressed the desire to live with him; he'd told himself that the odd feeling of victory in being chosen over his ex-wife had scarcely come into it. Not that Sean's arrival had made for an easy situation, involving as it did a complete rethink on both work and domestic fronts. A few teething troubles were inevitable.

Marcus's ruminations were abruptly interrupted by his son appearing in the doorway.

'Has she gone?'

Marcus was about to remonstrate that Jo had a name, but Sean's anxious expression stopped him in his tracks and he nodded instead.

'Can you come upstairs, Dad? I've got something to show you.'

Confronted with the broken cupboard door, Marcus forced himself to stifle his anger. Flying off the handle would not help things now.

'I just came home from school and found it.'

'And she didn't mention anything about it? Say it was an accident, or tell you how it happened?'

'No. She just seemed a bit weirder than usual. Anyway, I don't think it was an accident, do you?'

'Look, Sean ...' Marcus paused, momentarily at a loss for words. 'I'm really sorry about this. I ... we'll buy you another cupboard, one you can lock. It's only fair. And of course I'll talk to Jo about it when she gets home.' He was going to tack on a plat.i.tude to the effect that it could have been an accident, but he knew that was ridiculous. He felt as if Jo had humiliated him left him with no recourse but to admit that the woman he had taken for his wife was capable of such irrational behaviour.

In the meantime, Jo had driven to Kendal for her rendezvous with the coach. All the drivers who worked for M. H. Tours were good, but Clive was one of the best: calm, resolutely cheerful and adept at turning the coach in seemingly impossible places. They left the garage spot on time. When there were no pa.s.sengers on board, Clive liked listening to the radio, so after a brief chat about the health of his wife and his cat, on whom he doted in almost equal measure, he tuned in to Radio 2 while Jo watched the familiar landmarks go by.

There were pick-up points at Manchester Airport and Preston, and according to her manifest, the party would include Americans, Australians, Canadians and some British clients, so it would be quite a mixed bag. When they pa.s.sed the service station at Forton, she took out her folder of notes to check through the itinerary again, although she already knew it by heart. Marcus's parting 'You will be all right, won't you?' echoed in her ears. Of course she would be all right. She knew what she was doing. She had led dozens of tours over the past four years, and she wasn't about to let him down. She might not be as decorative as Melissa, but she knew her stuff.

Yet in recalling Marcus's parting words, she was suddenly a.s.sailed by doubts. Suppose she messed it up. A vision grew in her mind, of herself standing in The Square at Cartmel, quailing before a semicircle of faces and being quite unable to summon up the year in which Arthur Ransome had first holidayed there.

Steady the Buffs. That had been something her foster-father used to say. She had never heard anyone use the expression until he did, and hadn't really known what it meant. The other kids probably didn't either. There had been two other children while she was there. Jake, the one who had lived for football, might even have made it as a professional if he had not been so clearly heading off the rails. Jake was forever running away, financing his train journeys with petty thefts which brought him continually to the attention of the police. 'Why do you keep doing it?' the foster-parents had asked. 'Aren't you happy here?' But Jake hadn't been able to tell them why. He didn't appear to know himself.

Then there had been Robbie, little thin Robbie, who chewed the sleeve of his jumper and scarcely said a word. She had tried to be kind to Robbie and make a friend of Jake, even though it had been shaming to become part of such a household of flotsam and jetsam a place to which 'problem' children were consigned, in the hope that Ma and Pa Allisson could sort them out. She attempted to convince the kids at her temporary school that she was staying with relatives, but everyone in the neighbourhood knew the Allissons fostered.

It marked you out as different. When people laughed at Robbie, he just dipped his head and started chewing the neck of his jumper, or the collar of his shirt. No one laughed at Jake not unless they wanted to be duffed up in the playground after school. Jo herself had tried not to attract undue attention. She learned not to say too much in cla.s.s to appear neither overly smart or stupid and she never wet herself like Robbie, so there wasn't much laughing and outright pointing. But she was careful, always on her guard, always pretending. She never let anyone see how much she minded, ignoring the occasional whispering and pointing. Even the mothers did it. She saw one of them once, pointing her out after school. Too much pointing and too much attention it had been the story of her life. It was the supreme irony that she and Marcus ended up buying a house called The Hideaway.

She thought it would be easier when they let her go back home and return to her old school, but when she got back it seemed that everyone knew about Mum. Whereas before they had merely glanced sideways at Mum's tatty trainers, the outsize home-made jogging bottoms, or the flower she sometimes wore in her hair, now there was a new recognition in their eyes. It tainted Jo much in the way that being part of a foster-family had done. People felt sorry for her. Obvious acts of kindness stung as much as overt expressions of pity.

And they watched her, too. Where once they had merely thought her unfortunate to have a mother who was 'a bit odd', now they kept an eye on her, ready to rescue their own children from an unsuitable friendship at the first manifestation of any unusual behaviour. At the same time they tried to be nice, making a point of including her in other people's parties, never guessing how much Jo dreaded the arrival of such invitations. Party attendance meant buying a present, which was bad news if Mum happened to be in a funny mood. The present-buying for Jane Hill's party had gone OK. There had been no repet.i.tion of the episode with the cream crackers wrapped in newspaper. Mum had managed a box of chocolates, coupled with an appropriate card and wrapping paper with clowns on it. There hadn't been any trouble about ironing Jo's party frock, and Mum had walked her as far as the Hills' front gate.

Everything had been fine until they turned on the music for Pa.s.s the Parcel, and that hideous song 'The Laughing Policeman' had begun. By the first chorus Jo had begun to shake, and the longer the forced laughter echoed around the room, the more she had sobbed, until one of the mothers stopped the music and another of them conducted her into the kitchen. She might have been OK after that, but as soon as she had been taken out of the room the game resumed and with it the song, so that the maniacal laughter filled her head again and it was all she could do not to scream.

She still hated that song. Mercifully it was seldom played these days, but back then it had been a regular request on Junior Choice. Children were supposed to find it funny, although she had never been able to understand why anyone would think an exhibition of demented laughter was amusing.

The radio had always been on at home when she was a little girl. Mum often joined in with the songs which could be a good or a bad thing, depending on her mood. Sometimes she danced while she sang, holding out her hands for Jo to join in. They would career around the room together, weaving between the armchairs or circling the coffee table those had been the good times.

Mum had only once joined in with 'The Laughing Policeman' just the laughing, not the lyrics a high, unnatural laugh, which she carried on with, even after the song was finished. Jo had been frightened then. She had known something was going to happen. Mum had gone on laughing and laughing, drowning out the voice of the disc jockey, forcing the laughter out of her throat, growing hoa.r.s.e with the effort, on and on across the opening of the next record, 'Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,' wrenching open the cutlery drawer, clattering among the knives, bringing one of them down again and again on to the wooden draining board, until it finally stuck there; at which point Mum had stopped laughing, collapsed on to her knees and started to cry, slapping her hands ineffectually against the cupboard doors.

Jo had watched from the doorway, too scared to approach, her mouth silently forming the words, 'Stop. Please stop it.' She had been in middle infants then Miss Simms's cla.s.s it had been around the time Mum had first failed to pick her up from school.

The episode had stayed with her all that time, from middle infants to top juniors and beyond. She could never bear to listen to that song. If she heard it announced, she would snap off the radio before it began. Mum didn't like her messing with the radio, but an unspoken understanding appeared to exist between them when it came to 'The Laughing Policeman'.

'I don't like that one,' Jo would say, and her mother would just nod or say, 'Oh, all right then.'

People said afterwards that something should have been done. Why had no one helped them? Why hadn't her mother been given treatment, supervision, proper support? People were always clever after the event. The doctor had prescribed tablets, but Mum didn't like taking them. She was supposed to go to a clinic, but she hardly ever turned up.

'They think I'm barmy,' she said. 'Well, I'm not.'

Jo had lived with a sense of her mother's difference for as long as she could remember. She knew her mum was not the same as the other mums. She didn't look the same. She always stayed on the periphery, mostly walking to and from school on her own, not pairing up to talk to the other mothers although she sometimes talked to herself not joining in the chat with the woman in the corner shop. But Jane Hill's party had been the first time anyone had openly suggested that Jo herself might be different.

'Not normal,' one of the other mums had said, watching from a vantage point beyond the kitchen door, from where she a.s.sumed Jo could not hear her. 'Like mother, like daughter,' whispered another.

It was a suggestion which had haunted her ever since.

When Lauren disappeared, the press never made the connection. Different name, different place. A long time had pa.s.sed, and her mother's case had never been high-profile; just a brief flurry of local headlines and no subsequent trial to resurrect interest, the defendant being unfit to plead.

Local people did not easily forget, but Jo had moved right away as soon as she was old enough to do so. Even when she married Dominic, his family had not known any details. The official line was that her parents were dead and she didn't like to talk about it. Dom knew, of course. She told him when they were first going out. He said it was tragic. It just made him love her all the more, he said. But all the same, he had decided not to tell his mother. She could be very old-fashioned about things like mental illness.

Those first years with Dom had been a new beginning. They had been the best years even if admitting that to herself was disloyal to Marcus because there had been no shadows then. She had escaped the past, forgotten ... well, perhaps not forgotten, but been able not to remember. They had been like any other young couple, setting up home, getting married, having a baby. It had been joyful. It had been normal.

No one had pointed her out any more, as the girl whose mother had murdered her father.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

They used the Linthwaite for their Arthur Ransome tours because the food, service and views of Windermere never failed to impress the pickiest of clients. Although the hotel was within a few miles of home, there was no question of Jo slipping away for a night with Marcus: being on hand to mix with clients was very much part of the service. Instead, she undertook a minimal amount of unpacking, then rushed her shower in order to be first down to the lounge, so that any solo member of the party who came down early would be greeted by a familiar face.

When she got downstairs, however, she found the three adjoining rooms which made up the lounge at the Linthwaite were all empty, with only the crackle of the open fires for company. She normally stuck to slimline tonic before dinner, but when the waiter approached, temptation overcame her and she asked for a gla.s.s of red. He brought her a large one, which she cradled in both hands, watching the undulating reflection of the fire in the copper-coloured coal scuttle which sat on the nearest hearth, and wishing that she had risked a quick phone call to Marcus after all. It would have been good to exchange a few words, and in the process rea.s.sure him that everything was going well.

With no one to engage her attention, her mind began to wander. Sh.e.l.ley and Brian usually drank red. Wine was one of those things Brian knew about. She remembered Sh.e.l.ley saying, half in jest, that Brian was a wine sn.o.b. It had been on New Year's Day, when Fred and Maisie Perry invited all the neighbours round for lunchtime drinks. Jo had been standing next to Sh.e.l.ley when Brian wrinkled his nose at the gla.s.s of cheap Chilean plonk he had been given.

She was worried about Sh.e.l.ley, but did not know what she ought to do. Two days after her visit to return the first lot of Sh.e.l.ley's books, she had been on her way out to do some drawing when she caught sight of Brian emerging from Ingledene. He had his head down, and didn't notice her until he was out of the garden gate and coming towards her along the lane. She had opened her mouth to greet him as normal, but instead of acknowledging her, he had turned abruptly aside on to the track which led to High Gilpin. It wasn't a public footpath, and the Phantom Jogger's tenancy had come to an end a fortnight before, so she couldn't imagine why Brian would be going up there. Had he avoided her on purpose, guessing she was suspicious?

She had waited for Marcus to get home before explaining about Sh.e.l.ley, but when she sought his advice he had been no help at all, merely ridiculing her concerns. 'People have rows and walk out all the time,' he said. Actually he had reacted rather strangely, almost as if he was angry with her; although a few minutes later he had added in a much kinder voice, 'It's understandable that you always think the worst.'

Lately, Marcus was often irritable with her. That seemingly boundless tolerance and patience which he had always exhibited in the past turned out to have limits after all. It worried her, this change in him. He had always been so gentle and supportive, willing to listen, endlessly kind. Was it just the stress of his mother's illness? Or maybe having Sean around? Or had he fallen out of love with her? She had been watching him closely at the itinerary planning meeting. He was always so nice to Melissa, laughing at her jokes, agreeing with her ideas. Of course, Marcus was like that with most people. That was his way of charming them into doing what he wanted a softening-up process, which began by his appearing to agree with them. Maybe it was no more than that with Melissa.

She brought the gla.s.s to her lips and drank deeply, scarcely aware of what she was doing. She could not bear it if Marcus deserted her. If she was absolutely honest with herself, she had never really loved him in the way she had loved Dominic, but that did not mean she did not love him enough and moreover, she needed him. Melissa did not need Marcus. Melissa would just make a plaything of him, until she was ready to move on to the next man; whereas she, Jo, would always be faithful. Faithful unto death. No that had been the set of promises she had made to Dom, when they were married in church. What had she and Marcus said to one another on their wedding day? It had been a secular event in a small hotel, with just a few close friends and relatives. Nerys had read an Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet, and for music they had John Dowland's 'Come away, come sweet love', but she was alarmed to discover that she could no longer remember exactly what form of words she and Marcus had said to one another. It was only five years ago, but it had already gone, washed down the sink along with so many other memories, some good, some bad.

It's understandable that you always think the worst.

Well, yes, why wouldn't she? Dom had once said something along similar lines, on a day which had been much longer ago than that second wedding ceremony, but his words, and the expression on his face as he spoke them that particular memory had clung on, evaded the tide of red wine and tears, so that she could still see the look in his eyes, desperate, almost fearful. How much bad luck can you have in a single life?

He didn't really mean bad luck. Bad luck is when your number doesn't come up in the raffle, or you've just missed the bus. He meant horrible things; the kind of hideous events which don't intrude into most people's lives at all. That was why it was possible to believe that Brian had killed Sh.e.l.ley in a fit of temper and then pretended she had gone away because lightning did strike twice. It struck the same people again and again and again, and although everybody hopes for a happy ending, not all of us get one.

Jo's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of voices from the hall, but when she looked up she found that the women entering the lounge were not members of her own party, but two young women, one fair and one dark, who made a faint nod of acknowledgement in Jo's direction before seating themselves on a striped sofa at the window end of the room. They had already equipped themselves with gla.s.ses of wine from the bar, and continued the conversation they had begun there without pause. Jo had spent enough time in hotel lounges to become adept at guessing the reason behind visitors' stays: the lone businessman or woman, the couple on a romantic break, the f.a.g ends of a wedding party, scrutinizing the prices in the bar and wishing their friends' nuptials had been booked at a more affordable venue. She guessed that these two were girlfriends, taking a break from families or careers. She did not set out to overhear them, but the room was too quiet not to do so.