Local Gone Missing(8)
And then . . . then he was going to take another trip up to Wadham Manor.
* * *
—
it’ll be one of her old crowd showing up, he’d told himself on the drive home last week. I’m fussing about nothing.
But his gut, a reliable indicator over the years, had told him different. He’d decided to make the ninety-minute round trip each afternoon this week, telling Pauline he was on charity business. Just to have a look. Put my mind at rest.
He parked well away from his usual place when he arrived, tucking his car in beside a large delivery van, and waited.
Charlie undid the windows and fished out the last of the emergency ciggies from under the seat and inhaled it deep into his lungs. He’d been a forty-a-day man when he’d met Pauline and she hadn’t seemed to mind, but as soon as she moved into his house, she’d announced her body was a temple and had to be kept smoke-free. She’d bought him nicotine patches and gum and he’d almost kicked the habit. Almost. He’d have to buy a new car deodorizer on the way home.
Half an hour had passed and he took a swig from a bottle of now-warm water. He’d give it a bit longer and then pop in and surprise Birdie. In the meantime, he’d focus on finding the money for her care. All you have to do is keep the plates spinning for a bit longer, he told himself. And was immediately back beside his primary-school teacher, Miss Hargreaves, the smell of her face powder and damp knickers competing with the stink of caged animals. The council had paid for its poorest kids to go to the circus and he’d sat on the hard wooden bench, watching with his mouth open as the magic unfolded. There’d been a lion, terrifying clowns, and flying acrobats but what had stayed with him was the man in a sequined suit who bounded about the ring, keeping an entire dinner service spinning on sticks while the band played.
Charlie had been ten, a quiet, tightly knotted child who’d been careful never to show enthusiasm about anything. Liking something led to misery, he’d learned. He’d seen the fraying seams of the shiny costume and the dead eyes beneath the greasepaint smile. But he’d been entranced. He hadn’t been able to put a name on what he’d loved until much later but it’d been the brinkmanship: the imminent possibility of disaster as a single bowl slowed in its orbit and the audience held its breath, the lopsided wobble apparently unseen by the performer until the last moment. And then triumph as he rescued it with a flick of a wrist. The hero of the hour.
Charlie had found a stick and a cracked saucer back at the children’s home and practiced for hours in the yard. Later, he’d made a career out of it—in a different sort of arena but he’d never lost that thrill of whirling the first plate.
Until now. He tried to summon up fresh energy. If the plan doesn’t work, change the plan, never the goal, he told himself. It was something an old boss had had pinned to his office wall. Mind you, Just bloody well get on with it was normally enough to stiffen the sinews. But not today.
The rumble of a taxi pulling up on the gravel brought him back to the real world.
He struggled to sit up and saw the passenger get out and stand there with his back to him, staring at the main door until the cab left.
He opened his door and the sound made the visitor turn his head.
“Fuck!” he said.
“I could say the same thing,” Charlie said.
NOW
Six
SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 2019
Dee
Later, while I’m pulling a clot of hair out of the drain in the shower, I hear Postie Val calling, “Hello!”
“Coming!” Pauline shouts back.
“I’ve got another registered letter for Charlie. I need his signature.”
“He’s out,” Pauline snaps. “I’ll do it and give it to him when he gets back.”
Val chats like she always does while Pauline tries to sign with her fingertip, fishing for goss, but she isn’t getting anywhere. And I watch the postie walk back to her van through the window as I hoover. Pauline comes through and slumps on the sofa with the brown envelope on her lap. A registered letter is never good news, is it?
* * *
—
When I’m done, I take the full bin bag out to the dustbin and it splits as I lift it in. A bottle clatters out and I hold my breath in case it breaks but it just rolls around. It must be one of Charlie’s—Pauline puts her fizz empties in the recycling box but he’s hidden his brandy bottles since Pauline said it was affecting his performance in bed. Poor Charlie. She must know he’s still drinking. I’m sticking it in the bin when Pauline comes out and nearly catches me.
She’s talking into her mobile. “Did my husband call in last night? I’ve mislaid him.”
“Dee, the most terrible thing has happened,” she shouts when she finishes her call, and I swallow hard.
“What? What’s happened to Charlie?”
“No, not him. Two teenagers overdosed on drugs at the festival last night.”
“Yes, I know,” I call back, and open my car door. People who take drugs deserve everything they get. No one’s forcing them to take them.
But she puts her hands over her face. “No one’s seen him,” she says, and her shoulders start shuddering. But when she takes her hands away, her eyes are dry.