Chapter Sixteen

Cornwall in late May, and the tourists were starting to pack into the tiny county, filling the beaches with flabby bellies. Bodmin Moor, isolated and, despite the general sunshine everywhere else, draped in torn shrouds of mist, was where we ended up, in a gothic hotel. The place looked not so much built as extruded, a huge pile of grey granite, towered, turreted and moated. The rooms were all high-ceilinged with room for half the Addams family under the beds.

But, on the upside, I got to see more of the great outdoors than I had in the Lakes. Luke had brought his laptop, needing apparently to catch up on some paperwork and also to drop a bunch of emails to prospective clients, so I booked myself on a day trek to Dozmary Pool. Riding a thoroughbred at the gallop across heather rid me of any tetchiness I’d been harbouring. And, since we also managed to fit in more than our quota of sex (more than the sex quota of a small Catholic country actually), I didn’t really feel cheated.

Even better, when we arrived back on Sunday evening, there was no sign of either Flint or Ash. Luke kissed me goodbye, promised to pick me up the following evening in time to catch a film at the City Screen, with drinks beforehand, and hurled off in a slightly alarming puff of black smoke. The big black car had clocked up nearly a thousand miles that weekend, and it looked as though the distance was telling on significant valves.

The phone rang as I carried my bag upstairs. I ignored it, but it rang again as I was showering, and then again when I was making myself some tea. Figuring that anyone that desperate to reach one of us would probably be glad to get answered, I picked it up.

‘Oh, Willow. Thank God it’s you.’

‘Hey, Bree.’ There was a breathy pause. ‘It’s not the baby, is it?’ I asked. Bree still had a couple of weeks to go and I didn’t like the sound of the silences coming down the line at me.

‘Can you come?’

‘What, now? Have you rung Paddy?’

‘Please, Will, just come.’ My sister’s voice broke up and the line went dead. I stood and stared into the receiver for a moment, then started to panic properly.

Flint was out and besides he didn’t have a car. Ash was God knows where, and anyway, if Bree was in labour, being slung across a throbbing saddle would probably obviate any need for obstetric intervention.

I called Cal, but his answerphone was on, I didn’t have his mobile number and the farm wasn’t on the phone. So that was Cal out of the white charger rescuer league. Who else did I know with a car?

I tried Luke’s mobile, but it went direct to voicemail. He often left it on silent, so it wouldn’t disturb us during our dates, so maybe he’d forgotten to turn the ringer back on. Or he might still be driving. I checked the time – he should be arriving back at the hotel about now.

‘Moat House Hotel, how may I help you?’ The receptionist had a strong accent, French or Spanish.

‘I need to speak to one of your guests, Mr Luke Fry. Could you tell me if he’s back yet, please?’

‘A Mr Fry, is that correct?’

‘Yes. I mean, if it’s a matter of security you don’t have to tell me anything, just ask him to ring this number? Tell him … tell him his fiancée needs to speak to him. Urgently.’

‘Mr Fry.’ I could hear the girl accessing the computer, the sound of a mouse clicking and a keyboard being tapped. ‘I’m sorry, there doesn’t seem to be anyone of that name staying with us at the moment.’

‘Luke Fry. Tall bloke, longish blondish hair.’

‘I’m sorry, Miss …?’

‘Cayton. Willow Cayton. He must be there somewhere?’

‘Then I’m sorry, Miss Cayton. There is no one of that name resident in the Moat House Hotel at this moment. Was there any other matter I could help you with?’

‘I don’t know. Can you drive or deliver a baby?’

‘I am sorry.’ Obviously labelling me a complete nutter, she hung up.

So, where the hell was he?

I tried his mobile again, but once again only got voicemail. He couldn’t still be driving, the Moat House was only half a mile from my house. And he’d been telling me on the drive back about how he was going to get some paperwork done as soon as we got home – no mention of, say, going to the showroom or anything … Where was he? He’d been staying at the Moat House ever since he came back to York. Why didn’t they recognise his name?

Now I was worrying on several fronts. Luke had disappeared, Cal was out of contact, my brothers were God knows where and, although I had a driving licence, I had no access to any vehicles. In desperation I called Katie, who doesn’t drive, but has a husband who does. She told me that Dan was up in Newcastle, at some kind of literary do, but why not try Jazz?

‘I didn’t know Jazz could drive.’

‘Yes, you did. He passed his test before you, remember? You said that if you failed you’d have to go and live on the Orkneys until he forgot about it.’

‘Oh, yes. Has he got a car?’

‘Yeah, Skoda. Pretend to think it’s a BMW, he likes that. Oh, and tell Bree good luck and remind her to put ice on her stitches when she pees.’

Please, remind me never to have children. In fact, strike me infertile now.

Upshot of said discussions – Jazz, gingerly driving his pristine white Skoda (‘First time I’ve had her out this year’) with me alongside, not full of confidence, heading for the old rectory. We didn’t speak. Jazz was almost as bad a driver as Cal, hunching over the wheel like an elderly spinster, hands ten-to-two-ing like fury. I was too busy worrying about Bree and Luke to say much more than ‘turn right here’ and ‘mind that bus!’

When we pulled up at the end of the rectory drive, I was encouraged by the sight of my sister at the front door, not bent double and biting through her own knees. (I’d been an avid reader of Catherine Cookson’s more lurid fiction as a teenager.) In fact she looked poised in a navy maternity top and jeans, and her make-up was immaculate.

‘Willow, how nice to see you. Do come and have some tea. Jasper, you look amazing. Come in.’

But as she walked us through the house to the kitchen, I could tell things weren’t right. For a start, the dogs weren’t confined to the garden room but loose, running up to greet our ankles with whiskery sniffs and lurking by Bree’s side when she eventually lowered herself into a chair in the glass-roofed kitchen extension. For another thing, although her make-up was all in place, I could see traces of redness around her eyes, puffiness of the lids. Bree had been crying. She had also been baking. Fresh scones were lined up on the granite work surface, and buns and muffins cluttered the scrubbed refectory table. Bree bakes when under stress.

Jazz looked intimidated by the conspicuous wealth around him and took the dogs into the garden. ‘So?’ I poured boiling water into mugs. ‘What’s up?’

‘Mmmm?’ She was pretending to read a Mother and Baby magazine, one hand on her rapidly emerging bump, but she hadn’t turned a page since she’d sat down. ‘Oh, you know.’ But she didn’t meet my eye. ‘Jasper’s looking very trendy these days, isn’t he?’

‘If you like that sort of thing. Personally I’d rather take fashion advice from a squirrel. Bree …’

I could see the tears now, dripping onto the pages she held, falling with a sad little popping sound. Her hands were shaking. ‘Willow.’ Her voice was tiny. ‘I don’t know what to do. He’s left me.’

‘Fuck me.’ I sat suddenly. My worries about Luke’s unfindability folded into insignificance. ‘Paddy? He’s gone?’

Still without looking up, she nodded. ‘He sent me an email. Says that he’s found somebody else. Somebody who …’ The words clotted in her throat and she dropped her head farther onto her chest, fingers caressing her bump. ‘Somebody who makes him feel “alive”, apparently.’

‘Shit.’

‘Oh, I can keep the house. And he’ll make an allowance to pay for the baby, but he doesn’t want to see it.’ Now she met my eye and the glint of misery made my own heart shrivel. ‘He called the baby “it”, Willow. Last week we were thinking of names, now this’ – she stroked her navel possessively – ‘is just “it”.’

‘The bastard.’ But words couldn’t do justice to the way I felt. My dear, mellow, house-proud sister deserved way better than this. And her baby deserved a better father.

I sat with her in her spotless steel-and-chrome kitchen and watched her break her heart over the worthless spunk-machine that she had married. Jazz came in later. The spaniels ran to Bree and put their doggy heads in her lap as if they, too, knew how miserable she was, and she played with their ears while Jazz and I made her something to eat and then forced her to eat it. Gone was the hostess face she showed to everyone else. Instead, for once, the real Bree was on display. I’d forgotten what my sister was like. Underneath the Cath Kidston aprons and the Barbour jackets, she was far more like me than I’d remembered.

Jazz, too, showed another side of himself, rather than the hard-drinking cynic. He was softer, kinder, more touchy-feely. He hugged Bree frequently, told her that Paddy had never deserved her, until I began to think that there might be something in Katie’s suspicions about where his true feelings lay.

When we came to leave, Bree started to panic. ‘Take me home with you, Wills,’ she pleaded. ‘Don’t leave me here on my own.’ Then, when I agreed, she had to rush around packing things, and I hadn’t realised that the deal would involve Booter and Snag, because she had to pack things for them, too, and take her hospital bag and all her maternity records ‘in case’, until I was nearly screaming. But I could see that all this activity was distracting her, and maybe getting away from this place for a while wasn’t such a bad idea. For a start, if Paddy came creeping back to say that it had all been a terrible mistake, she wouldn’t be here, which Jazz and I, probably for wildly different reasons, both agreed would be a good thing.

So, variously tear-streaked, shell-shocked, exhausted and, in the case of the dogs, wildly overexcited, we arrived back in York where Bree was greeted by her eldest and youngest brothers, who provided a new audience for her tale, while Jazz and I hid in the living room with the gin. I dug my mobile out of my bag and sent Luke a text. Where are you? I called hotel, they said you aren’t there. Has there been an emergency? Is your dad okay?

‘I’m going home, Will.’ Jazz got to his feet, rubbing his eyes. ‘Breeze needs to be with her family right now. But if she needs anything else, or if anything happens, you know, with the baby, for fuck’s sake, call me.’

‘I will. Thanks, Jazz.’

But he’d already gone into the kitchen to drop a kiss of farewell on my sister’s tear-ridden cheek. There, you see? I told you I read too many Catherine Cookson novels. Deserted wives bring me out in clichés. He did no such thing. He just ruffled her hair, grunted ‘see you’ and disappeared.

We all went to bed. I was shattered but couldn’t sleep. From the sound of crying in the next room, Bree felt the same. I kept checking my mobile in case Luke texted back, but his phone must still have been switched off because there was nothing. In between paranoically snatching at my phone and lying in the dark listening to my sister cry, I worried. Could he have checked out of the Moat House because of the cost, not wanting to say anything to me for fear that I might offer him more money? But surely if cost was that much of an issue, he’d have chosen to come and live here with me, rather than move on? And there was always the flat, if he was desperate. All right, so there was no furniture in it. But he could have borrowed some, at least a sleeping bag and a microwave. And if money was such an issue, where had he got the cash to take me to Cornwall? Places like that didn’t come cheap, and he’d had money spare for his share of the deposit on the flat.

But then I thought of Luke’s obvious concern for my happiness and wellbeing. He’d encouraged me to go off riding while he was stuck in our room with his laptop, so that I could ‘enjoy the countryside instead of being cooped up’. I thought of his complete abandonment when we slept together, the wild (and even slightly exotic) sex. He wouldn’t hide anything from me, I was sure of it. This whole Moat House thing was a simple misunderstanding, being blown out of proportion by my tiredness and my concern for my sister.

Tomorrow it would be resolved.