I say, “No. No that sounds tough. Really tough. Messy…”
“Yes.” She nods. “Messy. He’s been saying, for years and years and years, that he’ll leave them, that he’ll come to us. But now his other children, they’re virtually grown up, and if anything, he and his wife seem closer than ever. It’s like they’ve fallen back in love with each other. They keep going off on romantic holidays, mini-breaks. Nights out at the theater. And he treats me more and more like I’m the mistake, when he used to make me feel likeshewas the mistake—the mistake that he gotlumbered with, and I was the precious thing he could never have because of the mistake he made with her. And frankly, I think he just wants us to disappear. I actually do. Just disappear. Poof.” She makes a small explosion with her hands that nearly knocks her drink over and she catches it awkwardly in the nick of time. “Urgh,” she says. “Sorry. I have no idea why I’m telling you all this. I don’t even know you.”
“No,” I say measuredly. “But I know you.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I mean—I see you.”
I narrow my eyes at her, trying to judge if I’ve pushed her away or drawn her closer. She veers away from me slightly and eyes me the same way I’m eyeing her.
“What are you talking about?”
“You are on the precipice,” I say, glancing pointedly at her vodka and tonic, “of blowing your whole life apart.”
Her eyes flash suddenly, and I notice, for the first time, that they are green, just like mine.
“It’s not too late. I can help.”
She frowns at me. The line between her brows is deep and hard.
“For a start,” I say, “I can walk your dog for you.”
I glance down at the Westie, who is lying with his chin resting on his front paws, eyeing me warily from beneath patrician eyebrows.
“No,” she says. “Thank you. I can walk my own dog.”
“Ah, but you don’t, do you?”
“Yes,” she says crisply. “I do. I walk him here. I walk him to school. I walk him back. I take him on the Heath twice a day. Plus he has a big garden at home to run around in, so thank you, but he’s fine.”
I nod unconvincedly. “OK,” I say. “Cool.”
The conversation flags for a moment while she gets over her annoyance at me for calling her out on her poor dog parenting.
Then she says, “What about you? Do you live with anyone?”
“Nope,” I say. “Definitely not.” I say this with a hint of regret, whichis more than I actually feel. I don’t get lonely. I like my existence, my days divided up into pints of lager, wanders across the Heath, nights on a futon on the attic floor of a very nice squat near the Royal Free Hospital. I can still get sex, if I want it; there are some girls, some women, I’ve known them for years, they’re fine, I don’t have to go searching for it. Thank God. I meditate. I read books about birds. I go to gigs, don’t care who it is, as long as I can afford the ticket. I cut people’s hair for free, or for a little cash in hand. I have friends I see from time to time; I have a brother who has a wife and kids and all the accoutrements. We get on fine. I’m welcome round there for Christmas. So yeah, all in all, I don’t need anyone. I don’t want anyone. I’m doing good.
She raises her brow. “Sounds like there’s a backstory.”
I blow out my cheeks. “Have you got all day?”
She glances at the time on her phone. Half past one. “I’ve got ninety minutes,” she says. “Shall I get us another round?”
By the time her phone pings at 3 p.m. to remind her to collect her child from school, her eyes are glazed, her speech is slurred. I feel bad for her kid. Who the hell wants a lush of a mother collecting them from school in that state in front of all their mates? I help her into her coat, and make sure she doesn’t forget her mittens. She smiles as she leaves and then she says, “Oh God, I don’t even know your name. I’m Jessamine, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Jessamine. My name is Stuart.”
She waves her mittens at me to show me that she hasn’t forgotten them and sets out unsteadily into the cold December afternoon.
chapter twelve
The sun is bright on the courtyard garden behind Jane’s kitchen the next morning, but there is still a chill of not-quite-summer in the air and Jane wears fingerless gloves and a soft scarf while she drinks her morning coffee. The three younger dogs snake around the courtyard lazily, sniffing the new herbs and flowers that are emerging, while Reggie sits at her feet, sun worshipping. Jane’s head is full of the white dog and Rose White and Thornwood. She thinks of what Shannon said yesterday, about bumping into Rose White in the public parkland behind Helen’s farm. It’s very popular with dog walkers. Maybe someone there will have seen something.
She finishes her coffee, rinses her cup in the kitchen sink, puts on her boots, and drives to the village.
It’s a seven-minute walk from Helen Yaxley’s property to the main entrance of Waterfowl Park (so named after the rare ducks that circle the pond). Jane is considering the possibility that Hugo might have escaped from there, as it’s closer to Jane’s property than to Helen’s and makes more sense. She follows some of the quieter paths around the back end of the park, tryingto sniff out a possible route for Hugo to have taken once he’d found himself separated from Rose White. Nobody in the village, according to Hester, had seen the white dog running loose or free through lanes or fields or land or roads in the days since Rose White went missing. But before she disappeared, Rose White had been seen walking the dog on the road between Helen’s property and the park, and Shannon had seen them in the park a few times. Hugo would have been familiar with this area.
