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‘Forget it. No problem, darling—of course you had to go; I understand. I hope you find her soon. Be in touch when you can, Ross.’
Hearing Jenny coming, Ross hurriedly said, ‘Yes, I will. Got to go now, Suzy. See you soon.’
Jenny came in, her eyes enquiring, anxious. ‘Any news?’
He shook his head. ‘Work, I’m afraid. I had to ring a colleague.’
Jenny frowned. ‘How can you even think of work at a time like this? Anything could have happened to Dylan...yet you still have work on your mind! Sometimes men make me so angry...’
Placatingly, Ross asked her, ‘Is that my sandwich? Looks great—what’s in it?’
‘Everything,’ Jenny said, distracted, as he had hoped. ‘Ham, tomato, lettuce, hard-boiled egg, cheese, all bound together with mayonnaise—cheese doesn’t keep you awake, does it? Take it out if you’re not happy eating it.’
‘It never bothers me. In any case I doubt if I’ll get much sleep tonight.’
‘No,’ Jenny said, sighing. ‘Oh, where can she be, Ross? I mean, if she did have an accident, why haven’t the police heard about it?’
He finally persuaded Jenny to go to bed at midnight, but he sat up in front of the TV until he fell asleep, shallowly, fitfully, in a cramped position, and dreamt of making love to someone: a silky body in his arms, smooth thighs which parted to allow him into a hot, pulsing heaven.
Shuddering and groaning, he woke up to find it was dawn, a strange, white dawn, the reflected light of snow flickering across Ross’s eyelids. Morning! He looked at his watch and saw it was seven o’clock. Sitting up, body stiff, mouth dry, he remembered the dream with guilty intensity. His body and his mind seemed to exist on different planets. How could he have dreamt like that when he was feeling so bad about Dylan?
On tiptoe, making as little noise as possible so as not to wake the others in the house, he collected his overnight bag from the hall and went into the downstairs cloakroom to freshen up. Ten minutes later, in a clean shirt, faced shaved and washed, hair combed, feeling a little more human, he went into the kitchen to make himself some black coffee and a slice of toast.
By seven-thirty he was creeping out of the house, leaving a note for Jenny telling her he was going to drive up to the M6 motorway exit Dylan would probably have used to see if he could find any trace of her or her car. He couldn’t believe that a vehicle like the flower wagon could vanish without trace. Someone would have seen it.
At first he stayed on main roads, which had been swept by snow ploughs that morning and had a covering of grit; Ross glanced up side roads as he slowly drove by, but reached the motorway exit without any sighting of the flower wagon.
At nine o’clock he stopped to buy a local map in a garage and asked the man behind the desk if he had seen a very pregnant woman driving a car covered in flowers.
He got a very odd look. ‘Covered in flowers? A hearse, you mean?’
Ross laughed curtly. ‘No, I meant a car painted with a lot of flowers, all the colours of the rainbow.’
‘Oh, I get you—no, can’t say I have. Think I’d have noticed if a car like that had come in for petrol.’
A postman had come in to hand a packet of mail over. He turned to stare at Ross with curiosity.
‘I saw a car like that, half an hour ago—abandoned just outside Stonelee. Stolen, was it? Looked to me as if whoever was driving it had crashed.’
Ross felt his heart stop and then start beating again, so fast he was giddy. ‘Crashed?’ he repeated hoarsely.
‘It had been driven into a wall. Don’t worry, the damage isn’t really serious, I’d say—scratches and bumps, mainly.’
‘Can you tell me where to find it?’ Ross opened the map he had just bought and spread it on the counter, his hands shaking. The postman leaned over to point.
‘Down that road—it’s a tiny lane, and still icy, so be careful. I’m not surprised they crashed your car; I nearly crashed myself. I skated down rather than drove. Lucky my brakes are good.
Ross thanked him and hurried off. He found the flower wagon twenty minutes later and parked behind it. Getting out, he looked around, and immediately noticed the lines of footprints in the snowy field, leading down to the house. He couldn’t walk across there in shoes, he would ruin them, and his trousers, too. Opening the back of his four-wheel drive, he fished out the boots he always carried; when you worked in the country you needed to be well prepared for any eventuality.
Locking his vehicle a few minutes later, he set off down towards the house. As he passed a shed he heard a loud crashing sound, a high-pitched cry, and froze.
That surely wasn’t...? Dylan couldn’t have spent the night in there?
Hurriedly he opened the door, and reeled back as something rushed out, butting him out of the way. Ross grabbed the door to stop himself falling over, glad he was wearing lined leather gloves.
A goat! he thought, staring after it, then shut the door again before following the previous inhabitant, who by now was down in front of the house, staring through a glass door.
Joining it, Ross stared too, into a pretty kitchen. Was anyone in? he wondered, and tapped loudly on the glass.
