Afraid (17 page)

Sure now that she had hurt him, Skye said, ‘I’m sorry, Tom; please don’t be angry with me. I really love my ring, and I can’t wait to be your wife – honest.’

‘You’ve got a funny way of showing it,’ he snapped. ‘Me and Jade spent hours choosing that ring, and you’ve ruined it in two seconds flat with your sour face. Don’t know why I bothered. And I
was
going to give you these,’ he added, snatching a bag off the table and throwing it at her, ‘but you’ll probably just chuck them back in my face as well.’

Skye felt guilty when several magazines spilled out of the bag and she saw that they were wedding brochures. She hugged herself when Tom marched out of the room and stomped heavily up the stairs. Apart from the time when he had caught her outside, he treated her pretty well and had only snapped at her a few times since she’d been here. It made her feel isolated and vulnerable when he got like this, but she knew from experience that there was only one sure-fire way to lift his mood. So, as sickened as she was by the thought of what she was about to do, she put the food back into the microwave and followed him up the stairs.

12

A month after moving in with Shirley, Jeff was still no closer to finding a place of his own, despite having scoured the internet and local estate agents for rental properties and placing bids on the council website. There was nothing available, and when even the hostels had told him that he would be waiting months for a room, he’d conceded defeat and allowed Shirley to drive him over to the old house to pick up his boxes.

He had been walking back there every day since, to check for post and see if there were any signs that Skye had been there. His main concern was that she wouldn’t know how to find him if she turned up and saw that he’d moved out – or, worse, that she would think he’d abandoned her. He had tried to call Andrea’s phone several times and had left numerous messages telling Skye where he was and begging her to get in touch. But the phone was always off, and she hadn’t replied to any of his messages, so he had resigned himself to the thought that the phone was either dead or lost.

As he turned the corner onto his old road today, Jeff was dismayed to see a skip outside the house. He’d seen Alan Ford a few days earlier and the man had warned him that he was about to start working on the place. But Jeff hadn’t expected it to be this soon, and the thought that new tenants would soon be installed depressed him. It was one thing to pop in when builders were around, but he very much doubted that the new family would appreciate him calling round every day.

The front door was open when Jeff reached the house and he could hear the muted sound of a radio coming from the kitchen. Aware that he no longer had the right to be here, he walked down the hall and tapped on the door before pushing it open. Three builders were in there, ripping out the units, and loud bangs coming through the ceiling told him that more were at work upstairs, while yet more were out in the yard shovelling up the debris.

Ford had yet to tell Jeff what he owed for repairs over and above his deposit, but if he ran true to form Jeff guessed that Ford would probably claim that a complete overhaul had been needed because of the damage they had caused while living here. He wished he’d thought to take photos before he left, to prove that it hadn’t been that bad. But it was too late now.

‘Can I help you?’ one of the builders asked.

Jeff turned to him, and smiled. ‘I, er, used to live here, and I thought I’d check if there’s been any post while I was passing.’

‘I haven’t seen any,’ the builder told him. ‘You’ll have to ask the landlord. He’ll be here in a bit.’

‘Didn’t you get it redirected?’ one of the others asked, glancing down at Jeff from the ledge he was standing on. ‘That’s what me and my missus always do when we move.’

‘I haven’t had time,’ Jeff replied, too embarrassed to admit that he couldn’t have afforded the fee even if he had remembered. ‘I’ll get onto it when I get home.’

‘Hope you told the leccy board you moved,’ the man went on as he leaned down to plug his drill into a wall socket. ‘We might be on this for a while, and you don’t wanna get whacked for the juice we’ll be using.’

‘Yeah, that’s sorted,’ Jeff lied, making a mental note to do it as soon as he was out of earshot.

‘That it?’ the first builder asked. ‘Only we’ll be pulling the ceiling down in a minute, so I’ll need you out of here.’

Jeff nodded and said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ Then, spotting a scrap of paper on the floor, he leaned down and picked it up, saying, ‘Don’t suppose anyone’s got a pen?’

The man on the ledge took a pencil from behind his ear and tossed it over. Jeff caught it and quickly jotted down Shirley’s address. Then, holding the paper out to the first builder, who he’d guessed was the gaffer, he said, ‘If a young girl should happen to come looking for me, could you give her this? Only my daughter’s missing, and I want her to be able to find me if she turns up.’

‘Put it on there.’ The builder nodded towards the window ledge. ‘If I see her, I’ll make sure she gets it.’

Jeff thanked him and put the paper down. Then, taking one last wistful look at his old kitchen, he went back out into the hall – just in time to see a man walk out with Skye’s quilt and laptop in his arms.

‘Wait!’ he called, rushing down the hall.

The quilt was already in the skip by the time he reached the pavement, and the man was carrying the laptop to a van parked across the road. Jeff ran after him and snatched it out of his hands.

‘Oi, what’s your game?’ the builder protested, trying to snatch it back.

‘It’s mine,’ Jeff told him, holding onto it and wondering why he hadn’t seen it when he was packing, because he was sure he hadn’t missed anything. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘In the attic.’

Jeff’s heart lurched when he remembered that the social worker had wanted to check the attic. He asked, ‘Was there anything else up there, like a mobile phone? It’s really important,’ he added, hoping that the man would pick up on his urgency and hand over the phone if he’d pocketed it. ‘You see, my daughter’s missing, and I haven’t been able to get hold of her, so it’d really help if I could find her phone so I’d know who she’s been contacting.’

‘Nah, mate, I only found that and the quilt,’ the man told him.

Jeff sensed that he was telling the truth, and nodded. ‘Thanks. And sorry if it sounded like I was accusing you of nicking it – I’m just really worried about her. I’ve left my address with your mate in case she turns up, but can you keep an eye out for her as well? Her name’s Skye; she’s blonde, about five-two, and she’s fourteen.’

Or is she fifteen now
? he wondered, remembering that Hayley’s mum had mentioned something about a birthday present. Ashamed to admit that he didn’t know his own daughter’s age, he didn’t correct himself.

‘Yeah, course,’ the man agreed, giving him a sympathetic look. ‘My little ’un’s twelve, and I’d go off my head if I didn’t know where she was, so I know how you must be feeling. Look, tell you what,’ he said then. ‘Why don’t you give us your number, and I’ll bell you if I see her.’

Jeff gave the man his mobile number, and then set off back to Shirley’s with the laptop clutched to his chest. He vaguely recalled that it had been loaned to Skye by her school, so he knew he ought to return it to them. But, right now, it was his only link to her and just holding it in his arms was a comfort to him.

Shirley was tired when she got home from work that evening, and her head was banging from the stress of having spent yet another day pretending not to notice the dirty looks and snide comments being aimed her way by the lads in the garage and the snotty bitches on reception.

She couldn’t believe they had turned on Jeff so viciously on the strength of a few rumours. They had known him for as long as she had, so they ought to have known better than to listen to malicious gossip. But they had not only condemned him without giving him a chance to give his side of the story, they had also sentenced him to a lifetime of having to look over his shoulder in order to avoid getting his head kicked in should they chance upon him in some quiet place.

Shirley hadn’t done herself any favours by speaking up for him in the pub the day after he’d been sacked. In hindsight, she should have kept her mouth shut and waited for them to get bored of talking about him. But it had pissed her off to hear them trashing him, and she’d got up on her soapbox and given them a good old tongue-lashing: berating the guys for so quickly forgetting all the times Jeff had supported them and helped them out, and reminding the bimbos that it hadn’t been so long since they were all batting their fake eyelashes at him and trying to worm their way into his bed.

She could care less that none of them had spoken to her since, but it wasn’t so easy to ignore the rumours that were beginning to circulate about her and Jeff. Somehow – and Shirley had no idea where it had come from, considering that she had never socialised with any of her colleagues outside of work and hadn’t thought that any of them knew her address – they had found out that Jeff was staying with her and now seemed determined to make her life at work even more uncomfortable.

It was hard to keep going in such a toxic environment, but if they were hoping to make her quit they were in for a very long wait because she was made of stronger stuff than that. And the boss, who had made his own fair share of snide asides since it had all kicked off, knew better than to try and sack her because he knew she would haul him up before a tribunal without pausing for breath. Apart from which, she did the accounts, and he
definitely
wouldn’t want the taxman to find out about the numerous ways in which he avoided paying his due. Still, it was unpleasant, all the same, and Shirley wished there was a way to prove Jeff’s innocence so that life could get back to normal.

She hadn’t mentioned any of this to Jeff, though, because he was depressed enough already without her adding to his woes. He would only end up blaming himself for dragging her into it if he knew, and then he’d probably leave, which wouldn’t benefit anyone – least of all him.

With that in mind, Shirley adopted her usual bright smile as she let herself into the flat tonight, and chirped, ‘Honey, I’m home!’

Surprised not to pick up the scent of furniture polish or hear the whirr of the vacuum cleaner, because Jeff had become quite the dab hand at cleaning while he’d been staying with her, she dropped the bag of takeaway food she was carrying onto the kitchen table and walked through to the living room.

Jeff was slumped on the couch with a dejected look on his face. Worried that he might have received bad news, Shirley draped her jacket over the back of the chair and sat down beside him.

‘Are you okay? Has something happened?’

‘I’m just a bit down,’ Jeff told her. ‘The landlord’s got the builders in at my old place, and it was sad to see them ripping everything apart. Kind of felt like the end of an era.’ He sighed now, and shook his head, before adding, ‘I’ll be forty in a couple of years, and what have I got to show for it? No wife, no kid, no house, no job – nothing. I’m a failure; a complete and utter failure.’

‘No, you’re not,’ Shirley argued, relieved to hear that this wasn’t about Skye, as she had feared. ‘You’re a good man, and none of this is your fault.’

‘Course it’s my fault,’ Jeff countered miserably. ‘It was my job to look after them, and I let them down.’

‘How?’ Shirley demanded. ‘You didn’t stab anyone, and you weren’t to know that Skye would run away. You’re a good husband and father, and that’s a damn sight more than I can say for most of the men I’ve met – believe me.’

Jeff knew that she was trying to raise his spirits, but it wasn’t going to work, because the truth was the truth and he couldn’t shrug it off.

‘If I was such a good husband I’d have had Andrea sorted out a long time ago,’ he admitted. ‘All I had to do was make sure she took her tabs, but I couldn’t even do that. As for Skye, I don’t even know how old she is. How disgusting is that? I’m her father, and I don’t even know when her birthday is.’

Shirley’s heart went out to him when she saw the anguish in his eyes, and she reached for his hand. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she reiterated gently. ‘You worked long hours, and you had Andrea’s illness to contend with. You couldn’t be expected to keep track of every little detail.’

‘Her birthday’s not a little detail, it’s important,’ Jeff countered guiltily. ‘She’s my only child, and I was there when she was born, so how could I just forget it like it meant nothing?’

‘I forget birthdays all the time,’ Shirley told him. ‘Even managed to forget my own last year.’

‘It’s not the same,’ Jeff said quietly. ‘I’ve been sat here all day thinking about her, and I’ve realised that I don’t know the first thing about her. What she likes to eat, what music she listens to, what year she’s in at school – nothing. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I sat down and actually talked to her one on one. It’s like she was just some kid who lived upstairs.’

‘You’re being too hard on yourself,’ Shirley insisted. ‘This has been a really stressful time for you, but you must know there was nothing you could have done. It was out of your hands.’

Jeff disagreed. ‘I’m not the man you seem to think I am, love. There’s a lot that I could have done different, and I’m ashamed that I let it get to this. But I’ll make up for it when they come home,’ he added with conviction. ‘As soon as we’re all back together, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep them safe and happy.’

‘I know you will,’ Shirley murmured, battling envy as she heard the passion in his voice. Andrea didn’t deserve him, in her opinion. The woman’s illness was manageable but she’d chosen
not
to manage it, seemingly preferring to torture Jeff with her unnecessary outbursts. And God only knew what their daughter had endured at her mother’s hands while Jeff had been breaking his back to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.

‘I’ll get out of your way,’ Jeff said, pushing himself forward on his seat. ‘You’re supposed to relax when you get home from work, not have to sit here listening to my problems.’