Where’s Dad?’ Sam yelled from his own room.
‘He’ll be on his way,’ Lucy called back, trying to keep her voice light despite underlying worry that had been niggling her since they’d come home. At least the bedtime routine had been useful in keeping her occupied: bath, pyjamas, drink and biscuit, teeth, stories … the whole rigmarole she had been through zillions of times. But now there was nothing left to do but worry – and wait.
She had called Ivan yet again, but his phone still kept going to voicemail. Surely he hadn’t decided to go out with colleagues in Manchester tonight, without letting her know? No – that wasn’t Ivan at all. He loved his working life, the thrill of being in the midst of a huge project again, but he was also a caring husband and father, keeping in touch with daily calls while he was away. He’d never failed to show up as expected at the end of the week – and this was no ordinary Friday night either. It was the start of his holiday. Lucy was aware of a sharp pang of missing him as she tucked in Marnie and kissed her before padding quietly out to the landing and going to check on Sam.
‘I don’t want to go to sleep,’ Sam muttered from his bed.
‘Darling, it’s really late now. I’m going to bed soon—’
‘I feel sick, Mummy.’
‘Oh, Sam. It’ll be all those sweets. I did say don’t eat so many.’ She hurried towards him just in time to see him sit up abruptly and throw up all down his front. ‘Sam, honey!’ Lucy exclaimed. He started crying and scrambled out of bed. Splattered PJs were stripped off, and a naked Sam was ushered through to the bathroom where he was showered, then wrapped up in his favourite dressing gown – the cream one with teddy bear ears, which was far too babyish for him really, but which he needed to wear now, very much.
Back in his bedroom, Lucy bent to cuddle him as he slumped on his bean bag, then stripped his bed and made it up with fresh linen. ‘Marnie, please go back to bed,’ she muttered as, naturally, his sister had come through to observe the spectacle.
‘This room stinks.’
‘It’ll fade away in a minute,’ Lucy fibbed, aware of tiredness pressing down on her now. She was no longer conjuring up images of red wine, but of her own bed, freshly made up as was her custom on Friday nights, with candles ready to be lit on her bedside table. Not that there would be anything terribly thrilling going on in bed tonight, she thought irritably – not after Ivan had worried her so much.
Finally, the children were back in bed. There was a noise at the front door, and she hurried through from the kitchen towards it. But it wasn’t Ivan; in fact there was no one there. The wind had got up, and the door was rattling, that was all. Lucy freed her long hair from its ponytail as she strode back to the living room and checked her phone in case she had missed a call.
When she heard a knock, ten minutes later, she wondered if she might ignore it, as who could it be at this time of night? It was near midnight, and no one local would dream of calling. Something clenched inside her as she made her way through to the hallway to see who it was.
Lucy’s breath caught in her throat as she opened the door. Two police officers – one man, one woman – were standing there, and that was the moment when Lucy’s whole life changed.
Ivan never saw Marnie’s elf costume, or Sam in his reindeer onesie. He never saw his wife or children again because, on his drive home from Manchester on that dark, wet night, Ivan had been killed in a head-on collision twelve miles from Burley Bridge. He hadn’t been on the motorway but a winding B-road, which was unusual. It wasn’t his normal route at all. The other car’s driver survived, with serious spinal injuries; Ivan had seemingly skidded on the wet surface and ended up on the wrong side of the road.
It was no one’s fault. That was the official conclusion that came out months after the event. It was the fact that water had pooled there on the road surface. But Lucy couldn’t stop thinking that perhaps she was to blame for being so insistent about making a new life here in Burley Bridge.
You and me will always be a team, Ivan had said.
As the days and weeks somehow continued without him, Lucy would find herself playing his words over and over as if some terrible loop tape had wedged itself in her brain. And although she knew it was crazy, she couldn’t help feeling furious that he had left her this way.
He hadn’t kept his promise at all.
James had been at his dad’s for two weeks now, trying to knock the place into shape and take care of the basics. Christmas had come and gone with Kenny showing little enthusiasm for the roast dinner James had made for the two of them, even though he had cooked his father’s preferred beef. ‘I don’t want some dried-up old turkey,’ Kenny had instructed. ‘I’ve never seen the point of that bird.’
He hadn’t seen the point of having a Christmas tree, either, but James had insisted on cutting one down from the woods and bringing it into the house. He had even unearthed the box of fragile hand-painted glass baubles his mum had collected, and which he remembered from childhood. Of course, his dad’s Christmas tree business was long gone, but the sight of the small, squat pine strewn with tinsel at least cheered the place up. Crucially, James had also managed to dispose of the stash of supermarket sandwiches by flinging them into bin liners and sneaking outside with them while Kenny was watching a young man being apprehended by airport border security on TV.
The man’s stash of advent calendars in his suitcase had turned out not to be filled with chocolates, but cocaine. ‘How festive,’ James had remarked as he came back inside, but his dad had merely cheered on the diligent customs officials (this was rich, considering Kenny had been fond of a gnarly-looking joint well into middle age). Fortunately, Kenny didn’t seem to notice that his sandwiches had gone. Perhaps he’d forgotten he’d even bought them.
Meanwhile, James had kept trying to get hold of Rod. He had gone AWOL on several occasions before, during particularly rocky patches in his marriage – otherwise James might have considered reporting him missing to the police. Finally, after a fortnight of his phone just ringing out, Rod finally answered his brother’s call. ‘D’you realise I’ve been trying to get hold of you since before Christmas?’ James exclaimed. ‘Christ – I thought you were dead!’
‘Sorry,’ Rod said. ‘Things have been … a bit complicated.’
‘You didn’t even call Dad on Christmas Day. Even he was worried, and you know he’s never particularly concerned about us—’
‘Yeah. I’ve just been off-grid for a while.’
‘Off-grid?’ James spluttered. ‘What d’you mean? Where are you?’
Rod paused, and James heard a female voice in the background. ‘I’m, uh … in Switzerland right now.’
‘What?’
‘I’m skiing,’ Rod added curtly, as if it should be obvious. ‘Well, not right now – right now I’m talking to you. But I came out for a bit of a break.’
James rubbed at his short dark hair, his breath forming white puffs as he exhaled. In order to conduct the conversation in private, he was pacing about on the scrubby ground behind his father’s house. ‘Fine,’ he said, keeping his voice steady, ‘but couldn’t you have let me know? I mean, what about Dad?’
‘Hmm, well, maybe you could have a go at trying to live with him for a while?’ Rod remarked with more than a trace of bitterness.
James leaned against the dry stone wall, aware of his father’s two cats eyeing him keenly from the living room window. ‘I know Dad’s not easy,’ he conceded.
‘You can say that again.’
‘And of course I don’t expect