Ted hinged upright, his circulation thudding between his eyes.
‘Evie?’ Juliette frowned. The only sound was muffled shouting on the other end of the line. ‘Wait, slow down.’
Evie. Why the hell was she calling at this hour?
‘Evie, take a breath.’
Even from the bed, Ted could hear Evie’s voice yelling in Juliette’s ear. What was going on?
‘OK, OK. Tell him I’m coming. I’ll talk to him about it. We’re on our way. Evie?’ Juliette glanced at the screen. ‘She hung up.’ Juliette speed-dialled her number. ‘It’s gone to message.’
‘What’s happening?’
Juliette shook her head and tried again.
‘Any update?’ Ted emerged from the bathroom wearing the taupe shirt and black jeans he’d had on earlier.
‘She’s still not picking up.’ Juliette had put on grey slacks and a navy sweatshirt.
‘Let me try Jakob.’ Ted speed-dialled with his phone but got his message. ‘No luck. So what exactly did she say?’
‘Just that Jakob had gone berserk. I couldn’t understand anymore.’
‘Should we call the police?’
‘She called us. If we were having a fight, would you want the police turning up?’
‘So they’re definitely having a fight?’
‘From what I could understand.’
‘I’d better get round there.’ Ted scanned the bright room for his shoes.
‘I’m going too. Evie’s my friend.’ She slipped on some black suede ankle boots.
‘We can’t leave Georgie on his own.’
‘I’ve spoken to Zoe. She’s on her way round.’
Ted shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t have disturbed her at this hour.’
‘She was up with Pip anyway.’
Their next-door neighbour had an eight-month-old daughter, so she and Juliette often babysat for each other. ‘That’s a big ask.’
‘I’m sure I’ll return the favour.’
Ted slid his feet into his leather shoes. ‘All right, I’ll get the car.’
‘You can’t drive. You were still drinking a couple of hours ago. I’ve ordered a cab and it’s nearly here.’
‘That was fast work.’ As he’d thrown water in his face to wake himself and then dressed he thought Juliette had been talking to Evie.
Juliette picked her phone up from the bed and checked the cab’s progress. ‘Let’s be ready to go as soon as it arrives.’ She tucked the phone in her back pocket and headed for the door.
Ted followed and they both paused at Georgie’s. No sound from within.
‘We won’t wake him,’ Juliette whispered. ‘Zoe can let him know what’s happening when he does.’
Ted kept his voice low too. ‘Hopefully, we’ll be back before he’s up.’
Juliette said nothing and stepped carefully down the stairs.
As they reached the bottom somebody knocked lightly on the front door. Juliette crept up the hallway runner and opened it. ‘Hi Zoe, you should have used your key.’
‘I didn’t like to when you were in.’ She whispered too. Zoe Cabot was a young single mother, in her mid-twenties. She was gently bouncing her new baby. She wore a paisley headscarf and a worried expression. Her pale eyelashes rapidly blinked. ‘Everything OK?’
Juliette nodded. ‘Just a little emergency, friends of ours in Ibbotson. I’ll phone you when we know what’s going on. Help yourself to anything you want. Georgie is usually up at seven on Saturday.’
Zoe nodded gravely at Juliette and then put on a warm smile for Ted. ‘Don’t worry about anything here.’ She dumped down a changing bag.
A car beeped.
‘Really appreciate you doing this.’ Ted stood aside so she could squeeze by, grabbed his leather coat from the rack and hurried out into the dark. There was a frost on their small front lawn, and he zipped up and shivered as he trotted to the car outside the gate. Juliette remained inside, so he greeted the driver of the white Seat, sat in the front and pulled his door shut.
‘Ibbotson, please. Just waiting for my wife.’
The young Japanese driver nodded and there was a short awkward delay until Juliette dropped into the back seat.
‘Zoe all right?’
Juliette closed her door and didn’t answer Ted immediately. ‘She’s fine.’
‘You OK?’
Again her response was delayed. ‘Yes, just worried about Evie.’
The driver pulled out.
‘They’re only fifteen minutes away. We’ll soon find out what’s going on.’ But Ted suspected it was serious. Evie had never called them like this before. It was difficult to imagine them even raising their voices to each other. Who knew what went on behind closed doors though? Jakob had been very quiet when they left and pretty unsteady on his feet. ‘Try her again.’
Juliette did, then shook her head and hung up.
The driver turned left at the end of the street.
‘What was Jakob doing?’
‘I told you I don’t know.’
‘So what’s “it”?’
Juliette leaned forward and replied in the ear furthest from the driver. ‘What d’you mean?’
Ted turned. ‘When you were on the phone to Evie you said you’d talk to him about “it”. What is “it”?’
‘She just said he’d gone berserk. The rest was incoherent.’
‘There’s nothing you’re not telling me?’
‘Why would there be?’
Ted wondered if there was a little too much mortification in her response. ‘You just seem so determined to come with me.’
‘I told you, she’s my friend.’
‘Has this happened before. Them fighting?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Ted turned front again. He couldn’t imagine it. There was sometimes sniping between them, but Jakob always seemed to be a gentle giant.
They drove the rest of the way to Ibbotson in silence.
The small hamlet that Evie and Jakob lived in had very few streetlights and the narrow road that ran through it was often manned by retired residents taking speeding drivers’ registration numbers. Ted had been caught on more than one occasion and had received stiff letters through the post. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find pensioners with clipboards lurking in the hedges even at this hour of the morning.
The driver took the sharp right into Fencham Place and the headlights illuminated a tall