Death Comes First

Nineteen

Joyce felt the wet warmth of tears running down her face as she held her son close. But this time they were tears of joy.

Fred was alive, and apparently well. And he was in her arms. She vowed never to let her son out of her sight again. She knew it was stupid, and totally impractical, but at that moment of enormous relief that was how she felt.

She closed her eyes, savouring the moment.

By the time she opened them again the man who had climbed into the back of her car had removed his hoody and was standing before her bare-headed, his white-blond hair glistening in the rain. Like Fred he was wearing camouflage gear. From the apparel of both man and boy, and the khaki tent, it looked like they were playing one of those character-testing war games.

The hair was unnaturally blond, fashionably bleached and cropped. The eyes were dark brown instead of the familiar pale grey flecked with hazel. Both hair and eyes were the wrong colour, and the man was far too thin. Much thinner than before.

But it was him, all right. She had known it must be from the moment she’d become aware of his presence in the car. The voice had been familiar, even though muffled and distorted. And who else would have been able to so easily gain entry to her locked and alarmed vehicle? Who else would have a key?

Yet throughout the drive from Landacre to the barn hidden away in Exmoor woodland, there had been a niggle at the back of her mind telling her it couldn’t be him. He was dead. True, his body had never been found, but the police and coastguard authorities who’d recovered his abandoned boat had concluded that he was dead.

‘Hello, Joycey,’ he said softly.

His voice was no longer muffled. It was unmistakable.

She stared at him over her son’s head. Then she stepped back from Fred and rushed towards him.

She could hear herself screaming. She hadn’t intended to scream. She barely knew she was doing it. It was an involuntary reaction to what was happening.

His arms were outstretched, held akimbo as if he expected her to run into them. And she did run to him. But when she reached him she pushed his arms further apart with her own, then clenched her fists and began to pummel him as hard as she could on his chest.

‘You bastard!’ she shouted. ‘You utter bastard! I thought you were dead. Your children thought you were dead!’

Charlie Mildmay stood there and took it. He was a tall, once fit man. If Joyce had been able to grasp anything beyond the fact that he was there, that he was alive, she would have noticed how grey and drawn Charlie was. Along with the pounds he’d shed, he seemed to have lost much of his physical strength. The blows she was raining on him caused him to flinch and gasp for breath.

‘Don’t, Mum, don’t!’ Fred cried out.

Joyce carried on as if she hadn’t heard him.

Eventually Charlie took hold of her wrists and gently pushed them away. She let him do so. She did not struggle. Perhaps she began to remember the presence of her children. Children who must both be as frightened and bewildered as she was.

Her frenzied attack ended as abruptly as it had begun.

She shook off her husband’s hands from around her wrists and stepped back.

‘You let us all think you were dead, Charlie,’ she said, speaking more quietly. ‘That was evil. Wicked. How could you?’

Charlie bowed his head.

‘You let us think you were dead,’ Joyce repeated. ‘I wept over your loss. Your children wept over your loss. How could you do that to us?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie said, his head bowed.

‘You’re fucking sorry?’ Joyce stormed, raising her voice.

Then she again remembered the presence of her children. She didn’t know how to deal with what was happening. She had no idea how to deal with it. But screaming at her children’s father while they stood and watched was not going to help.

She knew she should wait until they were alone before questioning Charlie, but she couldn’t stop herself. In any case, it seemed unlikely that there was anywhere to go where they could be alone, unless they were going to go off for a tramp through the wet and dripping woodland.

‘Why, Charlie?’ she asked, her voice as quiet as she could make it. ‘Why did you do it?’

Charlie looked up, and met her eyes for the first time.

‘I had no choice,’ he said. ‘You have to believe me, Joyce, I had no choice.’

His gaze shifted. He was looking over Joyce’s left shoulder at Molly, who, eyes wide, lips trembling, was still standing with one arm around Fred.

‘Baby?’ he said, his voice full of uncertainty, wondering how receptive his daughter was likely to be.

‘D-dad?’ Molly’s uncertainty was even greater. After all, she had never expected to see her father again.

‘Baby,’ Charlie repeated. This time he grinned. That old disarming grin. A tad forced, perhaps, but there all the same. A grin that split his overly thin face, a grin that lit up those erroneous eyes; eyes which were the wrong colour. Contact lenses, Joyce assumed.

Molly removed her arm from around Fred’s shoulders and ran to him, as her mother had done. But unlike her mother she did not beat his chest with her fists. Her face displayed no anger. It was as if the grief and torment of the previous six months had been washed from her very being by that one word from her beloved father:

‘Baby.’

Molly threw her arms around Charlie. He drew her to him and lifted her a few inches from the ground, as he had done since she was a toddler.

‘My darling girl,’ he murmured into her hair.

Joyce could cheerfully have throttled him. She had so wanted Charlie to be alive when they told her he had disappeared at sea. Now she was outraged. How dare he come back into their lives and behave, with Molly anyway, just the way he had before.

‘I want to know why, Charlie,’ she said.

She felt near-physical pain. There was so much anguish, and it seemed Charlie was responsible for all of it — deliberately so.

He looked up at her over Molly’s head.

‘I don’t know where to begin,’ he said.

‘I don’t suppose you do,’ Joyce responded. ‘Not only did you let us think you were dead, you took Fred from me. I thought that he might be dead too. Now you’ve more or less kidnapped me and Molly.’

She was struggling to maintain control. Her voice was growing louder and sharper.

‘Have you gone mad?’ she asked.

It wasn’t a figure of speech. She was absolutely serious. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps Charlie had lost his mind.

He shook his head.

‘I had to do it,’ he said. ‘Look, I want to tell you everything. All three of you.’

‘I think you and I should speak alone,’ said Joyce quickly.

Charlie shook his head. ‘No, the children have to know this too. It’s important for all of us. They have to know why I have done what I have done. Why I disappeared and why I have come back. If we are going to survive as a family, then they have to know.’

‘Survive as a family?’ Joyce let out a hysterical laugh. ‘After all that you have done to us? No, Charlie, you must have gone mad.’

Fred ran to her side, and pressed his small body into hers.

‘Please, Mum, listen to him,’ he said. ‘He can explain everything, really he can.’

Joyce glanced down at him, then looked enquiringly at her husband.

‘I had to tell Fred what’s been going on,’ he said.

So far as Joyce was concerned, that only made things worse. It went against her instinct to protect her son.

‘Does that include why you wrote me that letter and why you took our son from his bed and brought him out here, why you abducted him?’ she enquired coolly.

Charlie lowered his head. ‘Well, not absolutely everything, obviously.’

‘I can’t believe what you’ve done, what you are doing.’

‘Please, Mum,’ said Fred again.

‘It’s all right, Fred,’ said Joyce, though it most certainly wasn’t. Absolutely nothing was all right.

She turned to her husband again. ‘And what about today’s pantomime? What was that all about? Molly and I spent more than an hour freezing to death, waiting and hoping for Fred to turn up while you lurked in the back of our car — then you kidnapped us too.’

‘I had to do it that way,’ said Charlie. ‘I am in danger. We all could be in danger. I was terrified of anyone seeing me, recognizing me. You could have been followed. Your phones could have been tracked. I couldn’t meet you anywhere public, not even in the middle of the moors. You don’t understand. We’re safe here. Hidden away. For the time being, anyway. That’s why I had to get rid of your SIM cards. And you can’t even get a signal here, so we can’t be tracked directly to this place. I drove over the moors almost to Barnstaple this morning so that Fred could text you. Risked being spotted, of course, but on the roads there was less of a risk of using the phone than there was using it near to where we were hiding out.’

Joyce could only stare at him. Charlie’s eyes were unnaturally bright. Was he on drugs? For years she’d worried about his reliance on prescription medication. Had it pushed him over the edge? Had his state of mind been so adversely affected by his excesses?

‘You are mad, aren’t you,’ she said.

It wasn’t a question.

‘I’m not mad,’ said Charlie quietly. ‘But I may have been before I staged my own death.’

Then, whilst Joyce was still trying to work out what he meant by that, he spoke again.

‘Won’t you please come into the tent,’ he said. ‘It’s dry and warm in there. We can talk properly.’

‘I don’t remember us ever talking properly, Charlie,’ said Joyce. ‘Maybe that’s the problem.’

‘Please,’ said Charlie.

‘All right, I will listen to your story. But unless you have something amazing to say to make me change my mind, I shall be driving our children home. Without you. And meanwhile, Fred, Molly, I’m sorry, but whatever your father thinks, I do need to speak to him alone.’

Charlie looked as if he were about to protest. She silenced him with an impatient flick of the wrist. ‘I mean it, Charlie. Alone or not at all.’

She looked around the ruined barn, trying to work out a way of organizing some privacy.

‘OK,’ she said, addressing her children. ‘You two go into the tent and try to keep warm. Charlie, we can sit in the Range Rover. Now, nobody argue. Please. That’s my condition for listening to you, Charlie. Else I shall take off now and go straight to the police.’

She paused, wondering if that would even be possible, or if Charlie would attempt to stop her. She decided to challenge Charlie while the thought was in her mind.

‘Assuming you don’t intend trying to prevent me or our children leaving,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t do that, would you Charlie?’

Charlie looked at his feet. Clad in the kind of cheap army boots you can buy on the net. Boots no real soldier would ever consider going for a yomp in.

At least he seemed to realize he would not be able to persuade Joyce to listen to his story as long as their children were in earshot. He remained silent.

Fred looked at Molly.

‘Come on, you,’ said Molly. ‘Let’s do what Mum says. You know she means it.’

Joyce did mean it too. Her children had picked up on that straight away, and so it seemed had her husband. Even if he had avoided her question about whether or not she and the children would be free to leave.

Charlie said nothing but stepped towards the Range Rover and climbed in behind the wheel. Joyce watched Molly and Fred disappear into the tent and zip up the flap, then she climbed into the passenger seat beside her husband.