Death Comes First

Six

Joyce’s anger had quickly turned to regret at having lashed out at Stephen in that manner. She knew it had been unfair of her. The truth was that she wouldn’t have done so, not to that extent anyway, if it hadn’t been for her embarrassment over their recent sexual encounter. She had over-reacted. And that had set her wondering again: was she over-reacting to Charlie’s letter?

She told herself she should get a grip, not allow her mind to run away with itself, conjuring threats to her family purely on the basis of a rambling letter from her late husband. She’d loved Charlie and would miss him terribly, but the last few years he’d fallen prey to those black moods of his more and more often. If he had raised those fears with her in person instead of in a letter, she would probably have told herself it was all in his mind, that it was down to the medication — so why give any credence to it now?

Tired of going over and over it in her mind, she decided to make a supreme effort that evening to put it all to one side and focus on Fred and Molly.

She cooked her children their favourite tea in order to make up for what she saw as her shortcomings of the previous evening. Home-made burgers and chunky chips served with her own special tomato relish, and accompanied by a salad as a gesture towards healthy living.

Then, when the homework was out of the way, the three of them played table tennis in the area above the big connecting garage, which had been turned into a games room.

Since Charlie could only be relied upon as a fourth for doubles when he was in one of his ‘up’ moods and felt like participating in family tournaments, Joyce and the children had long since devised a complicated points system that enabled them to stage competitions that were not too swiftly completed. And Fred was helped by a handicap he no longer seemed to need. While all three were good at ball games, Fred was showing signs of a real talent for sport.

That night he was again the winner.

‘I think that handicap may have to go,’ threatened his mother as she prepared to dispatch him to bed.

‘I’ll still beat the pair of you,’ Fred boasted, chest puffed with victory.

‘Right, that’s it young man,’ proclaimed Joyce. ‘You’re going to have to live up to that. No more handicap for you. We’re all on equal terms from now on.’

‘’Bout time too,’ muttered Molly, slumping in front of the TV to make the most of the extra hour before her bedtime. She was completely addicted to Big Brother, but in its absence she would settle for any reality show. That night it was a repeat of a particularly banal episode of Come Dine with Me.

‘That programme is going to numb your brain,’ warned her mother.

‘If she had a brain,’ Fred called down the stairs.

‘Oh, Einstein, if only I was as clever as you,’ Molly shouted back. ‘The boy who told me only this morning that the VW Polo was named after Polo mints.’

‘Was too. At least I’m not soppy over a moron like Wally Johnson. Yuk!’

‘Shut up, you horror, or I’ll drown your iPhone!’

‘That’s enough, the pair of you,’ hollered Joyce, walking out into the hall. ‘Into bed now, Fred!’ she shouted up the stairs. ‘As for you, Molly, if you don’t pipe down you’ll be going up to bed too.’

Joyce listened for a moment to make sure Fred was obeying orders, then returned to the living room. ‘Who’s Wally Johnson?’

Molly flushed. ‘Nobody. Just a boy at school, that’s all.’

A voice came from upstairs: ‘Yeah, but you’re soppy over him. Soppy soppy soppy. And he’s really stupid stupid stupid.’

Molly jumped up from the sofa and set off in the direction of the stairs.

‘Fred, I’m going kill you, you little bastard,’ she shouted.

Joyce ordered her to sit down again.

‘And watch your language, too,’ she told her daughter. Then she turned her attention to the owner of the voice from above.

‘Fred, you have thirty seconds to get into bed or I’ll help your sister drown your iPhone,’ she called.

From upstairs she heard a chuckle, followed by silence.

The relentless clamour of Come Dine with Me filled the sitting room. Why did everybody have to scream all the time in these shows? Joyce wondered. Her daughter had nothing more to say to her. Her attention was riveted on the screen.

It had been a normal family night. Perhaps the most normal since Charlie’s death. Joyce had enjoyed it more than she would have thought possible after the day she’d had. She’d even enjoyed her children’s noisy banter. Molly and Fred’s incessant barbed teasing of each other had helped banish all thought of the letter, if only for a few hours.

She pottered around the kitchen until Molly had gone to bed, then decided to have an early night herself, once again armed with a bottle of wine.

There was a Joan Hickson Miss Marple on ITV 3 which she didn’t think she’d seen. And as she settled into the pillows, with a glass of red at her side, to watch the definitive portrayal of Agatha Christie’s unique detective, Joyce realized she felt surprisingly content.

The letter continued to hover at the back of her mind, coming to the fore during commercial breaks. But she dealt with it by reminding herself how erratic Charlie’s moods had become under the influence of the various drugs he was taking. He could have been in the grip of drug-induced paranoia when he wrote the letter. Perhaps it was as simple as that, and there was absolutely no substance to his allegations about her father and the family business.

Maybe the best course of action would be for her to forget about the letter and focus on trying to rebuild her life, and bringing up Molly and Fred alone as best she could. Realistically, what else could she do? She was no Miss Marple; if Henry and Stephen couldn’t be persuaded to divulge the secret workings of Tanner-Max to her, it wasn’t as if she could come by the information by any other means. And even if she could, did she really want to risk finding out something she’d be better off not knowing?

That damned letter had not only made her fearful for the future, it had made her dangerously nostalgic for her past. Particularly the one truly carefree and happy time of her life, when she’d been a young student, madly in love with Charlie.

It had also brought back memories of her early feelings for Stephen, which he’d treated so carelessly. She’d been a bit hard on Stephen that afternoon, she decided. But she’d let him stew a bit before relenting and telling him all was forgiven, she resolved before drifting off to sleep.

Joyce woke a few minutes before her 7 a.m. alarm after the best night’s sleep she’d had since Charlie’s death. While not exactly bursting with cheerfulness and the joy of being alive — she wondered if she’d ever feel that way again — she felt well rested and more positive about the future than she had in a long time.

The sun was shining, filling her bedroom with mellow morning light. Even the weather was showing signs of improvement. When the alarm sounded, she quickly got dressed and went downstairs to begin preparing breakfast for Molly and Fred. Half an hour later, she shouted up the stairs for them to rise and shine.

‘Or at least make the best impersonation you can of shining at seven thirty in the morning,’ she called, chuckling at her own wit.

Molly made it downstairs at twenty to eight, which was good by her standards. She lowered herself, yawning, into a chair at the kitchen table and started to pick disinterestedly at the bowl of fruit and cereal her mother had prepared for her.

Joyce removed four golden slices from the toaster and put them on the table along with assorted condiments. Peanut butter and honey for Fred. Low-fat spread and sugarless strawberry jam for Molly, who was starting to fret, unnecessarily in her mother’s opinion, about her weight.

This was one of Monika’s days. She arrived on the dot of eight and immediately began tidying up the kitchen around Joyce and Molly. One of her more irritating habits, but Joyce didn’t mind. Her taciturn presence was somehow reassuring, and she couldn’t imagine how she’d have coped these last few months without Monika.

Joyce gave it a few more minutes before poking her head through the kitchen door and shouting up the stairs, ‘Come on, Fred, or you won’t have time for breakfast. It’s five past eight — Geoff will be here in fifteen minutes.’

Five minutes later there was still no sign of him.

‘Right, that’s it,’ muttered Joyce, heading for the stairs. And as she climbed, she shouted a warning:

‘I’m coming to get you, my lad. And if I find you still in bed, I swear I’ll pull you out by your hair and drag you to the car!’

That should do it, she thought. Even though her son would know full well that she was joking. Perhaps it was time for her to surprise him with a little parental brute force.

Smiling in spite of her irritation, she opened the door to her son’s bedroom.

There was no sign of Fred, although his bed had clearly been slept in. She made her way to the family bathroom. He wasn’t there either.

‘Where are you hiding, Fred?’ she called, anxiety rising within her. ‘Come out this minute — this isn’t funny.’

She raced through the first floor, checking each of the five bedrooms and three bathrooms. There was no sign of Fred.

Heart pounding, her legs turning to jelly beneath her, she practically fell down the stairs in the rush to enlist the help of Molly and Monika. The three of them searched the entire house and garden.

Fred was nowhere to be seen.

Joyce kept shouting out his name until she was hoarse, yet already she knew it would do no good. Her son was mischievous at times, like any eleven-year-old, but there was no way he would torture her like this. The moment he heard the panic in her voice, he’d have emerged from his hiding place, full of apologies for having frightened her.

And she was frightened. Terrified.

Someone had come into the house in the night and taken her child.