Whenever E-Book

Sarah Connell

• Herausgeber: Cinnamon Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 149

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Christine wakes up one morning to discover that her husband, Ray, did not come home from his evening out with a friend. She waits to hear from him but has no message or news. The friend she thought he had arranged to see has left a phone message to say that he is sorry they did not meet. Ray's work believe he has gone away on sabbatical and the police are sympathetic but unhelpful. Ray is gone and there is no reason to think he might come back again soon. From being settled and content, Christine's life lies in tatters. Until she encounters a young man tending a cat injured by a speeding car. Against her instincts, Christine is drawn to the young man and strange, fragile association grows between them, one which gradually alters Christine's life.

Leseprobe

Contents

Title

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

WHENEVER

SARAH CONNELL

Published by Cinnamon Press

Meirion House

Tanygrisiau

Blaenau Ffestiniog

Gwynedd  LL41 3SU

www.cinnamonpress.com

The right of Sarah Connell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988. © 2019 Sarah Connell.

ISBN 978-1-78864-089-3

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A CIP record for this book can be obtained from the British Library. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers. This book may not be lent, hired out, resold or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior consent of the publishers.

Designed and typeset in Garamond by Cinnamon Press. Cover design: Adam Craig © Adam Craig. Cover image: Sean King/Unsplash.

Cinnamon Press is represented by Inpress and by the Welsh Books Council in Wales.

The publisher acknowledges the support of the Welsh Books Council.

Acknowledgements

With warm thanks to Rowan Fortune.

For Brian, with love

Chapter One

It starts with a phone call in the night. She comes out of a heavy sleep with a judder; that night harbinger of disaster is ringing. She rolls, registering as she does so that the other side of the bed is empty. Lifting the receiver with one hand, she stretches the other behind her in an awkward movement. The sheet is cold.

It starts with a phone call in the night. Only silence while she listens. A strange quality of silence as if someone is mouthing words, straining to speak but sounding nothing.

Fear enters her, squeezing her chest. For a second, the familiar shapes in the dark room are blurred and strange. Where is he? She checks the time. The digital display blinks. Exactly four o’clock. The middle of the night. Ray is a careful man, a considerate husband. He has not rung to say he would be late. Where could he be? Who was it that has rung and said nothing?

The arrangement to see his friend, Martin, in the pub is occasional, confirmed by a phone call the night before. ‘Yes, fine, eight is fine for me.’ His deep voice in the hall. And he had left yesterday evening in time to walk to the centre, a ten minute stroll to the town’s quiet bar, avoiding the hectic bands of drinkers on the main street. Could she ring his friend, at this time, to see, to confirm, that he stayed over at his house for some reason, that he is sleeping there? He would ring himself. He would never leave her worried, awake in the dark and frightened for him. For her. When it was time for her alarm at 7.15 he would ring. His face, a heavy oval, serious, crumpled by time at the edges. How long since she has touched his face? She shuts her eyes and lays down. She must wait for morning, but she will not be able to sleep.

The second awakening is worse because her mind knows before she is conscious that he is not here. Somehow she has slept and her alarm radio tells her about wars and far-off dramas, but Ray has not rung. 

Something bad has happened. Maybe he is ashamed of getting drunk, staying out. Maybe he will turn up soon. 

Ray is rarely drunk. He moderates himself. He is careful, restrained. Her body stiffens, her limbs rigid.

Her uniform is hanging in the bathroom, waiting, clean, white, trimmed blue. How she loves her uniform. Training, dedication, a new life in her forties and a useful role, helping so many. Using touch and movement to heal, console, bring about recovery. She straightens the bedclothes on her side as habit demands, putting the decorative cushions back. But where she has pushed the duvet down on his side, searching for his warmth, she leaves it. An untidy room, a disturbed bed. An empty space.

Instead of a shower and quickly dressing for work at the hospital, she meanders through the house, listening, waiting, into the kitchen. The kitchen has white tiles and cupboards, with touches of blue from her display of china on one shelf, carefully placed and frequently washed items she had chosen to fit this kitchen, this picture. Ray professed indifference to the colour scheme, but congratulated her when it was finished. She is proud of its clean simplicity; it is tasteful and hygienic. 

Without knowing what she is doing, she pours her usual cereal into a bowl. She looks at it as if it is alien. She sits at the table, lifts the spoon to her mouth. Then slowly drops it. A few splashes fall silently onto the table. She gets up, takes a cloth from its place next to the sink and wipes the milky marks. She rinses the cloth, hangs it back and sits again. The cereal waits uneaten. 

Outside soft autumnal rain falls, before the forecast storms. The acer and the cherry tree in the garden are still in full green leaf, but the first signs of change have begun, gold and bronze flashes in the branches. Christine planted them in their first summer. She loves the vivid red of the acer when it turns in late autumn and anticipates its glory with pleasure every year. The old magnolia, which was here when they bought the house ten years ago, is the last to change, its heavy leaves only going brown and dropping later in the season. Still sitting, facing the window, she waits. For a phone call, a message, for something to happen.

On the side of the bread bin, she sees his phone. He has not taken his phone. Something bad has happened.

She forces herself to open his side of the wardrobe cupboards. Empty hangers reproach her, only his two suits and some old trousers still hang, left behind.

Later in the morning, she decides she must ring the hospital to explain she is not coming in for her shift. She will have to say she is unwell. She wonders how to phrase this. Her sickness record is unbroken, remarked on by all her managers over seven years. As she still sits, staring out of the window, practising what she might say, the house phone rings. She springs to her feet and runs up the hall. But as she reaches it —is she going too slowly, is she unable to run quickly enough—the answer service starts. 

She stands in front of the machine and listens intensely.

‘Hi Ray, just a quick one, sorry you couldn’t make it last night, but I am free this pm and would like to see you, old boy. Let me know. Off to work now but my mobile, you know?’

Martin does not know where Ray is. They did not meet last night. He will ring again. She will tell him Ray has left her. He will come solicitiously, expressing concern. But he and she are not friends. His embarrassment will keep him away after that visit. His embarrassment and her unspoken shame. 

What could have happened to him? She must ring the hospital, the police, someone. 

The refrain, ‘something bad has happened,’ runs through her mind. She mouths it as she wanders through the house. It is a charm, a chant against the absence of her steady, faithful husband, the academic one, who could be trusted to do the decent thing, the expected action. 

She stands in front of a mirror in the bedroom. She sees a small blonde person she cannot recognise. Her eyes cloud with something other than tears.

In the afternoon, she rings the police. Speaking clearly and slowly, her heart pounding, she says she has a missing person to report. Three officers arrive, solemn, respectful, taking notes, sitting on her and Ray’s sofas in their uniforms, apparently untroubled. 

‘Have there been any trouble marital problems between you?’

‘Do you know of any difficulties he may have been having?’

‘Do you know if he has been going to work regularly?’

‘Has he been to work this week?’

She realises she has not wondered about work. She doesn’t know if he is at work at this moment. While she is facing police officers in her home, could he be teaching, sitting at a desk, only a short walk away? She tenses her legs as if to spring up to go and see.

Has he been to work? The senior one takes his time to talk it through with her, leading her inexorably, sentence by carefully spaced sentence, to the point where it could be said, in a thoughtful voice with steady eyes gazing into hers, that ‘there was no real risk involved.’ His companions nod thoughtfully in agreement. A man of fifty three, no obvious health problems, no mental health record. He will be registered on the system as a missing person. But, in fact, he is free. Free to go. Free to leave as he wishes. Unless she has anything else to add.

He has just left. Left the car, his phone and some clothes as well as her. 

‘Doesn’t it mean?’, she asks, her voice rising, ‘Isn’t it, isn’t it a risk that he has not rung me or left any, any sign?’ 

Surely he is a missing person who must be looked for? Their eyes are sympathetic, but the negative hangs between them. 

The female officer says she will be her contact, gives her a card with a name and number, to keep and use if there is any news. This official, with a cool look of professional sympathy, is her only link with the search. If there is a search.

She imagines helicopters in the sky whirring above woodland, dogs straining to follow scents, masses of officers combing inches of grass for clues. Is he to vanish without an outcry?

The advice leaflet the police leave, a leaflet for people like her who have inexplicably lost someone, has words she can read, but not follow. 

Their joint account is untouched, but he has his own money. His wallet is gone. After two days she goes through his drawers; not all of his clothes have gone. He had left that evening, seventy two hours earlier, and called out goodbye. She was watching television, did not turn, did not see if he was carrying a bag. Had he been careful to leave when she was occupied? She puts her hands onto what is left of the folded underwear and sweaters, soft and bulky, like himself. She smoothes their surfaces, looking at her hands, the broad capable hands she has always known. Hands she uses for her work. Hands he has slipped through. She laughs. What an idea for a wife; ‘he slipped through my fingers!’ Shaken by laughter, she sits on the bed on his side. The laughter turns to hot tears. She weeps furiously for long moments. How dare he be free.

Chapter Two

When she rings the following morning, the female officer explains that there has been no sign of him. He has not been recorded on CCTV in town; there have been no sightings. Her voice is professional, detached and cool. Perhaps she is a specialist dealing with missing persons. Then the officer suggests Christine contacts his work. The call is over. 

She rings the College where he is a lecturer in maths and geography. She is put through to the staff room as she knew she would be. She cannot say who she is. You cannot say you do not know where your husband is. At the last second, as the staff voice answers, she thinks of a name to call herself, a name she remembers Ray mentioning, an adult student who has been a nuisance, always demanding more help, more time from him. 

‘Can I speak to Ray Armitage. It’s Shirley.’ She has to hope the person on the other end will not recognise her voice or know Shirley’s.

She doesn’t know the voice she is listening to but she hears the hesitation and confused assessment.

‘Ray is on sabbatical this year. Perhaps you didn’t know. Sorry I can’t give him a message as we have only seen him to say goodbye. Can anyone else help?’

She drops the phone on its stand. Confirmation of his desertion of his post as her husband, of his care for her. Leaving without a word, except to others. Leaving with a plan, made in advance, talked to his department about a plan he had written letters about. She sits. Her breathing is harsh and the room swims. He has arranged an exit, one she knows takes time and effort and agreement. How could he talk to his Head of Department, fatherly Malcolm, about a sabbatical year, and not tell her? Where has he gone and why? Why has he planned to hurt her? What has she done?

She can hear the boys at their morning games in the playing fields behind their row of houses. Usually she would be at work. She stands in the white gleam of the kitchen, looking out. The noises, sometimes whistles and then shouts, rise and fall. When they first saw this house, the proximity of the school was a problem. Especially to Ray.

‘We don’t want to listen to kids all day.’

Later, ‘The parents might be a nuisance too, those private school types.’

But the main gate, where the children arrive and parents drive up in their huge vehicles, is around the corner. The only land close to their garden is the sports field stretching behind their road. Sometimes in the summer you can hear cricket practice in the long, light evenings. Or there might be a summer athletics event on a Saturday.

Today she stands, rooted, and listens to young voices pitched into the air, the booming of teachers; ‘Come on, Smithson, move yourself, that’s it, Weller, well done.’

A pain goes through her chest. A different pain. They can’t see her, she can’t see them. I am an invisible woman. The childless woman with no husband. The woman no one knows.

She realises she did not ask where the sabbatical was. That must mean the staff in his Department at the College all know where he has gone. Why didn’t the police tell her? Have they not even investigated what his Head of Department, Malcolm, knows? She cannot remember if the officer said they had spoken to him. She goes into the hall and stands by the phone. She must ring the College again.

The phone rings. ‘Don’t.’ she screams silently. ‘Don’t ring me. I am a marked woman. invisible, nobody, a stranger.’ 

But she must answer it. Calmly she lifts the phone. It is Gillian.

She starts to speak but can only make dry, sobbing noises, sobs forced out of her chest. ‘Chrissie, I am on my way.’

Gillian is there twenty minutes later. Holding out her arms, taking Christine into a hug. But she cannot let go, cannot relax into this offer of tears on the shoulder. She is stiff and pushes away. How can she explain to this steady person with a predictable, safe life that her husband has cleared off by choice. Christine is no longer safe. 

There is an unpolished look about Gillian, her clothes a little lumpy, the faintest bristle of a moustache if you look. Her mouth is made for disapproval even when expressing sympathy. The kindness of strangers. Gillian is no stranger though, an old friend, once a neighbour.

Gillian is someone you can rely on to care, to pay attention, to be there in a crisis. She is doing that, but Christine cannot be cared for. Please go away, she wants to say. Leave me. I am someone who has been left.

Gillian bustles around, making tea, writing a list, a list of what she does not know, talking and then sitting and asking her to talk. Christine is dry mouthed and cannot speak.

Gillian shakes her head when she has forced a few words out.

‘Gone? What do you mean, he has just gone? Is he a missing person? Officially I mean. What do the police say? How could he do this to you? Are you sure there is no note anywhere?’

She cannot tell Gillian about the sabbatical year. This betrayal is a secret held even closer.

‘Look, come to our house. Stay with us.’

The idea of being with Gillian and her stuffy, slow-wit of a husband, as Ray has always called Eddie, is unthinkable. 

‘Oh, my dear. Be brave. I will phone every day. Just let me know if anything happens and I will come round whenever you want. You know that, don’t you?’

She does know that.

As Gillian is leaving she says ‘Ray is a rat. Sorry, Chrissie, but this is unforgivable.’

How does Gillian know what can be forgiven? How does anyone know?

When the daily phone calls come, she wants to shout, ‘’Don’t ring me, don’t talk your endless comforting nonsense, stay away from me.’ 

But controlling her breath, she has an answer. ‘No news, Gillian. I am okay. Really I am. As okay as I can be. Please don’t worry about me.’