Patrick nodded his understanding. ‘Marcus, the man at the shop, he said you looked scared.’
Danny shrugged. ‘I’d rode me bike in, but me dad, he comes into Epworth on market days. I was scared he’d see me. He wouldn’t have understood. He’d have thought I was against him too and I’m not. Not agin either of them. I just want them to stop rowing.’
‘Why did you go to the shop?’ Patrick asked. ‘Why not just come here?’
‘I did,’ Danny told him. ‘I did that first thing, but there was no one here and I looked in the garage through the gap between the doors and the car wasn’t there. I thought he’d have gone to the shop but the other bloke said not.’
He broke off, cast a resentful look back towards the farm. ‘When I got back home she’d gone. Dad said she’d waited till he’d gone out then packed her bags and cleared off. She never left a note or nothing.’
Patrick gnawed on his lower lip not knowing what to say. Danny was so obviously hurting. His dad would never just have gone off like that, Patrick thought, nor, for that matter, would his mum or even his stepdad. He was lucky, he reflected, and not for the first time. His mum and dad had managed an amicable divorce and he got along fine with his stepdad and his stepbrothers. His parents were on good terms too and Harry and his stepdad were perfectly friendly. In fact, the only problem Patrick had with any of it was in being unable to solve the mystery of how his parents had met and married in the first place. Talk about an attraction of opposites.
‘Do you know where she went to?’ he asked.
Danny shook his head. ‘She’s not called and I’ve phoned my auntie and my cousins and they don’t know where she is either.’
‘What about a friend?’
Danny laughed harshly. ‘Me dad made sure she didn’t keep no friends,’ he said. ‘Reckoned they were a waste of time too.’
It sounded as though Danny’s dad was the waste of time, Patrick thought, but he bit back the words. He wondered why Danny was telling him all this but he didn’t feel able to ask that either. It would sound as if he didn’t care and Patrick did care. His heart went out to him.
‘Can I do anything?’ he asked finally.
Danny shrugged. ‘I went to the police station and told them about my mum. They said she was an adult and could do what she liked and if my dad didn’t report her missing there was nothing I could do. I’m not old enough to count,’ he added bitterly. ‘So I don’t know what I can do.’
‘What’s your mum’s name?’
‘Sharon Fielding. I don’t know what else to do. My dad won’t talk about her, he just says she’s gone and don’t care about us so I’d best forget about her.’
Patrick fumbled in his head for something useful to say. ‘Look,’ he managed finally, ‘the man who owns Fallowfields now, Alec, he’s a policeman. I might be able to get him to … well, to tell you what you could do.’
Danny turned his gaze upon Patrick and held it there for so long it began to burn. Then he looked away and shrugged. ‘Ask him then,’ he said. ‘But I keep thinking … keep thinking how she might be dead.’
It was almost four by the time Patrick got back to his bed and when he did, sleep just would not come. He could understand why Danny felt the way he did. To have a parent suddenly cut off contact like that, with no warning and seemingly no reason, was hard to understand. Danny understood that his mother had been unhappy. He’d understood that it was likely his parents would split up sooner or later. He’d just expected to have a bit more warning and a little less drama, after all, they’d muddled along unhappily for years up until now.
Oddly, it seemed that Danny blamed Rupert. Rupert, Danny sensed, though he did not put it into words, was the straw that broke the proverbial camel. Rupert had, somehow, showed Sharon Fielding just what she was missing out on; clarified and made solid that vague discontent and provided the impetus for action.
Patrick wondered if Rupert’d had any inkling of that.
Had anyone else come asking questions about Rupert? Patrick had asked.
Danny had thought about it and then nodded slowly. A man Danny estimated to be in his thirties, thin and with dark hair, had come asking if they’d seen him. It was a few days before he died, Danny thought, though he wasn’t certain. He’d only overheard a part of the conversation between the man and his dad, but it seemed to be something about the man wanting to buy Rupert’s car but not being able to get hold of him.
‘He wanted to know when he’d be in,’ Danny said. ‘As if we’d know! Dad told him that. Like we ever see him.’
His dad hadn’t always been so angry, Danny had said in his father’s defence, but the farm was unprofitable and the bills were mounting and his mam was nagging about chucking it all in. After all, she’d argued, the farm was from her family, not his dad’s, so why was it so important to him.
Danny didn’t know the answer to that one. He’d have been happy to move closer to his school and what friends he had in town. Patrick got the impression he’d have been glad to have moved anywhere away from his dad.
That was what troubled him the most, Patrick realized. The sense of abandonment. It was almost preferable that his mother might be dead and unable to get in touch than it was to think she might simply have chosen not to.
Unable to sleep, Patrick sat up again and propped his pillows comfortably against the headboard. He had a pad and pen on the bedside table and the first of the three journals. He’d already found four letters and two numbers in this one the night before, but was no closer to figuring out what they might mean. He began work again, picking up from where he’d left off, focussing his mind on something that he might just possibly be able to solve, unlike the Danny problem which, Patrick knew, he probably could not.
Light crept above the horizon and greyed the darkness outside his window. Patrick worked on, finally falling back to sleep with the journal in his hand and the notepad tumbling from his bed as the sun rose up above the garden wall.
Twenty-Four
Alec arrived just before midday. He sounded exhausted and distressed, Naomi thought. Harry had let him in and she hurried through to join them in the hall. His hug of greeting was more like the clasp of someone drowning and, although he tried to sound cheerful and was obviously happy to see her, she could almost feel him pulling her down into the depth of his weariness.
‘Coffee,’ he pleaded. ‘Strong please.’
Naomi laughed uneasily and led him through to the kitchen where Harry was busying himself with the newly acquired coffee maker Naomi had bought when she’d been out with Marcus.
‘I hope I’ve got the hang of this thing,’ he said. Satisfied he’d set the process in motion, he told them he was going to rouse his son and left them alone.
‘Are you OK?’ Naomi asked anxiously.
‘No. I need to sleep and I hurt like hell. I’d forgotten how lumpy my parents’ spare bed was. It’s no wonder they don’t have anyone to stay.’
Vaguely, Naomi wondered if the bed or absence of guests came first, rather like the chicken and the egg. She asked, ‘Were they able to tell you anything?’
‘Not a lot. Only that Rupert once got the sack for alleged insider trading, but that the money used to buy Fallowfields and the share in the shop was probably clean.’
‘Probably?’
‘Oh, not much doubt really. I’m just in pessimistic mode. Sorry.’ He reached across the table and took her hand. ‘The locket we found, it belonged to my mother, by the way. She must have left it here when they and Rupert were still talking. Now she’s fretting because she’d already claimed for it on the insurance.’
Naomi laughed. ‘God, that must have been years ago.’
‘True, but you know Mum.’
‘And your London trip. Was it worth it?’
‘Worth it?’ Alec considered. ‘Let’s just say I discovered a great deal. Worth it … now, that’s another question.’