‘Thanks,’ Naomi said though she suddenly felt terribly depressed. What if Sharon Fielding did turn up dead or badly injured?
She sighed. Well, she supposed, at least then Danny would know he hadn’t been abandoned. It was, she thought, a toss-up which outcome would be worse for the boy.
Danny Fielding had agreed to come to Fallowfields that morning. Patrick had thought it might be easier if only he and his dad were there, and Napoleon, of course, Naomi having left him behind. Napoleon was a great ice-breaker and Patrick was relying on him to ease the way.
Patrick met Danny in the meadow.
‘Does your dad know you’re here?’
Danny shrugged. ‘He’s out,’ he said. ‘Don’t know when he’ll be back.’ He had made Napoleon’s acquaintance when he talked to Patrick that night he had texted him, and he renewed the friendship now, patting the dog’s back and stroking his ears.
Patrick led him through the garden and into the house, entering through the kitchen door. ‘You want something to drink?’
‘You got coke?’
Patrick got a couple of cans from the fridge. ‘Here.’
‘Thanks.’
Danny stood just inside the kitchen door as though ready to make his escape. He allowed his gaze to travel around the room and Patrick noted as it fell on the blue bowl filled with eggs, the flowers Naomi had cut in the garden and the various gadgets Rupert had filled his kitchen with.
‘Did you make the list?’
Danny nodded and finally left the kitchen door. He took a couple of sheets of lined, crumpled paper from the back pocket of his jeans and sat down at the table. ‘This is everyone I could think of. I’ve ticked the ones I tried already.’
‘Did you try the hospitals?’ Harry asked. They both jumped, neither having heard him come in from the hall. Danny got to his feet as though ready to run away. ‘Don’t mind me,’ Harry told him, ‘I’ve just brought you these.’ He laid on the table a telephone directory and the Yellow Pages and the cordless phone.
‘Thanks, Dad.’
Harry nodded. ‘I’ll just make myself some coffee.’
Danny watched him warily and Patrick found himself observing as though through Danny’s eyes. He was so used to his father that he rarely noticed that he looked older than most parents, largely due to the fact that his hair was already grey and a little thin. He wore it cropped short, despising anything resembling a comb over. Harry’s eyes were grey too and his skin a little wrinkled at the corners. Patrick liked his father’s eyes. He was, lately, a little fatter round the middle than he really ought to be but, again, Patrick rarely noted that either. Patrick himself, slim and dark haired, olive skinned, resembled his mother, though his eyes, an almost navy blue, were inherited from Mari, Harry’s mother and, so he had been told, were like those of Harry’s long dead sister.
Danny examined Harry and Patrick knew he was comparing him to his own father. From what Patrick had seen so far that would not be an easy thing to do, though for that matter, it wasn’t easy to compare Harry to any father he could think of. Harry was, well, Harry. He found himself thinking about his stepfather. A tall, strong, fit outdoorsman with red hair and a beard to match and again wondered what on earth had possessed his parents to get married.
‘You can tell my dad anything,’ Patrick found himself saying. ‘He just wants to help, too.’
For a moment, Danny turned his gaze on Patrick and Patrick got the impression that he had crossed some line, made some incomprehensible statement. He shrugged, muttered something that Patrick didn’t catch but which he guessed expressed disbelief.
Patrick pulled the list towards him and began to read.
At Harry’s suggestion they worked back through the list from the beginning, starting with those numbers Danny had already tried – his mother’s sister, a cousin and a maternal grandfather that he never saw.
There were a few friends listed, some without numbers. It was clear that Danny had just written down anyone with a connection to his mother, however tenuous.
Harry took over. He sat down at the table and examined the list. ‘We should try hospitals,’ he said. ‘You never know she might have been in an accident and not had anything with her to say who she was.’
‘You mean like, she might have lost her memory?’ Danny sounded hopeful.
‘I’m not saying that’s what happened, Danny,’ Harry warned. ‘But we should look at all possibilities. Now, you’d better tell me about your mum, her age, what she looked like, what she might have been wearing on the day she left.’
Danny and Patrick watched as Harry found the numbers he needed, asking Danny’s advice about local hospitals and which his mother was likely to have been taken to.
Patrick listened with amusement and Danny was in evident awe as Harry began his spiel. ‘Oh, good morning. I wonder if you can help me. I certainly hope so, the family is terribly worried …’ He paused, listening. ‘It’s my sister,’ he said, his voice shaking slightly. ‘You see, she’s missing and we’re worried she might … oh, thank you.’
He covered the mouthpiece and said, ‘They’re redirecting me. This could take a little while.’
‘Sister?’ Danny asked.
‘They won’t tell you anything if you’re not a relative,’ Patrick whispered as Harry resumed his conversation with someone else.
‘Yes, my sister. Sharon Fielding. Yes. No, it would have been just over two weeks ago. We did call just after she disappeared but …’
Harry allowed his voice to trail off as though distressed and Patrick could hear the sympathetic tones of the woman on the other end of the line.
Harry repeated the description Danny had given him and then covered the mouthpiece again. ‘She’s gone to check,’ he said. They waited and the woman returned. Harry thanked her and hung up the phone.
‘No, no one there,’ he said. ‘She did tell me though, that if they’d had an unknown patient for this long, they would probably have put out an appeal in the local paper. She gave me a couple of numbers to try, local papers, I think, just in case we missed it. We’ll try the other hospitals first and then get on to them.’
Patrick got up and filled the kettle. He was reminded horribly of watching Naomi go through this very process earlier in the year when a close friend had gone missing. She had called the hospitals for him then, asking the questions Harry was asking. Later the friend had turned up dead. Drowned in the canal with a mix of drugs and booze in his stomach and an accusation of murder hanging over his head. Watching Harry do this brought back such painful memories. He could imagine what Danny must be going through.
He made tea and gave Danny another can, watching and listening as Harry worked his way through the hospital list and then the numbers for the local papers. At the end of that he replaced the phone and blew out a frustrated breath. Gratefully he picked up the mug his son had placed on the table beside the directories.
‘Nothing?’ Patrick asked, though that was self evident.
‘No, we can cross those off the list. Now, what else do we have here?’ He glanced through the contacts that Danny had written down. ‘Let’s try the ones you have phone numbers for first,’ he said, ‘then we’ll try to figure out the rest. Do you want to talk to people or shall I?’
‘You think you can do it?’
‘Sure I can.’ Harry smiled at the boy who eyed him speculatively.
‘What you doing this for?’ Danny asked.
‘Why not?’ Harry shrugged. ‘You need help. And besides,’ he added, meeting the boy’s eyes and knowing more was required, ‘I had a sister once, she went missing. It was twenty years before I found out what happened to her. Twenty years of wondering and never being able to settle properly because there was always that thought that she would come through the door.’
Not the best of analogies, Patrick thought anxiously. Helen had died. Been murdered. But he knew what his dad meant. Patrick had grown up in the shadow of her memory and in the end it had been a relief for everyone that they could finally know what happened to her.