The old lady had got it wrong. She’d been talking about Daniel’s mother. His father’s wife. This story was about his father. The three-year-old boy named Daniel Simmonds was their son. The parents she went to see were not his birth parents, her impression of them being childless was more true than she knew. This house had been Daniel’s first home. This is where he had lived with his mother until she was murdered. It was her scent that haunted him. She was the woman he spoke so vilely about. Hers the book found under that mattress. Mrs Bowden was Ellen Bowden, and the poor woman had found her.
Holding her hand to her mouth Tess managed to get up from the chair and rush to the kitchen sink to spew out brown fluid from a stomach that had only tea inside it all day. She scooped a handful of water to rinse out her mouth and then sank to the floor a shivering wreck.
Her husband’s father was a murderer, his blood running through the veins of the man she married. Why had he brought her to this house? Why had he ever come back to it? Was it any wonder he changed almost the day he stepped inside. He had known what had taken place inside these walls, known what happened to him. What could have possibly motivated him to come back to the home where his mother was murdered and then to sleep in her bed? Had he thought he could handle it only to find himself tormented by the memory of a scent? Or had he gone mad because he had real memories of what happened here? The newspaper said he lay beside the body of his mother for three days – was he awake for any of that time?
Tess didn’t know how to respond to what she had learned. What happened to him had shaped him. There was no doubting it. She would hold that small boy in her arms if she could and make what happened go away. Stuart Myers said he went into a big bed when he was three. Three. Her throat closed over and the lower part of her face ached. Why hadn’t he told her? She drew up her knees and folded her arms around them. If he had only told her. She closed her eyes and tucked her head down.
Before he made her afraid. She breathed raggedly, trying to work out what it was she now felt about him. Saddened, depressed, joyless, heartsick, heartache. Heartbroken.
And then it struck her with how else she felt and she cried out sharply. Paralysed. He’d paralysed her joy, gaiety, spontaneity, dreams, happiness. All the good feelings that made you want to stay with someone forever.
Why hadn’t he told her before it was too late? Making it impossible for them to have a future. She could never now stay. This house had broken them. She was not strong enough to live in a marriage without love. In a house that wasn’t a home. He had made it impossible when he made her afraid.
Chapter Forty-Six
At six o’clock her husband still wasn’t home. She’d rung the hospital on the off chance and was told by the operator Mr Myers wasn’t there. She went back to his study and picked up his address book and took it into the hallway. Her husband was thorough – he would have made a hard copy of his contacts in the old-fashioned way. Under P she saw Porter. Mark was the natural choice to try first. Her husband had been missing all day and Tess’s biggest fear was that he was either dead at the hands of a stranger who had obviously been watching them or he killed this person and was now on his way home to deal with her.
She gathered herself and when she was ready she dialled the number. It was Vivien who answered on the third ring.
‘Vivien, has Mark heard from Daniel today?’
Vivien sounded surprised. ‘I don’t know, Tess. Hang on and I’ll ask him.’ A moment later she came back on the phone. ‘No, Tess, he actually rang him earlier seeing as he didn’t get to talk to him yesterday. He left him a message but he’s heard nothing back.’
‘Oh God, Vivien, I’m now starting to worry. He’s been gone all day and I haven’t heard from him at all. I just hope nothing’s happened.’
‘Hey, calm down. Tell me what’s going on.’
‘When I got up this morning his