Chris Deerbon had got home around nine in the evening and fifteen minutes later had gone out again on a call. The temporary locum they had appointed to the practice had left a message with the doctors’ answering service to say that she was ill.
‘Doctors are never ill. We can’t be,’ Cat said, handing him a banana and a box of juice from the packed lunch shelf. The casserole would simmer in the bottom of the Aga for as long as it had to.
‘We, my love, are the last generation of GPs to have been trained to believe that.’
Chris kissed her and left. ‘Go to bed,’ he called back, ‘you look whacked.’
‘Don’t know why, I’ve done nothing all day.’
Sam and Hannah had been barely able to stand to have their faces washed and teeth cleaned before falling into bed. Cat took her book, switched out all the lights but the lamp over the stove, put Mephisto, wailing in protest, out of the window, and went upstairs.
The children had curled themselves into their usual sleeping positions, Hannah neatly disposed with her head on her arm, Sam in a tight little ball, knees up, duvet almost over him. Cat pulled it down a little and kissed his head with the mouse-soft brown hair. It was impossible not to think of David Angus. Hannah felt cool. She would scarcely turn in her sleep all night. They were a happy little unit. Cat wondered how they would take to the baby when it was a reality, not a long-standing promise in which they had almost lost interest.
Half an hour later Chris rang. ‘I’ve got an anaphylaxis … child with a peanut allergy. I’m trying to stabilise him, and now old Violet Chaundry’s daughter has rung in … she thinks her mother has had another stroke. I’m going to be a while. Are you in bed?’
‘And nearly asleep. The casserole’s in the bottom oven.’
‘I’ll probably be past it. Got to go. Love you.’
Cat read another chapter of her Anita Brookner novel before turning out the light. Outside the wind had got up and was rattling the overhanging rose branch against the window. She found the noise strangely soothing.
She was woken by a movement at her side.
‘Mummy …’
‘Sam? You OK?’
‘I needed you.’
‘Oh honeybunch … come here.’ But Sam was already wrapped round her, his feet twined about her legs, arms behind her neck.
‘Don’t squash my tummy.’
‘I didn’t want to go back to sleep.’
‘Why? Bad dreams?’
He clung tighter. Cat shifted to try and make herself comfort able without pushing him away.
‘Nat said David Angus had been murdered and thrown down a pit.’
Cat managed to lean across her son’s hot little clinging body and switch on the bedside lamp. His face looked up at hers, flushed and anxious.
‘Sam, Nat does not know anything … anything about David Angus. Do you hear me? What he said was not true …’
‘He said.’
‘He doesn’t know. Nobody knows.’
‘Why?’
‘Because … he hasn’t come home yet. The police haven’t found him.’
‘Why haven’t they?’
‘Do you want a drink?’
‘If they haven’t found him, they don’t know he hasn’t been murdered and thrown down a pit, do they? Have they looked in all the pits in the world yet?’
‘Hot chocolate?’
‘I don’t want you to go.’
‘You’re OK here … it won’t take a minute.’
‘If you go downstairs I want to come with you.’
‘OK … come on.’
How many small children in Lafferton have crept into their parents’ beds? How many are having nightmares about David Angus? How many other little bullying sods like Nat are frightening the lives out of the rest with stupid stories …?
Sam sat on the sofa, his eyes bleary as she set the pan of milk on the heat. ‘Why did he go with the man?’
‘What man?’
‘The man who murdered him. Everybody knows not to go with a man who might murder you, everybody knows that.’
Dear God, how do I answer this child? How do I begin to reassure him and convince him that he is safe when I am terrified for his safety myself and there is no reassurance and will not be unless David is somehow found alive?
She poured the milk on to the chocolate and whisked it round.
‘Can I have a biscuit?’
‘If you clean your teeth again afterwards.’
‘I’m too tired.’
‘Then no. Come on, big boy.’
The crash from outside was so sudden it made Sam hurl himself off the sofa and on to Cat and the mug of chocolate cascade on to the floor. The wind had lifted up something loose and hurled it down again.
‘Mummy, I don’t like it.’
‘It’s OK, darling, it’s fine, it’s just the wind catching a bin lid or something … don’t panic.’
‘The man might be there, the one who murdered David Angus, Nat said he was a man who likes to steal boys and murder them and then he throws them into pits, there are a lot of men who do it, probably even two hundred men and …’
‘Sam … come here, sit on the sofa.’ She pulled him close to her. ‘I want you to listen to me carefully. I am telling you that there is no man like that out there. That was the wind. There is no man wanting to take little boys. You are perfectly safe and nothing is going to happen to you. Now, I want you to tell me that you have heard me and you believe me.’
‘But you don’t know, how do you know?’
‘I know because I know a lot of things … a lot more things than Nat will ever know. Do you believe him more than me?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘If so you shouldn’t. He’s a silly little boy and I am your mummy.’
‘And a doctor.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well …’
‘Oh Sammo … I love you. Do you want me to make some more hot choc? And I’d better wipe that up from the floor before someone slips on it.’
Sam slithered off the sofa. ‘There isn’t any left to slip on,’ he said, his face bright with glee. Cat looked down at Mephisto, licking up the last of the spilled hot chocolate in an efficient manner.
‘Will you swear?’
‘Probably.’
‘What will you say?’
‘It’ll be secret swear. I can hear Daddy’s car. If he finds us up, he’s going to swear … go on, scoot.’
What do we do? Cat said fiercely to God as she waited for Chris to come in. What on earth can we do or say now?