We drove into town in an old army-green Land Rover Defender. It looked like a farm vehicle to me, so I said so.
Max agreed. “Barnsley is a working farm, you know. Back here, we have hundreds of Jacob sheep.” He gestured to some of the paddocks we were passing. The size of the place shocked me; in my mind Barnsley stopped at the end of the driveway. “It’s a very sensible car, and a real workhorse—it’s never let me down.”
For once, Thomas was absent, but he had left reminders of his presence; thousands of black dog hairs that quickly attached themselves to my clothing. I tried to brush them off, and Max, keeping one eye on the road, muttered, “I wouldn’t bother if I were you. That’s a battle you won’t win. Next time wear black.”
He stopped suddenly. So did my heart. “Why are we stopping?” The words came out all jerky.
The cliff on which we were perched looked back towards the village and over the bay.
I couldn’t see the road from where I was sitting. Just water. Rough and choppy and menacing. I could swim, but it was a sheer drop. Daphne was gone, and now I was alone with Max. Would anyone even realize I was missing?
Max leaned across from the driver’s seat so that his body was almost in front of mine. I held my breath, partly because up close his scent was overwhelming, but mostly because there was no denying his intent. But then he placed his left hand on the seat next to me and gestured towards the water. I exhaled. “In the summer, this bay is filled with fishing boats and families paddling.” Max’s eyes scanned up and down the coastline, searching—for what, I did not know. “It probably doesn’t look like much of a beach to your Australian eyes”—the word Australian curled on his lips—“but in July, it’s heaven on earth.”
“Yes, sometimes white sand and azure water is overrated,” I said. “Sunshine too.” Keep it light.
Max ignored me. “It wasn’t easy building this road. It came at great cost, and with extreme difficulty. The machinery caused mayhem on the roads around here, but Daphne insisted. She said this view reminded her of home.”
This time it was me doing the scanning up and down the coastline. Even squinting and trying to conjure up a summer’s day was no use; the outlook was bleak, and nothing like the beaches of my childhood.
At last Max drove on. He had all the windows open, which helped with the all-pervading doggy smell but made conversation quite difficult. I concentrated on watching the scenery and trying to get a sense of my bearings. It was useless. Every time I anticipated turning one way, we turned the other.
The land behind Barnsley House quickly turned rural, and we drove past farmhouses, down roads fenced by hedgerows, and past brambly pathways. Numerous times we stopped and reversed back into small cuttings to let farm vehicles past. In one there was a small wooden structure instead of a gate.
“Do you know what that is?” Max asked.
I swallowed nervously before I answered. “A kissing gate.”
He raised his eyebrows and kept driving.
Max was not joking when he said we would take the back roads; dropping bread crumbs would be the only way I would ever find my way back to Barnsley. I tried to imagine Daphne out on these roads in the dark. “Would she have taken a taxi, do you think?” I asked Max as we slowed down to come into town and it was possible to talk.
“Who?”
“Daphne. The taxi driver who dropped me off, the other night, he was very chatty. He’d probably be able to tell you where she went. She couldn’t have gone far.” I looked at Max, but he was resolutely focused on the road. “In her state,” I added as we pulled up at traffic lights, the first I had seen in days.
Max looked at me intently. An uncomfortable silence persisted until finally the light went green and the car behind us honked. His flesh turned white on the gear stick as he shifted the car into first gear.
When he finally spoke, his words were forced. “I have a saying about Christmas shopping: Something they want, something they need . . .”
“Something to wear, something to read,” I finished the sentence for him. “My mother used to say that too. Would you like me to ring the taxi company?”
He ignored me again. “Daphne never goes along with it. The piles of presents she buys the children. It’s criminal.”
Criminal. The word brought the conversation to a dead halt, and we both sat quietly again, me furiously thinking about Daphne, and Max’s reluctance to do even the slightest bit of investigation into her disappearance, and Max, well, just looking furious. “Where to first?” I asked when we arrived in town amid a cluster of pedestrians and hanging Christmas decorations. It all looked merry and Christmassy, and I suddenly felt more festive, managing to put Daphne out of mind for a moment.
“The bookshop?” Max suggested, eyeing the clothing shops suspiciously. Music was blaring out, a cacophony of noise. He winced.
“Why don’t we just get this over and done with?” I said. “Wait here.”
I ducked into the first boutique, noticing that the mannequins in the window wore the tight jeans and strappy tops Sophia favoured. My days in retail had served me well, and I felt confident making quick decisions and estimating Sophia’s clothing size. Once I had gathered up some items, I signaled for Max to come in and pay, and he did, producing a wallet stuffed with an array of credit cards. He hesitated before selecting one, seemingly at random, and I noticed that he didn’t look the shop assistant in the eye until she had completed the transaction and the shopping was safely in my hands. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” I asked, relishing the chance to take the upper hand. For once I was in my comfort zone, and Max was far removed from his.
“Let’s not get complacent. That’s one present for one child. I have three, you know.”
We continued the pattern in the next few stores, Max waiting outside while I selected the presents, and only coming inside to pay at the last minute. Even I was surprised by how much I had learned about the children in such a short time: I knew that Agatha needed some new pyjamas, and that ones with unicorns would be best; Sophia talked so often about her friend Jasmine’s iPod that I convinced Max to buy her one, and Robbie would love anything in the colours of his beloved Southampton.
When we reached the bookshop at the other end of the street, I was surprised at how efficient we had been. “We’re almost done,” I said as Max held the heavy front door open for me and a gust of warm air flooded past me into the street. He put his hand on the small of my back as I passed by, and my body tensed. His touch was too high to be suggestive, too low to be familial. The smell of the bookshop was at odds with the discomfort I was feeling: safe, papery, and familiar.
Max idly picked up a Winston Churchill biography and another book I couldn’t see properly from the nonfiction table and tucked them under his arm. We browsed silently for a few minutes, listening to the familiar notes of “Little Drummer Boy.” I selected some books for Robbie, mainly historical ones on the grislier aspects of the Tudor period, and then got the assistant to find me a small guide to haunted houses in the area. Sophia was easy: I found some beautiful new editions of Jane Austen that would look nice by her bed even if she didn’t read them. “About Agatha,” I began, as “Little Drummer Boy” finished and “Let It Snow” took over.
“Yes,” said Max, humming along facetiously. “What about her?” His mood seemed to have lifted with the music.
“I think we should buy her some books without absent parents in them.”
“Lovely idea. Barnsley’s in that.” Max gestured to the small book I had in my hand for Robbie. “Some old duck is meant to stalk about in the east wing. Could give him nightmares.”
“Oh.” Some old duck? My grandmother. His mother. I swallowed my shock, convinced it was yet another test meant to trip me up. I forced myself to remember my mother—somehow Max had banished her to the other side of the world. He wouldn’t get to me as well. “I’ll put it back, then.” I looked around to see where the girl had got it from so that I might discreetly replace it.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. The living are of more concern at Barnsley than any old stories about ghosts. Might do him good to get a sense of the history of the place.”
“Are they?” I spun around, eager to take the conversation further, but Max had moved on. I slipped the book back into my pile, resolving to read it myself before deciding whether to put it under the Christmas tree or not. Before deciding what was more dangerous at Barnsley.
Time was ticking on. I chose a gorgeously illustrated story with hidden elements for the reader to spot, and some fairly innocuous chapter books about two girls and a pony. That would have to do, although I feared the books would be a disappointment to Agatha after the exciting adventures of Pippi Longstocking and Co.
“Is it time for lunch yet?” Max asked as we left the bookshop, in a voice that hovered near a whine. It could also have been interpreted as flirtatious if he wasn’t my uncle and I liked that kind of thing. Which I didn’t.
“I have one more idea for Robbie,” I said, guiding him towards an electronics store I had spotted earlier. It was much busier than the bookstore had been, and we had to push through a crush of people crowding in on displays of tablets, laptops, and other electronic equipment. Most would be totally useless at Barnsley with the state of the internet connection.
An older couple stepped aside, shaking their heads in bafflement at the product before them, and we were able to move closer. “I thought this might be good for Robbie. It’s a camera, and you can take it everywhere with you. You can even get a headband thingy and strap it to your head, so the camera sees what you see. It might come in handy for his ghost hunting.”
I turned to Max, expecting to see a smile, particularly because I had delivered the last words in a deliberately vaudeville spooky voice, but he was not amused. In fact, he was already moving away. “No. Absolutely not,” he said as he retreated.
“Why not?” I asked, not seeing the fury building on Max’s face.
“Because I said so, and I am his father.”
By this point we were back out on the pavement, and I was grateful for the cold air, which went some way to relieve the slow burn creeping across my cheeks. It was embarrassment making me blush, but it was tinged with anger. I was beginning to resent the way Max’s moods swung from post to post, leaving me swivelling my head and wondering at his next move.
“It’s just a camera.”
“I do not want any more cameras in my life,” he said. “They have caused enough trouble over the years.”
I remembered the cameras I had seen around Barnsley: in the restaurant and at the boathouse. Who had they caused trouble for? Did the cameras hold the clue to Daphne’s disappearance? It was another mystery to add to my growing list.