10

‘What did that policewoman want?’ David demanded. ‘Tell me everything she said. I want to know exactly what they’re doing to find Daisy.’

‘I don’t have to tell you anything,’ Jessica replied, scowling.

‘Jessica, don’t speak to your father like that. He’s trying to help,’ Anne said.

‘This is all the fault of that bloody good-for-nothing,’ David fumed. ‘I told you he was a waste of space. You should have listened to me before you went running off to marry him. I told you all along, he’s not right for you.’

Jessica returned her father’s glare with what she hoped was an equally ferocious scowl of her own.

‘If you say another word against Jason, I’ll leave this house and go and find a hotel to stay in, on my own, and you’ll never see me again. How dare you insult my husband like that, when he’s not even here to defend himself. You wouldn’t dare say that to his face.’

Her fists clenched in an involuntary response to David’s belligerent outburst.

‘I’ll say what I damn well please about my own son-in-law in my own house,’ he snapped.

‘Not in front of me, you won’t.’

‘Whose fault is it that all this has happened?’ David asked, too angry to think about what he was saying.

His voice dropped to a reasonable tone, but the expression in his eyes remained as furious as before. ‘I can’t begin to understand why you agreed to marry that man. Don’t kid yourself we are ever going to be pleased if you insist on staying with him.’

‘Here we go again. You never wanted me to marry him. You and my mother, you never approved of him, did you? But be honest, for once, this isn’t about me and my happiness, is it? You don’t think he’s good enough to be your son-in-law.’

Anne stood up, flustered and trembling.

‘Stop shouting, please, both of you. They must be able to hear you halfway down the road. David, what’s got into you? Keep your voice down, for goodness’ sake. Do you want the whole street to know we’re fighting here?’

She stared at her husband and her daughter, aghast. David was on his feet, red in the face and sweaty, looking like he might have a stroke at any moment, while Jessica stood facing him, her fists clenched at her sides as though she was preparing to launch a physical assault on her father. Watching them, Anne let out an involuntary whimper. David spun round and frowned at her.

‘What’s the matter with you now?’ he demanded, turning the full force of his temper on her.

‘Stop it, both of you!’ she cried out. ‘Listen, I know we’re all feeling frazzled, but how is this going to help the situation if you two fall out? Don’t you think Jessica needs all the support we can give her right now? We all do,’ she added plaintively, staring at David.

Jessica whirled round and dashed out of the room, and they heard her footsteps pounding up the stairs.

Anne turned to her husband. ‘Arguing like this isn’t helping. David, Jessica’s upstairs crying. I’m going to speak to her.’

‘I’ll go –’ David began but Anne interrupted him.

‘You’ve already upset her enough for one day. You stay here and I’ll go.’

With that she scurried out of the room, leaving David muttering darkly under his breath that he wasn’t the one who had upset his daughter.

‘One day you’ll go too far,’ Anne called out over her shoulder as she left the room.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he replied.

After about an hour, Anne returned. ‘I’ll put the kettle on and make us all a nice cup of tea,’ she said.

‘That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it? A cup of tea. Is a cup of tea going to help us find Daisy?’ David replied.

She shook her head miserably, and slunk away to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Returning through the hall with a tray, she noticed a letter had been dropped through the letter box. Having put the tray down in the living room, she went back to the hall to collect it.

‘What’s this?’ David asked as she held it out to him.

‘It must have been delivered by hand,’ she replied, sitting down and pouring out the tea.

David swore suddenly.

‘What is it now?’ she asked, glancing up anxiously.

There always seemed to be some drama unfolding in her husband’s life, and she was sick of it. Having taken early retirement from his firm of solicitors, David had become increasingly crabby sitting around at home. She had advised him not to retire before he was ready, but he had been adamant that he was not going to carry on working now that his office had been invaded by arrogant young know-it-alls. When he had first entered local politics she had been pleased that he would be kept occupied away from the house, leaving her to pick up her life as it had been before her husband was at home all day during the week. On Mondays she resumed her painting class, on Wednesdays she returned to Pilates, and once Daisy was born she helped look after her every Friday. She had welcomed David’s election to the local council where she thought he would be kept happily occupied. But he seemed to be constantly falling out with one council member or another, and his temper had not improved. When he became leader of the council, if anything he had become even more curmudgeonly. But at least he was kept busy.

‘You don’t understand the pressure I’m under to resist these changes,’ he would tell her. ‘You have no idea how difficult they’re making it for me to just get on with the job. It’s becoming impossible.’

But when Anne suggested, hesitantly, that he might resign from his position, he dismissed the notion with an impatient shake of his head.

‘And how do you suppose they would manage without me?’

Anne could have replied that the council would manage perfectly well without her husband just as they had managed before his election, but she wisely refrained from making any such comment. Not only would it have incensed him further, but she dreaded the prospect of his quitting and being at home all the time.

Instead, she had said, ‘All that responsibility must be hard. They are an ungrateful bunch.’

‘Louts,’ he replied. ‘Ignorant louts, the lot of them.’

‘Surely you have a lot of support among them,’ she said. ‘You were elected, after all.’

David scowled and told her she didn’t understand. ‘You never do.’

He stared at the letter he had taken out of the envelope, and Anne noticed that his normally ruddy cheeks had turned pale.

‘What is it?’ she asked, putting down her mug of tea. ‘Is something wrong? Are you feeling a bit ropey? Can I get you anything?’

Without answering her questions, he held out the letter, and Anne was surprised to see the sheet of paper was trembling in his hand. Afraid the council might have voted to remove him from his office, she took the letter. As she did so, an even more terrible thought struck her.

‘Is it about Daisy?’ she whispered.

Although she and David were not wealthy people, their circumstances were certainly comfortable. She had a small pension from the years she had spent teaching part-time while Jessica was at school, and David received a decent pension from his law firm which seemed to have been very happy to pay him to retire. She wondered if it was possible that someone was demanding a ransom for her granddaughter’s safe return. Or they might be attempting to blackmail David for reasons that were still obscure to her. Taking a deep breath, she read the letter. It was typed on an A4 sheet of paper, addressed to David Armstrong, Leader of the Council, so there could be no mistaking its intended recipient. There were just three words on the paper, printed in a very large font size so that each word took up a whole line on the paper. The message itself was short and stark: YOU WILL DIE.

Anne raised her eyes from the message.

‘This is a nasty prank,’ David said.

Snatching the piece of paper from her, he crumpled it in his huge fist but she remonstrated before he could destroy it completely.

‘No! Wait. We should keep it.’

‘Keep it? Why?’

‘Because we ought to show it to the police. David, don’t dismiss this so lightly. That’s a death threat. Remember the crazy man who was shouting at you at a meeting in a library the other day? What did he say to you in the car park?’

David shook his head. ‘I can’t remember. I wasn’t really listening.’

‘Well, I was. He shouted that it wasn’t over, and he said you won’t get away with what you’re doing. He said someone was going to stop you.’

‘Idle threats from an impotent heckler.’

‘Maybe, but what if it was more than that? What if he really is out to stop you? I mean, really stop you. David, we have to go to the police before anything else happens.’

David scoffed at her fears, telling her with false lightheartedness that of course he was going to die. Didn’t everyone, sooner or later? Reluctant to let the matter drop, she determined to convince him to report the hate mail to the police.

‘I’m a politician,’ he told her airily. ‘This sort of thing happens all the time.’

His face had resumed its normal florid glow.

‘All right, but if there’s one more threat against you, we’re going straight to the police.’

When David didn’t respond, she replaced the crumpled sheet of paper in its envelope and put it safely away in a drawer in the kitchen.