Paula didn’t sound overly worried – not then, as she was telling Meredith that Ralph hadn’t come home the previous night. Meredith had a sudden urge to yell at her that she bloody well should be worried.
‘Has he ever done it before?’ she asked instead, fiddling with a loose thread on her top.
‘No, never. And his phone’s switched off.’
Meredith gave the thread a yank.
‘But, you know, I’m guessing that he just ended up on some kind of bender and has been sleeping in a hedge all night. He’ll probably limp home with a massive hangover and minus a shoe, any minute now. He might have left his phone at work. I just wondered if he’d crashed at your place last night. I know you had your monthly staff lunch, and he often has to get a cab home after that. I’m always asking him if the Earl knows how much of Minstead House’s budgets go on Ralph’s alcohol habit.’ She laughed mirthlessly.
‘I am a bit worried about his drinking,’ Meredith said, feeling like the hypocrite she knew she was. ‘He didn’t stay at mine last night, but he was drinking in his office after lunch. He texted me about five-ish to ask if I wanted to come up and have a drink with him then, but I’m really busy at the moment, getting ready for the stocktake, so I didn’t.’
She felt as if there was something obstructing her throat and swallowed hard.
‘It’s weird, Paula. His car’s still here. I saw it this morning on my way in. If he hasn’t come home, I think you should ring the hospitals. Maybe he couldn’t get a cab and decided to walk into the village, and had some sort of accident on the way. Or perhaps he’s collapsed somewhere. You hear these stories. Ceri hasn’t mentioned him leaving his phone in the office.’
‘I’m worried about his drinking too,’ Paula said in a small voice. ‘It’s got worse lately. You could be right. I’ve been thinking the same – but I was just waiting for him to come rolling in, in the early hours. I’ve been lying awake all night, planning the bollocking I was going to give him.’
‘Are you seeing clients today?’
‘No, I only had two booked in and I’ve cancelled them both.’
Paula was a psychotherapist, practising from a big studio in their garden. Meredith had often thought that was an unsafe thing to do, but Paula always brushed off her concerns with a blithe wave of the hand and pointed out that where Meredith lived was far riskier, being so isolated. ‘Yeah, but I don’t invite mentally unstable people to my house,’ Meredith would counter.
‘I’ve got to go upstairs for our heads of department meeting in a minute,’ she said now. ‘If he’s not there, I’ll check with Ceri to see if he’s rung in sick. She didn’t say he had this morning when I took Dexter out for his walk, though … Keep me posted, won’t you? And try not to worry…’ To her horror, her voice cracked.
She covered it up with a cough and said a hasty goodbye to Paula. Then she lowered her head to the desk and banged it, gently and repeatedly, on a catalogue of cashmere cushions and picnic blankets.
Unsurprisingly, Ralph’s seat was unoccupied at the start of the meeting. Ceri announced rather crossly that she hadn’t heard from him.
The Earl frowned. ‘What’s his car doing here then? Parked the Rolls next to him this morning, thought the lazy bugger was in early for once!’
Meredith forced her mind not to flash back to yesterday and looked around the table at her colleagues. Both the Earl and his son, Sebastian, looked a bit the worse for wear, and she wondered if they had also continued drinking yesterday after the staff lunch. Could they have had anything to do with Ralph’s disappearance?
Neither of them lived in the house any longer, although Sebastian had grown up here. When he’d gone off to uni, to study whatever young aristocrats study at Cambridge, the Earl and his wife had moved to a stunning eight-bedroomed Georgian vicarage in Minstead Village. ‘Downsizing’, they’d called it, which Pete and Meredith thought was hilarious.
Once Sebastian had left uni – after the first two terms – he’d bought a round-the-world ticket and set off travelling – probably with his own Sherpas – for a couple of years. On his return he’d promptly been employed by his dad as Minstead House’s PR person. He was pleasant enough and well meaning, but absolutely rubbish at his job.
Meredith imagined the scandal that would ensue if yesterday’s events were made public, and cringed. It would affect everybody, quite apart from the devastating impact it would have on Paula.
Please come back, Ralph, she exhorted mentally. If she tried hard, she was able to believe that he might just walk in now, clutching his head.
The Earl rotated a finger in his bristly ear and Sebastian gazed out of the window while Ceri poured cups of coffee from a large cafetière. The head of HR, Maureen – a willowy redhead nicknamed Mumblin’ Mo because she spoke so low, so fast and in such a thick Scottish accent that nobody could understand her – was reading through the agenda with a look of barely concealed boredom.
The Earl called the meeting to order, and Ceri sat in Ralph’s empty chair to take minutes, pen poised over a new page in her notebook and an expression of ferocious concentration on her lined face. Whatever her failings as an executive PA were, she was a whiz at shorthand and tended to write down absolutely everything, which meant that the minutes always ran to dozens of pages.
Halfway through a drone by Valerie, head of volunteers, about the recent volunteers’ training day, Meredith’s phone rang in her bag. Everyone turned to glare as she fished it out, apologising, and went to kill the call. But then she saw that it was Paula again. She stood up and excused herself, mouthing, I have to take this, sorry. The Earl frowned at her – mobile phones turned on during meetings were one of his many bête-noires – but she barely noticed. Why would Paula ring again, half an hour after they last spoke, unless there was bad news?
What was she thinking? She knew there was bad news. It was Paula who didn’t … yet.
‘Paula! Is he home?’
Paula was crying so much she couldn’t speak.
‘What’s happened? Is he hurt?’
Meredith thought she was going to throw up. She walked to the top of the stairs and forced herself to stare out of the window at the sunlit treetops, trying to ground herself. The morning sun felt warm on her face through the glass.
So this was how lives unravelled.
‘Nothing,’ Paula said eventually, and Meredith managed to breathe again.
‘Nothing?’
‘No news. I’ve reported it to the police, and they’re sending someone over. But I know something terrible’s happened. He’s never done this before; he just wouldn’t. Even if he was mad at me for something, he’d let Jackson know he was OK – and he hasn’t. Meredith…’
‘Yes?’
‘Will you come round later? I really don’t want to be on my own.’
Meredith closed her eyes, sunlight laser-dappling her eyelids, a dozen fabricated excuses flitting through her mind. The thought of witnessing Paula’s agony was intolerable.
‘I’ll see if I can get away a bit early. We’re still in the meeting at the moment, and Hester has a dentist’s appointment this afternoon, so I’ll have to cover the till until she gets back. But I’ll come after that, at about fourish, OK? Hang in there and let me know if there’s any news.’
She went back into the meeting, not realising how much her stricken expression was giving away until Valerie stopped talking and everyone swivelled to face her.
‘Meredith?’ Ceri said with alarm. ‘What’s the matter?’
Meredith sat heavily back in her seat. ‘Hopefully nothing … but that was Paula. She’s really worried because Ralph didn’t come home last night. She’s already told the police. It’s so out of character for him.’
The Earl peered over his smeary half-moon glasses, worn on a chain round his neck. He had quite a soft spot for Paula, and Meredith and her used to giggle that if she, Paula, played her cards right, she could one day be the second Countess Winnet.
It didn’t seem so amusing now.
‘Good heavens. And his car’s here. Do you think I should get the garden lads to do a search of the grounds? Did anybody see him leave last night?’
They all shook their heads. Meredith couldn’t meet anybody’s eye.
‘He’s walked into the village before, hasn’t he? When he’s…’ Mo tailed off, not wanting to drop Ralph in it by saying ‘been too pissed to drive’, but they all knew what she meant.
‘Has Paula rung round the hospitals?’ the Earl asked Meredith.
‘Yeah. Nothing. I said I’d go over and see her after work. I’ll work through lunch and leave early, if that’s OK?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Well, this is all most concerning. I do hope he hasn’t come to any harm.’
Meredith thought of herself scattering Ralph’s popped shirt buttons in her flowerbed like incriminating seeds. Seeds that, if they were to sprout roots, would only produce terrible seedlings of guilt and remorse.
‘So do I,’ she said fervently.
The meeting dragged on for another half an hour or so, but it was clear nobody was really paying attention. Ceri’s eyes kept going glassy and she had to stop doing her shorthand squiggles to press a tissue against her lower lids and sigh heavily, before half-heartedly resuming.
Eventually all thirteen items on the agenda had been raced through, and they were released back to their respective offices. The rest of the day passed without incident for Meredith, apart from a young woman with learning disabilities who tried to steal a packet of Minstead House fudge. She didn’t even have the heart to tell the shoplifter off. The girl started to cry as soon as Meredith pointed out she’d spotted her dropping the fudge into the open top of her backpack, and gave her back the fudge.
Hester returned at around half past three, a hand pressed to her rapidly-swelling cheek and her lip drooping slightly, and Meredith found herself wishing that Hester wasn’t quite so stoic. She had no option now but to go to Paula’s and face the music.