Two

Lara is back, fidgeting in the doorway. ‘We need to do my Spanish, Mum.’

‘OK. I’m coming.’ Rachel shoves the letter into her back pocket. Somehow she manages to turn her mind to her rudimentary knowledge of Spanish and help Lara answer the questions on the conjugation and basic differences of the verbs ser and estar. It was something she could never quite grasp herself, but trying to grapple with the meaning now helps turn her mind away from Tom’s note.

Temporarily.

Of course it’s bogus.

Is he alive?

Do I want him to be?

Lara goes up to her room when she’s finished her homework, and for once Rachel doesn’t fret about her spending so much time on her own. She sits out in the garden and allows herself to go over the details of that fateful day six years, ten months and seventeen days ago when Tom vanished. Every moment is engraved onto her brain – she went over and over it for weeks until there came a point when she’d had to stop or she’d have driven herself mad, and she had two small children to take care of.

What if the note is from him?

He wants to come back to me?

The local press relished the opportunity for lurid headlines once they found that the missing local businessman had left his wife for a younger model a few months prior to his vanishing act. Rachel pleaded for privacy, begged them to respect the family’s right to process what was happening without reporters haranguing her from all sides, reminding them there were two small children involved. That didn’t stop them splashing lurid details of their acrimonious split across the front pages, prodding at an open wound. Heidi was so photogenic, and Tom was a high-profile citizen, having won a prestigious award the year before his disappearance. Besides, in this small town, any departure from garden fetes and petty vandalism had the journalists of the Tribune slavering for a story.

The memory of the day he vanished without trace is still fresh in her mind, as if it were yesterday. Breakfast that morning was strained. Josh had kept her up most of the night; since Tom had left the family home and moved in with his mistress, he’d gone from being a trouble-free child to one who was constantly demanding attention. From the moment he was born he’d developed a special bond with his father, to the point where on occasion Rachel had felt a twinge of jealousy. Josh was a daddy’s boy, and Tom was the one who used to get up at night to appease him when he needed it, which wasn’t often back then. Until his father was gone, and Rachel’s life underwent a huge change. If it hadn’t been for her mother and sister, she’s not sure how she would have managed.

At the time of his disappearance, Tom had been living with Heidi for eight months. Rachel had had to accept the situation, and they’d come to an arrangement whereby he had the children Tuesday to Friday, and the rest of the week they were with her. It meant she got to spend weekends with them, though occasionally they’d go off with Tom if he had something he particularly wanted to do with them. She’d missed them desperately at first, and it had taken six months before she’d started to appreciate having time to spend on her own. Josh was too young to understand what was going on, and Lara insisted everything was fine but was quieter than she had been. She’d insisted on keeping her door open at night so that the hall light prevented her from being in complete darkness.

The last day anyone saw Tom was a Monday. He and Heidi had taken the children to the zoo that weekend, and he’d dropped them back home early on Sunday evening. He’d waved from the garden gate, avoiding any mention of the previous weekend, much to Rachel’s frustration, and driven off before she had a chance to speak to him. That night she had spent mulling over what exactly she wanted to say to him and how she was going to pin him down.

She’d snatched two hours’ sleep before the alarm went off. She woke Lara first, allowing Josh to stay asleep until the noise of their movements around the house roused him. Breakfast was messy, and she left the table covered in spilt milk and Coco Pops to deal with when she got back from dropping Lara off at school. Her mother was taking Josh today – Rachel had sent an SOS message when she woke up asking her to have him so that she could catch up on her housework.

Her mum offered to stay and help her tidy up, but Rachel declined the offer, wanting to get on with her chores. She was finally appreciating making better use of her time away from the children. She used to spend hours just sitting and reflecting on what had happened, on why Tom had left her for Heidi.

She was younger of course, Heidi, barely twenty-four, never appearing without her hair styled and make-up carefully applied. Botoxed and beautiful, as Emma described her, but lacking in substance. None of them could imagine her relationship with Tom would last. What on earth did they talk about? I doubt they spend much time talking, Rachel couldn’t help thinking.

She cleaned the house from top to bottom, ate a sandwich, then crashed out for two blissful hours, setting her alarm to wake her in time to fetch Lara. After her mum had brought Josh back and made them all tea, she put the children to bed. She had just left, at around nine, when Rachel received the call. Heidi flashed up on her mobile. She stared at her name, transfixed. Tom had insisted on giving her Heidi’s number in case of any emergency when they had the children, but Rachel had never wanted it; she’d seen it as some kind of toxic element disturbing the balance of her phone. Now she took so long considering whether to answer that the ringing stopped, then started again immediately. She figured Heidi wouldn’t call her without good reason. Tom must have told her about last weekend, she thought, panic seizing her. She was going to have it out with her. Hope mixed in with alarm. She breathed deeply and accepted the call.

Had she seen Tom?

The question confused her. Was it a trick one? Did Heidi know? Maybe she didn’t. Besides, it had happened a week ago, and surely if she was going to find out, she would have done so by now.

Heidi repeated the question, elaborating, and Rachel composed herself. No, not today, she told her; not since yesterday, when he’d dropped the children back home. Home. Their real home, with her, not the fake set-up she refused to believe would last.

She tried to sound normal, calm.

Was it only nine days ago?

The events of the weekend before last had been on her mind every day since. She couldn’t make sense of it no matter how much she went over it in her mind, and she daren’t mention it to anyone else. If she were a vindictive person, she’d have crowed about it to Heidi – could do so now, in fact – but Heidi was asking her again if she’d seen Tom, and this time Rachel picked up on the anxiety in her voice and felt a responding twinge, wishing she didn’t still care.

Heidi hadn’t seen Tom since that morning. He’d gone to work as normal, phoned her at lunchtime to remind her he had a meeting that afternoon and would be home early. She was very apologetic about having to disturb Rachel, the last thing she wanted to do – Rachel knew that was certainly true – but it was getting late and she’d called his colleagues and friends, anyone she could think of, and nobody had seen him since he’d left for the meeting, and… Then she’d dissolved into tears. None of his colleagues knew what meeting he was talking about, though he organised his own appointments, so that wasn’t necessarily anything to worry about.

‘But I am worried,’ she said.

And so was Rachel, but she didn’t say anything. Her stomach was churning, and she thought back to the events of last weekend; how different Tom had been in the months since he’d left her and how last Saturday he’d been the old Tom from the minute he’d entered the house. At first she couldn’t work out what had changed, but he hadn’t had that stiff, defensive posture he’d adopted since meeting Heidi, guilt stamped all over him for what he’d done to his wife. He’d asked if they could talk, and they had, for hours. They were still talking when the sky had darkened and she’d switched on the lamps and the outside light. They’d sat on the terrace with a bottle of wine, and with his hunched shoulders and beaten air, she could see how sorry he was, how conflicted. She’d just put her hand on his to comfort him, because she still loved him despite everything and couldn’t bear to see him in pain, and he’d leant towards her…

It had been natural to kiss and embrace and tear at each other’s clothes like they used to do, but then afterwards he’d dressed quickly, that anxious look back, saying what have I done?, and the spell was broken and she was back to being Rachel alone with their children in the house while he returned to the woman he’d left her for. To Heidi.

Did Heidi know?

Rachel had to assume she didn’t, because otherwise she’d be screaming at Rachel, full of recriminations, as was usually her style. She wasn’t known for holding back on her thoughts.

Guilt from that weekend enabled Rachel to push aside her personal feelings, and she tried to calm Heidi down. No, they hadn’t had a row, Heidi said, everything had been normal and she didn’t know what else to do. She’d called him and texted but his phone was off, and Tom never turned his phone off, she didn’t have to tell Rachel that. She agreed to wait until morning, and if he hadn’t returned by then, she was going to call the police.

‘Let me know what happens,’ Rachel said.

Once Heidi had hung up, Rachel allowed her own worries to surface. It was so out of character for Tom to go out of circulation; he was normally a kind and considerate man. She could hear her sister’s scorn at this – after the way he treated you? – but she knew what he was really like. Tom was decent, a good sort, as long as he wasn’t driven by lust. Her anxiety was based on what had happened last weekend, why Tom had slept with her. Unlike Heidi, he’d admitted there were problems in the relationship: she was possessive, demanding and extremely high maintenance. That was what had given Rachel hope.

Would Tom really leave Heidi? She’d seen a fragile side to him when he’d dressed after taking her to bed, face riddled with guilt, barely able to speak to her. Despite everything, she sensed that he still loved her, and it stirred up feelings she had finally started to forget. Had it all become too much for him and he just couldn’t face her that evening?

Now she takes the envelope from her back pocket and smooths out the piece of paper. Tom’s looping handwriting has a unique style. She envied it when she first saw it, teased him about having such flair; previous boyfriends had without exception had terrible handwriting. Her own isn’t too bad, legible at least. Heidi’s is round and girlish; Rachel remembers how four-year-old Lara tried to copy it, even though she could barely write, much to Rachel’s irritation.

I want to come back to you.

To you.

Definitely Tom’s writing. Her stomach is churning, butterflies and terror all at once. If he is alive, after leaving them all without word, would she even want to see him again?

Yes, for her own peace of mind she’d prefer to know. Could she forgive him? She stares into her glass as if the answer lurks at the bottom. Does she want to?

She allows herself to imagine that the note is from Tom, that he’s alive as she has always believed and he wants to come back to her. Would she have him back? Does she still love him? It’s hard to get past the swell of rage that engulfs her just thinking about what she and the children have been put through these last years. The initial horror, the police investigation, and above all, the lack of a conclusion. If Tom ran away from his life, she can’t forgive him, especially when he’d got her hopes up after that weekend. Love him? Yes or no? The question is too complicated for a one-word answer.

‘Mummy!’ Josh’s voice rings out from the house, and she sighs as she heads indoors. Whatever this note means, one thing is clear. Her children matter in this, nothing else. She won’t let anything upset them, not even their father.