After his meeting with Mark Whiting, Gareth has one of the busiest afternoons in the Meads that he can remember. He breaks up a fight outside Costa between two blokes in their early fifties, then chases and apprehends two shoplifters. After this he moves to the control room and deals with a three-year-old girl going missing (eventually located in Claire’s Accessories, pulling all the jewellery off a display) and calls in the cleaners after a shopper drops a tin of hot chocolate that explodes over the floor. Over the last couple of hours he’s barely had time to pee, never mind anything else, but he did make sure he bought a bunch of flowers for Kath during his break.
Now, as Raj arrives to start his shift in the control room, Gareth nips into the toilets then makes his way down to the first floor. There’s an hour to go until the end of his shift and as he patrols the walkways and common areas of the shopping mall he sorts through his thoughts. Last night in the pub, after he made his decision to ask Kath out, Tony gave him Auntie Ruth’s number. Gareth was feeling so buoyed up he decided to bite the bullet and give his aunt a ring there and then. The pub was at full volume so he went outside. Someone called Maureen answered the phone. She told him that Ruth had been hospitalised for a stroke a week earlier and they didn’t know when she’d be back. They chatted for a while, discovered they were cousins, and Maureen promised to ring if there was any news. Afterwards, when Gareth returned home, it was all he could do not to beckon Kath into the kitchen and tell her everything. But when he walked into the living room, she jumped out of her armchair and slipped her feet back into her slippers. She was obviously keen to get back to Georgia and he didn’t want to keep her. Later, after he put his mum to bed and turned in himself, Gareth couldn’t sleep. Should he tell his mum or not? There was a very real chance that the news about Auntie Ruth’s stroke would upset her, regardless of their estrangement. It might also confuse her if she was having one of her episodes trapped in the past. At one in the morning he made his decision. He’d tell her. Then it was up to her if she wanted to see Ruth.
Now, Gareth strolls along the walkway, scanning the level for any unusual activity. The number of shoppers has thinned out now the mall is so near to closing and those that are left are darting from shop to shop, their faces pinched with anxiety. Gareth watches them, trying to guess what they’re so keen to get their hands on. The man speeding towards the jewellers is almost certainly grabbing a last minute present for his wife’s birthday. The woman nipping into Claire’s Accessories probably has a daughter who’s lost her favourite hairband or needs to fill party bags for the weekend. And the old man walking towards Waterstones is—
Gareth’s heart stills.
White-grey hair. Olive-green jacket. Rigid spine.
Go, Gareth’s brain tells him, but he doesn’t move an inch. It is as though someone has pressed pause in his brain. He can’t move, he can’t think, he can’t feel. All he can do is watch. His heart restarts with a thump so powerful that his brain sparks back to life. Thoughts, dozens of them, flood his mind and now it’s indecision that paralyses him. It’s Dad. It’s not Dad. I want to find out. I don’t. I don’t know if I could bear the disappointment. What if he rejects me? What if he doesn’t? If he walks away, I’ll never know.
He takes off, jogging after the man, catching up with him as he reaches the bookshop’s glass double doors. He reaches out a hand and touches him on the shoulder. The man turns slowly, twisting at the waist as his neck follows suit. He raises a hand in self-defence. The skin is slack and lined, aged-spotted with bulbous, rope-like veins so prominent it’s as though they’ve risen to the surface in an effort to escape. But Gareth doesn’t see the man’s hands. His eyes are trained on the back of his head, the sliver of face as he turns and then—
‘I’m sorry.’ Gareth takes a step backwards, his hands dropping to his side. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.’
Somehow Gareth manages to make it to the end of his shift. He locks his pain and disappointment in a box in the back of his head and marks it ‘Do not open unless alone’. He keeps it there until all the doors are checked, all the shoppers have left and all the rotas for the next week have been completed, then he leaves the shopping centre, crosses the near-empty car park and lets himself into his car, then he puts his hands on the steering wheel and he sobs.
As Gareth walks up the path to his house, Kath’s flowers hanging loosely from his hand, he doesn’t so much as glance at the CCTV camera above the door. He doesn’t care who’s been sending his mum the postcards. He doesn’t even care if Mackesy has been trying to extort money. And he hasn’t got the energy to ask Kath out. He’s tired, so damned tired. All he wants to do is say hello to his mum, change his clothes and then watch TV so loud that it blocks out his thoughts.
‘Mum!’ He puts the flowers on the sideboard, slips off his jacket, then pauses as he crouches to remove his shoes. Something’s not right. The house is too quiet. The TV’s not on. Oh God, she’s not packing for a holiday again, is she?
‘Mum?’ He pops his head into the living room then does the same in the kitchen and heads up the stairs. ‘Mum?’
He pushes open the door to her bedroom. The room’s exactly as it was when he left that morning, curtains pulled, the suitcase on top of the wardrobe and the bed neatly made. His heart lurches as he heads for the small bathroom. He knocks on the door and waits.
A second passes, then two, three. He turns the handle. ‘Mum, are you in there?’
But there’s no one sitting on the avocado-coloured toilet or standing in the shower. There’s only one room left to check but when he walks into his bedroom it’s as empty as every other room in the house.
‘Shit. Shit.’ He flies down the stairs, grabbing hold of the banister as his feet slip out from beneath him on the second to last step. In an instant he’s up again. He grabs his keys from the wooden bowl by the front door then he’s out of the house, down the path and sprinting down the street. He runs all the way to the corner shop and grips the counter, sweat pouring off him and his wet socks clinging to his feet.
‘Have you seen my mum?’ He takes three shallow breaths. ‘Joan. My mum. Has she been in?’
Fred, the man who’s owned the shop for as long as Gareth can remember, slowly shakes his head. ‘I’ve not seen her in weeks. Is she okay?’
Gareth doesn’t answer. He bursts back out again and pushes at the door to the post office. Locked. They’ve already closed up for the day. The only other shops on the small stretch of street are a boarded-up hairdresser and a Chinese takeaway. He doesn’t bother going in there. It only opened six months earlier and he’s pretty sure his mum’s never been in.
Panting and panicked, he desperately tries to work out where she might have gone. Did she decide to take herself off to the doctor or the dentist’s? She’d normally go with Sally or Yvonne but if they’d already left and she’d had some kind of accident then …
Kath! He’s told his mum over and over again that if anything happens she needs to go next door and ask Kath for help. He’s pinned a note to the side of the front door, saying the same.
He sets off at a sprint, then slows as a stitch gnaws at his side. He should never have left his mother alone. He’s been telling her for months that she should move into a care home where she’d get better help, but she’s always refused. On a good day she’s lucid enough to argue with him. On a bad day she bursts into tears or looks at him confused, telling him that she promised ‘until death do us part’ and she’s not going anywhere without her John.
‘Kath!’ He hammers on the door with his fist. ‘Kath! Kath!’
He sees a shadow move behind the thin living room curtains then the light in the hall goes on and the front door opens.
‘Is she here?’ he asks before his astonished neighbour can speak. ‘My mum, is she here?’
There’s a split second as Kath’s lips part when he thinks everything’s going to be okay, that’s she’s going to tell him that his mum’s in her living room, watching telly at top whack. But then her eyes fill with concern and she shakes her head.
‘Mum’s not at home.’ Gareth grips the door frame. ‘She’s not anywhere. She’s completely disappeared.’