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Tim glanced at the clock on his computer. Yikes. He wasn’t going to get back in time. He pulled up the photo he’d taken of Mel’s note and copied down the number and address for the woman whose house Niamh was spending the evening at. He was supposed to pick her up twenty minutes ago.
“Hello, is that Wendy’s mum?” he said, when she picked up. “This is Niamh’s uncle, Tim. I’m just calling to say I’m running a little late, but I’m on my way to get her now.”
There was a pause at the other end. “Niamh? ... Niamh Howell?”
Unease prickled. Something was wrong. Was Niamh hurt? “Is everything okay?”
“Um ... you said she wasn’t well and staying at home with you today ...”
“What? No. I never called you before. I ... I dropped her off outside holiday club this morning. I watched her go in the door!”
“No ... you definitely called me this morning,” the woman’s voice was starting to climb in pitch. “She wasn’t at holiday club, otherwise I would have picked her up when I got Wendy.”
Tim froze. Liquid panic replaced the blood in his veins. “But where is she then?”
“Hang on,” said the woman. “I’m going to see if Wendy knows anything. I’ll call you back.” She was already bellowing “Wendy” when she put the phone down.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Where was Niamh? She’d been missing since the morning. What could have happened to her? He had definitely watched her go in through the door at the church hall where holiday club was held. What could have happened between her entering, and her being signed in?
Breathe, Tim. Breathe. He should call the police. No. First he should try her phone.
He pulled up her number. It rang. And rang. Come on come on come on. Answer.
Finally, just when he was certain it was going to go to messages, she picked up. “Where are you?” he demanded. “I thought you were at Wend—”
A sob from Niamh sliced through his train of thought. “Niamh? Where are you? Are you safe?”
Another sob, then, “I’m such an idiot.”
“Where are you? I’ll come and get you.” He stood up, ready to run out.
“I’m in ...” She sobbed. “... Yorkshire. I’ve done something really stupid.”
“What—” he bit off the words ‘have you done’ just in time. “What happened?”
“I needed to talk to someone about Dad. Mum won’t talk about him and there’s no one else and I miss him so much,” Niamh wailed. “Harriet’s the only one there is and she’s not answering her phone!”
“Wh—?”
But Niamh wasn’t finished. “I thought if I came up here, she could come and pick me up from the station like she did when Dad came up and ... and ... and she’s not picking up her phone! She might even have moved since ... Oh God, I’m such an idiot.”
Tim tried to unscramble what was going on and failed. Whatever it was, he needed to find his niece and make sure she was safe. Everything else could be ironed out later.
“Niamh,” he said, trying to project calm down the line. “Niamh, tell me where you are. I will come and get you.”
“I’m in Huddersfield.”
“What the fu—” That was two hundred miles away. It would take him at least three hours to get there. In the meantime, she was alone, in the dark, in Yorkshire.
“I’m sorry! I thought that ... didn’t think that Harriet might not ... oh Uncle Tim. Mum is going to KILL me.”
Tim took a deep breath and let it out. His fingers flew over his keyboard as he got up Google maps. “Okay. Okay. Stay calm, Niamh. I’m going to come up and get you, but it’s going to take me a while to get there. In the meantime, we need to get you somewhere safe where you can wait, okay. Let me think.”
****
It was dark by the time Harriet reached the station. After a few circuits, she found a parking space and jumped out. She still wasn’t sure what she felt about this – annoyed, sad, apprehensive? All she knew was that she didn’t want to see Richard’s daughter. But the child was stuck in a railway station, in a town she didn’t know, after dark. She had no option but to go find her.
The station glowed yellow-orange in the street light and gathering mist. It was almost spring, but it was still damp and chilly. Harriet pulled up the zip on her fleece as she hurried in. Inside the building the light was harsh. There were a few people sitting or standing in the main entryway. It wasn’t a big space. There were a few counters, all but one closed, a couple of tatty plastic seats, the steps into the underpass that led to Platforms 2 and 3 and big doors letting in the cold air from Platform 1.
Harriet looked around, trying to remember what Niamh looked like. A girl was sitting hunched over her backpack, which was on her lap, speaking to someone on the phone. Her face was hidden by her hair. Harriet took a step towards her.
The girl looked up. Harriet stopped as though she’d been stung. Those eyes. Richard’s eyes. She had dreamt of seeing them again. She would have given anything to look into them again. Just once. And now she was looking at them, set in someone else’s face. Her insides contracted. No. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t bear it.
The girl broke into a smile so full of relief that Harriet’s heart flipped. Richard’s daughter needed her. How could she turn her back on that?
Niamh said, “She’s here. It’s okay,” into the phone and hung up. She wiped her hand across her cheeks and stood up. “You came. Thank you so much,” she said.
Harriet couldn’t speak, so she inclined her head.
Niamh’s smile faltered. “I ...” For a minute, she looked like she was about to cry again.
Harriet felt her own eyes fill up. Oh Richard. He had adored his daughter. No matter how he and his ex-wife felt about each other, he had never stopped loving Niamh. Harriet cleared her throat. “Are you okay?”
Niamh nodded. “Yes. I’m ... well, a bit cold, but otherwise ...” Her phone rang. She flicked it off without even looking at it. “Thank you. For coming to get me. I ... I guess I should have called and checked with you before I ... uh ...”
“Yes, you should have,” said Harriet. “Well, you’re here now. What were you planning to do?”
Niamh opened her mouth. Then shut it again.
Clearly, she had no idea what she wanted to do. A stab of irritation pierced the heaviness in Harriet’s chest. Niamh had just turned up, assuming Harriet would take care of her. Which was the height of cheek. But Niamh didn’t look cocky right now. She looked cold and tired and scared.
“Does your mother know where you are?” Harriet demanded.
There was a ‘clack’ behind her. The man at the ticket desk rapped on the partition. “Everything all right?” he said, leaning forward to look at them.
Oh heck. The last thing she needed was to be accused of abducting a teenager. “We’re okay,” said Harriet, over her shoulder. She turned back to Niamh and said, quietly. “Niamh. Does your mother know you’re here?”
Niamh shook her head.
“She’ll be frantic. You have to call her.”
“She’s on a retreat with Alex.”
“And she left you alone?” Dear God.
“Oh no. Uncle Tim’s supposed to be looking after me.” She looked down at her feet. “He didn’t know I was coming here. I ran away.”
“You ran—” Oh bloody hell. “Call him,” said Harriet. “Call him now and tell him where you are.”
“I told him. He knows I’m in Huddersfield. When you didn’t answer the phone I thought maybe I’d made a terrible mistake and—”
“You have,” said Harriet. “You have made a terrible mistake.” She looked over her shoulder. The man behind the glass was watching them. She sighed. “Look, since you’re here and it’s late, you’d better come with me.”
Niamh’s face lit up with relief. “Oh. Thank you!”
“But before we go anywhere, I want to talk to your Uncle Tim.”
Her face fell, but she didn’t argue. “Okay.” She pulled her phone out and called a number.
Harriet came and leaned against the wall next to Niamh, so that the man behind the counter could see her clearly. From Niamh’s phone came a stream of tinny babble as the man at the other end spoke.
“It’s okay, Uncle Tim. Harriet’s here now. Here, she wants to talk to you.” Niamh passed the phone across.
“Niamh what the—” the man said before Harriet cut him off with, “Hello, this is Harriet Brown.”
There was a sharp intake of breath. A pause and then he said, “I’m Tim Knowles. I’m Niamh’s uncle. Er ... her mother’s brother.”
“Right,” said Harriet. “Well, Tim, Niamh is here in Yorkshire, at a railway station. If she was in your care, where did you think she was?”
Another pause. Irresponsible man. He was probably trying to think of an excuse.
“I thought she was at holiday club. I dropped her off there this morning and ... oh shit. Look, Harriet. I’m really sorry about this. I’m heading up to Yorkshire now. If you give me your address, or a place to meet, I’ll come and get Niamh. It’s about 4 hours’ drive from here and—”
Harriet glanced at Niamh, who was staring up at her hopefully. She sighed. “I’ll take her to my flat,” she said. “Have you got pen and paper? I’ll give you my address.”
She could almost hear the cogs turning in the man’s head. “Really, Tim. You’re all the way down south. And I’m here. My place is probably safer for Niamh than the train station.”
A sigh. “Yes, yes. I’m sorry. Right. I’ve got pen and paper.”
She gave him her address and landline number. She also gave him the number for the pub. “I have no food in the house,” she said. “I’ll take her to the pub in Trewton Royd and buy her some tea.” She thought of the out of date tins of soup. She couldn’t risk the child getting food poisoning. “The pub is called The Trewton Arms. It’s across the road from my place. Okay?”
“Yes. Yes. Thank you. It’s very kind of you,” said Tim. “I’ll be there in a few hours.”
“Drive safely,” she said. She handed the phone back to Niamh and looked away. “I’ll be there in a few hours” were the last words Richard had said to her. All it had taken was one lorry and a wet patch on the road. He hadn’t even been on the motorway.
Niamh listened to her phone in silence for a few seconds and said, “Yes, Uncle Tim. Okay, Uncle Tim. Bye.” She hung up and made a face. “He’s really pissed with me.”
Harriet glanced sideways at her and said nothing. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you somewhere warm.”
In the car, they drove in silence for a few minutes. Harriet tried not to scowl as she drove out of the town and up the narrow roads that headed out to Trewton Royd. What was she meant to do with Niamh until this Tim fellow came to get her? She tried to remember some of the things Richard had said about Niamh. Rosy descriptions from a proud daddy. He would hardly have imagined his girl as someone foolish enough to run away.
After a while, Niamh said, “Harriet?”
“Mmm?”
“Are you angry with me? I know I should have checked with you before I came, but Dad always said you had the biggest heart of anyone he’d ever met.”
He’d said that? Harriet cast a sideways glance at the girl in the seat next to her. The last time she’d seen her, she’d been about twelve. Not quite a teenager, not quite a little girl. She had been giddy with excitement meeting her father’s girlfriend – this had baffled Harriet at the time, but Richard had explained that Niamh and her mother didn’t always get on and that if Mel hated Harriet, Niamh would be predisposed to like her. Perhaps this was an extension of that.
“He said ...” Niamh’s voice caught mid-sentence “... he said that there was nothing he couldn’t tell you and that you always made him feel like he’d come home. And I thought ... I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”
Harriet took a deep breath. “Well ... it’s not so much that. You should have given me a bit of warning. And not running away, would have helped.”
Niamh sniffed.
They crested the hill and descended into Trewton Royd. The village was at the bottom of the valley, a pool of light in the acres of darkness. Living above the shop meant that Harriet was right in the middle of the main street. She was also a few hundred yards from the pub, so they left the car parked outside the flat and walked across to the Trewton Arms.
Mentally thanking Mr Petovski for being a reliable boss who paid exactly on time, Harriet ushered Niamh into the pub. The Trewton Arms was an old-fashioned place, with softly lit booths by the window. At the far end, a small fire danced, with a couple of armchairs pulled up to it. The regulars rarely bothered with the armchairs, but people who came up for the weekend seemed to love them.
The regulars, perched on stools at the bar, turned to see who it was. Seeing it was Harriet, everyone returned to their drinks and conversations. Harriet ushered Niamh towards an empty table by a window.
The landlady, Angie, who was gathering glasses stopped. “Hello, Harriet. Don’t often see you in.” She was speaking to Harriet, but her gaze was on Niamh. “Hiyya, love, you’re a friend of Harriet’s are you?”
“This is Niamh. She’s not had anything to eat since lunchtime, could we order some food?” Harriet jumped in before Angie started nosing around too much. She liked Angie, but bloody hell, that woman could gossip.
As predicted, the chance to feed a hungry child trumped curiosity. “Oh, you poor love, you must be starving.” Angie patted Niamh’s arm. “What can I get you? We’ve got jacket potatoes and chilli. Or there’s a burger and chips.”
“Burger, please,” said Niamh.
“I’ll have the same,” said Harriet. “Thank you so much.”
Angie turned, then paused. “You’ll be wanting a drink as well. I may as well get that for you at the same time.” She glanced at Harriet.
“We’ll have two glasses of Coke, please. Pints,” Harriet said. She would normally have had a glass of wine, but right now, she didn’t trust herself to stop at one.
“Diet Coke,” said Niamh. “Please.” She sat down and shrugged off her coat. She had left her bag in the car. “Thank you,” she said to Harriet. “I’m really sorry that I didn’t think this through.”
Harriet balled up her coat and threw it onto the seat. “It’s okay. Well, you’re here now, what did you want to talk to me about?”
Niamh stared at her hands for a moment. “I ... I’m not sure.”
Harriet waited and concentrated on her own breathing. If it wasn’t something specific, this was even weirder than it appeared. Much as she loved Richard, she had never had any illusions that she was ever going to be Niamh’s stepmother. It just wasn’t something they’d wanted. Richard loved Niamh. Adored her. Mel ... was an unfortunate hassle that came with access to Niamh. Mel would never allow Niamh to spend significant time with Richard and Harriet.
The silence stretched. Angie returned with their drinks. She looked like she was about to start chatting but Harriet forestalled her with a tiny shake of the head. She indicated Niamh with her eyes. Angie got the message and returned to the bar, where she continued to throw curious glances across at them.
“I miss him,” said Niamh, suddenly. She sniffed. “I mean, it’s not like we lived in the same house or anything, but I ... I got to see him a lot and I miss him. It’s like sometimes I think ‘oh, I’ll go hang out with Dad today’ and then I remember.”
“And it’s like you’re feeling it for the first time.” The words came out in a whisper. She knew that feeling all too well. That moment of disorientation before the knowledge slammed into you. When you forgot that he was no longer there. When you were, however briefly, content with life ... and then you remembered. That explosion of grief that was every bit as painful as the first time. All the denial, the grieving, the getting past things, all undone in a single moment. Harriet had known it would be like that, but poor Niamh would have been caught unawares.
“Yes.” Niamh’s eyes rose to meet hers. “It hurts. Thinking about him hurts, but I want to think about him. I want to talk about him ... I’m frightened that if I don’t ... I’ll forget him.”
Harriet reached across and put her hand over Niamh’s. The teenager looked up at her with Richard’s eyes. Understanding passed between them.
“But why me?” Harriet said. “I’m just ... the long distance girlfriend. I only saw him every three or four weeks. I know he had a whole other life that I’m not a part of. You know all of those people. Why do you want to talk to me?”
“Mum ... well, you know what she’s like. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with Nan or any of Dad’s friends. She tries hard to hide it, but she’s still really angry with him about ... well about you.”
Harriet opened her mouth to speak.
Niamh held up a hand. “I know you didn’t split my parents up. Dad said he met you after he and Mum split up, but Mum was having none of that.” She sighed. “She refused to hear his name in the house for, like, months. Once she met Alex she chilled a bit ... but ...” She frowned and fiddled with the straw in her Coke, stirring the ice cubes round. “The thing is, Mum and Alex aren’t doing so well at the moment. So she’s kind of preoccupied with that.”
“But your father died,” said Harriet. “That’s a big deal.” How could that woman not realise the effect that would have on her daughter?
“I know, right?” said Niamh. “For the first few months she was all, like, cuddly and stuff. But then, after a while, you could tell she didn’t want to talk about it. Or about Dad. She booked me in to have a chat with a therapist. But, well, it’s not the same talking to a stranger, is it?”
Technically, she was still talking to a stranger. Harriet decided it was probably best not to mention that. Everything she knew about Niamh, she knew second-hand, filtered through the eyes of a father who adored his little girl. It seemed that Niamh’s view of Harriet was similarly filtered through Richard.
“You loved him, you see,” Niamh continued. “I just wanted to talk to someone who loved him. Someone who could tell me happy stuff about him. So that I can keep hold of all those good memories.”
Harriet nodded, slowly. She could understand that. Poor Niamh. “Okay. I see what you mean.” She rested her chin on her hands. “Well, what did you want to know?”
Niamh’s face lit up. “Anything. Fun stuff. Like ... how did you meet?”
“You know that story.”
“Tell me anyway. How come you were here in the first place?” She looked eager, almost desperate, like a child begging for a bedtime story to stave off nightmares. In a way, that was exactly what she was.
Harriet smiled. “I had just been made redundant from the company I’d been working for. I was really unhappy there, so it was probably not the worst thing that could have happened. Anyway, I grew up in a village over that way,” she gestured through the window at the black hills in the distance. “I thought I’d come back up to the area. I was I looking for a place to rent and I got here early. I took one look at Trewton Royd and it felt ... right somehow. Like I belonged here.” She shook her head, smiling at the memory. “I saw that the flat above the shop had a ‘to let’ sign outside, so, on an impulse, I went in to ask about it ... and your dad was in the shop. There was some sort of discussion going on between the shopkeeper and another customer, so we got chatting. Afterwards, we went for a coffee together in the bakery and, well, the rest is history, as they say.”
Niamh dunked a chip in ketchup. “What was Dad doing here?”
“He was renting a holiday cottage for a few days.” Getting away from Mel, he’d said. He was getting divorced and needed some space to think about what he was likely to have to lose in order to keep regular access to Niamh. “The same place you stayed in when you were last here.”
“Oh yeah. I think he told me that.” Niamh’s gaze was far away. “When I came up with Dad that time, we went to see the Brontë Parsonage, do you remember?”
She remembered all right. They had looked round the Parsonage and then gone into Haworth for tea and cake. Niamh had skipped on ahead. Harriet and Richard had followed, hand in hand, smiling indulgently. It was almost as though they were a family. She had been nervous of meeting Niamh, but she had turned out to be a lovely girl.
“I really wanted you to like me,” said Niamh. “I was, like, on my best behaviour.”
At the time, Harriet had congratulated herself on getting on well with Richard’s daughter. Now, she realised that the bright smiles and giggles hadn’t been about her at all. They had been about Richard. Niamh knew her father wanted her to be happy to meet his girlfriend ... so she was happy. Harriet’s likeability was largely irrelevant. Getting On With Niamh had been such a big thing for her. She watched Niamh now, who have moved on to talking about something else from that weekend, and felt as though she’d had an award taken away.
Harriet looked down at her burger. She was no longer hungry. She put her cutlery down and rested her chin on her hand. “What was he like?” she asked. “At home, when you went to his for the weekend?”
Niamh blinked. “Well, he was always busy, you know, with work and stuff. But when I stayed over, he’d turn his laptop off and we’d go out for the day. Before, when things were ... you know, when he lived with me and Mum, I rarely saw him at the weekends. I kinda tagged around behind Mum all the time. And then, when they got divorced, suddenly he was there for me. How odd is that?”
Not odd at all. “Were you upset? When your parents split up?” She hadn’t really thought about that, because Niamh had seemed so balanced and happy when she’d met her. But what if she wasn’t? What if that too was all an act to please Richard?
Niamh looked down. “A bit,” she said. She traced a pattern on her plate in ketchup. “Well, a lot, actually. Not so much when they finally decided to separate, but before that. They used to argue. After I’d gone to bed. They’d try to keep it down, but I could hear them. You know, not the words ... but the tone. It was ...” She shrugged. “Not nice.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s okay. It’s not like it’s your fault. They made each other unhappy. Mum ... oh my God, Mum’s like the total control freak. She needs to be right. All. The. Time. It drove Dad insane. It drives me insane too, but, you know, I can’t divorce her. Looks like she’s getting to Alex too.” Another shrug. “Dad met you pretty soon after and he was happy.” She finally looked up. Green eyes. So familiar, yet not the same. “You made him happy.”
The wave of emotion caught Harriet unawares. She wanted to say “he made me happy too”, but she couldn’t speak. Her eyes filled with tears.
As if in response, Niamh gave a sob. “I miss him.” A tear ran down her cheek and fell onto the plate. “I miss him so much.” And she was crying quietly into her hands.
“Oh. Oh, honey.” Harriet shifted across and put an arm around the sobbing girl. She tried to say “it’s okay”, but her own tears got in the way. Niamh turned and buried her face in Harriet’s shoulder. Harriet put her arms around her and they held each other. Grieving for the man they both loved.
Looking up, Harriet saw Angie staring at her from behind the bar. Angie mouthed “all right?” Harriet nodded over Niamh’s head and her arms tightened protectively around the girl. They couldn’t stay here. There was too much chance of awkward questions.
Niamh’s sobs were easing off. Harriet loosened her hold and rubbed the tears off her own cheeks.
Sensing the change, Niamh moved away a little, her head still low. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. There’s nothing to be sorry about. I miss him too.”
Niamh sniffed. “It’s such a relief to hear someone talk about him like ... like they cared. Mum tried, but she ... well, she doesn’t like Dad much.”
“I understand.” Harriet went back to her original seat and pulled her handbag up from the floor. “Listen, Niamh, I’m going to pay up. I think we should go back to my place and wait for your uncle there, okay. Do you want to message him and tell him? There isn’t a mobile signal in the village, but the Wi-Fi in the pub is free. If not, we can call him from my landline when we get back.”
Niamh nodded. “Let’s do that.” She still didn’t look up. “I’ll just go to the loo.” She slid off her seat and headed off to the toilets, still sniffing.