All we have, p.30
All We Have, page 30
“Meg, let’s cross that bridge when we get to it, eh?” The stranger’s voice now, deep and soothing. “The police are hopeful that she’s just gotten lost somewhere. She’ll probably turn up of her own accord, or failing that one of the search parties is bound to find her. They’re combing every inch of the area around here.”
“I know she’ll be okay.” This was Helen now. “She’s always been a bit of a scatterbrain.” Huh! Thanks, Helen! “She probably just didn’t pay enough attention to where she was walking and ended up losing her bearings. She’s never had much of a sense of direction.” That was rich, coming from the girl who’d been the only one on school camp who’d ever, in the entire history of the camp this was, managed to end up on the wrong side of the river and half a mile in the complete opposite direction from the end point of the introductory orienteering course. The instructors were completely flabbergasted by her incompetence.
I glanced over at Dan, who was trying to keep a straight face and failing. “Stop it!” I mouthed at him. “This isn’t funny!” I frowned ferociously to emphasize my point.
“I’m sure that guy Dan has something to do with it.” Meg’s voice again, and she sounded angry. “I can’t believe I fell for his wholesome boy next door act. Here I was thinking what a lovely young man, but now I haven’t seen him for days either.” This was sounding worse and worse. I’d no idea what I was going to say to them, but I’d to get into that room now. I couldn’t let this go on a moment longer. Ignoring Dan’s frantic hissing that I should stay where I was, I walked the last couple of feet up the hall and into the kitchen. There was a collective intake of breath from its occupants.
Chapter twenty-two
“Paige!” Meg was the first to react, leaping up from the couch but then just standing there with her mouth open, as if not really trusting what she was seeing.
“Hi Meg, yes it’s me,” I assured her, moving quickly to stand in front of her.
“It really is,” she whispered, pulling me into her arms and hugging me tightly before pushing me away again so she could look at me. Her face went from amazed, through relieved and on to steaming mad in about three seconds flat. “Where the hell have you been, young lady? Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been about you? You just disappear without a word, I’ve had to call your parents home, we’ve had the police out scouring the rivers and lakes for you, and everyone else out walking grids looking for any trace of you. You’ve got some explaining to do.”
I’d never seen Meg in a towering rage before. It was pretty scary. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out, so I closed it again, swallowing as I tried to collect my scattered thoughts and formulate some kind of response. “Well? Come on, I’m waiting,” Meg snapped, her voice quivering with emotion that I decided was ninety percent rage. In the meantime, the man who’d been sitting next to Meg on the couch stood up. He tried to insert himself slightly between us, but Meg wasn’t having any of it.
“Meg, darling, give the girl a chance,” he began. “She’s here, she’s safe, that’s the main thing, hmmm? Maybe we should just give her a minute.”
I recognized him immediately from the various photos I’d seen of him on the dust covers of his books. “Give her a minute?” Meg was livid. “Bill, are you mad? She’s been missing for two nights, and now waltzes in here like nothing’s happened and you want me to give her a minute?” Meg’s voice rose incredulously and she glared at him in disbelief.
Helen piped up at this point. “Maybe you should sit down again, Meg.” She sounded a bit worried, and I must admit I wasn’t keen on the way Meg’s face was suddenly changing from bright red and angry to pale and interesting.
“You may be right,” Meg agreed unexpectedly. Her meek acquiescence with this suggestion worried me even more, especially given that seconds ago she had been tearing strips off me. I watched her closely and was relieved to see that, having sat down and taken a few deep breaths, her color was returning to a normal healthy pink.
But now it was Helen’s turn to have a go at me. Sitting next to Meg with her arms folded, she began. “So, Paige, now you’ve had a moment to catch your breath, I think we’d all really like to know, where have you been? And where on earth did you get that outfit?” She gestured at my clothes, and I remembered too late that I was still wearing the flouncy frilly dress the Duke had chosen for me. I groaned inwardly. Why hadn’t it occurred to me to change into some normal clothing? Stupid, stupid, stupid! Of course, I hadn’t planned on rushing out here quite like this. But when I’d heard Meg sounding so upset, and blaming Dan for my disappearance, I hadn’t stopped to think.
“Ummm, well, it’s a really long story,” I started then stopped, trying frantically to come up with something that even approached a plausible explanation. Perhaps I could say I’d accidentally gotten myself locked into the back of the costume and props truck owned by a troupe of travelling actors? That they’d only discovered me days later when they’d opened the back of the truck to unload for their next show? And I’d torn my own clothes to shreds trying to get out, so they’d had to dress me up in one of the costumes? None of that sounded believable to me.
“That’s okay, we’ve got plenty of time. It will make a nice change to hear the truth of what’s been going on, I’m sure it can’t be anything like as bad as what we’ve all been imagining for the past 72 hours.” Helen’s voice dripped with sarcasm. Usually I could rely on her to spring to my defense in any situation where it looked like I was going to be in trouble, but I guessed I’d pushed the bounds of friendship a little too far this time to expect her to side with me against the adults.
Which is why I was so surprised to hear Bill pipe up in my defense. “Hey, everyone, I think we need to take a breath here and calm down.” I waited for Meg to shoot him a withering look and then proceed to ignore him. I was shocked when she just meekly nodded, looking up at him as if she was waiting for more pearls of wisdom to fall from his mouth. What was going on here? Helen looked a little more mutinous, but even she managed to restrain herself from letting loose another barb, satisfying herself with looking daggers at me instead. “Meg, why don’t you put the kettle on, and I’ll get the cups out, and Paige, why don’t you sit down….” He looked like he was casting about for a place I could sit far enough out of Helen’s reach that she wouldn’t lynch me while he was in the kitchen. “Over there,” he decided, gesturing at the dining room table.”
Everyone moved to do as Bill suggested. I chose a chair that meant I was facing away from Helen, for obvious reasons. Meg put the kettle on and then joined me at the table, but she avoided my eye as assiduously as I was avoiding Helen’s. Bill brought over four cups, a milk jug and sugar bowl and Meg busied herself with moving them about the table. She placed a cup in front of each chair, and then moved the jug and bowl to the middle of the table. Then she stopped and put her hands in her lap and just looked at her cup as if expecting it to get up and walk away or something. The sound of the kettle building up steam filled the room, along with our collective silence. Once the kettle switch clicked off Bill made the tea and brought the teapot and trivet over as well, placing them in front of Meg. Pulling a chair out, Bill glanced over at Helen, who took the hint and came over to the table. We must have looked quite incongruous, the four of us sitting around the teacups with our long faces and our silence. A silence that Bill eventually broke on our behalf. “So Paige,” he began, “We haven’t been properly introduced. My name is Bill and I’m....”
“I know who you are,” I interrupted, then immediately regretted doing so, because now all the attention was back on me. I should have let him go on as long as possible, at least that would have bought me a little time to work out what the heck I was going to tell them. But it was too late now, because now here they all were, all looking expectantly at me again. “I know you’re all waiting for me to tell you where I’ve been...” I began.
Helen snorted, opening her mouth like she was going to say something, but she subsided when Bill shot her a quelling look. Which I was grateful for, because I could tell she’d been winding up to start laying into me again with the sarcasm. Clearing my throat, I suddenly felt like you do when you start to get a cold and everything in your throat feels blocked up and even talking is an effort. “I went out for a walk. After Meg and I’d had words I was feeling like I needed to get some fresh air. And then I just got lost,” I finished somewhat lamely.
“You got lost?” Meg’s voice rose at the end of the sentence. “You got lost for two nights?” She was meeting my eye now all right. “Come on, Paige, we’ve been all over every part of the local area, there’s no way you couldn’t have heard us looking for you.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I never heard anyone looking for me.” That much of my story was true, at least.
“Ok, you were lost, that’s one thing. But that doesn’t explain the weird outfit,” Helen said slowly. “What happened to your clothes? And where did you get those ones?”
“You have to admit, this story seems pretty weird Paige,” Bill added.
“I agree,” Meg nodded. “Paige, you need to start telling us the whole truth now.” Her tone told me she would brook no further attempts at avoidance. “I can promise I won’t be mad if you just tell us the truth, though I can’t guarantee your parents will feel the same after being dragged home from the holiday of a lifetime,” she added warningly.
Clearly this wasn’t going to work. I had nothing. No possible plausible explanation was occurring to me that could even start to adequately justify my absence. My panic must have shown on my face, because Meg started to look even more concerned and Bill, who had picked up the teapot to pour tea into our cups, set it back down upon the trivet and reached for Meg’s hand, holding it tightly. Helen too seemed to see that something was really wrong, because all the anger drained out of her face, to be replaced by an expression of worried concern. It was too much.
Pushing back my chair I ran from the room, slamming the kitchen door behind me and heading for my bedroom. As I exited, I heard Bill’s murmured instruction to let me go. I figured that meant I had about two minutes before either Meg or Helen decided they’d had enough my nonsense, and Bill’s telling them what to do, and followed me.
Bursting into the bedroom, I found Dan pacing up and down beside my bed. He stopped as soon as he saw me, his eyes widening as he took in the expression on my face. “I take it that didn’t go well,” he said.
“You could say that,” I tried to laugh but it came out as a strangled sob. Dan crossed the couple of meters between us in an instant, and I collapsed against him. As the shock of the scene with Meg combined with the stress of the past few days hit home, more sobs wracked my body. He held me, making soothing noises and rubbing my back until I managed to get myself under control again.
“It was awful,” I managed to stammer, when I could talk again. “I’d nothing I could tell them, nothing believable anyway, and any minute now one of them is going to burst in here, find you, and that will only make things worse,” I wailed, looking up at him, my vision still blurred with tears. He held my face in his hands, gently smoothing away my tears with his thumbs.
He was being so caring and supportive, and that meant what he said next came as one gigantic shock.
“I have to get out of here,” he said quietly, the words hitting me like a slap.
“What?” I couldn’t believe it. “You’re going to leave me here to...to....” to do what? What could I do? He was abandoning me, and even though rationally I realized that if Meg found him in here it would only make the situation worse. There was logic to his leaving now, before anyone came in and found him. But it still hurt that he would leave me here to face the music alone.
“I have to. But I’ll be right back. In fact, you might not even notice I’m gone, if I get this right.” Great, now he was talking in riddles. “While you were in the lions’ den,” he jerked his head in the direction of the hallway, “I was applying some thought to solving the problem of your disappearance, and I’ve thought of someone who might be able to help us get out of this mess. I can’t believe I didn’t think of him earlier,” he said bitterly, running a hand through his hair. “If I had, it might have saved you from ending up in this mess.”
I wasn’t managing to follow what he was saying at all. I was still too busy focusing on the fact that at any moment a livid great aunt or sarcastic best friend was going to burst through that door. And Dan was right, he couldn’t be here when that happened.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re on about or what crazy scheme you’ve got up your sleeve,” I snapped, removing his hands from my face and wiping away the remaining traces of tears with the back of my own, “but I agree with you on one thing. You’ve got to get out of here.” My voice broke on the last word, and I was mortified when more tears began streaming down my face.
“Paige,” he began, but I held up a hand to stop him.
“Please just go, will you?” I managed to say, shoving him none to gently towards the wardrobe. Yanking open the door I virtually pushed him inside. But at the last moment he resisted.
Holding the door open, he looked down at me. “Paige, have you heard the expression ‘time waits for no man’?” he asked urgently.
“What?” What kind of time was this to be playing name that quote? “Yes, of course I have,” I said, “but this is hardly the time...look, just go will you?” I begged, trying to close the door on him. But still he resisted my efforts, holding me off without any trouble, and the door right where it was, while looking down at me with an expression that I found it impossible to read. For goodness sake why was he standing around? Any minute now someone would march in demanding answers, see him, and I’d be in even more of a mess.
“Wait for me, will you?” he asked quietly. “Wait right here for me and I’ll come back, and sooner than you think. Trust me,” his voice was serious, his gaze unwavering, and I didn’t believe him for a moment. But he hadn’t finished. “And when I do,” he continued, “I’ll have the answer to all this. I promise you I’ll make everything right again.”
“Just go,” I whispered. “Please, just go.” I couldn’t bear to think about what would happen if he didn’t. Finally, with a last look at me, he closed the door to the wardrobe and I leaned against it, relief coursing through my body as I heard the sound of my bedroom door opening behind me.
It was Helen, with a face like a thundercloud. I’ve always wondered, when I’ve read that expression in a book, exactly how that looked. Well, now I knew. Her eyes, normally a friendly pale blue, were almost black, her eyebrows were drawn low over them like two separate storm clouds, and her mouth was a flat line of fury, it reminded me of the sea when it goes strangely flat and still just before a wild wind arrives and whips it into a frenzy of angry waves. Even her hair, which at school was invariably pulled back in a practical ponytail, today was hovering in a dark cloud around her head.
“Okay, Paige, I’m ready to hear it.”
“Um, hear it?” I played for time, even though I knew Helen was in no mood to play.
“Your explanation. Your story. Whatever it is you’ve been up to for the past few days that you don’t feel able to share with Meg.” She advanced on me, and I backed up until I felt my bed hit the back of my knees and realized I could go no further. “Meg’s beside herself in there thinking something awful’s happened to you and you just can’t bring yourself to tell us.” Helen snorted her trademark snort again. “But I don’t believe anything awful has happened to you, at least not on the scale Meg’s thinking. I’ve seen you look like this too often before. Hell, I’ve been the one who’s idiocy has got you into situations that have made you look like this. But we’ve always told each other everything, that’s what we’re about. Best friends, remember?” Her voice wavered a little at this point, and she paused.
Seeing an opening I took advantage, plunging in. “Look, Helen, I know this looks bad. Do you think I want to hurt Meg like this? Or you?” I pleaded. “I don’t! It’s just I can’t tell you, I don’t see how I can tell you, what’s been going on. It’s just too bizarre, too unbelievable.” I stopped, willing her to understand. She looked unconvinced. I sighed. “I really wish I could tell you, but even if I did you’d think I was mad.”
“Try me,” she offered, bringing her menacing advance to a halt about half a meter in front of me, arms folded and her eyes boring into mine so that I couldn’t look away. “I’m prepared to be as open-minded as you like, but I’m not prepared to be shut out. We don’t have secrets from each other. Remember? Certainly not something as big as this seems to be.”
I’ve known Helen long enough to know that when she’d determined on a course of action, nothing will put her off. My heart sank as I recognized the dogged, I’m-not-giving-up-until-I-get-my-way, expression on her face. Usually, I wasn’t on the receiving end of it. Usually, I was the one backing her up as she used it to confront some unreasonably troublesome teacher, or saw off some annoying guy who had gotten totally the wrong idea about her being secretly into him and wouldn’t take the hint that he should back off.
“Okay. I’ll tell you the truth, as far as I know it,” I offered. “But,” I qualified, pointing a finger at her. “You have to promise to hear me out and reserve judgement until the end.”
“I can promise to do my best,” said Helen frostily. “That will have to do.”
I sighed. “Okay, remember when you were still in the US with your dad? That night we were messaging each other, and I told you about Dan?”
“The guy you met? Sure, I remember. Are you telling me he’s involved in all this? Where is he anyway?” She looked around the room, her eyes narrowing as if she was expecting him to pop out from somewhere at any moment. Which, given his history, was actually quite likely I reminded myself. “Meg hasn’t mentioned him being around since you disappeared.”
