18
“He just… vanished.” Maxine grips a white china mug of tea in both hands. “Went out one evening and never came back.”
She’s made us both a cup and now sits opposite me on the small sofa in her living room. The opposite wall is decorated with pictures of Adrian, a wedding day picture together with Maxine and a few framed holiday snaps, the colors blanching with age. There are also pictures of a baby, of a bespectacled boy in a smart school uniform on the doorstep of this house, then pictures of a teenager, and finally of a young man in a graduation gown.
The house is eerily quiet, the only sound the occasional car on the street outside and Maxine’s soft Nottinghamshire vowels as she tells me about the husband she’s not seen for more than two decades.
“He came back from work and took the dog out before tea,” she says. “Just like he always did. Same time, same place, up the park at the end of the road. He seemed normal and he was never more than about half an hour, and it was throwing it down with rain that night, so I thought he’d be keen to get back. At first I thought he’d probably just met one of the lads from the Royal Oak darts team and was having a chat. But after an hour I started to get worried—he would never have missed his tea like that. When he’d been gone an hour and a half I walked up there myself even though it was pretty much dark by thenand there were no lights on at the park. And that was when I found Woody, soaked to the skin and shivering, just wandering around on his own, no collar, no lead. No Adrian. That night was the last time anyone ever saw or heard from him. It didn’t make any sense… it still doesn’t.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, feeling the inadequacy of the words. “Can’t begin to imagine how awful that must have been.”
“I knocked on some neighbors’ doors, asked if they’d seen him, but no one had. Then I started ringing up friends, all the time expecting him to walk through the door, wet through, and with a smile on his face, and a story to tell about something or other. I didn’t care where he’d been by that point, I just wanted him to come home. An hour after that I called the police.”
“And he’d never talked about…”
She’s already shaking her head.
“Leaving? No. Never. We were happy; he would never have done that to me.” She gives a rueful smile, but it’s full of pain even all these years later. “More to the point, he wouldn’t have left Woody roaming around off the lead near a road. He loved that dog. He wouldn’t have abandoned him like that. Woody had been dumped by his first owners when he was young—that’s why we got him from the shelter.”
“What did the police make of it?”
“Not much. They never really seemed to get going, even after a week when his bank account hadn’t been touched, there were no eyewitness sightings of him, no suggestion that he’d gone abroad. I mean, he didn’t even own a passport. They never seemed to put much effort into finding him, said he wasn’t a child or a vulnerable adult, not at risk of exploitation or harm, to himself or anyone else, blah blah blah. When I told them I was pregnant withCharlie, it made it worse, like it was the oldest story in the world:sketchy bloke gets his missus pregnant, decides he doesn’t want to be tied down, goes out for a packet of cigarettes one night, and never comes back. That sort of thing.”
“But that would have been out of character for Adrian?”
“Godyes. He’d be the last man on earth to do something like that.”
It occurs to me that a million women before her have probably said something similar, but her tone is unwavering even all these years later.
“So the police decided he’d cut and run?”
“More or less.” She bites her lip. “Then when his debit card was found a few weeks later up near Flamborough Head, in a car park near the cliffs, they just assumed there was only one reason he would have gone there. But Adrian wouldn’t have done that either.Never.”
“Were there any phone records?”
“He didn’t have one.”
I finish my tea and put the mug down on a side table, trying to imagine myself in her situation. To be the one left behind if Jess ever went missing, if she simply vanished one day and never came back, knowing that I had to carry on for the sake of the children. The idea of life without her—without knowing what had happened to her—is almost unthinkable, impossible. Inconceivable.
“I’m sorry to just turn up on your doorstep and stir everything up again. I realize it must be very difficult for you.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Don’t apologize. I like talking about Adrian but no one ever asks anymore, you know? You’re the first person to even bring him up in… God, I don’t knowhow many years. I like talking about him, but people think you shouldmove on. What if you don’t want to move on?”
“What was your husband like?”
Her eyes fill with tears.
“Kind. That’s what I remember most. And he was funny too, in his own way. He could come across as shy, reserved. You know that thing they say about how opposites attract? That was never the case with us. We were happy in our own little world, our little team of just the two of us. Soulmates. Then Woody came along, and the baby was going to make it complete.” She pulls a tissue from the pocket of her dungarees and dabs at her eyes with it. “I’ve never had any answers, never been able to grieve properly. We’ve never had a funeral, there’s no gravestone, nothing to remember him by. Nowhere I can take Charlie. It’s like Adrian didn’t even exist. Everyone just seemed to forget, except me and Woody: that dog used to wait for him, for years after. He’d always go to the front door at quarter to six in the evening—that was when Adrian would get in from work. That little dog would sit there, and wait, almost to the end.”
She talks more about Adrian, his job as a warehouseman, his hobbies, how they met. Her efforts over the years to keep his disappearance on the radar of local police and residents of the area.
“I’ve tried to get the media interested over the years,” she says. “There’s been a few stories in the local papers here and there, not that it ever led to anything. They always say there’s nothingnew, no newangleor whatever to write about. Even tried to get one of those missing persons podcasts interested on the twenty-year anniversary but they never even got back to me. Not interesting or unusual enough for them, I s’pose.”
I wait a beat, before posing the question I came here to ask.
“Why do you think that collar ended up in my house?”
“Honestly?” She shakes her head. “I have no idea. I’ve never even been to The Park, and I’m pretty sure Adrian wouldn’t have had a reason to go there either. No reason to be there unless you live in one of those big houses, is there?”
