Josie had been through things she didn’t talk about. Not even to me. Perhaps that was why I thought of her first. I could have taken Aiden to Rob’s. He was Aiden’s father, after all. Perhaps I just didn’t feel like dealing with Rob’s mother. Either way, it was Josie’s door I’d turned up at, and it was Josie who I felt had the strongest affinity with Aiden and what he had been through. Though Josie had never really opened up to me, I knew there was something dark lurking beneath her tight smile. I’d always known. She’d dropped little hints over the years—nothing particularly concrete, but I had a feeling she might understand more about how Aiden was feeling than anyone else I knew.
ChapterFifteen
On the way to the bathroom I found myself wandering around the Barratt house, refreshing my memories of a happier time. Josie and I went to school together, but she was a few years older than me and we never really hung out. But one day when I was struggling with Aiden in a Bishoptown café, Josie came to my rescue, standing up for me against a busybody old lady who had told me to ‘shut that thing up’. Aiden was four and had dropped his ice cream on the floor. Josie swooped in with a second bowl of ice cream to give to Aiden and plonked herself on the chair next to me. We were friends from that first moment. She even helped me snag a part-time job at the accountancy firm where she worked, on the outskirts of Bishoptown. I hadn’t needed the money but I had needed a life outside Aiden, and the job gave me a new sense of purpose. I had always thrived on being a mother but it didn’t satisfy me in the same way a career did. I needed that extra direction in my life in order to find my own brand of happiness. Though being a mother had always been wonderful to me, having a job fulfilled me in a different way.
Josie and Hugh welcomed us into their house with open arms. Looking back, I think they may have been a little desperate. At that point they’d been trying for a baby for around a year and nothing was happening. Their house suddenly seemed empty and they needed to fill it with people. I’d always thought that Aiden was both a reminder and a distraction to them from that difficult time. I walked through the corridors, remembering the time Rob, Aiden, and I all squished into one of the spare rooms. There were plenty to choose from, but we’d all decided to sleep in the same bed.
After Aiden’s disappearance, both Josie and Hugh were huge helps, delivering food to the house, offering shoulders to cry on. Hugh even paid for contractors to search the river after the search and rescue team had given up. They were my best friends. My only real friends.
I stopped and stared out at Wetherington House, which stood tall on the hill above Rough Valley Forest. The Bishoptown village lay nestled in the valley of three hills, but the boundary reached up to both the hill where Josie and Hugh Barratt lived, and the larger hill where the Duke of Hardwick resided in his stately home. Between the Barratt house and Wetherington House, part of Rough Valley Forest snaked through the valleys. Looking at it made my chest tighten. Had Aiden been held captive inside the woods, or had he staggered through part of the woods from somewhere else? No one knew how long he’d been walking. No one knew where he had come from.
My phone rang.
I swiped the bar across, recognising the number. “Hi, what’s up?”
“They took my fucking picture.”
“Who took your picture, Rob?”
“The fucking reporters. Who the fuck else?”
“Calm down. I’m at Josie’s place. Come up here. I’m hiding from the reporters. They’re all camped outside my house.”
“I’m on my way.”
Less than ten minutes later, a dishevelled Rob turned up at the door, red-faced and fuming. He ran his hands through his wet hair and brushed past me as he hurried into the house.
“I can’t believe it, the bastard. He shoved that thing right in my face and I nearly lost it.”
Josie popped her head around the door of the kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on, Rob.”
He didn’t even notice. Instead he paced the length of the entrance hall. “Where’s Aiden?”
“He’s in the living room watchingThe Jungle Book. Listen, Rob, there’s something I need to tell you about this morning.” I hesitated. I didn’t want to tell him, not like this, but if I left it much longer, it would get worse.
“What? Did the bastards get you, too?” Rob had a wild way about him when he was agitated. He fidgeted like a junkie in need of a fix. He scratched his forearms and rubbed his bulging eyes, as if he had more energy than he could handle but felt exhausted at the same time.
“No, nothing like that. It’s about me and Aiden. I did something really stupid.”
He stopped pacing the hallway and moved closer to me instead. I noticed how his hands moved up, like he was contemplating reaching out to me, but then his arms dropped by his side. “What is it? It can’t be that bad. You never do anything stupid, Em. I bet it wasn’t as stupid as getting your mug photographed by a scummy paparazzi.”
I shook my head and backed away. “It’s worse.”
“Anyone for a cuppa?” Josie called, saving me from blurting everything out.
“Coming,” I called. “Come and sit down for a minute. You’ll feel better.”
“I want to know what’s going on.”
I chewed on my bottom lip and scratched at a patch of dry skin on my hand. The anxieties of the last few days were catching up with me. I was changing in a physical sense. The lack of sleep, the constant worrying, and the fact that I was so busy in the late stages of my pregnancy had brought nothing but dry skin and circles under my eyes. I’d even lost a little weight.
“Long time no see, Hartley.” Josie placed a mug of steaming tea onto the breakfast bar as we moved into the kitchen. “Are those grey hairs I see? And crow’s feet, just there?” She pointed at his eyes.
Rob swatted Josie’s hand away, but failed to hide his smile. “Yeah and that’s a new moustache hair, isn’t it?”
“Cheeky arsehole.” Josie rolled her eyes exaggeratedly when she turned to me.
I mouthed a ‘thank you’ for helping calm him down. But even still, when I swallowed my throat was dry. I was dreading telling him about the incident in the forest.
