Why Don’t You Come for Me (29 page)

‘My mother’s always asking about scores in tests,’ said Charlotte. ‘How many did you get, and how many did Tamsin Dyer get, and how many did Aaron Wilkins get. Honestly, it drives me mad. Parents are all a bit hyper, if you ask me.’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The arrival of the postcard thrust Jo into a helter-skelter of emotions. Euphoria, disbelief, panic; a series of confused ideas which hurtled by faster than she could keep up with them. Among them were thoughts which she could scarcely bear to entertain. To lose a child is the most terrible thing in the world, but to regain that child might be no less terrifying. Suppose the idealized Lauren in her head turned out to be completely different from the flesh-and-blood reality? Suppose the girl she brought home in the early hours of Sunday morning was not Lauren at all? How would she know? In all her fantasy reunions she had known and recognized her daughter as a matter of course; but these scenes had invariably been conducted in well-lit, well-populated settings, with the identity of the child already verified beyond doubt. She had never envisaged a clandestine meeting at midnight, halfway to the middle of nowhere.

What a place to choose – Claife Station – an old viewpoint situated high above Windermere on Claife Heights, the supposed haunt of the Crier of Claife, Windermere’s most famous spectre. She wasn’t too clear on the ghost story, but she had certainly derived the general impression that you should avoid Claife Heights on your own at night. She assumed the venue had been chosen because it could only be accessed on foot, thereby making any kind of police trap or surveillance that much more difficult.

Jo had never been to Claife Station, but she knew of it from magazines and walk books. She checked it out on Google, and found the good news was that it lay on a well-defined path not too far from a car park, but an accompanying photograph of the place was less encouraging. The text explained that Claife Station – which had nothing to do with railway lines – was a roofless, late-eighteenth-century ruin, built to enable the original tourists to view Windermere in all its scenic splendour, through specially designed stained-glass windows. In its heyday the viewing station had been a popular place for picnics and parties, but subsequent generations had allowed the building to fall into disrepair, preferring to find their own views from greater or more secluded heights; or else to eschew any views which were not visible from the windows of a moving coach or a tea shop window.

As Jo considered the location on an OS map a new thought struck her – suppose it was a trap? What if the abductor wanted to lure her there and kill her? But why? To stop her searching for Lauren? It was not as if she was getting any closer.

Then again, why should anyone want to give Lauren back now, after all these years? Maybe she was ill. Something which couldn’t be handled in captivity. Childhood leukaemia? The last and cruellest joke – to have your child restored to you, only to watch her suffer and die.

Anything was possible because once the worst of your fears has been realized – your child snatched – nothing is ever entirely beyond the realms of your reality again.

Three days to go. Three days to think about it. Three days to plan. Three days to wonder. Unable to be still for a moment, Jo matched frenzied activity to frenzied thought. She cleaned the house from top to bottom, made up the spare bedroom, placed a jug of fresh flowers on the window sill, bought a cuddly Dalmatian dog (was twelve too old for stuffed toys?) and placed it in the centre of the bed. Time enough to personalize the room later. She was not sure what a girl of Lauren’s age would like in her room. She might be a pink princess or a thoroughgoing tomboy. She removed, then replaced, the Dalmatian half a dozen times a day. Lauren might be bringing things of her own – although a significant amount of luggage did not appear to be indicated by a rendezvous at Claife Station.

Jo could neither eat nor sleep. She was aware of Sean watching her with more than usual circumspection. At times the urge to tell somebody – even Sean – almost overwhelmed her. The knowledge filled her so that she thought she might explode with it, yet she had to keep swallowing it back.
Tell no one
, the postcard had instructed. It did not matter whether Sean could be trusted to keep a secret. Telling anyone at all could be enough to break the spell. Even an email to Nerys was out of the question. She had to stay silent for Lauren’s sake.

One of their Lakeland walk books included a route along Claife Heights which passed the old viewing station. The sketch map which accompanied it implied that the building was easy to find and only a short walk from the road, but Jo decided that the wisest course would be an advance visit to ensure that she could find her way there after dark. She had hoped for a dry day, but it rained steadily through Thursday and she set out on Friday in intermittent drizzle. She took a cross-country route, driving through little-used lanes until she emerged alongside Graythwaite Hall, then headed towards Sawrey and the ferry road. The National Trust car park was described in her book as an old quarry, but any quarrying must have ceased decades ago because the small parking area was surrounded by mature trees. There were already a number of cars and two large camper vans in there, but Jo managed to squeeze her car into the last remaining space, then sat on the back bumper while she changed her shoes for walking boots.

Judging from the number of vehicles the weather did not seem to have deterred walkers, who all presumably subscribed to the theory that there is no wrong sort of weather in Cumbria, only the wrong sort of clothing. The only other human beings in the car park were a foursome, who talked to one another in strident Yorkshire accents while they got kitted up for a forthcoming exploration. They seemed to take an age in sorting themselves out, so Jo slowed up too, tying and retying her bootlaces because she was reluctant to set off at the same time as they did. The idea of falling into step and then into conversation with anyone else made her nervous, lest she inadvertently give something away and jeopardize the rendezvous. She knew it was irrational, but their voices – indeed their very presence – began to grate on her. She was just thinking that she would have to give them a long start when they finally departed, clumping in single file along the road rather than up the muddy track which led through the trees towards Claife Station.

There were signs of recent forestry operations in the wood, and these had left a quagmire scarred by the repeated passage of heavily shod feet and even heavier vehicles. Jo had barely been sloshing her way through the mud for a minute before she glimpsed the side of a stone building, standing high above her among the trees. She had not been expecting to see anything so soon, but only seconds later she came in sight of the stone stairs which ascended to the old viewing station. The approach had been constructed to resemble a grand curving staircase built into the side of the hill, but its glory years were long past and now the steps were irregular, sharp-edged and sloping, partly covered in last year’s leaves which had melded into a solid mass, looking for all the world like a rust-coloured carpet which had once been thick and expensive, but was now so badly worn that in places the treads showed through. The patches of bare rock were slippery with rain and the jagged edges unforgiving, so that Jo had to ascend with care and was unable to give the viewing station her full attention until she reached the top.

The remains of the building presented a dismal prospect: a roofless ruin surrounded by temporary metal fencing, which had been erected because of safety concerns according to the National Trust sign attached to it.
Dangerous Building. Please Keep Out
requested a separate notice. A small information panel had also been wired to the fence, which included an artist’s impression showing how the place must have looked in its prime: a miniature turret from a Hollywood-style medieval castle, complete with battlemented top and even a couple of arrow slits. The huge windows which had once afforded views in every direction were now either bricked up, or else gaped like eye sockets in a skull. It might still have been possible to enjoy some of the famous views if access to the building had been permitted, but from where Jo stood behind the wire fence there was little to see except a surrounding canopy of trees.

The commentary from a passing lake steamer was just audible, a disembodied voice which floated up from the boat as it moved along the opposite shore of the lake. She glimpsed its blue and white hull briefly as it crossed a gap in the leaves. Otherwise there was no sound except for the birds, noisy now that there was a lull in the rain, their song only interrupted by the occasional car heading along the road to join the queue for the ferry.

Jo began to assess the place from the point of view of a midnight rendezvous. Anything which took place here could not be seen from the car park, or even the bottom of the steps. After mounting the steps, the public footpath vanished through an arch in the wall which linked the main turret of the viewing house to the remnants of what had once been a smaller chamber built into the rocky hillside, although little of this secondary structure remained except a knee-high outline showing where the walls had once been and a rather splendid window which matched the main archway. She followed the path through the archway and found that it disappeared behind an outcrop of rock, thereafter becoming a narrow track which headed steeply downhill then steeply up again, like a muddy single-file roller coaster, which vanished into the trees after about a hundred yards. It presented neither a good hiding place nor the means for a swift getaway.

It seemed to Jo that whoever planned to meet her would naturally expect her to come from the direction of the car park, and that by taking up a vantage point close to the top of the steps, it would be simple enough for them to be sure that she had come alone. It would also be virtually impossible for anyone to spy on a transaction undertaken here: even if someone with very strong binoculars was standing over on the eastern shore, the small plateau in front of the ruin was almost entirely masked by the surrounding trees.

If it was raining tomorrow night, then anyone waiting here would get pretty wet because there was no shelter at all. But perhaps the viewing station was merely a first meeting place. Maybe she would be taken on from there, or would find some instructions which would lead her somewhere else. On reflection, that seemed a far more likely scenario than someone bringing Lauren up here to meet her.

Another shower began to patter against the leaves, silencing the birdsong. She put up her hood and began to pick her way carefully down the steps. There was a narrow terrace at the bottom of the flight which curved round the side of the hill. Jo followed it, squelching through the mud, until she found herself looking down towards the southern end of the lake, but the aspect was greenish-grey and disappointing. The mountains to the north were hidden completely by the tree-covered Ferry House promontory.

The rain had eased again by the time she retraced her steps to the car park. A different quartet of walkers had returned to their car, where they were in the process of removing outdoor gear. ‘Let’s try the Sun at Hawkshead,’ said one. ‘They might have Bluebird bitter, there.’

Their cheerful conversation conjured a faint echo of carefree days, when all that mattered was what you were going to eat or drink – trivial things that didn’t matter at all now. On the drive home she found that she couldn’t recall whether she had eaten that day or not. It was impossible to think of anything but midnight on Saturday. At times she almost had to remind herself to breathe.

She checked that she had her maps, boots, torch and anorak in the car a dozen times. Ought she to take a flask, with a hot drink for Lauren? Maybe she should leave a note for Sean, telling him where she had gone … just in case she did not come back.
Tell no one
, the card had said. She must not breach the instructions. There could be no leaving of notes.

She set out far too early – even to allow for going the long way round. It was easier to stick to the main roads at night, because the narrow lanes were such a pain if you met anything and had to reverse in the dark. Not that you ever did meet much this late, not even in the middle of the season. Reaching the car park too early was as problematical as reaching it late. Whatever happened, she must not deviate from the instructions to the slightest degree. It would be terrible to get this far, only to make a wrong move which put the kidnapper off, so after passing Graythwaite she pulled into the side of the road to kill some time. She was well out of sight of any human habitation, and had not seen another vehicle for some minutes, but she switched off the lights and stilled the engine, the better not to draw attention to herself. With the engine silenced she could hear the wind in the trees. The rain had ceased a couple of hours before, but when she eased the window open a crack she could smell autumnal damp, rather than high summer. It made her think of funerals and death. She tried to tell herself that she would always remember this moment – the wind in the trees and the smell of wet bracken – in a positive way,
because this is the night I got Lauren back
. It did not work. The darkness around her seemed to bristle with hostility. A sharper gust gathered up a posse of raindrops which had been clinging to the trees, and flung them on to the roof. The unexpected impact made Jo jump in her seat. She had to fight the urge to start the engine and drive on. She must –
must
– see it through for Lauren. But growing in her mind was the thought that if sitting here in the darkness, safely locked inside the car where no one was watching or waiting, where no one even knew she was there, induced something approaching terror, then how on earth would she bring herself to get out of the car and face up to the actual rendezvous at Claife Heights?

‘You can do it, because Lauren is up there waiting for you,’ she told herself – but all the time she could hear that other voice, telling her that Lauren was not there. Lauren was far, far away, and the viewing station at Claife was no more than an awful trap, set by someone who had no intention of handing Lauren over. Someone cruel who walked in the shadows: a figure which came tantalizingly close, before receding into the darkness again and taking Lauren with it.