This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior (written) permission of the author.
Copyright R. N. Taber 2011
CHAPTER ONE
As the London to Brighton train rumbled through the tunnel, a woman gazed at a succession of distorted images in the window and was reminded of a visit years ago to a Hall of Mirrors at a local fair. She sighed wearily. “If only we could put the clock back,” she murmured to her reflection.
I can’t do this. Not again...
The thin mouth relaxed into the semblance of a smile as she found herself remembering the same day in another time. She had been part of a family then, not the lonely, self-contained person she had become. It had been just the three of them - Tom, her husband (now ex-husband), Patricia, their daughter, and herself.
Brighton, Saturday August 6th 1983. She would cherish the memory always. For it was the last day they would spend together as a family. By the following morning, Patricia would have…vanished. They had been to the Aquarium to see the dolphins. It wasn’t called the Aquarium any more of course, and the dolphins were long gone. She and Tom had been married ten years to the day. Patricia would have been ten years-old a few weeks later.
I can’t do this. I can’t. Not again...
The half smile faded. Tom and she had been divorced for more years than they were married. As for Patricia…She sighed, but sat erect, her shoulders stubbornly refusing to slump.
The train roared out of a tunnel, anxious to reach its destination. The woman, Anne Gates, released a long sigh. She glanced at her watch. She would be at the Orion B&B hotel in good time for the optional evening meal. It would be good to see Mel and Joe again. Husband and wife had made an excellent job of running the place all these years. They were always so kind to her. Few people understood the compulsion she felt to return for the same two weeks in August every year. Some people, she suspected, thought her obsessed. But Mel and Joe never asked questions, always greeted her with smiles and hugs and reserved the same double room, with its enchanting sea view without her ever having to book.
Anne tried to stop fidgeting with her hands but the stubby fingers had other ideas. It was absurd to feel nervous after all this time. Yet, at each subsequent visit since Patricia disappeared, tension still sought to get the better of her.
A dispassionate female voice announced the train’s imminent arrival at Brighton. Anne braced herself. This time would be different, she was sure of it. This time she would find…what? Not Patricia. Deep down, she knew her daughter was probably dead. What then? A peace of sorts perhaps, one that would help her sleep at night, encourage her to pick up the pieces of a life left shattered twenty-three years ago? She sighed again, and this time her shoulders slumped.
I can’t do this. I’ll catch the next train back to London.
She wouldn’t of course, she never did. The train was still slowing to a halt but already, in her mind’s eye, she was at the hotel, gazing up at a bay window on the fourth floor as if expecting to see a pretty nine year-old girl smiling impishly down at her before dashing to the door and down the stairs to fling herself into her mother’s arms the instant Anne entered the lobby.
The train stopped and people began making their way along the carriage to the doors, some chatting excitedly, others stumbling with suitcases and swearing aloud. Anne only half saw, half heard, as the movement of her hands grew more frantic and her heart skipped several beats.
I will. I’ll catch the next train back to London.
The train had emptied and people were starting to board before she rose, reached for a shabby suitcase shoved in a space between seats, gave the fingers of her right hand time to grip the handle and prepared to exit. Once on the platform, she felt marginally stronger, more confident. Making her way slowly to the barrier, she even managed a smile for a puppy in the arms of a young girl whose brown eyes smiled shyly back at her before an agitated mother took her loudly to task for dawdling and the child ran on ahead.
In the back seat of a cab taking her to the Orion, Anne made no attempt to resist an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. On the contrary, she embraced it. She began to relax, as she always did. For two whole weeks she could look forward to indulging in memories that family and friends kept telling her she must learn to put aside in order to ‘move on’. No putting on a brave face or having to find words to spare the embarrassment of those who thought they had made a faux pas by referring to children, holidays, family life…or whatever else they felt obscurely obliged to avoid mentioning in her presence. Anne bit her lip. How could people be so stupid? Did they honestly believe anything they said or did would make a scrap of difference?
As her cab pulled up outside the hotel, another was just leaving. Anne saw two people climbing the few steps to the entrance. One was a tall, big boned woman who looked vaguely familiar. Her companion was a handsome man, years younger, lugging two suitcases with some difficulty. At first she took the pair to be mother and son until the woman declared loudly, “What you need Spence, darling, is a spell at the gym to lick you into shape. Look at you. You’re panting like a dog after a bitch on heat!”
“I’m sorry, my sweet. But is it my fault you’re so adorable and I can’t wait to service you?” the young man responded with a grin.
“Keep your voice down,” the woman snorted though smiling broadly, “Do you want people thinking I’m some kind of a sex maniac, for heaven’s sake?” She gave a bawdy laugh.
The young man threw back his head and roared, “Heaven forbid!”
Still laughing, the couple vanished through swing doors that led into the hotel lobby.
Anne paid the driver and would have picked up her bag if a familiar voice hadn’t called out to her.
“Anne Gates, don’t you dare pick up that bag or I’ll never speak to you again.” Joe Harvey, the proprietor, came bounding down the steps, gathered her up in an affectionate bear hug and carried her bag into the Reception area. “I’ll take this up to your room while you sign in. Mel sends apologies. She’ll come and see you as soon as she’s free. He turned to a pretty blond woman at the desk. “Mrs Gates is an old friend. She only needs to sign the register. There’s no need to bother with credit card details etcetera.” The receptionist nodded and Harvey headed for the lift.
Anne shook her head and could not suppress a chuckle. “Dear Joe. He has a heart of gold, but how he rushes about so!”
“It’s like everything has to be done yesterday in case tomorrow never comes,” the receptionist agreed with a polite laugh.
Anne gave a start. She hadn’t realised she’d spoken aloud. As she signed the register, she frowned. The receptionist was new and she did not like change, not here at any rate. Nor did she much like the woman, she decided with no grounds whatever for doing so. “What’s this?” The woman was handing her something over the counter.
“It’s your room key.”
“My room key…?”
“Yes, we have swipe cards now.”
“Swipe cards…?”
“Would you like me to find someone to show you how to use it?”
“I know how to use a swipe card,” Anne lied, “I was expecting an ordinary key, that’s all.”
“We have to move with the times,” said the crisp voice that made Anne’s hackles soar.
“Oh, do we?” muttered Anne inaudibly as she headed for the lift. It did nothing to ease her growing irritation by conceding the other woman was right. Moving on, however, was easier said than done.
Once outside room number thirty-one, she struggled in vain with the swipe card but the door stubbornly refused to open.
“Can I help you? They can be a devil, those things, if you’re not used to them. Give me an old-fashioned key any day.” Anne turned to find the young man she had seen earlier with the older woman. He was smiling pleasantly, wearing a mildly amused expression and handing out his hand. Anne was only too happy to relinquish the offending article. As curious as she was impatient, she watched him insert it into a slot fixed to the door and pull it downwards. A green light appeared. He gave the door a push and it opened.
“Thank goodness for that!” Anne breathed a sigh of relief, “Thank you, mister err?”
“I’m Kirk, Kirk Spencer. But you can call me Spence, everyone does.”
“Thank you…err…Spence.”
“My pleasure…” He hesitated.
“Oh, forgive me. I’m Anne Gates. I come here every August, have done for the past twenty-three years,” she added for no other reason than she quite liked the young man and he seemed the sort to be genuinely interested in other people. “I saw you with your…friend…as I arrived,” she added inconsequentially.
“You mean you heard us,” said Spence with a grin, “We’re a bit rough around the edges, I’m afraid, Charley and me.”
“Don’t be afraid,” Anne found herself saying with a laugh that came quite naturally, “We should all be content just to be ourselves. If only other people would let us, eh?”
It struck Kirk Spencer as a peculiar thing to say. All the same, he warmed to this small, thin woman. She had kind eyes. “We’re across the hall. Just yell if you need anything. I mean…not room service or anything of course…just…well, anything else really.” He left the woman with more haste than he intended. It wasn’t like him to get flustered, he reflected wryly. Charley would have a giggle when he told her. But there was something about the Gates woman that gave him goose pimples. He hoped it wasn’t an omen and burst out laughing as he entered the room and fell into Charley’s open arms.
Back in her own room, Anne Gates stood at the bay window, gazing out at the sea. Tomorrow she would go for a walk along the prom. “Who knows what might happen?” she commented to a fly on the glass. “Who knows?” she repeated, looking around as if half expecting the familiar room itself to answer.
Abruptly, she turned her back on the incoming tide, strode resolutely to the huge double bed to and set to unpacking her suitcase.
Meanwhile, Mel Harvey, Anne’s old friend and co-owner of The Orion, was at a garden flat about a mile away collecting eggs. Even after all these years, it still struck her as ludicrous that anyone should keep hens in Brighton. No one else but Owen Shepherd and his mother would consider lowering the local tone. It wasn’t even as if they were eccentrics, merely odd. Nor did she subscribe to Joe’s romantic notion that the Shepherds were making a stand for character and individuality, values he would frequently insist Brighton itself had all but lost. If anything, the Shepherds struck her as faintly sinister. There was something peculiar, to say the least, about a man in his fifties living with his mother, not to mention keeping hens. At the same time, she couldn’t deny it was very convenient to have a regular supply of fresh eggs for her more demanding guests. “It is such a nuisance having to collect them myself,” she told Owen without meaning to complain.
“Sorry about that, I really am. But my old van didn’t pass its M.O.T. so I’m stuck with shanks’ pony until it does.”
“You and me both,” commented Mel dryly then, “Anne is arriving today.”
“No surprises there then,” said Shepherd.
“I dare say you’ll be seeing her.” It was not a question.
“I dare say.”
“She’ll want to see your mother too. How is Alice, by the way?”
“Not so good.” Shepherd became agitated and changed the subject. His mother had refused to go into a hospice and the doctors had warned him she might pass away at any time.
"It doesn’t seem like twenty-three years…” Mel’s voice trailed away and for a while both were lost in much the same thoughts. Such a tragedy and so long ago, yet hanging over them as if it were yesterday. In vain, Mel tried to stop the flow of painful memories. Both parents had doted on Patricia, their only child. Was it any wonder Tom, the father, had gone to pieces or that he and Anne had eventually divorced?
Owen Shepherd and his mother had been staying at the Orion at the time of the child’s disappearance, Mel recalled, as she always did at this time of year. The people who sold the flat to Owen had asked for a few days grace before moving out. (What was their name? Horan, Warren, something like that?) Then the family pet had died. Mel heaved a sigh, recalling buckets of tears all round. The woman (Jane was it, or Jean?) had insisted on burying it in the garden. Mel pursed her lips. She would never understand why people made such a fuss about animals.
Owen hadn’t minded staying on. It was the old lady who had kicked up an almighty fuss and made it clear she didn’t want to stay in some rat-infested hotel a minute longer than was necessary. Mel frowned. While she was sorry that Owen’s mother was dying, Alice Shepherd had always been a difficult, domineering woman. Rats, indeed, she sniffed. Her hotel had always been scrupulously clean. The frown lifted and she suppressed a giggle. Her son, Peter, had just lost his pet hamster around that time and it chose to re-appear in the dining room during dinner. Alice Shepherd remained convinced to this day it had been a rat.
The frown on Mel Harvey’s face reasserted itself. She had been a pretty little thing, Patricia Gates. The whole town had been devastated by her disappearance. No one had ever been brought to book for it or any trace of the little girl recovered. “Tomorrow will be the anniversary,” she murmured, “Twenty-three years to the day.”
“High time Anne put it behind her and moved on, if you ask me,” said Shepherd gruffly.
“Could you move on?” Mel snapped. “She’s lost her only child, for heaven’s sake. Worse, poor Anne has no idea what happened to her. She hasn’t even been able to bury the poor little mite. How can she move on? Move on from what? Did Patricia run away for some reason or…” but she was unable to put the worst fears of everyone connected with Patricia Gates case into words. “I’d better be going or Joe will be wondering where I am,” she muttered crossly. Owen Shepherd was a nice enough person. If he was odd, at least he was harmless enough. But she had often wondered if perhaps Alice hadn’t dropped him on his head when he was a baby?
Meanwhile, in her room - she always thought of it as ‘her’ room - Anne Gates stood at the huge bay window gazing at the busy promenade, pebbly beach and incoming tide. Her eyes, though, barely took in what they were seeing. Instead, she saw a much younger version of herself strolling with a tall broad-shouldered man wearing a silly straw hat. Between them, holding tightly to each parent’s hand, skipped a little girl with blond pigtails who was chatting away, nine to the dozen, about nothing and everything. “Oh, Patricia..!” Anne moaned softly, unaware she had done so.
The child had a sweet, ready smile and the sound of her chatter made a rushing noise in Anne’s ears, like waves, even as she stood there, transfixed, forced by a cruel fate to re-enact scenes from twenty-three years past.
She heard the door open behind her and rounded angrily on the intruder.
“I kept knocking, but you wouldn’t answer. I was worried…” Mel Harvey tried to apologize.
“You mustn’t ever worry about me,” Anne reassured her old friend while moving forward to give her a hug, “Nothing worse can happen to me than hasn’t already. Things can only get better, right?”
Mel winced involuntarily and received the other’s embrace with mixed feelings. She hated it so when Anne talked like this. As if a forced cheerfulness wasn’t enough, it was as if the poor woman were throwing down a gauntlet, challenging fate to show a kinder side than it had already shown her so far. “It’s good to see you again Anne,” she said warmly, returning the peck on her cheek. “You will come down to dinner later?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world. No one feeds me up quite like you do Mel!”
Both women knew Anne would do no such thing. She never did on her first evening. But Mel liked to be welcoming, and Anne enjoyed being welcomed. If they were simply going through motions, it was a ritual both would have felt uncomfortable about ignoring.
“See you later.” Mel gave her friend’s hand a squeeze that spoke volumes and left the room.
The door had barely closed behind Mel when Anne became conscious of another knocking sound. “Come in?” she called hesitantly, unsure whether she had heard correctly.
The door was flung open to reveal the same buxom woman she had seen earlier with Kirk Spencer. Spencer himself was grinning, a trifle sheepishly, over her shoulder. “Charley Briggs is the name. Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” A deep, almost manly yet not unattractive voice boomed at her. Anne summoned a fixed smile as the woman entered and practically grabbed both her hands. “I’ve always wanted to see you again, just to say how sorry I am for your loss. It must be terrible for you and coming back here too…it’s just so brave. Isn’t she brave, Spence?”
Anne tugged her hands free. “Again?” she repeated, “Have we met before?” I’m sorry, I don’t…”
“Of course you don’t remember,” the voice boomed, “I was much younger then, and I’ve put on a few pounds since. But Spence likes me just the way I am, don’t you Spence? I was a guest here all those years ago when your little girl went missing. I was with Briggs, my first husband. On our honeymoon, we were, Briggs and me. It was just so awful, what happened to you. Wasn’t it just awful Spence?” She turned to a nonplussed Spencer and fell into his arms. The young man smiled even more sheepishly at Anne.
Charley Briggs took so long extricating herself from Spencer’s embrace that Anne began to wonder if the other woman had forgotten all about her.
As if on cue, Charley Briggs wriggled free and tossed Anne a wicked wink. “Men, eh…? No sense of decorum! You take care now. I just wanted to…well, you know. I dare say we’ll be seeing lots more of each other. Far better to get these things out of the way than let them hang around and get on everyone’s nerves, don’t you think? We’re on holiday, after all, so we might as well enjoy ourselves.” She flung Anne a dazzling smile before practically dragging Spencer out of the door without even pausing to let him pull it shut.
Anne practically flung herself at the door in her haste to close it behind them before turning to rest her back against its comforting panels and catch her breath. “I have never met that woman before!” she said aloud and felt vaguely reassured by the sound of her own voice. “I’d have remembered, surely, a woman like that?” Yet Charley Briggs had been so definite, so uncompromisingly certain.
Anne’s heart sunk. As a GP’s receptionist for many years, she recognized the type. Invariably they meant well, the Charley Briggs of this world. Convinced that a trouble shared was a trouble halved, they saw it as a duty to provide moral support whether or not it might prove surplus to requirements. Even so, Anne reflected with some surprise, the woman had a lovely smile. Nor had it oozed pity. So many smiles had greeted her pityingly, their owners anxious to move on. Not so, Charley Briggs. At the same time, there was something about the woman that made Anne feel faintly if rather foolishly threatened.
Making a mental note to avoid Charley Briggs and her toy boy like the plague, Anne returned to the window and watched for her daughter’s smiling face among its teasing shadows. She sighed contentedly. Here and now, more than anywhere else or at any other time, her sense of Patricia’s presence was at its most intense. If some people liked to think she was deranged, let them.
To be continued on Monday.
