Page 85 of Six Days

Finn’s face looked up at me now from the front page as I chewed on my toast and marmalade. Even as a compilation of slightly fuzzy pixels, he still had the power to make my heart beat faster. Beside that picture was one of Finn and me together, smiling like idiots at the camera, blissfully unaware that the route to our happy-ever-after would be littered with landmines. Below those two images was the clearest photo I’d been able to find of Finn’s car. It was a model that had attained cult status in a US police show that aired before I was even born. I wasn’t particularly into cars, vintage or otherwise, but even I could see why this particular one had earned its celebrity status. I only hoped the American design with its striking paintwork – tomato-ketchup red with a broad white stripe – was unique enough to have stuck in the memory of anyone who’d seen it.

Too late to do anything about it, I realised that including my personal phone number on the ‘Missing’ posters and in the newspaper might not have been such a great idea. A cheapie pay-as-you-go mobile with a disposable number would have been a better plan. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock, but I’d already had a handful of crank calls, as well as a sad one from a lonely old lady who freely admitted she hadn’t seen Finn but was desperate for someone to chat to.

Screening calls was clearly the way forward. But in truth, each incoming message had me pouncing on my phone like a cat who’d spotted a mouse. The last caller had been a woman who’d sounded so hesitant and unsure as I played back her message, I was already afraid it was going to be yet another wild goose to chase after.

‘Hello. I do hope I’m through to the right person. I’m phoning about the article in today’sChronicle– the one about the man who’s gone missing. I’m not sure if this is relevant or not, but I thought I should call just in case. You see, last Friday night at a little after eleven, I was pulling out of my local petrol station when a big American car drove in. It was dark, and I’m sorry but I don’t know if the car was red or not, as I didn’t get a very good look at it. I didn’t even see who was driving it. But… well, it did strike me as a bit odd at the time. You see, it’s pretty rural around here and it’s unusual to seeanythingon the road that isn’t a four-by-four or a tractor. Anyway, I’ll leave you my number, although you might have more luck phoning the petrol station direct. It’s called Foxton Garage, and even out here in Hicksville they should have CCTV coverage on their pumps.’

I replayed the message three times before getting to my feet. My hands were busy stacking the plates and utensils I’d used for breakfast, but my mind was somewhere entirely different.Foxton?Why did that sound so familiar? I didn’t know anyone who lived in a place of that name, nor did I think I’d ever been there myself.Foxton. Foxton. Foxton.The name rang in my head with the persistence of a clanging bell.

I crossed to the sink like a sleepwalker, no longer in my humid kitchen but lost in a tangle of memories. I closed my eyes and saw a long road, bordered on either side by trees and foliage, and half hidden by the overgrown hedgerows was a signpost with the name of a village.Foxton.An almighty crash snapped me rudely out of my semi-trance. The plate had slipped from my fingers and shattered into the sink, taking out my favourite mug and two glasses in the process, and yet I smiled as I looked down at the breakages.

I knew now why Foxton had sounded familiar, but what Finn was doing in that area – if indeed it had been his car – was still a mystery.

Leaving the broken crockery for later, I returned to the table. I’ve always found it easier to think things through with pen and paper before me, so, ignoring the toast crumbs and ghost rings from my coffee mug, I reached for a notepad.

Fifteen minutes later, there were several sheets covered with more doodles and question marks than tangible ideas. Why would Finn have been in an area where we knew no one except for the owner of a cottage we’d ultimately not bought and the estate agent who’d been handling the negotiations?

I glanced down at one of the many doodles my subconscious had summoned up while my thoughts had been busy blue-sky diving. I’d drawn the figure of a woman who, even in caricature, was clearly the estate agent. My pen had perfectly recreated her doe-like eyes, which had always lingered a little too long on Finn’s face while simultaneously looking straight through me, as though I was a ghost halfway to being exorcised. At the time it had been funny, only now it felt considerably less amusing.

I’d exaggerated her long wavy hair in the sketch, giving her a Medusa-ish appearance, but in reality those curls had been softer and ash-blonde in colour.

My subconscious could do no more; it was practically screaming out to me from the notepad.

I saw Finn getting into a car with a very attractive woman with long blonde hair a couple of weeks ago. They looked pretty ‘up close and personal’, in my opinion.

I pushed the notepad roughly aside, like it was contaminated, as the overheard conversation in the Ladies’ room atGlowcame back to me. Had the unknown woman in Finn’s car, the one he clearly hadn’t wanted to be seen with, been the flirty estate agent?

After all the agony of the last week, could Finn’s mysterious absence turn out to be this tawdry? When we’d almost had it all, had Finn himself sabotaged us? Those demons were in his past, or so he’d repeatedly told me. But now I wondered if they’d always been there, waiting in the wings, to take him down again.

*

‘Hello. This is the manager. You wanted to speak to me?’

I drew in a deep breath before launching into my explanation for a second time. The mechanic who’d initially answered the phone had heard me out and then exhaled heavily, as though about to deliver a truly horrendous repair estimate, before admitting the question was ‘above my pay grade’. I was hoping for more success with his boss.

‘I’m sorry, love, but I don’t think we can do that.’ He sounded genuinely regretful after hearing my plea. But I’d had enough time between looking up the number for Foxton Garage and waiting to speak to someone in charge to fine-tune my request.

‘I understand that you have a responsibility to protect your customers, and I wouldn’t ask you to share any sensitive information. All I need is for someone to look at the CCTV tapes for last Friday night and tell me if my fiancé’s car came in for petrol. I can give you the make, model and registration number. You just have to say if he was there or not.’

It sounded so simple when summarised like that. I only hoped the garage manager would think so too. Sadly, he didn’t.

‘It’s not a data protection issue – although now you mention it, I might be on thin ice with that one.’ I bit my lip, annoyed that I’d accidentally shot down my only good idea. ‘What I meant was that we only keep the tapes for a week before recording over them. I don’t even know if the one for the night you’re talking about still exists.’

‘Could you just check,’ I pleaded.

The garage manager was silent for so long, I honestly thought he’d hung up on me.

‘I’ll look,’ he said eventually, ‘but I’m not promising any more than that.’

My thank yous were so effusive, I’m not sure who I embarrassed more, him or me.

30

FINN

He’d halved his water rations, but, even so, it would soon be gone. With each passing hour Finn could feel his thoughts becoming blunter, clumsier. Ideas were fragmenting and twisting out of his reach, like images in a kaleidoscope. Were these the first symptoms of severe dehydration, he wondered? He knew just enough about the condition to be terrified of what might follow.

His mind kept trying to spin him out of there to another place and time. Somewhere happier. With a feeling of inevitability, Finn knew that soon he might stop fighting quite so hard to stay there.

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