The Forever Home by Sue Watson

Chapter Thirty

After the phone call with Lara, I was hurt and confused, but I understood, this was about her daughter, and I’d be the same if Phoebe was missing, just desperate for answers and lashing out. I’d spent the late afternoon walking up and down the garden, going over and over the night Erin had gone missing and becoming quite agitated. So when Ryan arrived on the doorstep soon after, with his bags, boxes and guitar, I was glad to see his smiling face.

‘Just to say thanks for having me,’ he said, holding out a bunch of pink peonies.

‘Ahh, thank you. But I should be thanking you too,’ I said, leading him inside. ‘After all, this is a mutually beneficial arrangement,’ I added, as we walked into the kitchen.

‘Yeah, it is,’ he said, sliding his hand under my T-shirt.

I slapped it down. ‘I meant… well, you know what I meant,’ I said, filling a vase with water, and putting the peonies in. ‘Now, come on, let’s get you unpacked.’

I led him upstairs to Jake’s old room, where I’d made a fresh bed, which he playfully pushed me down onto.

I sat up. ‘No way, not in here,’ I said, when he started to open my blouse. ‘This is my child’s room.’

He stopped, lifting both hands in a surrendering gesture. ‘Good point, not exactly sexy for you in your kid’s room. I’m not sure I’d want to either now you’ve said that.’

He started to unpack, while I sat on the bed. I watched him putting his clothes in the wardrobe and drawers, moving easily around the room, and I was glad he was here. The house needed new life, new memories, new stories, and I looked forward to him just being around, and doing nothing together.

‘Hey, I heard about Mark – being arrested,’ he said, his eyes wide. ‘Is he still with the police?’

‘As far as I know.’ I nodded, running my palms along a T-shirt as I folded it, imagining him wearing it. Since meeting Ryan, lust had returned like an old friend. I’d forgotten what the feeling was like, but when I thought of him, it was always there to greet me.

‘So, they think he did something to her?’ Ryan was now standing by the wardrobe, attempting to put a jacket on a hanger.

I looked up. ‘I don’t know, I think they’re just questioning him. I mean, anything could have happened, couldn’t it?’

‘I guess so – but it’s not looking good for him. I read that they’d had this big row and she stormed out.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But she stormed out and came here, didn’t she tell you what had happened?’ He’d stopped trying to hang his jacket, and was now looking at me, waiting for my answer.

‘She said the same, that they’d had a row. Look, it’s not me who’s a suspect,’ I said, standing up.

‘I just don’t understand…’

‘There’s nothing to understand,’ I snapped. Perhaps I was just at the end of my tether, but I’d had enough. ‘Why are you so interested anyway?’ I asked.

‘Well, it is interesting, isn’t it?’ he said, without looking at me.

Yes, it was. A celebrity, his missing girlfriend, and a three-million-pound pay-out? The only problem the papers would have was how to get everything in one headline. The tabloids would pay a lot for inside information on this story; reporters and photographers had been gathering at the bottom of the road since yesterday. And, as much as I liked Ryan, he was almost too interested in the details, and I had to face it, one good titbit to the Sun could pay his ticket to Thailand, first class.

‘I just thought you might know. That she might have said something to you about where she’d been, where she was going.’

‘No – she didn’t,’ I repeated firmly.

‘Okay, calm down,’ he said, a trace of anger in his voice that lingered in the air as he continued to move clothes around.

This annoyed me, so I took myself off downstairs.

I’d hoped having Ryan around would be light relief; instead I felt like I was being questioned by the bloody police again. If he was going to keep going on about this, and sulking when I didn’t answer his questions, this arrangement wasn’t going to last the night, let alone a few weeks.

I pottered for a while, and eventually he came down.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to piss you off,’ he said, awkwardly.

‘And I’m sorry I snapped. I just felt like you were interrogating me – and if I’m honest, I already feel guilty. Erin disappeared from here, and now I feel like even though Mark’s the one who’s been arrested, everyone’s thinking I’m somehow in on it.’

‘If he’d looked after her better, this wouldn’t have happened, she wouldn’t have turned up here in a state and you wouldn’t feel like this.’

‘Oh, there’s no point in what ifs… who knows what happened or why?’

‘Have the police said why he’s been arrested?’ Ryan asked.

He was asking questions again. ‘Ryan, I only know what you do… and whatever’s been said in the papers,’ I said, exasperated.

‘The police must have something, they can’t just arrest him,’ he continued.

But I was too embroiled in my own guilt to answer him. All I could think was that I should have run after her as soon as I saw she’d gone. I should have gone all the way down onto the beach straight away to check she hadn’t gone down there.

He turned away from me and walked slowly to the big glass doors, and stared out. ‘God, I just wish none of this had ever happened.’

‘Me too,’ I said, surprised again at his strength of feeling over this. But it suddenly occurred to me that his anger was on my behalf. Ryan liked to make things better, and he was angry because I’d been put in this position, and he couldn’t help me. Perhaps I’d misinterpreted his interest, his strength of feeling regarding this whole thing? And as he turned to look at me, I felt this overwhelming need to hug him. I walked over and put my palm flat on his back, feeling the warmth of his skin through the T-shirt, wanting to put my hand under the cloth, touch his skin. ‘I’m sorry if I snapped, Ryan, but your questioning made me feel defensive. I haven’t had to answer to anyone for a long time, and I’m not going to start again now,’ I said as softly as I could.

‘Carly, I wasn’t questioning you…’ he cut in. ‘This is… I don’t know why I ever thought you and me could…’

I instinctively took my hand from his back, feeling suddenly on edge. This was reminiscent of Mark in the early days, just when I thought everything was wonderful, he’d start with the, ‘This isn’t working, Carly,’ waiting for me to beg.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘I’m just not good enough for you, Carly; you’d be better off without me.’

‘I don’t believe that. I love being with you and want to get to know you better.’ We may not have started his move on the right foot, but there was no doubt I wanted him here.

‘I want to get to know you too, but…’

‘But what?’

‘I know I might be a bit difficult to understand sometimes, Carly. But I feel things for you… and whatever happens, I want you to know, I really do care.’

I had feelings for him too, and even if this was only for a summer, I wanted us both to feel secure in this. He might have a reputation, and I might not understand him sometimes, but this guy went out of his way to make me feel good about myself. He was always telling me how beautiful I was and how much he wanted me. He also worked on the house in the same way he cared for me: gentle, loving.

We moved to the sofa, sat down next to each other and I rested my head on his chest. It felt good. Ryan was either a very honest man, or a very good liar.

Later, we opened a bottle of wine, and sat together, talking as the light faded over the ocean.

‘This house is so beautiful,’ he sighed. ‘Sometimes I just can’t believe I’m here, like this, with you.’

‘Yes, it is beautiful. I feel part of it, not just because I was born here, but when Mark and I came back, married, I felt like I gave myself to it all over again. Like my blood runs through the walls,’ I said, ‘which sounds very dramatic, but sometimes I feel like I don’t know if it belongs to me, or I belong to it.’

‘This house takes you over. I can understand why you feel so passionate about staying here.’

‘Yes, it possesses you, this house. When I first moved back in, with Mark, I hoped he’d feel the same, but he didn’t. It was only when it started serving a purpose, making his name, that things changed; initially his keenness to work on the house was all talk, and I was so disillusioned. I remember standing in the middle of the kitchen one night, all those years ago. It was little more than a pile of bricks and rubble with a plug-in heater and countertop stove. It was winter, we were all freezing, there was no heating, no money, it was like living on the street. Mark would convince me it would all be fine and he’d take care of things, and back then I believed him. But one day it dawned on me, he couldn’t be trusted, and not just regarding extramarital affairs. He gambled with mine and the children’s lives to achieve his own personal goals, always telling me I worried too much, and “I’ve got this, Carly,” when he hadn’t.’ I shook my head at the memory. ‘Then one day, I pulled out the fridge to clean behind it, and found a wall of unpaid bills stuffed there.’

‘They hadn’t been paid?’ Ryan asked, incredulously.

‘No – he’d said he had, but he’d lied. God knows what he’d spent the money on. Then, soon after, I discovered he’d also taken on credit cards I knew nothing about, and racked up thousands. Huge amounts of money had been spent on fancy meals I’d never eaten, hotel rooms I’d never slept in and flowers I’d never received.’

‘Did you ask him about them?’

‘Yes, of course. At the time, they upset me more than discovering we were in horrific debt and in danger of losing our house. But he told me they were “clients”, and he was doing it for “us”.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘I tried to. Because anything else would mean I had to kick him out, and back then I still cared. I knew the truth in my heart – but I couldn’t prove anything, nor did I really want to,’ I sighed.

‘What did you do?’

‘After I cried and ranted and railed? I fixed it. I took out a second mortgage on this house, and made sure any money we had went straight into a joint account so I could manage it. We already had the YouTube channel, so I then wrote a treatment for The Forever Home, sent it to all the TV companies.’

‘And that’s how it all started?’ Ryan murmured, reaching out for my hand.

‘Yeah, I remember how happy we were when the TV company got in touch said they were interested. I thought I’d solved our problems, but they were only just beginning. Mark now had an army of women to choose from.’

‘That must have been awful for you,’ he said.

I nodded, slowly. ‘Yeah, but eventually I lived my own life, and didn’t allow his behaviour to affect me. It never occurred to me that what he did affected anyone else. But yesterday Phoebe told me that she and Jake both knew about their dad’s affairs,’ I said into the silence, aware there were tears falling down my cheeks.

He pulled me to him. ‘That must have been horrible for them.’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t see it. I didn’t know my own children were suffering. I feel like such a bad mother. I had no idea.’

‘Don’t beat yourself up,’ he murmured, stroking my hair, ‘you had everything else to deal with.’

‘Yeah, like keeping a roof over our heads. I took in washing and ironing, baked pies and cakes and sold them in the village; it was pretty desperate.’ I smiled at the memory of the kids and I standing behind a trestle table groaning with home-made cakes and pastries. ‘I made a few quid too, enough to help keep us going. When we got the TV programme, I suggested doing some cookery segments. Cornish pasties, scones, Stargazy pie, that kind of thing – just me just and the kids. I mentioned it to the director, who seemed to love the idea. But Mark hated it, said it was “small-time and too colloquial for the programme” and shut it down.’

‘Why would he do that?’ Ryan asked.

‘Well, at the time, I thought he was protecting the brand, and genuinely didn’t feel that it would fit. But now I guess he didn’t want to share the stage with me; he wanted to keep me as the support act. I think me and the kids were just window-dressing.’

Ryan was looking out through the window, clearly moved by everything I’d told him, yet somehow troubled.

‘Are you okay?’ I said. ‘You’ve gone a bit quiet. Are you disillusioned that the Andersons weren’t awesome after all?’ It was my attempt to lighten the moment.

He appeared to be miles away, like he wasn’t really listening, and then he said, ‘Whatever happens, know I’m on your side, Carly.’

I was puzzled. ‘Thank you, but what do you mean, “whatever happens”?’

‘It’s just… Oh, it’s just a figure of speech. Who’s questioning who now?’ he said, smiling.

‘Sometimes I wonder what goes on in your head.’ I ruffled his hair and stood up. ‘I’m going to make dinner,’ I announced, and went into the kitchen to start cooking.

But as I chopped vegetables for dinner, I couldn’t help but feel slightly uneasy.