Page 81 of The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up
I am not. But I nod anyway, and we get out of the car, meet by the front door. The paint is peeling. I reach and scrape some flakes off with my thumbnail. And then I knock. The seconds feel like hours, but I wait a reasonable amount of time before knocking again. Matt takes a step backwards, looks up at the windows, searching for signs of life. What’s the next step? Calling the police? How do you explain that you were called out on a mercy mission and it’s taken you two weeks to get here?
‘I have a key,’ Matt says, reaching into his pocket. ‘If you want me to…’
He has a key. I’m so grateful that we have a way to get inside, to check. He passes the key to me and I slide it into the lock and turn.
‘Will you go in first?’ I ask.
He knows what I am asking. If my mother is dead inside this house, will he please be the one to discover her? I’ve watched enough crime dramas to know that if she’s been lying in here for all this time, we’ll know almost immediately from the smell. But still, I want him to go in first. To act like a shield. And he agrees, without question. I think about what a good man he is, and then I push the door open and he takes a step inside.
There is no smell. No body on the living room floor or lying on the bed. If my mother is dead, she’s also elsewhere. But something awful has happened here. Matt and I move through the rooms, silent. All the curtains are closed, and the front room has a chair with rope tied to the legs, an upended coffee table. In the bedroom, the bed is unmade, and there’s a bottle of whisky on the bedside table, a dirty glass. Mick has been here.
When the search is over, we come together in the living room and Matt looks at me, his eyebrows raised as if asking what comes next.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say. ‘Do we call the police?’
Matt looks pained at this suggestion that she might still be in danger. ‘We should report her missing,’ he says.
He’s right. So we go back to the car, locking the door carefully behind us. Matt searches for the nearest police station on his phone, and then uses the GPS to drive us there. When he’s parked and is reaching for his seatbelt clip, I put a hand on his arm.
‘Will you come in with me?’ I ask.
‘Of course.’
I see that, as far as he’s concerned, we’re in this together. This rescue mission. This life. I want to thank him, for coming to my rescue and my mum’s. For going ahead of me when I can’t face going into the house where she might be decomposing and for coming with me now, when I have to explain somethingalmost inexplicable to the police. I give him a smile that I hope conveys all of it, suspect it doesn’t. And then I get out of the car and we walk into the police station. I’m not going to be fobbed off, or told they don’t look for adults who might just have taken themselves off for an extended holiday.
Over the next hour, we explain it all more than once. The historic abuse, the recent run-in with Mick, the house my mother escaped to, that only we know about. A police officer named Denny listens, takes notes, asks me to repeat certain things. I explain the car accident, the coma, the memory loss. How it’s coming back to me, how it started like a trickle but now it’s like a flood. I have an image of me standing on a beach with a piece of wood or metal in front of me like a shield, trying to hold back the tide. Denny is patient and he seems reasonable.
‘He’s a dangerous man,’ I say at the end. ‘Please take this seriously.’
‘Thanks for coming in,’ he says. ‘We’ll do what we can and keep you posted.’
I want to ask exactly what they’ll do, but I know I can’t push it. I told him what we’d found, at the house. The state of things. It’s clear she hasn’t just gone away somewhere without telling me. We stand up and he shakes my hand and then Matt’s, and I notice the flash of a gold band on his wedding finger. What sort of a man is he? The kind like David or the kind like Matt? He seems ordinary, pleasant, but you can’t know. If life has taught me anything, it’s that.
Back in the car, I take a few deep breaths.
‘You did good,’ Matt says.
‘It’s just such a convoluted story. I think he just thought I was a bit unhinged. It isn’t normal, any of this.’
‘It isn’t normal,’ Matt agrees, ‘but it’s true. I’m sure he’s used to sorting lies from truth. Try to have faith. Now, do you want to do anything else before I drive you home?’
‘Is there anything you can think of?’ I ask.
‘Well, we could go into the town centre, ask around in shops and pubs…’
‘The pub!’ It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. ‘The pub where she works.’
‘Do you know what it’s called?’
I’m about to shake my head but I speak instead. ‘The Bull’s Head.’
He puts the name into Google Maps and we go there. It’s a bit dingy, a real drinker’s pub. No food menus on the tables, no women to be seen other than the one behind the bar. For a second I think it could be her, but then she turns and I see she’s just a similar age and build. She comes to us, her arms folded across her chest, and asks us what we’re drinking.
‘We’re looking for someone,’ I say. ‘She works here, or she did. Tina Woodhouse.’
I keep a close eye on her face, but she gives nothing away. ‘Who’s asking?’
‘I’m her daughter.’
