Jo’s fingers hover over the keys, the mouse pointer positioned on the ‘Begin Application’ button. Should I? she thinks. Should I make contact with this woman – SusiQ19? Should I ask her why she has pictures of Will in her living room? I’m going to sound mad, deranged, like a stalker, and perhaps she’ll even report me, have me thrown off the site before I’ve begun.
‘Or perhaps I should anonymously report her to the police,’ Jo says to herself, setting down her glass. ‘But for what?’ She needs to keep a clear head. Her hand reaches out for her phone again. PC Daniels would be all over this, she thinks. But she quickly puts it down again. She needs to deal with this the right way. The only way. The way Will would want.
Jo is familiar with the website now – knows where her profile is located, how much information Louise has filled in on her behalf – which is not much. Louise, she thinks, picking up her phone again just as it pings. Always trying to help.
Why not? You can’t hide away forever, Jo.
Jo thinks about this; wonders, for a second, if Louise is right. But then she shakes her head and puts her phone down again, turning back to her laptop. Because there are more important things to worry about right now than giving Ted my number, she thinks. Like filling in the blanks on my profile. She knows that the site is reviews-based, that many homeowners are looking for verified house-sitters only, with positive feedback. And of course, she has none. The phrase ‘0 per cent New Angel’ is displayed beneath her own greyed-out profile head. She needs to add substance to her application.
‘Upload your passport or driving licence to help us identify you. The blue tick gives confidence to property owners… all information remains confidential and real names are never revealed until you’re ready…’ she reads, scanning the small print.
Half an hour later and her profile is complete, including identification checks and a brief bio about herself, who she is, what her interests are, why she is trustworthy, responsible, good in a crisis and far and away the best person ever to look after your house. But she isn’t ready to put up a photograph of herself yet. She ends with, And if you need any mending doing while I’m looking after your home, then I’m your woman! I’m a professional seamstress. She hopes it will help, go some way to securing her ten days at Hawthorn Lodge, East Wincombe as she hits the ‘apply’ button. She prays SusiQ19 finds her appealing.
‘Right,’ Jo says, stretching back her neck and closing her laptop, suddenly feeling nervous. Her eyes track across the room. Will is standing there, leaning against the chimney breast, shirtsleeves rolled up, an appreciative look on his face.
So, he says in that drawn-out way of his, wearing his suggestive, lopsided smile that always meant he wanted to take her to bed. Are you done on your laptop for the night?
Hi… Jo replies softly, so grateful he’s there. Yes, yes… I’m done, and yes, I’m—
Done interfering, you mean?
Jo turns cold.
She stands up, walks a couple of steps towards him, her hand outstretched, her heart on fire, just wanting to make everything OK again. She loves him in those jeans, that shirt… She can even smell him – his musky aftershave. But when she reaches out for him, when she takes hold of his hand, he’s gone.
Seven
Jo wakes early: 4.24 a.m. She knows she won’t sleep again before it’s time to get up for work. Rolling onto her side, she clicks on her bedside lamp and opens the drawer in the little painted cabinet beside her, her hand fumbling as she pulls out her notebook and pen. Sometimes, in the early hours, she reads back through her jottings and notes and sometimes she adds to them. It’s not really a diary; rather a place for random thoughts and feelings to be held captive. To get them out of her head.
‘If you write your feelings down,’ her counsellor had said, ‘then it’s almost as if they’ve been taken prisoner. Isolated. The negative thoughts, anyway. Feel free to keep the positive ones flowing outwardly.’
That’ll keep me busy writing forever, then, Jo had thought, trying to engage with the idea. I simply have no positive thoughts. This was in the first six months after Will went missing, over twelve sessions of therapy through her local GP’s counselling service. But that had ended now, and she couldn’t afford to pay for private sessions, not with having to manage the bills and the mortgage alone. The car would probably have to go in the next few months and she hated the thought that she might have to ask her parents for help. She couldn’t stand the I-told-you-so’s… Would rather get a second job or sell the house, rent a small flat, though she couldn’t stand the thought of Will coming home and her not being there. As though she’d been the one to desert him.
She opens the notebook, flipping to the page she’d last written on a couple of weeks ago. FUCK!!! is scrawled in huge capital letters. Angry sketches fill the pages preceding that – horrific faces with bared teeth and butchered bodies beneath them. Childlike drawings, but with a bloody intent. The contents of her tortured mind. The anger coming out. The pages before that, though, have notes about her feelings, her hopes and fears surrounding what happened. What might have happened.
First Christmas alone, she’d written five months ago. How many more will there be? I can’t even stand one. How do I get through all the anniversaries, the birthdays, the various celebrations? How do I do all that alone? I can’t. I just fucking can’t…
Best things about Will not being here, Jo had written on 13 February, nearly three months ago. An attempt to make herself feel better. To take back control.
1. Don’t have to worry about Valentine’s wars tomorrow. She’d jotted a laughing face then, as if it was funny. But it’s what they’d called it. Valentine’s wars. No more wondering if he’ll outdo me again. Spa break for me versus my vintage vinyl for him. He won hands down. Though it was an original Pink Floyd album I got him. And he did love it.
‘As if it was actually funny,’ she whispers, scribbling out the stupid emoji thing.
2. No snoring. ‘I’d give anything to hear your night-time wheeze now,’ she whispers, hating herself for being so shallow. But that’s how it was with Will. Nothing to complain about. She was scratching about for upsides.
3. No worrying if we’ll get pregnant or not. That was true. The stress of conceiving had taken its toll on both of them. Every time her period came, she had to think how to tell him, how not to feel like a failure, less of a woman. But without Will here, failure was guaranteed. She didn’t want anyone else’s baby – now or ever. But similarly, she couldn’t come to terms with the cancellation of their IVF treatment, or the hormone therapy she’d not long started being curtailed shortly after D-Day. As if she was even more of an empty husk without him. Her ovaries had needed a jump-start and the treatment had been going well. And then suddenly Will wasn’t there. She couldn’t do it alone. Didn’t want to do it alone. She needed him.
‘That’s the thing,’ Jo says into the night. ‘With you here, there was always hope. Whatever happened, good or bad. Always something to travel towards. Someone’s hand to hold along the way. I’m not sure I can do it on my own.’