Free Tideline by Penny Hancock

again, a restless grey sky through my windows, and I’ve left Jez all night with his hands above his head, tied to the bed in the music
room, just as Seb trapped me, my love for him intensifying with every attempt I made to wriggle free of his bonds.

 
CHAPTER NINE
Sunday morning
    Helen
    Helen peeled her tongue off the roof of her mouth. Screwed her eyes against the light. Something horrible had happened and she felt ragged. She put a foot out to soothe herself
by rubbing it against Mick’s calf, and encountered only empty space. She sat up. Mick was dressed in his jogging things, doing up the laces of his running shoes.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ she mumbled.
    ‘It’s Jez,’ he said. ‘I haven’t slept a wink.’
    ‘You checked his room?’
    ‘He’s not there.’
    ‘Oh, God.’
    Mick said last night that they should call the police right away. He spoke to someone, who had asked several questions. In the end he had put the phone down and reported that the police had told
him to phone back in the morning if there was still no word from Jez.
    ‘You say he’s sixteen, he’s been in and out at odd times all week. So it’s not completely out of character,’ the policeman had told him.
    ‘Well, that’s a relief, I suppose,’ Helen had said, but Mick had stood up, left the room and gone to bed without speaking to her again.
    Now Mick ran downstairs. The windows juddered as the front door banged shut. Helen looked at the alarm clock. 6.45! He never got up this early on a Sunday. It was barely light outside. And
bloody cold. She contemplated getting up for water, or juice, was overwhelmed by fatigue and nausea. In the end she took advantage of the space he’d left in the bed, rolled onto her front and
stretched across the mattress, her arms flung above her head. Ben’s face, suntanned and smiling floated into her mind as she drifted back to sleep.
    It was still only 8 a.m. when Mick came back up, sweating a little, red in the face. He went straight into the en suite shower room. Helen could see him from the bed, peering
at himself in the mirror, smoothing back his strawberry-blond hair, looking at his face from different angles, then his stomach, holding it in and patting it. Sensing her gaze, he pushed the door
shut and she heard the hiss of the shower. Helen wished he would come back to bed, that they could have the kind of warm, fusty, Sunday morning sex that always helped to assuage a hangover.
    When Mick emerged from the shower he didn’t come to her, but walked over to the window, rubbing his head with the towel. He leant on the radiator, gazing out and tapping his fingers. Helen
opened her mouth to ask what was on his mind, but shut it again. She wished they could speak to each other the way they once had done, without thinking, simply voicing any thought that came into
their heads. Helen looked at the man she’d lived with for so many years she knew the moles on his back, the fillings in his teeth, and wondered who he really was.
    ‘What time did they say to ring back?’
    ‘Not till ten. At the earliest.’
    ‘I bet he’ll be here by lunchtime if he’s not back in Paris.’
    ‘The police could take us more seriously.’ He spoke through the towel so his voice was muffled. ‘How long before they consider someone missing for Christ’s sake?’
    There was the chink of crockery as Mick unloaded the dishwasher, the thump of cupboard doors opening and closing. Later Helen found the bin full of packets of chocolate
biscuits, crisps, even cans of beer.
    He came back up at last with a breakfast tray just as the phone began to ring. He shot across the room to pick it up. Helen could tell by his tone that it was Maria.
    ‘No, no. I know. I couldn’t sleep either. Of course she apologizes but . . . Obviously, of course we
both
feel responsible, but she simply thinks he’s old enough . . . No, I
didn’t mean that . . . Yes, of course. I’ll come. See you later.’
    He put down the phone and