Free The Missing Marriage by Sarah May

reckless – despite the fact that his audience was police – because he might lose it at any moment. There couldn’t be anything wrong in this recollection – surely grandchildren were allowed to go horse riding if they chose, and sons were allowed to visit their fathers without breaking any laws.
    â€˜Did Bryan come yesterday?’
    â€˜I haven’t seen Bryan in years. What was yesterday?’
    â€˜Saturday,’ Laviolette responded, debating whether to be more specific or not. ‘Easter Saturday,’ he said after a while.
    â€˜It’s Easter?’ At first Bobby looked surprised – then resigned.
    â€˜Yesterday was Saturday. Did you see Bryan yesterday, Mr Deane?’
    Bobby shook his head, running his left hand down the greasy chair arm and starting to pick at the foam. ‘No. He never came in.’
    â€˜He never came in,’ Laviolette repeated gently. ‘So he was – where? – outside?’
    â€˜I don’t remember,’ Bobby said, suddenly deflated. ‘I don’t remember anything.’
    â€˜Mr Deane, your son’s wife reported him missing yesterday – Easter Saturday – and we’re trying to find him, that’s all. We’d like to find Bryan so that he can go home.’
    â€˜You don’t know where Bryan is?’
    The Inspector got up, sighing. ‘Well, if you do see Bryan – if you even think you see Bryan, will you give me a call?’
    He gave Bobby Deane his card, waiting for him to read it.
    Bobby sat turning it over between his thumb and forefinger.
    â€˜Is it alright if I use your bathroom?’ Laviolette asked.
    As he disappeared out of the lounge and Bobby Deane’s mind, Bobby sat clutching the air with his left hand. He was holding a piece of leather in his hands – reins, attached to a harness, attached to a pony he was pulling towards the sand dunes rising in front of him.
    The pony, so sure of itself underground, was hesitant up here on top – it kept stumbling and stopping even though it was blinkered, bewildered. Bobby would have to pull hard then to get her to move, and yell irritably – until he remembered that the black and white pit pony was the reason for his own day up top as well, and then he’d give her neck a belligerent stroke. All the same, he couldn’t understand why she hadn’t gone running off – this was her one day a year up top. But then one day probably didn’t make the other three hundred and sixty-four any better, he reasoned – in fact it probably made them worse. This reasoning didn’t lessen his own disappointment, however. He’d so wanted to see the pony run. In the end, frustrated, he’d tethered it to a hawthorn and run up onto the dunes with the rest of the boys. He must have been – how old? – as old as Bryan’s daughter the last time he saw her. So he ran with the others up onto the dunes, cutting his feet, which were bare, in the thick blades of dune grass.
    He sat moving his bare feet now, in the carpet’s filthy pile, while the Inspector checked the cabinet in the bathroom for signs of occupancy other than Bobby Deane’s. There was nothing apart from a bottle of Old Spice, a cup of tea, a couple of buttons, and a penny whose copper had turned blue. There was a fraying yellow towel hanging from a nail in the wall, no sign of any toilet paper – and a bath full of water.
    Laviolette let the bath out then crossed the hallway into the kitchen where there was a piece of board over the hob on the oven and a Calor Gaz camping stove on top of this. On the surface, lined up, were cartons of weed killer, a box of disposable gloves, and various tools. Somebody was using Bobby Deane’s kitchen to cut Methadrone, and it smelt bad in here.
    In the lounge, Bobby Deane age twelve had been running with the other boys down the dunes onto the beach. Now he’d taken the edge off his excitement,