Where Everything Seems Double by Penny Freedman (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

hour and expect to find Freda in the garden, but she is not. I check at reception and find that she has not collected our key. Out with the gang, I think, and go down to the jetty to look for them there. I go back to reception because I realise that I didn’t ask if she had left a message for me. She hasn’t. I go to the car park sweet spot in case she is somewhere where she has been able to send a text, though I know really that my phone would have picked up a text when I was on the lake shore, away from the looming hill behind the hotel. There is no message. I try phoning her and it rings out.

All this while my brain has been sending me calming messages – this has happened before, there is no need to panic, she is not a baby, there will be a rational explanation. Irrationally, I go up to our room, convinced somehow that she has been there and left a message for me, but the room is immaculate and untouched since it was cleaned this morning. I drink some water and take long, calming breaths. If she is not here then she has gone somewhere with the gang. She would not have gone off on her own, would she? So I have to find out where they are and Eve will know, won’t she?

I walk briskly along to Eve’s studio, forcing myself not to break into a panicky run but feeling my heart racing anyway. Eve is with a customer and I have to wait, trying to look casual as I drift round the shop, blindly picking pieces up and putting them down again. When, with agonising slowness, the customer leaves, I can’t pretend casualness anymore.

‘I can’t find Freda,’ I say, and it comes out in a wobbly rush.

Eve looks at me. ‘Since when?’ she asks.

‘Since over an hour ago. I went for a walk and she vanished.’

I know this sounds over-dramatic and I expect Eve to say, reassuringly, Oh, she’ll be off with the boys, but she doesn’t. Instead I think I see my alarm reflected in her eyes.

‘I don’t think she’s with the others,’ she says. ‘They went off for a day’s fishing first thing this morning.’

My legs feel odd and I must look unsteady because Eve catches my arm and takes me through to her studio, where she sits me down. She is practical in spite of the fear I saw in her eyes.

‘I have a landline here,’ she says. ‘Try phoning her on that.’

I find her number on my phone and then call. This time I get the message that her phone is switched off.

Eve is watching me. ‘I’ll ring Milo,’ she says.

Although I am sitting down, things are swirling around rather and there is a rising knot of nausea under my breastbone. I put my head down to my knees as you are supposed to, and from there I listen to Eve’s end of the conversation.

‘Hello darling… so you’re having a good time, good… darling, I’m wondering if by any chance you have Freda with you? You haven’t, no… no, I understand… it’s just we don’t know where she is… no… no… yes, it’s just, her gran is worried, you know… yes… yes… well, if you think of anywhere she might… yes we’ll try that. I’ll see you later… yes.’

I lift up my head. ‘Nothing?’ I ask.

She shakes her head and then I start to wail, hunched forward, keening into my knees.

Eve is brisk. ‘Stop it,’ she says. ‘This isn’t helpful. Think. You’re good at that.’ She looks at her watch. ‘The ferry will just be in. She could have taken a ride round the lake, couldn’t she?’

She hustles me to my feet and out of the studio, locking the door behind her, and then marches me along to the jetty with a grip on my arm, as though she is arresting me.

At the jetty, people are disembarking. Eve goes to talk to the ferryman and I watch with no surprise as he shakes his head. She comes back and takes hold of my arm again.

‘Right, so she hasn’t been there, so it’s got to be the hotel. What enquiries have you made there?’

‘I just asked if she had picked up our key.’

‘Well then, we need to ask more. Someone must have seen her. Where was she when you left her?’

‘In the garden.’

‘And what was she wearing?’

I experience that past tense as a jolt of nausea but I shut my eyes and visualise her. ‘Jeans and a turquoise t-shirt,’ I say.

‘Good,’ she says, and walks me in to the reception desk. There she shakes the young man on duty out of routine unhelpfulness. ‘Freda Gray,’ she says. ‘Thirteen years old, blonde hair. She has been staying here for some days. You must know her. If you don’t know where she is then I need you to ask everyone who is working here.’

When he stands looking stupidly at her, she says, ‘This is about to become a police matter so I advise you to co-operate.’

His eyes open wide; her usually beguiling Irish accent has acquired a threatening edge. ‘Wait here,’ he says, and dives off into the office behind his desk.

‘Jeans and a turquoise t-shirt she’s wearing,’ Eve calls after him. ‘Curly blonde hair.’

Eve orders me to a chair – one of the monstrous, squashy leather armchairs that furnish the reception area – and I feel stranded and helpless in it. Eventually, a receptionist, whose name badge says he is Gustav, returns, bringing Gheorghe with him. Gustav presents him like a trophy. ‘He has seen her,’ he says.

Gheorghe looks terrified. Why? Did Gustav mention the police? He looks at me. ‘I see her,’ he says, and the present tense gives me a momentary surge of hope before he adds, ‘I see her earlier, in the garden.’

‘What time was that?’ I snap, struggling out of my armchair. Eve and I are