The Day Two schedule was tight, so it was always a relief to find that everyone had appeared in good time for breakfast, although Jo soon realized that the party were not in universally good spirits. Mrs Barber of the "inedible beef" was now grumbling that their room had not lived up to expectations. "I think it"s very pricey, for what it is."
Jo was desperate to divert the conversation before Mrs Barber turned the collective enthusiasm dial down to zero, but by dire mischance she had ended up sitting next to Mr Radley, the miniature-railway man, who was intent on explaining something called block signalling to her. She was simultaneously aware that at the far end of the table Mrs Bennett-Wilding and Miss McClintock, sisters travelling together from Australia who had hitherto given no trouble at all, now appeared to be upset because Mrs Bennett-Wilding had mislaid a bracelet, given to her by her late husband. Miss McClintock was trying to establish where it had last been seen, appealing to the other guests to corroborate that her sister had been wearing it the night before during dinner.
"If it was a valuable bracelet, I"d ask to have the staff questioned," suggested Mrs Barber.
Jo did her best, making enquiries with reception, even joining the sisters in another fruitless search of their room. A member of staff was despatched to check the route of the previous night"s tour of the building, but with no result. In vain did the management a.s.sure Mrs Bennett-Wilding that if the hotel found the bracelet, they would send it on.
"You might have packed it, by mistake," Jo suggested as gently as she could, but Mrs Bennett-Wilding vehemently denied the possibility and continued to dart around the room, lifting bedding, opening and closing drawers. "I"m afraid we do need to be downstairs now," Jo reminded them. "I"ll see you at the coach in a couple of minutes," she added from the door.
The day had started dry but soft, misty rain began to fall as the party"s luggage was loaded into the bus. Jo paused in the car park to point out the window from which it was believed that Mary Stuart had made her escape in 1567, and then stood at the door of the coach to see them all aboard, but with everyone seated in readiness for departure, there was still no sign of the Australian sisters. The schedule was already slipping, and Jo"s hopes that the two women would appear of their own volition had not been realized, so there was clearly nothing to be done but go and fetch them. Fit as she was, Jo"s heart rate quickened and her calves began to ache as she tackled the spiral stairs. When she finally arrived at their bedroom door she found it locked, and no amount of knocking raised a reply. As she made her way through the apparently deserted lower floors, she gave vent to some unladylike expressions under her breath, meeting no one until she got back to the coach, where she found the two women already installed in their seats. It appeared that the sisters had descended by an alternative route, Mrs Bennett-Wilding hoping in vain to discover her bracelet in some area of the castle which she had visited the day before.
"And now Phil has gone to see if he could find you, to tell you the Australian ladies are here," the wife of the model-railway enthusiast said in a tone of accusation.
Jo felt like screaming. If only Mr Radley had minded his own business and stayed in his seat, the party could have been on its way. Instead she had an increasingly impatient group of people sitting on the coach and had to decide whether to return to the building, thereby risking the possibility that Mr Radley would give her the slip as effectively as had the Australians, or whether to wait him out in the car park. While she was hesitating, the man in question appeared at the castle entrance and made his unhurried approach to the bus.
"There you are." He addressed Jo as one might a naughty five-year-old. "I knew I"d got you cornered, because I took the precaution of stationing two of the waitresses at each of the main staircases." He spoke as one whose quick thinking had saved the day.
Jo managed to muster a warm smile. "Thank you. But for future reference, if anyone else goes missing, it would be better if everyone waits on the bus and we don"t send a second search party out to look for the first."
"Well, let"s hope you don"t manage to lose anyone else, eh?" Mr Radley was not to be easily demoted from his role as the older, wiser man, resolving a situation where others had failed.
It was still raining when the coach reached Dunbar. The wind had risen, so that the group had to wrestle to keep their umbrellas slanting in the right direction, while they stared across the windswept harbour at the tumbled remnants of the once great fortress and Jo gamely brought to life the story of Mary"s various journeys there: the dramatic ride through the night with Darnley, and the subsequent Dunbar excursions with Bothwell. There was more to see further up the coast at Tantallon, where the remaining facade perched on the cliff tops for all the world like a two-dimensional stage set. Tantallon did not have the same importance in the story as Dunbar or Hermitage, but like Crichton, where they had paused the day before, it was an atmospheric ruin, and the Queen of Scots was known to have been there.
The rain had eased, but a chilly wind still whipped across the car park as Jo ushered her group towards the entrance. She had talked them through Tantallon en route, and by cutting down the amount of time there, she still hoped to get them back on track. The unseasonable weather would help too; who would want to linger at an exposed coastal ruin on a day like this? Sure enough, they were all back at the coach with time to spare. As Jo stood at the front wearing a fixed smile, while mentally checking their numbers (M. H. Tour guides never marched up and down the bus, counting heads like schoolteachers) she was aware of Clive slipping out of the driver"s seat into the car park. On reaching the correct tally of eighteen, she glanced over her shoulder and saw him beckon. She joined him outside before asking, "What"s up?"
"The warning light that tells me the rear luggage compartment is open has come on. Can you give me a minute to check it?"
"Of course." She followed him round to the rear of the vehicle. Surely nothing else could possibly go wrong today. Clive opened and shut the hatch a couple of times, but there did not appear to be anything amiss.
"There"s probably a fault with the electrics," he said. "It seems secure enough. Nothing to worry about."
"Thank goodness. Someone"s luggage falling out is all I need right now. Let"s get the show on the road again, shall we?"
As the bus pulled away, she switched on the microphone and gave them a brief cheery spiel about how soon they would all be sitting down to lunch. Another shower had begun to hit the windows, but it was warm and dry inside. She switched off the mic and relaxed. She was dreadfully tired, but she must not let herself doze, however tempting it seemed just then. As she leaned her head back against the rest, the sixth sense of an experienced guide abruptly kicked in. A murmur of disquiet reached her ears, followed seconds later by Mr Radley, asking in the voice of one taking command: "Is Mrs Van Halsen on the bus? Has anyone seen the American lady with the orange rain hat?"
Jo unfastened her seatbelt and stood up. Mrs Van Halsen had been occupying a double seat, three rows back on the right, which was now vacant. How could that even be possible? "I counted," Jo said, under her breath. "I know I counted."
"I saw her getting off the bus, back at the last stop." It was one of the Australian sisters who spoke.
"When?" asked Jo.
"When you and the driver went off together. Maybe she was popping to the ladies". I thought she must have got back on again without my noticing. I can"t see her from here, when she"s sitting in her seat."
Jo bit back the desire to yell: "Why didn"t anyone speak up before?" It wasn"t their fault, it was hers. She should have double-checked before they set off. But who would have antic.i.p.ated a member of the party getting off the bus at such a moment, or that no one else would speak up until they had driven away without her?
Clive had already found somewhere to turn the bus around, without needing to be told. Jo resumed her seat, eyes front, as if they might spot Mrs Van Halsen hurrying along the road in hot pursuit. Excited chatter had broken out behind her. "I didn"t realize ... I just thought she must have changed seats ..." "You say she got off again? I didn"t see her, but of course I was taking a last look out of the window at the castle ..." "Fancy leaving someone behind ..." "Poor woman, she won"t know what to do ..."
Mrs Van Halsen was not amused. She had been seized with a last-minute desire to purchase some engraved goblets from the little gift shop, she said. It had never occurred to her that the bus would set off without her. "Heaven knows, we have had so many delays today that I hardly thought another tiny one would make any difference, although it seems you were not willing to hold the coach for a moment or two, so that I could make my purchase." All Jo"s apologies could not make it right, and Mr Radley did not improve the collective mood with his hearty: "And there was me this morning, saying we"d better try not to lose anyone else."
When they arrived at the lunch stop, Jo managed to seat herself as far away from Mrs Van Halsen as possible, but occasional s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation floated down to where she was sitting. "Disgraceful ... left standing in the rain ..." "A shambles ... one thing after another ..."
"Don"t worry dear," said Miss Watt, a long-retired schoolmistress, who had taken the chair opposite Jo. "I"m sure the sensible ones know that it wasn"t your fault." She patted Jo"s hand in a well-meaning gesture of comfort.
At this point a shriek emanated from Mrs Barber. "A bug! There"s a bug in my food!" Jo arrived at Mrs Barber"s shoulder at the same moment as the waiter, to find Mrs Barber indicating a small black object in the juice of her Florida c.o.c.ktail.
"Ees not a bug, madame. Ees mint a leaf of mint tiny piece gone black. I fetch you another."
Mrs Barber was neither convinced nor mollified. She insisted that she wanted nothing else. "It"s turned me up," she said. "I can"t eat anything after that. First the meat last night, and now this ..."
"It really was just a little piece of blackened leaf," Jo tried but failed to a.s.sure the Barbers. "Mint goes like that very quickly, if it gets crushed and left in the juice. It"s poor presentation, I agree ..."
"The food was supposed to be one of the high points of the tour," Mr Barber interrupted. "There have only been three meals so far, and my wife hasn"t been able to eat two of them."
Jo"s head was beginning to thud. As soon as the opportunity arose, she covertly extracted some Paracetamol from her bag and took them with a few sips of water. She could not remember a party who had been such hard work for a very long time and the thing was that she should not have had to be dealing with them Melissa should have got this bunch, not her. The thought made her irrationally angry, so that her head thumped harder than before.
She was conscious that her delivery on the approach to Edinburgh had begun to sound flat, like the reluctant reader in an English cla.s.s called upon to go through a well-known pa.s.sage in a set book, and she sensed an air of dejection about the group when they disembarked into a mist of fine rain at their first stop in the city. Her announcement that the amount of free time available for souvenir shopping would now be shorter than antic.i.p.ated met with a rumble of discontent.
In the early days of M. H. Tours, she had been carried along by the buzz of it all. They had prided themselves on offering something special: any problems they encountered along the way were merely challenges to be overcome and turning round a client like Mrs Barber was all in a day"s work. Key to it all was the pleasure of sharing knowledge, faces lighting up as your pa.s.sion for the subject brought it to life for them; but today she found herself wondering what on earth was the point. What did it matter if Bothwell had wooed Mary, as the romantic novelists would have it, or raped her as historians thought more likely? It was all one and the same now, because they were both dead and buried these past four hundred and some odd years. The possibility that she no longer cared hit her hard. She was like the adolescent who suddenly doubts her own belief in G.o.d, and yet is still helping to run the Sunday School. Without the belief, without the enthusiasm, she not only felt that she was a sham, but wondered if the whole group did not sense it, too. She urgently wanted to escape from them all for a few hours even the earnest, note-taking Mr and Mrs Hart and the kindly Miss Watt unable to face any more conversations about Mary, Darnley, Bothwell, John Knox and the whole long-dead crew of them. As they a.s.sembled in the Edinburgh drizzle, waiting to gain admission to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, she imagined herself saying, "Look, you go on in and buy a guide book. Have a ball. You won"t believe the size of that alcove where Mary was sitting with Rizzio, when the rebels came to kill him. No, really you"ll enjoy it all the more if I"m not there to put a damper on proceedings. Me? Oh I"ll be getting the next train south. I"ve seen it all before, you see. I"m done with Mary Queen of Scots, or MQS as my husband"s lover calls her. Yes it is a bit irrelevant, isn"t it who MQS was sleeping with, when your husband"s fooling around? Anyway, so long. Have a good trip."
In reality, she shepherded them inside, saying all the right things like a well-programmed mechanical doll, pretending, always pretending. Why do we care about the past, she wondered not our own past, but other people"s? She had first discovered Mary Queen of Scots via some faded Pan paperbacks which sat on Ma Allisson"s bookshelves. The cover ill.u.s.trations had caught her eye: velvet-clad heroines, complete with eye shadow and mascara and knowing, twentieth-century faces. The stories had been an escape route from reality, and even if Jean Plaidy"s version of history had been highly romanticized, the books had still served as a first step on the road to a real interest in the Tudor period and beyond.
Other people"s lives, however terrible they happened to be, could still provide a good antidote to the bad things which were happening in our own. At least, she had thought so until now. Today in chilly, dour Edinburgh, it was as if the spell had been broken; maybe it was the wreckage of her own life which required attention. Did Mary Queen of Scots matter? Did M. H. Tours? Surely what really mattered was finding Lauren.
At this point another voice it sounded very like Marcus intruded to ask just how she proposed to pay the mortgage or settle up for the groceries, without the steady income generated by the business. Moreover, it asked, what did she think she could actually do to find Lauren? Searches, the police, media appeals, none of it had worked.
She was so tired. Once they got to the hotel, she would have to lie down, s.n.a.t.c.h a nap, try to shake off her headache. Mrs Van Halsen loomed up beside her. "I thought I should tell you that I intend to lodge a formal complaint. Thanks to your mismanagement, we will not have a full opportunity to enjoy the retail experience that is Edinburgh." She p.r.o.nounced it opportoonity and Edinburrow. Mrs Van Halsen stalked away again without giving Jo time to respond. From somewhere behind her she could hear the familiar voice of a miniature-railway engineer a.s.suring another unseen person that you should never set off without making sure everyone was on board the coach. "Beginner"s mistake," he said.
Jo was so preoccupied that she almost fell over the child"s buggy. A small blonde girl, m.u.f.fled up in a pale pink jacket, with imitation pink fur around the hood. "Why didn"t you come for me?"
Jo stepped back abruptly and burst into tears. Various members of the party surrounded her at once, faces anxious, voices asking her what was wrong. She had to excuse herself as swiftly as possible, promising to meet them at the exit. As she hurried away, she caught sight of Mrs Van Halsen"s contemptuous expression. She had given way to emotion marked herself down as an amateur. It was the final loss of face.
It was cold in the ladies" toilets, and the floor tiles looked damp and dirty after being repeatedly traversed by wet footwear. The expression of the woman who looked out at her from the mirror had a familiar, haunted look: a look which might always be there if it were not carefully hidden behind a mask. She would have given anything not to return and face the party, but she regained her self-possession and forced herself back into part. She would make a success of this b.l.o.o.d.y tour if it killed her.
When she rejoined the group she apologized profusely, inventing a lie about some news of family illness; thinking all the time how furious Marcus would have been. I had to tell them something, she responded angrily to the voice in her head.
It was considerably less simple to deal with the man in person.
We felt deeply sorry for your guide, who did very well, when having to cope with a family tragedy.
"Family tragedy? What b.l.o.o.d.y family tragedy?" Marcus waved the customer satisfaction form at her, much as an irate householder might wave his torn Daily Mail at the paper boy.
"I got a bit upset. I had to tell them something. You know what people are like you hint at something and they invent the rest for themselves."
"Why did you have to tell them anything?"
"I told you." Jo"s tone was defensive. "I got a bit upset."
"Why? What do you mean, upset?"
"If you would just stop shouting at me for one minute ... I started to cry."
Marcus stared at her. "You started to cry," he repeated. "Just like that? Out of the blue?"
"I couldn"t help it. So I just said I"d had some upsetting news. I never said tragedy, I"m sure I didn"t."
"Golden Rule Number One," said Marcus. "Nothing gets in the way of the subject matter, unless the clients themselves introduce it. If you"re on an MQS tour, the topic is MQS, later medieval architecture, Scottish society in the sixteenth century, maybe even the suppression of Catholicism. It is not our private lives: yours, mine, or anyone else"s. You know that."
"But it didn"t spoil the tour for them," Jo interrupted. "The form says "your guide did very well ...""
"No, she did not," Marcus shouted. "You gave a below-par performance, which these people forgave because they thought you"d suffered a bereavement. And it wasn"t just one adverse comment. There were problems mentioned across the board hold-ups, itinerary issues, food at the hotel ..."
"There was nothing wrong with the food. You know some people are professional complainers."
"It"s your job to smooth things over."
"Don"t tell me my job, please. I know my job." She was overcome by the absurd sensation that she was in the midst of an interview with her head teacher, or had been transformed into a very junior member of staff, carpeted by the MD.
"And at Tantallon, you managed to leave someone behind. There were only eighteen of them, for goodness" sake. Checking the numbers is a basic, an absolute given."
"It was a fluke. I had checked, but ..."
"Satisfied customers are our bread and b.u.t.ter. We can"t afford to have a bunch of people telling their friends we didn"t measure up to the company promise. You must have known you"d messed up because you never said a word about any of this stuff when you got home."
Jo stayed silent, knowing only too well that this was true. There was a long pause while Marcus appeared to be wrestling with his own thoughts and inclinations. Eventually he took a deep breath and said, "You"ll have to hand your tours over to other guides. We"ll reschedule "
"No," Jo cried. "That"s unfair. You can"t punish me for something one old crone has written on her comment form!"
"Old crone? Is that how you think of our clients? How many other things have gone wrong lately that you have forgotten to mention?"
"None of what happened was my fault."
"Leaving people behind? Bursting into tears? How is that anyone"s fault but yours?"
"Hang on a minute. I"m a partner in the firm. You can"t just order me off the tours, as if I was some inexperienced n.o.body. Surely there has to be a proper discussion about this, with me getting a chance to have my say."
"You mean a partners" meeting? You, me and Melissa?"
One look at his face was enough. "Oh my G.o.d! You"ve discussed it with her already you have, haven"t you?"
"She was the first person to read the forms. She drew it to my attention."
"And the two of you made a decision without even consulting me."
"Melissa knows you haven"t had a recent bereavement. What on earth did you expect me to say?"
"I expect you to take my side."
"It isn"t a question of taking sides. We have to do what is right for the business. Times are tough economically. We can"t afford dissatisfied customers not even slightly dissatisfied customers. If it had been Melissa, you would have been the first to say that she had to be replaced temporarily."
"Temporarily?"
"Until you sort your problems out."
"My biggest problem is that my daughter went missing ten years, nine months and two days ago. How do you and Melissa propose I solve that?"
"That"s not the problem I"m referring to. I think you need to see a doctor."
Jo shook her head, so that the tears which had welled up in her eyes zigzagged wildly across her cheeks.
"Maybe some counselling might help," Marcus continued. "But you can"t go on like this we can"t go on like this."
"Like what?" She struggled with her tears, making a monumental effort to steady her voice as she asked, "Marcus, are you having an affair with Melissa?"
"Like that," said Marcus, as he turned to leave the room.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
Are you having an affair with Melissa? Whatever had possessed her to say such a thing? Why had she even allowed herself to think it? "I was angry and upset," she told Marcus. "Imagine how you would feel if someone told you that you were off the tours, just like that." Although he had forgiven or at least appeared to forgive the implication that she thought he was having an affair ("It"s insulting, Jo, to both me and Melissa"), he was unmoving on the question of the tours. "It was one slip-up," she pleaded, although in her heart she knew it was more than that. Somehow she had to get back on to the tours, had to persuade Marcus that she was fine. If they forced her to stay at home with Sean the whole time, she really would go crazy.
Persuading Marcus that "her problems were being sorted out" meant at the very least meeting him halfway, so she agreed to make an appointment to see their family doctor, taking care that it fell on a day when Marcus could not possibly attend. To Dr Hillier she presented her problem as occasional migraine-type headaches, and destroyed the prescription he issued instead of cashing it in.
"How did it go?" Marcus asked, when he returned home next day. "Did he suggest a referral?"
"A referral for what?"
"For anything? Did you ask him about counselling?"
"I"ve already told you", said Jo wearily, "that I don"t want counselling. Talking things through with some fat ex-social worker is about as much good as a chocolate teapot. I"m up to my eyeb.a.l.l.s in counselling, and going over and over things can only help so much."
"So what did he suggest?"
"He said a bit of a break from work might be a good thing just for a while. Rest and recuperate, that sort of idea ..." She waved an arm, as if encompa.s.sing a whole variety of restorative activity to which she couldn"t quite put a name.
"I wish you had let me go with you."
"Marcus, I am perfectly capable of going to see the doctor by myself, and I don"t see what difference your being there would have made." It was such a big fib that she had to look down and flick an imaginary crumb from her lap, in order to avoid his eyes.
"So he didn"t prescribe anything?"
"No. Not least because, unlike you and Melissa, he didn"t think there was anything wrong with me! Quite honestly, I think he only said the stuff about rest and recuperation to humour me. I think if I"d been in a job which called for him to write a sick note, he might have thought twice about issuing one and asked me if I wasn"t swinging the lead."
"So what exactly did you tell him? Did he examine you?"