Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
That night curled up next to Jack was the last bit of peace that I got to experience for a while.
Sunday, and then Monday, dawned with no sign of Hilda, and despite searching frantically, there was still no trace of her.
She hadn’t been handed in to any of the rescue centres, none of the vets within a thirty-mile radius of Oxford had even seen an Irish wolfhound in the last week, and despite Leo’s police contact putting out the lost dog equivalent of an all points warning to his colleagues, there was no news on that front either.
I went through the motions of opening the shop, more because I didn’t know what else to do, but after frightening off several customers with my haunted expression and my frantic questioning about whether they’d seen my dog, Jack quietly took over behind the counter, while I settled into torturing myself still further by scrolling through my social feeds hoping to receive a message about a sighting.
Plenty of kind people had reposted and shared, making well?meaning suggestions and offering positive thoughts for Hilda’s safe return, but of course there were a few cruel comments in response to Liam’s video, and those were the ones I kept returning too, as I continued blaming myself for Hilda’s disappearance.
‘Stop reading them,’ said Flick, her expression concerned during our FaceTime call. ‘They’re only going to make you feel worse.’
‘But what if that means I miss something important?’ I pointed out. ‘Somebody must have seen something. She didn’t just vanish into thin air.’
‘Be that as it may, Flick’s right. No good ever comes out of doom scrolling,’ said Jack. ‘You’ll make yourself ill.’
‘Seconded. It was irresponsible of Liam to post the video in the first place,’ said Flick.
‘He was trying to be helpful,’ I said, although I wasn’t sure I entirely believed my own assertion.
‘Trying to get the views up on his channel more like,’ muttered my best friend disapprovingly.
‘As I know to my cost, Liam’s only real love is his social media engagement.
He could have framed it in a more sensitive manner.
The sensationalist captions he’s added were guaranteed to provoke a pile-on. ’
‘I’d endure all the pile-ons in the world if it brings her home,’ I said. ‘I’ll take all the help I can get.’
Flick looked guilty and I hastened to reassure her.
‘That’s not a dig at you, lovely. You’ve done everything you can.’
As soon as Flick had heard the news, she’d written an article for the Oxford Gazette’s website.
She claimed her editor had been happy to post it, but I suspected she’d had to pull a lot of strings to get him to agree to publication, the Oxford Gazette not normally being the kind of newspaper to feature lost dog stories on its pages, printed or otherwise.
‘I’m sure there’s more I can do. I’ll skive off work and come back to help,’ she said.
I sat up straight. ‘You’ll do no such thing. I’m not having you jeopardise your job.’
‘I can find another job,’ she said, determinedly. ‘I feel utterly useless being stuck here in London, not being able to give you a hug.’
‘You love being a journalist. And your virtual support is more than enough. Promise me you won’t come back here until originally planned.’
She looked dubious.
‘Felicity Summers, I mean it. You will make me be a whole lot more stressed if you turn up, because I’ll feel responsible for you risking your career, and frankly that’s an added pressure I could do without right now.’
‘Fine, if you absolutely insist,’ she said grudgingly. ‘But you only have to say the word, and I’ll be there in a flash.’
‘I know you’ve got my back, don’t worry.’
She only agreed to hang up after I suggested she try her contacts at the council to see if any of them had heard anything about an Irish wolfhound living wild in the city.
I sent Jack away too.
‘The Jericho Wine Barge has barely been open since the official launch night. I know you’re right next door, and I promise I’ll call you if I need you. You’ve done more than enough. You can’t put your life on hold just because I’ve made a mess of mine.’
‘You haven’t,’ Jack started to argue back.
‘You know what I mean. Somehow, I need to find a way of getting used to this new normal until Hilda returns. And the only way I can do that, is by myself.’
He didn’t look convinced, but after extracting a promise I’d summon him the second I needed him, he eventually agreed to leave me to it.
The Oxford Bookship was a lonelier place once Jack had gone, but I told myself I had to get used to it.
I was incapable of standing still for even just a second, throwing myself into work and starting conversations with every customer out of a desperate need to fill the silence.
My usual ability to match people with their perfect reads seemed to have deserted me, and although I didn’t sell any books, nobody left the barge without a Missing Dog poster pressed into their palms. My heart ached every time I saw Hilda’s scruffy face staring up at me from them.
In the middle of the afternoon, my phone started ringing. I clicked answer with trembling fingers, not even pausing to check the name or number on the screen.
‘What’s this about Hilda being on the run?’ asked Nana Rose, not bothering with the preliminaries.
‘It’s all my fault,’ I said. I knew I should try to pretend everything was alright, but Nana had obviously heard what had happened, despite my efforts to protect her from my anxiety, and she knew me far too well for me to get away with dissembling.
‘Nonsense. The reason I rang is that I might have a lead for you. Eric’s just taken a call from some holidaymakers lodging a complaint that it’s unsafe for them to remain in the area because for the last hour there’s been, and I quote, “an unearthly creature howling in the haunted boatshed”.
I mean I wonder how some people survive on the day to day.
“Haunted boatshed”? Most unlikely. But perhaps they were on to something.
Don’t you think it could be Hilda they’re hearing? What do you reckon, my darling?’
The moment Nana Rose had mentioned ‘unearthly howling’ my pulse had started accelerating with hope.
Because that had been exactly the noise that Hilda was making when I first saw her in the rescue centre.
It had been a heart-wrenching sound, one which had made me all the more determined to jump over whatever hurdles I had to in order to bring her home with me.
‘That does sound like her. Did Eric manage to work out from them where the so-called haunted boatshed might be?’
Nana Rose sighed. ‘It’s obvious that these holidaymakers were not the most sensible sorts. But reading between the lines, it sounded awfully like the storage place belonging to your new neighbour.’
‘Jack’s boatshed? That can’t be right.’ If this had happened when I’d first encountered Jack, I would have immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had been involved in Hilda’s disappearance.
But now I knew without a shadow of a doubt that even if she did happen to be in his storage place, it wouldn’t be because Jack had put her there.
I trusted him completely. ‘We checked around that area yesterday.’
‘It sounds like the noise has only been happening for the last hour or so,’ said Nana Rose. ‘Perhaps she wandered in when he was fetching something and he accidentally locked her in.’
I frowned. Accidentally? It would be pretty hard not to notice a dog the size of Hilda. My mind was racing. This was no accident. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became: Hilda had been shut in there because somebody wanted to make Jack look guilty.
‘I really hope she’s there. Nana Rose, I love you dearly, but I’m going to hang up right now and go to check, if you don’t mind.’
‘My darling girl, I would expect nothing less. Let me know as soon as you find her. I will be sending all the positive vibes your way, as you young people like to say.’
I blew a kiss down the phone, and then hurried out of the Bookship, bumping straight into a guy standing on the well deck, wearing a tweedy suit completely incongruous for the weather.
‘I’m really sorry but I’ve got to go. I think I might have found my lost dog. She’s been missing since Saturday, and I’ve been tearing my hair out with worry.’
He blinked at me, unsurprisingly startled by the stranger who was oversharing with him. Then he beamed widely. ‘That sounds like very good news,’ he said. ‘I guess I’ll come back on another occasion.’
‘Please do,’ I said, already halfway across the gangplank by now.
The noise of my sudden exit brought Jack out on deck too.
‘I might know where Hilda is,’ I shouted across to him, then set off at a run along the towpath, heading for his boatshed.
Jack caught up with me.
‘What about your customers?’ I asked breathlessly.
‘Your customer agreed to keep an eye on them for me,’ he said, in a similar state of wheeziness. ‘Matthias someone. I figured if he’s a book person he’s a decent sort. That’s what you always say, anyway.’
‘But he’s not a regular. I’ve only just met him,’ I said.
‘I’ll worry about that once we’ve found Hilda,’ responded Jack.
I burst out laughing, teetering on the edge of hysteria with the high tension of the situation.
‘Where are we heading?’ asked Jack, continuing to match my pace.
‘Eric had a tip-off about noise coming from your storage shed,’ I said.
‘My storage shed?’ Jack stumbled in his tracks, and I reached out to stop him falling.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
‘I’m fine. But Molly, I promise you, I haven’t locked Hilda in my shed. I would never dream of doing such an awful thing.’
I briefly paused and faced him. His expression was a mix of total sincerity and complete horror. ‘I know that,’ I said. ‘I have a theory about what’s been going on, but do you mind if I share it with you once we’ve actually found her?’
We set off at a run again. As we neared the boatyard, I caught Jack’s arm.