said Cat, smiling apologetically at the film crew, and wandered to the back of the studio.
‘Hullo, Catherine Tinsall here,’ she said. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. How may I help?’
She dreaded phone calls from school, which seemed to be happening with monotonous regularity of late.
‘Mrs Tinsall?’ The crisp tones of Mrs Reynolds, the school secretary, always made her turn to jelly. ‘It appears that Melanie is absent from school, and we haven’t heard from you. I take it she is ill?’
‘Ill? No of course not,’ said Cat in bewilderment. ‘I saw her off to school myself. Did you send me a text message?’
‘Of course,’ said Mrs Reynolds.
‘Oh,’ Cat checked her messages. She’d missed one. ‘Yes I did get it. I’m at work, and didn’t pick it up. Didn’t Mel come in at all?’
‘Apparently not,’ said Mrs Reynolds frostily. Cat knew it was paranoid, but she always got the impression Mrs Reynolds thought all mothers should stay at home till their children had left school.
‘I am so sorry,’ said Cat. ‘I’ll try and find out what’s happened and where she is.’
She put the phone down, her heart thumping. Bloody hell. She’d had far too many conversations this year with Mel’s form teacher about her bad behaviour, but usually it was about cheeking the teachers, or not working hard enough. She’d even been suspended for a day for being caught smoking. Why on earth would she have skipped school? It was probably because she was due to get her mock results. Mel had been grumpy as hell for the last few days, and judging by how little work she’d done over the Christmas holidays, Cat wasn’t expecting miracles. It was the first time Mel had ever bunked off. That is, if she was bunking off, and not dead in a ditch somewhere. Oh God, Cat thought, what if something had happened to her?
‘Don’t even go there, Cat,’ she muttered to herself, and rang Mel’s mobile. Switched off, of course. She sent a text instead. You’ve been rumbled. RING ME, Mum.
She texted both James and Paige at school, though she knew, technically, they weren’t supposed to have their phones on them.
Do you know where Mel is?
No idea. James’ response was swift and to the point.
Paige took longer to reply.
Saw her talking to Andy outside school.
Andy who?
Dunno was the helpful response.
Great. Thanks for nothing, Paige.
‘Ahem, if we could get on?’ Len was tapping his watch, the film crew were looking bored, and Cat was conscious everyone was looking at her.
‘Yes, of course, nearly done.’ Cat made one last phone call.
‘Noel, I’m really sorry to do this, but Mel’s bunked off. I’ve no idea where she is and I was due on camera five minutes ago. Can you deal with it? I assume she’s in town somewhere. Possibly with a boy named Andy.’
‘Cat–’ began Noel.
‘I know, I’m sorry,’ said Cat, ‘I’ll get away as soon as I can, I promise.’
‘Okay, leave it with me,’ said Noel, ‘I’ll go out on a recce.’
‘Thanks,’ said Cat. ‘I owe you.’
‘Again,’ said Noel, who had, she realised guiltily, been picking up more of the domestic slack than her of late. ‘I’ll bloody kill her when I find her.’
‘Not before I do,’ said Cat.
‘When we’re ready,’ interrupted the director, sharply.
‘Ready,’ said Cat, turning her phone off.
She allowed the make-up girl to touch up her face, and stood in front of the shiny hot plates on which she was about to demonstrate making her twist on a traditional Shropshire stew.
‘Hello and welcome to Cat’s Country Kitchen, where I’ll be showing you recipes old and new from Shropshire, the food capital of Great Britain,’ she said, trying with all her might to forget about errant daughters and concentrate instead on cooking. After all, that’s what she got paid for.
‘And, cut.’ Eventually Len was satisfied. It seemed to have taken ages to get the exact shots he’d wanted, and Cat had been itching to get off the premises for the last half hour. As soon as she decently could, Cat made her excuses and, heart hammering, dashed to the door. She switched her phone back on, to one text message from Noel: Got her. Thank God for that. Cat felt herself unwind slightly. At least Mel wasn’t in danger. But now she knew they were going to have the sort of confrontation Cat always dreaded, with Mel screaming in their faces and her losing her rag. She tried to stay as calm as Noel somehow managed to, but Cat found herself bewildered by their daughter’s unreasonable behaviour. Mel had everything she wanted, why did she have to put them through the mill like this?
Noel was always saying she should try and see it from Mel’s side more. Mel would no doubt say that she had everything but her mum’s time, Cat reflected. Guilt, guilt, guilt. Her default position. They’d left London so Cat could spend more time with the family, so how was it she seemed to spend less? And now there was more guilt, when she discovered Noel had had to leave an important meeting with Ralph Nicholas’ nephew, who had just joined the firm. If it had been Ralph, Noel was sure he would have understood, but Michael Nicholas was still an unknown quantity according to Noel, and while he hadn’t said anything, Noel had felt awkward about curtailing the meeting to deal with an absconding teenager.
‘Next time, it’s your shout,’ said Noel. ‘I can’t keep doing this.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Cat, thinking well, I can’t either. The trouble was she had been so busy filming over the last few months she had dropped lots of balls into Noel’s lap, from dental appointments to meetings with Mel’s teachers. She sighed and wished more than ever Louise hadn’t become ill. Life in Hope Christmas with Louise on hand to help out would have been perfect.
‘So where was she?’ asked Cat while rooting around in her bag for her keys.
‘I found her in the café,’ said Noel. ‘They were a bit dim, really. It wasn’t hard to track them down.’
‘And where’s Mel now?’ said Cat.
‘In her room, sulking,’ said Noel.
‘Oh joy,’ sighed Cat. ‘I’ll be home soon.’
She got in the car and put her foot down, and soon found herself escaping the gloom of Birmingham’s high rises for the snow-capped hills of her adopted county.
‘Blue remembered hills indeed,’ she murmured, as she drove down the main road towards Hope Christmas, seeing the hills she and Noel loved to walk on looming in the distance. It was a grey winter’s day, and shafts of light streamed out underneath the louring clouds, as she sped her way home.
Snow had started to fall as she finally drove into the large gravel driveway in front of their oak-beamed house. Their home in Hope Christmas was so different from their London abode – a converted farmhouse with a fabulous kitchen, its gleaming modern steel apparatus still managing to retain a traditional feel when married to grey flagstones and marble-topped work surfaces; creaking stairs, wooden beams, and a huge wood burning stove in the middle giving it a cosy aspect, particularly on a gloomy January day, like today.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Cat as she walked through the door, into their lounge, where the fire was already lit