Page 24 of Too Close To Home

Because if the press got hold of it, they’d start digging. They always did. Small town. Old wounds. They’d connect the dots. Whitton. Disappearance. Sister. They’d be back on his mum’s doorstep before lunchtime, ripping open a grief she’d barely learned to carry. Please let this be nothing. He gripped the steering wheel. Let her be at a mate’s house. Hungover. Embarrassed. Safe.

That’s what they’d said about Robyn, though.

She’ll turn up.

She hadn’t.

The memory moved through him as if it had teeth.

He started the engine, and it roared to life beneath him as he pulled off the verge and onto the high street. Hartswick was still rubbing sleep from its eyes. Shop shutters were half-up. The bakery door was propped open, drifting warmth and yeast into the cold air. And the market square was empty except for a lone delivery lorry reversing with slow, patient beeps.

Everything looked normal.

As it always did. Even when rot lurked beneath it.

The King’s Arms sat on the corner of the main square, red-brick and stubborn, windows still dark at this hour. He knew the place better than he knew most people. Knew the sticky varnish on the stage boards. The hum of anticipation before a Saturday night set. And he knew the exact spot near the bar where Robyn had stood, arms folded, pretending she wasn’t proud of him. Pretending she wasn’t dancing along.

He’d been in here last night.

The irony made his gut twist.

He might’ve crossed paths with this Emily Fisher. Might’ve taken a pint from her hand. But he didn’t linger at the bar. Never had. Not with girls that age. Girls at all, really. He stayed behind the kit, or outside with the others, smoke in his lungs and noise in his head. And whoever she’d been, she’d been part of the background to him.

He hated that now.

Someone might have thought the same about Robyn.

He swung the van around the back, taking the narrow lane leading to the gravel car park. A marked police car sat beside the bins. The blue and yellow battenburg looked almost surreal against the familiar backdrop of beer barrels and overflowing recycling crates. But if they had uniforms stationed here, then this was where she’d last been seen.

He climbed out and slammed the van door hard enough to send a gull shrieking off the chimney stack, then headed for the rear delivery door, gouged and scarred from decades of beer barrels and hurried load-ins. He’d hauled half his life through these doors. Drum kits. Amps. Cables. Sweat and ambition.

Hope.

Today he brought something else entirely.

He strode across the yard and hammered his fist on the wood. “Oi! Pete. Open up!”

There was a clatter inside. A muttered curse. Bolts scraping back. Then the door cracked open, and Pete Hargreaves filled the frame. Thick grey hair mashed flat on one side, yesterday’s band tee stretched over a softening belly, reading glasses hooked in the collar. Late fifties, broad through the shoulders from a youth spent hauling kegs himself before he could afford staff. Beard shot through with silver, unruly like the rest of him. He was Hartswick born and bred. Knew everyone’s dad, everyone’s secrets, and exactly when to cut someone off.

“Jesus, Jake,” Pete rasped, voice gravelly with exhaustion. Or maybe exasperation. “What you doing here?”

“You heard?” Jake ducked under Pete’s arm and shouldered past him into the corridor smelling of bleach and stale hops.

“Morning to you too,” Pete called as he followed him to the bar.

It looked wrong without bodies in it. Chairs still upside down on a few tables. Floor tacky from last night’s spilt lager. The low stage at the far end sat in shadow, drum riser pushed back against the wall. Fairy lights dead and colourless in daylight.

Jake stilled.

He’d grown up here. First snuck in at fifteen. First gig at sixteen with Static Youth, hands shaking so hard he nearly dropped a stick. Pete had given him a chance when most pubs wouldn’t risk underage bands. It was here a manager from Leeds had watched Jake play, then cornered him after and told him he had timing most drummers would kill for. Asked if he’d ever thought about getting out of Hartswick. Two months later, Jake had walked into an audition he never expected to pass. And for a while, everything had happened exactly as promised. He was in. Rehearsal rooms. Recording sessions. Gigs with Neon Arcade, the next big thing to come out of Yorkshire since the Arctic Monkeys. The ticket out had been real. He’d actually held it.

Then Robyn hadn’t come home.

“You look like you need something stronger than a lecture.” Pete moved behind the bar to switch on the coffee machine.

After a moment, he set a small espresso in front of Jake.

He slid onto a stool and knocked it back in one swallow, as if it were tequila. It burned all the way down. And Pete folded his arms as he leaned back against the optics. For all his sarcasm, there was concern in the lines around his eyes. He’d owned The King’s Arms for nearly twenty years. Kept it afloat when every other local had gone under after Covid. Paid bands properly. Looked after his staff. Half of them were kids from town he’d watched grow up.