HAUNTED WIRRAL: She hid in the past

IN August 2017, a sixty-year-old Upton man named Nathan rang the office of a private inquiry agent named Phil Marquand.

Nathan wanted to know who his 55-year-old wife Helena was seeing.

Marquand drove to Nathan's home and the latter filled him in with the details.

Helena had recently recovered from a nervous breakdown. Marquand nonchalantly asked Nathan what had caused the breakdown and was told: "Overwork; Helena is a secondary school teacher, and she just overdid it."

"Have you got any idea who your wife is seeing?" Marquand asked, and Nathan said: "She was very pally with an old schoolfriend named John; we met him on holiday in Portugal, but I warned him off. I think he lives down in Neston.

"She talks a lot about Heswall; she is from round there, and she used to drive down to her mother’s house in Lower Village, Heswall, till her mum passed away about five years ago.

"Is your wife at work at the moment?" Marquand inquired, and Nathan shook his head: "Nah, not in the school holidays. She’s gone off again – with him – whoever he is. She left around noon today."

Phil Marquand scribbled down a few words in his little black notebook and said: "If you could give me her mobile number, I could track her movements. I have this app – "

Nathan shook his head and told the private detective: "That's one of the strange things about Helena – she leaves her mobile here when she goes off gallivanting and she doesn’t take any phone with her.

"She has been acting very strange over the last month or so, since she recovered from the breakdown."

"In what way?’ asked Marquand, "Strange as in what?"

"Well, she has a car – we both have a car – but she bought a classic Datsun Bluebird off eBay, and she has also started to wear vintage clothes – stuff we wore in the 1970s; blouses, coats, flares, all sorts of outfits.

"I get the feeling the person she is seeing is perhaps into the Seventies, and she’s dressing up to please him. A lot of the young people today are into the Sixties and Seventies."

"Look, Nathan," said Marquand, biro poised over a page of his notebook, "I'll be blunt; have you actually had it out with your wife when she returns from her mysterious outings? Have you asked her where she’s been?"

"Of course I have," replied Nathan with a false chuckle, "and she just says nothing; she blanks me. I’ve come near to giving her..."

His voice trailed off, and Marquand said: "You’ve come near to hitting her?"

"Look, Marquand, you’re a private eye not a marriage guidance counsellor," countered Nathan, "now are you going to find out who she’s seeing or what?"

"Have you got a recent photograph of your wife?" Marquand queried, and after Nathan had supplied the PI with a photograph, Marquand told him to call him as soon as he was sure his wife was about to go out again, and this Nathan did on the following day at 5:30pm.

Marquand arrived in Upton, parked up fifty feet from Nathan’s home, and as soon as the dodger-blue Datsun Bluebird drove off, he carefully followed it – all the way down to Lower Village – a six-mile 20-minute drive, but at the end of this drive, something bizarre took place.

As the Datsun Bluebird pulled into a private road called Raby Close at the side of a garage on Village Road, the vehicle seemed to vanish off the face of the earth.

Marquand crawled down the narrow road into a close surrounded by ten houses, and then he swung the car around and drove back – and there was Helen, getting out of her Datsun, which had been parked close to a wall between two trees.

Marquand reversed ever so gently, and he watched the subject of his investigation walk out onto Village Road. He parked up close behind the Bluebird and gingerly followed Helena.

He leaned against a lamp post and watched her as she stopped outside a hairdresser’s called Rosemarie Hairstyles. Helena turned to look at him.

"You followed me all the way from Upton;’ she said, calmly, ‘I’ll bet my husband hired you to investigate me."

"Who are you seeing, Helena?" asked Marquand, "Your husband does have a right to know."

"Nathan is a brute; he caused my breakdown, but I’ve found a way out now," said Helena. She smiled, and said: "You’re not a very good private detective – not very observant at all, are you?"

"I don’t follow you," said Marquand, and in reply, Helena said: "Have a good look around you – notice anything odd?"

The private inquiry agent looked about as directed, and he realised all of the cars passing by were dated, and the men on Village Road wore flared trousers and sported long hair – as if they were back in the Seventies.

A young woman brushed past Marquand with a Farrah Fawcett hairstyle.

The private detective also noticed the big Esso sign at the garage that had not been there when he had pulled into that side road.

"It's 1977 here," said Helena, "and I intend to stay here soon. When I’m here, my anxiety disorder vanishes.

"My mum and dad are still alive here, and it’s a much better place than the 21st Century."

Marquand was speechless. His eyes were asking Helena how this could be so, and she said, "I found a shortcut back here, but you have to really want to stay or you drift back. You’ll go back soon."

Minutes later, Phil Marquand found himself back on the Village Road of 2017.

He simply could not tell Nathan what he had experienced, and had to abandon the investigation.

A year later, Marquand heard that Helena had sent her husband a Dear John letter, informing him she was leaving for good – and they say Helena has not been heard from since.

•All Tom Slemen’s books and audiobooks are on Amazon.