Everything She Forgot (33 page)

“What's going on?” said Ben, taking her by the shoulders and holding her far enough away from him so that he could look into her face. “What on earth are you doing?”

“I'm sorry, I . . .”

“You're here to see this burned guy who helped you?”

She nodded, catching her breath.

“I wish you hadn't run out like that. Anything could've happened. I was worried sick.”

“I'm sorry . . .” The tears in her throat made it hard for her to speak.

“What happened? Did he . . . die?”

“I thought he had,” said Margaret, her teeth suddenly chattering. “But he'd been moved. He's awake and . . . you remember the number in his wallet? He's been . . . following me and I know him and—”

“Slow down,” said Ben, taking off his jacket and putting it over her shoulders. “What do you mean, he's been following you?”

There was a fine silt of rain in the air and Margaret felt it dampening her hair.

“Where are the children?” she asked.

“Your dad's watching them. I knew you'd come here. I got a taxi. I was worried you'd crash again.”

Margaret smiled as tears spilled down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she whispered, looking at the night and the drizzling rain and the far-off oily streetlamps. She took his hand and squeezed it as she sat down on a bollard next to one of the disabled parking spaces.

“You'll get a medal for this last month.
Husband of the Year
badge or something . . .” She tried to smile.

Ben crouched down beside her and took her hands into his. His face was full of concern. “Your dad and I had a chat . . . Over dinner, I had no idea what that was all about, and he told me some things. Not the whole story of course. When you're ready . . .”

She nodded and got to her feet. The rain was becoming heavier. Their hands hung at their sides, fingers interlaced, foreheads touching.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered again, into his neck.

“Let's go home,” Ben said, running two hands down her arms.

“Not yet,” Margaret said, straightening, wiping her face with
her palms and smoothing her hair, tucking it behind her ears. “Do something for me. I want you to meet him.”

He frowned, hunched, looking down at her. “Mags . . .”

“I need you to meet him,” she said, washing two hands over her face. “Please.”

“Sweetheart, we shouldn't leave your dad with the kids . . .”

“I know, but I need you to meet this man.” She folded her arms, nodding. She was still trying not to cry and despite Ben's jacket she was still shivering. The shoulders of Ben's shirt were wet with rain. A raindrop flashed from the hair that hung over his forehead.

Ben took a deep breath and looked away, as if preparing to disagree with her. She reached out and took his hand. “If you want to know what happened back then, then you have to come and meet this man.”

Ben turned to her. “What's he got to do with that?”

Margaret took a deep breath and looked up at her husband.

“He's my father.”

CHAPTER 32

T
HE EXHAUST OF THE OLD CAMPER VAN WAS
ROARING BY THE
time they drove into Penzance, and George knew that he would soon have to patch the hole. He lay on the ground and shimmied underneath to inspect it. The hole was the size of a halfpenny piece.

The engine was overheating. The temperature gauge on the dashboard had been almost into the red and he had opened up the back of the van to look at it. He had waited for the engine to cool, but still singed the knuckle of his forefinger brushing against it when he added water. He inspected again a loose wire that he had found when they were in Stoke. He wondered what Tam would have made of it.

The old van had slowed them down, but arrival had filled George with elation and he decided to drive on while he could. There would be time to look at the engine when they found the cottage. It was a fine October day. The sky was blue and blown with thin clouds. The wind was up, and it buffeted the sides of the van as they pulled into town. Everything was so much more beautiful than George had imagined it. After Glasgow, the
buildings seemed tiny and clean. He rolled down the window and took a deep breath.

“Do you smell that, Moll, can you taste it?”

Moll shook her head, taking deep breaths with her mouth open.

“It's the smell of the sea. Isn't that grand?”

Moll rolled her window down and knelt with her head outside, and her tongue sticking out as they drove slowly along Alverton Road.

“What are you doing, ya daftie?”

“Trying to taste it.”

George found a parking space and told her to wait in the van. He bought her an ice cream with raspberry sauce and a Flake chocolate bar and a pack of cigarettes for himself.

“Here,” he said, climbing into the van and handing it to her, licking the ice cream that had melted down his wrist while he waited on his change. “This is our celebration. We made it. One end of the country to the other. The longest adventure ever.”

Moll sat concentrating on the ice cream as he drove, yet he noticed that every time he went over a bump in the road or turned a corner she got ice cream on her nose or her cheek. He smiled and sat back in his seat, wondering if now he would be able to be happy.

She turned to him, her face a palette of white ice cream and pink sauce. “Now that our adventure's over, will I go home?”

He ran a hand through his hair, keeping his eyes on the road.

“Well, I didn't say the adventure was
over
. We need to find our dream home first. We need our perfect cottage. I bet once I find it . . .”

“But can I call my mummy at least?”

“I'll let you do whatever you want, button, but we need to get set up first, remember? We need to get sorted. We've only just got here. Once we're sorted, if you still want to leave me, I can let you go.”

“I don't want to leave you,” she said, crunching the wafer of her ice cream, “but I want to see my mum too. I could see you sometimes and my mum and dad the rest.”

George winced at the sunshine that split through the windshield. He bit his thumbnail, and then put a cigarette between his lips. “Not sure how that would work, button,” he said, biting on the cigarette to light it and exhaling through his open window. “I think it's going to have to be one thing or the other. Like a lot of things in life—you have to choose.”

He glanced at her, and she was looking at him, wide-eyed, her face covered in ice cream. He pulled over. He didn't have a tissue so instead used the inside of his T-shirt to wipe her face and hands.

“You have a hairy belly,” she said.

He laughed down his nose at her, but he was cleaving inside, wondering what he would do if she refused to stay with him. He remembered the scratch of the tattoo needle over his heart and the warmth of his own blood that had flowed down to his nipple.

It was too soon, but he knew that he would have to let her go, if that was what she wanted.

“I choose you for now,” she said, licking her lips, as if she could tell what he was thinking.

“That's good enough for me.”

They left town and headed along the coast, where fields were expansive and green with patches of burned heather near the
cliffs. The sea was wild and the cliff edge rose higher as they drove along the road toward Land's End. George drove through a village called Mousehole and parked for a while near the circular harbor, so that they could look at the floating, moored fishing boats and yachts and see the waves crash against the breakwaters.

He took out his map and tried to work out where his mother's cottage was.

He indulged himself as he drove, dreaming about what it would look like, and how they would live there. He would find her a school and would collect her each day. And they would be happy.

They drove on, with the windows down and the volume turned up on the stereo, looking out at the wild navy-blue sea. Brotherhood of Man came on the radio, and she knew it well, and together they sang “Save Your Kisses for Me” at the top of their voices,
“kisses for me, save all your kisses for me”
—George banging on the steering wheel and Moll kneeling on the seat slapping her small palms on the dashboard.

They sang so loud and so hard that George's throat hurt when they finished. They had been following the coastal road, driving slowly at forty miles an hour, farmers plowing fields on one side and the deafening crash of waves on the other. Despite the speed they were traveling, the van was still buffeted on its left side and George felt the gale's power in the steering wheel.

The wind was blowing in from the sea, so there was no danger, although the cliff side was becoming perilously high. The tide was in and Moll sat with her nose pressed to the side window, looking down at the ocean as it swirled, gutting the cliffsides with spectacular sprays of surf.

There were few cars on the road, but when the wind altered George's steering again, he glanced in the mirror and noticed that an old brown Ford had been behind them for a while, despite their ice cream stop and other wanderings.

The road curved up ahead and there was a passing space by the cliff edge. George indicated and pulled over, then sat, hands on the wheel, watching as the Ford slowed down, then accelerated to pass. George peered out of his window as the car went by, wanting a look at the driver, but he was holding a map by the side of his face.

George got out of the car and slid another cigarette from the pack. He cupped his hand against the wind and lit up, watching as the Ford slowed but then drove around the corner and disappeared behind the field ahead. Moll tried to get out of the door but he raised his hand to stop her.

“Wait a moment, poppet.”

When the brown Ford was out of sight, George opened the door for her. They stood near the edge together, hand in hand, watching the waves break far out at sea and then lap and crash against the shingle below: breaking on overhanging rock, then silently absolving the sheltered bays.

“Don't stand too close to the edge,” he said, pulling her back, before flicking his cigarette and watching it fall down toward the wild water below.

She leaned into him, one arm around his waist, and he put a hand through her hair and over her shoulders.

“We'll be needing to cut your hair again.”

“No, I want to let it grow.”

“Understood, button.”

“How high up are we?”

“I don't know. Fifty feet, maybe more. A long way to fall, that's for sure.”

He felt a darkness shift over him, which he ascribed to the brown Ford he had seen and his paranoia about being followed and caught. He wondered if the man he bought the camper from had recognized them and told the police. He tried to brush his worries aside, as the north wind rushed the clouds over the cliffs. He picked her up and spun her and placed her back in the front seat of the van, then he drove on, telling himself that he was just imagining things. The brown Ford could have been an undercover policeman, but that was ridiculous. The police had no reason to be undercover; they would just pull him over as they had outside the Peak District.

He smiled to himself: the brown Ford was nothing. If he saw one of his brothers following him, then that would be a
real
paranoid delusion.

After Porthcurno George kept following the coast. The roads were like those he had driven on in the Highlands—single track. He had to pull into passing spaces to give way to oncoming traffic; except there was little traffic and the speed on the roads was otherwise fast. The cars that did pass George were traveling at least fifty miles an hour, while he only reached forty with a clear road ahead.

Around the next corner, George saw a cottage just after the Sennen road. It was single-story, whitewashed, with a black slate roof, like a croft. George reached into his bag and took out the map and the address that he had been given by the lawyer just after his mother's funeral. There was a black-and-white photograph of the property attached, and now George held it up against the house ahead of them.

“Look at that, button,” he said, pulling over and pointing it out in the distance. “What do you think about that for a house?”

“It's pretty.”

When they drove nearer, it was clear that it was almost a ruin. George pulled up and got out of the car. He had a key, but he could see as he approached that it would not be needed. One of the windows was broken and he peered inside. It smelled of damp and was unfurnished but for an old school desk in the corner. The floorboards were bare but there were still strips of old damson wallpaper on the walls. The living room contained two simple open fireplaces.

George felt Moll at his side, her arm threading through his. Together they went around the back and peered into the small kitchen and two bedrooms. The back door was rotted; he merely pushed it and it opened.

“I don't want to go in there,” she said. “It smells funny.”

She stayed outside, sitting on the grass, splitting autumn daisies with her thumbnail and threading one through the other to make a chain.

George stepped inside and walked from room to room, smelling the dampness, stamping on the rotten floorboards and inspecting for woodworm. He imagined fresh paint and carpets, the fires burning, new wood in the window frames, a room filled with toys for Moll. He put his hands on either side of the broken window and looked out to sea.

The waves were wild but comforting and George felt a peace settle on him, which he had always known he would feel when he had arrived.

He turned and she was standing at the door with a chain of daisies held out to him.

“Very pretty,” he said.

“It's for you—a necklace.”

He knelt before her and bent his head, as he had as a child at mass. She tied the necklace carefully, taking her time, her breath a balm against his neck.

He stood up and the necklace stayed in place. “C'm'ere till I show you the rooms.”

“It's all right,” she said, turning and skipping. “It's too dark and scary.”

“I'll be out in a minute then.”

The kitchen was old blue Formica with a stone sink, but there was no stove. A bashed metal kettle sat on the worktop. His mother had had one just like it, and George smiled as he picked it up. She had used it to fill the bath when the hot water ran out—back and forth, lifting the kettle with two hands.

George glanced out of the window, but Moll was not there. He went into the living room and looked out of the south-facing window, but he could not see her there either. He frowned, wondering where she had gone.

Just then, he heard her scream.