Little Black Lies (31 page)

‘I’d love to see Scotland,’ I said, as the plane took off again from its refuelling stop at Ascension Island. I’d been reading Sir Walter Scott and having Rob Roy fantasies about tumble-down castles, tartan-clad warriors and heather-strewn mountains.

‘The drama society at Bristol usually takes a couple of shows to the Edinburgh Festival,’ I tried again, when she didn’t respond.

‘Isn’t the festival in summer?’

As first years we were expected to fly home for the long summer vacation.

She twisted round in her seat. ‘Ben, when’s the Edinburgh Festival?’

He was sitting three rows back, with Josh Savidge, who was in his final year studying law at Bath. Ben invariably looked as though he’d just woken up in those days. Maybe it was his heavily lidded eyes, or his habit of blinking rather quickly and forcefully. Maybe he didn’t sleep enough.

‘August.’ He flicked hair from his eyes. The silver that was to claim it hadn’t yet staked its hold. It was still black as a Spaniard’s. ‘Why? You thinking of coming up?’

‘Rachel is.’

‘Come for Hogmanay. It’s mental. We usually have floor space.’

We did go for Hogmanay, the Scottish New Year. Our sleeper train arrived at six thirty on a Tuesday morning and Ben was at the station to meet us. There then followed five days in a city that seemed to be carved from black ice. We were dazzled by Edinburgh, as imposing and as permanent as the mountains around it. Coming from settlements where, if you want your house to stand the test of time, you give it a stronger tin roof, we were in awe of the castle and its surrounding mansions, towers and churches, of the wide colonnades and sweeping steps, the cobbled roads and subterranean bars, of skies that were so like home, above a city that could not have been more different to anything we’d known in the past.

The New Year cold sucked the air from our lungs and tore the skin from our fingertips, but the amber liquor we drank burned all the way to our toes. For five days, we barely stopped to rest. I don’t think we spent an hour sober. We didn’t both sleep on the floor, though, not after the first night. That was the trip when Ben and Catrin got together.

Leaving my snorting, stamping horse I creep to the rear of the trailer and look out. Ben is over by the ambulance, talking to the paramedic who drove it here.

The people we love fall into two distinct camps, it seems to me. First, those whom we are obliged to care for, connected to us through ties of blood and, occasionally, other people’s marriages. Then there are those few souls who suit us so perfectly that we cannot help but love them. Those whose very presence seems to lift our spirits, soothe our ruffled feathers, tilt the disturbed world so that its axis is true again.

In all my life, there have been only two people I’ve loved in that way. Two people whom I simply couldn’t help but love. My best friend and soulmate, Catrin, of course.

And the man she married.

28

The five days in Edinburgh became five nights of physical and emotional torture. Alone in my sleeping bag on a greasy living-room carpet, I dreamed of Ben’s hands on me, of the warmth when our skin touched, of the soft tracing of his fingers, just as Catrin was experiencing those things for real only a few yards away. I told myself it wouldn’t last, that one day he’d be free again and next time he’d choose more wisely, but it did last. It lasted all the way through the three years of university, and by the final term she was wearing his diamond.

When she went home to work for the Conservation and plan her wedding, I simply couldn’t follow. I didn’t go back until the big event, over a year later, when I cried the whole day. Luckily, everyone assumed it was sentiment. I’ve always cried easily. After that, I decided I might as well stay. It wasn’t as though things could get any worse.

Besides, there was a new young man on the islands, a Dutchman called Sander who’d come over to work in the Secretariat. He obviously had a thing for girls with damp blue eyes because he barely left my side the day of the wedding. I’ve wondered, occasionally, if he knew that those were real tears and that, beneath the pale gold satin, my heart was shredded. If he did, he’s never once let on.

Thinking of Sander has calmed me somewhat. It usually does. I don’t love him – I’m not sure I ever did – but I’m a better, stronger person when he’s around.

I gather up the rest of the tack, listen to a half-formed plan to meet in the morning – if we have to – and then we all head back towards Stanley. Desperate not to see Ben again, I’m the last to leave apart from the police cars and the family’s vehicles.

A few yards before the road crosses the stone run I spot an old green Range Rover coming in the other direction. It pulls over to let me pass. I raise my hand in thanks and George Barrell, back from his errand, raises his in return.

By this time, I seem to be alone on the road and realize it’s getting quite close to Peter’s bedtime.

Something has been digging into my bum and I remember I still have the anonymous note in my pocket. A note that I know I should report to someone, if only to Sander. And yet, I cannot tell anyone about it without admitting that, for large chunks of the day, I do leave my youngest son alone. He goes for a nap, and I head for my rock above the beach, or take one of the pills my GP prescribes for when I’m having a rough time sleeping. Often, he wakes before I do, or before I get back from the beach, but he can’t climb out of his cot. He’s perfectly safe.

I’m nearing the point where the road out of Stanley forks, the left arm heading towards Darwin, Goose Green and the airport, and the right (the one I’m driving back along now) towards Estancia. Another vehicle is heading for me from the west, travelling faster than I am, as though determined to reach the fork first. I brake, let the pale-coloured Land Rover get ahead, but not before I catch the final three registration letters, SNR, which makes me think of the stone run.

*   *   *

Halloween is in full swing as I drive through Stanley. I pass groups of tiny witches, miniature devils and half-pint skeletons, all carefully supervised by attending parents. Older, bigger children are out too, their masks altogether darker, more threatening. A zombie lurches across the road in front of my car, forcing me to stall.

Before I can restart the engine, I see that some of the adults are getting into the spirit as well. Mel, the chef from the Globe, struts down the street in the costume of a pantomime dame. He sees me and stops, one hand on his purple-silk-clad hip, the other pushing a Carmen Miranda hat more firmly on to his head. ‘How do I look, darling?’

Mel is one of the few people on the islands who is genuinely nice to me. So I look him up and down and try to smile. ‘There is nothing like a dame,’ I tell him.

He pretends to rearrange his crotch. ‘And I’m nothing like a dame.’ He winks before tottering off along the street.

I find the boys at home, up and playing with their grandmother, even though it’s long past the youngest’s bedtime. She’s found some old cardboard boxes and built a series of tunnels and caves in the living room. There is no sign of any of them as I walk quietly in through the back door, but I can see boxes shaking and hear the scuffling sounds of small people scurrying along inside.

‘Mwa, ha, ha, ha!’ Grandma sounds even more like a goblin than usual. She emerges from one end of the cardboard city and looks abashed when she sees me in the doorway. Crawling out, she gets awkwardly to her feet.

‘Is your father with you?’ She brushes the cardboard dust off her clothes.

‘I think he went straight to the newsroom. They’re planning to stay on air for longer tonight.’ All scuffling has stopped. Chris appears to grin at me, then Michael. Finally the little one stands up. He ignores me. ‘Ganny chase us!’

All three boys are in their pyjamas. I can smell shampoo and biscuits.

‘Any luck?’ my mother mouths at me. I shake my head.

‘Did you find him?’ Chris misses nothing. Michael comes over and wraps his arms around my waist. He has always been a very cuddly child. Peter sees my arms around his older brother and, predictably, gets jealous. He runs over, holding up both hands to be lifted. He’s looking at Michael, not me, but I pick him up.

‘How about some hot chocolate?’ Grandma suggests.

In the kitchen, dishes are washed and away in cupboards. The table is clear of clutter. The worktops shine. I try to see it as it was meant, as a kindness, but the very sparkle on the taps seems to be telling me I’m a failure.

‘What will happen to him?’ Chris asks, as we sit down.

‘I’m sure he’ll be fine,’ I say. ‘He’ll be cold and a bit frightened, but there’s no real harm can come to him. The weather forecast is good tonight. Do you want to take Peter, so I can help Grandma?’ I hand the small boy over to the bigger one.

‘Will he die?’ asks Michael.

‘Of course not. How could he die? Pecked to death by a penguin?’

Quick as a flash, Michael becomes a penguin, arms stiff by his sides, hands sticking out at right angles, mouth pursed like a beak. He starts pecking away at his little brother, who naturally decides it’s the best game ever.

‘Sam Welsh’s mum says he’ll die of exposition,’ says Chris.

‘Exposure, and that’s very unlikely. Lots of people sleep outside in the summer.’

‘More,’ demands Peter.

‘In tents. In sleeping bags.’ Chris still looks troubled.

‘I’m not saying he won’t be uncomfortable, just that a night out of doors won’t do any permanent damage.’ I can tell no one is fooled by my determination to look on the bright side.

‘We blew out the pumpkin candles,’ says Michael. ‘So that if he comes near here he won’t be frightened.’

‘I said they should.’ My mum won’t let an eight-year-old take the praise that is her due. ‘I expect his parents were there,’ she says, in a low voice, as though Chris and even Michael aren’t hanging on to every word. ‘You never know what you have till you lose it.’ Mum puts two mugs and a covered plastic cup down on the table. ‘Goodness, what that poor mother must be going through. Oh, did you want some, Rachel?’

‘I’m fine,’ I say, although I’ve eaten nothing since lunch.

Mum helps me tuck the boys into their respective beds and then I walk her out to her car.

‘Do the police think there’s any connection?’ she asks me as she opens the door, and I press into the hedge to avoid the wind. ‘With the other two?’

‘No one’s said anything.’ Except my father, I think. He’s determined to see a conspiracy.

‘All three vanished from near water.’ She lowers her ample frame into the driver’s seat and looks up at me. ‘Maybe we have to be thinking about people with boats.’

Half the people who live here have boats and she knows it. ‘I’m sure we’ll find him tomorrow. Goodnight, Mum.’ I bend to peck her on the cheek and pretend not to notice when she half flinches away from me. ‘Thanks for all your help.’

She snorts and drives away before I have the chance to step clear. She doesn’t drive over my foot but it’s a close-run thing.

*   *   *

An hour or so later, a startled cry rouses me. I wait for a few minutes; there is always a night light in the little one’s room and he’s pretty good at settling himself. Not tonight, though. He starts crying in earnest and I know he’ll wake the others.

A flicker of light outside the house catches my attention as I’m making my way down the corridor. I step closer to the window, knowing it’s unlikely I’ll be seen from outside.

There is a vehicle in the road. One I know immediately, even if I didn’t recognize the pale-faced, dark-haired woman in the driver’s seat. Once again, Catrin is parked outside my house at night, looking up at my youngest son’s bedroom.

*   *   *

I lock the door as I leave the house, which I almost never do, but the missing child, not to mention my anonymous correspondent, is bothering me. The wind that has been absent for much of the day has picked up now, forcing the buildings to creak and groan in protest.

Unusually, also, I left a note on the kitchen table for Chris. I’ve never known him wake and come down in the night, but this doesn’t feel like a normal night.

Gone to check on the horses,
I’d written.
Back soon.

‘Oh, you are kidding me,’ moans my horse.

‘Come on, you lazy bastard. Earn your keep for a change.’

I have him saddled in a matter of moments and then I lead him out of the yard along a strip of grass that effectively muffles sound.

Catrin’s house is several miles away by road, but across country I can get there in a little over half an hour. We’ve been playing this game for a while now. She drives past my house at night, sometimes stopping for minutes at a time. I ride over to hers. I seem to know when she’s out there and I can’t help thinking she knows when I’m close too. Yet we do nothing. One night, maybe tonight, one of us will do something to break this deadlock.

And maybe, if we do, maybe I can start to find myself again. To pull myself,
with penance done,
from the depths in which I’ve been floundering.

For over twenty years, most of our lives, Catrin was the other half of me. Even when I was sick with jealousy that she had Ben, I still needed her in my life. Now, years after we last spoke, I am lost without her. I would cut off my own arm, rip my face to ribbons, if it were sufficient penance for what I did. I sometimes think there is nothing I would not do, no sacrifice too great, to get Catrin’s forgiveness.

To wash away the albatross’s blood.

The islands are transformed by the setting of the sun. As the colours fade to monochrome, as the fine contours of the landscape melt into shadow, so the sounds and scents and textures of the land wake up. People who live in the populated parts of the world talk about the quiet, the stillness, of night. Here, when the sparse population goes to its rest, the opposite happens. Here, night-time means an endless cacophony of noise. The nesting birds that Bee and I ride past chuckle and gossip, in a constant, squabbling carpet of sound. Overhead, avian teenagers carouse in high-pitched revelry, drunk on flight and freedom. Hawks sing, penguins on the nearby shore bray at the howling of the wind, while the clifftop albatross colony might be discussing politics, so varied and intelligent seem their conversations. Beneath it all is the endless grumble and roar of the ocean.