Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon (23 page)

They went to the front door together.

‘Thanks again.’ Anna was eager to be gone.

‘Keep in touch. I’ll pray for you,’ Christina said, surprising Anna, who raised a hand in farewell and walked away quickly. She remembered Christina making that offer before – praying for Rose, as if she had a direct line that led to the solving of everyone’s problems. A lot of good that had done.

Still, Anna had come away with a new lead. Christina may have thought she’d said nothing of importance, but she’d given Anna what she wanted: a name. Michael Sullivan.

And a scene. Walking back to the station, Anna played it in her mind, embellishing it. There stands Rose, beautiful and imperious in her sea-green dress, her glossy hair falling over one shoulder and bare arm; she is full of the assurance Anna grants her that she can attract anyone she chooses. And there across the hall – mentally, Anna decorates it with draped gauze and paper flowers, recalling her own leavers’ ball – is Mr Sullivan, Michael Sullivan, with a group of teachers, most of them older than him. He’s already noticed Rose, of course; how could he fail to? Each time she glances in his direction their eyes meet, and it’s like a signal, a promise, crackling between them through air heady with perfume. Next to Rose is Chrissie, plumply pink in a too-tight, too-pale, too-fussy dress that makes her look like an overweight bridesmaid, her hair big in the layered waves that were popular then. ‘Go on,’ she urges, nudging Rose, giggling. ‘Ask him. You know you want to.’ Chrissie isn’t used to champagne; her voice is shrill with it, carrying to the group nearby. Rose looks again at the teachers over by the stage. ‘Yes, I will,’ she says clearly, and crosses the floor in a slow, deliberate walk, one hand grasping a fold of her dress so that it swishes behind her. Someone wolf-whistles. Michael Sullivan must know she’s coming for him, but his expression is unreadable – however hard she tries, Anna can’t see him; she pictures a tall figure in a dinner suit, but can’t bring the face into focus. Rose smiles her invitation, but Michael Sullivan doesn’t respond, and she has to say aloud, ‘Will you dance with me?’

What does he say? Anna can’t hear; sees only the slightest shake of his head. Rose turns, as abruptly as if he’s slapped her in the face. She walks back to Chrissie and the others across what now seems a vast expanse of polished floor, a skating rink ready to send her feet skidding from under her. She holds her head high, but her cheeks are glowing and her eyes are hot with tears.

‘Turned you down, did he?’ mocks one of the boys.

Rose turns her rejection into a joke, sidling up to him. ‘I’ll have to make do with you, Darren.’ She swings him into the dance, swaying to the rhythm, laughing into his face to show she doesn’t care.

Not once does she glance over at Michael Sullivan. But, but. She is Rose, and her memory records every humiliating detail.

Chapter Thirteen

Sandy, 1967

The funeral was all wrong, with nothing of Roland in it. Everyone wore sombre clothes and spoke in platitudes:
So terribly sorry
and
He had so much to live for
. Several boys from Grove Park were there, solemn in uniform, not sure how to behave; the whole family came, great-aunts and -uncles Sandy only distantly remembered, and cousins awed by the enormity of what had happened. There were hymns and readings chosen by Roland’s parents, and the service was conducted by a vicar who hadn’t known him. It shouldn’t be like this, Sandy thought, all wrapped up in formality; she pictured, instead, a huge bonfire on the beach where Roland had been found, and candles, and stars, and everyone singing the songs he had written. He should have stayed there, cremated on the sand like Shelley, his ashes floating to the sky. Instead, this raw grey day, and the winter churchyard, hedged about with yews and cypresses and centuries-old tombstones so weathered that you could hardly read the inscriptions – this wasn’t a place for Roland. It was too early in the year for even the first snowdrops. The new grave was a gash in the turf, the heap of soil next to it respectfully covered by a tarpaulin, as if the sight of fresh earth might render the
ashes to ashes, dust to dust
phrase too literally to be borne. They can’t do this, Sandy thought; can’t put him in the ground, next to all the dead people. It was outrageous: too final, too stark.

When the first spadeful of earth spattered over the coffin, she watched intently, searing the moment into her brain. Someone was sobbing behind her and Elaine wept copiously into a large handkerchief, but Sandy was too clenched up inside to cry. Phil was ashen-faced, eyes hidden behind dark glasses, and Dempsey looked like a frightened little boy.

‘It’s always worse when it’s a young person who’s died,’ she heard one of the great-aunts say, as they walked back to the cars.

Sandy played
Revolver
over and over again. She had moved Roland’s portable record player into her room, and some of his favourite LPs, but it was mostly
Revolver
she listened to.
Eleanor Rigby
was now unbearably sad, and the final track eerily prophetic. When she closed her eyes and listed to George Harrison singing
Taxman
or
Love You To
, she could almost bring Roland back, seeing his intentness and absorption as he bent over his guitar. She played and played the record until she knew every song by heart.

After all, the mock O-Levels turned out to be something of an anchor. She could have been let off doing them, but was adamant that she wanted to: otherwise, what else but to shut herself up with her misery? The mocks gave her a structure, a challenge. Instead of attending school full-time, she was allowed to come in just for the exams. She knew, from the respectful glances and hushed voices of the other girls, that she’d acquired a sort of glamour; she’d passed to the other side of something they could only imagine. In the corridor she saw younger girls nudge each other and whisper, ‘That’s her, Sandy Skipton – you know, the one whose brother …’ She pretended not to notice. During breaks she hid in the library.

In the English Literature exam, her composure deserting her, she sat head in hands, tears dripping onto the blank page. Delia summoned the invigilating teacher, and Sandy was escorted out of the room, but insisted on writing her answers later that day in the library, with Miss Roberts the geography teacher in attendance. It was Thomas Hardy’s fault, making her think about Sergeant Troy who was thought to have drowned, but reappeared a year later.

Only in books. In real life drowned people stayed dead, and you had to know that, even if you couldn’t make yourself believe it.

‘You’re being terribly brave,’ Miss Roberts told her, at the end.

It was harder when the exams were over and they went back to the normal timetable. Sandy avoided Elaine and attached herself instead to Susan and Delia, without caring much for either of them. If she could endure the remaining weeks of term, and the proper exams – what did they matter, now? – she could leave school. Where she would go, who she’d be, she had no idea. It struck her for the first time that wherever she went, she’d have to take herself with her.

Roland had hardly spoken to Sandy since New Year’s Eve. He shut himself in his room, keeping the door closed; he appeared only for meals, saying little. His A-Level mocks would start as soon as term began. Their mother fretted that he was working too hard, that he ought to take breaks and go out with his friends, but his father took the view that there’d be time to relax when the mocks were over. The Merlins weren’t mentioned, and no sound of singing or guitar-strumming came from Roland’s room, so maybe he really
was
working all hours.

On the Wednesday of that first week in January, the TV news was full of Donald Campbell, who had been killed attempting to break his own world water-speed record. Sandy, supposedly re-reading
Far from the Madding Crowd
in the front room, watched mesmerized as footage of the crash was shown again and again: the jet-powered speedboat like a dart on the chilled greyness of Coniston Water, slowly rearing above the surface, then flipping into a somersault amidst a welter of spray. Campbell’s words were heard over the radio: ‘
She’s going … she’s going …
’ Then silence, and turbulence slowly subsiding to nothing. The lake had swallowed up the speedboat and the man inside it and had claimed back its stillness, the water mirroring dark mountains and cloud.

‘Great way to go,’ said Roland’s voice behind Sandy; he stood gazing at the screen, mug in hand, then slipped out of the room before she could answer. She thought of the mystery of being alive one moment and dead the next; would you be conscious of your death, would you
live
it? They hadn’t yet found Campbell’s body, only parts of the wreckage, but no one doubted that he had died, crashing at more than two hundred and seventy miles per hour.

Those were the last words Sandy could remember, with any certainty, Roland saying to her, other than the odd monosyllable as they passed on the stairs or met in the kitchen. On Saturday morning he went out early and never came back. Why he chose to go to the Isle of Wight, no one was sure – maybe he remembered a childhood holiday spent there. He had been seen on the passenger ferry, and later walking along the coastal path from Freshwater Bay. His train and ferry tickets were in the pocket of the rucksack he left on the grass above the beach. Currents had carried his body some way along the shore to where it had been washed up and found by a dog-walker. The autopsy revealed that he’d drowned after taking LSD, and at the inquest the coroner returned a verdict of death by misadventure. For the second time Roland’s name appeared in the
Echo
:
LOCAL SCHOOLBOY FOUND DROWNED.
The mention of
mind-altering drug
horrified Sandy’s father, who would have preferred that detail to be glossed over. Sandy heard him on the telephone berating the editor, but the damage was done, and she had to feel sorry for him.
LOCAL SCHOOLBOY WINS PLACE AT OXFORD
was what he’d set his heart on.

Chapter Fourteen

Anna and Ruth now had an arrangement to take turns shopping and cooking. As tonight was Anna’s turn, she bought food for supper at the M&S shop at Victoria: chicken breasts, salad, focaccia and a pineapple. Walking up from the station with her carrier bag, she thought of the evening ahead: Ruth would be tired from her day’s gardening, Liam probably doing last-minute homework. Anna would make the meal, and tell Ruth, maybe, what Christina had said. Later she’d do a Google search for Michael Sullivan, and see if that led anywhere.

But she found Ruth in the kitchen sharing a bottle of wine with a man she introduced as Aidan. Anna looked at him with keen interest. He was older than she expected, fiftyish, with a tanned, weathered face, and short hair silvered with grey. He’d been working with Ruth at Holtby Hall and wore cargo trousers and a dark green fleece unzipped over a T-shirt. They shook hands – he held hers in a firm grip – and she noticed that his eyes were a light and piercing green.

‘Aidan’s come back to eat with us,’ Ruth said. ‘I hope you got my text?’

‘No!’ Anna hadn’t looked at her mobile since arriving at Christina’s house. ‘Fine, though – there’s plenty for four.’ She began taking out her purchases, putting them ready by the hob.

Aidan fetched an extra glass from the cupboard and poured a glass of wine for Anna. So he knows his way around, Anna thought, and wondered if he spent nights here, before remembering that Ruth had told her she’d never slept with anyone but Martin.

‘Aidan’s the architect in charge of the project,’ Ruth explained.

Anna was unwrapping the chicken, assembling spices. ‘Is the house being restored, then, as well as the garden?’

‘The house is eighteenth century and in quite good nick,’ Aidan said, with a hint of a Newcastle accent, ‘but there’s a separate stable block that’s being converted into a visitors’ centre and restaurant—’

‘– which Aidan’s designed,’ said Ruth, with evident pride.

‘And Ruth’s project, the walled garden, is making great progress. You should come and see for yourself some time,’ Aidan told Anna.