The Last Winter of Dani Lancing: A Novel (10 page)

Finally it’s Jim who makes the move.

“A drink, maybe a bite to eat?” Tom asks, hoping to keep the link alive.

“Maybe another day. I think I should get back to Patty.”

“ ’Course. Yeah.” Tom nods and starts to wiggle the toes he knows are in his shoes somewhere. He wonders if this is the last time he’ll see Jim. Then together they walk to the car, hobbling slightly on their frozen feet.

“Patty,” Jim calls as he walks through the front door. He’s bought an extra large portion of chips from the Sung Lee and two giant pickles. He imagines them sousing them in malt vinegar, sprinkle of salt and then Heinz poured all over. Maybe they could eat on the sofa, in front of the TV—see the New Year in together. A new start, maybe. They could hold each other. Make love in their bed. Wake up in the morning and talk about Dani and love each other again.

“Patty?”

But there’s no reply. He finds a note on the kitchen table.

Gone. Back later. P
.

No little x of a kiss. Jim wonders for the thousandth time if his wife can bear to be with him any longer.

“Will you stop staring at me, I feel like I’m on fucking suicide watch,” she’d said just yesterday.

He makes himself a coffee, and sits at the kitchen table, staring deeply into the patina of the wood until it swims before his eyes. He loves this table. He and Patty found it in a junk shop in Chichester soon after they were married. It was a beautiful shape but scuffed and scratched, a piece hacked out of the middle. They bought it for next to nothing and restored it, the two of them, a shared project. They found a piece of wood that was as close as close, its twin, and joined them together. Jim traces his fingertips across the top, following the grain with his hand. Even though he knows where to look for the piece they grafted in, he can barely see it. The scar has healed and the wood bonded.

He remembers how happy they’d been working together, sanding and planing. It’s a beautiful memory and he allows it to wander through his head and warm his thoughts. Then it passes and the cold invades his mind once more.

There is a light knock on the door.

“Are you okay?” a woman calls out.

Patty can’t answer. She sits on the toilet and sobs as the train sways beneath her. In the bowl her bile and small flecks of the little she ate this afternoon swill about and will not flush away. Tears flow freely, splattering down into her lap as she leans forward. It
had taken her all this time to find him, months. Sending letters, pestering his family, putting posters around, all to find this Seb Merchant and … and it was such a fucking waste of time and now there is no lead, there is no suspect, there is no hope.

She sits there, on the foul-smelling toilet, and lets the grief and frustration bubble up and die. She’s lost. She’s used up every last favor and dried up the last reserves of goodwill. She knew it was coming, has seen how old colleagues shy away from her or run the other way when they see her. How the Durham students take a step back from her when she tries to question them, thinking they’ve told her every last thing they knew about Dani. She knows how she’s pestered them, but she thought something would give, someone would crack, and allow her a glint of hope. But what happens now?

“Are you okay? I’ll get the guard,” the voice calls through the door once more. Concern mixed with more than a little annoyance.

“I’m …” Patricia begins. “I don’t need the guard.”

She hears the woman grumble and walk off, possibly searching for another toilet. Patricia tries to stand but the nausea sweeps across her once more and she drops back feeling everything unravel. She is so scared, scared that nothing of Dani will remain, even her face is fading in her thoughts. In her bag she keeps a photo. She stares at it every day but she knows that more and more it is the photograph she remembers and not Dani. She can do nothing for her now, all those years of feeding, washing, dressing, encouraging and loving—loving, always loving. But at the end it was all shit, all such shit, all arguments and disappointments and all fucked up. With no goodbye, no time to prepare. That Christmas. Oh God, the Christmas—last Christmas.

“I forced her away.” Patty cramps at the memory. Dani was
meant to stay for a week and it was just two days. They argued so bitterly.

“That was what I left her with. She hated me.” The tears will not stop.

“It will get better, time heals all wounds,” Jim had said. Fucking liar. The only thing that will ease the pain is to find the man who did this and …

“How do I do that?” she shouts. “How do I find him?”

The train rattles on.

Finally the river runs dry and she can clean herself up and leave the small cubicle. She sits in the first empty seat she finds where she can be alone. Then she closes down.

It’s dark when Jim looks about him. He must have fallen asleep, curled up in his chair. Again.

“Christ … arrgh.” His leg’s asleep. Pins and needles dance along the sole of his foot and march up his leg. He feels scrunched up, a tall man forced into a box and—the phone. It’s ringing and that’s what’s woken him. He launches himself out of the chair and limps into the hall.

“Hello?” he tries to keep the urgency out of his voice.

“Have you been watching it all? Dancing on the Berlin Wall, the crumbling ripped-down bloody Berlin Wall, who would have thought it? We won. We’re giving peace a chance.” It isn’t Patty but Ed, sounding a little boozy.

“It’s good to hear from you,” Jim replies. It really is good to hear from his oldest friend. Ed and Jacks have done so much over the last year.

“Well, I watched the moon landing with you, I think this is the
next big thing. And it was pretty obvious you’d be at home while the rest of the world celebrates the end of nuclear war. Greenham Pat must be wetting herself.”

Despite himself, Jim smiles at his wife’s old nickname.

“She isn’t here.” He thinks for a second. “I have no idea where she is. What’s the time?”

“It’s ten o’clock. If you’re on your own, get the fuck over here and get drunk with us and forget, just for one night, about this fucking awful year.”

New Year’s Eve, he’d forgotten. He cradles the phone between chin and ear and pulls his sleeve away from his watch. He squints in the near dark. It’s ten past ten. On the table the unopened chip packet has gone cold and soggy. There will be no new start with Patty tonight.

“So come. Jacks wants you to.” In the background there is a snort. “And there’s twenty or so people here that don’t know you’re the most miserable fuck in the world and—”

“I can’t. Patty might be back in time.”

“In time to do what? Give you a kiss to ring in 1990, say, ‘It’ll all be fine next year’? I love …” Ed pauses, thinking he might have gone too far. “Oh, Jim. I’ll come over and get you.”

Jim hears Jacks in the background saying that Ed’s too drunk to drive.

“Thanks, Ed, but I can’t,” Jim cuts in.

“Leave her a note and drive over. You can make it by midnight. Don’t be by yourself. Not tonight.”

“Thanks, Ed. Love to Jacks.”

“You fuc—”

Jim misses the rest as he puts the phone down. The silence in the room seems so profound all of a sudden. He appreciates Ed’s
try at getting him over, but he can’t betray Patty. Betrayal? What a strange idea. He just needs to be there for when she needs him, that’s all. Isn’t that love?

He closes his eyes tight and indulges himself in a happy memory: the first time he saw Patricia.

She was looking down reading a story as he walked into the university newspaper offices. He was going there to see Connie Tunstall. She had kept telling him he ought to contribute and he always said he was too busy. But that night he and Connie had arranged to meet to go and see a film and he was half an hour early, so he decided to pick her up at the newspaper office.

So, he walked in. The editor’s office was at the back, overlooking everything, but at that exact moment Patricia was standing at a desk by the door looking over some boy’s shoulder, reading his text. As Jim walked in she looked up for a second and caught him full blast with these eyes. Kapow! “Come to bed eyes” is how he described them to Ed the next day. Hazel with flecks of gold, languid like they couldn’t be bothered to look at you, sexy as hell. And then there was her mouth. Full, soft—perfect. He fell in love with that mouth there and then. He may even have drooled a little. He was immediately drawn into her orbit like a love-struck moon. She was the editor, in her second year reading politics, and by all accounts had turned an unloved, barely read monthly into a must-read weekly and was advising other universities on what to do with their crumbling old titles. As he watched her advising and guiding the cub reporter through his story, he was immediately struck by how she took charge with such a deft touch, getting the best out of him not by domineering but by persuading and suggesting. Jim had already fallen a little in love with her that first night, before he even got to her desk and offered his services as cartoonist.

He flicks on the overhead light, which seems too bright somehow. He hears some thumping music from somewhere close, maybe two doors down. The sounds of the party make him feel even more alone. He wishes he could have a drink but there’s no alcohol in the house. He indulged a little too much in the months after Dani’s death and cut himself off. Maybe for New Year’s Eve … but he doesn’t want to go out in case Patty calls. So the best he can do for a treat is a squashed Quality Street from the back of the sofa.