Towers of Silence (13 page)

“They’re only after food,” I reassured her. “Once they see we haven’t got any they’ll leave us alone.”

“I’ve got a biscuit,” Tom announced. And proudly retrieved a doughy mess from his pocket. The geese moved in with alacrity, practically obscuring him.

“Drop it,” I told him. “Now.” I grabbed his hand and pulled him through the gang and up the grassy bank. We set off walking along the sandy path that circled the water park.

Several of the little jetties were occupied by anglers. They’d as much gear with them as Maddie and I take for a week’s camping. Bell tents and umbrellas, flasks and iceboxes, chairs and blankets plus all the poles and maggots and stuff.

Out by one of the islands Tom spotted a swan and I pointed out the moorhens, with their red legs and beaks, nipping around the shallows.

“I’m freezing,” Maddie moaned.

“Walk faster then.”

“I’m tired.”

“Early night.”

“Just tired of walking.” I estimated that we were a sixth of the way round.

“I wish it was hot,” she said, “then we could paddle.”

“Not here, it’s not safe.”

“Why?”

“Sinking sand,” Tom pronounced.

“Yes, and stones, and old fish hooks and rubbish.”

“I’m a dragon,” Tom breathed clouds into the air.

I found a stick and we threw it for Digger. He’s not exactly a retriever. He kept losing the stick and we had to search for a replacement.

The children ran ahead to ambush me. I walked along savouring the fresh air. The bare trees with their branches of brown and cream and grey made patterns against a pure blue sky smudged with wisps of golden cloud. Like a Christmas card scene minus snow. I ought to write my cards. Perhaps I could make a start after tea. I heard a giggle and saw Maddie’s elbow protruding from the tree ahead. I prepared to be startled.

Near the end of the circuit we stopped at the small wooden playground. Tom leapt and swung over everything and made friends with another little boy. Maddie stuck to the swings. I called them away after a while. I had to get Tom back in time to go to Nana Tello’s for Sunday lunch. It’s a sporadic event which seems like a good way to do it to me. More of a treat than an obligation. It was her chance to stuff son and grandson to the gills.

“Men’s food,” Ray said once.

“Meat?”

“You bet, piled high.”

She seemed to worry that my not eating meat and not cooking it for others meant we all lived on grass and that without her intervention severe malnutrition would result. I’d stopped trying to reason with her. I was even woman enough not to rub it in when the BSE scandal was in full spate.

“Chicken feed,” she’d say, when she looked at my plate. Did she know what they actually fed chickens these days?

Monday I went to York.

With Adam Reeve.

We took the bus to town again and there was an interlude of about an hour spent wandering round Lewis’s and Debenhams and the top of Market Street. Susan Reeve rang; the college had called to check whether Adam had cause to be absent. I told her I was in town following her son and would keep her informed.

Adam set off for the coach station. He didn’t go in the information office this time but to one of the stops. I watched from the news-stand. I bought a copy of
The Guardian
to hide behind. After a few minutes the coach came swinging round and drew up and disgorged its passengers. Adam got on followed by other travellers. When they were all on I went across and climbed up the steps. Asked for a return to York, which was the final destination. I was fairly sure he’d not recognised me but I had a different coat on due to the colder weather and a woolly hat in my bag that might come in handy to alter my appearance if I felt a little exposed.

I sat several seats in front of Adam and never looked back.

It was a three hour journey. The coach headed up the Oldham Road through the centre of the East Manchester redevelopment; a major site for the Commonwealth Games. We took the M62 towards Leeds. As we climbed away from the cities and up into the Pennines the view was spectacular; moors and hills rippled buff against a rich blue sky with a burnished sun. I could see for miles. Those parts of the ground where the sun hadn’t reached were still dusted white. I enjoyed the landscape for a while but eventually I wanted distracting and turned to the book I’d brought with me.

We had to change in Leeds. A forty-five minute wait. I found a cafe a few minutes from the station, got a cup of tea which looked like washing-up liquid and tasted similar, and huddled in a corner with my book.

When it was time to go I got on the coach and sat near the front again. Adam was already on further back. I looked out as we swung through the streets. Leeds wasn’t a city I knew well, though work has taken me there now and again. It has a similar Victorian feel to Manchester with some resplendent city centre buildings and arcades. The same sort of terraced streets that had sprung up to house the mill-workers and factory-hands spread outwards from the centre, but here they were mainly stone built instead of brick. And Leeds is hilly, unlike Manchester which sits on a plain surrounded by hills.

As we drove north the land became flatter. The vale of York. The buildings fell away to be replaced by grazing land, dotted with sheep and cows and enclosed by ancient dry stone walls.

Fields grew winter crops or were shorn, bare stubble glistening with frost. The coach drove on, low easy-listening music faint on the tannoy. We passed a farmhouse with a huge tree in the yard strung with outdoor lights. Further along two barns were being converted, bright new sandstone walls and solar panels.

Where were we headed? Was Adam meeting someone? Perhaps there was a simple, utterly banal reason for our journey. A job interview, research for a college assignment. York was full of museums wasn’t it? Dripping with history. As we got closer to the town there was much evidence of the dominant role of tourism here. Coach routes and stops were sign posted, as well as scenic tours and heritage trails . Every other house had a B&B sign up. Presumably some people came up here in the winter. When the coach came to a halt I got off before Adam and walked across and into a phone box where I would still be able to see him alight.

He hesitated on the edge of the pavement as if he might change his mind and get back on. He certainly didn’t look excited or happy to have arrived. Whatever awaited him here it was not something he was looking forward to.

He went into the Gents and then over to an inspector who was leaning against the information booth. Adam spoke and the inspector nodded and gestured across the bus station. A man came and waited outside the phone box.

I replaced the receiver and came out.

Adam went and sat on a seat at one of the bus stops. I consulted the schedule hanging on the wall and worked out that the buses there went to Ripon and the next would be in twenty minutes.

Adam had settled to wait. I took the chance to go to the Ladies and then got myself a tea and a cheese salad sandwich at the station shop. The tea tasted of melting plastic. I’d have been better with a cold drink but at least it served to warm my fingers up.

As we got further away from York and into unchartered territory it was more likely that Adam would recognise that I was the same woman who had got on the bus at home. Okay, at this particular point he didn’t seem to know me from a hole in the ground but I must be pushing it. I had to stick with him but not stick out. I hovered in the shop as long as I felt comfortable and then went to the Ladies again. Wherever we were going it was not likely I’d be home to collect the children. I rang the Dobson’s and spoke to Vicky. Yes, she’d take them home and stay until either Ray or I got back.

I also rang and told Adam’s mother that I was still following him and that I would ring her later. I told her to try not to worry.

I put on my woolly hat. Mistress of disguise. I had some sunglasses in my bag but they only made me look deranged with the hat in the middle of winter.

As it was, I was saved by a trio of middle-aged women laden with shopping bags waiting for the Ripon bus who engaged me in conversation. I chattered on with them about shopping and Christmas - or at least I asked all the open-ended questions and kept them going.

Their favourite topic was their individual shopping passions and foibles.

“Shoes get me.”

“She’s twenty-eight pairs.”

“Imelda Marcos.”

“Twenty-nine. Not counting slippers.”

“I can never make my mind up. I come home empty-handed.”

“You need a personal shopper.”

“I can buy for anyone else, not myself.”

“That’d be a good job, personal shopper.”

“Ooh, no. I’d rather do it than watch others doing it.”

“She talking about shopping?”

“Hazel!”

To an outsider like Adam I hope I’d be one of the gang.

The bus was crowded which suited me. I bought a ticket all the way as I’d no idea of our destination.

I sat with my new friends who continued to tease each other as talk moved from shopping to fashions and nostalgia for the bygone styles. I nodded and smiled a lot.

We hadn’t gone far and were still in the suburbs of York when the driver called out something unintelligible which drew Adam to his feet. I said loud goodbyes to my companions trying to make it sound like a weekly ritual. If Adam was going to clock me I reckoned it was going to be now.

I let him get off first then followed and immediately crossed the road looking purposeful. He was studying a piece of paper. We were on a suburban housing estate. Brick built semi-detached houses with small front gardens. A passing cat solicited my attention and gave me an excuse to loiter. I bent to pet the cat, watching Adam out of the corner of my eye. He put the paper away and crossed the road. He was coming my way. The cat squirmed beneath my hand, purring and craning its neck. I waited for him to pass.

“‘Scuse me.”

Shit! My heart skittered around. I stood and braced myself.

“Can you tell me where Blandford Drive is?”

I pretended to consider. “Sorry, no,” I smiled.

He nodded and walked off towards the bend in the road. I closed my eyes to steady myself. Swallowed hard. When he was out of sight and the prickling had gone from my arms I set off in pursuit. Mingled with the tension I felt a frisson of excitement. The same thrill I got from playing Cowboys and Indians and Cops and Robbers as a child. Though this wasn’t a game and if Adam Reeve rumbled me it wouldn’t be a case of ‘now you’re on’.

Blandford Drive was off to the left round the bend. It was a long gradual hill, lined with houses, and halfway down on the left was a parade of shops. Adam passed these, crossed the side road to the first house below the shops and stopped. He went up the path and rang the doorbell or knocked; I was too far away to see exactly. He waited. Meanwhile I made my way to the shops hoping for somewhere to lurk. There was a butcher’s, a hardware shop, a baker’s, a newsagents, a launderette and a Save the Children shop selling secondhand clothes. I went in the charity shop, said hello to the women at the counter, then looked at the items near the window so I could see the street. Adam had left the house and crossed the road. He walked up the hill until he reached a bus shelter where he sat down. It was a different route from the one we’d come on. Was he planning to catch another bus or was it simply somewhere to shelter? Almost immediately my question was answered as a bus climbed the hill, slowed but didn’t stop and went past the stop. I could see Adam still there.

Adam had come all this way, yet there appeared to be no one in at the address he wanted. It looked like he was sitting it out. I’d have to do the same. The old clothes shop was a heaven sent opportunity to alter my appearance and also provided me with the means for hiding in the warmth while keeping Adam in sight. I found a long, camel coloured raincoat and a dark wool hat with a brim which was suitably different to what I’d arrived in. I also bought two old candlewick bedspreads in the sale for a song. I put these and my own jacket and hat in a dustbin liner. “Too big for the carriers,” the women agreed.

From outside the newsagents it was possible to read the number on the house. Twenty-one. Then I went next door to the launderette to do my washing. I got some soap from the dispenser, stuck the bedspreads in the machine, put in the money and found a seat near the window where I could alternate reading the paper with watching Adam. Regulars came in and swapped gossip with the woman who ran the launderette but they left me to my own devices.

It soon began to get dark and I transferred my load to the dryers. Parents and children were wandering back from school, the newsagents next door busy with people calling in for sweets and the evening paper.

I saw Adam stand up and walk down the hill. I left my seat and went outside in time to see a woman with two children, one about Tom’s age and the other, a girl, about seven or eight, walk up the path and let them all into the house.

Adam didn’t go over and knock again - he just stood there for a few moments. Then he went back to sit by the bus stop. Was it someone else he was waiting for? A girlfriend, still on her way home from high school? He must be freezing, and hungry. I was starving. I bought a Snicker’s bar and a can of lemonade in the newsagents and went back to the launderette. I really wanted something hot and wholesome like a creamy cheese and tomato lasagne or a bowl of thick soup and a hot roll but there was no chance of that.

Curtains were drawn and the lights went on in houses up and down the street, Christmas lights twinkled or flashed in windows. It was maybe another half an hour, and my candlewicks were virtually dry when I saw Adam move again; he stood up but stayed inside the shelter. I stepped outside, waited next to the newsagent’s window where all the little cards bearing adverts were and we both watched a silver Mondeo with a buckled rear bumper enter the driveway of number twenty-one. A man got out, locked the car, and went in.

Adam went slowly down the hill and stopped opposite the house. He didn’t approach it. What was this, some sort of vigil? Was he stalking these people or what? The orange street lights distorted his face, cast him in a sickly glow. My stomach flipped when I realised he was crying, his face was blurred, features screwed up, his head bobbing up and down as his shoulders rose and fell.