The Burning (22 page)

‘Self-contained women drive men more crazy than any other kind,’ Ryan said, as if thinking aloud, ‘especially ones as attractive as Kelly. The less of herself she gives away,
the more room there is to fill with fantasy – like a model in a magazine.’

‘Freud?’

‘And more than a little painful experience.’ He finished his coffee and glanced at his stylish wristwatch. ‘Much as I’d like to stay for another, I should be getting back
to Gloucester. When’s the inquest?’

‘I was planning to make a start on Monday.’

They both got up from the table.

‘Will you want me as a witness?’ Ryan asked.

‘I’ll try not to trouble you unless I have to.’ She lifted her coat from the back of her chair.

‘So our paths may not cross for a while?’

‘Who knows?’ Jenny said.

‘Would it be inappropriate of me to ask if you might be free for a drink one evening?’

Blind-sided by his question, Jenny looked away, finding herself unable to answer.

‘Sorry – I didn’t mean to embarrass you. It’s just that you seem such an interesting person. And a little sad.’ He calmly buttoned his coat. ‘Good luck with
the inquest. Any time.’

Jenny remained by the table as Ryan walked out of the cafe and disappeared along the quay. She caught her reflection in the glass: she barely recognized the bewildered, middle-aged face looking
back at her. What would a good-looking young man like Ryan see in her? She looked so tired. She looked like her mother.

It was the strangest of days and surely couldn’t get any stranger. Jenny pulled on her coat, thrust the bag containing Ed Morgan’s phone in one pocket and felt her fingers tighten
around the small cardboard package in the other. She threaded her way between the cafe tables and went through the door decorated with painted flowers.

Pregnancy tests had changed in twenty-three years. There were no ambiguous blue dots to interpret; a small digital display pronounced the result with unerring certainty:
Pregnant. 3+
. She had been pregnant for nearly a month, which meant it had happened during Michael’s last overnight visit in early December. Jenny had been carrying his child while he
cheated on her.

Now what? She didn’t have an answer. She simply stared at the back of the cubicle door and sobbed.

I
T WOULD ALL BE DEALT
with in a little over forty-eight hours, Juliet Turner, Jenny’s 32-year-old and, ironically, very pregnant GP, had told her.
One dose of mifepristone today and a few hours in the antenatal ward on Saturday morning. Early stage termination was virtually a painless process, she had assured her, no worse than heavy period
pains, but with the added benefit that they would only last for a few hours. Neither was there any need for embarrassment: she would be surprised to learn just how many women in their forties
presented with the same dilemma. The consultation had been going well until Juliet had used that word:
dilemma
. Up to that moment Jenny hadn’t been in any doubt. In truth, she had made
her decision within half an hour of getting the result. There was no question of her interrupting her career to have a child who wouldn’t be an independent adult until she was approaching her
seventies. It wouldn’t have been fair on either of them.

Jenny was equally adamant that she needed Michael out of her life, not lingering on the margins as an absent father to a child who would always harbour a secret fantasy of seeing them
reconciled. If she needed any more reason, there was the fact that there always seemed to be something fated about the offspring of failed love affairs, as if their lives had been blighted by the
unhappiness of their beginnings.

But Juliet’s single word had caused her to question.

‘Is that all right, Jenny?’ Juliet said, insisting on using her Christian name. ‘You won’t have to be here long.’

‘You mean I’d take the pill here?’

‘In case of any unusual reaction, but it’s not likely.’ She sensed Jenny’s reticence. ‘Or at home if you’d prefer. Just as long as it’s within the next
hour or two.’

‘I think I’d rather do that.’

Juliet gave an understanding smile. ‘That’s OK.’

Please don’t use that caring voice
, Jenny wanted to say,
it really doesn’t make it any better
. But instead she smiled back and nodded politely as Juliet assured her
that she could email whenever she liked with questions or concerns. Nothing was too much trouble. She even stood up from her chair, tottering under the weight of her swollen belly, to clasp
Jenny’s hand as she left.

‘I know it’s hard,’ she said.

Juliet hadn’t mentioned the father, not once, but she was doing it now, not in words, but in her sympathetic but ever-so-slightly pained expression. It seemed to carry the suggestion that,
while it was Jenny’s perfect right to go ahead as she intended, there really was no reason to hurry such a momentous decision, and perhaps it might be best to consider the father’s
wishes before rushing to action. It would, after all, be the considerate thing to do.

Jenny exited quickly through the waiting area, hoping not to see anyone who might recognize her, and emerged from the surgery to feel the cold slap of the wind on her face. In the time it took
to walk the ten yards to her car, the anger that had seized her after the initial shock of yesterday morning gave way to a sadness that seemed to swallow her up. She should have been in the office
half an hour ago, tackling her neglected cases and preparing for Monday’s inquest – Alison would be tearing her hair out wondering where she had disappeared to – but none of that
seemed to matter. Somehow, during her final moments with Juliet, the thing inside her had assumed an identity that was asserting itself; an identity beyond hers or Michael’s. An individual
presence whose voice, she sensed, needed to be heard.

It was a right turn out of the car park along the valley to Chepstow and the bridge, but Jenny found herself turning left and driving as if by instinct towards the place where she had already
decided she wanted to make her decision. She threaded her way along eight miles of empty, ice-rutted lanes, passed through the tiny village of Penallt, and continued a mile further north along the
narrow, undulating road to the church.

It was known as the Old Church because at some time early in its 700-year history, the name of the saint to whom it had been dedicated had been lost. Local tradition claimed it was St James, and
that the church stood on an ancient pilgrimage route to his shrine in Compostela, northern Spain. But ever since she had first discovered this place, Jenny had never been able to conceive of it as
being en route to anywhere. Set high on the corner of the hill overlooking the broad sweep of the Wye Valley, it was a final destination. Whoever had chosen its position must have felt as Jenny did
each time she entered through its ancient lychgate and saw the countryside spread out before her: this was a place that stood midway between heaven and earth, in the midst of creation, but with the
illusion of floating above it. There was an invisible reminder of hell here, too: the nameless structure owed its isolation to the fact that the community that had once thrived around it had been
destroyed by the plague. There was nothing of life and death, no joys or horrors its walls hadn’t witnessed.

Jenny pushed open the heavy oak door that was crudely carved with the year of its installation – 1539 – and entered the silent interior. A little sunlight penetrated the stained
glass and pooled in the centre of the nave. She took a seat in a pew and tried to offer a prayer, but every phrase she attempted to form seemed stupidly and inappropriately childlike. Accepting
that words were inadequate to the task, she instead sat in silence, letting her eyes wander along the ancient gravestones set in the floor that sloped downwards to the altar table. Slowly, and by
imperceptible degrees, any sense of her own significance faded. The bodies buried beneath her feet and the names commemorated in the plaques on the walls became part of the same continuous and
unbroken procession of life, none of them any more or less important than any other. A two-year-old infant, a ninety-year-old woman and a soldier killed in war had each been equally alive and were
all equally dead.

She received no answer. There was no flash of light. But as she made her way back along the path, she paused by the dustbin at the edge of the graveyard and dropped the small package of pills
she had brought with her from the doctor’s surgery in amongst the dead flowers and crumpled cellophane.

C
OURTROOMS
AT
B
RISTOL
’
S
S
MALL
S
TREET
were in short supply after the holiday season, and even if Jenny had managed to twist arms and secure one in which to hold her inquest, the slender budget on which
her office barely subsisted wouldn’t have stretched to it. Instead, Alison had been through the
Yellow Pages
and at three days’ notice hired the Oldbury Memorial Hall. The modest
daily rate even included heating, which, given that the temperature had yet to nudge above freezing, meant they had secured a bargain.

Jenny had grown used to the sight of bemused-looking lawyers and even more confused jurors arriving at the humble buildings in remote locations in which she was forced to administer justice, and
this morning was no exception. The village of Oldbury-on-Severn lay five miles to the west of Blackstone Ley as the crow flies, and was situated close to the windswept shore of the estuary. The
Memorial Hall, built to commemorate the fallen of the Great War, stood on a quiet lane dotted with pretty stone houses whose gabled roofs remained blanketed with snow and were decorated with
icicles.

Jenny arrived more than an hour before proceedings were scheduled to commence to find the road already lined with parked cars and Alison standing outside, swathed in a thick anorak, directing
the new arrivals inside. As Jenny stepped through the gate and approached along the gritted path she realized that Alison was being bombarded with questions from a young female journalist; one who
had a lot to learn about the rules of
sub judice
.

‘You actually interviewed Ed Morgan personally?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘I heard that for a while he was a suspect?’

‘He was one of them.’

‘So why didn’t CID pursue him harder?’

‘I wish I knew the answer.’

‘Excuse me,’ Jenny said, stepping between them. ‘My officer won’t be answering any more questions. And all you’ll be reporting is the evidence in court.’

‘Just doing my job,’ the reporter shot back indignantly.

Jenny spared her a law lecture and gave her a look that said that was an end to it. The young woman stepped defiantly past her and pushed into the hall.

‘What did you think you were doing?’ Jenny asked.

‘Hardly state secrets, Mrs Cooper.’

‘Enough for a story.’

Alison looked puzzled, then confused. Then contrite. ‘I’m sorry. We just got talking.’

‘It’s all right,’ Jenny said. She touched Alison’s arm. ‘Just be careful.’

She turned to the door.

‘Far end on the left,’ Alison called after her. ‘I left you some coffee.’

‘Thank you.’

Jenny passed through the hall in which jurors and witnesses were gathering and followed Alison’s directions to the committee room that would serve as her chambers during the inquest. It
was a simple space lit by a single fluorescent light, which also served as a store for piles of wooden staging and spare furniture. A small trestle table with a fold-down chair stood in the centre
of the remaining area of floor, and on it Alison had placed a Thermos flask and a cup and saucer. Her final act of thoughtfulness had been to tape several pieces of paper over the glass pane in the
door, to lend her some privacy. No one could call it ostentatious, but as she unloaded her files and her battered copy of
Jervis on Coroners
, the textbook that never left her side at
inquests, Jenny reminded herself that when it came to digging out the truth, a coroner’s obscurity could be their greatest asset. She could ask questions that no judge sitting in ornate
splendour would dare to. She had no senior colleagues looking over her shoulder. There was no network of court officials to inform on her. Her sole duty was to uncover the truth, however
unappealing that might turn out to be.

The minutes counting down to a court session were always tense, and there had been a time not so long ago when Jenny would have needed a pill to calm her jangling nerves. She could safely say
that she had now moved beyond chemical dependency, but she still felt her heart beat faster and noticed a tremor in her fingers. Skimming through her papers, she attempted to order her thoughts.
Michael, the baby she was carrying and all her fears for the future were pushed to the margins of her consciousness, as she entered the tunnel of concentration from which she wouldn’t emerge
until her jury delivered a verdict.

She was disturbed after a short while by a knock at the door. She checked her watch: it was only quarter past nine, a full three-quarters of an hour before the session was due to start.

Alison entered unbidden. ‘There’s a solicitor to see you, Mrs Cooper. A Mr Lever. He said he’s acting on behalf of the Grant family.’

‘The Grants? Why have they got a lawyer? They’re just witnesses.’

Alison had taken statements from both Emma Grant and her seventeen-year-old son, Simon, the previous week. Both had strongly rejected Nicky Brooks’s allegation that Simon had had a sexual
relationship with Layla and that he might be the father of her unborn child. Nevertheless, Jenny had decided that their denials needed to be tested in court. Harry Grant, Simon’s father, had
managed to make himself unavailable for a meeting, but to make sure he understood there was no avoiding her, Jenny had served him with a witness summons, too.

‘I think that being witnesses is what it’s about,’ Alison said. ‘They don’t want anything to do with it.’