A Question of Identity (8 page)

Now, looking at him bounding and leaping at the far shoreline, Simon saw a boy full of energy and simple
joie de vivre
. Did it matter whether he talked about himself or not? Simon was sure
that Sam would not share his feelings. He was not like his mother, nor the kind of open, cheerful character his father had been. Sam was like him.

He waved to his nephew. The plan was to head round the three miles to Wells and enjoy hot chocolate and buns in the cafe there, before returning to the cottage, but as Sam started to jump over the pools on his way back, Simon’s mobile rang.

‘Where are you? I’ve been trying to reach you . . .’

Rachel. Rachel, whom he loved as he had never loved a woman before. Rachel, who was loving in return, and generous, understanding of both his job and his personality. Rachel, who struggled with her conscience, married as she was to a man in the late stages of a debilitating illness but who had given his tacit blessing to her relationship with Simon. Rachel, who was beautiful, troubled, loyal. Rachel, whose calls he had been avoiding since coming here.

‘Hi, sweetheart. Sorry – this is a black area for phone signals.’

‘Can you hear me OK now?’

‘Yes, I’m on Holkham Beach and it seems to be fine but if we get cut off suddenly you’ll know why . . .’

‘I just wanted to hear you. I wasn’t sure where you were.’

‘I’ve brought Sam up here for half-term . . . good for us both. Sorry, I should have let you know but it was all arranged at the last minute.’

‘You never have to apologise to me.’

‘No. No, I know that. You’re . . .’

He felt ashamed of himself – something else new to him in his relationships with women. Rachel never demanded, never blamed. She accepted him as he was, loved him for that. Yet still he sometimes felt a desperate need to dodge, to run, to shut her out.

‘Is everything all right – are you?’

‘Fine, now I know you are.’

‘And . . .?’

‘The same. It’s no life, Simon. He . . . yesterday I went into the room and he didn’t hear me and he was crying. Not loudly. Not so I could hear. He was just quietly crying. I can’t describe . . .’

‘Listen, I’m coming back on Friday. I’ll ring you when I’m home. Come there. You can, can’t you?’

He heard a faint sound, then silence, as the phone signal went.

‘Hey, it’s fantastic out there, the sea’s so thin . . .’

Simon laughed in spite of himself.

‘Thin? The sea is thin?’

‘Shallow then, but you know . . . it’s so far out and the edge . . . no, I was right first time. It’s thin.’

‘Great description. You look frozen, Sam, your face has gone blue round the edges.’

Sam thumped his arm, and they turned to walk towards the headland. Close to the bank the snow was thick, and the ground slippery, so they moved out to the sand which was firm and clear.

‘I could so live here,’ Sam said, whirring his arms round, ‘right here and never go back. Can we do that?’

‘I wish. But we’ll come again, no problem. Glad you like it.’

‘Love it.’

‘Know the feeling. I get fed up with being landlocked.’

‘Move then. Move up here. I could come as well.’

‘Job, Sam.’

‘They have police in Norfolk.’

‘Yes. Not necessarily ones likely to move over and make room for a new DCS.’

‘You don’t know that. How do you know till you ask?’

‘True. There’s other stuff, though.’

‘Like what?’

Ahead, a spaniel raced towards a flock of geese, feeding on a stretch of marshy grass, and the geese rose as one, making a racket that gave Simon an excuse not to reply. After the geese had left and they had walked round the spit of land into the next bay, Sam said, ‘I’d leave like a shot.’

‘What – home, friends, all that?’

‘Yup.’

‘Right. Why?’

‘Just stuff.’

‘Always is.’

‘You still on with Rachel?’

Simon missed a step. Caught up. Did not look at him.

‘It’s OK, I won’t say anything. I don’t.’

‘Fine. It’s just that – people don’t know.’

‘Ha.’ Sam gave him a sharp look. ‘You’d be surprised. Or maybe you wouldn’t.’

‘You been listening at keyholes?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Sorry. No, I know you wouldn’t.’

‘Nothing to listen to anyway. Mum doesn’t say anything – only I did just happen to hear her and Judith talking, that’s all. Then I saw you.’

‘Where?’

‘Went to someone’s house and his dad was driving me back. Saw your car.’

‘Sam . . .’

‘Yeah, I know about it, her husband being ill, all that. Hey, look – hello!’

A Border terrier had come running up and dropped a ball at Sam’s feet, before standing back and waiting, making little yaps of demand. Sam threw the ball far and fast. ‘Wow, look at that.’ The terrier went across the sand like a greyhound, splashing through pools and retrieving the ball.

‘I miss Wookie,’ Sam said. ‘He’d have had a great week.’

‘Next time, we bring him then.’

The dog came back with the ball, dropped it and looked at Sam. ‘He’s laughing,’ Sam said. ‘Look at that.’

Yes. A laughing dog. A laughing boy, throwing the blue ball away again. In the distance, some people were shouting, waving, trying to get the dog back.

Stuff, Simon thought. What ‘stuff’? What would make him sure he could leave Lafferton at the click of his fingers, and be happy?

Stuff.

There was always stuff.

They were tucked into a sofa in the Wells Beach Cafe with two mugs of chocolate and a pile of hot buttered toast when Simon had a surge of anxiety about Rachel. He should have told her he was coming away. He should . . .

But it was Sam’s mobile which rang next. When it did so, his face closed up so tightly it almost snapped. He looked at the screen, then got up quickly. ‘No signal. Shan’t be long.’ He disappeared like a shadow through the door and out of sight.

Simon finished his hot chocolate. Sam. Stuff. Something was – well, what? He didn’t know. Something. That was all.

The door opened on three people and one Border terrier, blue ball in its mouth, followed by Sam, who asked for more chocolate, then moved to the opposite sofa and bent over to make a long fuss of the dog. It was some time before he could be parted from it and when he was he scooted out of the door ahead of Simon, managing not to meet his eye. He bought two more drinks and slices of cherry cake. He would read the paper and wait. Hassling Sam would be counterproductive. The call would be from one of his friends – fourteen was the age when innocent phone calls suddenly became intensely private.

A second later he banged in through the door, face screwed up in panic.

‘I just . . . I was just talking to . . .’ He stood trying to get his breath.

‘Hold on, calm down –’

Sam waved at him furiously, took several more quick breaths. ‘I just stopped talking to Jake and it rang again and it was Mum, she tried you but she . . . and Molly . . . Molly . . . she’s gone to hospital, but the roads are so bad down there, Mum said, they might not get there in time . . .’

‘Sit down, Sam. Now, tell me slowly. What’s happened?’

HARRY ANSWERED THE
phone. It was gone eight, the boys were in bed, flat out after playing in the snow since the early morning. There was a smell of bacon coming from the kitchen and Harry had a bottle of lager in his hand. Things couldn’t get better, he thought, picking up. Things could not get better. Funny that.

‘Harry?’

‘Hello, Rosemary. How are you?’

Rosemary didn’t answer to the usual description of ‘the wife’s mother’. She never interfered, was always good-humoured and had her own life. She had welcomed Harry from the start, and never breathed a word of criticism. Harry would not have gone so far as to say that he loved Rosemary Poole but he had no problem with her at all.

‘Karen’s cooking supper – can she ring you back?’

‘No, just give her a message . . .’

‘Have you been OK in this weather? I meant to ring you only I know you’ve got the neighbours.’

‘Oh yes, Geoff Payne has been wonderful, got a gang together, cleared everybody’s front. No, I had a letter . . . post didn’t get through until after two and then what with everything . . . only I’ve got one. One of those sheltered bungalows. You know – Duchess of Cornwall Close.’

‘The new ones?’

‘That’s it. I’ve been allocated one. It was in the letter.’

Rosemary had been on the waiting list for sheltered
accommodation for three years, long before she needed it – she was only seventy-six now – but she had diabetes and the previous year a hip replacement operation had been unsuccessful. She was struggling to cope in the old three-bedroomed family house which had a big garden and was too far out of Lafferton.

‘Now that’s a bit of good news. When do you get the key?’

‘Two weeks. The thing is, Harry . . .’

‘You need help with moving. I’m working all hours but we’ll sort something.’

‘It’s brand new. I can’t get over it. Never moved into a brand-new house, Harry, I’m over the moon.’

He had a thin moustache, like kids draw on faces with a biro. He never took his eyes off me. Staring, staring. I hated him. But who else had I got?

‘You’re nobody. This is no-man’s-land, here. You’re not the person you were any longer and you’re not the person you’re going to be either. It’s my job to graft that new person onto you until the graft takes and it’s part of you – no, not part of you, that’s wrong. You. It’s you. Do you follow?’

I couldn’t sleep for it. I’d get up and look out of the window onto that bloody square where they did their drill and I’d try not to think about it because it was the future and the future scared the shit out of me. What he said. The stuff he made me repeat after him. Scared me.

So I stood and looked out at the empty square and I thought about the past. I felt good then and they couldn’t take that out of my head even if they took it in every other way. The past was mine and it’d always be there, to make me feel good.

NIGHTS WERE BEST.
Days, he mostly slept. People walked their dogs along the towpath past his shack and annoyed him, them chatting and the dogs barking, and when the kids went by on bikes the tyres made a screechy sound and that annoyed him too. Nights were best.

He generally went out, even in the rain. Didn’t mind the rain. The snow he hadn’t liked at all, it went over his shoes and soaked his trouser ends and once he got a few yards it was too deep anyway, so he stayed in. Got his stove going, got some soup on. Thought a lot.

But before the snow, it had been very good. Cold but good. He’d been walking for a bit, watching, listening, waiting, and then it had happened, right where he was. That had been a good bit of luck, the car reversing fast, the man and the woman on the corner nearly getting run over, then the crash of the shop window as they backed in. He’d felt his heart thump. He could have told the coppers everything because he’d seen everything, but they didn’t want to know. It annoyed him. A lot of things annoyed him. He’d heard what one of them said – ‘Get Parks out of here.’ What for? He hadn’t done anything and he had evidence. Nobody else had seen what he’d seen, which was all of it. Nobody else. He saw a lot of things at night that nobody else saw. He could have told the coppers plenty. But why would he? ‘Get Parks out of here.’ They’d no respect.

The snow had stopped and was starting to melt a bit, but he
wasn’t going out unless he had to and he didn’t have to yet. He’d got plenty of tins, he’d got tea. He was all right. By the time he had the feeling he had to go out at night or his head would burst, the snow would have gone.

He turned over the blanket and did the same with the old eiderdown, which had a rip in the top and stuffing coming out. He turned his pillow over as well. That was the bed made. The curtains at the windows were thick wool, made out of ancient coats strung together. They helped warm the room.

There was an upstairs room in the shack. Two rooms. But he hadn’t been upstairs for fifteen years.

He took off his jacket, kept his trousers and jersey on. Got into bed again.

A siren sounded along the main road. Then it was quiet. Snow made everything quiet. It was just before noon.

Nobby Parks slept.

‘
STAY WITH US,
Molly . . . stay with us. You all right there, Doc?’

Cat was cramped up beside the stretcher in the air ambulance, holding Molly’s hand and watching the paramedic adjust the leads that were attached to her, recording everything, showing the faintest of pulses, the blood pressure so low it did not seem possible the girl could be alive. Her face was chalky and looked oddly flat beneath the oxygen mask, as if the features were sinking back into her head.

‘Any idea how many she’s taken?’

Cat shook her head. Molly had been prescribed antidepressants, tranquillisers and beta blockers by her GP. Cat had found two empty foil packs, one with a few tablets left, but she did not know how many there had been for Molly to take in the first place.

The helicopter began to descend. Out of the window, Cat could see nothing but white fields, tipped at a sick-making angle. Air ambulance pilots were skilled and experienced and she was not afraid, just queasy.

‘Landing in two minutes. How’s she doing?’

‘Be glad to get there,’ the paramedic said into his mouthpiece. Meaning, get a move on, we’re losing her.

Cat agreed.

She had rung Hallam House before leaving the hospice but there had been no reply. She had left a message, then tried as many
other people as she could think of, but either nobody answered or else her friends were marooned by the snow.

‘I can look after Felix. We’ll be fine. I know what not to do and you
have
to go in the ambulance with Molly.’

Cat had looked into her daughter’s face. Hannah’s expression was assured, serious.

Could she? How irresponsible would it be to leave her in charge of a five-year-old, when she had no idea how long it would be before she could get back?