Mr Toppit (42 page)

The other element of the story that intrigued people was that Rachel was not on her own, which added a kind of Bonnie and Clyde spin to it: she had decamped with Matthew Sumner, the strange boy I had met at Broadmeadow, the one who had told me he knew who Mr. Toppit was. He should have talked to Merry: they could have compared notes. My guess is that it was him who had scrawled the graffito. For one thing, it didn’t look like Rachel’s handwriting, though I admit it’s hard to recognize anyone’s handwriting when the writing implement is a paintbrush. It was too crude a gesture for Rachel, cheap and on-the-nose, too obvious, really.

The stories—for once—were less about me than about Martha and Rachel. Of course, I was described, as usual, as “eponymous” in some of the more upmarket papers, not strictly accurate because my name is Luke Hayman, not Luke Hayseed, and, also as usual, many of the pieces printed a childhood photograph of me alongside one of Lila’s drawings of Luke. But luckily I led a life “away from the limelight,” as
one newspaper put it, so apart from retelling the story of my “arrest” the night before I had left for Los Angeles five years before, there wasn’t much to add about me.

There had been articles about us in the past, but now the tone of the pieces was quite different. The
Hayseed
story had been shoehorned into that particular arena where journalists drop lottery winners whose lives are destroyed by money, and movie stars who crash and burn: we were a living illustration of the Price of Success. The problem was that Rachel had not ignored whatever limelight the
Hayseed
phenomenon had shone on our lives. She would always speak to journalists, much to Martha’s fury, so there were many old quotes by her that now found their way into the newspaper pieces, and many references were made to a particularly shambolic interview she had done. Even at the time it had caused comment, although the most pejorative adjective used had been “rambling.” Now, “sources close to the family” were quoted as “alleging” she had been “drunk” or “under the influence of drugs.”

In the piece entitled “Troubled Legacy of a Publishing Phenomenon,” Rachel and I were described as “heirs to a pot of literary gold.” From time to time, Martha had been labeled “eccentric,” but now the tone of the pieces was less kind: she had become “reclusive and bitter” and, in one article, “viciously protective of her late husband’s heritage.” She was “estranged from her children” and “at loggerheads with the publishers.” While the first statement could be construed as relatively accurate, in Rachel’s case at least, the second was not: the court case with the Carter Press had been resolved some years before and her relationship with Graham was reasonably calm.

As the days wore on, what had seemed like a minor blip in Rachel’s chaotic life acquired a more worrying dimension.
There had been many times when we didn’t know precisely where she was, but somebody would hear from her: me, or Claude when he was alive, sometimes Martha. Even Lila got the odd postcard. This time there were enough unusual elements to make it different. The graffito, for one thing—even if she hadn’t done it herself, she must have been party to it. Then there was Matthew Sumner: not her style, I would have thought, from my one meeting with him—too young, too needy, too insubstantial. As it turned out, I was wrong. Then there was the most worrying thing of all, which only I knew about: how she had been the last time I saw her, when I had visited her at Broadmeadow. It was like LA all over again: although she was missing, she wasn’t a missing person—she was an adult and had presumably left Broadmeadow of her own volition—and while the police were helpful, they were clearly not going to instigate a full-scale manhunt for an over-privileged girl with a history of unreliability and drug issues.

There wasn’t enough oxygen to keep the story burning for long, but just when it seemed exhausted, Matthew Sumner turned up.
“Hayseed
Boy Found” was the irritatingly imprecise way it was described. I didn’t often feel proprietorial but I did have a moment of outrage that he had stolen my crown. He was spotted early in the morning by someone he had been at school with just a few miles from his home in Weybridge. Rather pathetically, he was buying a Crunchie for breakfast.

He was “unharmed,” as the papers had it, though I couldn’t imagine what harm was meant to come to him: he and Rachel appeared to have traveled rather slowly from one end of Surrey to the other, not crossed the Gobi Desert. They had been staying in a bed-and-breakfast—another troublingly uncharacteristic element for Rachel—outside Weybridge, but by the time
the police got there she was gone. Some days later Matthew was shipped back to Broadmeadow to continue his treatment for what the papers called “a nervous disorder.”

Then there was an interview entitled “Every Parent’s Nightmare.” The piece had one of those cute photographs of Matthew aged about twelve, smiling and gap-toothed in his school uniform, so perfect in its depiction of innocence that it can only tempt fate and end up one day in a newspaper as an icon of what the subject was like in the good years, the years before God had told him to stab his classmates during school assembly or whip out a Kalashnikov in a Burger King or end up, in Matthew’s case, incarcerated in Broadmeadow with borderline schizophrenia caused, in his parents’ view, by smoking marijuana.

Matthew had been a perfect child—weren’t they always?—a keen footballer and a grade-six flautist, popular at school, plucky but caring, top of the class. It was a “loving family,” churchgoing, of course, in which an unspecified but definite set of values had been instilled in Matthew and his younger sister. So far, so numbingly predictable: such an obvious setup for the fall that, inevitably, would come.

And so it did : bad influences, peer-group drug-taking, trouble with the police, behavior and control issues, eating disorder, self-harming, unhealthy obsessions, particularly with Mr. Toppit. It was “a regrettable coincidence” with “unfortunate consequences” that Rachel had been at Broadmeadow at the same time as Matthew: she “fed” those obsessions; he had become “withdrawn.” It was here that the paper’s lawyers had clearly got out their pencils: a sexual relationship was “alleged” to have started between them, instigated, of course, by her. I would have liked to tell the parents that he should have been so lucky. He was probably gay. He had, after all, told me he had fucked Toby
Luttrell. Anyway, they were praying for him, praying for a return to the boy whose ambition, once upon a time, was to be a fireman, who was happiest when he was flying his kite, the boy who might once have baked forty separate muffins for his mother’s birthday and put a candle on each. That was what I loved about Rachel: she would never have done that in a million years.

By then, the police had been in touch with us. They couldn’t have behaved more courteously: they telephoned Martha to say they had interviewed Matthew Sumner and he had made a statement she might care to see. Would she be able to present herself at the main police station in Guildford? No, she wouldn’t. Why couldn’t they put it in the post? Politely, they informed her that it was not “policy” to release confidential statements. Grumpily, she told them that I would have to do it.

They were very nice at the police station. They gave me tea and biscuits and put me in a little room with a table and chair. A file was waiting for me with the statement in it, ready for me to read.

INTERVIEW BETWEEN DC JANE CLARK AND MATTHEW SUMNER. ALSO PRESENT: DR. DAVID FORD (SUBJECT’S GP)

INTERVIEW COMMENCED 3.05 P.M., 24 AUGUST 1995

DC JANE CLARK
: What were your intentions in leaving Broadmeadow Clinic?

MATTHEW SUMNER
: [
inaudible
]

CLARK
: I’m sorry, Matthew. Could you please speak up?

SUMNER
: To find him.

CLARK
: To find who?

SUMNER
: Why do you want to know?

CLARK
: We are trying to establish the circumstances of your and Miss Hayman’s leaving Broadmeadow Clinic.

SUMNER
: We were going to find him.

CLARK
: To find who?

SUMNER
: Someone.

CLARK
: Were you on medication?

SUMNER
: I stopped taking the pills. They made me sleepy.

CLARK
: Are you on medication now?

DR. DAVID FORD
: [
interrupting
] Yes, he is.

CLARK
: Was Miss Hayman on medication?

SUMNER
: She tried to score in Croydon.

CLARK
: Is that the person you were trying to find? A drug dealer?

SUMNER
: [
laughs
]

CLARK
: Then who was it?

SUMNER
: I don’t want to say his name.

CLARK
: Will you write it down?

RECORDING PAUSED 3.12 P.M.
RECORDING RESTARTED 3.15 P.M
.

CLARK
: May I say his name?

SUMNER
: If you want to.

CLARK
: Why did you want to find Mr. Toppit?

SUMNER
: He came to Broadmeadow. I think I saw him. I think he had been there.

CLARK
: Did Miss Hayman see him?

SUMNER
: No. I told her, though. I told her we had to find him. He had gone.

CLARK
: Where had he gone?

SUMNER
: I can’t tell you. He’ll be angry.

CLARK
: Did Miss Hayman want to find him?

SUMNER
: She had to. I told her she had to.

CLARK
: Was that when you decided to leave?

SUMNER
: She wasn’t talking then. She didn’t talk to people, but she talked to me. She knew she had to come.

CLARK
: Why did you want her to come with you?

SUMNER
: I wanted us to be like blood brothers. I wanted us to cut ourselves and mix our blood. I’ve cut myself before. [
Holds up arms and shows scars
.] She was my best friend.

CLARK
: Were you having sexual relations?

SUMNER
: [
inaudible
]

CLARK
: Was she your girlfriend?

SUMNER
: She wanted to. I think she wanted to. She was intense. She frightened me. I didn’t like it when she didn’t talk.

CLARK
: Where do you think Miss Hayman is now?

SUMNER
: I need to find her.

CLARK
: Do you know where she might be?

SUMNER
: She wanted to go to Lindisfarne. She said we would be safe because of the causeway and the tides.

CLARK
: Is that where you think Mr. Toppit is?

SUMNER
: [
becomes visibly upset
] No. No. I said we had to find him. He wouldn’t be there. I tried to make her understand. She [
inaudible
]

FORD
: I think we’d better stop now.

INTERVIEW TERMINATED 3.34 P.M
.

It was a long way to go for something so short. Within five minutes I had finished. I hadn’t even touched the tea. I spoke to Jane Clark on the way out. She said they had alerted the Northumbria
Police about Lindisfarne. I knew Rachel wouldn’t go there, but I didn’t tell her that. Then, delving into her handbag, she asked if I would autograph one of the books for her children. On the train back from Guildford, I locked myself into the lavatory and cried. It was just a one-off thing. I wouldn’t be doing it again.

Two days later, despite being under what they called “increased surveillance,” Matthew Sumner vanished once again from Broadmeadow. Well, it wasn’t a prison. His parents were reported to be considering legal action.

I had some holiday left. The publishing house where I worked—not the Carter Press—offered to put it down as compassionate leave. I said no. It wasn’t time for that yet. I called Martha and said I would come to Linton for a few days.

“Are you sure?” she said, as if it was the most extraordinary notion.

“You might like the company.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you. It’s so hot here. You’ll be bored.”

“I’d like to.”

“You’ll have to look after yourself. I can’t do any cooking.”

She was right. It was hot. It had been hot all summer. The garden was parched and tired and there were great brown patches on the lawn. The woods behind were a dull green, as if they’d been covered with a fine layer of dust. Inside the house it was dry and musty. All the windows were closed and most of the curtains, as usual, were drawn. Martha didn’t want the sunlight to fade the pictures. It was silent when I let myself in. I called Martha, but there was no answer. When I went into the sitting room, I could see her in the far corner on her hands and knees.

“One of our ashtrays is missing,” she said. “You’ve got to be careful. It’s dry as a tinderbox here.”

I wasn’t the one who took sleeping pills and smoked in bed. “There’s one,” I said, pointing at the table.

“I know that’s there. There’s another. I might have knocked it onto the floor. Help me look.”

I hadn’t seen Martha for a while, although I’d talked to her quite a lot recently because of the Rachel stuff. She seemed older. Her hair had been pinned up but it was collapsing.

“I told the TV people no,” she said. “You didn’t want to do it, did you?”

“Not really.” They had done an item on the local news about Rachel going missing and had asked Martha if she wanted to make an appeal for people who might have seen her to come forward.

“I suppose it’s August,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “Nothing happens in August. Your clothes, baby—don’t you have to dress properly for work? Your hair’s too short.”

“I’m not
at
work.”

“Just because they haven’t got enough to fill the news I don’t know why they expect us to sort it out for them.”

“I went to Guildford.”