That Summer He Died (3 page)

He’d come to recognise them as memory, not reality. And finally, as he’d come to believe the lies he’d taken to telling others – about how he’d spent his gap year between school and university staying with a relation and writing a novel that he’d never managed to find a publisher for – he’d stopped thinking at all about what had really happened.

He’d taught himself to forget.

Ignore something long enough and it will cease to exist. That had become his philosophy, his survival mantra. And that’s what would keep him sane now. And he wasn’t about to go changing it just because Norm thought there was a good story to be found.

Don’t ever look back.

Norm could find someone else to cover Daniel Thompson’s murder, someone for whom it would just be another job and a jaunt to the coast rolled into one.

Norm could send some other investigative journalist down, who wasn’t going to find himself investigating his own past.

James got up and pulled on his coat, collected the bag containing his research on Headley and his laptop.

Bury yourself in your work, he told himself. Bury yourself so deep you can’t see out any more.

*

As James walked down the short hallway which led to the front door of his flat, he noticed the answerphone’s red eye winking at him.

He checked his watch: plenty of time before he had to be in the office. And, after the way things had gone yesterday, he doubted if Norm was going to begrudge him a lie-in. He picked up a pen from the table, poised it over the notepad and pressed play.

‘Hi, gorgeous,’ Lucy’s voice crackled out of the speaker. ‘If you’re there, pick up. Hello? Hell-o? I’m waiting. . .’ There was a five-second pause, during which he could hear her breathing. ‘Guess I’ve missed you. Sorry. Didn’t think you were leaving for Heathrow till later. Must’ve been wrong. Whatever. Shit.’ Another pause. ‘Oh, well, you’ll be back when you hear this, so I’ve probably missed you more than I should by now. And I’ve probably been texting you or Skyping you insanely.’

James smiled. They’d done all that. And more than once.

‘And I hope you had a good time and didn’t get too freaked out,’ Lucy’s voice continued.

Another smile. Jeez, this girl could talk for England.

‘And I hope you found time to have some fun, too. And. . . and call me. Give me a call and let’s fix up a time to get together. Just give me a call. . .’

The machine clicked on to another message. His best friend David this time: ‘Hi, James. It’s me. You’re in LA, so I thought I’d call you in London. Logical, huh? Just a cheapskate, really. I can’t be arsed to pay the call charges. And you never check your bloody email. Anyway, it’s about my birthday. And you’d better pick me up a present in duty free. . .Anyway, the birthday. The big two six. I’ve hired out Faust. Friday after you get back. Bring the delightful Miss Lucy Skinner. If that’s still on, yeah? If she’s still your girl. . . ha, ha. Seriously, though. Do what you gotta do. She’s nice, really. I’m impressed. Too good for you, of course, but who isn’t? Only kidding. But if she’s history, then bring whoever. Even better, bring no one and have fun. Just make sure you bring yourself. If you don’t show, you die, my friend. . . Oh, yeah, and enjoy LA, you lucky. . .’

The message crackled out. Then came an automated one, telling him he’d won some contest, which was probably a scam. Then came a voice he didn’t recognise.

‘Hello. My name’s Adam McCullock. This is a message for Mister James Sawday. I apologise for calling you at home, but I’ve had no reply to the two letters I’ve sent to you. . .’

James looked away from the pad to the letterbox on the inside of the front door. He’d forgotten to check it. The whites and browns of envelopes, most of them sure to be bills, were visible through the wire mesh.

‘. . . I’d be grateful if you could call me once you’ve had time to digest the contents of my first letter. I have something to tell you which will be to your advantage. Oh, and if my letter has failed to reach you, then please telephone me on. . .’

James finished jotting down the number and stared at the name it lay next to on the pad. Adam McCullock. James had never heard of him. And he didn’t know James either, by the sound of it. Mr James Sawday. No one called him that except for his bank manager when he called up to inform James he’d broken his overdraft limit again. And, though James referred to his bank manager by a variety of colourful names, McCullock wasn’t one of them.

James ripped through the mail: bills and junk, until he finally got to two letters in expensive-looking, crisp white envelopes. The first he opened was from Adam McCullock, referring to the previous letter James had failed to respond to.

He opened that letter now and read what McCullock had written:

Dear Mr Sawday,

Re: Estate of Alan L’Anson deceased

Under the terms of a will made by the above individual, we were appointed executors to the Estate. We have completed an oath for executors and have obtained a Grant of Probate and are therefore entitled to administer the Estate of the deceased. Under the terms of the will, you are the sole beneficiary. In accordance with our obligations as executors, we were required to advertise for information of your whereabouts in a newspaper circulating in the area where you were last heard of. Following a response to our advert in both the print and digital versions of
The Times
, a print copy of which I enclose for your ease of reference, we were informed that you are currently residing at the above address.

The administration expenses and debts have now been settled, an account of which is available for inspection at our offices. We are now in a position to make distributions to you as sole beneficiary in respect of your entitlement under the will.

Your entitlement consists of the residue of the Estate, including title to the property of Alan l’Anson. In order for you to obtain title to all real and personal property, it will be necessary for you to attend these offices to complete the necessary paperwork and other formalities.

In this regard, I should be grateful if you would contact me on the above telephone number to arrange an appointment.

Yours sincerely,

Adam McCullock

Partner

James heard nothing but the rush of his own breathing as he read the letter again. Then he turned from the table and walked through to his bedroom where he crawled on to the bed, the letter still clasped in his hand.

There were no tears, but now he remembered it all. How he had felt when he was eighteen. And how it had started. With darkness. How darkness had been there to greet him, as the train finally pulled into Grancombe station and his summer there had begun.

It was already dark when the train slowed. James looked up from the patch of worn carpet between his feet, pushed his fringe away from his eyes and watched as the other passengers in the carriage shuffled along the aisle towards the exit.

The concertina of bodies squashed to a halt by the doorway – a flesh-and-blood motorway pile-up – as a fat man at the front simultaneously attempted to keep his three hyperactive children under control and wrestle a bag down from the luggage rack.

James pulled his sleeve over his palm and mimicked a windscreen wiper, rubbing a clear arc across the grime of the window. Out on the dimly lit platform other passengers were already busily commandeering trolleys and studying the maps on the backs of their holiday brochures.

James remained in his seat. Keep it slow. Float downstream. Enjoy the scene.

No point in rushing. Even excluding the congestion in the aisle, the train wasn’t going anywhere. The tracks stopped here. Beyond them lay Grancombe. And beyond Grancombe, nothing but the sea.

James checked his watch: just gone ten. The train had got here early. Alan wasn’t due to meet him for another ten minutes. If he turned up at all, that was.

And there was no guarantee of that.

*

Their phone conversation the previous afternoon had left James feeling awkward.

Understatement. It had left him feeling paranoid, like he’d perpetrated the mental equivalent of breaking and entering, kicking the door down on Alan’s personal space and walking dog shit all over his new carpet.

Prior to the call, making it had seemed like a good idea, and had continued to seem so, right up to the point when the stilted pleasantries had ended and he’d suggested to Alan that maybe it would be a good thing if he came down to visit him.

‘Why?’ Alan’s voice, monotone and incommunicative, had eventually come back. ‘Why would you want to stay here with me?’

The fact that Alan had stopped calling James these last six months. . .the fact he’d not returned any of his calls. . .it all fitted now. He’d changed, the same way James had changed after his parents had died. Of course he’s changed, James thought then. Because how could he not have? How could he possibly have stayed the same after what had happened to Monique?

‘I’m sorry,’ James said. ‘Let’s just forget I ever––’

‘I didn’t say that. I asked you why.’

Why? James knew why. There was an army of becauses queuing up to answer that question. Because he wanted out of London. Because he couldn’t stand staying in this flat on his own a minute longer, sensing its walls closing in around him like an iron maiden. Because it had been his parents’ London base and they’d died in a car crash two years ago, and no matter how many nights James spent here, he still woke up hoping they’d still be here when he woke up. And because Alan was a writer. Because James wanted to write, too. Because Alan was his only living relative. Because he’d never really got to know him. And because James didn’t have anyone else. And neither did Alan. Not any more.

But what was the point of voicing any of this? Alan wanted to be left alone.

‘I’ll go now,’ James said.

‘No.’

The word was like the opening of a door leading out of a dark cellar. The way it was said: with a beat of emotion, of engagement. James heard the flick of a lighter at the other end of the line and the inverted sigh of a cigarette being drawn on.

‘Tell me what time your train gets in,’ Alan said. ‘I’ll pick you up.’

As James put the phone down and stared at the receiver, he felt his earlier paranoia blossom and bloom. Maybe his friends had been right. Maybe he should have listened to them when they’d told him that going down to spend the summer with his uncle was the worst idea he’d ever had.

You what? Do what? What for? they’d said. And he could see their point. Here they all were, fresh out of school, most of them working in London to save up enough money to go to Asia, or America, or just about anywhere with broader horizons than the boarding school they’d been stuck in for the last five years.

And here James was, already sorted in what had once been his parents’ London flat but was now his, with its mortgage fully paid off by their life insurance, just the same as the mortgage on their main country home, which another family was now renting until James decided whether to sell it or not.

Oh, yes, he could understand his friends’ confusion. He had enough money not to need to work. He could have got his jabs and malaria pills and flown straight to Vietnam, or Nepal or India, and told his friends he’d meet them there.

Or he could have done what he’d been telling them he’d do since he’d turned thirteen. He could have become a writer, or journalist, or blogger, for real. He could have gone and worked for free on an e-zine, or even started on the novel he’d told everyone he’d got planned out – though, in truth, it was little more than a mish-mash of ideas culled from the short stories he’d got into the habit of writing at school.

But he hadn’t. He’d done nothing. Instead he’d got drunk. He’d gone out. He’d got into fights. Or he’d stayed home. He’d got high. He’d lain in bed and smoked. He’d tried to write down stories again, things that had nothing to do with his life. But something had been missing. They’d not transported him the way they’d done at school. They’d gone nowhere. They’d made no sense. And when he’d read them through in the morning, it had felt like it hadn’t been him who’d written them at all.

In the drunken, stoned hazes he’d more and more frequently found himself drifting into, he’d begun repeatedly picturing his mother and father, with blood running down their faces and shards of metal sticking into their skin.

He’d taken to fantasising about being there with them, imagining how they must have looked and how he would have looked if he’d been there on that day, instead of being safe at school.

He’d pictured himself in the back of that crumpled car, with his limbs twisted and snapped just like theirs, with his eyes wide open and blank and dead.

And this was the real reason he’d called Uncle Alan. Because he knew he was trapped here and he was going in circles, like a crab with a missing leg and the tide coming in.

This last week or two, an alarm had started screeching inside him during those dry-mouthed, gluey-eyed stabbings of self-hatred he suffered waking drunk again in the middle of the night, when he’d wish himself sober and wished himself dead.

He knew he couldn’t go on like this. Because if he did, he would soon cease to go on at all.

*

A glance down the corridor of the train carriage told James it was just about clear; the last passenger was filing through the door. He downed the remains of his Coke and crumpled the can up, first squeezing its centre in his fist, then resting it on the fold-down table on the back of the seat in front of him and pushing down on its top with his palm, crushing it flat.

He remembered how he’d watched someone do that when he’d been a little kid and had then attempted to copy the action himself. He hadn’t been able to. Too weak.

But that was then. He’d grown stronger since, had muscled up. Mostly these last two years since his parents had died. Before he’d hit this current rut, before he’d started smoking so much, back at school, he’d taken to working out like it had been an end in itself. Instead of dope, he’d junked out on the endorphins exercise had released in his body. And the grief counsellor had been right: it had helped occupy his mind, had given him something to focus on, had stopped him imagining the crash.