The Beauty of the End (23 page)

44

R
yder's pursuit of me, then Bea's lack of faith, Will's mocking contempt spark an awakening moment of agonizing clarity. One in which my eyes are forced open and the brightest torch is shone into the dusty corners of my life, illuminating my failed career and broken relationships, searing them into my mind. But also, there's my lack of kindness to myself, so that in the most bizarre way, it's a gift. A moment I know I have to cling to. Have to see for what it is and face head-on, so that I'm free. That same evening, one that because of my own sea change feels weeks, even months, later, I arrange to meet Bea a few miles out of Tonbridge at a village pub, a place with trees and empty space, where the cool air is soothing and the weight of the day starts to lift.

“I'm so sorry.” Bea hugs me tight, then sits on the bench beside me.

“Don't be. You were great. Couldn't have timed it better.” I pour her a glass of wine from the bottle I've already bought, which I won't touch.

“Thank you.” Bea takes it, then looks ashamed. “For a while, I'll be honest, Noah, I didn't believe you. God, Will is such a bastard. I checked out the Fairview Medical Centre.”

“You did? I couldn't get anywhere. I was going to drive over there, until Will did his level best to have me arrested. What did you find out?”

“There wasn't really anything online,” Bea says thoughtfully. “So I went there. You know how on the website there were photos of that big, white house? Well, the real number 78 is a redbrick semi, rented out to students, one of whom just happened to be coming out as I walked past. Owned by a rich surgeon bloke, was what he said. Described Will's car to a tee.”

‘He used the house as a safe place for the questionnaires to be sent to. He couldn't have used the hospital, could he? Or his home address? Someone might have linked them to him.' I'm staggered at the lengths he's gone to.

‘And the website was there, just in case anyone checked,' Bea says slowly.

“You did well,” I tell her. “That was quite brave. You might have run into anyone.” Meaning Will, of course.

Bea shrugs. “When you've dealt with a bastard like my ex, it changes your perspective on a lot of things. Did he kill Norton, do you think? Will? And set April up?”

“It looks like it. Then when I discovered what he was up to, he tried to pin it on me.” I'm thoughtful. “He's done a lot of that. I think what happened was when April found out that Will was selecting his patients by unethical means, she challenged him. I don't think it was ever about what Norton did all those years ago. Will just used him.”

Pausing, because I'm guessing, because there's still no proof—not yet. Contemplating how Will could have been so cruel as to stir up Norton when he knew what the man had done to April. “But what doesn't make sense was if Will was somehow manipulating April out of the way and he was even prepared to kill someone, why not her? How come she's still alive?”

Bea looks just as puzzled.

I'm trying to work it out as I speak. “He met up with April, the first time. Somehow managed to take her phone and a glove, then later, engineered the meeting between April and Norton in the North Star, all the while waiting for Norton to leave. Then after he'd killed him, he planted the phone and one of her gloves. He really is a bastard. But for reasons he's not saying, he didn't want April dead—just out of the way.” I pause, distracted, because the revelation is still so new. “I can't believe she has a daughter.”

Bea smiles sadly. “Just for a moment, I thought I was looking at April's ghost. She's so like her, Noah. Her eyes, that hair . . . It was Ella who came up with proof. He'd forced April to sign a document, years ago, giving him custody of her. It's why April told me she'd had a miscarriage.”

“She must have told anyone who asked the same thing.” I frown.

“I didn't see her so much around that time.” Bea's voice is sober. “If only I had. Imagine her dealing with Will on her own. Then after, if April had ever tried to contact Ella, he'd have taken her to court.”

What's incredible, too, is that Will thought he could get away with this. But then he had, for all this time, using his own daughter to get at April, and then Norton to frame April.

“He wanted her out of the way because she knew too much,” I say slowly, as it starts to fall into place. “I'm convinced he's been altering her meds, Bea. He wasn't her consultant, but he was often in her room.”

“Surely not.” Bea looks horrified.

“He probably thought he could pin it on someone else. That's Will through and through.”

Bea's eyes are sad. “It must have tormented April, not being able to contact Ella. But when she found out what he was up to at the hospital, why didn't she go to the police?”

“I don't know.” It's another question I don't have the answer for. Then I have to tell her, “You need to tell me about my baby, Bea.”

She nods. “I've been thinking that, too. Several times, April did want to tell you, then just couldn't. I suppose in the end, there didn't seem any point.” Bea looks straight at me. “His name was Theo.”

Theo. I think of the photo I took from April's house.

“He was beautiful, Noah.” Bea sighs. “When April found out she was pregnant, she was devastated at first. She'd just got settled with her flat, her job. It represented hope for a better kind of future, she said. Then, suddenly . . . Well, you can imagine how she felt. After all she'd already been through . . .

“She changed her mind, though.” Bea goes on. “As the pregnancy went on, she decided she was going to give this baby everything she'd never had—love, a safe home. The future. When you saw her that time, in London, she almost told you; then at the last minute, she couldn't do it. She thought you'd leave your course. It would ruin your life.”

I lean forward, resting my chin in my hands. She was right. I would have left school without a backward glance. “It wasn't her choice to make, was it?”

“No.” Bea pauses. “Anyway, a few months later, Theo was born.”

“My mother's name was Theodora.” Bea nods. “I know. April told me. She didn't really know your mother, but it was a small way of connecting the baby to you. April juggled work with looking after him; I babysat when I could. At one point, I lived there. It was hard, but for those months, it was as though we were in another, totally different world. A baby changes how you look at everything. . . .” Her eyes sparkle sadly as she remembers. “We would take him for walks, noticing the flowers or the birds. We'd laugh when he laughed. He had this great laugh, like bubbles of sunlight, April always said.”

All the time she's been talking, there's been a light in her eyes, but then it dies away.

“But then it changed. It was April who noticed. It was when he got more active. He got tired so easily. His skin was really pale and sometimes his lips were blue. There were other signs. She took him to her doctor—her useless doctor—who brushed her off and sent her away. He should have been fired, because of another thing. You wouldn't believe it now, but twenty years ago, in some parts there was still a stigma attached to being an unmarried mother.”

Her words strike a chord, filling me with guilt, as I imagine April with Theo, as if being alone wasn't hard enough, having to field the blows of judgment and condemnation of people who didn't know better, as if it were her choice.

“Her doctor was old school. April said he used to treat her with contempt. . . .”

Bea shakes her head, her face growing distant. Then she continues. “Talking about it brings it all back. We knew something was terribly wrong, but no one could tell us what. April brought Theo home. We watched him really closely but it was getting worse. Eventually she got him to a different doctor, who diagnosed a heart defect.”

I remember Daisy Rubinstein, her harrowing account of watching her baby lose his life. Suddenly I feel sick.

“Go on,” I say quietly.

Bea's face is sober. “Theo went downhill quickly. They took him in for surgery. They told us he'd need several operations, and even then, they might not be able to completely cure him. The first one went well enough, but after the second . . . He started having seizures. The first time, April was alone with him. She took him to hospital. They gave her drugs for him, but there wasn't anything else they could do. I remember them coming home—I'd just got back from work. Both of them were exhausted, Theo crying and crying. It was grim. She took as much time off as she could, then stopped working altogether so that she could care for him.

“It was horrible, Noah. Theo was so weak, further surgery wasn't an option, but we were told without it, he didn't have long. It was so hard to watch him, fighting to move, even to breathe. Then one night, he started crying.”

Bea's eyes are wet with tears. “I swear I've never heard anything so terrible. There was no way to comfort him. Will came round now and then, but he was a student. April begged him to help that night, but there was nothing he could do. It seemed everything we did made it worse. The effort of crying meant Theo was exhausting himself. He'd close his eyes and his little chest would gradually slow; but then he'd wake up and it would start all over again. . . .”

Bea breaks off. When she continues, her voice is wavering. “Theo died not long after that. I wasn't there. I had to go to work, but I was glad that if he wasn't going to get better, at least it was over.”

All the time she's been speaking, I've been numb. Then suddenly the realization hits me—this is my child she's talking about,
mine and April's baby
—and I feel a searing pain, deep inside, of raw flesh being ripped open and human suffering exposed.

“She was distraught. Will signed the death certificate. . . .” I try to listen, but Bea's voice seems to come from far away. As I try to focus through the hot tears that fill my eyes, she pauses. “I was never sure why she called him. But everything was so surreal then, so completely devastating, I didn't question it. Then after, I didn't want to bring the subject up.”

She's thoughtful. “You know how a child who loses its parents is an orphan? There's no word for a parent who loses a child.”

Bea goes on. “It was weeks later, because April couldn't bear to do it, but we took his ashes to one of her favorite places. She insisted we go to the top of Reynard's Hill. I remember the fog. So thick you could barely see in front of you.”

She pauses, then looks me in the eye. “You must remember, Noah. We saw you.”

45

 

B
y now in my second year of university, I'd resented the trip back to Musgrove for my father's fiftieth birthday. It was January, and after spending Christmas at home, I was impatient to be back among my friends. It didn't help that I knew what the occasion would be—dull people, the same boring food my mother produced for every gathering—but I knew in my sinking heart, I had to be there.

It was a particularly bleak January, I thought, as I stepped off the train into deadly suburbia. Grey but not frozen, the hills shrouded in mist, with that biting damp that chilled you through. Weather for cozy pubs and lively student bars, not my parents' front room full of my mother's canapes and a whole bunch of neighbors I didn't really have anything to say to, but here I was anyway.

I'd like to say that I'd been taken by surprise—that it had been a great day. Fun, even. It wasn't. A dozen times I was asked how I was getting on at school, while Mr. Selway who lived across the road droned on about the dent in his car and my mother flitted around offering trays of her dreary food. As soon as people started leaving, I seized my opportunity.

“I said I'd meet Will,” I told my mother's disappointed face. “I won't be long.”

It was a lie, of course. I'd no idea whether Will was at home. Even if he was, I had no intention of seeing him. I'd recently taken up smoking and my body was craving its fix. I stopped at the news stand to buy cigarettes from a disapproving Mr. McKenna, wondering why just because someone had known you forever, they felt they had the right to judge you. Then after lighting up, I walked.

I suppose I walked the streets of my old life. I passed Will's family's house, the darkness through the half-drawn curtains telling me no one was home, then the North Star, which beckoned me in. Then after buying a pint, not unexpectedly I found myself thinking of April.

As I sat at a table in the corner, I knew I was over the indignity of being unceremoniously dumped, but I couldn't help wondering how my life would be if she hadn't written that letter, if I'd followed her and gone to work in London. Would we have stayed together?

I decided we probably would, just as the door swung open and in they came.

At first, I couldn't move, just felt familiar embarrassment engulf me and the rush of heat to my cheeks, as I watched them unbutton their coats, their hair obviously damp from the mist.

I saw Bea say something to April, then April shake her head. As she spoke again, Bea's hand went to April's arm. I waited for one of them to smile, or laugh loudly the way they often did together, but they were oddly subdued.

It was as Bea went to the bar, I got up and made my way over.

“Hi. April?” Her back was toward me, and as I spoke, I would have sworn she jumped.

She spun round. “Noah! What a surprise!” She glanced around for Bea, but not before I noticed the forced brightness in her voice and the agitation she was trying to hide.

“How are you?”

“Good.” She smiled, only that was forced, too, not reaching her eyes, as Bea's voice came from behind me.

“Noah?”

“Hi, Bea. What are the chances?” I couldn't think what else to say.

“What a coincidence.” But Bea's voice, too, lacked its characteristic brightness.

Then April looked across at Bea. I couldn't see what passed between them before she forced another smile. “I thought you'd be back at uni.”

“A dutiful visit only for my father's birthday.” I raised my eyebrows. “You're the last people I expected to see here.”

It was true. As far as I knew, April was still in London.

“We came back to see my mother,” Bea said unexpectedly. “Didn't we, April?”

Again, I thought I saw a hint of something between them, but it vanished. I thought nothing more of it, because visiting Bea's mother seemed perfectly reasonable.

We'd sat together for a while, the three of us, talking with awkward self-consciousness, about how we couldn't wait to get away from Musgrove back to our respective homes. How it was the same small place it always had been. Then before I knew it, I'd finished my pint, and in the absence of any suggestion I should stay, I got up and walked away.