Uphill All the Way (29 page)

She laughed. 'Mind your own bloody business! The days when who I slept with was your concern are long gone! Very long gone, you ridiculous arse!' She turned to glance at Adam, to find that he had lifted his head, and was staring at her.

'I don't like the way he hangs around,' Tom persisted, obstinately.

Adam snapped the paper shut. 'I was just thinking the same about you.'

With an exasperated tut, Judith shoved past Tom and yanked open the door. 'Well, I like him hanging around,' she snapped. 'Good night, Tom.'

On Thursday, she accompanied Adam to shoot pix of Podraig Mahoney, a man who kept losing his short-term memory and had to be constantly reminded of his surname. He was highly reliant on his dark-eyed wife, Loraine, because if he left the house for too long alone, he forgot his route home.

He treated his highly unusual and frustrating condition with humour, and had to be constantly reminded not to smile into camera, as the magazine wanted a pensive mood to the piece.

By the time the shoot was over, Podraig had to confess that he'd forgotten why it had happened at all.

Helplessly, he smiled at his wife. 'You'll have to remind me. I forgot to write it down.'

Seated at Adam's computer, downloading the pix into a fresh folder ready for Adam to select his submissions to the commissioning magazine, Judith wondered how often Podraig asked his wife to be his memory, and how often his wife patiently complied. How strong love had to be to withstand the constant drip of a frustration like that.

Adam concentrated silently on his own work. He'd been almost morose since Tom's visit.

From her pocket, Judith's mobile began to ring, vibrating disconcertingly against her hipbone. An unknown number flashed up on the screen.

But the voice that went with it was achingly familiar. 'Hey, Mum.'

She swallowed. A rush of love surged through her, making her hot and dizzy, and any resentment that he'd confided more in Wilma than in her, evaporated.

'Mum? It's me.'

'Hello darling,' she managed. Her voice cracked. She was aware of Adam looking up suddenly, a smile clearing his faint frown lines. She closed her eyes the better just to listen to the sound of Kieran's voice as he told her a little about the house they rented, 'Red bricks, black roof, white windows. Nowhere to park.' And his job, 'I left the one in Brinham without working my notice, so they wouldn't give me a reference. So I'm working in a shop, now, but it's cool. I'll be able to work my way up. They've already put me in charge of ordering stuff for the CD section.'

'That's wonderful.' She smiled. Her heart expanded in relief. He had a roof over his head and a way of keeping it there.

'So, I've rung to ask a favour.' Kieran cleared his throat awkwardly. 'You know... at the cemetery? We ordered this little - ' He cleared his throat again.

She said it for him. 'The stone tablet? For Aaron?'

She heard him take a couple of deep breaths. They whooshed down the line. 'Yeah. It's supposed to be in place by now. We were wondering... could you ask Adam to take a digital photo of it and e-mail it to us?
Bethan's a bit stressy about whether it's been done right, so when we've seen it we'll be cool.' His voice became gruffer. 'Well, we might be upset, but we want to see it. We need to.'

Without waiting for the conversation to be over, she passed the request on to Adam.

'Tomorrow, as soon as the cemetery opens,' he promised. 'The light will be pretty decent, this rain's due to pass over tonight.'

The cemetery was silent apart from the breeze through the naked trees and cautious, end-of-winter birdsong. Adam's camera bag containing the black Nikon swung from his shoulder as he walked at Judith's side.

The stone was easy to locate; palest grey veined marble with gold lettering, set into the grass. Adam took overhead shots so that Kieran and Bethan would be able to read the inscription,
Aaron McAllister Sutherland
, and of Judith laying white roses beside it, her hair blowing back from her face.

Crouching, touching the engraved inscription, the bleak, single date that reflected the baby's failure to draw breath, Judith felt claws of pain around her heart. She glanced up at the weedy, watery English winter sun, and wondered how it could possibly be the same that beat on Malta.

Adam helped her to her feet. 'Let's go back and send the pictures straight away.' He kept her hand all the way back to the car. Adam knew exactly when she needed these little expressions of support. She might get a bit of silent disapproval from him where Tom was concerned, but he forgot that the instant she needed him.

Next day, it was Adam who found a message from Kieran in his inbox.
Really cool. Thanx mate. Tell Mum we're really, really ok, don't think she believes me. Thx again. Means a lot. K&B

Reading the mail for the fourth time when she should be typing invoices, Judith mused, 'It sounds as if he's truly growing up. As if they both are.'

Adam nodded as he sucked out one of his equipment cases with the brush on the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner. He didn't like dust on his equipment. 'Tough breaks tend to chase away immaturity.'

She clicked to print out the invoice she was working on, and began a fresh one. 'I think they'll be OK. It's still hard to accept that Kieran's chosen not to confide where he's living, and I expect Tom's still livid. But if a twenty-two-year-old decides to resign from his job, pack his clothes and leave, there isn't very much you can do about it. There isn't much you can do about a seventeen-year-old girl doing the same thing, the Sutherlands have discovered.' She looked outside to where rain had begun to fall in a cold, heavy curtain. Again. 'It's time for me to go back to Malta.'

Adam fitted the crevice nozzle to clean out the smallest compartments where the brush wouldn't reach. When all was satisfactorily dust-free, he switched off the vacuum, wound up the flex, and stowed it in the cupboard under the stairs.

He came back into the room, and picked up the diary with the navy-blue cover.

'I can clear the last week of April and the first week of May,' he observed, after quickly flipping through. It wasn't a question or a hint, just a statement of a fact she could, or not, take advantage of. He shut the book with a snap.

She smiled to herself as her rapid fingers opened another invoice template. 'I'll ask Richard if we can stay with him.'

Chapter Twenty-six

Judith stood, motionless in the soft darkness, and listened.

The crickets, the
werzieq,
were making their endless background buzz. Sliema Creek lapped at the edge of the pavement, a gentle noise that was soothing and comforting, and the occasional car whooshed past between the silent shops and the broad pavement where she stood, headlight reflections wheeling over those of streetlights that lay across the black water like golden scribbles.

The smooth railings that edged the harbour were cool beneath her hands. She breathed in salt water and boat oil, pine trees and dust, listening to the pull and suck of the water, feeling the utter peace.

Quiet footsteps made her turn.

Hands stuffed in the pockets of his black canvas jacket, Adam had the creased appearance of someone who'd been woken from a nap. 'Are you safe out here at two in the morning?'

She smiled at his disgruntled air. 'Probably. There's not much crime here - not that I have any valuables on me - and any self-respecting Romeo would be looking for someone younger.'

'Good thinking,' he yawned. 'And maybe even Romeos are put off by madwomen who hang around alone in the dark.'

'I like the dark.' A long, slow, even breath, as she inhaled the essence of Malta.

He stifled another wrenching yawn.

'Go to bed,' she suggested. 'Erminia's given you a lovely room, and she's wonderfully hospitable. Your sheets will be scented with lavender, your pillows plump and inviting.'

Groaning longingly, he leant his forearms on the rail and studied a rowing boat that rocked beside a faded red buoy. 'Richard made me come out to look after you.'

'Don't say he's waiting up for me, too!'

He yawned again, saying sourly, 'Not now I'm out here.'

Her laugh was loud in the still air. As he didn't seem inclined to leave her to a private wallow in the Maltese atmosphere, she decided to illuminate his surroundings for him, nodding first to a bulk of land across the narrow ribbon of sea. 'This is Manoel Island, here in front of us. It is an island, but only just - it's joined to this road, The Strand, by a bridge. This part of The Strand's called Triq Marina or Marina Street on some maps, but everyone still calls it The Strand.'

She turned to their left. 'Those are the ferryboats; see the little one with
Lowenbrau
on the side? That shuttles all day to-and-from Valletta, there, look. We can go across in the morning. Or stay in Sliema. Whichever you prefer.'

He turned, resting his backside on the rail, regarding her curiously. 'Can we? I thought you had plans? Giorgio's family?'

Slowly, she nodded. She did have plans involving Giorgio's family, of course, wasn't that one of the reasons she'd come? But now she was here, a little rest and relaxation wouldn't hurt. She wanted to show Adam her Malta. 'I'm going to take a couple of days first. I need thinking time.'

He didn't comment that she had had most of the winter to think in, but glanced around with weary interest, as if resigned to the fact that sleep wasn't immediately in the offing. 'So where's Richard's office?'

She pointed down The Strand the other way, towards Ta' Xbiex. 'Just about in sight - see the restaurant with the bright yellow sign? Immediately past that.'

'And your apartment?'

She swung back. 'Behind the ferryboats and the bus stops. Second floor.' The outside of her old home was so familiar, although someone else's home at the moment. She remembered the warmth on the soles of her bare feet when she stepped onto the balcony, the evening she waited for Giorgio but Charlie Galea showed up instead. She shut out the recollection. 'You were supposed to be seeing all this in the morning.'

'Yes, I remember the idea being to go straight to bed after our late flight. I missed the bit where it got changed to wandering about half the night.'

She let her exasperation show. 'Go back to Richard's without me!'

He adjusted his position on the railings and showed her a peeved scowl. 'You are a bloody woman, Jude. At one time if a man put himself out to protect a female she used to damned well let herself be protected! Now he has to be apologetic, in case he offends her. Go on, you carry on with your tour guide bit. I'm sure I can cope indefinitely without sleep.'

Tour guide.

Giorgio, standing at the front of the bus and making all the passengers smile with his easy charm.

She made herself relax. 'If you're going to pout about it, we'll wait till morning.' She took his arm and they crossed the road, turning up the tiny street further up The Strand that led to Richard's house with a courtyard behind. A typically Maltese house of limestone with tiled floors and staircase, a scroll of wrought iron swelling over each window like a belly. On older buildings it would have signified that the building had needed to be defended, the bulge at the bottom to allow a lookout to be kept down the street for enemies. On Richard's house it was an ornamentation Erminia liked to fill with potted red geraniums.

'Look, lizards!' Adam pointed up at the geometric shadows on the pale limestone, legs making right angles against still bodies that ended in long pointed tails.

'Geckos,' she corrected. 'Wall Geckos. You'll see plenty at night, they hang out near a light to eat the insects it attracts. Geckos have shorter, broader bodies than lizards and are dull, like speckled sand. Lizards like to bask in the sunshine and have shiny scales, sometimes a beautiful dark green.'

She let her explanations fade away. Adam was watching her mouth as she spoke.

Geckos aren't that interesting a subject when your onetime lover is looking at your lips with a particularly intent expression that starts the memory of desire uncoiling inside. She reached out. Her fingertips collided with his scarred palm and she let her hand close around his. 'Adam... why don't we sleep together any more?'

He betrayed by only a blink that her bluntness had caught him off guard. 'Self preservation,' he offered, with a quirk of his lips. And he inserted his left hand into the cradle of her fingers to extricate the right as they walked into the lofty, cool interior of Richard's house.

The next three days were a holiday.

With pride in her adopted country, she showed Adam up and down the steep streets of Sliema with the shops packed tightly from corner-to-corner. The following day they drove Richard's car to the beautiful beaches of Paradise Bay and Ghajn Tuffieha, where the sea had never looked so blue, and then the impressive silent city of Mdina in all it's medieval splendour. Despite the fact that it was far from silent as extensive cable laying works were going on, Adam shot so many photos of the carved buildings and narrow streets that he had to use a computer in Richard's office to download the pix and e-mail them home to himself in order to free up his memory cards.