He reached eagerly for his phone but there was no message from Slater, no message from anyone, just another missed call from Tom Deacon. He couldn’t face calling back. He wasn’t ready for more amateur therapy, or any other sort of therapy, come to that. He didn’t want to be told what he was supposed to be thinking or feeling, or what stage of the grieving process he’d reached. Anger suited him fine; it gave him a sense of direction. He certainly didn’t want Tom telling him that he needed to work through it. It seemed to Hugh that there was an essential fraud in the idea that grief was treatable, that by disgorging your most precious and painful thoughts your so-called condition would somehow improve. The idea stemmed from the modern conviction that everything should be fixable; and if it wasn’t, you found someone to sue. Well, there was never going to be a remedy for death and grief, that was for sure. But if you were lucky there was justice and, if you were luckier still, retribution, and the prospect of attaining them was therapy enough for him.
It was different for Charlie. He relied on therapy to stay clean, though Hugh sometimes wondered, probably unfairly, if for an addictive personality like Charlie therapy wasn’t just another form of addiction. Certainly no therapist was going to encourage Charlie to break free, not while Daddy was paying the bills. The one thing Hugh didn’t understand was how the constant revisiting of weaknesses and insecurities was meant to do anything for Charlie’s self-esteem. Wallowing in it, he’d once said to Lizzie: to be told he hadn’t grasped the basis of therapy, how the process helped people to identify and address
issues in their lives. Hugh had enquired mildly if the issues really needed to be identified and addressed weekly at seventy quid a throw, to which Lizzie had argued with unassailable logic that the financial pain was surely preferable to the risk of Charlie going back on drugs.
Charlie wandered in and picked up Lizzie’s phone. He tried switching it on and, having no more success than Hugh, took it off to his room.
Hugh was looking through one of Lizzie’s drier notebooks when Lou came in swiftly and, looping an arm round his shoulder, pressed her cheek against his head. ‘Sorry, Dad.’
He kissed her pale, slender, child’s hand. ‘No, it was my fault,’ he said. ‘Did it all wrong.’
‘There was no right way to tell us, Dad.’
‘I’m not sure about that.’
Straightening up, she said in a no-nonsense voice, ‘Well,
I
am. Now, what can I do? I need something to do.’
‘Well, there’s a load of messages on the answering machine. And the family to call. Could you bear it?’
‘What shall I tell them about the delay?’
He hadn’t thought that far. ‘I don’t know. The truth?’
She shot him a look of dismay. ‘They’d ask all kinds of questions.’
‘Say it’s the coroner then. Say there’s a delay with the inquest.’
‘And Granny? She wants to know when she can come and stay.’
‘Say we’d love to see her at the weekend.’
‘And Aunt Becky? She was talking about coming as well.’
‘No. Tell her . . . tell her there’d be nothing for her to do.’
‘And if she says she’s coming whatever?’
‘Put her on to me,’ Hugh said ominously.
Lou took a long breath as if to prepare herself for the fray, before going into the hall and rewinding the messages. Disembodied voices were still issuing from the answering machine when Charlie came in with some printouts.
‘Here’s the three documents Mum saved that evening,’ he said. ‘And the earlier version of two of them.’
‘Thanks . . .’ Hugh was already skimming the first page. ‘And Charlie? Can you find out what documents Mum had worked on in the previous week or two?’
‘Sure,’ Charlie said, rising to the challenge. ‘So long as none of it’s in the corrupted sector of the hard disk.’
‘Oh. Could it be?’
‘It looks like it’s mainly a couple of programs that got fouled up. So . . . should be okay.’
‘Well, whatever you can find, Charlie.’
‘Sure.’
The first file was labelled ‘CA/Kizito Paul/housing app3.doc’ and was an application letter to a housing association on behalf of a Ugandan asylum seeker and his family, presently in temporary accommodation. The letter was a page and a half long and appeared to be finished. The earlier version showed that Lizzie had made substantial changes. Was she satisfied with the final draft? he wondered. Well, she should have been. It was a well-crafted letter. Charlie’s pencilled note gave the time it was saved as 19.20.
The next document was a report on Lizzie’s campaign to get Gloria James and her son moved away from the Carstairs Estate. The report, which ran to ten pages, was cumulative, starting with Lizzie’s first meeting with Gloria, covering eighteen months of referrals, psychiatric reports, phone calls, communications with local authorities, consultations with Angela Parfitt, and visits to Gloria’s flat. Hugh skimmed quickly through to the last page. The penultimate entry, dated the day of the fire, noted a conversation with a council official which confirmed an offer of a two-bedroomed council flat in the north of the city. The final entry, dated later that day, recorded Lizzie’s phone call to Gloria to give her the good news. What a rewarding moment it must have been for Lizzie after such a long, uphill struggle. He was glad she’d known about it before she died. This thought and the ones that came rushing after it brought
a lump to his throat, a tightness in his chest, a sudden heat behind his eyelids.
I want you back, he told her. I want you back now and for ever.
Well, that’s not possible, is it? You’ll have to manage as best you can. And concentrate, please. Keep going. Don’t miss anything.
But I’m so exhausted, Lizzie. Half the time I’m not sure I’m thinking straight.
In that case you must get more sleep, mustn’t you? Remember what I used to say – it’s no good tossing and turning. You must learn to switch off at night. You must learn to let go.
But night’s the hardest time of all.
All the more reason to let go. I give you permission.
‘Easier said than done,’ he whispered aloud.
He took a quick look at the time. Allowing for traffic he had ten minutes before he had to leave for the coroner’s office. As he started on the printout that Charlie had marked ‘Saved 21.41’ his mobile rang. Picking it up, he saw ‘Tom D’ on the display. He wavered for several seconds before putting the phone back on the table and letting it ring. ‘Sorry, old chum,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘you’ll just have to wait.’ After the allotted five rings the voicemail kicked in and the phone fell silent.
The last file was labelled ‘CA/Jacobs John/request to be sectioned.doc’, and contained exactly what it said on the label, a letter on behalf of a mentally ill man who was asking to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. The letter ran to four paragraphs. Halfway down the second paragraph there was a break in the text preceded by an unfinished sentence:
At this point Mr Jacobs’ case notes were mislaid and
And the doorbell had rung.
Feeling a sudden drag of exhaustion, Hugh went through to the kitchen and made a strong coffee cooled down with a splash of cold water. Having downed it in three gulps, he put his head into the sitting room where Lou was on the phone. He made a
questioning face to ask how things were going and she held out a piece of paper to him. It read
Tom Deacon (2 calls)
. He mimed going out and she nodded.
Pocketing his mobile, he pulled on the new padded jacket Lou had bought for him, grabbed his wallet and car keys and went out into a blustery wind. As he opened the car door his mobile rang. It was Tom. He got into the car and started the engine before answering.
‘Hi, Tom.’
A pause. ‘You’re there, then.’
‘I’m in the car.’ Hugh unreeled his seatbelt, stretching it out to gain length before curving the tongue towards the buckle.
‘I’ve been trying to get you.’
‘I’ve been rather tied up, I’m afraid.’ The metal tongue wouldn’t quite reach the buckle and Hugh yanked at the reel to gain more length.
‘Not trying to avoid me?’
Hugh hesitated, before gently clicking the buckle into place. ‘No, Tom. Just busy.’
‘How’re you doing?’
‘Well, I’m still here. All I can say really. You know how it is.’
‘Got the kids with you?’
‘Not right now, no. They’re at home.’
‘That’s what I mean. You’ve got ’em with you.’
Recognising one of Tom’s more abrasive moods, Hugh made no reply.
‘Keeping you going, are they?’ Tom asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s what kids do. Keep you going.’
‘Sure do.’ Aware of the time, Hugh began to search for his hands-free kit.
A silence followed, which Tom didn’t seem inclined to break.
‘Hello?’ Hugh said after a while.
There was a rushing sound as Tom breathed hard against the mouthpiece. Finally he said in a taut monotone, ‘Crazy how things get to you, how you look back and what seemed like the worst thing that could ever happen wasn’t so bad after all.’
The hands-free wasn’t in its usual place, and it didn’t seem to be in the foot well either. Giving up, Hugh jammed the phone against his shoulder while he put the car into gear and drove off.
‘I used to think Bosnia was the worst thing that was ever gonna happen. Wasn’t too bad at the start. I thought, it’s war, this is what happens, this is what I’m trained to do, go up this hill, follow the stink that’s like no other stink on earth, start sorting through the bodies . . .’
‘Tom, listen—’
But Tom was talking over him. ‘I thought, it’s not like it’s any of my mates who’ve bought it, not like Northern Ireland where some of the guys got to see bits of their mates plastered all over the road.’
‘Look, Tom, can we leave this till another time?’
‘But then it started to get to me,’ Tom went on doggedly. ‘We had to put yellow crosses on their foreheads. Or their feet if the head wasn’t in good shape. In among the women there were small babes. But it was the two-, three-year-olds that really got to me. Some, you could see the bullet wounds. Others, you couldn’t see how they died and you began to think they’d been buried alive.’
Belatedly, it dawned on Hugh that Tom was drunk or high, or both. ‘Just stop it there, Tom. Okay? I really can’t talk now.’
‘Must’ve been the fourth grave,’ Tom continued as if Hugh hadn’t spoken. ‘Sipovo it was. Outside Sipovo. It was full of OAPs and kids. Crazy thing was, it was the OAPs that did my head in as much as the kids. Never worked that one out. Still can’t. OAPs!’
Hugh had reached the T junction at the end of the lane. With fast-moving traffic ahead and a car coming up behind, he
dropped the phone into his lap while he concentrated on finding a safe gap. Once onto the main road, he picked up the phone again and, hearing silence, prompted reluctantly, ‘Hi?’
‘What happened?’
‘Traffic.’
‘
So
. . . the fourth grave was at Sipovo. Just outside Sipovo. It was full of OAPs and kids—’
‘I got that bit!’ Hugh interrupted, dangerously close to exasperation. ‘Look, Tom, can I call you back?’
‘No, you can’t!’ Tom answered furiously. ‘No! I’m telling you, and you’re gonna listen. You’re gonna fucking listen!’
Hugh would have rung off there and then but for the certainty that Tom would call back and keep calling back until he’d got this off his chest. ‘Okay, Tom, but I’m driving and I don’t have a hands-free and I may have to put the phone down sometimes.’
‘
So
,’ Tom said, moving on tenaciously, ‘when I got back to the UK, that’s when the nightmares started. Did my head in. Saw the dead climbing out of the graves, yellow crosses on their foreheads. Coming after me, trying to grab me, pull me down. Saw the babes under the earth, half dead. It seemed like the worst thing that could ever happen.’ He gave a bitter snort. ‘Bit of a joke now.’
Coming into the village, Hugh veered left into the only parking place available, a disabled bay outside the Star of India. Halting, he saw Mr Ravikumar in a window of the restaurant, fixing a menu to the glass. The top and sides of the glass had been overpainted to form an Eastern arch ornamented with elephants and stars, so that Mr Ravikumar appeared to be framed by a stage set of India.
Tom was pressing on in a fierce monotone. ‘That’s when I got into dope. Not like before, at weekends and shindies, but all the time. Only way I could get through the days, let alone the bloody nights. And then Holly arrived. Changed my life, she did. Loved her to bits right from the start. With Matt, I hadn’t taken to him, not as a babe. Hardly seen him, for one
thing. Screamed the whole bloody time. But once my little girl came along, it was like she stole my heart. I got my act together, cut out the dope and the worst of the booze, went to the doc for stuff to calm me down, got regular work . . .’
Mr Ravikumar had spotted Hugh and was waving from the arched window. Hugh waved back and reached forward to turn off the engine.
Another blast against the mouthpiece as Tom snorted again. ‘It was like I was being set up, of course, taken sky high just so I could be dropped as low as I could go. Like I was being taught that Bosnia didn’t come close to being the worst thing that could ever happen. But then you know what it’s like, don’t you, Hugh? To be sky high one minute, then low as you can go.’ There was an edge to Tom’s voice, a challenge or a warning.
In the window Mr Ravikumar was smiling enquiringly at Hugh as if to ask after his health.
‘Sure,’ Hugh murmured as he mustered a brief smile for Mr Ravikumar.
‘Then so-called God in his so-called fucking wisdom decided he’d make me watch Holly die. At least you didn’t have to go through that, did you, eh, Hugh?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘That’s right,’ said Tom, pushing his point. ‘Only thing that stopped me from topping myself was the thought of getting some justice. What a joke. The only real justice would’ve been if that old man hadn’t died in the crash, if he could’ve been made to suffer like I’d suffered. But the case, the money – it was the next-best thing. That’s what I told myself. But then I got to realise the money didn’t count for anything without my boys. Got to love ’em like I loved Holly. Never thought I would, not like I loved Holly, but I did. Got to love ’em to bits. Broke me up whenever I had to take ’em back to Linda and that scumbag she took up with.’ His voice was rising and cracking slightly. ‘And then for once in my life I get a break. Linda wants to give ’em up, to let ’em come and live with me!
My boys! All I’ve ever wanted – to have my boys at home with me! And I’m sky high. Sky high!’